#just a casual reminder he dies at the age of twelve

[vee-crytraps]

Kiss Me More | Ch 1 | {Groan}

SUMMARY: It’s been twelve long years since you were the sad little girl tugging on the tails of your adoptive father’s coat.

Your brothers take notice. AN: New to posting fics on Tumblr, feel free to read here or over on Ao3 under the username VenusCrytraps. Same bat time, same bat channel.

{Trigger warning/Themes Masterlist}

And yeah, i wanna spend the night with you Yeah, i wanna feel a beating, bleeding heart, don't you? Because i've never really known But i pinky promise you i'm grown And i wanna know what it feels like

You’re deep in your head as you lean forward in your vanity’s mirror, lightly dabbing away the smeared lipstick at the corner of your mouth with your middle finger. You don’t notice the creak of your door as it opens, and the protest of the frame as one of your many adopted siblings leans against it.

You don’t see the range of emotions he cycles through- some visible on his face, and others happening only in his head, behind those stormy green eyes.

“Yeah. I don’t think so.” Jason scoffs to himself after a minute, startling you. The tension drains from your shoulders as you turn around to see him standing there, all geared up in his Red Hood uniform sans the armor and that goofy fucking helmet of his. Your surprise has less to do with the atrophied instincts you’ve barely managed to keep from your two weeks as Robin back in the day, and more to do with the strangeness of Jason serving you his best impression of Dick’s Blue Steel, A.K.A, his ’Concerned Big Brother’ face. Something your oldest brother pulled so often, he could have it patented. It looks totally ridiculous on Jason, a dude you legitimately haven’t seen out of his uniform since he was welcomed back into the family. You think to yourself that he must be doing his rounds, doing his best to repair the dynamics that were lost when he died, and soured when the pit left him more than a little trigger happy.

Still, you remind yourself of Dick’s advice, to reward vulnerability and welcome these moments. Jason was supposedly quite fragile beyond his hulking form.

You sighed. “What can I do for you?”

There was some lingering awkwardness around the fact that he’d briefly dedicated his life to ending your dads, but if Bruce could trust him enough to welcome him anywhere near the Batcave, you supposed you could, too. He was trying his best, after all. You just wish he’d take it elsewhere, for once.

Still, you’ll play along.

“Where the hell are you going?” Dressed like that, was the implication that hung in the air. You’re smart enough to fill in the blank. He’s smart enough to let you.

“Out.” You turn around, unable to help but be a little bit guarded about this particular line of questioning.

God, on all the nights…

Turning your back to him, you casually resume your preening. He doesn’t at all remember you being this stubborn, but he’d died and come back to find you a whole lot older than he remembered.

“Out,” Jason repeated, exhaling heavily as he pushed off the doorframe. Jason was your age, once. He knew all about ‘out’. When he was in your shoes, going to Gotham Academy, making those fancy friends with more money than sense, ‘out’ meant joyriding around, bar hopping with fake ID’s and hooking up with fast, socialite girls wearing skirts not unlike the one you sported as you shifted in your plush vanity seat.

“What’s his name?”

“Are you still here?”

It slips out of you before you can remind yourself of Dick’s instruction to give Jason the room and encouragement he needed to be a part of your life again. As if he were a scared cat, and not a six-foot-something giant with the wrong kind of bodycount.

You try again, but it doesn’t come out any more cordial. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

Jason raises an eyebrow. He wasn’t expecting that. He also wasn’t expecting you to look so…grown up. His gaze flickered over you, over the short skirt and lace trimmed cardigan you were wearing. Over the way you applied that mascara and eyeliner with practiced skill and patience.

You were beautiful. God damn it, Bruce.

Catching his gaze in the mirror, you falter. His unreadable stare pulls the plug on your brat-ittude. A sigh escapes you.

“I’ll be careful, Jay. I promise.” You mumble, capping your eyeliner with finality as you give into this game of house he insisted on playing with you. When your eyes finally flicker up to meet his again, something in them seems…changed. The expression he wears is no longer unreadable. You recognize it, but can’t seem to place it. It’s been a long time since he’s seen you, but it’s been just as long since you were able to get a good look at him, too.

And then it’s there, again. The guilt and shame that coils within you as you notice the way his arms bulge under the brown leather of his jacket, the set of his strong jaw and the pout of his full bottom lip. You want to bash your head against your vanity. Tonight was supposed to be your night to get away from this feeling. To distract yourself with normal boys that weren't off limits. To cure yourself of the way you instantly became distracted whenever your brothers were near.

Adoptive brothers, you remind yourself inwardly. But you know that fact doesn’t make you feel any less fucking gross.

For as much as you appreciated some of the upsides of puberty hitting you like a train, there were some notable downsides, too. Inappropriate attraction to the other gorgeous men that live in this house aside, you’d found yourself concerned with things you had always prided yourself on being above. The way you gravitated towards more flattering clothes and cuter underwear, your proclivity for flavored lipgloss and this…overwhelming desire to feel attractive had you feeling so unlike yourself that it was hard to embrace the change, let alone enjoy it. Sometimes, the process of becoming a woman often felt like you were being beat with a pretty pink nightstick.

It takes you a moment to realize you’ve been quiet for a strange amount of time. And the knowledge that he has too makes you tense in places you didn’t know you could.

“Besides,” You continue, though too much time has passed to really consider it a continuation of your promise. “I’ve got backup.”

Swiveling around in your vanity’s chair, you don a self satisfied smirk as you slip the hem of your skirt up your thigh just a smidge, exposing the knife holstered to your thigh.

Jason’s eyebrows almost hit the ceiling. He wasn’t expecting that of all things. Not the sight of you, gorgeous and young and supposedly retired from this whole vigilante thing having a butterfly knife strapped to your leg. He wasn’t expecting the thrill he was getting just by looking at it, and how much he wanted to see it in use.

What is wrong with me?

He clears his throat to regain his composure.

“Where the hell did you get that?” He asks, his voice rougher than before.

“Where do you think?” You can’t help but laugh, tugging the hem of your skirt back down. Your sharp tongue gets him hot under his collar in a way he is beyond not proud of.

Still, he joins you, letting out a noise that is somewhere between a laugh and a snort. The moment brings about a sense of familiarity, the conversation finding a groove it hasn’t been able to since before he had died.

Clearing his throat again, he has to fight against the heat threatening to rise in his face- unable to do much about the blood rushing south. “Look. I know it’s not my place, just…I’m concerned. About you going outside wearing…” The way he vaguely gestures to your outfit with his hands makes you forget he’s supposed to be some kind of sharpshooter.

“I’m…going on a date.” You finally answer, offering an olive branch. Maybe the truth really will set you free. From this cage of Wayne Manor, from the clear gloss, sensible shoes and frumpy skirts that were good for your optics, whatever the fuck that meant. Jason was in your shoes, once. Under the microscope of society, young and repping the name of an entire family on your back. You hope he can relate, and give you some grace. So you lay it on. Thick.

“Do you like it? It’s pretty much brand new. I never get to wear it, because there is no way dad would ever let me out dressed like this.”

Jason nods slowly.

He likes more than your outfit.

“You’re going on a date.” He turns it over in his mind. It seems his suspicions were correct. “And…Bruce doesn’t even know?”

You can’t help but roll your eyes. “Oh, don’t give me that. As if you told him where you were sneaking off to when you were my age. And don’t you dare say it was different or whatever bullshit you’re about to-“

Jason crosses the room to your still seated form before you can finish, stepping into your personal space and placing a hand under your chin. He lifts it gently, and tries not to absolutely lose it at the way you look up at him from beneath your lashes.

“Where is he taking you?” Jason asks, his voice low and rough.

You do your best to beat back that feeling again. The warmth in your core is persistent, but you’ve had a few years of practice surpassing it. Digging your nails into your palm, you try not to observe how handsome he looks, even now, with that spark of disapproval in his gaze. Focusing hard, you manage not to bite your lip at his tone.

“Drive-in.” The truth slips from you quickly, and quieter than it would have several minutes ago, when you couldn’t smell his cologne. You lean into his touch imperceptibly. “And then there’s a party we might stop by.”

“Drive-in?” Jason repeats, his eyebrows arching. “Like, a literal movie drive-in? Do those places still actually exist?” His fingers tighten, his thumb rubbing against your chin- dangerously close to the fullness of your bottom lip. There’s no way you could miss the way his eyes devour your face. And drop to your lips.

“Uh-huh.” You confirm, dropping your chin ever so little, kissing his thumb. “They’re popular spots. Sitting in your car with your date. Alone, in the dark.”

“God, you’re killing me right now.” His heart pounds as your lips touch his thumb, but makes no move to pull it away. His fingers grip your chin a little tighter. His other hand comes to your neck, the pads of his fingers brushing over it gently. “You’re just begging to be kissed, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” the word escapes you breathlessly. It’s so fucking embarrassing. You can’t help it. That you care so much about your hair, that your showers are extra long and that you’re so horny all the fucking time now because living in his house is like being in the Olympic village- constantly surrounded by beautifully sculpted people. It was beyond difficult, even if you were now counted among them.

Jason doesn’t care that your door is cracked open or if anyone could walk in and see you. He drops one hand off of your chin, and the one tracing your pulse trails back and up into your hair, forgetting himself as he fists the strands and tugs it back.

“God, look at you.”

It’s all he can manage before he’s leaning down, pressing his lips to yours. The discovery of your flavored lipgloss sets off a wave of possessiveness in him when he thinks that some other punk was planning to savor the taste. He wants it to be just for him.

You kiss him back before you can think about it. You’re touch starved and aching, barely thinking straight as he lifts you into his arms with his impossible strength and picks you up as if you weigh less than nothing. Instinctively, your legs wrap around his waist. Breaking the kiss, your hands find his face, thumbs brushing over the scars on his cheek. “Forgot how strong you are, Jay.”

He lays you across the bed with one swift motion and kneels between your legs as his large hands roam your thighs. You know for a fact that your skin is soft and smooth. Your Everything Shower routine was of the gods.

“You’ve grown up, baby bat.”

His dark eyes bore into you, the old nickname rolling off of his tongue with ease. It no longer brings an irritated flush to your face the way it did when you were still playing with dolls. For a moment, he’s reminded of the fact that he was here to try and step into that role again. To be the brother that keeps you from making the sort of dumb mistakes he had been known for at your age, and not to touch you- but you’re so soft and so sweet. There’s no pity in your eyes, or fear of the monster he used to be. He can't decide if he wants to cherish you or ruin you, but he's greedy enough to try and get away with both.

Manicured fingers twitch to the front tie of your lace cardigan. The edge of the ribbon rests between your forefinger and thumb before you slowly pull, releasing the bow. You reveal your bare, ample chest to him as you agree breathlessly. “Yeah,”

Jason bites his lip at the sight of your chest. A deep sense of satisfaction fills him as you reveal yourself to him, and the hand on your thigh rises slowly, stopping at your hip. He lets out a soft groan as he promptly resumes to think with the wrong head.

Catching his gaze, you drag your nails down his chest, fingers stopping at his belt. Tilting your head, you don’t bother to look as you work on undoing the buckle and pull it free from the loops of his pants. “Jay,” You whisper.

“Don’t call me that.” His voice is low, his gaze still boring into yours. “It makes me…feel a certain type of way.” Tilting his head back a little, he lets out another soft grunt when he feels you working open the front of his pants. His eyes fall shut. He seems to be on the verge of something, no doubt attempting to convince himself to stop before the two of you do something you can’t take back.

“What if I want you to feel that way?” You ask, dipping your hand beneath the open waistband of his pants, your soft fingers brushing against his swelling cock.

“Jesus Christ.” Releasing a deep breath, he looks down at you. His hand travels up to your throat, fingers digging into your skin.

“Please.” You finally just beg him, your bare chest heaving as you attempt not to squirm with the anticipation. “Please, Jay. Please.” How long has it been, since you were touched? Yeah, you were gorgeous, and fairly popular at school, but being involved with the precious daughter of the ‘prince of Gotham’ was often too risky for a lot of the guys at school. With you, they couldn't get away with half of the things they could with some of the other girls you know. And then there’s Jason. Someone she’s known for a good chunk of her life. Someone she trusts, someone she’s mourned, and most importantly- someone who is not afraid of Bruce Wayne.

The dying embers of his resolve are snuffed out the minute you shift your hips, that too short skirt riding up and revealing your absolutely soaked panties. And fuck, has he even touched you yet?

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, sweetheart. I got you.” Jason leans over you, one hand supporting himself by your head as the other drags your underwear to the side. Two of his calloused fingers stroke your slippery folds, covering his hand in your warm slick before he fists his thick cock.

He brings the blunt head of him close to you, stroking your clit before it brushes against your core. “Relax for me, sweetheart. You gotta let me in.” He murmurs, kissing the corner of your mouth. “Hold onto me.”

You do. Your fingers dig into his strong shoulders as he finally manages to push into you with a long suffering groan. You’re no virgin, but you’re half his size, and so, he bets, was every other chump you had before him. And from the way your walls quiver and stretch around him? He also bets that list is pretty short.

“ ’S okay, princess,” He breathes, his pupils blown wide. It takes everything in him not to pin you down and absolutely destroy you, but he reminds himself that your desperation does’t equal experience. You can act as fast as you want, you still need time to adjust to him.

“Oooh, fuck.” Jason hisses, his nails digging into the sheets beside you as he somehow manages to bottom out. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” You can feel his shoulders tense under your palms, and your soft hands slip down his biceps until you’re holding his forearms. You’re so tight it’s criminal, and he can’t even focus as he begins to thrust into you.

His name sounds magical coming from your lips, and you look so gorgeous beneath him, your eyes screwed shut in pleasure as he fucks you hard and deep and bare. Your cunt is noisy and desperate, sucking him deep into your impossible warmth, covering every inch of him in your slick. His hand finds your throat again, and he can feel the way you squeeze around him in response. He groans complete delight. “You like that? Huh?”

Something akin to a yes escapes you as he begins to fuck you harder, the wood of the antique bed frame creaking in protest as your distant sort-of-stepbrother practically folds you in half, seemingly unable to get deep enough inside of you. Jason is a complete mess above you as you all but melt into your sheets, fingers tangled in the linens as each deep thrust forces a desperate whine from your parted lips.

“Such a perfect little cunt. So warm and fuckin’ wet-“ His free hand greedily palms at your tits as a string of other obscenities that make your clit throb begin to fall from his lips. He finds a spot deep within you that makes your toes curl and your walls tighten, and he grips your hips for leverage as he abuses it relentlessly. The difference between you is such that he barely has to shift his hand from your thigh to have his thumb roll over your clit shortly after you feel him spit on it, the oddity and the sudden stimulation forcing your back to arch.

There’s a part of him that hasn’t yet forgiven Bruce for leaving him to die, and that part greedily soaks up the sight of you coming undone beneath him, your tits bouncing as your back arches off of your bed. You may be barely an adult, but you’re still Bruce Wayne’s little girl, too precious for combat, but not too precious for Jason to spread you open on your pastel linens, under your daddy’s roof. You cream around his cock as your greedy walls threaten to milk him but he refuses to let up, determined to bully another orgasm out of you before he’s through.

“Tell me you want it,” Of course he knows you do. You’re the one who practically scrambled for his belt the minute he got you onto the bed, but it’s not enough to see it. He wants to hear you say it. To beg for him His voice is hoarse. Desperate. “Tell me you want me.”

“I want you,” You manage, barely able to get the words out. “Want you, I want you-“ His nails bite into your thigh and you can hear the blood rushing to your ears.

“Jason,” You look up at him through your lashes, tears of pleasure collecting in the corners of your pretty eyes. He mumbles your name in return, leaning down to kiss your shoulder.

“Get off in me.”

“Fuck!” His orgasm hits him like a train almost instantly, and he grinds into you needily with a disbelieving groan, filling you up. Your eyes nearly roll back as you come undone around him, and you’re not even though your orgasm before he lets out a barely coherent whine that sounds like it could be ‘good girl’ or ‘dirty fucking tease’. Your mind is spinning too much to make sense of anything and you decide take your pick, leaning back into your nest of plush blankets and pillows.

“Shit,” You breathe, exhausted.

“Yeah.” He agrees.

Jason allows himself to roll off of you, the bed creaking with impact as he collapses beside you with an uneven exhale. You close your eyes and try to catch your breath, hearing the shifting of his tactical pants beside you as he tucks his cock away. He casts a sidelong glance at you, swallowing before he can think of something to say. “That…you were okay with that, right?”

It takes a good moment to register the words, and you blink your eyes open. Turning to your side, you meet his gaze. You’re both sweating, and you feel decidedly un-sexy with his cooling cum leaking out of you. “What…what are you asking me?” You frown.

Jason tilts his head towards you. “It’s just…you know. What I was like before you uh…grew up.” His thoughts trail off, and his face creases with a frown as he tries to get through the next few words. “I just. I want to make sure…” A deep breath. Another heartbeat. “I can be rough, is all.” His expression softens, and guilt begins to seep in. You may live under this roof, but you aren’t like him. Not really. You were the soft one. The normal one. And that makes him feel equal amounts of pride and shame when he thinks about what you two have just done.

“Hey,” You recognize that shame, and you decide to put a stop to it before he overflows with it. “I may not spend my nights being tossed around by thugs anymore, but Gotham is rough. Our life is rough.”

Reaching out, you rest a hand over his heart, feeling the heat of him through his shirt. “But…being here…like this- with you? Being roughed up doesn’t have to suck.” Sitting up, you offer him a smile. “In fact, it felt so good I came twice. So. You know.”

Your answer is honest, and he can’t help but chuckle as he moves to sit up with you. His hand moves to caress the side of your face. You lean into his hand, and his gaze softens.

“You’re so different than you used to be.” His words come out in a whisper, and his thumb traces your jawline. “I want to keep you safe from this. But…I like this side of you. I like what I can bring out of you.”

“It’s been a long time, Jay.” You mumbled, closing your eyes. "A really long time."

You open them when you feel the way his lips brush against your forehead. They linger there for a heartbeat.

The moment is cut shot when you can hear the pneumatic hiss of the downstairs grandfather clock as it swings open, no doubt your adoptive dad home from patrol. “Shit. Dad’s home,” You whisper, and Jason grumbles as he leans against the headboard to catch his breath, watching you sit up. “You sure know how to kill the mood.”

“Dude, I just let you unload in me. I am the mood. So like, zip it.” You huff, fixing your underwear. Jason, despite his casually annoyed exterior, is lighter on his feet than you’ve ever seen him as he moves to get off of your bed. He’s sneaking out of here like his life depends on it, but he has the feeling it actually might.

“See you at breakfast, Jay!” You call a little too loudly, snickering at the way he tenses up in fear. He makes sure to flip you off right before he disappears past the doorframe, and you walk over and shut it.

Looking over to your desk, you see the screen of your phone is lit up, flooded with half an hours worth of texts and missed calls.

Guess you missed your date.

I ain't scared of boys, but boy, you're a man And if anybody could, I'm sure you can For a girl this young, naive, and miserable

[mountainouslogs]

i learned the taste of grief when mr. fletcher died.

that was over ten years ago and i still ache when he crosses my mind. i live in florida now, nowhere close to where my family used to vacation, but the elephant leaves and banana trees growing in beautiful yards are the same — seeing them still make me think of him. i brake for reptiles because i remember how loved by him they were, those zipping lizards that have unsettled me ever since one bit the skin between my thumb and finger and not even my flailing hand could dislodge him.

i don’t remember if it hurt. i’m sure the shock of such a small thing defending itself against a towering beast such as myself distracted my body from any pain i might have felt in that moment — but what i do remember is the sound of my father laughing with mr. fletcher as i rushed towards them, terrified and betrayed, because it was less than a minute before that they encouraged me to chase lizards under the pretense that they did not have teeth and therefore could not harm me.

that turned out not to be the case, of course, and while i’m certain i milked that incident as much as i could, it was never an unpleasant memory. i dodge the lizards and iguanas outside my apartment complex like they’re disguised nukes, but i don’t mind that short fraction of time where i’m unsettled by their tiny bodies dashing past me because i think about mr. fletcher, on that beige swivel chair next to my father, his body trembling with laughter and life.

the odd thing about this grief is the immensity of it — some days i miss him more than my own papaw, but admitting that is shameful and confusing. i had more love for my papaw than i knew what to do with.

as an adult, i think i understand why that is, why thinking about mr. fletcher brings about emotion more negative than when i miss my own grandfather-- death is an uncomfortable topic for any age, but it is far more unpleasant to have that conversation with a child.

i remember every detail about the first time my parents introduced me to loss.

it was early afternoon and my father had returned home early from work with tudor’s biscuit world, a breakfast chain unique to west virginia that primarily served -- you guessed it -- biscuits. this wasn’t a first, but it wasn’t a common occurrence either, which should have suggested to me right then and there that something had happened and my parents were trying to ease the potential upset with buttery biscuits and greasy potato cakes, but i was twelve and hadn’t yet learned that people often did that — accompanied a kind gesture with devastating news.

naturally i began eating. it wasn’t often we ate breakfast as a family, and though it missed that familial spirit of a fried meal, we were all together. and then my parents began talking to each other, and i hardly listened with my sister next to me on the couch unwrapping her biscuit and texting someone i didn’t know but was peeking over her shoulder trying to learn, when i heard my mother:

“i can’t believe mr. fletcher died.”

for a moment, i think my body shut down. i can still remember the tingle in my wrist when my arms went numb. the biscuit fell into my lap. my parents watched me, surprised and uncertain, while my sister, who rarely showed emotion that wasn’t anger, digested the news smoothly, easily, maturely, and i figure they expected the same reaction from me. we hadn’t seen mr. fletcher in awhile by that point, financially screwed from moving into a new house and unable to vacation in florida that following year. i didn’t think about him often before his death — most of the time i neglected the letters he sent and only responded when my mother reminded us to. but his death affected me in a way i couldn’t explain, in a way my family didn’t consider, otherwise i choose to believe they would have approached the subject with more sensitivity instead of just as casually as they would inform me of a stain on my jeans.

i remember slowly wrapping up my food while my family spoke. my sister was asking questions just as causally as they were answering them, but all i could hear was my heart breaking and my body buzzing with the novelty of knowing what grief felt like. i retreated to my room silently, stopped by no one, and though my mother made her way upstairs shortly after to check up on me (at the request of my father), i did not find her presence comforting, nor the words she shared with me reassuring, designed to be kid-approved and digestible — but how could i swallow a truth as large as life ending? nothing made it easier going down.

all at once i felt shame, regret, horror, a deep-rooted sorrow that has never stopped aching. i was thankful my mother remained quiet, but i was even more thankful that she didn't ask me to explain. i don't think i could have.

i don't think i can.

it’s been over ten years and that grief is still caught in my throat.

[kiridarling]

𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐒

izuku midoriya | ft. ceo!au + praise + exhibitionism + breaking and entering + body worship + f!reader + more! minors dni.

— 3.8k words

“When I saw you this evening, in that ballgown, I knew I just had to have you. But I can't be a gentleman for much longer, as much as I'd like to."

You’ve always hated Chopin.

“L’œuf mimosa, Madame?”

After turning down the poor waiter whose arms quiver under the weight of the plates, you turn back to your red wine and people-watching. The ballroom is full of golds and reds, the amber lighting illuminating the intricately decorated walls. And you sit in the middle of it all—you and your 147 billion net-worth, with a ball gown that’s caught at least half the aristocratic asshole’s attention, not that they were very loyal to their wives in the first place.

You're not here for their attention, though. You’re strictly here for business—and frankly, you want to do nothing more than sock these fat business moguls in their chubby faces until their teeth fall out and demand they pay their taxes. But, seeing as you’re the only woman here who isn’t a gold-digging wife, you bite your tongue.

You’ve always dreaded black tie events, but as you’ve said, duty calls.

A whine filters through the speakers, followed by two amplified taps and a clear of a throat. The murmur down as the auction's owner takes the center of the stage, stilling in front of the next piece of art—hidden behind a black veil—before adjusting the tie to his business suit.

“I’m glad that you all could be with us tonight. I have both a great privilege and honor to host this event,” he announces, bulbous head already growing damp under the heat of the stage lights. “Now that we're almost at the end, I'm sure you won't be disappointed. Saving the best for last, as one does."

He includes a casual wave to his comment and the audience erupts in a flurry of chuckles, though not for long. As he walks over to the piece, hand raised and ready to reveal, silence seizes the room by the neck.

"Well. Shall we?”

The audience balances on the edges of their seats, with millions of wide eyes and thrumming chests in anticipation. A smooth flick of a hand and the black sheet is removed, and there sits the only piece you’ve had your eyes on all night. She’s even more beautiful up close.

“El Bacio, The Kiss. Francesco Hayez, 1859.”

The grip around your glass tightens. The brilliant blue from the woman’s dress in the oil painting may as well burn your eyes, and the surrounding murmurs peak with your interest. You know it's yours without question, though—you can outbid almost anyone in this room. Anyone that matters, anyway.

“This is the original version, originally commissioned by Count Alfonso Maria Visconti of Saliceto. It was donated to the Pinacoteca di Brera in 1886 and went missing in 1937. Starting at ten million.”

You try not to scowl. The fucker jacked up the price by two million.

“Twelve million,” the man says as he recognizes whoever lifted a hand. You sit tight, your hands throbbing in your lap for the right moment as you survey the room for anyone who could possibly pose a threat. You find none.

The bidding continues. The price elevates from twelve million to fifteen to thirty to fifty. You raise a hand, finally, fingers splayed wide and confident to signify a five.

“Fifty-five million.”

The room falls silent; you try not to smile. You know for a fact no one wants this painting more than you do, and you’re determined to have it.

“No one else?”

His eyes scan the room but no one makes a motion. It’s yours.

Until there’s movement from your peripheral.

“Sixty million!”

You eye whoever had the audacity to raise their hand, only to be met with a rather peculiar sight—a man, roughly your age, with slicked-back green hair and a hand twice the size of yours, lifted lazily in the air.

With a huff, you find yourself thrusting another five into the air.

“Sixty-five millio—Seventy million!”

You know that green-haired (probably) trust fund baby has got to be doing this for fun because the poorly hidden smirk hidden behind the hand he rests his chin on is more than obvious.

You dislike him already, immediately categorizing him with the rest—another sleazeball.

“Seventy-five million!”

“Eighty million!”

“One hundred million!”

In your defense, you were getting frustrated.

Either way, the green-haired stranger backs off with a nonchalant shrug, and it makes you burn this discontent. The business mogul-turned-auctioneer steps off the stage for another twenty-minute intermission and folks turn to one another for conversation. You sigh, simply satisfied that you’ve gotten what you came for.

You find yourself faintly puzzled by the boy with the green hair, and you're sure it's solely due to his age. Frankly, you've been the only one under thirty in the Top 100 Richest People since you achieved such a feat, and the fact that you haven't heard of him is...puzzling. But it doesn't matter. Clearly, he’s just another fellow looking to put another pretty thing in his foyer—you doubt he knows a thing about art, and definitely not an appreciation for it. You find solace in the fact that it's the new addition to your precious art collection instead, and will be owned and taken care of by someone who actually enjoys it.

“Good evening.”

You jump. Wrapped up in all of your inner turmoil (complemented by inner bragging, naturally) you fail to notice the greenette cross the expanse of the ballroom and make himself comfortable in the open seat next to you, despite your lack of approval.

“Hello,” you say, unsure of why he's here. He offers a hand to shake, Rolex glinting under the golden lighting.

“Izuku Midoriya,” he introduces, and you suppose shaking his hand won’t hurt.

“Your name?” He snorts, raising a cocky eyebrow. You scowl.

“Does it matter?”

“Not particularly.” Izuku rests his forearms on the table as his evergreen eyes rake your figure up and down. “But if you prefer to remain nameless, be my guest.”

“[Y/N].”

“Hmm?”

“My name,” you clarify. “It’s [Y/N].”

You’re not exactly sure what possessed you to tell him your name so easily. Maybe the fact that most already know who you are, and the fact that this man—this stranger—doesn’t know who you are, irks you a bit.

Okay. It irks you a lot.

“Well, Miss [Y/N],” Izuku tilts his head sideways. “I think that’s a very pretty name.”

Your body betrays you with a light gasp. Stupid thing.

“Well. I’m bored,” Izuku announces childishly, relaxing against the chair. “Lets go somewhere.”

You roll your eyes at his asserted dominance—in no way does he expect you to go with him, does he? You raise an eyebrow.

“No.”

Izuku clicks his tongue as if it were a buzzer, and more importantly, as if you were wrong. “Why?”

That has you scoffing. “I don’t know you.”

Izuku’s eyes flash with a challenge and it’s gone just as quickly. He leans forwards, crowding your personal space yet again.

“I told you my name, no?”

“You did,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest and straightening your back. You feel too small. “But I know nothing about you.“

“Well,” Izuku places an inquisitive finger on his lips, and it’s almost mocking, the way he takes a moment to think about it. “My name is Izuku Midoriya. I like...katsudon and hero movies. I’m here because I have too much time and money on my hands, and I’m, most importantly, bored.”

Your eyes narrow. “What do you do for a living?”

Izuku’s lip curls, and it’s downright sinister, “I'll tell you if you come with me."

You roll your eyes, and he takes both your hands in his. You don’t pull away, but you don’t reciprocate it either.

“Where?”

Izuku shrugs, “Wherever the wind takes us.”

Your stomach growls loudly, interrupting your fairly intimate conversation and dying your cheeks pink. Izuku raises an eyebrow.

“I heard they’re feeding us escargo for dinner.”

“Ugh,” you sigh, shoulder sagging. “Looks like I’m not eating, then.”

But there’s a glint in his eyes, and you’d be lying if you said there wasn’t one in your own. There's an ebb in the discourse, a beat, before Izuku's nodding towards the exit.

“Fast food?”

Wendy’s hits different during a Parisian midnight.

“—and so I had to be like: No Kacchan, you can’t hotwire his car to blow just because your food was, and I quote, lukewarm.”

You snicker behind a fist, digging your fancy heels into the grimy cement sidewalk, Wendy’s frostee in hand. Izuku hasn’t let go of your hand since you two left the fast-food joint, and for some reason, you haven’t pulled away.

"Violence seems to be a reoccurring theme with your friend," you say, laughing when Izuku nods in agreement, eyes stuck on the full moon hanging high in the air.

"You remind me of him, actually."

You raise an eyebrow, unable to see the correlation at all, "Because I'm a loud and angry and I like to blow things up."

"Or, because you're strong—independent. The type of woman to make men turn tail and run, you know?" Izuku turns to you with a lopsided grin.

You hum, averting your eyes to the moon. It's a stupid question, one that's all too loaded yet empty at the same time, and you hate that you hesitate to ask it.

"Why haven't you ran, then?"

"Easy." Izuku lets a smooth shrug roll off his shoulders, "I like strong women."

He continues to pull you to an undisclosed destination, the two of you stumbling through the heart of Paris with his suit jacket around your goosebump-ridden shoulders. People stare, but for the first time in forever, you find that you don't care much.

Finally, you two reach Izuku's "big reveal." You gaze at the magnificently lit french building in confusion, the golden under lights contrasting both of your beings against the navy blue sky.

"The Louvre?"

"Mhm," Izuku says, and he looks more than giddy. "Have you been?"

"Once," your voice is weary and you're sure he senses it, his grip tightening around your own. "For a fundraiser...but it's midnight Izuku, ho—"

But he's already tugging you to the right, dipping between columns and arches until you reach the back of the building. Izuku turns to you and whispers:

"Watch this."

It's hard to tell what he did exactly, especially with no light—it's just a bunch of jingles and ticks. Though, the moment you can't escape the sense that this is beyond sketchy, a lock clicks, and a door whines open.

"Hurry. And take your heels off," Izuku whispers, tilting his head towards the entrance. You hear the crunch of a leaf and see the beginning of a white flashlight curl around the building and fuck, this place has to be crawling with security guards, doesn't it?

"Don't tell me what to do," you grumble...as you take off your shoes. (Because you were going to do it anyway.) You enter and he closes the door behind the two of you, submerging you both in complete darkness.

"Security's only on the outside," Izuku grins. "They don't expect us to get inside, so as long as we're quiet, it should be fine."

"Until we have to get back out again," you say, huffing. Your heart pounds from the adrenaline because frankly, you've never been one for adventures, and breaking into a historical french museum is miles out of your comfort zone. "Seriously, did you think this through at all? What happens when we get caught?"

Izuku sighs, turning to you with a pout before grabbing your free hand again. "Women worry too much. C'mon—I wanna explore."

"You—let go, you misogynistic assho—"

You're cut off by a finger to your lips. Izuku bends down so he’s looking at you straight on, eyes dark as he sternly whispers, "Do you want us to get caught?"

It's not the prospect of getting caught that makes you falter, though—it's the way his stare pins you in place, voice swollen with that air of dominance you claim to hate. You have to tighten your grip on your heels to ensure they don't hit the ground.

"Now," Izuku‘s strangely childish manner returns, tugging your hand once your panicked whisper-yelling ceases, "Shall we?"

You roll your eyes, but your bare feet patter against the cold Louvre tile anyway. And you've got to say, the museum is much nicer when it isn't crawling with people.

"Mona Lisa's forehead is bigger than I thought," Izuku observes with a finger on his lip. He's on the wrong side of the railing, his nose close to kissing the glass protecting the piece. You snort, dropping your head to pinch the bridge. He turns to give you a weird look.

"What?"

"Nothing, just," you shake your head, the cool wood of the railing digging into your forearms. "Did you actually want that painting?"

Izuku frowns. "Which one?"

"El Bacio."

"Mm," the greenette hums as he thinks, blinking to the corner of the room."I suppose. You seemed like you wanted it more, though."

You roll your eyes, "So you cap at eighty million?"

Izuku shrugs, hopping the railing. Seems like he's finally done insulting poor Lisa, "I capped when you started to sweat."

You huff, but stomping instead of walking isn't so intimidating when you're barefoot. "I wasn't sweating."

You see a hidden smirk on Izuku's face once you catch up to him, and it's frustrating and insulting, to say the least. Both of you proceed down a hall of statues. "You're much easier to read than you think, Miss [Y/N]."

"And you're not as perceptive as you think, Mister Midoriya."

Izuku chuckles at that, shaking his head. "Well played, Miss [Y/N]. Well played."

You're not sure why your chest swells, but it does, and it takes both you and your limited lung capacity off guard. But you don't have much time to sort it out—Izuku's grabbing your hand again, and redirecting your attention to the last statue in the hall. You recognize it and frown.

“Cupid and Psyche?”

The silver moonlight pours in through the window, spilling down Cupid’s tipped wings and the softest points of the Psyche’s curves. Izuku hums in confirmation, hands sliding to encompass your hips as his chin hooks on your shoulder.

"Well done, Miss [Y/N]."

His voice deepens—it's coarse and heady, and gets your blood rushing in a way breaking and entering never could have.

"Amore e Psiche, Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. Antonio Canova, 1793."

You fail to understand why this statue stood out to him compared to all the others, but the circles Izuku’s thumb presses into your hips signifies that you’ll find out soon.

"Cupid represents desire, and Psyche, the human soul," Izuku says, running his hands up your sides. "Together, they make the perfect union."

Dipping his nose into your neck, Izuku inhales, and the hands around your waist tighten, if the smallest bit. "Psyche was the prettiest woman in the world; so pretty she rivaled Venus' beauty with her own. It didn't matter if it broke rules—Cupid knew he had to have her."

The gentle nudge of a neck evolves into a set of butterfly kisses, tracing the column of your neck until his mouth reaches your ear. A hand slides to gently cup your breast, and the other to your thigh.

"Miss [Y/N], when I saw you this evening, in that ballgown, I knew I just had to have you. But I can't be a gentleman for much longer, as much as I'd like to." Izuku groans into your neck, hips gently grinding forwards. "So, it's up to you what we do next—I could drop you off at your home to probably never see you again, or...”

Izuku shifts, and you can feel his hardening cock against your back. “I can bend you over right here. Your choice.”

You hesitate, determined to think this through—but Izuku's wandering hands and rutting hips prove to be too much of a distraction.

"Fine," is all you say, before whirling around, grabbing the greenette by his dress shirt, and slamming your lips onto his.

Izuku kisses back with a grin—like he knew you were going to say yes—and places his hands around your waist yet again, backing you up against the marble statue.

"Sit on the platform," he breathes into your mouth. You frown.

"Like, the platform to the statue? Caus—"

"Yes on the statue, now sit," Izuku demands, but he doesn't give you much room to protest, forcing you onto the marble platform. Hiking your dress to your waist, Izuku's calloused palms slide up your inner thighs, spreading them apart to make room for himself in between. He pauses.

"No panties?"

You flush red—from the exposure or the comment, you aren't sure—but you huff in defiance nevertheless, determined to stand your ground and keep some of your dignity. (Though you're positive Izuku can feel you shaking already.)

"I'm wearing a dress," you defend weakly.

Izuku hums behind a bitten lip, lying a heavy thumb on your clit. It's enough pressure to make your thighs tense but not much else, until it flicks downwards.

"I wanna taste you," Izuku growls with dilated pupils once he finally tears his gaze from your exposed body. "Can I?"

Heat surges through your veins, and you let him pry your thighs apart as you respond with an unsteady, "Yeah—yeah, that's fine."

Izuku's chest rumbles with a growl as he closes in on your pussy, hands gripping underneath your thighs. You whimper when he trails butterfly kisses down your inner legs, the grip you have around the skirt of your dress tightening.

"So pretty," Izuku groans, chuckling when you shiver as he flattens his tongue against your slit, "My Goddess."

With that he dives in, almost sending you toppling with the force. The moonlight dyes his green locks a navy blue, and you can't resist seizing them into a fist when he pushes a finger in.

"Feel good, Gorgeous?" Izuku says with a knowing smirk on his sinfully glossed lips. Another digit enters and it has your toes curling as you nod. “Shit, you’re tight.”

Izuku spits on your pussy and it’s downright dirty, before looks at you under forest green eyelashes, the other hand finally letting go of your thigh in favor for pulling at the top of your dress.

“Izuku, wha—“

“I wanna see your tits,” he huffs. You’d laugh at his enthusiasm if you weren’t so aroused, and you find your hands joining in the flurry. The moment they’re free, Izuku’s mouth latches onto your breast in an instant.

“F-Fuck, ‘Zuku—“

“You sound so good when you moan my name, sweetheart,” Izuku groans, and you jolt as he tweaks a bud.

“Say it again.”

He pinches your nipple and clit at the same time, and it has your legs kicking as you squeal his name again.

The Izuku growls and it's nothing but feral, and another yelp of his name has him pulling you to your feet to the point where your noses almost touch. Aggravated from being so close before the greenette ripped his fingers away has you scowling.

"Wha—"

"Can I fuck you?" His breath ghosts your lips. You hide your shock by a roll of your eyes.

"Do you always ask stupid questions?"

Izuku hums in contemplation before grabbing you harshly by the jaw, to the point where your cheeks squish into your eyes and your lips pucker. "Say it, Bunny."

"I just sa—"

"Say 'I want you to fuck me, Izuku,'" he says with a cruel snarl. "’Hard.’"

Your eyes dart from his heavy gaze to the statue, and you can't help but feel more fragile than glass. "I litera—"

"Say it, brat."

"I—" you try but nothing comes out, and you blame that darkened stare of his, "I w-want you to fuck me. Izuku."

Izuku inhales sharply, the fingers cradling your face tightening before he speaks again.

"Good girl."

He spins you so your hands lay on the statue's base, yanking your hips back and flipping your dress so your bare ass is exposed to the cool air.

Izuku's palms caress your behind, kneading both globes before he pulls you against his bare cock. (When he took off his pants is beyond you.) He slaps his cock against your clit until you huff in frustration, turning around to shoot him an angry glare.

"Today, Izuku."

The greenette blinks out of his absorbed gaze on your behind in favor of glowering you down. You waver under his glare despite your best efforts.

His cock kisses your entrance and then all of it is in you at once, and his size is enough to make your inner thighs ache from the stretch. You bite your lip in an attempt to muffle a moan, but that crashes and burns fairly quickly.

"O-Oh shi—"

"You said today, didn't you?" Izuku rasps, before pulling out and stuffing you full at a quick and steady pace. Your hands scramble for proper purchase against the statue—without breaking it, for gods sake—but the harder he fucks you into it, the harder it is to stay upright. "Quiet, baby. We're not supposed to be here, remember?"

You nod frantically, teeth digging into your bottom lip. The thought of getting caught, you, of all people, while being railed against a marble statue—

Izuku moans in your ear, a hand moving between your thighs to rub at your clit. "Oh, you tightened when I said that—you like the idea of getting caught, Bunny?"

You respond with a choked moan, thighs quivering with an impending orgasm. Izuku groans as you tighten around him again, but they quickly turn into shushes.

"Bu—"

"I-I know," your voice cracks and it's absolutely pathetic. "But I can't—"

Izuku's hand wraps around your mouth to the point where his fingertips just barely brush your ears. You whine, eyes fluttering as the new grip adjusts the angle ever so slightly, and pushes him so much deeper.

"You're gonna kill me," Izuku says, wheezing out a laugh. "I—fuck Bunny, I'm close."

You whimper behind his hand and nod as if to say me too, and you're sure Izuku understands from the way he groans before he speeds up in all aspects. "Good. G-Good—cum for me baby, I know you can—"

Your toes curl into the marble floor as the coil in your gut snaps, knocking the wind out of you and sending you thrashing in Izuku's arms. You hear the greenette curse and shudder behind you, stuttering hips slowing to an eventual stop. Both of you stand there for a moment, comfortable interrupting the silence with nothing but your heaving breaths.

"You okay?"

You chuckle. It's dry and scratchy, and your lip throbs from biting it so hard, but it isn’t...aggravating, per-se. "You sound worse than me."

Izuku laughs at that, though it waters down as he pulls out with a hiss. "I don't think worse is the correct adjective here, Miss [Y/N].”

You snort. Back to “Miss [Y/N]” it is, then.

Your ears catch the distinct wail of ever-increasing sirens, but you don't think much of it until the side of Izuku's face starts flashing blue and red. Both you and the greenette falter, sharing a look.

"Police! Hands in the air!"

i wrote this while watching a hysterectomy in physio aah (also yes, the french police speak in english leave me alone skjdhfgk) — sun

[eldrai]

Not Worth It

Whumptober 2021 - day 3 - prompt: insult

Character: Reid

Warnings: ableism, r-slur, brief/mild homophobia

Words: 2.2k

Summary: Spencer isn’t naïve. He is young and he looks young but he isn’t stupid. He hadn’t graduated with the expectation that because he was older, had qualifications to back him up, the world would collectively mature in kind. After all, he’d gained his relative immunity to insults because it hurt less to let them taunt him than it had to confront them and end up shoved in a locker or tied up on the football field.

He had hoped things might be different. Not expected. Not assumed.

Just hoped.

ao3 / masterlist

“—were actually invented in the early fifteenth century, though the first versions were, uh, significantly more spherical and made of a wood like beech. It’s also highly likely they used cows’ hair inside leather—”

The cop – Maciewicz – nudges the officer beside him. “Does he ever stop talking?”

Spencer is fairly sure the jab is intended to be audible. It’s an interesting social convention, that sort of insult, where everyone including the target hears it but the person who said it can’t be called out on it because they supposedly directed it at nobody in particular. Interesting, and very high-school of them: Maciewicz is closer to forty than thirty and beginning to bald, and the stale remnants of cigarette smoke follows his colleague wherever he goes.

It doesn’t offend Reid these days. Attending a public LA high school is its own distinct circle of hell but doing so at nine? University at twelve? He’s been called most names under the sun and petty insults don’t get under his skin like they used to.

Which isn’t to say they aren’t annoying.

What he hates the most is the variety of people who insult him: they all have different reactions, different sore spots, and getting them to go away isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. Reid has dealt with enough bullies to understand that ‘ignore them and they’ll go away’ is useless, if not downright dangerous advice, but there is a whole spectrum of solutions which may or may not work. Get it wrong, and they just grow more persistent.

Spencer isn’t naïve. He is young and he looks young but he isn’t stupid. He hadn’t graduated with the expectation that because he was older, had qualifications to back him up, the world would collectively mature in kind. After all, he’d gained his relative immunity to insults because it hurt less to let them taunt him than it had to confront them and end up shoved in a locker or tied up on the football field.

He had hoped things might be different. Not expected. Not assumed.

Just hoped.

Of course they aren’t.

He pays them no mind and continues to explain the significance of the golf balls their unsub keeps leaving behind. If they didn’t want him to talk, they shouldn’t have asked for his opinion.

This seems like a fairly straightforward case and with any luck, they’ll only have to tolerate the local police department for a couple of days more.

He may have jinxed it.

(Once when they had come to take his Mom to inpatient, Spencer had overheard someone at the front desk talking lowly to someone else, and her words had stuck with him: see, that’s what you get for saying it’s quiet today!

That was always the gist of what was said on TV hospital dramas too. Police chaos isn’t all that different from hospital chaos, he thinks. There’s always too much of it and it’s unpredictable in its unpredictability.)

The curveball this time is their unsub is not a lone male but a male-female duo – he carries out the kills but under her direction. Classic submissive-dominant dynamic. The thing with pairs is they crack. Bend under the pressure until they break and lives are lost in the collateral damage.

Case in point: Marcy Edgeworth, aged twenty-four, Caucasian female, death by blunt force trauma. She is the first female victim and the first to have been left to lie where she’d died. That isn’t a good sign. No indication of sexual assault pre- or post-mortem but there is an incomplete ring of bite marks just beneath her right collarbone, exposed due to her torn shirt.

“What, never seen a naked girl before?” Jamison – Maciewicz’s colleague – mutters. Just low enough for Spencer to hear as he is trying to get on with his job, unlike a certain pair of officers.

“Woman,” he corrects, for her age, “and yes, I have.”

He hopes the lightness in his tone offsets the brusqueness. Spencer shifts his crouching into kneeling and leans forwards to examine her hair. It’s an artificial red – her roots and her eyebrows are blonde – and their previous victims have all had brown hair.

“Only counts if it’s outside a morgue,” Maciewicz chimes in.

He ignores them but their gaze burns the back of his head, and their presence has his guard raised. They stand behind him and their shadows stretch out over the grass either side of him. They’re going for a reaction, Spencer assumes.

Biting is an interesting thing without an accompanying sexual assault. If nothing else it gives them a good estimation of their male unsub’s teeth. The impression he’s getting from the scene is one of interruption, an impulse kill whose victim he had to leave too soon. It is a public park and it was an early-morning dog walker who found her – likely a jogger or someone on a night shift.

Jamison clears his throat once, twice, then taps him on the shoulder. Spencer rears away from his touch. People never ask, they just do.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Oh, nothing,” Jamison says. “I – we – we were wondering why you do that… thing.”

“What thing?” Spencer asks.

Jamison gestures. “You know, the – you know.”

Is that some sort of punchline he’s missing? Spencer glances over at Maciewicz and finds a mild amusement. Nothing to indicate he should be laughing, nor should he know what they do mean.

Maybe he’s missing the cue. He’s better at it these days, but not perfect.

“No, I don’t.”

With a furtive glance at the precinct’s captain, deep in conversation with one of the forensic technicians, Jamison sighs. “The thing with your hands, the—” He shakes his hands in an exaggerated manner.

Spencer’s hands still. He hadn’t thought it was very noticeable and more to the point, Jamison is definitely overexaggerating it like kids in middle school used to do. Only back then they had his unusual gait and meltdowns to mock too. “I don’t do that,” he says firmly.

(He’d answer it if it was a genuine question. Respectful. He loves people who ask out of genuine good intent. They are few and far between.)

Maciewicz snickers.

“Yeah, you do,” Jamison says. “I want to know why, that’s all.”

“Makes you look like a retard,” Maciewicz adds.

…and there it is.

He goes cold from head to toe. It never fails to make him feel as if someone has just dumped a bucket of water right over him, washing away his enthusiasm and excitement and everything else he values. Leaves the bare bones, the weirdness, each of the hundred ways he never quite fits in.

Spencer hates the word.

Because they don’t care about his IQ or eidetic memory or reading skill when they say that, and they don’t care after he tells them.

Nobody calls him that because they think he is. They say it to hurt him.

He wishes it wouldn’t.

Despite how often he’s heard it, he never has a response. His mind goes blank and all he can pull from it is the roots – re,from Latin: back, and tardus, from Latin: slow – as if they give a damn about etymology. As if that’s a normal person’s response. Today is no exception so it’s a blessing when Morgan wanders over.

“You got anything, pretty boy?” he asks. Maciewicz and Jamison snort. If Morgan hears it, he pays it no mind. “They found a guy’s baseball cap over there. No hair but it looks like it’s our man’s.”

And once again, his mind goes blank. Makes you look like a retard. He’d been thinking about – the bite mark, yes, what does that indicate? Spencer catches his hands moving and shoves them in his pockets before they can. “He was interrupted,” he says. “It explains why the bite isn’t complete and why he didn’t notice he’d left his hat.”

Morgan nods. “The person who found the body didn’t recall seeing anyone else around, so you think he’d just left before they got there?”

“Probably,” Spencer says. “I think the woman might be blonde. If they got into a fight, he’d be stressed, he’d be thinking about her. Maybe she reminded him of her.”

“Could be the hair, could be something else,” Morgan says. “He won’t have talked to her, not if he hit her from behind.”

“What if they did? She could have walked away—”

“Maybe,” Morgan says. “But if her hair was dyed, he wouldn’t see that unless they were up close, right? He’d initially go for her because she’s got red hair, not blonde. And if they did talk, Prentiss says no woman’s gonna just turn her back on a strange man. Especially in the middle of the night with no-one around.”

It’s a valid point, and it isn’t condescending. Nonetheless it hurts. Spencer studies the ground for a long moment and tries to forget (retard) Maciewicz and Jamison. “The unsub isn’t going to be someone he’s sexually attracted to,” he says. “He didn’t assault her, and if the victim reminds him of the other unsub, he’d probably have tried to even if someone interrupted him before he really could.”

A burst of laughter from Maciewicz and Jamison. His cheeks go hot with embarrassment—they must be talking about him, what else is there to laugh about? Morgan follows his gaze. “There a problem?” he asks.

Maciewicz holds up his hands in mock surrender. “No, no. Just… the hell is that about, ‘pretty boy’?”

Morgan shrugs. Spencer isn’t sure if it’s as casual as it looks.

“Well, makes sense,” Jamison says. “Course he’s gonna freak out over a naked girl if he doesn’t swing that way.”

…oh, great.

Spencer doesn’t mind exactly what they say as much as the implication—that they know, that they’re entitled to know his sexuality. How they say it as if gay is equivalent to bad. Once again, how utterly high school it all is. And he knows Morgan isn’t going to appreciate it either, probably more insulted on his behalf than Spencer himself.

“And you care, because...?” Morgan says, looking back and forth between them.

“I don’t,” Jamison says.

“He’s…” Maciewicz stammers, “…you know.”

“Smarter than you?” Morgan suggests. “Better at his job than you? A better person than you?”

“You don’t have to stick up for him,” Jamison says. “Must get annoying to deal with a re—”

“It’s fine,” Spencer interrupts. It isn’t. It really isn’t but it isn’t worth the conversation. How tiring it gets to deal with it, how much easier it is to walk away. These officers aren’t going to change their worldview on disabilities all of a sudden. “Morgan.”

Morgan takes in his posture, the unnatural stillness as he forces himself not to fidget, though the look in his eyes doesn’t fade. “The only people I don’t want to ‘deal with’ are both of you.”

The men share a look – not so much chastened as disappointed their fun was interrupted – but they do back off.

“They already seem to think I’m incapable,” Spencer says irritably. “I said it was fine, I didn’t need you to say anything.”

He crouches down to examine the bite again.

“It didn’t matter,” Spencer says. His hands itch and despite needing to, he can’t bring himself to move. Makes you look like a retard.

“Does if it bothers you,” Morgan insists. “And it did, don’t look at me like that.”

He sighs. They’re not even there any more, the two cops out on patrol and them revisiting the penultimate crime scene. “I’m used to it.”

“And?” Morgan says. “Just because you are doesn’t mean you have to put up with it—”

“It was five minutes at most,” Spencer points out. “Everyone else was fine.”

“Yeah, and they were dicks.”

He shrugs.

“What else did they say?”

Spencer rolls the fabric of his sweater between his fingers and feigns ignorance. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what else did they say when I wasn’t there, ‘cause they said something.”

“Makes you look like a retard.”

He doesn’t mean to say it – wasn’t sure what he had planned to say, but it certainly wasn’t that – but he says it nonetheless, his tone mimicking the disdain and irritation. And now Morgan definitely isn’t going to believe him if he says he’s fine and it’s going to make the situation worse to explain that he mostly is, he just hasn’t heard it for a while, he’s used to it.

Stupid echolalia.

“Like I said,” Morgan says, “they were dicks.”

Spencer doesn’t point out being rude doesn’t automatically mean lying. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t give them the right to say stuff like that.”

He rocks back on the balls of his feet. His hands aren’t co-operating but the swaying motion is a good substitute. “I’m okay.”

“You know,” Morgan says casually, “whenever you lie, you stand exactly the same way.”

Spencer looks up. The expression on Morgan’s face falls somewhere between sadness and sympathy but, he thinks, not pity. It’s a nice change.

“Kid, the only thing you’re gonna get from pretending you’re OK is worse,” Morgan says. “It’s not worth it. Not for anyone but especially not morons like that.”

“It’s not worth it,” Spencer repeats. The words catch in his thoughts and he murmurs it again and again and Morgan isn’t even slightly annoyed at him.

(It isn’t worth it—he knows this—but maybe it is. Just a tiny bit. Just for the part where he has friends who tell him things like this, who don’t mind when he’s awkward. Who don’t mind him.

Friends who say nothing about it but when they get back to the station, the pair are getting chewed out by a pissed off captain.)

A/N: I had trouble getting this to flow as well as my other ones, there's something about it I just can't figure out. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it.

[salemroleplayhq]

❝There's an ugliness in me that is impossible to love.❞

MEET…

Dmitri Mikhailov

Age: 31

Birthday: August 22

Gender/Pronouns: Cis Male, He/Him

Hometown: Moscow, Russia

Length of time in Salem: 4 years

Occupation: Writer at Clad Lads Magazine

Faceclaim: Bill Skarsgård

THEIR STORY

tw: Death, Depression, Sex, Money Laundering, Drugs

Everything about Dmitri’s upbringing is shrouded by mystery and mystique. One of three siblings, he is right dab, smack in the middle. His older brother Viktor is known as his protector and seems to be the one who gets him out of trouble, which is commonplace for Dmitri like it is to breathe air. His other sibling, a younger brother named Ivan, showed interest in photography and attended school in NYC to further his knowledge in the field, along with a minor in French. Even Dimitri’s parents dabbled in the arts, but their involvement with the Russian mafia (the Solntsevskaya Bratva) was where they gained their vast wealth. His father had started off as an assassin for the notorious crime syndicate, later working his way up to second in command. Unfortunately, like most things in life, all good things must come to an end. There had been a traitor who tried to assassinate his father, one of the Bratva’s very own members. When Dmitri was but twelve years old, his family had no other choice but to flee their homeland of Moscow, Russia for a more promising future in the United States of America, or so they had hoped. With New York City’s great diversity it had been the easiest place for them to relocate and blend right in. His mother was young and continued her modeling career, where his father continued illegal activities like money laundering to keep the family afloat. Unlike his siblings, Dmitri didn’t have aspirations of going to college. Instead, at the ripe age of sixteen he followed in his mother’s footsteps and began a modeling career, signing with Elite Models. He became a well known model, walking runways in Milan, Paris, and New York, doing a lot of traveling, which allowed him to see more of the world. His face has graced numerous magazines, mostly consisting of GQ, Vogue, and Esquire.

At the current age of thirty-one, he is considered a handsome and wealthy bachelor, who has more friends than he can count on both hands; yet, he still craves something more that doesn’t require being in the lime-light all the time. That’s why he started a writing career after moving to Salem, Massachusetts. Dmitri went from being pictured in magazines to writing in them, but not before a traumatic death in the family occured and shattered the world around him.

When his younger brother Ivan died as a result of a fluke boating accident while on holiday in the Mediterranean, it seemed things became more bleak for Dmitri. He quit modeling for good and began to journal everyday, based on his therapist’s recommendation to quell the dark thoughts that popped up in his head. After the accident he just had to get away and start fresh. With the rest of his family still in New York, there were times he’d feel lonely, but going back to New York was too painful for him. When he traveled back to attend the funeral, it felt like an excerpt out of a bad dream rather than a reality. There, for a while, he resorted to drinking, drugs, and meaningless one night stands to help rid him of his inner pain. All it did was dull his senses temporarily, never fully erasing the heartache completely.

It’s been four years since Ivan’s death, but Dmitri continues to dwindle in a very dark place mentality-wise. He continues to suppress the pain of losing his younger brother by galavanting around Salem, looking for things to aid in the perfect distraction. Sometimes it’s booze, a beautiful or handsome stranger, or sometimes a mixture of both. His main vices include alcohol, casual sex, and smoking cigarettes. His behavior has done such a complete 180 that his editor at Clad Lads Magazine is threatening to drop him for showing up late and hungover more times than not. If he doesn’t get his crap together soon, he may lose his job and be forced to return back to New York with the constant reminders of the brother he lost.

PERSONALITY

+  Passionate, Independent, Adaptive

-  Selfish, Vain, Vulgar

Dmitri is played by E.

[uservillanelle]

Killing Eve ― 3x01 (Review)

I didn’t rush to write this review right after the episode, as I sometimes need to rewatch the episode several times to actually appreciate it and spot a thing or two. I know, everybody’s writing these, their thoughts, so I’m sorry if some of them will be repetitive, but I do want to get my thoughts out! Soo shall we get to it?

Dasha

What is interesting to me is that they chose this flashback of Dasha being a gymnast in her early age as the very first scene of the episode. And let’s not forget, it is the first scene of the entire season, meaning it has to be very important one. I don’t think they brought her in just to play Villanelle’s next handler. She was her mentor before, which makes it a lot more personal to both of them. There’s more to her, I’m sure. So far I’m loving the dynamic between her and Villanelle. There’s this... old-friends reunited kind of vibe, but then again, they can be laughing one moment and trying to choke each other to death the next. In this aspect they are very similar. 

That brings me to Dasha’s killing style. It is unique, something we haven’t seen in the show before. It can only mean competition to Villanelle. And she’s so confident that her work is better than Dasha’s. Not only does she say it to Dasha, but later on copy her style during the spice kill ― which, by the way, I think is very underrated. 

Villanelle had to ask Dasha about her part of the deal, twice. Then she brought up the possibility of going back home ― back to Russia. It might be true, but I don’t think that’s everything she was promised. And it’s one more reason for us to keep watching to find out, hm?

The Wedding

All I can say about the wedding is ― WOW. I was looking forward to it and it didn’t disappoint. Actually, it’s the best part of the episode for me. Many people have said that it was ‘waste of potential’; ‘they only did it to set up a meeting with Dasha’; but really. I don’t think we would’ve gotten the Villanelle wedding in any other circumstance. Like, think about it. A wedding is not something Villanelle would normally do, right? She doesn’t care about such things, yet in this case she does it. Yes, she LOVES a good show and attention as well as being rich and have everything she ever wanted including having the power and control of it all. And since she’s getting over Eve, why not find another woman and marry her to prove to everyone and to herself, that she is totally over the Asian woman with amazing hair? She’s extra like that and I love it. And don’t get me started on the tuxedo blazer AND black tulle ruffle top. She wore THAT for her own wedding. Just thinking about it makes me want to go feral. 

Mooving on, the irony of Villanelle not only bringing up Eve during her wedding speech, but saying she is ‘so much happier now she’s dead’ while immedially afterwards glancing around the place almost as if she’s expecting to see Eve. She hopes she’s there... and it makes me wonder, what if Eve actually was there? What if she somehow made it to Villanelle’s wedding and just... can you imagine? What their interaction would look like? Plus having MARIA there the entire time and the guests? Damn. 

Then there’s casual Villanelle simply enjoying her wedding cake, because why the hell not? And on top of that ignoring her new wife during the dance. I mean... this is SUCH Villanelle thing to do. She couldn’t care any less. Then again we are reminded of how awkward/uncomfortable she could get around people when she’s being.. more or less herself. I haven’t seen her like that for a hot minute. She has always been brilliant in slipping into other groups of people, pretending to be a part of a conversation, it never really was an issue for her. Yet this time she’s not really pretending to be someone else. She is Villanelle and yes, she is awkward. I love that we got to see that bit. 

And of course... it wouldn’t be Villanelle’s wedding if there wasn’t a fight involved. Why not start a fight herself? It’s exactly what she did and having Dasha show up only highlighted the wedding scene even more. It wasn’t all about Dasha being there, it was about Villanelle trying to prove to herself that she’s finally moving on and I, personaly, needed that. It’s a shame the wedding scene ended so quickly, I mean we could’ve gotten a kiss or two, since it’s a damn wedding! Though I’m still really glad we got to see it. We actually got to steal a glance at Villanelle’s wedding. That sounds so surreal on itself. Are we sure they didn’t take this from any of the fanfics? 

Carolyn

(warning: possible spoilers/predictions ahead)

She’s still a very shady lady. Carolyn must be the most mysterious character on the show, based on how little we know about her, her work and her family. I’m glad that someone is finally confronting her about the previous operation in Rome. What’s even better ― Hugo sued MI6 and he has EVERY right to do so. The entire mission was a blood bath and someone has to answer for it. Yet, despite given circumstances, Carolyn remains completely still during all the accusations she has received and even refuses to apologize during her conversation with Kenny. None of the previous events that took place seem to be valuable and important enough for her. And that makes me wonder.. that maybe the Twelve ordered Kenny’s death to stop any further unofficial investigations AND to punish Carolyn, because Kenny’s all she has, right?

Well, now they will be bringing up Carolyns daughter ― Geraldine. Up to this point we knew that Kenny was Carolyn’s only child, but since he’s gone now, there has to be someone else related to Carolyn and we got Geraldine. From what we know now, they do not have a great relationship which makes me even more excited to see them interacting. 

Since the Twelve put a hit on Kenny... I’m starting to think that maybe Carolyn is next on their list, and possibly Konstantin. In S3 trailer we got a quick shot of Carolyn in a car with a driver. And there’s Villanelle, pretending to be a police officer, chasing someone down. If I’m correct, Villanelle will come after Carolyn and will try to assassinate her. Now why would Villanelle try to kill Carolyn? Either she will find out something related to Eve and Carolyn being involved, maybe wanting to take revenge? It’s not very likely is it? But the Twelve deiciding to take out Carolyn, and Villanelle doing the job sounds more like it. At least to me.

Eve

First off... the scene in the store is not only the first scene of Eve we see in this episode, but it shows exactly where she is right now. Where her mind is, how she’s dealing with everything around her. Cearly, she’s done with everything, running on auto-pilot for the most part of it. She’s one huge mood. Eve really must be the most relatable character for us as viewers. If something like this happened to us... we would basically be Eve. 

It’s been 6 months and that’s the Eve we see. She’s struggling. And she should be. She almost died and now everything seems to be reminding her of Villanelle. The song in the store, the cashier’s talking about spaghtetti and Rome?! Then the other cooks at the restaurant talking about one of their’s crush and how it started with infatuation and now it’s love. Everything about it screams Villanelle. We know it. Eve knows it. And most importantly... the SCAR itself. No matter where she goes, what she does... she won’t be able to erase Villanelle. She has been scarred for life and so was Villanelle and guys... that is just so brilliant. They are meant for one another and that’s a fact. Either they will end up together (hopefully) and somehow manage to create some kind of future together or they will die together. Either way.. they can’t hide from one another and that makes their next meeting so... so special and important and intense and all of the other things. I simply cannot wait.

Knowing how the episode ended, I didn’t think I’d appreciate Eve and Kenny’s scene together so much. It’s so deep and sincere and reveals a lot about what happened and where they are separately and together. I’m glad their first and last interaction this season was a light, positive one. They even talked about getting beers at the office during weekends. And knowing that.. Kenny was basically the only person who understood Eve and where she’s coming from, his death is exactly what can and WILL push Eve forward in investigating the Twelve and eventually reuniting with Villanelle. Back to S1, when Bill was killed, Eve was so determined to catch Villanelle and ‘kill her with her bare hands’ that no one seemed to be able to stop her. So this time... will be similar to it, if not even greater. 

Villanelle

Soo... Oksana wants to be a Keeper. Oksana the Keeper! It actually makes sense to some extent, that she will eventually want to get a ‘higher’ position in the industry and why not be the Keeper then. She has always wanted power and control and Keepers have that. They hold valuable information about the organisation that no one else knows. It’s a very important and dangerous position too. I can see why she’d want to be a Keeper, and not only that... she is still curious about who is in charge. How the whole system works. Though, at the same time.. knowing Villanelle, this might get tricky. She’s still very childish and impulsive and all other things.. she still needs to be handled by someone. That’s why I’m a bit concerned that if she ends up becoming a Keeper or having to handle other assassins (which she will, in next episode), things will go terribly wrong. I hope I’m wrong about this, because god, do I want to see Villanelle as a Keeper and continue being the top boss bitch in the industry.

Her confidence continues to fascinate me. Especially her confidence around Dasha. She knows she’s better than her and that’s all there is to it. Not only she says it but she proves that by her first kill this season. I honestly can’t wait to see her future kills, because so far it looks very promising.

Konstantin

Only a couple of scenes of the show’s dad this episode. Apparently he has several phones which he is struggling to deal with. He’s living several lives and that shows. In S2 he was all determined to get back to his family. But what we see in this episode is that he’s not with his family anymore. He’s working again. And based on Irina’s voice mail, he and his wife are separated. His wife has a boyfriend now and Irina is there with them. (I hope they will bring her back, what an iconic, hilarious yet annoying child) 

Konstantin receives several shady messages, one of which reads “time to go fishing”. It can mean literally anything. But for some reason I’m feeling that they want us to think he had something to do with Kenny’s death. It could be him, it could be an assassin Konstantin is handling right now. Or it’s not him at all, but we believe it’s him based of what we saw so far. Too many questions and not enough answers so far. 

He was the Twelve’s target back in S1 and had to stay low during S2 as a “dead man” so now.. I’m not really sure what his status is. Some of us saw the leaked photos of S3 finale and what might possibly happen... and that just brings me back to my previous point of Carolyn and Konstantin being the Twelve’s targets this season. Will they survive? And if they do... how? If they don’t... does that mean Villanelle and Eve will now be completely by their own and possibly on a run from the Twelve?!

Kenny

There’s not really much to say here. We ALL loved our dear Kenny. He’s probably the most innocent character on the show and he had to go. Now, I don’t believe his death was done for shock value. Not his character. A huge, meaningful character had to die in order for the rest of characters to get moving. For the entire story to move forward. They are setting up a serious plot here and I am excited, despite being really upset about Kenny’s death. 

I think Eve will be the mostly affected character in the show by his death. Carolyn doesn’t seem to be very affectonate towards her son, but hopefully it will make her realize just how big of a trouble she in. Eve, however, will be forced to get back to investigate the Twelve and she will not stop until she does so. She’s all by herself now. The determination, the anger as well as other feelings will drive her this season to get the much needed answers and get to the bottom of the whole thing. Meanwhile... Villanelle seeks information and control as well. She is trying to investigate the Twelve in her own way. So why not pair them up?

Overall thoughts

As many have said it, the episode felt different to me as well. I think that’s mostly because we have set our standards so high, that we immediately become disappointed if the episode doesn’t deliver as much murder, Eve/Villanelle scenes or something else we might be expecting in particular. 

I found myself wanting to compare the episode with other seasons and that is a mistake. We shouldn’t be comparing it because previous season had different plot, the overall feeling was different and the characters weren’t as developed as they are now. Furthermore, the show runner changes each season and that is what we need to look at. Phoebe and Emerald have done incedible job during those first two seasons but now it’s Suzanne’s time to shine. All three of them are different people and have different ideas and views as to how they see the characters and where they want to take them. So I think we might need to “forget” the previous two seasons and be way more open minded when it comes to third season. After all it’s the most personal one and it has a different feel to it. It’s more serious, and it is setting up an actual plot for the series. It’s a good thing. And as much as we hate changes like these... I think we should embrace them this time and let the show go in the direction it is going without the need to criticize it or control it. 

I’m beyond excited to see how everything will unfold and where this season will take us. Based on all the trailers and interviews I’ve seen so far... this will be a one helld of a ride and I am NOT prepared for it!

If any of you reached this point, you seriously deserve an applause! Hopeuflly you enjoyed reading my nonsense lol! Let me know if you’d like me to write a review for the next episode, because I do have plans for writing for the entire season, but it’s always better when I have an audience to write for! 

Now if you have any theories or thoughts don’t be shy to comment or message me so we could chat about it! I’d love nothing more than a good conversation about the show we have a common obsession for! 

[thedistrictroleplay]

ID:

Name | Nickname | Age:  Alycia Camila Acosta | Aly | 29 Birthday | Astrology:  August 2, 1991 | Leo  Pronouns | Sexual identity:  She/her | Bisexual  Birthplace | Raised:  Miami, FL Residence:  Upper Northwest Occupation:  Regional Director, Acosta Group Faceclaim: Victoria Justice 

TRIGGER WARNINGS: none? 

TIMELINE: 

1950s- The Acosta family migrates from Puerto Rico to Miami.

1970s- The Acosta family forms the Acosta Group, a realty firm with holdings all across the Americas.

1989- Michael Acosta (Aly’s older brother) is born.

1991- Alycia Acosta “Aly” is born to Manny and Amy Acosta in Miami Florida.

2007- Aly wins her first Women's WSL World Tour at only 15.

2008- Aly and Nick’s relationship begins at Camp Walt Whitman (summer), Aly and Nick visit D.C. for Nick’s mock UN event (October), Aly visits Nick in NY for Christmas / NYE.

2009- Nick visits Aly in Miami for prom, Aly visits Nick in NY for prom, Nick and Aly break up at the end of their senior year. Aly starts college at The University of Miami. Aly meets Ben in English class and they begin dating.

2011- Aly and Ben break up because Aly finds out Ben is married with a baby. She probably tries to murder his lying, cheating ass.

2014- Aly moves to NY to attend Columbia.

2015- Aly and Nick blackout and wake up married.

2016- Aly graduates from Columbia and begins working for the Acosta Group. Her work takes her all over the Americas as she opens regional offices for the firm. When she isn’t obligated to travel for work she splits her time between Miami and wherever Nick is.

2020- Aly’s abuela dies. There is a power shift within the Acosta Group. Her brother Michael assumes more responsibility and influence. Aly collects a lofty inheritance.

2021- Aly opens the Acosta Group’s office in D.C. and decides to stay as the regional director for the North Eastern United States.

BIOGRAPHY:  

During the Great Migration of the 1950′s, the Acosta family moved from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida where they started their real estate business; The Acosta Group. They dominated the Miami market of luxury residential and commercial property, all while raising six children. Once their children were grown, each one assumed an integral role in the company that allowed the business to expand up the East Coast. The eldest, Manny, assumed the role of C.E.O in the 1980′s and fostered the company into the real estate empire that it is today.

Only one thing superseded Manny’s ambition, and that was his faith. The Acosta family were devote Catholics, which is what prompted Manny to marry Amy Wilson just a few months before the couple welcomed their first child into the world. A son they named Michael, after Manny’s father. It was a loveless marriage, but Manny didn’t believe in divorce and Amy had much to gain financially from the arrangement.  Their second child was just as much of a surprise as the first, however quickly became her father’s favorite.

Alycia Camila Acosta was born August 2nd, 1991 on the hottest day Miami had seen in a decade. Nicknamed Aly by her brother. No one loved her more. Michael took his role as a big brother seriously. Before Aly could walk he taught her to swim, and she quickly began following in his every foot step. He protected her from feeling unloved in a household where their father always worked, and their mother preferred social clubs to raising children. They took care of one another, and it was obvious that there was no one else more important to either than each other.

While Amy exhausted every effort to live the life she had always dreamed of through her daughter, Aly resisted at every turn. She purposely preformed poorly in pageants, and sang off key in choir. The only thing she indulged Amy on was camp Walt Whitman, an illustrious summer camp in New England, and only because her brother went along too. It was a place she should’ve been grateful to attend, but by eleven Aly only wanted to spend summers in the ocean. She’d learned to surf alongside Michael, and possessed a natural talent and great skill on the board. Even before high school she began competing, and at only sixteen Aly won her first Women's WSL World Tour.

It wasn’t the kind of accolade Amy had in mind for her daughter, but as long as she kept her grades up the Acostas allowed it. Academia was easy for the brunette, even as she attended Miami’s most prestige Catholic schools. She excelled from the start, especially in math, and skipped a grade in middle school. With extra curricular activities and academics Aly kept busy, but it wasn’t her schedule that kept her from dating. Rather, the obscenely strict rules her parents enforced, and while Michael was usually always Aly’s advocate, on this he seemed to agree with them.

The summer before her senior year Aly fell unexpectedly for her long time camp Walt Whitman friend, Nicholas Vanderbilt. His family’s notoriety made him an acceptable candidate for her parent’s exceedingly high expectations, and the twelve hundred miles of distance between Miami and New York City eased their worries about any inappropriate conduct. While Aly truly did love Nick it was incredibly difficult for her to imagine an immediate future with someone so far a way. After making a pact to get married at 40 if they were both still single the pair parted ways before college.

At The University of Miami Aly studied business. It was a well established precedent amongst the Acosta that every member of the family contributed to The Acosta Group, even though for her that just meant a figurehead role. Michael bore the brunt of their parent’s business expectations, and therefor all the responsibility. For which Aly was extremely grateful because her interests were strictly surfing and social. During undergrad Aly won two more Women's WSL World Tours, and was a frequent but casual dater. She struggled to find someone with whom she shared real passion and was starting to wonder if she’d already had her one, epic love until she met him. Bennett Ryan Brody. Aly was falling in love before she even realized what was happening. Head over heels, stupid in love with every six foot and five inches of him. If it wasn’t enough to look and fuck like an actual god he strung words together more brilliant than any symphony she’d ever heard. Maybe it was kismet that, for as hot as their love burned, it all ended in flames.

Eager to put some distance between herself all the heart break that had happened in Miami, Aly accepted Columbia’s invitation to attend grad school in New York. Her MBA was really just a formality, but she loved life in the city. It was strange place, but familiar enough with her long time friend and ex, Nick, also living there. The lines of friendship had always been blurry for them, and their relationship grew even more complicated when Aly and Nick blackout exchanged vows. A divorce was messier than either family wanted, especially with Nick’s budding legal career. So, they agreed to stay married and try to make things work. Which they did, for a little while, but then they both graduated and work got in the way.

Long distance wasn’t unfamiliar to either party, but it certainly wasn’t desired. Aly spent years after grad school opening offices for the Acosta group up and down The Americas, which left them with no other options. She would visit whenever she was close to wherever Nick was working, but it was inevitable that they both began to see other people. Unsurprisingly, Aly couldn’t commit to anything serious. Her list of one night stands longer than she cared to admit because a part of her would always feel guilty. A part of her would always feel like Nick’s.

In the Spring of 2020 Aly’s abuela, the largest shareholder of the Acosta group, passed away. The disbursement of shares and funds created a power shift within the company. Aly inherited a lofty sum that came with a legal reminder of her marriage to Nick and their lack of a prenup.  Her older brother Michael assumed more responsibility and influence, which later resulted in his promotion to the Acosta Group’s CEO. With her brother calling all the shots Aly had more control over her life. After opening the D.C. branch of The Acosta Group she requested a permanent position in its office as the regional director for the company’s North Eastern division. The stability comes with proximity to friends and a relationship she’s hoping to figure alongside questions Aly has about herself. Her travels changed her, even if she’s not quite sure how yet.

Aly is written by Ash.

[omgrachwrites]

Don’t Go (Sirius Black One Shot)

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader

Summary: Your love returns to you after twelve years, claiming his innocence.

Warnings: fluff, angst

Words: 1451

A/N: This is the sequel to ‘leaving home’ which you can read here! Hope you guys enjoy this part and please let me know what you think! I love you all very much! This gif does not belong to me, it belongs to vellawrites! xxx

(part one here)

You could feel his eyes on you as Dumbledore announced that the post of potions master would be split between you and Snape – Snape wasn’t exactly happy with this arrangement and you couldn’t blame him. You were going to be teaching the first years, OWL students and NEWT students. Dumbledore had offered you a job the year after you had left Hogwarts but you ended up putting it off and instead you had worked at St Mungo’s. You smiled as you sat down and looked along the top table and met Remus’ eyes; he was going to be teaching Defence against the Dark Arts.

His soft brown eyes looked at you with a mixture of hurt, anger, confusion and relief; you shot him an apologetic look before you looked out at the sea of students who were enjoying their magnificent feast. You spotted your daughter Beth, laughing and joking with two redheaded boys, and with a jolt you realised who was sitting further down the Gryffindor table, it was Harry. You hadn’t seen your godson since he was a year old; he looked startlingly like James but you remembered that he had Lily’s emerald eyes.

After the feast was over you looked for Remus, you had to speak to him, you had to apologise and explain yourself. You found him waiting for you in the Entrance Hall. As you approached him his face was like stone so you managed a weak reluctant smile.

“Hello Remus.”

Remus scoffed at your words, “after twelve years all you can say to me is hello? How could you?” that hurt look was back in his eyes, the last thing that you had wanted to do was hurt him.

“I was struggling; I had a three year old. I had to get away,” you explained but even that sounded like some sort of feeble excuse.

“What? Did you think that I wasn’t struggling myself? Three of my best mates were dead, another one was in Azkaban. The one person that I thought would have been there for me wasn’t, we could have struggled together.”

“I know Rem, and I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking straight,” you cupped his scarred and lined face, he looked old before his time, “but I’m here now.”

He nodded, looking away from you, trying to act like he wasn’t bothered, “where did you go Y/N?” he asked casually.

“I went to London, I came back when Sirius escaped from Azkaban. Won’t you forgive me?”

He smiled, his chocolate brown eyes finally softening, “I forgive you, I just really missed you. Never go away again.”

Being back at Hogwarts seemed to be the cure for your sadness, you adored your students and they seemed to like you too. Though, Beth was still a little embarrassed that you were teaching her class but by mid-September everybody had stopped teasing her about it. One blustery day in October changed everything, it had started out as a perfectly ordinary day, and your OWL students were brewing their potions – all except three. Fred, George and Beth were laughing and pointing at something that Fred was holding beneath the desk. You shook your head fondly, the Weasley twins reminded you of two certain Marauders.

“Shouldn’t you three be working on your potions?” you smiled as you walked over and held out your hand, ignoring Beth who was glaring daggers at you, Fred sighed and handed the piece of parchment over.

Surprise was an understatement as you saw that it was the Marauders map, you never thought that you’d see it again. Scanning the map you saw an impossible name – ‘the map never lies,’ James’ words rang clear in your head – it was Peter Pettigrew. He wasn’t dead, this would change things, it meant that Sirius had never murdered him and maybe Sirius hadn’t been the spy.

“Mischief managed,” you mumbled beneath your breath and tapped the map, causing it to go blank and you gave it back to Fred, “keep it safe,” you smiled as all three of them looked at you with gobsmacked expressions. You desperately wanted to tell Remus about what you had seen, though he probably wouldn’t hear you out or believe you.

Christmas arrived at Hogwarts quicker than anybody would have believed; you spent the Christmas feast with your daughter and Remus. You were going to your cottage in Hogsmeade the following day, Beth was staying at the castle with her friends so you invited Remus to stay with you, you didn’t want him to be on his own at Christmas. Maybe it would even feel like old times.

“Your cottage is beautiful,” Remus exclaimed as he walked through the front door on Boxing Day.

You beamed; you took great pride in your home, “thank you Rem! I always wanted a cottage in Hogsmeade but Sirius wanted to stay in Godric’s Hollow,” you smiled before taking your chance, “he’s innocent you know.”

Remus sighed as he hung his coat on the stand and he helped you out of your own coat, “let’s not argue about that today,” he pleaded.

After twelve years of not seeing Remus you thought it would be awkward but it was just the opposite. Soon enough your little cottage was alive with laughter as the two of you had dinner and exchanged gifts. It was wonderful to feel blissfully happy again. Ever the adult, Remus retired to bed at a reasonable hour but you decided to stay up for a little while.

As you were closing your curtains you saw that shaggy black dog staring up at the house, with your heart in your mouth you walked to the front door and opened it. The dog looked at you and you felt your eyes well up with tears, “please,” Padfoot obediently trotted into your house and you closed the door before turning around.

There he was, his hair was long, his face was gaunt and he was wearing dirty, ragged robes but he was still so handsome, “Sirius!” you cried and ran towards him, hugging him hard, “what are you doing here? You could get caught.”

“There are not many people left that know I’m an Animagus,” he let out a croaky laugh as he pulled away and looked at you with wary eyes, “I didn’t kill Peter! He’s alive and I didn’t betray James and Lily.”

You smiled and cupped his cheek, “I know sweetheart, I know,” you leaned forward and kissed him, getting lost in him for the first time in twelve years. You were finally home.

“Thank you for believing me,” he grinned, “you look so beautiful Y/N. I missed you so much.”

“As do you, my love. I missed you more than you could ever know. How are you still so handsome after spending twelve years in that awful place?”

He flushed and kissed your forehead, “I saw you and Beth move in, our daughter is so beautiful.”

“She is,” you nodded; it was true, she was going to be a right little heartbreaker, “she’s a great kid. She reminds me so much of you when you were her age.”

You made Sirius a proper cooked meal and some hot chocolate as the both of you sat on the couch and caught up with each other. You told him about yours and Beth’s life together, assuring him that there was nothing romantic going on between you and Remus. In turn, he told you what really happened the night that James and Lily had died, it shattered your heart to know that he’d spent so long locked away for a crime that he didn’t commit. When the sun began to rise and there was a shuffling noise coming from Remus’ room, Sirius stood up, his eyes wild.

“Remus can’t see me, he thinks that I was the spy doesn’t he? I need to go.”

You couldn’t say goodbye to him so soon, not again, “he does but if you just explain it to him!” you pleaded desperately and Sirius shook his head.

“He’d never believe me.”

Tears pricked at your eyes as you tried to make him change his mind, “don’t go Sirius, please don’t go. Stay with me.”

He looked at you sadly, taking your hands in his rough ones, “I can’t, when the Ministry comes looking for me again this is the first place they’ll think to come! I won’t put you in danger! I’ll come and visit as often as I can, I love you Y/N,” he kissed you hard like it would be the last time that he’d ever kiss you.

“I love you too,” you sighed as he turned back into that black dog and disappeared into the early morning snow.

[asyeralovelies]

ICARUS - percy jackson x oc (chapter one)

word count: 3,909

trigger warnings: gory description (mrs dodds) , implied physical abuse

a/n: lmao i posted this on wattpad first (@/asyeralovely) so you guys can check it out there too. also on ao3, same user as my wattpad.

"My, my..." Dittany celeste murmured as she looked around Yancy Academy, a private school in upstate new york. Her satyr friend, Grover Underwood, and her mentor at Camp Half-Blood, Chiron, or tío as she liked to call him, had asked for someone to help in picking up a demigod in the school. Apparently, it was so hard to get the half-blood that they needed another one from camp.

Well, Dittany wasn't really "just another one at camp."

The dark haired girl had been left at camp borders when she was a mere one year old, the only information of her mother she had was that the woman's last name was "Celeste."

Honestly, she didn't know what to feel about the woman. Did she leave her there to train early at camp to learn to protect herself? Did her mother simply not want a child and left her there to fend for herself? The daughter of Hephaestus had no clue.

The only other long-timers at a young age in camp was Annabeth Chase, another friend of hers. The daughter of Athena had been there since she was seven.

Dittany snapped her fingers, willing the mist, a veil that covers up the Greek Myths world in mortal eyes, to make her seem like another student in Yancy Academy. She had learned that trick when she was ten, after six years of pestering her tío.

As she walked casually around the halls of the private school, her mind went through notes about the new demigod. His name was Percy Jackson, a boy with black hair and green eyes. He was in sixth grade and seemed to have attracted a very dangerous monster, because Grover had been panicking when he Iris-Messaged her about the situation.

Finally, the girl caught sight of a certain curly haired satyr talking to who she assumed to be Percy Jackson and stalked towards them. She snapped her fingers again, willing the mist to make it seem she was already friends with the two. Well, to Percy. Grover already knew her, without the mist.

The green eyed boy met her own dark eyes and he grinned as if they really did know each other, as if the scars on her face were a natural sight, and Dittany grinned back, acting her role.

"Hey, Perce," she said enthusiastically, using the first nickname that came to mind. She sent a subtle nod to Grover, who gave her a quick thumbs up. "You two having fun without me? After all we've been through!"

Percy rolled his eyes and smiled fondly at her. "Shut up, An. Grover was just saying something about being worried for the field trip tomorrow." He looked at her with a raised eye brow, like he was saying, "can you believe him?"

Dittany was a great actress. "What? You afraid our teacher's gonna turn into a monster and slash us to bits?" she asked Grover, mirth in her eyes. The satyr narrowed his own eyes at her, clearly too worried to laugh in amusement.

"No," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm just.." he couldn't seem to find an excuse for his nerves.

"Just?" said Dittany amusedly.

"Whatever." he grumbled.

Dittany only smiled teasingly at him.

"I'm going to kill her," Percy mumbled. Nancy Bobofit, a red haired girl with kleptomania and freckles that seemed spray painted with crushed Cheetos, had been throwing wads of her sandwich into Grover's curly brown hair.

Dittany knew Percy wouldn't do that, because according to Grover, the demigod was on probation and had been threatened by the headmaster himself with death by in-school suspension if anything remotely strange happened.

See, from what she had gathered with observations in one day, the boy had ADHD and dyslexia, like most demigods. Dittany didn't have dyslexia, meaning she could read perfectly fine, but she could still read Greek. In truth, she didn't know how that worked, but she didn't question it.

"It's okay. I like peanut butter." Grover said. Being thrown at your hair, Dittany mused. Hope you're not serious.

Grover dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it." Percy snapped, standing up, but Dittany pulled him down by his shirt.

"You're already on probation, Mr Jackson," the girl air quoted the last part. "Anything remotely shitty happens and you're out of here." then she smirked. "Wouldn't want to leave your two best friends in the whole world, would you?"

That shut him up.

When Dittany willed the mist, she made it so Percy thought she had been here since day one and only had Grover for a friend. The daughter of the forges had noticed that the only things keeping Percy from straight up leaving was because of his friends who would be all alone without him and his mom who would be disappointed that he just gave up.

Sally Jackson was a nice woman, from last night when Dittany had Iris-Messaged her. She informed the mother that she was also going to keep watch on Percy, since the situation was getting desperate with the really powerful monster. But Dittany had assured her things would be fine when Sally started panicking about the statement.

But today, Dittany's senses were on high alert.

She knew immediately that Mrs Dodds, the other chaperone for the field trip, was their monster. From the way her eyes had widened when she caught sight of Dittany, who had not been there before, and seeing the students just pass by her like she had been there all along. From the way the monster had glared at her, like she was silently asking, "how dare you interfere!?"

She had glared back at the woman. The students saw it as "what're you gonna do about it?" because in their mist memories, the dark haired girl liked to stir trouble. The "what're you gonna do about it?" glare really meant that she was challenging the monster.

Ever since Dittany had left for a quest with Luke Castellan, a son of Hermes and a mutual friend with Annabeth, about two years ago, the twelve years old wasn't so terrified of monsters. Well, she never was, really, but she got to see the real world. She knew what it was like to fight monsters in life or death situations and not just for practice.

She remembered the days very well.

Luke had been offered a quest by his father. Well, not personally, but according to tío, Hermes wanted Luke to go to the garden of the Hesperides and get a golden apple like Heracles had once done.

Luke immediately took it, consulting the oracle.

He had went back down the attic ladder looking confused. He had said the oracle required him to bring only one other person along with him.

The Hermes boy had asked Dittany because she was the most skilled person in combat at camp, partly because of staying the longest there and partly because she trained relentlessly to spite her unknown mother for leaving her at the borders by herself.

They had travelled to San Francisco together, stopping every once and a while for take out food or fighting monsters.

When they were outside the garden, just about to enter, Luke had told her the prophecy.

SEEK THE LAND WHERE THE GREEKS ARE FORBIDDEN,

FOLLOW THE TRAIL OF THE HERO OF TWELVE LABORS,

ENTER THE ONCE SO BEAUTIFUL GARDEN,

FAIL TO PROCEED WHAT SHOULD BE DONE BY SCAR'S FORCE,

TAKE ONE COMPANION OR YOU'RE DOOMED FOR DEATH,

A DISTRACTION, AN ILLUSION, WILL FALL FOR THE THEFT

TAKE A CHANCE WITH FATE IN A HERO'S TRUE END

THE GAMBLE OF HERMES, A GAME OF PRETEND

Unlike Luke, Dittany caught a meaning to it. Well, the first part, at least. The demigods were never allowed in San Francisco unless for a quest because, apparently, it's where they're most likely to get killed off. They were doing one of the labors of Heracles. They were about to enter the garden of the Hesperides.

She didn't understand anything from the second part except that Luke needed one companion or he'd die and Hermes apparently had a gamble going on.

When they entered the garden, at first, Dittany didn't understand why it was only "once beautiful." It was mesmerizing, reminding her of those religious bible stories about the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve used to live before their sin. But the longer they looked around, she felt like a part of the place was missing. Like a song cover with missing lyrics. It could still be beautiful, but it just wasn't right without those missing parts.

Then they approached the hundred headed dragon, Luke warning her to stay put before he called signal so they could both have a role. Luke would distract while Dittany would go for the apple.

The whole time with the ordeal, Dittany felt like she was being watched.

In the end, Luke ended up with a scar running from above his eyebrow down to his jaw. Dittany had to step in the distraction to save him from the dragon's other claws that were going for a second strike and got Dittany's face and shoulder instead. It looked like three knife slashes on her face going diagonally and a scar from her shoulder to the small of her back.

They failed to steal a golden apple, but Dittany felt like they were meant to fail.

They came back with heavy injuries because of going back to camp and facing more monsters while they were already scarred. From then on tío banned quests, not wanting anymore heavy injuries.

Luke had felt like he ruined chances for everyone, but Dittany assured him that he didn't. She told him she should have kept with the plan because Luke could protect himself, but then Luke told her that he would have died without her.

Luke told her he also felt like his father was making fun of him for thinking he could do it, and Dittany silently agreed. But she didn't voice out her thoughts. She just hugged him and told him that one day, someone would clear for the camp and quests would be allowed again. Someday, things would get better.

But both Luke Castellan and Dittany Celeste knew that things only ever get worse for demigods.

Annabeth had taken it to herself to cheer up both of them, saying corny jokes that were so bad they were funny and reading random facts about architecture to distract them.

In the present, Dittany found herself smiling sadly. Luke was better now, and so was she, but sometimes the girl would find the sandy haired boy looking grim and trying to stop the tears.

She knew the boy wanted to make his father proud, prove that he was a hero, but instead he had failed. Dittany would walk up to him, sit on the seat next to him and make his head fall to her lap so that he could cry. She would never ask, because she already knew. She didn't whisper comforting words, because someone's presence and knowing they're there for you was enough.

Sometimes Annabeth would join them and would just tell silly stories where she describes the places in the story.

They would pretend they were a normal mortal family where Luke was their father who was overwhelmed with work and needed comfort and Annabeth would be the one to tell him about her day while Dittany made snacks. A normal, happy mortal family.

Dittany found herself following Mr Brunner— aka Chiron or tío— as he led the museum tour. Tío already knew she was there, and he played his part of acting like she always had been.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding the class through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew Dittany's mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand to three thousand years. What, with the gods' tempers and tendencies to destroy things? Wow.

He gathered them around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling them how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about their age. He told them about the carvings on the sides.

Dittany noticed Percy was trying to listen to what he had to say— she didn't really need to now— because it was kind of interesting for him, but everybody around was talking, and every time he told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs Dodds, would give him the evil eye.

Dittany would back him up discreetly by smirking at Mrs Dodds and playing with her sword's hilt that stuck out of her sheath, right at her waist, and was disguised as some chain belt in the mist. But the monster saw right through that mist and only settled for keeping away from her while keeping eyes on her weapon and on Percy.

Tío kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and before Dittany or Grover could stop him, Percy whirled around to face the redhead and said, "Will you shut up?"

Dittany had a feeling he had said that louder than he meant to. She silently watched him in pity as his face reddened from his own realization.

The group of kids laughed, tío stopped his story.

"Mr Jackson," he said, effectively adding more attention to the embarrassed boy, and making Dittany want to face palm at the centaur. "did you have a comment?"

"No, sir." Percy said, looking down to hide his face.

"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

Damn it, tío, Dittany thought, but her lips were pursed.

Percy looked up with a face of recognition. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?" he said with uncertainty. Dittany looked away and curled her lip in disgust, remembering about reading the "myth."

"Yes," Chiron said, not sounding very impressed. The Celeste girl rolled her eyes. "And he did this because. . ."

"Well, Kronos was the king god and— " Dittany turned to look at him with an eyebrow raised, forgetting that he still didn't know he was a demigod yet and didn't think the Greek Myths were worth the read.

He caught her gaze and cleared his throat. "Titan. Titan.. Lord." he corrected himself.

Dittany nodded, looking away again.

He continued, "And... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eww!" said one of the girls behind Percy and Dittany, making the latter roll her eyes and smirk. She, too, was disgusted when she first read the story, but then she joked around about it just to annoy campers.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," Percy continued, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind them, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr Jackson," tío said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover and Dittany snickered.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair. Grover only smirked and looked away and Dittany stuck her tongue out childishly.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Tío was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

Percy thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Chiron looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grover, Dittany and Percy were about to follow when Chiron said, "Mr Jackson."

Dittany internally face palmed, having been used to her tío's dramatic tendencies.

Meanwhile, Percy knew that was coming.

Dittany turned to Chiron with an are-you-fucking-serious-right-now look before heading outside with Grover.

When they reached the fountain, they started talking.

"Ten drachmas that tío'll be ominous again and confuse Percy," Dittany immediately said. Grover replied, "Twelve that he actually gives him a clue."

The scarred girl rolled her eyes, muttering with a smirk, "Yeah, right."

They sat in silence after that, waiting for the boy in question to come outside.

Dittany zoned out, staring at the water. She realized she looked like a stereotypical skater girl with a grey sleeved shirt under a black tee. Her ripped denim jeans were just a quick in-the-moment choice that Silena Beauregard, a close friend and her older half-brother's crush, would have not approved of. The sapphire eyed teen would have chosen black jeans to match the "aesthetic" or whatever the hell it was. Dittany just wanted something to wear.

The she caught sight of Percy approaching her and Grover. He sat down between them with a brooding look.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," Percy said, but he still looked grim. "Not from Brunner. I just wished he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean— I'm not a genius."

Grover didn't say anything for a while, and when he opened his mouth, Percy thought the boy was going to give some deep philosophical comment to make him feel better, but instead he said, "Can I have your apple?"

The raven haired boy didn't have much of an appetite, so he let him take it.

Dittany saw Percy look to the road with a longing expression, and she did, too. But her reason was the want to get hit by a car, feeling restless at just sitting. At least she'd have a reason to be still. She was hit by a moving vehicle! Of course she can't move right now!

As she mused the thought, Nancy Bobofit was suddenly in front of them, or maybe the Celeste girl just didn't notice the redhead approaching.

The bitch had the audacity to dump her lunch in Grover's lap, and Dittany felt her hands prick and warm up, like a flame about to ignite, but she quickly calmed herself. No one knew about that power. She wasn't going to let the secret out anytime soon.

Percy wasn't so calm.

Dittany swore the fountain's water had suddenly lurched forward, grabbed Nancy, and pulled her in the fountain.

Poseidon, Dittany thought immediately. You three gonna do this in order, she silently asked the three gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Thunder rumbled and the earth slightly shook beneath her feet. She rolled her eyes.

She was referring to Thalia Grace being the first child of a broken oath, and Percy now being the second. All she had to do was wait for a Hades child and it'd be a complete set. Thunder rumbled again, and the earth shook, but specifically only under her.

How terrifying, she thought sarcastically.

She was splashed by the fountain's water in the back, but her clothes were quickly made dry so Poseidon seemed innocent. She discreetly flipped off the god.

With her interactions with the three gods, she had missed Mrs Dodds taking Percy away and Grover looking at her with an exasperated look, like he knew exactly what she was doing.

When the brunette finally noticed that Percy Jackson, apparently the son of Poseidon, was gone, she looked to Grover with an eyebrow raised. He only shook his head worriedly.

She stood up and ran to her tío who was watching the museum doors worriedly. He took out a pen and looked ready to follow inside when he spotted Dittany.

Chiron handed her the pen and nodded, emphasizing she could get there quicker.

Dittany took it and ran up to the entrance, swinging the doors open and just in time as Mrs Dodds was ready to slash Percy to bits.

A fury!?, she thought furiously, hopefully sending her thoughts to the god of the underworld. How petty can you get, Hades?, she huffed.

"Percy, catch!" she yelled and tossed the pen in the air, the said boy whipping around to meet her dark eyes and catching the pen, watching it turn into a double edged celestial bronze sword.

Dittany would have taken out her own weapon to help, since a fury wasn't usually killed at first try, if Percy hadn't immediately sliced through the monster.

The girl's eyes widened but she didn't stay, immediately running out. She had a feeling Chiron would want Percy to think it was all just an illusion, so she immediately went back to the fountain with Grover, sending a quick thumbs up to her mentor.

She took the face towel Grover offered to dry her sweat, partly from running and partly from seeing the fury.

She sent a look to her tío, silently asking him if she should will the mist again to make up some new teacher, but he shook his head. He had it handled.

A few moments later, Percy came out of the museum looking dazed. It had already started raining, and Dittany was soaking while Grover hogged the only cover.

Percy said something to Nancy, and the girl looked at him like he was mad before scoffing and walking away. Then he walked over to Dittany and Grover.

"An," he immediately looked to Dittany. "Where's Mrs Dodds?" He wanted to know if this was a dream or not.

As was said earlier, Dittany was a great actress.

"Perce," she said slowly, emphasizing that she was trying to see signs if he was going insane. "Who the hell is that?"

Percy looked desperate.

"Mrs Dodds!" he exclaimed. "Our pre-algebra teacher!"

Dittany looked at him in concern. "Percy," she started. "We never had a teacher named Mrs Dodds."

Percy looked to Grover.

The raven haired boy would have believed it was all an illusion if Grover hadn't looked around nervously, like preparing to make an excuse, and said, "She's right, Perce. Are you okay?" in the most unconvincing voice ever.

Dittany mentally face palmed.

Percy looked to Dittany. "But.. You gave me the pen, only it wasn't a pen, it was a sword, and—" he raised his hand, which was holding a normal ball point pen. He looked at it with wide eyes suddenly, like it wasn't a pen the previous moment.

Dittany let her eyes widen, too, but to say, "Hey! That's mine!" in a playfully accusing tone. "Well, I only borrowed it from Mr Brunner.. But still!"

She snatched the pen from him, but the boy was still in shock.

The dark eyed girl ran to Chiron, quickly giving him the pen. She glanced back at Percy who looked to be in a crisis.

"What monster?" her tío silently asked.

"Kindly one." Dittany said simply.

Chiron heaved a breath and the demigod only shrugged.

"Could be worse, honestly."

And... she jinxed it.

tag list: @pallasdira ,

[golchaworld]

Panacea | L.BG (Part II)

➳ pairing: lee byounggon x fem!reader, ft. cix ensemble

➳ genre: organized crime!au, action, occasional fluff

➳ word count: ~2.9k

➳ warnings: cursing, mild violence, mentions of non-descriptive gore, mentions of death/killing, glorification of crime

➳ summary: The plan is always the hardest part.

A/N: This took me forever and a half to write! And the funny thing is this is mostly just filler!! It’s a lot of insight into the members’ and reader’s relationships and tendencies. Either way, I hope you enjoy!

Part One

panacea (noun): a solution or remedy for all difficulties

All of Jinyoung’s plans start out with observations.  He becomes hellbent on knowing every single detail, every mechanism and inner working, before making his next move.  Jinyoung always likes to hit where it hurts, and he finds observation a crucial factor in that.

It starts with him dropping sticky notes on your desk.  Most of them are mundane observations, like the fact that Kim Jaeyong eats lunch at 12:43pm every single day, or the fact that he keeps the temperature warmer in his personal office than the rest of the office.

But eventually, they become more detailed, useful.  Jinyoung notes that Kim Jaeyong walks with a slight hitch in his step, leaning over to his right side, likely the result of a hip injury when he was a teenager.  Jinyoung also informs you that Kim Jaeyong only keeps one weapon in his office, a Beretta M9, with plenty of ammo in the bottom drawer of his file cabinets.

As the notes pile up day by day, your shredder becomes fuller and fuller.  It’s better for all of you to keep them as mental notes anyways.

The six of you don’t get a chance to discuss the notes until the following Friday, piling into Seunghun and Byounggon’s shared apartment as usual. This time, instead of hard liquor and the ever present taste of murder in your mouths, there’s only the bitter taste of determination. 

“I don’t know why I needed to know the exact minute that the boss eats lunch, Jinyoung. Why did you even send that to us?” Hyunsuk’s voice is whiny, worn out from using his customer service voice for the entire week. 

Jinyoung rolls his eyes, throwing a chicken bone that just barely misses Hyunsuk’s cheek. “It’s so we know when he’s not busy. People are almost always relaxed over a meal. I think that’s our best time to strike.”

Byounggon snorts, chest rumbling under your head. How the two of you ended up cuddled up on the couch while everyone else is sprawled across the floor is beyond you. You imagine it was under the pretense of you being “tired.” All you know is that you definitely don’t mind it. 

“What do you mean ‘strike?’” 

“Well I mean, we have to kill him. I think that’s pretty obvious.”

Even with the steady tone of Jinyoung’s voice, you know he’s still being cautious. Although Yonghee just looks over at him with big, inquisitive eyes, you imagine it must hurt. It would always hurt to see your best friends plotting to kill your father. It must hurt even more when you’re taking part in such plotting. 

“There isn’t another way?” Seunghun’s voice is calm and even, standing strong in the silence of the apartment. “Like can’t we just force him to leave and never come back or something?”

“It’s us or him.”

Yonghee’s voice causes a knot to wrangle its way into your stomach. His words are clear, even though they waver with a hint of fear. There’s something else there, maybe sadness, grief. It mixes in smoothly with the deep tone of Yonghee’s voice. 

“If we don’t kill him,” Yonghee explains further. “He will kill us. No hesitation. Killing him is really our only option.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Byounggon asks softly, as if not to frighten a cornered animal. 

Emotion swims in the dark irises of Yonghee’s eyes. Having been the “quiet nerdy kid” growing up, Yonghee has never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. His father had taught him that emotion was weakness, and would always be used against him. It was only around his five best friends did he ever let his walls down. 

Yonghee sighs, running a hand through his already messy hair. Somehow, it falls flawlessly back into place. It’s amazing how even under the stress of plotting to kill his father, Yonghee manages to look like a supermodel. 

“Even if I’m not okay with it, it’s what we have to do. So let’s stop mulling it over and just do something about it.”

The corner of Jinyoung’s mouth twitches up in a smirk, accompanying the sadism flaring in his eyes. “Then let’s get started.”

.        .        .

The first thing you notice the next morning is that you’re not in your own bed. 

You sit up, quickly take account of your surroundings and rush through the possible places where you could have ended up. All of your clothes are on and intact, which is a good sign. You search the room, panicked, until your eyes land on a familiar picture in a navy blue frame. You sigh in relief; it’s only Byounggon’s room. 

The framed picture on the nightstand is quite cute, and you find yourself smiling at the six faces that stare back at you. It was taken at the boardwalk the summer before your senior year of high school. You’re all grinning from ear to ear, each holding various cliche items from cotton candy to plushies won at game stands. Byounggon’s arm is slung around your waist. 

You remember that you even loved him then. 

The picture has you continuing to smile, even as the room owner enters. Byounggon lacks a shirt, only clad in sweatpants slung low on his hips. Even though it’s his typical Saturday outfit, you find your mouth watering nonetheless. 

“Sleep well?” He asks, voice gruff from sleep. 

You nod slowly. “Yeah, but when did I fall asleep? Like I remember Jinyoung outlining the plan and then next thing I know, I’m waking up here. I wasn’t even drinking!” 

You punctuate your statement with a frown, which causes Byounggon to smile, dimples indenting his rounded cheeks. 

“You fell asleep while Jinyoung was talking, genius.” Byounggon takes a seat at the foot of the bed. “Seunghun and I just brought you back here so you could get proper sleep.”

A yawn takes over your features, prompting you to stretch your arms above your head. Byounggon giggles. 

“Did you guys finish coming up with a plan?”

Byounggon’s expression sours at the question. He looks down to the sheets of the bed before meeting your eyes. His eyes are hard set, determined, but are also laced with a lingering air of sadness.

“We’re still mulling over some details, but um, Y/N?” He places a hand on top of yours on the cover, curling his fingers around yours. “We’re going to have to kill a lot of people. It’s like we’re going to war. A war against our own.”

You turn your hand over so that you’re palm to palm with Byounggon. In his eyes, there’s still the brooding boy that refused to talk to you when you were introduced at age seven. There’s still the boy who was scared of the monkey bars until he was twelve. But there’s also the man who has killed. A man who has sinned. 

You squeeze his hand in comfort. “I know. But you have to remember that as long as the six of us are together, we’ll be alright. We’ll always have each others’ backs.”

Byounggon nods, squeezing your hand back just as tight. 

.        .        .

Jinyoung is the one who warns the group against diving into a plan head first.  Ever the planner, he works to create small increments in which the six of you can work to take down Kim Jaeyong.  The only downside to his planning is that he feels the need to remind you all of it every waking moment.

The sticky notes don’t stop landing on your desk, this time sporting small messages like ‘we have to make nice with the informants so they trust us,’ and ‘Seunghun agreed to spend more time with the boss to get closer to him.’  It all seems a tad bit extraneous, but nothing is too extra for Jinyoung.

He even goes as far as to call small meetings for the six of you in the middle of the day.  All too often you find yourself smushed into a cubicle, speaking in hushed whispers disguised as small talk.  The worst is when you all have to pile into the single stall restroom at the end of the main hallway, conspiring and dreaming up a hierarchy of people to take down.

It’s on a random afternoon, however, that your cover is almost blown.

Five of you stand around Hyunsuk at the front desk, casually sipping coffee while you dream up the most discreet ways to dispose of bodies.  You’re so caught up in the conversation that you all miss the chime of the elevator, completely ignoring the figures that step out of it until a booming voice rings out around the lobby.

“Who knew that kids these days talk about burning bodies during their coffee break?”

The six of you instantly straighten up your posture, greeting Kim Jaeyong with slight bows.  The man sports a greasy smirk at the obvious fear written all over your faces.  He has always been giddy at the thought of people respecting him, of people fearing him.

“Yeah, well you know burning bodies is all the rage these days,”  Hyunsuk responds with a smile, forever the charmer.

Seunghun nods.  “You know Gen Z, all about social media and burning bodies.”

Kim Jaeyong laughs loudly, once again commanding all the attention in the room.  “You kids are too funny.”  His face suddenly loses all hints of humor, putting up a serious, stoic front.  “But we don’t have time to take coffee breaks, whether you’re talking about burning bodies or anything else.”

The six of you nod, practically in unison, making small noises of agreement.  Kim Jaeyong seems pretty satisfied at the response, and you think he’s going to leave it at that, especially as he moves towards the office door.  However, as soon as he shifts his weight to open the door, he freezes, regarding the group with scrutiny.

“As a matter of fact, the six of you have been congregating a lot lately.  Is there something I should know about?”

All of the blood in your body freezes over.  You would think you died on the spot if not for the styrofoam cup warming the skin of your hand.  For a moment, there’s silence, until a confident voice speaks up.

“It’s the consequence of recruiting six best friends when they were fresh out of college.  All we want to do is see each other.”  Yonghee smiles as he speaks, proud at the implied dig at his father.  “Surely you can understand that right?”

Kim Jaeyong regards his son with a sneer.  “I don’t care what you all ‘want’ to do.  You’re congregating on my time.  Get back to work, now.”

Five of you scramble back to your desks, passing by the father-son duo that seem to be communicating with their eyes.  Their gazes are ammo, and none of you want to be caught in the crossfire.

By the time you’re settling back into your cubicle, Yonghee re-enters the office, a triumphant smirk on his face.

.        .        .

The plan is officially set in motion the following week.  It begins from the bottom with its goal being for the six of you to work your way up.  It seems easy at first, to take out the small scale informants and then move on to their bosses, and their bosses’ bosses.  But the task becomes harder and harder to manage.

You come across your first round of problems as you’re sawing an informant’s body into small pieces, making them easier to be burned when it’s all said and done.  You have just separated the man’s lower leg from his thigh when a crackle of static fills the small room you have converted into a morgue of sorts.

“Junhyuk?  Are you there?”  A staticky voice calls, making you instantly drop your bone saw to the floor.

It falls with a loud clatter, one that’s loud enough to gain the attention of Seunghun, who had been posted outside of the room.  He instantly bursts into the morgue, hand on the small pistol in the holster on his waist.

“What happened?”  The boy questions, looking around the room for signs of danger.

“You guys didn’t take his walkie?!”  You yell, startling Seunghun.

The static crackles again.  “Junhyuk?  Come in.”

Seunghun just rolls his eyes, finally taking his hand off of his gun.  In two short strides, he stands over the collection of body parts, not even flinching when the static fills the room once again.  He doesn’t hesitate to reach a hand into the corpse’s bloody back pocket, pulling out an equally bloody walkie talkie.

Seunghun throws the small appliance onto the ground, watching as small pieces splinter off.  To seal the deal, he stomps on it a few times, until it no longer spouts staticky commands.  You roll your eyes at the show of strength.

“Better?  Gosh, I didn’t expect something so miniscule to scare you.”  Seunghun jokes, nudging your shoulder with his.

Now it’s your turn to roll your eyes.  “When you’re alone in a room with bodies that are supposed to be dead, you don’t exactly expect shit to start talking.”

The smile Seunghun gives you in response is bright and sweet, the kind that’s not marred by any malintent.  You wonder if this is how he lures his prey in.  With just a flash of his smile, you can imagine that anyone would be putty in his hands.  But when you see his smile, however, it just reminds you of the chubby little boy who greeted you and your mother when you moved in across the street.

To this day, he always greets your mother like she’s his own, molding a space into your family.  And after years of friendship, he practically is a brother to you.  From playing on the swingsets when you were in third grade to studying for college entrance exams when you were in eleventh, Seunghun has always been a part of your life.

The last thing you expected, however, was for him to ever be flashing you his smile in front of a half dismembered body.  But you guess things change.

“Well before you lost it over a walkie talkie,” Seunghun chuckles.  “Jinyoung said he and Byounggon were going to take down another informant.  Somebody who does outreach to the suppliers?  I don’t know.”

“Clearly, I need some time before then.”  You motion to the body behind you.  “You guys can’t just be piling up bodies in my morgue.”

The tall boy shrugs before making a move towards the door.  “Bring it up with Jinyoung...or better yet, bring it up with Byounggon.”  

Seunghun shoots you an obnoxious wink over his shoulder.  You can only manage a few curses at his retreating form before he exits the room, taking his post at the door once again.  When you turn back to the body on the table, you meet its cold, dead eyes.

You scoff.  “Don’t look at me like that.”

.        .        .

It’s a little after noon on a Wednesday when Byounggon meets you inside of the morgue.  Your breath catches in your throat once you catch sight of him.  His blazer hugs his shoulders perfectly, cinching in just the right amount at the waist. Byounggon in a suit should be illegal.

“Why is it always so cold in here?”  The man whines, crossing his arms over his chest to preserve warmth.

“You know why it’s cold in here,” you roll your eyes.  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

Byounggon’s eyebrows raise before he chuckles. “What’s got you so upset?”

You sigh, finally putting down the pliers you had been using to remove fingers from a dead hand. The urge to run your hands through your hair overtakes you, but you fight to suppress it, hands smelling like formaldehyde and drained blood. 

Byounggon’s still looking at you expectantly as a moment of silence passes. He knows not to push, content with waiting for you to open up on your own. It’s something he learned the hard way. Pushing you too hard once in the 9th grade led to such a nasty black eye that he had to wear sunglasses for two weeks. 

“This is just a lot,” you finally murmur. “How are we going to take everyone out without Kim Jaeyong noticing? He already noticed we’ve been congregating a lot.”

A smile graces Byounggon’s face, deep dimples indenting his cheeks. He crosses the small room quickly, pulling you into a tight hug. You can’t help but sigh, feeling all of the tension leave your body at the feeling of your best friend’s arms wrapped around you. You sigh again once Byounggon begins to rock you both back and forth. 

“Worrying doesn’t look good on you, you know.”

The comment makes you chuckle, the sound nothing more than vibrations in your chest. 

“Leave the worrying to Jinyoung,” Byounggon continues. “His stupidly pretty face can handle it.”

Once again, you laugh, emitting a short huff that gets trapped in the space between your face and Byounggon’s chest. He’s warm, a sharp contrast from the chill of the room. 

“Yonghee’s got the system hacked so that it looks like the informants are still up and running. He’ll do the same as people go higher and higher up. He’s cancelled all large body meetings for the next month.”

“Oh shit.”

Now it’s Byounggon’s turn to chuckle. “Yeah, oh shit is right. We have this on lock, Y/N. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”

You nod in response, taking the opportunity to muzzle further into your friend’s hold. His heartbeat is strong and steady under your ear, felt through the quality fabric of his crisp white dress shirt. His hands trace circles into your back, slightly displacing the cloth of your white lab coat. 

The two of you continue to rock back and forth, paying the smell of formaldehyde no mind as you get lost in the warmth of each other. 

[romanceandnothingelse]

Paris, France.

10:43 pm

Dear Alice,

Its been twelve years since Renesmee was born. Twelve years since I married Edward. Twelve years in the face of forever.

If I were still to age I would be thirty now.

It's strange to think of such an amount of time both short in the reality of my having forever, and so long and everything I had feared such a short time ago. In three days time comes my worst nightmare. My thirty-first birthday. Edward tells me that I shouldn't count, but how can I not when I look at my life now, and see in it what could have been. What could have been if Edward had his way and made me age and get old. What could have been if I got to this day naturally and saw myself as a grown woman, standing next to my husband who looks seventeen. My husband who will look seventeen forever as I would have died a little each day slowly watching the creases on my face deepening.

Oh, Alice. I'm sorry. the trouble with letter writing instead of emailing is there's no way to undo what you've written- except for scrapping the whole thing and starting over, but I won't do that, you've waited long enough for my reply.

I haven't told Edward about your letter, and you know he wouldn't be happy with you if he knew in advance, but I think it's a good idea. I haven't seen Renesmee since she and Jacob visited two months ago. I still can't get used to the idea of my daughter being with my old best friend. But luckily I've got the rest of my life-which will never end- to come to terms with it. I've missed them while we've been here. I hate not seeing her so much but what can we do? Jacob lives with his pack and Renesmee is wherever he is. But maybe it's for the best, the less I have to see them together the less I have to think about what exactly that means.

I'm looking forward to seeing the old house again after so long. I hope you've stocked the kitchen for Renesmee, I've missed you all so much, Edward has too, despite what he'll say when he sees you all. We'll see you in a few days. But you already know that.

  

All my love,

                   Bella

Returning to our townhouse after sending my letter, I found Edward where he had been sat for the past 3 days straight; bent over the grand piano in our 'living room'. Without much need for typical human comforts we kept pretences for just that. Pretences.

Drawing closer I sat beside him on the small bench and tapped his arm gently. Nothing. I rolled my eyes; we needed to be back home at Faulks in two days, but he was completely absorbed in the new piece he was writing.

"Edward." I cleared my throat, raising my eyebrows.

He doesn't even know I'm here right now. I sighed, heading into the kitchen to resume by activities of the past week. Authentic Italian cooking. Every year since I became a vampire I've taken up a new interest and this year I was inspired by one of my moms old cooking books. She, of course never used it, or any other cooking book but when Edward and I 'vacationed to Italy' after we were married she gave me an old book full of Italian recipes when we returned. And so, after falling in love with the recipes I decided I wanted to be able to perfect them in the real Italian way; installing everything I needed into our modest French townhouse and buying every cookbook I found, and lastly being tutored by an Italian chef. It's been amazing. But I missed being able to cook for the people I loved who could actually enjoy it. Renesmee left too soon, I sighed to myself, but was gently consoled by the fact I was going to give Charlie a shock when I got home with a proper Italian meal for him and Sue. I couldn't wait.

After practicing my signature dish- which I was told by the locals was 'très magnifique'- I followed the music coming from the living room and found Edward, perfectly content, leisurely playing a composition I'd never heard before.

"You're done?" I asked.

He turned from where he was sat and looked at me serenely, his gentle smile slowly turning into the one reserved only for me.

"Yes." He smiled softly, rising to meet me.

"Would you like to know what it's called?"

"What?" I grinned, throwing an arm around his neck as he leaned down to meet me.

"I don't know yet." He confessed in a whisper.

I laughed, "Well, you can think about it on the way to Faulks." I said as I watched his face intently for his reaction.

To my surprise, he frowned and the rest of his features softened, eyes straying from my own, wonderingly.

"That's a good idea." He said slowly. "Yours?" He asked.

Oh god. I don't want to lie to him but...

"Yes." I tried to smile without wincing, but somehow I didn't think it would escape his notice.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Alice's?"

I straightened my already unnaturally straight back (vampire posture had me looking more graceful than I could ever feel. In this life or my human one), and looked him in the eyes challengingly.

"No." I said firmly. "My idea. It's almost my birthday and I want to go home for it. I want to see our family again."

A half truth. I thought to myself. An omission isn’t really a lie.

He arched an eyebrow casually down at me, obviously seeing through me, but pressing no further.

"I've packed for both of us already. You were busy." Thankfully.

"Okay," He said, dropping the subject before taking my hand and leading me to the piano. "Let me play for you before we leave."

"But we're not leaving until tomorrow." I objected instinctively. "Wait no." I laughed, "that doesn't matter.” I shook my head, smiling up at him. “Play for me." I corrected myself, sitting on the chaise opposite him where he sat at the piano.

He smiled and rolled up his sleeves and read from the creased papers standing tall above the keys.

"Pour toi, mon amour." He said softly as he began to play the most beautiful melody I had ever heard. It reminded me of one of my favourite chopin pieces he would play for me... something in E flat. I sat perfectly still with my eyes closed as he played, hearing his fingers stroking the keys, the quiet movements underneath the music adding something much more intimate to the practice.

As he stilled to a close, I opened my eyes only as I felt him beside me.

"That was beautiful." I breathed.

"I'm glad you like it." He murmured. "It was written for you."

"The next thing I take up after my Italian kitchen ventures, will be something that will benefit you." I promised. "This isn't fair, you being so perfectly considerate and me...learning to cook in a household where nobody has any need to actually eat food."

"Just because I don't need to eat food doesn't mean I don't enjoy whatever you make." He said softly. "And for your information... just you being here... just your existence alone... benefits me. I don't need anything else."

My heart fluttered as he slowly smiled down at me. I looked into his eyes and I blushed as I realised this was never going to get old. I was going to keep feeling like a teenager hopelessly in love forever. And, to my embarrassment, forever in our world really meant forever.

[saccharii]

Todofam Month, Day Twelve: What if...

Human Disaster Social Worker Touya

AO3 Link

Todofam Month masterpost

@todofammonth

heads up, dad might try to contact you

Touya stared blearily at his phone and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He reread the text, trying to make sense of it. He checked the sender again. It had to be some wrong number, right? Nope. It still said Natsuo. 

Maybe he was still asleep?

It was not something he ever expected to wake up to. A text asking him to come in to work early, sure. Or maybe a firm reminder of the next family dinner from Fuyumi. A booty-call text from Hawks would be a pleasant morning surprise. 

But not heads up, dad might try to contact you

More than five years had passed since Touya talked to his father. He couldn’t even remember the last thing they said to each other. Hell, when was the last time they saw each other? Maybe a month before he’d packed his things and left...?

Touya shook the thoughts out of his head.

What? Why? he texted back.

The “...” bubble popped up, disappeared, and popped up again. The phone rang and Touya answered it without thinking.

“Hey,” Natsuo said before Touya could say anything. “The old man’s apparently trying to ‘mend bridges’ or some garbage. He he kept going on and on about how becoming the number one hero put things in perspective. Yesterday, came home early when I was visiting Fuyumi and Shouto and I got the pleasure of his company. I wanted to warn you he might try to ambush you too.”

Touya scrunched up his face. None of this made any sense.

“You sure it’s him and not the bodysnatchers or something?”

“Pretty sure. He’s just as much an ass as always.”

“You might want to check the basement for pods, just in case.”

Natsuo snorted

Touya yawned and stretched, nearly knocking over one of the many half full cups of water on his nightstand.  

“It’s too early for this. I just woke up.”

“It’s ten. Don’t you have work?”

“Not until eleven. I’m working a half shift. It’s paperwork day.”

“That’s good? I guess? Don’t answer any unknown numbers.”

“I can’t do that.” Touya threw his arm over his eyes. Why did sunlight have to be so bright? “I have to answer any calls I get because of work. Emergency situations or whatever.”

Natsuo hummed sympathetically. “That sucks.”

“Yeah. Actually... do you have his number? I could block it now.”

“Nope.”

Touya groaned. Of course. Nothing could ever be easy. “I guess I’ll just have to hope he can’t get my number. Or maybe he’ll forget I exist.”

Natsuo laughed. “If only. At least he doesn’t know where you live.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Touya said. “He could probably find me if he wanted.”

It was an abuse of power to use hero resources to track someone down without a warrant, but when had Endeavor ever cared about shit like that?

He pushed himself up and squinted at the clock. “I better get out of bed and get ready. I have to be at work in an hour and I haven’t eaten or showered or anything.”

“Isn’t your work a half hour away?”

“Yup.”

“Good luck with that,” Natsuo said. “I’ll see you later.”

Touya hung up and rolled over, pulling the blankets around him. Maybe he could get away with sleeping for another fifteen minutes.

“We received a complaint about you.”

Touya nodded. People complained about him all the time. It turned out some people thought that piercings and badly dyed hair where ‘unprofessional.’ The more traditional parents didn’t like his casual speech and attitude. Whatever. He wasn’t using keigo just because some asshole waste-of-space parents thought that a lowly social worker should bow down to them. (Endeavor had drilled keigo into all of his children’s heads. Touya knew the proper way to respond in any formal situation. He took great pleasure not doing that.)

“So what is it this time?” 

“According to the complaint,” she said, scanning the papers in front of her. “When told of a teen’s disrespectful behavior you said, and I quote, ‘Hell yeah, stick it to the man’ then high fived her.”

Touya grinned. “Oh yeah! I remember that. I liked that kid. She’s got guts.”

His boss pinched the top of her nose. “You can’t just say things like that, Todoroki. I know you connect well with troubled teenagers, I’m not sure if it’s because of your age or your casual attitude, but you have to retain some professionalism.”

Touya snorted, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Troubled teen.’ Ha, she had plenty of troubles alright—two pieces of garbage who called themselves her parents.

 Only years of practice pretending not to give a shit kept him from blowing up at the sight of the girl’s split lip and dead eyed stare. It was a familiar sight for him: he’d seen it in the mirror enough times growing up. 

“You know what grave sin she committed? She said ‘okay’ and rolled her eyes when they asked her to do something. What will that troublemaker do next? Breathe too loudly? It pisses me off.”

His boss’s gaze softened. “I understand your feelings. It frustrates me too, but you know why we can’t do anything.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Only ‘life threatening’ situations justified removal from a household. That was why no one did anything when he was a child, even when he showed up to school in bandages. It was why he couldn’t get Shouto out of the house even now, with all of his resources. All that shit he’d gone through—lying on the floor bruised and bleeding due to his father’s ‘training,’ unable to move until his mother scooped him up—felt pretty life threatening to him.

Getting Shouto out of that house was the whole reason he’d become a social worker in the first place.

The first time a kid from a ‘non life threatening situation’ on his watch died, he’d spent the entire month holed up in his room, dark thoughts swirling in his head, wondering if it would be better to burn the world down.

“Listen,” his boss said. “You’re good at your job, and I respect your judgement. But you have to show some propriety. For example... why are you wearing two different shoes?”

Touya flexed his right foot. It pinched his toes, but a shoe was a shoe. “When I was switching to my indoor shoes Amano bumped into me, and I dropped one out the window. A dog grabbed it and ran off. Ichihara lent me one of his spares. It’s a bit tight, but it mostly fits.”

His boss nodded slowly. “Right. And why didn’t you just wear both shoes?”

“...It didn’t occur to me?”

“The strangest things happen to you, Todoroki. You’re lucky I have a truth telling quirk. Otherwise I’d never believe you.”

Touya shrugged. It wasn’t his fault that these things kept happening to him. Okay, maybe a few of them were his fault, but the kangaroo thing and the time with the parade were out of his control.

“Todoroki!”

Touya jumped and nearly dropped his phone onto the mall’s dirty floor. A smiling, pink cheeked, brown haired girl skipped towards him. He opened his mouth to ask her who the hell she was, but she brushed past him before he could say anything.

Brow furrowed, he turned to see her approach... Shouto?  The girl flounced up to his youngest brother and said something to him. Shouto responded and smiled. He smiled. What the hell was going on?

Two other teens, a black haired boy with glasses and a freckled green haired boy, flanked Shouto. They greeted the girl.

Shouto was hanging out with people? He was talking to them? Smiling at them? Did he have friends? When did that happen?

Without stopping to think about whether it was a good idea or not, Touya strode towards the small group of teenagers. One of them, Glasses, saw him coming and moved as if to intercept him. Touya sidestepped the boy and made a beeline for his brother.

“Hey! Shouto!”

Shouto startled and whipped his head around, eyes wide. “Wha-? Touya? What are you doing here?”

“Buying new shoes. Are these your friends? Holy shit, do you have friends now? I never thought I’d see the day.”

Shouto turned bright red. “You’re one to talk.”

“Um.” Freckles looked back and forth between the two of them. “You are...?”

“He’s my brother, Touya. And yes, these are my friends.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” The brown haired girl put a finger on her cheek and tilted her head. It was kind of adorable.

The three teens not so subtly eyed him. Touya knew what they were thinking. With black dyed hair, red showing through at the roots, multiple piercings, and a grungy leather jacket, he didn’t look like someone related to his prissy looking little brother.  He loved Shouto, but honestly he embodied Rich Kid Aesthetic.

“He’s got two of them. Why didn’t you tell your friends about us? Are you ashamed of me and Natsuo?” Touya realized his mistake as soon as he saw the stricken expression on Shouto’s face. No matter how many times they told him that they didn’t resent him, it remained a sore spot. “I’m just kidding. So, friends, huh? I’m proud of you.”

Glasses cleared his throat and stepped forward. “It’s nice to meet you. My name is Iida Tenya and-”

“I know you.” Touya snapped his fingers and pointed at Freckles. “You’re the kid with the hands. Midori something.”

Shouto groaned and covered his face with his hands. He looked just like Fuyumi when he did that.

“Um, yeah, I’m Midoriya.” Midoriya held up his gnarled, scarred hands, and stared at them with a furrowed brow, like he had never seen them before. “I do have hands.”

“I thought Shouto would never have friends. First day of middle school he made some kid cry. He didn’t even mean to. He just said, ‘Why would I want to be friends with you?’ and stared him down.”

Shouto turned an even deeper shade of red, almost purple, and scowled. “Okay, that’s enough.” He pushed Touya bodily away from his friends. “Time to go. It was good seeing you. Goodbye.”

“I was just-”

“Good. Bye.” he said, pushing harder.

“I was just being honest. It’s a compliment. I was congratulating you.”

“I’m going to get my revenge,” Shouto hissed, low enough his friends couldn’t hear. “Just you wait. I’m going to humiliate you.”

“Alright, alright. I’m going. Try not to be too weird and drive them off.”

“I don’t need your advice. It’s not like you have any friends.” Shouto gave him one final push, sending him stumbling. “Don’t ever talk to me again.” He stomped back to the other teens.

“See you next week!” Touya called back.

“What on earth is that?”

Touya hefted himself off the couch onto his elbows to see what Fuyumi was talking about. 

“That’s my backpack.”

“It’s got Pokemon on it, and it’s covered in coffee stains.”

“It was on clearance for a hundred yen. And that’s Detective Pikachu, I’ll have you know. It’s a good game.”

Fuyumi shoved his legs out of the way so she could sit down next to him. “Why do you have to sprawl out all over the couch?”

Touya groaned and dragged himself up into a reclining position. He pushed his feet against Fuyumi’s legs, and she swatted his knees.

“I don’t have a couch at my place and this one is comfortable.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Other people have to sit too, Touya. Please tell me you don’t take that bag with you to work.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Fuyumi rubbed her eyes underneath her glasses. “You’re supposed to be a professional. You’re an adult now. You need to set an example for the children you work with. You need to set an example for Shouto.”

“What does a backpack have to do with that?”

The microwave dinged. Hell yeah, food time. Touya hopped to his feet and jogged into the kitchen. He pulled the hot pocket out of the microwave and took it back into the living room.

“Is that a hot pocket? Where did you get that? We don’t keep those in the house.”

“I brought it with me.” He gestured to his hoodie pocket, and sunk back down into the couch.

It had been pretty awkward to walk around with a frozen pastry in his pocket, to be honest. It was probably something most people didn’t do. He knew he sometimes did things that others found strange, but he had a hard time telling apart what was weird and what was normal. He usually relied on people’s reaction to figure out if he was being strange or offensive. Judging by Fuyumi’s horrified expression, carrying around a frozen microwaveable meal in your pocket was not normal.

He took a large bite and promptly burned his tongue. 

“Ow!” He fanned his mouth.

“Serves you right. You should eat healthier.”

“Why are these things always too hot or too cold?”

“Did you follow the directions?”

“Yes- well, no. I’ve never read the directions.”

He held the package up to eye level. “Oh. You’re supposed to let it sit for two minutes. Hmm... ‘Enjoy with a serving of fresh fruit or veggies.’ Hah! Even they know that their food is nutritional garbage.”

“Maybe you should cut out the middle part and just eat a serving of fruit and vegetables.”

“But that takes effort. You have to wash the vegetables, then cut them up, then cook them. Then you eat them off the plate and after that you have to wash the dishes. It’s just not worth the hassle.”

“Touya, they have bags of salad you can buy and eat with no prep. You can get frozen vegetable stir fry packets, too.”

“But you still have to cook them and do the dishes.”

Fuyumi clasped her hands together and raised them to her lips like she was praying to god for strength. She did that a lot when Touya was around.

“You are going to die of malnutrition. You can come over anytime you want. We have a home cooked meal every night, and we’d love to see you.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to see Endeavor. Hard pass.”

“He’s been doing better,” she said, picking at the afghan draped over the arm of the couch. “He wants to do right by us. He asked about you.”

“Sure he does. You didn’t give him my information, did you?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Good. I can’t stay tonight anyway. I have a date,” he said as casually as he could, like he wasn’t internally freaking out.

Fuyumi’s eyes lit up. “You have a date? That’s great! I didn’t know you met someone.”

“I already knew him. One of my fuckbuddies is interested in trying for something more.”

She grimaced. “Please. I never want to hear you say ‘fuckbuddy’ again.”

Just as the word ‘fuckbuddy’ came out of her mouth, Shouto entered the room, stopped, turned around, and walked back out.

Touya burst into laughter.

“Oh god,” Fuyumi whimpered, sinking down into the couch and covering her bright red face with her hands. “I can’t believe he heard me say that.”

“Poor kid.”

The front door slammed open and shut, and heavy, thudding footsteps stomped toward the living room. Touya knew those footsteps. He hadn’t heard them in over five years, but every atom in his body knew what they meant.

He jolted to his feet, sending the hot pocket packet tumbling to the ground and crumbs scattering.

“Oh, he’s home early,” Fuyumi said.

“What the fuck. I thought he was in Hokkaido all week.”

“No, that’s next week.”

Touya vaulted over the back of the couch, and threw himself flat on the ground. Just in time, too. Only moments later Endeavor entered the room.

“Fuyumi.”

“Welcome home, Father.”

“What was that noise, and why is the room a mess?” A pause. “Is that a child’s backpack?”

“Um.”

The floor creaked under Endeavor’s weight as he came closer and closer to the couch. Touya held his breath and tried not to move.

Endeavor, sans flame beard, (he had improved that much at least) leaned over the back of the couch, and stared down at his oldest son.

And so, the first thing Touya said to his estranged father whom he had neither seen nor spoken to in a half a decade was, “What’s up, fuckface?”

Touya arrived outside the cafe ten minutes late. Unsurprisingly, not many people were in the outdoor seating area. Only Hawks and one other person pretending, and failing, to not stare at Hawks. Most would consider it still too cold to eat outside. Not Touya, though.

When Hawks looked up from his phone and saw Touya he did a comical double take. He spluttered and wheezed, covering his mouth with both hands in a vain attempt to stifle his laughter. “Oh my god. What the hell happened to you?”

Touya plopped down on the (uncomfortable) wrought iron cafe chair across from Hawks and held up his now deep purple arm. “Work happened. There was a kid who couldn’t control her quirk yet. I tried to wash it off, but no dice. I came over as soon as I could.”

“The kid has a quirk that dyes people purple?”

“Just the skin and hair, but it lasts a few days.”

Hawks leaned forward and examined Touya’s face. “It even dyed your eyelashes. Wow.” He sat back in his chair. “And you came out for the date anyway despite the fact you look like an eggplant. I’m flattered.”

Touya shrugged. “I’ve had worse. One kid had a projectile vomit quirk.”

Hawks’ eyes lit up. “That’s so gross. Tell me more.”

“Not much to it. She was... six? I think? Anyway, she had two stomachs. One was normal, and the other was a sort of storage, I guess you’d call it. She could swallow items and store them in the second stomach, and later spit them out at high speed. Pretty dangerous, even when used right. She spit rocks through car windows a few times. The second stomach didn’t have any way to digest anything, or anywhere for whatever she swallowed to go.”

“I am loving where this is going.” Hawks gestured with his hand. “Please, continue.”

“Well—she ate some food and it went to the wrong stomach. She couldn’t digest it, so it went bad-

“Ew.”

“-and she got sick. When they realized it was a quirk mishap they called me and she-” Touya pantomimed vomiting. “All over me.”

“Disgusting.” Hawks laughed.

Touya shook his head. “It’s probably the worse quirk mishap I’ve had. Some others are close, though. What about you? You must’ve come across some strange quirks and situations.”

Hawks leaned back and tapped his black, talon-like fingernails on the table. “There was a mugger who had some sort of subspace pocket in her boobs that she was keeping all the loot. We had to reach in and fish it all out. Not gross, but awkward. One woman sweated slime and left a large trail behind her. She wasn’t too hard to track down. Oh! Once, I had to apprehend a guy who farted fire. He-”

“What’s this?” Shouto appeared seemingly out of nowhere next to Hawks’ and Touya’s table. It took everything in Touya not to jump, but Hawks didn’t seem to be startled at all. “Touya, do you have a friend? Who would have thought.”

Shouto’s eyes glinted and his lips curled up into a smirk. Touya did not like what that expression promised.

“What are you doing here?” Touya ground out, glaring daggers at Shouto and doing his best to telepathically communicate fuck off. 

His smirk widened, the little shit. “I was going to meet up with one of my friends, but then I saw you and thought I’d say hi. Wait, are you on a date? How did you manage that? I’m so proud of you.”

Hawks looked back and forth between the two of them and furrowed his brow. “You two know each other?”

“We’re brothers,” Touya said.

“What?” Hawks’ eyes widened. He pointed at Shouto. “But you’re Endeavor’s son. So does that make you-” He pointed at Touya. “-Endeavor’s son, too?”

“Yes,” Shouto said. “You didn’t know?”

Hawks hummed contemplatively and looked at Touya. “I just realized I never knew your family name. I probably should have asked earlier. It’s been, what, six months now?”

Touya shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t know your real name either.”

“It’s Yuuoh Sora, nice to meet you.” Hawks saluted and Touya returned it.

“You’ve known each other six months and you only now learned each other’s names?” Shouto asked incredulously. “Is that normal? I don’t know anything about dating, but I don’t think that’s normal. Were you really going to date someone whose name you didn’t know?” 

“Yup,” Touya said.

Hawks snapped his fingers and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and resting his head on his hand. “So what was it like growing up with Endeavor as a dad? Pretty cool, yeah?”

“No,” Touya and Shouto said coldly at the same time.

Hawks jerked back slightly. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“There is,” Touya said curtly.

Hawks looked back and forth between the two brothers, but they didn’t elaborate.

“What do you even see in Touya? He’s a mess.” Shouto raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, tilting his head to the side. “He used to eat toothpaste out of the tube, like it was candy. Mom had to lock it up.”

“Shouto...” Touya growled.

“One time,” he said solemnly to Hawks, “he glued his lips closed with superglue. When they took him to the doctor the nurse had to run to the hardware store to buy solvent.”

“The label was in Korean!” Touya protested. “It’s not my fault that chapstick and gluesticks look so much alike.”

Touya wondered how Shouto even knew about that. It was a few years after the fiery bag of dicks isolated Shouto from everyone, and he doubted that Endeavor even knew about it, and if he did he certainly wouldn’t have told Shouto.

It was probably Natsuo. He’d find that funny. Then again, Fuyumi had a mean sense of humor from time to time. (It happened long after Mom was committed, so no way she knew about it.)

“You’re currently purple.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

“See? A mess,” Shouto said to Hawks

But Hawks just smiled. “I feel like I can relax and be myself around him without pretense, you know? I don’t have to worry if I’m funny enough or charming enough. It doesn’t matter if I do or say something embarrassing.” He tilted his head to the side. “If you ever find someone like that hang onto them and don’t let them go, whether or not it’s romantic.”

Touya’s cheeks heated and he beat down the bubbly feeling rising inside him. He turned his head to the side so he wouldn’t have to look directly at Hawks, or Shouto for that matter.

“...I guess I understand,” Shouto said slowly.

His phone dinged. He took it out of his pocket, his face impassive until he saw whatever the text said. He swore.

“I have to go. I told Ochako I’d meet her for sushi five minutes ago.” 

He stuffed his phone back in his back pocket and jogged down the street toward the kaitenzushi place. (Endeavor would lose his shit if he knew his precious youngest son was dining in such a cheap place. Touya approved.)

“Ochako, huh?” he mused under his breath.

How kind of Shouto to give him material for his own revenge.

Touya stretched, and his back popped. He kicked away the tangled sheets at the end of the bed. Hawks moved away slightly, then cuddled back up to him once he got settled, their sweaty skin sticking together in spots. He picked a few loose, downy red feathers off of Touya’s chest.

He snickered.

“What is it?” Touya asked.

“When your brother asked what I see in you, it took all of my strength not to say your dick piercing.” 

Touya groaned. “It’s a good thing you didn’t. Shouto wouldn’t get that it’s a joke and he’d repeat it to someone.”

Hawks buried his face in Touya’s neck, and Touya could feel his smile against his (still purple) skin.

---

Like what you read? Consider buying me a coffee.

[thirtysomethingloser92]

Comfortably Numb.

Author’s Note: Welcome to my new Luke Alvez x Reader story. It’s going to be a long one-shot. So I hope you all enjoy! Warnings: Angst, Death, Small amounts of smut.

You suppose your life changed for the worst when you willingly chose to swap the DEA for the BAU. You knew the DEA, you did your job well and you knew your crew like the back of your hands. They treated you like one of them, you were one of the boys and you made sure they knew that you had just as much of a right to be there than any of them did. And then you all had a joint operation with the Behavioural Analysis Unit, you impressed their unit chief Aaron Hotchner with your quick and logical thinking skills, and he offered you a place on their team. Of course, it needed to get the approval of the higher ups, but he said he didn’t see much of an issue with that. And you stupidly said yes.

Over the years, the team became your family. David Rossi’s house- yes that David Rossi- became like your second home, Spencer Reid became the annoying little brother you scolded for his constant need to sacrifice himself for his friends, Derek Morgan had a terrible habit of calling you babyface- you weren’t sure if that was aimed at your age or the fact that you were an adult who still hadn’t outgrown her acne yet-, Penelope Garcia was your best friend, that’s all there was to that one, she was amazing, you loved the same things and she was easy to get along with; she was the first one to make you feel truly welcomed at the BAU. Jennifer Jereau was a mother figure to you; she held you when you cried, she reminded you how strong you were after the events that changed your life, she was the one who kept you grounded when you needed grounding the most. Emily Prentiss was your friend, she was the one you sat with until the early hours of the morning drinking wine and wondering how you ended up at that stage of your life. But it was Luke Alvez who truly made an impact on your life. At first, you didn’t want him around; you didn’t need him around. His cocky and at times flirtatious attitude made you want to slap the smirk from his face; you were civil with him in the field, and when you were at work, but outside of work you were to complete polar opposites. Two completely different people. He never gave up though, he never gave up trying to win you over to be his friend. He brought you Roxy- that stupid dog of his never ceased to make you smile- on days that you found yourself having a bad day, on days when you had both lost too many people. He would joke that he can only get you to talk to him if he had his dog around and it was entirely true. You loved that frigging dog.

Still though, Luke always had your back, just like you always had his. Because despite you not liking him on a personal level, on a professional level he was a worthy partner to have. He wasn’t Derek Morgan worthy, but he was worthy enough. He was worthy enough that you trusted him to be your partner.

Anything outside of work, however how hard he tried, you would push him away. He would try to ‘bond’ with you as partners, he would make jokes, invite you out; but you weren’t interested in becoming his friend outside of work. You had your family, and he wasn’t it. 

But still, he persisted. He would come in every morning with a large coffee with one sugar for you, he would place it on your desk with a good morning and a smile. Sometimes you would smile back, but most of the time you would tell him that this was something he didn’t have to do. You felt like he was sucking up to you. Things changed between you one night after a particularly bad case. Twelve full months after him joining the BAU. Luke found you crying. He found you in your hotel room with tears falling down your face. You didn’t want him to be there, you didn’t want him to see you at one of your lowest points, but when you tried to hide your face from him he turned you to face him and just held you while you cried. He sat with you on the floral bedsheets while you placed your face in the cook of his neck and cried. After that night the pair of you had almost become inseparable. You found him to be one of your confidants when you needed him to be, and vice versa. You would both talk until the early hours of the mornings before he would offer you his couch and the throw blanket over the back of the couch. ”Roxy will keep you warm” He would joke. When Lisa came along you had felt like your friendship with Luke had taken a back seat, no longer were you staying on his couch, no longer were you both staying up all night talking. She had become somewhat of a wedge in your friendship. He would always try and brush off your concerns, he would call you his favorite best friend, tell you that he wasn’t leaving you and that was that. Lisa tried to be friendly, but you could tell she was somewhat standoff-ish towards you. You wondered if she thought that you were going to come between the pair of them. At the time you would tell yourself no. But then you found yourself in his arms, stripping off his clothes with your mouths attached after a long night at Rossi’s house and a few too many drinks. It became a common occurrence, you would find yourself longing for Luke’s touches in the night when he wasn’t there and soaking them up when he was. Lisa was never really spoken between the pair of you, but the guilt in his eyes after each rendezvous would tell you what he felt. As you fell in love with him, you wondered if he ever felt the same. If your smile affected him the way his did for you; if, despite everything, there was a glimmer of something between you. Then the bomber happened. The man who was creating bombs, attaching them to people, then sending them into government buildings to blow them up. Five people had died so far. You didn’t know how it happened, in fact, you weren’t even sure if you were hit from behind or the front. All you remember was being forced into the local congressman’s office with the threat of the bomb being detonated from a different location. The weight of the explosives attached to your chest stayed as a constant reminder of what you needed to do. Your breathing was steady, your arms were held out either side of you as not to touch the pressure pads that were sitting under just under your armpits.

A backup, the men had told you. You touched them, you died. It was as simple as that. As soon as you walked into the reception area, the frightened receptionist called security; you told them all to evacuate the building. You didn’t want any more casualties. You could see the police cars surrounding the building, making an exclusion zone. Your family at the BAU were there standing behind the black SUV’s, even behind their sunglassed eyes, you could see their face’s contorted with distress. And then your asshole partner argued something with Emily and made his way under the tape and towards the building. Your shoulders slumped, your head shaking. He came to a standstill in front of you, his hands on either side of his hips; trying to look somewhat casual to keep you calm. “The bomb squad’s thirty-five minutes away” You saw the look of pain in your colleague’s face as he told you these words. The pain that there was a high chance that today you were going to die, the pain that there was nothing he could do to help you. A lump rose in your throat as you continued to hold your arms out either side of you, any movement and you were positive that you would die. Your arms were getting tired and sore, everything in your body screamed at you to drop them, but the surviving part of you demanded that you keep your arms up, don’t let them drop. “What can I do?” He asked he was almost pleading with you. Despite how you treated him, he stayed by your side. When the guards and even your colleagues evacuated the building, he pulled out his earpiece and stayed by your side, his brown eyes telling you that he wasn’t going anywhere without you. “You can get the hell out of here Luke” You choked back a sob as he shook his head, a sad smile crossing his face. “I told you a long time ago, you can’t get rid of me that easily” You begged him again, you didn’t want him to die if you couldn’t keep your arms up. Two stray tears fell down your cheeks as you let out a shaky breath, you apologized to him. You apologized to him for how you treated him when he first arrived, for the words spoken; you tell him that you loved him. His face contorted as his eyes started to glaze over; he swallowed and shook his head. Promising you that he was going to get you out of here, and when you got out you were both going to sit down and have a proper chat. You smiled a watery smile and nodded slowly, agreeing to that. Time seemed to move painfully slow as Luke placed his earpiece back in and examined your vest; he was describing it to your colleagues and you were silently begging for someone to know something about this. You begged for Spencer’s brain to work faster. You asked Luke how long it had been, your arms were sore, you could feel them shaking, dropping a fraction before you caught yourself and rose them back up. He tells you that the squad is ten minutes out and you wonder if you were able to do this for ten more minutes. He made jokes, trying to distract you; trying to remind you of the times you had together. When you got out he promised you pizza from that pizza place down the block you liked so much, your shout of course. You tried to laugh but it instead came out as a sob. You looked behind him through the glass windows as a man in a large suit, his face covered by a large helmet, came towards you. The bomb squad was here. You let out a small sigh of relief, your heart still beating out of your chest, but there was more of a chance that you were going to make it out of this alive. Luke had the same look of relief as he moved to the side, allowing the man access to your vest. The suited man demanded Luke leave, too much could go wrong, too much could happen and he needed to leave. Of course, he was hotheaded, of course, Luke wasn’t going to leave you. You could hear the suited man talk, his name was Alex he told you, his fingers looked at the wires carefully before opening up his tool kit. He looked over at Luke again and shook his head, demanding that either he leaves willingly, or he’ll be forcibly removed. And that was what happened, another suited man came in, placed his arms behind his back, and marched Luke back outside roughly; much to the FBI agents protests. Alex apologized to you, but you knew it had to happen. You knew that it was safer that he was outside, and you breathed a bit better knowing that if anything was to go wrong, he wouldn’t be caught in the midst of it. The suited man pulled out a pair of pliers, telling you that soon he was going to cut two wires, then he was going to gently lift the vest over your head and you were to walk with your hands up out those doors. You were excited to say the least, excited to see the end of this situation. Excited to see where your talk with Luke would lead. You felt yourself nod. The suited man cut the two dark wires.

Luke Alvez was barely listening as his superior was chewing him out. Something about being rash and stupid in his decision making. He didn’t care though, he knew that his partner was going to make it out of there okay, he knew that she loved him the same way he had loved her from the first day they met. He knew the next few weeks between them would be rough while he ended his relationship with Lisa and started to see where they would lead; but if he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t wait. He turned around from Emily and faced the building, his eyes met yours through the window as the suited man picked up something from the toolbox beside him. Then a fireball erupted from inside the building making everyone duck behind the cars. In a split second, everything changed.

[rosywaifu]

Home {A Percy Jackson Oneshot}

Hi Everyone! This is for @coldheartedgay ‘s AU: 

“Can I ask a small request from a PJ AU I made? The general premise is that Half Bloods are born with certain hair color depending on their Godly Parent. Percy - Aqua Annabeth - Silverish blonde Grover - Deep Green Etc.” 

I read this request at one in the morning, so I may have gone a little off-book so if this isn’t what you had in mind, LMK and I will redo it to what you actually wanted! But, when I reread it this morning, I thought what I wrote was actually kind of cute so here you go! Please, enjoy and keep requesting, I love it!! 

Percy brushed the hair from his forehead, trying different hairstyles by pushing and pulling the strands in different positions. He made faces at his reflection; pouted lips, smoldering eyes, sucked in cheeks for the haute couture look. Finally, he let his aquamarine locks flop against his forehead framing the deep green eyes staring back at him. He was worried about today. If all went well, he’d be engaged. He gave his appearance a last once-over and walked out of his cabin. The air was warm but he was able to stay cool from the breeze coming in from the ocean. He brushed the invisible dirt from his dark blue dress shirt, not being able to keep from fidgeting from his nerves. He tucked and smoothed and picked at his entire shirt to keep his nerves smothered. Once he reached the door of the Athena Cabin, he was sure his shirt was worse than when he started. After a deep breath of the May evening air, he rapped his knuckles three times sharply against the dark oak wood. He took a step back to let the air take hold in the space between him and the door. Hardly a second passes before the door swings open to reveal the silver haired beauty that was Annabeth. Percy drank in her appearance appreciatively; soft, silvery hair curled like a princesses draping down her shoulders with just the slightest bounce. Her tanned skin sporting a bright smile. Her dark grey sweater dress contrasted nicely against her hair and complimented her skin tone. Her camp necklace adorned on her neck. Percy thought she was incredibly beautiful and could hardly keep himself from proposing right there in the door way in front of all her siblings. “Wow, Seaweed Brain, you look great! Very dashing.” She smiled as she teased slightly with her words, but meaning every one. “Not so bad your self, Wise Girl. Took my breath away.” He said smoothly making her smile as she clasped his hand tightly into her own as she closed the door behind her. “Ah, I thought Piper got a little crazy with all the primping but seeing how smart you’re dressed, i’m glad she made me look so nice- even for just a casual date.” She sighed as she talked, half because she was so content with walking with Percy right then and half because she was frustrated he never gets any of the hints she’s dropping to have him propose. Annabeth wasn’t normally one to beat around the bush, but she had let Piper and Hazel convince her that proposing was a delicate matter. She had to use subtlety, they said. It had been 3 months now and Annabeth was about ready to shove that subtlety right in its—

“So, I thought we’d have a picnic near the strawberry fields and the water.” Percy’s voice musing out his plan for the evening kept her from finishing her derailed train of thought. “Sounds lovely, Percy.” They walked in step to the place where Percy was sure he pulled off the most romantic picnic area that ever was. A deep blue and grey plush rug, mechanical candles (as to not start and forest fires), fresh strawberries, cherries, macaroons, and sparkling lemonade. He wanted to get champagne to toast to like they do in the movies, but Chiron, as happy as he was that Percy was proposing the Annabeth, would not bend the rules of no alcohol on camp; even to those of legal drinking age. So, sparkling lemonade it was. Annabeth gasped at all the effort, Percy went through- all the food and drink with the candles glowing in the fading blue sky, even lily pads with little pink and purple flowers floated atop to the water in the little inlet. The whole area looked like a magic forest. She gave Percy a big smile who looked a little sheepish at her happiness. He wanted to make this their most memorable date yet. Sure it was happening at camp, and not a fancy french restaurant but camp was home and their favorite place to be, especially with each other. They sat down and talked about random things and nearly anything that popped into her head. Annabeth talked about the new building design she came up with, explaining all the intricate and delicate ideas and designs she came up for it. Percy half listened to Annabeth, truly trying to listen no matter how hard it was for him to pay attention when she talked about stuff like architecture. He wasn’t super into it but that didn’t mean he didn’t try to pay attention and ask quality questions. The other half fretted about the right time to pop the question without cutting her off too soon or waiting until the end of the date. Soon, Annabeth started asking questions for Percy; how his day went, what he had done since the last time they saw each other (which was only since breakfast that morning). Percy’s tensed shoulders relaxed at talking about the sea animal he got to save that day; a large sea dragon of sorts, about the size of a baby calf, got caught in flurry of fisherman’s hook, fishing poles and netting. He got pretty banged up and his dad sent word to him, via hippocampi, that the mythical creature needed his help. And Percy truly animated when he told the tale of his daring rescue, diving under the ocean waves, swimming as far as the English docks to rescue the incredible creature. Annabeth smiled as she could literally feel the love he had for animals. Eventually, the evening began winding down as Percy felt the anticipation buzzing his every nerve. Annabeth began to clean up but Percy stopped her quickly. “Hold off on that a second. I-i have to talk to you..” his voice was jilted and stiff. Annabeth had a gut instant fear that he was breaking up with her. Would Percy really be the type of guy who would give her a great last date before breaking her heart, like how you give your dog the best last day before having to put him down just so they have one last good memory? Percy, with how completely endearing he is, and idiotic, would probably think a great last date would ease the blow of a breakup, unknowing how wrong he was. Annabeth’s moment of doubt was quickly scrubbed away as she remembered how amazing her relationship was with her boyfriend. Things started to ease as they left their teen years behind; calm and soothing. They spent a great deal of time with one another but still had their own friends and lives as to not smother one another. In fact, it was her relationship being so great that led her to wanting to get married in the first place. She stood up and grasped Percy’s hand gently as he led her a tad closer to the water, wanting to feel the comfortable rock of the waves; encouraging him. He knelt down and grasped both her hands tightly in his grasp. “Annabeth, I love you so much, I would probably, no actually i know i would have died without you back when we were twelve on our first quest together. You have saved my butt so many times over the last ten years, I know i’ve saved yours at least half as many. Without you, my life would be less interesting. I wouldn’t know any of the differences of buildings, I wouldn’t understand what it means to be a hero at all without you teaching me your resolve, confidence, determination and power. You are the most incredible, smart, beautiful, infuriating and talented person i’ve ever met. I love getting lost in our discussions on the lives of the greeks might going on, I love getting lost in ADHD and caffeine fueled ramblings. I love to being in the same room as you. I have been building to this moment for years now.” He pulled out a ring box and exposed the small and dainty silver ring, with the most intricate engraving of wave designs and olive branches interchanging curling up to wrap around the small and modest ocean colored jewel. The jewel seemed to change color with the light passing through it giving it the appearance as if the jewel contained a part of the Mediterranean sea within it. “Annabeth “Wise Girl” Chase, will you do me the absolute pleasure of becoming your husband, your meddling partner, for good?” His eyes twinkled with hope and promise, a smile tearing his face apart as he stared adoringly at her deep storming grey eyes pool with love and excitement. Annabeth fell to her knees, a large smile unable to be constrained on her face. “Yes! Gods, yes seaweed brain! I love you!” And before Percy could slip the dainty ring on her finger, she pulled him into a kiss, embracing him fully, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. His own arms pulling her closer into him, wrapping his own arms tightly around her waist. Seconds later, they pulled apart and Percy was able to pull the ring from the box and slide it softly onto her ring finger. As he did so, Annabeth reveled in the fact that some times when the light danced perfectly on the sparkling jewel, it looked like it was colored as vibrantly aqua as Percy’s hair. Percy watched her face smile at her new rings as she admired it. “I got the jewel straight from the ocean. I went deep sea diving for months looking for the perfect one. When I saw it, the filtered light from the sun streaking through the ocean made it look silvery blue and it reminded me of you; your eyes and your hair. Plus I had Leo and Tyson design the actual ring part, giving my two-sense about the design here and there of course but they built it. However i did make sure they included a specific point.” He smiled conspiratorially, making her arch her eyebrow in piqued curiosity. He gently grabbed her wrist and gently pushed the jewel deeper into the ring. It turned into a half shield, covering her wrist to her elbow and about her arms width above and below. She marveled at the beautiful shield; deep silver with the etched designs of ocean waves and olive branches seemingly moving in wave patterns across the shield. “I named it stavroménoi erastés, meaning Star Crossed Lovers, as a reminder I guess that even though our parents hated each other, our friendship and love can survive and conquer anything. To always protect you and to have a little piece of me when we’re apart.” He winked with the boyish grin adorning his features. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth saw something move near the bushes. And thanks to the nearby ocean, Percy had the same quick instinct. With incredible precision from years of battle reflexes, that and living this close to a forest packed with monsters and Clarisse, Percy drew his sword Riptide from his pocking, dislodging the cap as he pulled it out, ready for use just as Annabeth shielded part of her face with her shiny new sword as she drew the dagger that had previously been strapped to the outside of her upper thigh. They pointed their weapons to the noise, poised to attack at the slightly motion of an ambush. “Show yourself!” Annabeth called with incredible strength, almost making Percy want to drop his weapon at her mercy. He thanked all the gods on his good list that he never had to be on the business end of her dagger like that. Suddenly a large tuft of forest green hair appeared above some of the bushes, sporting rather silly looking branches, that Annabeth quickly deciphered as horns. Soon a glimpse of pink hair, flaming red hair, sky blue hair, dark black hair, dark, oil slicked-looking red hair, bright gold hair and blood red hair peaked over the top. Percy And Annabeth shared amused looks before lowering their weapons. The spots of colored hair soon officially identified themselves as Grover, Piper, Clarisse, Jason, Nico, Leo, Hazel and Frank. They all shared a slight look of embarrassment but it was more or less overshadowed by their excitement. “S-s-sorry, guys! We couldn’t help but watch! We would never want to miss the proposal of Percabeth!” Grover bleated. He ran and gave Percy the manliest embrace he could muster. Suddenly, the whole gang was surrounding them, cheering him for finally being able to muster the courage to do it, admiring the ring, and celebrating their engagement between the favorite couple of camp half-blood. As much as Percy wanted to be mad and embarrassed that they had all heard him pour his heart out and let it gush all over the place, he was actually very glad to have his own little cheer squad, cheering him on and lending their support to this anticipated moment. Annabeth was a little more angry than Percy but her anger quickly subsided as her friends gushed over the idea of a wedding making her insides feel all giddy and excited. The stole a glance at one another over the roar of love and support from their friends, no- family and admired each others glow of love making their hair glitter silver and aqua in the bright, sparkling moon. He was so glad he proposed, knowing right there, right then, the wedding would most definitely take place here at camp; at home.

Word Count: 2,261

[all-of-the-imagines-for-eve]

Red ~ Embry Call (Part 1)

A/n: This had me so pumped, let’s go

Warning: cussing and sexual content

Word Count (w/out lyrics): 3,047

Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street. Faster than the wind, passionate as sin ending so suddenly.

Fifteen and wildly in love. To be so free...

I'd been told plenty of times how lucky I was. How insanely, crazy lucky I was that I had found Embry Call. They didn't have to tell me, though, I KNEW I was lucky. I knew that he looked at me like no other boy his age could ever even dream of looking at a girl. He treated me better and thought more long term than sometimes even I did.

Sometimes I wondered what it was about me that made him this way. He had never been like this before (trust me I'd asked) and he could be so immature and childish that in the moments of earnest and true love, I worried that maybe I was working with two people who looked exactly the same...

He was wild. Loving him was being on a rollercoaster, rarely ever calm and slow unless it was building up to something major. He was fun, but I fell in love with him because of the way he held me when I cried.

There was something mesermizing about him. About his laugh and how he tied his hair back and the way his eyebrows wiggles when he made a sex joke that would have made a nine year old tattle tell and a twelve year old holler with laughter. There was something in the way he kissed me that left me both completely satisfied and also dying for more. Something about the way he scooped me up when I wasn't paying attention or how he said my name when he wanted to cuddle or how he drew his last name next to mine that made me wonder if he was joking or daydreaming.

We'd been dating a year and a half. We'd gotten together when we were fourteen. Fourteen! We were sixteen now. Weird. It seemed insane and stupid and impossible but we never stopped. A year rolled around and then almost another and we were still here.

His arms around me felt like armor and I leaned back into him, smiling even though I was doing homework. "I love you, Call."

"I love you too, y/l/n."

He didn't ven hesitate, but it didn't feel casual either. He enunciated it by leaving a kiss on my neck and I felt my smile soften. The sparks and insanity and bubbly feelings went away, but my happiness when being with him never did. He didn't spark me like a car engine starting, but he made me happy and I could do the same for him. That's all that would matter as long as we would allow it.

After a second, I sighed. "I don't want to do this, Em," I whined. My head rested against his shoulder as he leaned forward to look closely at what I was working on, his hair tickling my jaw.

A sigh as heavy as mine escaped him. "Why is your math so much harder than mine? We're both sophomores."

"They hate me more." He scoffed, humored, but I feigned seriousness. "Those teachers have a creepy adult crush on you. It's probably your smile. Or your eyes. Your hair. Your laugh. Your-" he moved to come face to face with me, his darker skin tinted with a blush. "Lips," I finished, smirking.

He kissed me and I grinned. When we parted I turned on my side, pushing my homework away with my foot before curling into Embry and closing my eyes. "You have to do this," he reminded me. "You're already behind- your mom is going to ground you. And I'm all she ever grounds you from anymore."

Trying not to laugh, I groaned. "Don't make me, Em this stuff is murder!"

His nose traced along my neck and I sighed contentedly. "Do it for me?" I huffed. "I'll give you a kiss every time you get a problem right."

"You'll give me a kiss either way," I pointed out."

He leaned away. "No I won't."

Opened my eyes, I rose an eyebrow. "You can't stay in the same room as me and not kiss me, Call, but you can be cute and pretend to try."

His eyes set and I knew hat I had just set of World War three. "Bet."

I made the mistake and indeed bet.

Now I was sitting here, on my back as he leaned against the doorframe, looking at me with a smirk on his face but frustration in his eyes. I pouted. "Em," I whined.

His face screwed up in concentration and I knew I’d suceeded in making it harder to say no to me. "Do your work and I’ll give you a kiss," he offered rather casually and calmly.

I got an idea, smirking as I sat up and leaned over to do a problem. It took me a good few seconds but I pushed myself, pumped by my idea and anticipation. He came and sat next to me to make sure I was actually doing my work, probably surprised I’d broken so quickly. When I finished, I sat back, grinning at him. "I get a kiss now."

Embry searched my face for a few seconds, his eyebrows curled in doubt. Before he could find anything, though, I rolled my eyes and grabbed his collar, bringing his lips to mine. He made a half moan on the feeling of impact, his hand instinctively moving to my neck, his thumb caressing my jaw. I let nature take over and followed the flow of my wants - which I usually had to calm but was going to let completely lose now.

Moving and turning, I got to my knees without breaking the kiss, causing him to lean back a bit. I then moved into his lap, straddling him purposefully so that I grinned against him. He gasped and I smirked, my hands moving into his hair to wrap in the long strands and tug slightly. Another moan escaped him, muffled and low and longer than the first. His hands moved to my waist, gripping me tightly and pulling me close. My tongue ran along his bottom lip and he let me in without even a pause, enjoying the rare show of dominance. My hands moved again, this time breaking the kiss only a second to take my shirt off.

The house was empty and this was SO much better than doing homework. I kissed him again and his hands flattened against my exposed sides and stomach. He went to pull me close but then groaned and pushed me away. I went back in to kiss him again but he turned his head. "You need to do homework," he reminded me, his voice huskier than usual.

Determined, I moved to kissing his neck, my teeth and lips moving across his warm skin. He hummed in appreciation. "I love you," I whispered seductively. "I want you, Em."

He pushed me away, his eyes darkened with lust as he tried to control himself. "Y/n, you are going to do your homework." I glared at him, crawling off and returning to my after school hell. He leaned close, his fingers grazing my bra clasp as he whispered, "And then I’ll fuck you senseless."

Who needed much more motivation than that?

-

I remember the day it all fell apart.

Embry Call was a lot of things, but he was very rarely ever angry. Never was he as violently angry as he was now.

His fingers wrapped around my wrist, pulling me closer. "Why won’t you just LISTEN?" My eyes widened and I flinched. I wasn’t scared of him but he was being rough and aggressive and I didn’t like it. "Why did you go to that party? You could have been hurt!"

Ripping my arm away was harder than I thought and I ended up just pulling him closer. He was intimidating when angry. "I had it under control," I promised calmly, trying to process this sudden turn in his personality. He worried, sure, but usually when I did something stupid he’d wrap me in a hug and kiss me and tell me how stupid I was and tell me to at least involve him next time so he could keep an eye on me...

Now he was pissed. "You broke down on the road and just WALKED home? Your phone died? You didn’t answer any of my calls and texts- Y/n I thought we’d have to find your body somewhere!"

"Embry, I’m sorry okay? It wasn’t-Hey, that hurts!" His eyes widened and his face relaxed as I exclaimed, loosening his grip on my wrist so that I could rip it away, my other hand rubbing the throbbing skin gently. My eyes watered and I felt stupid crying. I should be yelling at him, or leaving the house and ignoring him for a very long time. Make sure he NEVER did something like this again. But I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do and I got caught up in the moment.

His eyes searched mine and then looked to my wrist. "Did- did I hurt you?"

"Not badly," I comforted. "Look, you need to calm down okay? What’s gotten into you?"

He stepped back, eyes widening. "Not badly? Y/n, did I hurt you?"

My mouth opened and then closed. I frowned. "A little bit," I admitted begrudgingly. Embry took another step back until his legs bumped into the couch and then he basically collapsed on it. My eyes went wide and I forgot my wrist in favor of rushing the few steps to kneel next him. My hand went to his forehead. "Em you’re burning up... Come on let’s get you to bed." I carried him to his room, helping take his shirt and shoes off and laying him in bed to be wrapped in blankets- how he always slept. "I’ll bring over some soup tomorrow," I whispered. "For now, stay warm and go to sleep. Now. You need rest. I’ll get you a glass of water for when you wake up because you’ll need lots of fluids. Maybe you should-"

He caught my wrist, gently. The same wrist he’d held in an iron grip earlier. His eyes were sad as he looked at my hand, tugging me closer so he could kiss my wrist. "I’m sorry." His voice broke and he suddenly looked so exhausted and worn out that my heart broke too.

Kneeling next to his bed, I wiped his hair out of his face. "It’s okay," I eased. "Just don’t do that again okay? Ever." He nodded. I huffed. "Well you’ve never done anything like that before and you were worried sick and actually not feeling well, so I’ll excuse it once." We exchanged a smile. "Now I’ll get that water and then head home, okay? Sleep."

As I went to leave the room, Embry asked, "How did I get so lucky to have you?”

I chuckled to myself. “We’ll never know, Call.” As I promised, I got him a cup of water, kissed him goodbye, and headed home. I went right to sleep so I could wake up early the next morning and make him the soup I’d promised. Homemade, my mom’s recipe. I brought it to Embry’s house, smiling when his mother answered.

Her face was sad though and my smile wavered. "He says for you not to come in right now, dear. He’s just gotten worse than yesterday, Jacob Black’s father brought Sam Uley came over when I called to ask him if he knew anything about it... I’m sorry, hun, but they said it’s really contagious."

My heart fell but I nodded, wondering where I’d heard that name before. Sam Uley. It sounded way too familiar to not be able to tie it to something, but I couldn’t place exactly where I’d heard it before. "Well, give this to him will you?" I asked, holding up my bowl of soup.

She grinned. "Aw, how sweet! He’ll love this, thank you, I will. Hope to see you soon, dear." And then she went inside and I stepped away from the house, sighing heavily. I moved to Embry’s window after a small pause, my fingers reaching up to tap three times, pause, tap two times, pause, and then tap once. This was our secret code: 3, 2, 1. And then he would response with 1, 2, 3.

The response never came.

Dismissing it since he was probably asleep, I turned away from the house and went back to my own again. I’d be able to talk to him again soon- I could last a few days...

I wouldn’t see Embry Call again for far longer than just a few days.

Loving him is like trying to change your mind once you're already flying through the free fall. Like the colors in autumn, so bright just before they lose it all.

I can’t help but think of how we met as I sit here by myself.

We were young, in middle school. I’d loved next to Jacob Black as long as I remembered but I was awkward and kind of a loner because I was too boyish and rough to hang out with the girls and boys didn’t want me because I was a girl. A snotty girl had shoved me in the hallway, and I lashed out because I would not let this even start. I was ending this- NOW. I was not the kind of person to lay down and take anything; you don’t mess with me.

After I went off on her and she attempted to shove me again, I pushed her onto her ass, tackling her to the ground and pinning her arms with my legs and using my hands to slam down next to either side of her face, startling her. "Don’t," I enunciated. "Do that."

A teacher had begun to come over so I scrambled off of her. She started crying and I got sent to the principals office, but after I explained everything, thy called us both in, made us truce, and that was it. She left me alone, and so did everyone else.

Completely alone... as usual.

On my way home from school, Jacob caught up to me. "The way you stood up to that girl was crazy cool."

I grinned, excited by the idea of a new friend. The two of us really hit it off and he invited me to hang out with him and his friends. I of course agreed. When the time came and I finally met Embry and Quil, I was taller than all of the boys.

Eventually they got their growth spurts and we all started to go through puberty. Embry and I got more flirty in our physicality. Me jumping on his back randomly, or running at him and having him catch me. Wrestling matches where one of us would let the other pin us so we could meet eyes and be close. Me teaching him how to dance. Him constantly wrapping his arms around my waist and shoulders. When he asked m to the dance and we kissed, everyone was just relieved it had finally happened so they wouldn’t have to deal with our angst and longing.

I thought of the way he smiled when he kissed me for the first time, hands on my waist and my arms resting on his shoulders while we slow danced. After, we closed our eyes, moving slowly with our foreheads pressed together. Him quietly asking if I would be his girlfriend and both of us giggling as I said yes. That first month we COULDN’T stop touching each other. That awkward time after where we learned self control but still wanted to touch each other all the time and had to learn when we and when wasn’t the appropriate times.

I thought of his breath on my neck and he whispered, "I love you" for the first time. It took us a while because people kept nagging about how young we were so much that it scared us, but I was thrilled and eagerly said it back, kissing him again. "I’m serious," he said after my wild giggles died down. "I love you. I know I’m a kid or whatever, but when we grow up I’m going to marry you Y/n L/n.”

I had blushed so hard. "You won’t."

He had grinned. "Bet." I would soon learn that that word was always followed by a fierce, driven action. One that he would do no matter what obstacles stood in his way.

And yet, it seemed, something had stood in the way of that first promise. That first challenge he’d so fervently accepted, grinning as wide and mischievously as if I’d just challenged him to a race or an eating competition.

How silly it all seemed now, to believe that an immature love born in near childhood could ever surpass to adulthood. Ridiculous, that I believed we would really make it.

We hadn’t talked in weeks. I saw him at school but I’d long realized he was avoiding me and didn’t want to talk to me. I’d tried to face him a ton of times. First to tell him off, and then just to get answers. Were we even still together? The one time I finally caught up with him he snapped at me that I wasn’t getting the message and then broke up with me. In front of all of his new friends. Sam Uley and that gang. Yeah, I’d remembered where I’d heard the name before. Sam Uley, the ring leader of the gang that before Embry had only mentioned with loathing. He stood there with his buddies, not even looking at me as he sneered at me to get lost.

He seemed normal otherwise. His hair he cut short and he kissed a surprising amount of school but otherwise he seemed to be pretty upbeat and positive around Sam and the others.

Our love was fiery and passionate and full of life and fun. Few boundaries or hesitation. It was impossible not to fall for him. Too thrilling and enticing. It had lasted just long enough to make me believe that it would go forever, too. Just long enough to make me dare believe, even after all of the warnings and promises and attempts of other people that tried to get through my skull. I still believed. Defended Embry and me and us.

I guess we were as doomed as everyone had said...

-

Forever Tag List: @bitchyseawitch @alexa-playafricabytoto @chipster-21

[bisexualstokes-archive]

A Walk in the Woods (2/4)

Chapter (2/4): The Troublesome Twins Rating: Teen+ Chapter Summary: Parker goes on a roller coaster of emotions, as tension rises and comes to a breaking point as Nick disappears into the Earth. Chapter Notes: Discussion of animal violence, some hurtful things said to a boy who just really loves dogs but don’t worry...justice will be served. Also, this fic is gonna be longer than I anticipated lol so double the chapters!

@letswaitforme​, @deltajackdalton​, @impossiblepluto​ OH MAN HERE WE GO

Previous Chapter | Read on ao3

His batteries died about three hours into the twelve hour car ride. He was allowed to bring his GameBoy, but not his cell phone--nobody was allowed to bring their phones, and for the fact that the battery of the GameBoy wouldn’t have lasted longer than the car ride, anyway. He threw his head back against the seat in frustration and boredom, how could anybody survive twelve hours, strapped down into some sort of physical stasis, unable to move with nothing but their own mind to entertain them? 

Nick and Eli seemed to have no trouble with the daunting task, chatting about Eli’s life, Nick telling Eli how proud he is that he’s doing so well, that he’s going to school, that he has a job, living the life that his father would have wanted for him. Blah, blah, blah. The same dialogue that Parker has heard all of his life, in regards to Eli Brown. He wishes he could just skip through it. 

Even Sam had seemed invested in the conversation, he was allowed to roam free in the car, though Nick would tell him to sit back right before a sharp turn, so that the poor dog wouldn’t lose his footing. Otherwise, Sam would perch himself between the driver’s and passenger’s seat, which earned him praise from Nick and Eli, who would take turns rubbing the top of his head as they continued to talk.

About halfway there, they stopped for a bathroom break, Nick was walking around with Sam, allowing him to take as much time as he needed to go to the bathroom. Eli and Parker waited by the car, stretching idly. Parker was grateful for the silence, he felt drained from just listening to all the talking, though found that his unused voice was hoarse when he took the rare initiative in asking a question to Eli.

“So...these trips...do you guys really kill…?” Parker asked hesitantly, clearing his throat. He knows his father told him that they wouldn’t, that he wouldn’t, but he had convinced himself that was a lie to convince Parker to come. That the minute they showed up, he would be given a gun and told to “prove himself,” as his cousins had described.

Eli smiled and shook his head. A stupidly handsome smile. He could hear his dad’s voice complimenting it, telling Eli how much he looked like his father. 

“Nah, bro--”

I’m not your “bro…”

“That’s not Uncle Nick’s scene. He and I usually just go hiking, taking in the sights. We usually find a spot to just sit and...watch. He’s got his binoculars, I got my sketchpad. It’s really relaxing, you’re gonna love it. Beyond that, we get to just...talk. About anything. Everything. It’s a huge release.”

Parker nodded, grateful that he didn’t have to actually participate in the hunting. He had seen his dad armed with a gun before, but couldn’t imagine seeing him in the same way he’s seen his cousins playing with BB guns at the Stokes Ranch during the holidays. He couldn’t imagine himself in that way, for that matter. 

“You know, he’s really happy that you’re coming with this year. Never stops talking about you,” Eli leaned on Parker’s shoulder casually, to which Parker reacted by attempting to shrug him off, but was too distracted by the shocking words Eli told him to notice. 

“Really?” Parker muttered. Eli winked as Nick walked towards them, beckoning them all back into the car.

“Alright boys, we’re halfway there!” Nick shouted as he and Sam got closer, in a sing-song voice that made Eli beam with joy.

“Ohhhhhh-oh! Livin’ on a prayer!” Eli sang back, he and Nick fell into a head-banging dance of joy.

“Take my hand, we’ll make it, I swear…” Parker sang hap-hazardly, unsure if he would ruin the moment by joining in, but another surprise, as his dad looked at him in wonder, and continued the song.

The next six hours of the car ride were filled with Parker joining in on the fun, and he thought to himself, maybe this trip wouldn’t be so bad after all, maybe Eli wouldn’t hog all of the attention from Nick like he normally did, maybe the hike would be as relaxing as Eli made it out to seem.

Maybe he could finally tell his dad all the things he wanted to say to him, no holds barred, all cards on the table. He could tell him everything. 

They parked on the outskirts and unpacked most of the car, it was a short hike to the campsite that was already in the usual state of chaos Parker was used to walking into during their visits to the Stokes Ranch, except void of the high-pitched, playful screams of his female cousins and sister. Just loud mouthed, goofy boys. 

“Still got that dog of yours, Nicky?” his Uncle Steve remarked, shaking his father’s hand. “Dog’s older than young Billy here!” 

“Yeah, well, this dog’s got as many lives as I do. Doesn’t know when to quit. Just like me,” Nick added in a playful growl, gripping his brother’s hand a little tighter than needed. A small twitch in his eye went unnoticed by Steve Stokes, who moved on to shaking Eli’s hand eagerly.

“Eli! Nice to see you again, Jesus--you’re gettin’ to be as tall as Nick!” Uncle Steve joked, patting his brother on the top of his head. Parker knew that his father wasn’t exactly “short” but he was the shortest out of his brothers. He could tell he wasn’t too happy about being teased about his height. “That, or maybe young Parker here is gonna be towering over you some day! Get over here, Parker!” 

“Hi, Uncle Steve,” Parker murmured sheepishly, allowing his body to be encompassed into a bear hug.

“You know, boy, you don’t have to stay behind your Daddy all weekend, you can come hang out with the big boys, if ya want,” Steve whispered into his nephew’s ear. “Otherwise, you’ll miss out on all the fun…” 

Parker looked over to his younger cousins, running around, talking, laughing, having fun as they got things ready, nets and arrows and loaded guns. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they were preparing for a battle.

“Nah, I’m good, Uncle Steve. Thanks, though.” Parker muttered, but his uncle had already broken away from him, to go playfully shout at his own children as they were tying up their other cousins to a tree.

“Pancho! There you are!” an older, rougher voice cut through all the white noise. Nick winced, somehow a once comforting, pleasant nickname brought a sense of alertness, attention, and adrenaline. But, he plastered a smile as his father got up to greet the last of the hunting trip party. “What took you so long?”

“He got lost,” Eli nudged Nick in the shoulder, before walking over to Todd, who greeted him with a hand shake into a hug. 

“Course he did. Good to see you, Eli--and there he is, man of the hour! Park!” Another tight hug, this time from his grandfather. “C’mere, it’s time you’re given ‘The Talk.’”

“The...talk?” Parker looked to his dad, who just nodded encouragingly. 

“UNCLE NIIIIIIIIICK!” 

Two young boys ran up to Nick, Billy and Jake, twins, aged thirteen. Steve’s kids. Always a year ahead, Steve Stokes. 

“Did you bring your gun!?” Jake asked excitedly.

Nick cleared his throat, slightly uncomfortable with the question. Of course he brought his gun, his 9mm pistol which he carries with him everywhere.

“Yeah,” he sighed, taking it out from behind his back. He held it out for the boys to see. He did promise them last year, that he would “bring it this year” (though he had the gun with him at the time, but they were too distracted by having their first opportunity to hunt to really prod their uncle. 

“Whoa!”

“Cool!”

“It’s just like a cop’s!” 

“Have you killed anything with it?” Billy asked in a gasp, reached out for it, but Nick took it away. 

“It’s not a toy,” Nick reminded him, avoided the question. The boys’ faces fell, discouraged, and Nick felt a twinge of regret for ruining the tone, but being asked the same question all of these years was really starting to get on his nerves. He should have never told his family about the restaurant incident. “Here, wanna see something funny? Here, go put this--” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a dog treat. “--Into your father’s back pocket.”

Jake distracted his father as Billy did just that, and then the boys returned to Nick for the punchline.

“Watch this...Sam! Aller chercher la friandise!”

It took Sam no time at all to find the treat, and soon he was digging into Steve’s back pocket, nearly taking his pants off of him to an uproar of laughter from the Stokes men.

The camp was set up and dinner was made before the sun dove down beneath the trees. Parker yawned, exhausted from the long drive and sudden exertion of energy, and happily dove into the tent as Grandpa Cisco bid everyone good night.

“Alright, boys, tomorrow comes early! Y’all get some shut-eye, we leave at the first sight of dawn.”

Parker wrapped himself up in his sleeping bag, his body felt comfortable, but couldn’t seem to keep his eyes closed. His head was turned to his dad, who was staring straight up at the top of the tent with a clenched jaw. He closed his eyes, seemed to mutter something, before rolling onto his left arm, away from his son. Parker pursed his lips, furrowed his eyebrows, his weariness faded into a determination to watch his father, who seemed unable to get comfortable.

“First night’s always the roughest,” Eli whispered from behind Parker, nearly making him jump out of his bag. “I can’t sleep either.”

Typical nerves that come with sleeping in another place away from home, Parker understood that enough. He’s never quite gotten used to hotel rooms, during vacations, or to his father’s childhood bed during the holiday stays in Texas. He knew he would struggle sleeping on the ground, but didn’t think his dad would. He thought of all the hotel rooms, shared rooms in family’s guest rooms. Either Parker or Madison were given the comfy bed, his dad would take the chair or the floor, but would always fall asleep sitting up.

Maybe he doesn’t like being on his back?

“He’ll toss and turn for a bit, probably won’t get a whole lotta sleep, but he’ll be okay. Might hear a scream or two.”

Parker’s eyes widened, unsure if Eli was joking or not.

His eyes would have widened even more, as his dad rolled over to his other side, wincing a little, shutting his eyes tight. Still muttering, Parker couldn’t make out what it was over Eli’s gentle snoring. 

Guess Eli was more tired than he let on.

“Dad?” The quietest whisper, laced with concern, somehow seemed to ease Nick out of his restless dreaming.

“Park? You okay, buddy?”

The crinkles of Nick’s face softened into a loving look of concern at his son, as he cupped a hand onto Parker’s cheek. Nick’s eyes darted all over Parker’s face, mapping out the replacement of what he thought was the source of an imaginary fan.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. Just...can’t sleep,” Parker muttered sheepishly. “Too excited,” he added, in an effort to cheer his dad up, though he wasn’t really all that excited.

It worked, a half-smile spread across Nick’s face. 

“Me too. Gonna be a long day tomorrow, though, try to close your eyes…” He stroked his son’s cheek as Parker eventually fell into a dream of a long drive, just him and his dad, sharing a comfortable silence as they watched the road disappear behind them.

He hoped that the events of the next day would be just as peaceful, but a wake-up call from Jake and Billy whooping loudly started him off in an irritated mood. His mood didn’t get any better, as Jake and Billy continued to berate their younger cousin. They had already claimed their first victim, an innocent squirrel, shot down from a tree by Billy’s homemade sling-shot.

“Scared you might hurt something, Parker?” Billy sneered, not seeming to understand Parker’s love for animals. “They’re gonna die anyway, we’re just putting them out of their misery.”

“Yeah, and back in the olden days, our ancestors needed to hunt to survive!” Jake backed his brother up.

“Oh, please, like you know anything about ‘the olden days.’ Didn’t you have to go to summer school for history, Jakey? Besides, guns aren’t toys. A-and death isn’t some sort of...game.” 

“Says the boy who lives in video games.”

“And who’s dad is a cop!”

“Yeah, but video games aren’t real! And my dad isn’t a cop. He’s a scientist.”

“Well, our dad told us he’s shot someone before. A few people, actually.”

“Yeah, shot them dead.”

Parker balled up his fingers into a fist, breathed fast and deep through his nostrils. 

“He...I’m sure he had to do it.”

“What, can’t handle the fact that your daddy isn’t as perfect as you thought he was? Pfft.” 

“I never said he was perfect--”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t shot your dog yet, he’s getting pretty old. Our dad put our oldest one out of its misery, before it started suffering really badly.”

Parker was fuming, he wanted nothing more than to shove his cousin off of a cliff, wound him, let him run around injured, chase him, make him feel the same fear that they put those poor, harmless animals through with their damn hunting.

He was about to raise his fist, push it into Billy’s face, when a hand on his shoulder made him release his grip. For a second, his heart leapt, he thought it was his dad--but he turned around, and saw Eli, with a stone cold expression on his face. 

“Boys, this weekend is supposed to be about having fun, and well, it looks like to me that we’re not having fun right now, are we? Don’t wanna get Papa Cisco all cranky, do we?” 

Eli’s words brought a cooling wave of silence over the hotheaded boys. Billy dramatically stomped his foot on the ground before running a hand through his hair.

“Whatever! We’re going to have so much more fun than you guys, anyway!” Billy scoffed. 

“Yeah, have fun with your bird watching and stupid drawings!” Jake cried out as they began to run off their excess energy around the camp in some imaginary game.

“Hey! Eli’s drawings aren’t stupid!” Parker shouted back to them. He took a few deep breaths, dug his head into his hands, turning away from all of the adults, who seemed unaware of the entire argument. Even if they were, it was only natural for young boys to “duke it out,” as his Uncle Todd would put it. They wouldn’t have paid attention to what it was about...unless Parker did get his hands on Billy. 

“Thanks...but I don’t need you to defend me,” Parker muttered as Eli pat him on the back. 

“Can’t help it. You’re like a little bro to me, Parker. From what I gather, brothers stand up for each other.” 

Another pat on the back, which rocked Parker a little forward as he sniffled and nodded to Eli, who walked back towards the other adults.

Parker stood alone, watching the two troublesome twins--he almost wanted to smile at the alliteration, get his other, younger cousins to join as the adults continued to exchange stories, laugh, have fun. Parker felt so out of place, not belonging in either group. Why did he even come here?

“Hey, buddy, you ready?” 

Nick’s voice startled his son, who quickly wiped his eyes.

“Y-yeah, let’s go.”

“You all right?” 

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Nick bent down a little, made direct eye contact with his son. For some reason, Parker thought he saw a flash of blood spatter on his dad’s face, from the victims he’s shot down, hopefully in the line of duty. 

“I’m fine,” Parker repeated in a snarl. He brushed past his dad, picked up his backpack from the tent. “So, where’re we goin’?”

His accent was getting thicker, an accent he only had from being around his family for so long. An accent that was only obvious when he was upset. Nick inhaled deeply, tried to fight down the urge to interrogate his son, on why he was all of the sudden so gloomy.

He is a preteen, after all. 

“We’re gonna go this way. Yo, Eli! Let’s roll!” 

Nick and his boys started their hike, though Todd, Billy and Todd’s son Flynn followed closely behind until they reached a crossroads. Nick and Todd had made friendly idle chit-chat, discussing what trails they wanted to go on throughout the week, asked each other about their jobs and families.

Meanwhile, Parker and Billy exchanged offensive gestures.

After a final, silently spoken curse word to Billy and about thirty minutes of distance from the cretin, Parker was starting to feel better, calmer. Nick would occasionally stop the group, pointing out birds perched on branches, Eli snapping photos of various wildlife and general forest aesthetic. Sam trotted along, sniffing the ground, attempted to eat things that Nick would tell him to spit out.

Parker, meanwhile, was imagining that he was in a video game, that he had a user interface in front of him, picking up rocks, sticks and berries and placing them into his “inventory.”  

He was finally at peace, finally enjoying himself, when he heard a gunshot in the distance--if he didn’t know better, it had almost sounded like thunder, followed by an uproar of cheers and whoops, to which Nick, Eli and Parker did not join in. Sam had stopped, alert, but Nick released him with a command.

“First kill,” Eli told Parker, a deer caught in headlights. He moved to put a hand on Parker’s shoulder, ground him back to the earth before he flew away into a panic, but Parker shrugged him off before his fingers made contact.

“Whuh-Why are we even on this trip, if we’re not hunting with them?” Irritation laced in his voice, embarrassed that a stupid gunshot had startled him.

Nick knew this question was coming, and yet he still didn’t know what to tell him.

“Tradition,” he said simply.

“But, you don’t even like it!” 

“Yeah, but the family does. Sometimes, you do things for your family, even if you don’t want to. It’s just part of loving them, I guess.”

“Yeah, but there’s loving Uncle Todd and Uncle Steve and Papa Cisco and then there’s killing harmless, innocent animals!” Parker protested. Nick and Eli kept walking, kept silent, let the young Stokes vent out his frustrations. 

“A-and I get it, you know, I get we eat animals, I get we eat fish, and cows and chickens but, I just...don’t get killing things just for, what? Tradition? I mean, what’s so fun about that? Why would you make such a violent act a tradition?! Those animals did nothing wrong--”

“Well, to play devil’s advocate, sometimes they do hunt predators--” Eli began.

“Yeah, and that’s just like killing a serial killer, or something. Still doesn’t make it right. You’re still a killer.”

“Sometimes, it’s kill or be killed, Parker,” Nick finally spoke, in a low voice. 

Silence from the group, a fever built up inside Parker, something rose up his chest, and flew out of his mouth, his heart had barely had time to catch up to it. He stopped walking, Eli and Sam stopped a few moments later, noticing that he had fallen behind. 

“You would know, wouldn’t you, Dad?” Parker spat, letting his frustration get the better of him before he had time to think about what he was implying.

Nick kept walking, silent, didn’t say a word. Eli shook his head and kept walking, Sam circled around Parker to his side, nudging him to keep going.

“Billy told me! He told me you’ve shot someone--Not even an animal, a human!” Parker shouted to his dad, who was more than a few feet ahead at this point, almost running. 

“Drop it, Park, it’s not the time,” Eli shouted in a hushed whisper.

“I thought part of this trip was to finally tell the truth, say what’s on your mind?” Parker bellowed loudly. “C’mon, Dad, just tell me!”

He could just barely see his dad in the distance, could just barely see as his body suddenly sank into the earth. A loud gasp, a shattering shriek, the sound of something cracking in the air, louder than the gunshot he heard a few minutes ago--Did his dad vanish in the air? Shrink down to the ground? Fall off the edge of the cliff? Parker’s heart was pounding with the possibilities of what might have happened, and he began to run towards the source, to investigate.

He was once again grabbed by the shoulder, dragged slightly backwards, as he nearly fell into the hole, himself. The hole that his father had landed in, a hole that was more than six feet deep--maybe twice that? It might as well have stretched all the way to hell itself, for all Parker cared. His father was trapped, bleeding from the head, his leg bent in a position that he’s only seen Madison achieve with her dolls--it was definitely not right.

“Dad!” Parker screamed down into the hole, for some sign that his father was still alive, because everything seemed to pulse along with Parker’s body, he couldn’t tell if his father was breathing or not.

Nick didn’t respond.