#like there was a TRAUMA and several ers and this dumbass is trying to get the routine inpts done

[pastelchad]

Work hasn't made me this mad in a long time I'm literally sweating I'm so fucking angry

[suitofvibraniumarmor]

Boston Boys [Part One]

Summary: Dr. Aurelie Juneau treats someone in the emergency room she shouldn’t, and get a visit from her brother a few days later.  Pairing: Chris Evans x OFC, John Krasinski x OFC Word Count: 1700 Chapter Warnings: Hospital setting and treatment, mentions of guns, implied crime.  Square Filled: The entire series (bits and pieces of it) will fill my Crossover square for @marvelfluffbingo​.  A/N: This story contains a character who lost her hearing as she got older. I do work closely and regularly with the D/deaf community (I’m a sign language interpreter), but my own hearing problems do not involve significant hearing loss. It is not my intention to offend anyone, only to bring in a character with a quality I don’t see often in other fics. If you have questions about her, feel free to ask :)

A busy emergency room wasn’t an unusual thing, especially in Boston, but tonight the chaos was weighing down on Aurelie. She pulled the magnet piece of her cochlear implant away from her head in an effort to drown out the sound for a few peaceful seconds. She stretched her neck from side to side, then rested her head in her hands. The near-silence was a welcome reprieve from the things weighing on her mind.

A tap on her shoulder prompted her to replace the magnet against her head and turn to see who was beckoning her. A nurse handed Aurelie a chart.

“The guy in room five is refusing to let anyone examine him or anything until he sees you. Says he’s got a lac, I see blood on his shirt.”

Aurelie frowned. “He seem legit?”

The nurse shrugged. “Seems like any run of the mill guy, middle class, whatever. We called security down, they’re waiting by the room.”

“All right.” She flipped through a few pages of the chart. “I don’t recognize the name, but I’ll check him out.”

She stood from the desk where she had been charting and skimmed over the rest of the chart as she walked. The curtain to room five was pulled closed for privacy, but the sliding doors were still open. Normally such a room would have been reserved for a psych patient or a near-trauma. Aurelie suspected that the nature of this patient’s refusal to speak to anyone but her had something to do with his room placement.

The request for her services was another common occurrence in the emergency room. Though no one, including most of her patients, particularly knew why she did it, Aurelie treated any injury or sickness that came into the ER, and she did so with a discretion that, at times, was outside of the law. Her casual manner about the treatments often went unnoticed by her co-workers, or didn’t bother any of them enough for them to speak up. If you lived in Boston and got tangled up in some mess that got you hurt but you didn’t want the authorities involved, you went to MassGen and asked for Dr. Juneau. That’s just the way it was.

Pulling the curtain to the side, she kept her facial expression neutral, as she would with any patient. She surveyed the man laying on the bed; at least six-two, maybe a buck-eighty in weight. Brown hair, face pale -- from his injury, Aurelie figured. She set the chart on the metal tray and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’m Dr. Juneau. You asked for me?”

The man nodded. “I’ve heard that you’ll take care of someone and not put anything sketchy on the books.”

Aurelie licked her lips, pulling her bottom lip between her front teeth. She flipped on all of the lights in the room and surveyed the man again; his face was only vaguely familiar. Regardless, she wasn’t going to put herself on radar by causing a scene. So, she stepped out through the curtain again and told security they could go.

“He’s an old family friend, scared of hospitals. I’ll talk to him about it.”

The two guards who had come down from their bubble shrugged and left. Aurelie asked the nurse to give her a few minutes before she came back into the room. She donned a pair of gloves and disappeared back behind the curtain. After hooking him up to a heart monitor and a blood pressure cuff, she checked his temperature and respirations. With all of vitals noted, she took a seat on the rolling stool and asked where his laceration was located.

The man pulled his shirt up to reveal a cut above his left hip bone, pulling around to his abdomen. Aurelie positioned herself on the side of the bed and took a closer look at the cut.

“How’d you get this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Fair enough.” She rolled to the door and asked the nurse to bring a laceration kit. While she waited, Aurelie got a clean washcloth and doused it with sterilized water. She cleaned the dried blood from the area, then sat and waited in silence. When the nurse came with the lac kit, Aurelie sent the chart with her, and got ready to stitch the man up.

“This is gonna sting, but it’s better than taking the stitches raw,” Aurelie assured, injecting lidocaine to several places in and around the cut. She waited a little longer, then poked him with the needle again. When he didn’t even flinch, she knew she could start the stitches. “Do you need a tetanus shot?”

“Don’t think so.”

Other than that, she went to work in silence, quickly and neatly stitching up the cut, making sure the scar would be straight and minimal. The cut was halfway stitched when he spoke again.

“What’s that above your ear?”

Aurelie pursed her lips, completing two more stitches before answering him. “It’s called a cochlear implant. It helps me hear, to a certain degree.”

“You’re deaf?”

“I wasn’t always. Slowly started to lose my hearing as I got older, sometime in high school, it dropped out completely from the left side. Right side is there, but not nearly a hundred percent. They still don’t know why.” She bit her bottom lip as she struggled to knot the stitch she had just completed on. “My turn?”

He frowned. “What?”

“You asked me two questions. Now I get to ask you two questions, right?”

“I guess.”

Aurelie nodded. “Are you from Boston?”

He laughed. “The accent didn’t give it away?”

She smiled. “You needed to lighten up. It was worth wasting a question. What’s your real name?”

“My real name?”

“I know it’s not Boris Schmidt, even if that’s what’s on your chart.”

The man said nothing, and Aurelie knew better than to push the issue. They fell into silence again while Aurelie finished the stitches and bandaged the area. She left for a few minutes to fill out his dismissal papers, then returned to educate him on the aftercare.

“What are you going to put in my chart?”

Aurelie shrugged. “That you came in with a lac to your lower left flank and quadrant, there was no sign of infection or organ disturbance, that I stitched you up and sent you on your way. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

Aurelie snapped her gloves into the trash can and turned back to him. “You’re welcome. Good luck.”

At the curtain, Aurelie thought she caught him say something, but had to turn back around to ask him to repeat.

“John,” he smiled. “My name is John. Krasinski.”

Aurelie’s smile faded. “Krasinski?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, “it’s a weird one, I know.”

Aurelie nodded. “Do me a favor, John. Don’t tell anyone that I treated you.”

With that, she pulled the curtain closed behind her and went back to her desk to chart and catch up with her other patients.

GIF found via Pinterest search. 

Three days later, another hospital shift. Fortunately, this night was not nearly as busy as her last shift. When Aurelie’s pager went off and she saw the code 613, she finished the current orders she was working on, then made way for the parking lot just outside of the emergency room lobby.

Her brother, Chris, was leaned against his car, a classic American muscle number, smoking a cigarette.

“You know this is a hospital, they’ll fine you for smoking outside of the designated area, dumbass.”

Chris turned with a chuckle, tossing the cigarette to the ground and put it out with the toe of his boot. “Better? Here. Your ma packed lunch for you.”

“That was nice of her,” Aurelie replied, taking the brown bag from him. “What’d she pack for you?”

“A nine mil and a wish that I wasn’t so much like my father. The usual.” He opened the driver’s side door of the car and reached in for another bag. “This is from him, by the way.”

Aurelie checked that no one was watching them and shoved the bag back at Chris. “I don’t want that shit, and you know it. I didn’t earn it, neither did you, neither did he. I don’t need it.”

“Aur, listen, all right? Hey, don’t make that damn face. Yeah, we’ve been over this a million times, we’re gonna fuckin’ go over it again. You’re his kid, whether you ever wanted to be or not. Maybe he’s not the dad you were born to, but he’s the one you ended up with. He’s just trying to take care of you.”

“He’s not over what happened. He still thinks my deafness is his fault, and if he pays me off long enough, I’ll come back to the family. Can’t you see that?”

Chris pursed his lips. “Why can’t you stop putting me in the middle of this?”

Aurelie groaned and tucked the extra bag into her white coat. “Fine.”

“All right.” He pulled another cigarette from the pack and held it between his lips but didn’t light it. “You been holdin’ up all right?”

“Yeah, of course. I can hold my own. You made sure of that.” She decided to take a chance and mention her patient from the other night. “Hey, you remember that guy who went to the high school, he was a year ahead of you -- John Krasinski?”

“Fuck that guy,” was Chris’s immediate response. “He and his family could jump into the river and not come back up and I’d keep walking.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” Aurelie snorted. “So that thing with your family and his, that’s still a thing?”

Chris nodded, tossing his cigarette lighter up and down in the palm of his hand. “Hell yeah, it’s still a thing. They’ll learn one day that we run shit, though. What made you think of him?”

“I don’t know. Random thought, I guess.”

The expression on her brother’s face told Aurelie he was going to be watching her carefully over the coming weeks. She thanked him for the food and went back into the hospital, careful to put the bag of money into her backpack before anyone else suspected something was amiss.

AllOfTheThings: @captain-s-rogers​ @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan​ @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked​ @hurricanerin​ @horsesandbandsforlife​ @im-not-an-armrest-im-short​ @captain-rogers-beard​ @shynara51​ @sea040561​ @anxiouskore​ @pinknerdpanda​ @xtina2191​ @jackryanplz​ @beakami​ @heartsaved​ @fullprunerebelstatesman​ @blackwidowismyhomegirl

Boston Boys: @atc74​ @the-murder-strut-murdered-me​ @becs-bunker​ @shield-agent78​ @patzammit​ @crazyandanonymous4u

[anotherwellkeptsecret]

Alrighty. Time to type up my surgery and recovery experience. 

When I got my pacemaker two years ago, I spent a year (almost exactly) drawing a comic called Change of Pace, which helped me kinda process what happened to me. You can read the comic here if you’re interested. It’s largely all true, aside from the love story part. Tsk.

I don’t think I’m going to be drawing out this experience. It was completely different. I’ve been expecting a surgery of this nature since I was nineteen, when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. So, in a way, this stint in the hospital was harder, more personal. The pacemaker was an emergency. The colon resection was some time coming. Not as much trauma, really. Not as much confusion about what was happening and why. But I still feel like telling the story, purging it from my mind. 

I was scheduled for surgery on Monday, the 18th of November. I took off work that Friday so I could have my pre-op bloodwork done and I also took off Sunday so I could start the colon prep. If you don’t know what a colon prep is, God bless you. You basically drink a crap ton (lol) of laxative and spend all night pooping until you poop clear. The easiest version is the Miralax version. If you have to have a colonoscopy, ask for the Miralax. I promise, you don’t want the Go-Lightly.

The day before prep, my friend took me climbing in Memphis to keep my mind off of things. We also went to IKEA. It was helpfully distracting. I had Swedish meatballs. 

I was meant to “technically” start the prep at midnight Saturday by not eating anything until surgery on Monday. Beginning to drink the Miralax sometime around noon on Sunday. I didn’t get that far. 

I got righteously sick Saturday night. My back was killing me and I was very nauseous and dizzy. I knew what was going on even before I started throwing up. I had a bowel obstruction. The second one in my life. I’d had one once before in March and jeeze. It hurt like a son of a bitch. I’m not sure if every bowel obstruction feels the same way, but mine certainly did. If you find yourself having these symptoms, please go to the ER. Bowel obstructions are no joke. You can go septic, which is incredibly dangerous. 

Nausea, feeling like you’re going to pass out, vomiting bile, severely upset stomach, cold sweats, and my back was aching something awful. I assume it was because my stomach was cramping so badly, my back muscles were spasming.  

I live with my mother. Have done since I’ve been getting sick so regularly. I woke her up and she took me to the hospital. 

The first time I had a bowel obstruction, I thought something was wrong with my heart. (The cold sweats, the nausea.) They rushed me to the back immediately. This time, I knew it was an obstruction, not my heart, and I said as much. They don’t tend to be in as much of a hurry when you don’t mention your heart. Didn’t realize that. I’m also not entirely sure they were convinced I did have a bowel obstruction. I’m sure plenty of people walk into an ER saying random stuff for random reasons, but yeah. I was very slowly processed. I remember them taking my blood pressure and because it wasn’t high at all, I imagine they thought I was full of shit. Figuratively, not literally. Because I was, literally. Whatever. 

My blood pressure normally runs very low. I can also take a lot of pain, because I’m on a first name basis with pain. They didn’t take my pain seriously because my blood pressure wasn’t high, I guess. Not my fault I’m a badass.

I sat in the waiting room until I started vomiting bile again. I also pooped all over myself in the processes. Which I didn’t think you could do if you were obstructed, but you live and you learn! 

That’s when they got in a hurry. I was making a huge mess. 

They got me a paper gown and I cleaned myself up as best as I could before the CAT scan, which proved I was, in fact, obstructed. 

So there I was, in the ER, very very early on the Sunday morning before my surgery Monday. I was admitted and my doctor contacted. Since the surgery was so close at hand, they agreed it was best to wait until the scheduled time to do the surgery. I’d stopped vomiting so there was no need for an NG tube this time. Those things suck.

Got admitted. Got a room. Tried to sleep. My surgeon came in and we talked. Got everything situated. At one point my mother told me there was a girl down the hall who’d just had a colon resection if I wanted to talk to her. She was sitting int he hallway with her sisters, eating her dinner. Poor thing had been in the hospital for almost a month. 

I spoke with her a bit. I’m not entirely sure what happened. Whether it was nerves or if I was hurting, but I almost passed out in the hallway. I hadn’t experienced anything of that nature since I had my pacemaker put in. The whole point of the pacemaker was to prevent me from passing out altogether. But I didn’t pass out so...I suppose that means it’s working?

I also pooped on myself that night while I slept. First time that’d ever happened. It was then I knew that I’d literally gone as long as I could before I needed surgery. I couldn’t wait any more. I’d been so stressed out over in the idea that I maybe didn’t need the surgery. That I was being pitiful and my case wasn’t that bad. I could tough it out if I really wanted. I realized what a dumbass I was for thinking those thoughts, but hindsight is 20/20. 

Monday dawned and surgery rolled around. Took forever. I was basically watching the clock tick the minutes by until transport fetched me. I was wheeled down to pre-op where they gave me a hair net. I don’t remember getting a hair net for the pacemaker surgery. 

I signed some paperwork and a lady told me she was going to get me ready. She said she was going to give me a nerve block in my stomach. I was like, “Cool, right on.” Until I saw the needle. 

Holy fuck. That needle. 

“You’re going to give me that when I’m asleep, right?”

“I’m going to give you some ‘I don’t care’ juice.” 

“Oh, thank God. I probably won’t remember this then.” 

“Probably not.” 

In went the ‘I don’t care’ juice. I got really dizzy. 

They swabbed my belly with iodine. 

They prepped the needle. 

I was still very much awake. 

I said, “Guys...” Because at this point there were several people standing over me. Like five. “...I’m still cognizant.” 

Yeah, I used the word cognizant. That’s how fucking cognizant I was. 

Not sure if they heard me. Or if they replied. I was really dizzy. 

In went the needle. 

And ow. OW. 

In went the needle again. One stick on each side of my belly. 

The ‘I don’t care’ juice must have been working in some way because while I remember the pain, I don’t remember the panic. I certainly would have panicked if I didn’t have that juice pumping through me. So that was a thing. 

I fell asleep soon thereafter. Couldn’t have been like...a minute earlier? Really? 

I remember waking up in recovery with the pacemaker. I remember the pressure, the nurse asking me questions. I remember being wheeled back to my room. I don’t remember jack shit about recovery after the colon resection. I don’t remember being wheeled back to my room. I apparently asked for my mom, but I don’t remember doing that either. 

I do remember, however, turning over on my side. Because ouch. But I did it anyway and kept doing it because I’m a determined asshole. Monday night was very hazy. I was high as fuck, probably. 

Tuesday: Not a good day. I was in a lot of pain. They gave me hydros, but the hydros weren’t touching it. Felt like I was taking Tylenol. And I have a very very VERY low tolerance for pain meds. They wouldn’t give me any morphine because my blood pressure was too low. (Again, badass?? Maybe?? IDK man my blood pressure just runs really low.) Which makes sense, because that’s dangerous, but I was in agony. I begged for morphine. I pleaded with the nurse to give me morphine. She would not. 

My mother got angry. I’m not one to complain. And my threshold for pain is admittedly pretty stout. I was hurting and no one was doing anything to help. My mother got ANGRY. 

I think they must’ve finally given me some morphine, but I don’t remember. Morphine also didn’t help. Didn’t even make a dent in the pain I was feeling. They kept giving me hydros every couple of hours to no avail. I remember I asked for a heating pad for my back. Barely. The nurse did give me one, but said I could only have it for an hour? Very fuzzy.

The tech forgot to...do something with my catheter because my urine got everywhere. The nurse that found me like that called the floor manager. I hated to, but I did report that my pain wasn’t kept in check. I was hurting so badly I actually reported one of the nurses. The one that wouldn’t give me morphine. I felt horrible about it, but I was also nearly in tears I hurt so bad. 

Hell, the pain was so intense at one point my mother called my family. Like, they thought something was wrong. Very very wrong. The doctor called for some kind of scan while I was in bed. They put a board behind my back. I was writhing, I remember. My family gathered in the hospital to see me in case I had to go back to surgery. In case I wasn’t going to do well. 

It was scary.

The next set of nurses figured out the problem when the scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary. My back was spasming. Horribly. When I sat up and they felt of me, they were shocked to find my back riddled with knots. It felt like knuckles underneath my skin. The new nurses got me some hella icy hot with pain killer and rubbed me down. 

It helped tremendously. My back stopped freaking out, which gave my abdominal muscles time to rest.

At last, I wasn’t hurting. At last, I slept. 

Wednesday and Thursday were spent trying to keep my back under control. At one point I vomited all over my bed due to acid reflux. I paged the nurse to ask for some acid reflux medicine and puked all over the place while I was on the call with her lol.

I never once had any issue with my incision. My entire trouble, the whole time, was from my back. And nausea. And lemme tell ya. Vomiting with a six inch incision on your abdomen? OW.

Getting up and walking? Easy enough. Getting up and going to the bathroom? No problem. Spongebath? Piece of cake. But God my back. 

I managed to poop for the doctors. Fantastic. 

And finally, finally, I got to have food. 

I went from about 5:00PM Saturday to 12:00PM Friday without having anything to eat or drink. I had an IV, and I could eat ice chips if I desperately needed to wet my mouth, but yeah. I hardly had any ice chips. Weird to imagine you can go that long without food and be alright. 

I proved I could eat GI soft food on Saturday and they let me go home.

Got my staples removed the following Tuesday. Had some steri strips applied. Just waiting for them to fall off on their own. 

And here I am. Just lounging, waiting to get my strength back. It’s much easier to draw after this surgery than the pacemaker one. Thank God. I’m slow moving and my stomach hurts a bit when my contents shift, but other than that I’m doing swimmingly. I can’t lift anything over ten pounds until the new year. Not sure when I’ll be able to drive, either. I’ll find out soon. 

This surgery was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Mentally and physically. Mentally because I’ve been struggling with Crohn’s since I was a teenager. I’m 32 now. Half my life I’ve been at war with my own body, drowning in the pain it leashes on itself. It’s been a long road. I hope this spells the end of it. Or at least, the rest of the journey is all downhill.

I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m trying not to think about it too much. I’ll gain it back. Just takes time.

[lullabieswrappedinlies]

Boston Boys [Part One]

Summary: Dr. Aurelie Juneau treats someone in the emergency room she shouldn’t, and get a visit from her brother a few days later. Pairing: Chris Evans x OFC, John Krasinski x OFC Word Count: 1700 Chapter Warnings: Hospital setting and treatment, mentions of guns, implied crime. A/N: This story contains a character who lost her hearing as she got older. I do work closely and regularly with the D/deaf community (I’m a sign language interpreter), but my own hearing problems do not involve significant hearing loss. It is not my intention to offend anyone, only to bring in a character with a quality I don’t see often in other fics. If you have questions about her, feel free to ask :)

A busy emergency room wasn’t an unusual thing, especially in Boston, but tonight the chaos was weighing down on Aurelie. She pulled the magnet piece of her cochlear implant away from her head in an effort to drown out the sound for a few peaceful seconds. She stretched her neck from side to side, then rested her head in her hands. The near-silence was a welcome reprieve from the things weighing on her mind.

A tap on her shoulder prompted her to replace the magnet against her head and turn to see who was beckoning her. A nurse handed Aurelie a chart.

“The guy in room five is refusing to let anyone examine him or anything until he sees you. Says he’s got a lac, I see blood on his shirt.”

Aurelie frowned. “He seem legit?”

The nurse shrugged. “Seems like any run of the mill guy, middle class, whatever. We called security down, they’re waiting by the room.”

“All right.” She flipped through a few pages of the chart. “I don’t recognize the name, but I’ll check him out.”

She stood from the desk where she had been charting and skimmed over the rest of the chart as she walked. The curtain to room five was pulled closed for privacy, but the sliding doors were still open. Normally such a room would have been reserved for a psych patient or a near-trauma. Aurelie suspected that the nature of this patient’s refusal to speak to anyone but her had something to do with his room placement.

The request for her services was another common occurrence in the emergency room. Though no one, including most of her patients, particularly knew why she did it, Aurelie treated any injury or sickness that came into the ER, and she did so with a discretion that, at times, was outside of the law. Her casual manner about the treatments often went unnoticed by her co-workers, or didn’t bother any of them enough for them to speak up. If you lived in Boston and got tangled up in some mess that got you hurt but you didn’t want the authorities involved, you went to MassGen and asked for Dr. Juneau. That’s just the way it was.

Pulling the curtain to the side, she kept her facial expression neutral, as she would with any patient. She surveyed the man laying on the bed; at least six-two, maybe a buck-eighty in weight. Brown hair, face pale -- from his injury, Aurelie figured. She set the chart on the metal tray and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’m Dr. Juneau. You asked for me?”

The man nodded. “I’ve heard that you’ll take care of someone and not put anything sketchy on the books.”

Aurelie licked her lips, pulling her bottom lip between her front teeth. She flipped on all of the lights in the room and surveyed the man again; his face was only vaguely familiar. Regardless, she wasn’t going to put herself on radar by causing a scene. So, she stepped out through the curtain again and told security they could go.

“He’s an old family friend, scared of hospitals. I’ll talk to him about it.”

The two guards who had come down from their bubble shrugged and left. Aurelie asked the nurse to give her a few minutes before she came back into the room. She donned a pair of gloves and disappeared back behind the curtain. After hooking him up to a heart monitor and a blood pressure cuff, she checked his temperature and respirations. With all of vitals noted, she took a seat on the rolling stool and asked where his laceration was located.

The man pulled his shirt up to reveal a cut above his left hip bone, pulling around to his abdomen. Aurelie positioned herself on the side of the bed and took a closer look at the cut.

“How’d you get this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Fair enough.” She rolled to the door and asked the nurse to bring a laceration kit. While she waited, Aurelie got a clean washcloth and doused it with sterilized water. She cleaned the dried blood from the area, then sat and waited in silence. When the nurse came with the lac kit, Aurelie sent the chart with her, and got ready to stitch the man up.

“This is gonna sting, but it’s better than taking the stitches raw,” Aurelie assured, injecting lidocaine to several places in and around the cut. She waited a little longer, then poked him with the needle again. When he didn’t even flinch, she knew she could start the stitches. “Do you need a tetanus shot?”

“Don’t think so.”

Other than that, she went to work in silence, quickly and neatly stitching up the cut, making sure the scar would be straight and minimal. The cut was halfway stitched when he spoke again.

“What’s that above your ear?”

Aurelie pursed her lips, completing two more stitches before answering him. “It’s called a cochlear implant. It helps me hear, to a certain degree.”

“You’re deaf?”

“I wasn’t always. Slowly started to lose my hearing as I got older, sometime in high school, it dropped out completely from the left side. Right side is there, but not nearly a hundred percent. They still don’t know why.” She bit her bottom lip as she struggled to knot the stitch she had just completed on. “My turn?”

He frowned. “What?”

“You asked me two questions. Now I get to ask you two questions, right?”

“I guess.”

Aurelie nodded. “Are you from Boston?”

He laughed. “The accent didn’t give it away?”

She smiled. “You needed to lighten up. It was worth wasting a question. What’s your real name?”

“My real name?”

“I know it’s not Boris Schmidt, even if that’s what’s on your chart.”

The man said nothing, and Aurelie knew better than to push the issue. They fell into silence again while Aurelie finished the stitches and bandaged the area. She left for a few minutes to fill out his dismissal papers, then returned to educate him on the aftercare.

“What are you going to put in my chart?”

Aurelie shrugged. “That you came in with a lac to your lower left flank and quadrant, there was no sign of infection or organ disturbance, that I stitched you up and sent you on your way. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

Aurelie snapped her gloves into the trash can and turned back to him. “You’re welcome. Good luck.”

At the curtain, Aurelie thought she caught him say something, but had to turn back around to ask him to repeat.

“John,” he smiled. “My name is John. Krasinski.”

Aurelie’s smile faded. “Krasinski?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, “it’s a weird one, I know.”

Aurelie nodded. “Do me a favor, John. Don’t tell anyone that I treated you.”

With that, she pulled the curtain closed behind her and went back to her desk to chart and catch up with her other patients.

GIF found via Pinterest search.

Three days later, another hospital shift. Fortunately, this night was not nearly as busy as her last shift. When Aurelie’s pager went off and she saw the code 613, she finished the current orders she was working on, then made way for the parking lot just outside of the emergency room lobby.

Her brother, Chris, was leaned against his car, a classic American muscle number, smoking a cigarette.

“You know this is a hospital, they’ll fine you for smoking outside of the designated area, dumbass.”

Chris turned with a chuckle, tossing the cigarette to the ground and put it out with the toe of his boot. “Better? Here. Your ma packed lunch for you.”

“That was nice of her,” Aurelie replied, taking the brown bag from him. “What’d she pack for you?”

“A nine mil and a wish that I wasn’t so much like my father. The usual.” He opened the driver’s side door of the car and reached in for another bag. “This is from him, by the way.”

Aurelie checked that no one was watching them and shoved the bag back at Chris. “I don’t want that shit, and you know it. I didn’t earn it, neither did you, neither did he. I don’t need it.”

“Aur, listen, all right? Hey, don’t make that damn face. Yeah, we’ve been over this a million times, we’re gonna fuckin’ go over it again. You’re his kid, whether you ever wanted to be or not. Maybe he’s not the dad you were born to, but he’s the one you ended up with. He’s just trying to take care of you.”

“He’s not over what happened. He still thinks my deafness is his fault, and if he pays me off long enough, I’ll come back to the family. Can’t you see that?”

Chris pursed his lips. “Why can’t you stop putting me in the middle of this?”

Aurelie groaned and tucked the extra bag into her white coat. “Fine.”

“All right.” He pulled another cigarette from the pack and held it between his lips but didn’t light it. “You been holdin’ up all right?”

“Yeah, of course. I can hold my own. You made sure of that.” She decided to take a chance and mention her patient from the other night. “Hey, you remember that guy who went to the high school, he was a year ahead of you -- John Krasinski?”

“Fuck that guy,” was Chris’s immediate response. “He and his family could jump into the river and not come back up and I’d keep walking.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” Aurelie snorted. “So that thing with your family and his, that’s still a thing?”

Chris nodded, tossing his cigarette lighter up and down in the palm of his hand. “Hell yeah, it’s still a thing. They’ll learn one day that we run shit, though. What made you think of him?”

“I don’t know. Random thought, I guess.”

The expression on her brother’s face told Aurelie he was going to be watching her carefully over the coming weeks. She thanked him for the food and went back into the hospital, careful to put the bag of money into her backpack before anyone else suspected something was amiss.

Tags: @themtbmbgirl​ @keithseabrook27​ @ulovemelightsout​ @rosie2801​

[hispeculiartreasure]

44.“You need to see a doctor.” with Bruce?

Sorry Nonny, this one got away from me 😅 Mentions of blood below.

–

Not that Kind of Doctor

Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it.

Your breath was ragged, mostly because you were trying not to openly scream as the wound in your thigh was gushing blood.

Don’t panic, you’re fine, just find a first aid kit.

Stumbling into the garage of the Avengers Compound, you lean against a vehicle to take a breather. You were scared to take a look at your leg. Ya see, there was a reason you never became a doctor or nurse. The sight of blood almost always made you woozy. The sight of A LOT of blood, however…

The steady stream of blood trickling down your leg weakened your knees. Bracing yourself against the car, you slowly slid to the ground. Now if I fall over I won’t have severe brain damage.

“Okay, think. You can’t sit here bleeding. Going somewhere is out. So someone will have to come to me.” Talking aloud was the only way you could keep the panic at bay and organize your thoughts. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Are there any doctors or medics on site?”

“No, everyone has returned home for the night.”

You groan, whether out of frustration or pain, you didn’t know.

“Are you in danger, miss? Shall I alert the team? Or the authorities?”

“Who’s here?”

“The entire team, Miss. Although Dr. Banner is the only one awake.”

You close your eyes and sigh. Literally anyone else would be preferable. Bruce Banner, coming to your rescue and saving the day? An absolute dream, a true fantasy of yours. You being forced to be vulnerable and in pain (and probably whiny) in front of your crush of over a year? You’d rather bleed out.

But then you see your hands covered in blood from keeping pressure on your wound. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., ask Dr. Banner to come to the garage. And tell him to hurry.”

“Yes, Miss.” A few beats passed before the AI activated again. “Miss, I let him know you were in distress and that he should bring a first aid kit. He asked me to wake the Avengers because he believes you’re in danger. Is that how you wish to proceed?”

“No! No, don’t do that. I’ll be fine, I just need his help.”

“Very well. He will be there in three minutes.”

Those three minutes were agony. You were getting more light-headed by the second and you hoped against hope that you wouldn’t pass out.

You’re on full alert when a door slams open, followed by Bruce yelling your name.

“I’m over here,” you called, the pain evident in your voice.

Bruce rounds the vehicle and finds you slumped against one of the tires.

“Shit, what happened? Are you okay?!” He was beside you in a flash, a hand beneath your chin to get you to look up at him. He was frazzled to say the least. His hair was standing on end and his glasses were askew. “Where is everyone, I told F.R.I.D.A.Y. to get everyone going.”

“And I told her not to. I’m okay, I’m just a dumbass.” Bruce tore off his lab coat and pressed it to your wound, bringing a hiss out of you at the extra pressure. Your head spun when red bloomed on the pure-white fabric. “And I’m a bit of a baby about blood.”

“You mean, we aren’t under attack or anything?” Bruce feverishly looked around, waiting for a criminal or thug to jump around a corner.

“No, Bruce.” He lifted his coat to get a better look at the gash. “How bad is it?” you asked, dreading the answer.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“You are a doctor.”

“Not that kind of doctor!”

“Come on, you took care of people when you were in Calcutta, right?”

Bruce opens and closes his mouth several times. “I-well-yeah, but - infectious diseases and trauma are very different things.”

“I trust you, Bruce. You’ve had to have sewn a stitch at least once in your life.”

He stares at you for a solid 30 seconds before he mumbles “Fine,” under his breath.

“Talk to me, tell me what happened.” He uses the coat to wipe away excess blood, most of which had stopped flowing.

“I was an idiot,” you lean your head against the vehicle in an attempt to steady yourself. “I couldn’t sleep so I decided to take a jog.” You watch as Bruce meticulously rifles through the first aid kid to get the necessary items to fix you up.

“I strayed from the path and tripped over a tree root. I fell super hard and landed on a fallen branch and it kind of… went into my leg.”

Bruce’s head snaps up, “And you took it out?! That’s like first aid 101, that always makes bleeding worse!”

“Well I wasn’t going to walk around with a tree hanging out of my leg!” You yelled defensively. “Besides, I didn’t realize it was more than a scratch until the blood trickled down my shin.”

Bruce leaned closer to examine your leg. It wasn’t until that moment that you realized just how close he was to you, how gently he was touching you. “I don’t see anything left in the wound.”

“Mhmm,” is all you can manage. How are you thinking about romance right now?

Bruce unscrewed the antiseptic, leveling you with an authoritative look á la Captain America. “A, jogging at night by yourself is dangerous. B, the walking trail is always lit. This is exactly why you should stay on it.” With that, he poured the disinfectant over your leg.

“SHIT, that stings!” you hiss, clutching at Bruce’s arm out of reflex.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he coos with so much empathy that the tears already in your eyes spill over. He softly blows air into the cut, soothing the burn ever so slightly. “Better?” he asks, looking up at you over his glasses.

You nod, embarrassed but grateful for his kind touch. “I’m afraid it’s about to get worse.” He pulls out the suture kit and threads the needle. Pausing, he looks you in the eyes. “Are you sure you want me to do this? It’s not going to be pretty.”

“Because I’m notorious for showing off my legs,” you attempt at a joke. One side of his mouth quirks up, which you would find adorable if you weren’t in so much pain. “Besides, there aren’t any other convenient options.”

Brice sighs, looking more reluctant than you’ve ever seen.

“You know the concept of not looking down when you’re doing something frightening at a major height?”

“Yeah…”

“Don’t look down and witness my sloppy stitches, okay? I’ll try to be as fast as I can.”

The moment the needle first pierced your skin, you grabbed the back of Bruce’s shirt, trying your best not to dig your fingernails in. You tried to keep quiet, but the pain was too much - a few sharp cries escaped you.

“You’re doing great, I’m almost done. Hang on for me, okay?” Your head dropped to his shoulder which your tears ended up dampening. “Aaaaand… done,” he finish the last suture and tied it off, using an antiseptic wipe to get rid of any leftover blood.

You breathe a sigh of relief, leaning almost all of your body weight into Bruce. “Thank you, so much,”  you whisper, eyes shut tight.

“You’re welcome. Wish I could’ve done a better job, or convinced you to see a real doctor.”

“So you admit you aren’t a real doctor?”

Looking up, your proximity to each other seems to dawn on him too. His eyes search your face, an intensity covering his features.

But then he chuckles as he takes his glasses off to clean them on his shirttail. “That’s a debate for another day. We need to get you comfortable. Can you stand?”

“One way to find out.” Bruce carried most of your weight as you hobbled to your quarters and into bed.

“Thank you again, Dr. Banner. You saved me a lot of pride and an ER visit tonight.”

“Anytime. You were my best patient by far.” With a wink, he was out the door, leaving you with all kinds of feelings and dreams.

[imyourliquor-youremypoison]

A Girl’s Best Friend (Peter Parker x OC) - Part 19

Synopsis: Diamonds are man’s best friend- or dogs are girls’ best friends, wait… how does the saying go again?

Warnings: Family issues; Peter has a crush and it’s complicated; mention of assault; good dogs; College AU; aged up! characters; TONY STARK IS ALIVE AND WE ALL LIVE IN A HAPPY PLACE CALLED DENIAL

Word count: 3.8k

Part 18 <<< >>> Part 20

MASTERLIST

               He landed on the floor next to a screaming Emmeline; she fumbled around to try and see where he had been shot but the blood was flowing out, making his sweater stick to his skin.

“No, no, no, no,” she began chanting. “Peter, oh, my God. Peter, what do I do? Tell me what to do, oh, my God…” she rambled on, her eyes searching for something, anything she could use to press onto the wound to stop the bleeding. In the end, she used her own scarf. The silk immediately soaked up the blood. “Peter, talk to me!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he tried to reassure her, looking at his own side to evaluate the severity of the damage.

               Fuck, it hurt. It hurt like a real bitch! He couldn’t let it show though, because Emmeline’s level of panic entirely depended on his.

               The other two men began to yell things about this not being part of the plan, that no one was supposed to get shot. The shooter didn’t seem to mind much; in fact, he seemed to be the head of their little squad. The sirens sounded a lot closer already, and they were packing up. The man Peter had taken a bullet for was now huddled in a corner, pants wet.

               The police burst through the doors before the last of the men could escape through the back, but Emmeline was too focused on Peter to pay attention to their surroundings at this point.

“Hold on, kid,” a police officer told them. “An ambulance is on its way.”

               Peter froze, eyes wide staring into Emmeline’s.

“No, no Em, listen, I can’t go to the hospital!” he told her, sounding like he was the one panicking now that they were mostly out of danger. He tightened his grip on her hand to gain her attention. “I can’t.”

“You have a bullet in your stomach!” she almost shouted back, still very much in shock. “Where else would you have them take you?!”

“Yes, I know! I felt it, thank you very much!” he snapped back, letting her panic get to him too. “It’s not the stomach by the way.”

“It damn well looks like it to me!”

“Listen, I can’t go there. I can’t, do you hear me?”

               The paramedics would soon swarm this place to check on the people who had been trapped inside the store during the robbery, and then take Peter into the ambulance. There was no time. Emmeline sensed the urgency in Peter’s voice and leaned in.

“I know I’ve been shot but trust me when I say I cannot go to the hospital!” he whispered in a rapid-fire speech to ensure no one else could hear.

“But you-“

“Please, Em. I need your help for this,” he begged her.

               She closed her mouth, lips pinched in a thin line. She needed to think. How were they supposed to get out and away from a crime scene filled with policemen? Their options were pretty limited, but she had to find a way. Peter never asked anything of her, never asked for favors, but this sounded important.

               He must have a reason for not wanting to go to the hospital, and she trusted it was more serious than a debilitating fear of needles or doctors.

“Fuck! Alright, let’s do this,” she swore, already helping Peter up while the officer from earlier checked on the other people present, especially the man who had pissed himself and now resumed his panicked behavior.

               She hoisted Peter up with a muffled grunt and he bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from groaning in pain as she led it towards the back, where no police car awaited them if their made a quick escape. She felt like she was the criminal fleeing from the crime scene.

“Wait,” she said, making him stop walking so she could grab the coat hanging from the back of a chair in the back office. “You’ll need this to hide the wound.”

               Before continuing, she pushed open the emergency exist to check it the back alley wasn’t swarmed in policemen, or worse, the robbers.

“Coast seems clear, but we should hurry. Someone must have noticed our disappearance already. It’s not like a pool of blood on the marble stone will look inconspicuous.”

               The walk around the building to a nearby street free of cops wasn’t long, but Emmeline felt as though she had run a marathon when they finally reached an avenue. While holding his coat closed to prevent people from seeing all the blood, Peter and Emmeline went to stand at the road and hailed a cab.

               It was a miracle the driver didn’t see the sweat trickling on Peter’s forehead, and his sickly pallor. Emmeline climbed in after him and gave her address. The ride never felt longer.

“Peter,” she whispered, more to make sure he wasn’t fainting on the backseat of the cab than to make actual conversation. “Peter!”

“Mmh?” he hummed, eyes closing lazily. Emmeline smacked him in the head and he sat straighter. “I’m awake, I’m awake!” he told her.

“Peter, we just fled from a crime scene. We’ll get in so much trouble, this was a terrible, horrible, disastrous idea!”

“You know a lot of synonyms,” he chuckled. “Yeah, alright, it’s bad, I know,” he added when he saw her jaw clench. “But it would have been worse if we’d stayed there. I can never go to a hospital, I’d be found out immediately.”

“Why? Do you have six other legs I don’t know about?” Emmeline snapped. “I’m very serious, Peter! What if they think we were a part of this robbery? What if we get arrested?”

               She scoffed, not convinced, still shaken up and a little paranoid about being arrested.

“I heal too fast, it won’t be good if I arrived at the ER with a bullet wound that looks weeks old.”

“I know, I know… I’m sorry,” Emmeline sighed, finally seeing her building down the road. “Right now, the idiot you took a bullet for must have told everyone I was there. My face is going to be all over the news in no time, I hate it. Most of all, I hate that you got hurt.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her, the grunt that followed not working in his favor. “It’s nobody’s fault, even if I had it with me, I can’t always sneak off to change into my suit. Sometimes I have to improvise. I’m not usually inside the premises when there’s a robbery, this is a bit new.”

“Don’t make me laugh, I’m supposed to be upset,” Emmeline told him, repressing a smile.

               Peter grinned boyishly.

“We’re here,” she announced.

               She tipped the driver and pulled Peter out of the cab with as much care as possible, still hiding his wound and the blood-soaked sweater underneath the coat she stole.

               The cab ride might have given Emmeline the opportunity to calm down a bit, but as soon as they reached her bathroom, and Peter’s coat was discarded, her eyes went wide in alarm upon seeing the sheer amount of blood he had lost.

“You shouldn’t even be conscious anymore!” she exclaimed although she had no notion of how much blood an adult male could lose before losing consciousness. “Tell me truthfully, have you ever had this kind of injury before? Or are you bullshitting me to stop me from freaking the fuck out? Which I am about to do, by the way.”

               Emmeline was not believing him when he assured her that it was nothing and she kept saying to herself that this was a mad, reckless idea, and now Peter was going to die in her apartment, and she would have to move out again because of the trauma.

“Okay, okay, I can do this,” she told herself in an attempt to gather her wits. Now wasn’t the time to give in to panic, that was too easy. Peter was badly hurt and he needed her to keep it together. “It still looks really, really bad, Peter.” It was downplaying it, but she tried her best.

               He rolled his eyes and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

“See?” He pulled his sweater up, showing the wound and subsequently making Emmeline go several shades paler. “It’s not as bad as it looks with all the blood,” he promised her.

“What the fuck? What the actual fuck?” Emmeline whispered to herself, eyes not darting away from the oozing blood – it was impossible to look anywhere else; it was morbidly fascinating to watch Peter’s body reject the bullet and try to heal the wound at an abnormal speed.

               After wiping away the blood that had already dried on his stomach, it did look less like he was going to kick the bucket tonight but it was still a bullet wound and Emmeline was in no way, shape, or form ready to stitch Peter up after this entire traumatic endeavor.

“Look!” He pointed at the entrance hole. “The bullet is already coming out.”

“Oh, my God!” she swore, hiding her face in her hands. This was exactly the kind of freaky stuff she never thought she would see outside of a movie theater in her life. “Why did I look?”

               Just as she said this, she opened her eyes to have another peek through her fingers, unable to stop herself. It was like a car crash – she couldn’t stop looking at it. In any other circumstances she might have teased Peter about his abs, but she wasn’t in the mood to ogle him right now.

               He pressed his fingers on the skin each side of the wound to push the bullet out, and soon enough it was there. Emmeline didn’t know how she managed not to faint when she saw the bullet come out, making a disgusting sound, and hit the tiling in a clatter of metal, sending droplets of blood on her immaculate floor.

“Hey, hey!” Peter called her name, his hand shooting out to hold her steady. “Stay with me, Em. Where do you keep your first aid kit?”

“A first aid-kit?” she squeaked out and shook her head to shake off her parasite thoughts. Now wasn’t an appropriate time to daydream. “You need a doctor, Peter. I don’t think a Spidey band aid will do the trick.”

               He paused to look at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Do you have one?”

“No!” she exclaimed, now giving him an exasperated look. “Beside the point, dumbass! What I mean is you probably need stitches!”

“Some gaze will do, don’t worry. See? The bleeding has stopped, and the wound will be closed by tomorrow. I won’t even have a scar by the end of the week.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am totally serious. Look-“

“No, I’m not looking anymore!”

“Emmeline,” Peter started, using her full name. “Please, just see for yourself.”

               His tone had grown much lower, steadier. She didn’t like this in the least but thought she could trust him, and while she did not look forward to taking yet another lingering look at his bullet wound, she complied.

               Much to her bafflement, it did look much smaller already. Her mouth opened slightly but she didn’t say anything. In fact, she reached out, fingers stopping only an inch before touching the entry hole.

“It can’t be possible,” she murmured, barely believing her eyes. “It was so… it was… there was so much blood…”

               Her shoulders slumped in the faintest of ways, and only Peter, who had spent more time studying her than he would care to admit, would have noticed. She was obviously still upset and emotional because of what happened, but at least seeing with her own eyes that he hadn’t been lying about his fast healing seemed to have put a full stop to her panic.

“No need to worry, Em. I’ll be as good as new in no time, okay?” He took a hold of her wrist and she finally detached her eyes from his stomach to look into his eyes instead. “Better me than the other guy.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that,” she countered, clicking her tongue against the inside of her cheek and crossing her arms over her chest.

               She stood up now that the crisis was over. The adrenaline was coming down too.

“He might be dead,” Peter pointed out.

               She knew he was trying to appeal to her good nature, but after today’s events, she wasn’t so sure she still had enough of it to care about that cowardly man who put all of them in danger and so easily discarded her life.

“He will be if I ever see him again,” she snapped back. “He’s the reason why you got shot! Sure, I spat in our attacker’s face, but I got my own souvenir for it.”

               She pointed at the left side of her face, which was very sore and would no doubt sport a beautiful purple bruise tomorrow morning.

“You could have gotten more backlash for that, you know? I’m sorry I let the situation escalate so much.” Peter stood up, right in Emmeline’s face since she didn’t step back. He was a little taller than her, which always made him smirk a little when he thought about it. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I should have protected you.”

               Her expression softened and her arms fell back to her sides.

“And you did, Peter. The second he lifted a hand on me you were there,” she reminded him, but Peter shook his head. He was obviously disappointed in himself, and nothing she could say would make him feel better about what went down. “Don’t beat yourself up over this. Come now, you’re not fully healed yet and I intend to watch over you like a hawk until you are. You need rest.”

“What- no, please, don’t make me,” Peter whined when she began to walked out of the bathroom, holding him by the arm.

“Don’t be difficult!”

               He might be serious about his fast healing, and Emmeline might have slowly calmed down when she realized that he was telling the truth and he really wasn’t in danger, but she still felt entitled to fuss over him.

               When she ordered him to lie on the bed, Peter refused.

“It’s only half past six, what am I supposed to do in bed?” he argued.

               Emmeline didn’t say anything but the devious grin painted on her face spoke for itself and Peter regretted asking as soon as he spotted it.

“Alright,” Peter agreed, electing to put an end to his own misery since he wasn’t going to win this argument. He let his tired body fall onto her bed but just when Emmeline smiled in victory, he pulled her down with him. “But I’m not lying all alone in your bed and staring at the ceiling while you go about your day.”

               Emmeline gasped when she fell heavily on him, trying to absorb the shock with her arms but barely managing.

               They laid very still, chest to chest on her bed, and she wasn’t pale in the face anymore – not in the least. Peter hadn’t taken the full measure of what he was doing when he pulled her with him, but he wasn’t complaining about the result. Maybe it was the adrenaline speaking, but he thought this was quite an improvement from their usual careful distance.

“Gottcha,” he told her, easing himself on her pillow and wrapping his arms around her to prevent her from getting up. “You’re my hostage now.”

“Oh, too soon,” Emmeline grumbled, yet couldn’t hide the laughter in her eyes when she looked up.

“Sorry. I must be more shaken up than I thought. Maybe you could cuddle me better?” he suggested quite boldly, earning a frank laugh in response but no resistance.

“Alright, you win.” She tapped out and Peter opened his arms. “Let me get my shoes off at least.”

               Pretending to think about it, Peter hummed thoughtfully, but Emmeline only swatted his shoulder and sat on the bed to take off her shoes and bits of jewelry that she set aside on her nightstand. She typed something on her phone and then it joined the rest of her items. Just when Peter was about to start whining about her taking too long, she climbed on the bed, taking care to lie on the side he wasn’t hurt.

“Mmh, I feel better already,” Peter hummed and closed his eyes, welcoming Emmeline’s embrace and wrapping his arm around her shoulders when she delicately placed her head on his chest.

               It made his heart fluffer like a bird’s wings, feeling her so close. For a moment, however short, the distance between them shrunk to nothing at all. Maybe she could hear his heart beating wildly against his ribcage, and so what?

               It might tell her what Peter had failed to do, so far. Maybe she would be able to read his heartbeat like she could a piano sheet – understand it and hear its music. If she rubbed her thumb against his chest on purpose or not was hard to tell, but it soothed Peter. He relaxed enough to slow down his frantic heartbeat and enjoy the appeasing presence of Emmeline, snuggled into his side.

“We still haven’t found May’s birthday present,” Emmeline said after a while, turning her head to prop it up on her other hand and meet Peter’s eyes.

               A long groan answered her.

“You’re right,” Peter eventually said. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “Almost forgot.”

“Let’s forget about the jewelry,” Emmeline decided, surely done with jewelry stores for a long time now. “We should do something simple – a homecooked dinner, good wine, a bouquet of her favorite flowers… something cozy.”

               While Emmeline didn’t know May all that well, she had her in a nutshell when she talked about giving her something simpler but more personal for her birthday. He had only meant for Em to help him choose a gift, but if she offered to come and give a hand, he wasn’t going to turn her down. He had a feeling May really liked her.

“Yeah, sounds nice. But I can’t cook. Do you know how to cook? I’ve never seen you cook.”

“Of course, I know how to cook! I wasn’t counting on your cooking skills to make this dinner happen,” she teased him, sniggering lightly and scrunching up her nose at him.

“That’s what I thought,” Peter laughed too, agreeing with her. “By the way, I was meaning to ask you… why did you spit in the guy’s face earlier? That was a pretty stupid thing to do given the situation.”

               The mood shifted just then and Emmeline stirred a little bit until he released her from his hold. She sat up then, facing Peter and but looking mightily embarrassed – a rare occurrence for Emmeline Gerard. A strand of hair fell in front of her face when she lowered her eyes to stare at her hands.

“He called me ‘princess’,” she admitted, eyes looking into her lap.

               Peter frowned a little, confusion taking over his features as he pulled himself up and leaned against the bedframe to face Emmeline. Why should she be ashamed to tell him this? He didn’t know what to make of her reaction.

“But I’ve called you ‘princess’ before. You didn’t seem to mind back then,” he pointed out, not understand why she would react so violently for a pet name.

               The situation had called for cooperation, not deliberate provocation. Then again, he never called her ‘princess’ as Peter Parker, maybe it was different when Spider-Man did it. Maybe she liked it… This perspective dampened Peter’s mood quite a bit but he tried not to let it show.

“Yes. Exactly,” she quipped, looking up shyly. “You can call me that. No one else.”

               Awestruck, Peter remained quiet for a heartbeat too long, probably leading her to think he thought it was an idiotic reason for putting them all in danger. Her stray strand of hair swung in front of her eyes when she looked down into her lap again, and this time he couldn’t help it anymore and reached out. When he tucked it behind her ear, they both froze, realizing their sudden proximity.

               Their thighs touched; they couldn’t possibly sit closer to each other unless Emmeline decided to sit on his lap – which Peter would allow with great pleasure. His hand was still on his cheek, he hadn’t withdrawn it, and Emmeline leaned in ever so slowly, almost against her better judgement. The moment seemed to last forever as they both understood what was going to happen if they didn’t snap out of it.

               Did they want to snap out of it? Not really. Should they? That was an entirely different matter.

               He wanted to touch her so badly – not just her cheek, not just to tuck her hair behind her ear, not just to innocently cuddle her. Peter wanted to hold Emmeline against him and never let go, he wanted to finally know what it felt like to kiss her, and make love to her. Every last cell in his body ached for a kind of intimacy he hadn’t really thought about until she came into his life.

               Their foreheads touched and he let out a sharp breath. Could he hear the hammering on her heart from where he was, or was it his own that thrummed loudly in his temples?

               Bella’s loud bark followed by her dash across the apartment put a tragic end to the moment they were having, and Emmeline jumped back, getting off the bed and to the door.

“Must be the food I ordered,” she grumbled, obviously not happy about the interruption.

“When did you order food?” Peter asked from the bed, slowly getting up without reopening his wound.

               It was just his luck – finally about to take this step with the girl he’s like for months, only to be interrupted in the middle of their moment. By her own dog no less.

“When you decided I should cuddle with you instead of letting me do the cooking,” she chuckled, looking through her judas. Bella was still barking and pawing at the door like mad, until Em shooed her off, telling her to go to Peter.

               When the pit came to sit in front of Peter in the kitchen while he took out plates and cutlery, Peter narrowed his eyes at her.

“I thought we were friends!” he whisper-shouted at the dog. “Friends don’t cockblock each other.”

               Bella only tilted her head to the right, moving her ears in a curious way. It was dinner time for Bella too, so he filled her bowl with the usual, watching her get excited when he opened the fridge. She wagged her tails and ran around Peter until he set down the bowl and she could start her feast.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Peter sighed, turning away from the dog.

               Better luck next time.

.

.

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Reblog to save a writer

Taglist: @of-virtuoso​ @justanothergenzkid​ @complete-trash-101​ @the-freefeather​  @yarkmydude

[ruinedthatfriendship]

Start Again

A/N: Okayyyyy so I was talked into posting this, and yes I am aware it is the most trashy fanfiction trope I have ever written, and I was mildly disgusted when I found this in my drafts. 2014 me was a dumbass. This was also evidently supposed to have more chapters that were never completed. I’m actually not sorry about abandoning this one, though... 

I’m sorry this exists?

It took too long. Everything just took too long. It took an ambulance too long to navigate traffic, too much time to get her out of the wrecked car. Too much time to clean up her battered face before anyone even recognized her, too long before she got a bed in the ER. Too long before one of the doctors finally realized what was really going on, shoving a couple residents out of the way with a burr hole kit.

By the time they got the pressure down in her brain, and sent her up to surgery, she’d already had one seizure from the bleeding inside her skull, and she’d crashed in the elevator, arriving to the surgical suite with a nurse still riding on the gurney doing CPR.

By the time anyone found her emergency contacts, she’d been in surgery for two hours, without any word. By the time they got to the lobby, the driver of the car that hit her had been pronounced dead.

Simon hadn’t even known she’d set his information as an emergency contact. And apparently, it wasn’t just him she hadn’t told. Like every other detail of that horrible day, he would never forget facing Dianna and Eddie in the waiting room and spreading his hands helplessly, letting them shout at him while the only thing he had to offer was that he didn’t even know. And they were wasting time splitting hairs, couldn’t they see that? It didn’t matter anymore who Demi had been spending her time with or if he was too much older or her boss or anything else, not when they didn’t know if she was going to wake up. They didn’t have time to argue in the lobby of the emergency department, he just wanted to be able to see her.

A nurse had been anxiously watching the face off, clearly trying to remain professional even though this was probably the most gossip-worthy day of her career. “Mr. Cowell, sir, uh, Miss Lovato does have an advance directive in place and--”

“She made it after she got out of treatment,” Dianna cut in tearfully. “She said it was just in case,”

The nurse gave her a polite nod to acknowledge her, and then turned back to Simon. “We need to speak with you--”

“No!” Dianna protested, squeezing her husband’s hand. “That’s my daughter, he doesn’t get a say, I’m her mother, you can say whatever you have to say in front of me.”

The nurse--her nametag read ‘Angelica’--looked at Simon, waiting. “Sir?”

“It’s fine,” he said heavily, hardly believing that any of this was real. “And it’s just Simon, please.”

Angelica nodded, glanced down briefly at the chart in her hands. “Miss Lovato named you as her medical proxy, which means that you have the power--”

“I know what a medical proxy is.” Simon interrupted, feeling shock numb his body while his heart rate increased. Demi, baby, what did you do? “It shouldn’t be me. Give it to her parents, I can’t--”

“We don’t have that power.” Angelica said apologetically. “It’s a legal document that Miss Lovato signed willingly. We can take you back to wait, she should be out of surgery soon.”

“I’m coming,” Dianna insisted. Angelica just nodded at her; she was immediate family too, they wouldn’t refuse her.

A tense elevator ride later had them sitting in hard plastic chairs in a waiting area outside of neurosurgery, the sign itself almost giving Simon a heart attack. Brain surgery, because someone crossed the median while she was driving. And she’d gone to the trouble, sometime so long ago, to put her fate into his hands.

If what Dianna had said was true, that she’d written these things just after getting out of treatment, then it would have been before they were ever together. It would have been while the extent of their relationship was annoying one another at the judges’ desk, back at the very beginning. When the most he’d ever done was hug her and pinch her nose and call her a brat, she’d looked at him and imagined a day like this and signed her life into his hands.

“It shouldn’t be me.” he mumbled again, staring at his hands in his lap. “I don’t know what she was thinking.”

“You’re right, it shouldn’t! I don’t know what you ever thought you were doing with my daughter, she’s my baby and you can’t just take advantage--”

“Dianna,” Eddie murmured, squeezing her hand. His eyes were angry too, he looked ready to strangle Simon, but they were making too much noise in the waiting room.

Demi’s surgery took six endless hours. And when the surgeon finally came out, Simon already knew. The set of his jaw and the look in his eyes wasn’t good news, he could only hope it wasn’t a death sentence.

“Is she alive?” he spat out in a low voice, fists clenched and not sure if he was ready for the answer.

The surgeon nodded shortly, sending a rush of relief through Simon that was quickly tempered by the rest of his words. “She’s still unconscious, and not anywhere close to out of danger. We’re keeping her heavily sedated for now, and you can see her, but I want to warn you, she does have a lot of tubes right now, she won’t...look like you expect.”

“I don’t care.”

“Her vitals are good, but she did sustain severe trauma to her brain. I trust I don’t need to tell you how serious that is, Mr. Cowell. She’s alive and stable, but I can’t make any promises about her recovery until she wakes up.”

“What are you saying?”

“She may have cognitive deficits. We just have to wait and see. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I can take you to see her now.”

“What does that mean?” Eddie asked quietly, holding tightly to his wife’s hand. “What...what can we expect?”

The doctor shot him an apologetic look. “We have no way of knowing, right now. Injuries like Demi’s have had a variety of outcomes, from full cognitive function to brain death. Obviously, given that her responses to stimuli are intact, she’s in as good a place as we can hope for right now. If we were to see any negative effects when she wakes up, it would likely be fairly mild.”

Eddie seemed to relax just infinitesimally at those words, and he was first into the room after the doctor, Dianna on his heels. Simon, exhausted in every possible way, didn’t bother fighting them and followed slowly, trying to brace himself before laying eyes on her.

Nothing could have prepared him, really. She looked peacefully asleep, if not for the washed-out paleness of her skin and the unceremoniously shaved side of her head, a line of stitches crossing her scalp.

Her lips were cracked and parted around a tube in her throat, cuts and bruises and butterfly bandages littering every visible inch of her skin as she lay there, looking tiny and helpless in that hospital bed.

Dianna sobbed and lurched forward, reaching for her daughter’s hand. Demi had a grey plastic clip on one finger, and an IV running into the back of her hand, and hers stayed limp while Dianna held on.

Eddie moved to stand beside her bed as well, one gentle hand tracing her hairline and sweeping the long side of her unplanned undercut off of her forehead.

Simon just swallowed hard, temporarily frozen. Demi belonged on the stage, larger than life with her incredible voice, she belonged laughing and stumbling in high heels and bodily attacking him with the promise of getting him sick. She belonged barefoot in the kitchen with her nose wrinkled up in concentration as she tried to cook, on the floor playing with his dogs, on the couch in a heated debate about Netflix. She belonged with fire in her eyes and love and laughter on her lips, she was not meant to lie here, so fragile and broken.

He found himself moving to the other side of her bed, ignoring the glares of her parents, and tracing the word on her wrist as he reached to grab her hand. “She’s strong,”

The doctor awkwardly returned just then, telling them that Demi was technically only allowed one visitor at a time, and Dianna stayed at her bedside while Simon and Eddie went back out to the hard plastic chairs.

***

It marked the beginning of the worst week of Simon’s life. He cleared his schedule and spent it almost entirely in the hospital, as did Demi’s parents. And if she’d been awake, she’d have scolded all three of them and set the record straight. Without her, and unwilling to alienate her family while she lay unconscious, Simon just endured their anger, pushing back only when they tried to keep him away from her. But he still couldn’t really blame them.

He’d had to give his permission for them to pull her off sedation and remove her machines after the third day. Tonight would be the eighth since the accident, and Demi still hadn’t woken. Her doctors were at a loss, explaining only that sometimes the body needed more time. That she wasn’t quite in a coma, yet. Simon knew what they weren’t saying, though. Her chances of recovery went down with every day she remained in an unconscious state.

For the moment, it was his turn at her bedside, while Eddie had finally convinced Dianna to let him take her home and take a breather. Simon was sitting on the edge of her bed and looking down at her face, which only looked more sleep-like and tranquil as her bruises began to fade. He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, swallowing hard. “Come on, Dem,” he murmured. “If you can hear me, baby, I need you to wake up. Please,” he added in a whisper, fear threatening to choke him.

He’d lived over half his life without her, and she’d come in and rearranged everything so completely in such a short time. And now he was facing down the possibility of her leaving as suddenly as she’d come, permanently, and leaving him to live the rest of it without her. It was a bleak existence he didn’t particularly want to contemplate. One that might require some tattoos of his own to get through it. But it wasn’t going to be like that. She was going to make it through this.

Simon leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead gently, wishing he could hold her properly. She was cold and still so fragile and she smelled like the hospital and faintly like the burning metal of her accident, and he wanted nothing more than to take her home and deposit her in a warm bath, wrap her up between his sheets and hold her and never let her leave again.

But for that, she’d have to wake up.

“You’re such a brat,” he whispered, trying for humor. “Making us sit here waiting on you.”

Demi did nothing but breathe, her heart monitor beeping rhythmically in the silent room. Simon sighed, and squeezed her hand again. “Come on, Demi. You can do this. I love you, brat, just open your eyes.”

He collapsed back into the chair at her bedside, still without letting go of her hand, and bent his head over their laced fingers like he was at prayer. And he hadn’t given himself permission to cry--he didn’t cry--but there were tears falling onto her cold fingertips anyway, and when Eddie roused him later with a firm hand on his shoulder, it was with a bleak expression and red eyes.

Her father said nothing, and Simon just sighed and stood, feeling his back pop in retaliation for sleeping in that damn chair. And he was just about to let go of her hand when he felt the clip on her finger shift. It was a fool’s hope, he’d probably just bumped it with his own hand, but it was enough to glance back at her one final time.

And it was weak and uncoordinated, but her fingers moved, tightening around his hand as best they could, in a gesture no one could mistake. Simon’s heart jumped in his chest, and he turned to Eddie without ever letting go of her. “She squeezed my hand,”

And then Eddie was smiling over his shoulder with tears in his eyes, and Simon glanced down again to find her brown eyes looking up at him with such a quintessentially Demi bemused expression that he almost broke down crying again in relief.

“Hey, love,” he said softly. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Demi coughed, making a face, and looked straight past him. “Dad?”

“I’m right here, Demi.” Eddie assured her.

“Dad, my head hurts.” Demi whimpered, scrunching up her face. Simon reached over to press the call button at her bedside, earning a tentatively grateful nod from her father for it.

Demi dropped his hand quite suddenly, reaching toward Eddie, and Simon tried not to feel hurt. She was here, she was alive, she was awake. She was talking and aware, her brain wasn’t damaged, she was here. He’d take what he could get.

“I don’t understand,” she was saying weakly, looking between Eddie and Simon as quickly as she could without moving her head. “What--I…”

Her doctor and a nurse interrupted her, Dianna hot on their heels. “Baby!”

Demi’s face initially brightened, but then crumpled again in confusion. “Not you,” she was murmuring, almost to herself. She’d let go of Eddie’s hand now, too, and stared down at her own fingers, turning them over in examination almost as if she wasn’t quite sure she was real.

“How are you feeling, Demi?” the nurse was asking, an expression on his face that said he was entirely over the number of people crowding his patient.

“I’m...did I overdose?” Demi asked in a small voice, still not looking at anyone.

“No,” Simon rushed to reassure her, wishing he could be closer than where he’d ended up, almost in the doorway. “It was a car accident, darling.”

Instead of relief, Demi’s face only registered further alarm. “A car accident? Why...why was I driving? I’m sorry, Mama!” she burst out, panic in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to, I don’t know what I did, I--”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dianna reassured her. “You’re okay, baby. The other driver was on the wrong side of the road. Not you.”

“I wasn’t supposed to leave,” Demi whispered, sounding terribly ashamed.

“Baby, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dianna was almost crying again. “You’re okay, Demi. It’s okay!”

“Demi, is it okay if I ask you some questions now?” her doctor cut in, smiling politely. Demi nodded weakly, and Dianna reluctantly took a step back.

“Okay, can you go ahead and tell me your full name, hun?”

“Demetria Devonne Lovato,” Demi returned, still looking down at her hands like she didn’t quite know what to do with them.

“How are you feeling right now, Demi?”

Demi shrugged. “My head hurts. Everything...kind of hurts.” she tried to play it off, but Simon could see the pain in her eyes. “I guess it makes sense if I was in an accident,” she mumbled.

The doctor nodded swiftly. “We can start you on some painkillers. Something non addictive, don’t worry. Do you remember your accident at all?”

Demi shook her head, looking agitated again.

“Okay, what’s the last thing you do remember?”

She hesitated. “Um, therapy. My session in the morning. I’m guessing it’s not today anymore, though?”

“Demi,” Simon started, ignoring all of the looks suddenly shot his way. “You didn’t have therapy that morning, darling.”

Demi made a familiar irritated face, starting to wave him off in her usual fashion, before she paused, her eyes flicking over his form rapidly. “Wait a second.” she said slowly. “I know you.”

Simon’s entire body went numb at her words. “Demi?” he said hoarsely.

She snapped her fingers impatiently. “You’re...I sang for you, you didn’t stand up. American Idol. You’re the judge guy, the rude one...Sa--Si--Simon. Simon Cowell.” She looked momentarily pleased with herself, and then made a face that would have been comical in any other situation. “Why the hell are you here?”

[the-lupine-sojourner]

Love Conquers Amnesia [Amnesiac!Eijiro/Takara(OC)]

Hiya! I saw This video and couldn’t help thinking about KiriKara (my name for the ship. I can’t think of a better one, so if you can, leave it in a comment below!), and this is the result!  Anyway, in writing it and trying to think of a realistic way for Kiri to lose his memory, I kinda veered from the video when I meant to practically quote it, but I also like this version, so here we are! Also, if you want more domestic KiriKara, send an Ask or message me and I’ll totally write it (as long as it’s not smut. Sorry!)!!

Real quick before I begin, @dailyojiromashirao is pretty much on my permanent MHA writing taglist, cus they’re always so sweet and supportive! Love you! And maybe @elite-guard-hardygal would enjoy this, too?? IDK. Feel free to ignore, lovey! 

Now that that’s done, I will only this before we begin; I hope you all enjoy! 

God Bless and Good Day!

~The Lupine Sojourner

(P.S: This guy is my headcanon/faceclaim for Adult!Eijiro, btw. I haven’t seen Bleach, but I know he’s a character in that show. This is the face Kiri makes when he sees his waifu but doesn’t remember her yet. She startles him with her beauty! XD)

Statistically, it was probably more shocking that it took so long for this to happen, given our profession.

But, it was still very shocking to get a call in the middle of a daytime patrol. “Are you Mrs. Takara Kirishima?” The person on the other end asks. I gulp.

“Yes, this is she. Who’s calling?” I ask as politely as I can.

“The receptionist at Sanno Hospital. I’m calling to report your husband’s admittance.” Instantly, my heart plummets into my toes, and the temperature seems to drop below freezing.

“O-oh...I...Is he..?”

“He’s in surgery. We’re still unsure precisely what happened, but more details are emerging the longer we have him. The doctors are very hopeful, however.” I can’t help but not feel comforted by those words. Something could always happen. It only took one wrong move, one instant, for everything to change.

“O-okay. I’ll be there in around thirty minutes. Thank you.” I say, then hang up. I race back to my agency. The one Kiri and I shared, like everything else. I rip off my headgear and toss it into the locker along with my belt, all while calling out the situation, before sprinting for my- -our- -car. We were supposed to drive home together and have a family movie night with our five-year-old son, Senshi.

This wasn’t supposed to happen! Kiri had an amazingly defensive Quirk. How could someone have hospitalized him?!

=#=#=#=#=

“The story we’ve pieced together from the data we’ve collected is this;” the doctor explains when I arrive. “your husband was fighting an unknown villain, and somehow suffered trauma to the head, resulting in the loss of the fight, and…”

“What?” I press urgently. I needed to know!

“Well, with brain injuries...memories are the easiest to lose, we’ve found. It appears your body automatically purges memories first instead of the knowledge of how to breathe, for example. I’m sorry, Mrs. Kirishima, but there is a strong possibility that your husband won’t remember much when he wakes up.” I thank him for telling me absently, eyes peeking into the room, to Kiri laying still on the bed. “And we’re not sure when he’ll wake up. We hardly had to use anesthesia on him for the surgery; he was unconscious when he was admitted, but without any real indication that we could find as to why. I’m sorry.” I nod.

“Thanks for doing what you could, doc.” I murmur, walking slowly into the room. The man smiles sadly at me and leaves me to sit beside Kiri. His hair had to be combed down and messed around so they could run tests to see why he was still out cold, and the black hospital gown looked incredibly odd on him. His chest rose and fell rhythmically. It seemed to lull me into a doze, one I tried to fight without much luck.

=#=#=#=#=

It’s only a few hours later that I wake up, and Kiri still isn’t awake. I hold in a groan and stand, stretching out my back and arms that were sore from sleeping in the chair.

I wasn’t planning on leaving til Kiri woke up and I could ascertain for myself his condition, so I watch him. His chest goes up and down and the heart rate monitor beeps incessantly as time creeps by. It was unknown how long I sat there before I started to fall asleep again. I shook myself. I wouldn’t fall asleep again until I saw Kiri awake.

So I stood again, deciding to leave briefly to get a cup of coffee and call people. Mainly Ma, Pa (what I call Mr. and Mrs. Kirishima) and Katsuki. They deserved to know what had happened.

It went about as well as expected. They were upset (Katsuki vowing to roast Kiri for being so sloppy as to let that villain get a hit on him), but promised to get here soon.

I then got my coffee and headed back to Kiri’s room, only to find him standing and gazing at the sunrise out of his window, his IV pole clutched beside him. 

I gulp. Time to see what was what with him. I grin and walk over. “Beautiful, huh?” I ask, sipping the coffee. He flinches, jerking his head to look at me.

“Yea- -uh...did...did the doctors send you?” He asks, stunned, cheeks red. I blanch. Of course. Memory loss was a high probability, the doctor had said.

“N-no.” I murmur, gulping the coffee to avoid talking. How was I supposed to deal with this?! How long would this last?!

“Wow…” He breathes, taking me in and smiling. “You must be the prettiest woman in the whole world.” It’s almost like he wasn’t aware he was talking out loud. I blush. Even without memories of our marriage, he was attracted to me. 

“Thanks.” I reply, chuckling. It then drops. “...Do you know my name?” I ask tentatively. Eijiro frowns, scanning me again.

“...I’m sorry, but no...should I?” I sigh. Of course he wouldn’t remember...

“Takara.” I reply. “It’s Takara Kirishima.” There. I’d kinda told him. He’d have to piece it together now. His eyes narrow in thought, then go wide.

“Are you my sister?” He asks. I snort.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“Cousin?” I smile.

“Not a cousin, either.”

“...Then...what?” He asks shyly. I roll my eyes.

“I’m your wife, dummy.” I chuckle, ruffling his hair. He blinks several times, then grabs my left hand. I slip the glove I hadn’t taken off and he stares at the simple sterling silver band around my ring finger.

“...We’re married?” He exclaims, staring at my face now. I grin proudly and nod.

“Yeah. For almost six years now.”

“Whoa, really?! How do I not remember that?! Man, I hit the jackpot!” I chuckle, scratching the back of my head, cheeks scarlet. Wow...

“The doctors aren’t really sure. You were admitted to the ER unconscious and had to go into a brief surgery to try and determine what happened. They still don’t know, but my guess is a Quirk’s to blame.” Kiri nods.

“I have one, too, right? A Quirk?” I nod.

“Yup. You can harden your body using your body’s carbon. Downside is you can’t do it forever.” He frowns, then grins happily.

“I think...I think I remember that!” He cries. “I use it to fight, don’t I?”

“Yup. You’re a hero. You help a lot of people at our agency.”

“Our agency?” Eijiro asks, head tilted. I grin.

“Yeah!” Just then, I hear the door open behind us. I glance over and see Katsuki glaring from the doorway, only halfway out of his costume, as well.

“Hey! Shitty Hair! Remember me?!” Kiri turns.

“...You know me?” He asks. Katsuki does a double-take, then scoffs.

“Right. Forgot. You let a villain hit you with some dumb memory loss Quirk. Your wife called me. I was closer than your parents are, but they’ll be here.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Kiri murmurs, looking at Katsuki’s outfit. “...Are you a hero, too?” Katsuki flinches in irritation, then deflates.

“Yeah. So’s your wife, dumbass.”

“Katsuki, thanks for coming, but don’t be mean.” I warn. I knew, however, that this was just Katsuki being Katsuki. He didn’t really mean it.

“Ground Zero, right? That’s...that’s your hero name?” Kiri suddenly asks, eyes lighting happily. Katsuki smirks.

“Finally, you remember something!” I roll my eyes.

“He remembered his Quirk and that he was a hero before you got here.” I point out.

“I don’t remember my hero name, though. Or yours, Takara. Sorry.” I wave that aside.

“No worries! You wanted to model your hero image after Crimson Riot, so you chose Red Riot as your hero name as an homage.” Eijiro’s eyes light up.

“Oh, right! He’s so manly and hardcore! What’s yours?” I chuckle and rub the back of my neck awkwardly. It always sounded weird when I explained it out loud.

“Well, I’ve always liked foxes and wolves, so I chose Kitsune as my hero name.”

“That’s awesome!” I laugh.

“You had that reaction the day we chose our hero names, too.” I reminisce fondly.

“Yeah, back when you two made dopey heart-eyes at each other in class and we all pretended we didn’t see and wanna puke.” Katsuki adds, scoffing and crossing his arms. His smirk betrays his happiness, though.

“Really?” Eijiro asks, eyeing me.

“We-well, it was more like I made the heart-eyes and then, ah- -do you recall something called the USJ incident? It happened almost nine years ago…” Eijiro frowns.

“I...I think so. We were in some huge building, right? Combat training?” I shake my head.

“No.” I grimace. Even now, the memory was painful, my ribs recalling that day easily. “We were supposed to be doing rescue training.” I murmur. “Then villains attacked. My mom nearly died. She was our teacher.” Eijiro frowns.

“Oh. Right. I was the one who found you, right? Against a fountain with a nearly collapsed ribcage?” I nod.

“Yeah. That was a tough week.” He nods.

“Ah, you babies got over it.” Katsuki muses. “If you ask me, that’s when you two nerds started liking each other and making everyone around you nauseous with your mushy attitude.” Eijiro then blushes and tilts his head, scratching the back of his neck.

“Uh...Takara, I’ve been meaning to ask...do we have kids?” I smile, pulling my phone out. I pull up a picture of Senshi at his fifth birthday (just a few weeks ago), sharp teeth on display as he grins at the camera.

“Yeah; a son, Senshi.” My hand goes to my stomach subtly. I’d planned to tell him the revelation I’d had this morning, the one still waiting on our bathroom sink. But not now. I’d wait til he had more memories to tell him, though. Eijiro stares at the picture for a long minute or two, gently taking my phone.

“He’s just like me…” He murmurs. I nod.

“Yeah.” His black hair came from his father, but the large brown eyes were from my side. It was adorable, and an instant recipe for success on his end when he gave me the infamous ‘puppy eyes’. “He’s a good kid.”

“Yeah, that brat’s alright.” Katsuki admits, scoffing a little. Surprisingly, Katsuki handled Senshi well. He wasn’t usually too forceful and angry with the kid. He’d really come a long way since our high school days, when he’d terrified any child that dared look at him wrong.

“I can’t believe we’re married and have a kid..” Eijiro murmurs thickly, and I notice tears on his cheeks. “How could I have forgotten you? I’m sorry, Takara...I’m so sorry…” I hug him, tears forming in my eyes.

“Eiji, it’s okay.” I murmur, rubbing his back as he clutches me. “It’s not your fault.”

“If I’d just taken care of that villain, none of this would’ve happened.” Eijiro sobs. I blink.

“So...you remember?” I ask, drawing back just enough to look him in the eye.

“Bits and pieces. The more we talked, the more I remembered. The picture of Senshi was like the final key.” He says. “That guy’s Quirk wasn’t affected by my Hardening, and it only took a touch for it to work.” 

“Great, you remember, now stop dancing around each other and kiss already.” Katsuki grumbles before I can react. I laugh and hug Eijiro again. He’s blushing as we part a few moments later.

“...Can we?” He asks. “Can we kiss?” It was exactly what he’d said, the morning he’d confessed. We’d gone sunrise hiking and he’d asked that as we watched the dawn unfold. I smile and play with his hair, just like I had that morning.

“Of course you can.” I reply, continuing the reenactment, and he all but tackles me in elation, kissing me so eagerly, I’m pretty sure my lips are swollen and bruised.

“Oi! I know i told you to kiss, but come on! Knock it off!” Katsuki growls. I smile into the kiss and deepen it, knowing it would piss Katsuki off. Sure enough, he growls and is stalking over when Eiji pulls back to stick his tongue at Katsuki.

“Oh, lay off!” He replies. “You’re just jealous cus you’re still single.” Katsuki growls and grabs the front of Eiji’s hospital gown.

“What did you say?!” Katsuki growls.

“Oh, good; I see we were worried for nothing.” Comes the voice of my mother-in-law. I look behind Katsuki and wave.

“Hi, Ma!” I call. I generally call Mrs. Kirishima ‘Ma’ or ‘Mama’, and Mom...well, ‘mom’. “Turns out, Eiji got hit by a Quirk that knocks you out and gives you amnesia, but it’s nullified by showing the victim photos or talking about the missing memories, evidently. He remembers.” 

Ma nods. “Thank goodness.” Eijiro hugs his parents.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hello, Eijiro.” Ma replies. Pa smiles and ruffles his son’s hair.

“Gave us quite a scare there, son.” He says. “But, of course, you pulled through!” Eijiro nods.

“Cus Kirishima men always win!” He says proudly, fist-pumping his dad. I roll my eyes. That was part of the reason Kiri was so upset in Middle School; his father encouraged bravery and manliness in his son and when Eijiro failed to act in that attack, it whacked his self-esteem.

But, over time, he’d become every inch a brave, manly hero. And an even better man to be married to. I side-hug him and squeeze his side reassuringly. “And the Kirishima women will always support their man.” I add, chuckling as Ma nods.

“Agreed. Knew I liked you when I met you, Kara.” I grin.

This was what we’d always have; a family to fall back on, no matter how bad or weird things get. Family is priority. Always.

Crappy ending is crappy, but hope you liked the rest! XD