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celerrie · 3 years ago

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curse-breaker [part 2]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large. [part one here!]

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Friends to lovers, these two dorks [affectionate] love each other sm they start to form a magical connection between their minds, continued sass, things get taken to the bedroom but don't get into full swing just yet

word Count: 9,927

a/n: I wrote this literally just to have fun and gave absolutely 0 consideration to chapter size so these next two are like, massive compared to the first one! Whoops! BUT THEY GET STEAMY (the next one is almost entirely smut) so at least there's that hahaha. Also I'd just like to say a HUGE thanks to everyone who's liked, commented, reblogged, etc! This is my first fic I've posted to Tumblr and you've all made me feel so welcome <3

Thanks to your students’ wonderfully curious minds, the first day of your curse-breaking intensive took a full hour and a half longer than expected, which was quite impressive when you considered that you’d already allotted some extra time for their questions throughout the day. You didn’t resent staying late with your class, though; they were an engaged and clever bunch, with nary a sorcerer without potential among them. They could all blossom into valuable assets for the Mystic Arts, and as such, they deserved your full time and attention.

But now, class was over, and you deserved dinner.

You slipped your sling ring on and opened a portal back to your room in the Sanctum Sanctorum, dropping your travel-slash-teaching bag off in your room and peeling the top layer of your teaching robes off your body. They’d gotten truly disgusting over the course of the day, as was the norm for your classes. The first few hours of your novice curriculum focused on the theoretical side of curses and curse-breaking, but the second half of the first day was where the fun started to happen: you helped your students work through some simple physical curses (set by your own self the day before) that would produce a range of relatively benign, non-lethal effects, including fizzling and smoking like a sparkler, making mud rain from the ceiling, or exploding the foam blocks they were carved on.

It was a blast in the most literal sense of the word, but it always left everyone in the class smelling like fire and covered in mud and what looked like packing peanuts, and you were no exception. You definitely needed a shower before you joined Wong and Stephen for a meal.

“Thought I heard a portal opening and closing in here,” a familiar voice called from the hallway.

“Hey, Stephen,” you said, sparing a glance out your open door.

Of course he’d managed to catch you before you were cleaned up. He was in his Sorcerer Supreme robes, a sure sign that he’d been called to fulfill some duty or another today and hadn’t just gotten to enjoy a lazy Saturday, but whereas you looked like the product of a science class gone wrong, he was immaculately groomed and put together, with not so much as a single hair out of place.

“You look like you had a fun day,” he said, moving forward and leaning against your doorframe. “Are the packing peanuts a new addition to the curriculum? If so, good call. They really bring out your eyes.”

God, he was the worst.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” you replied readily, a teasing smile pulling at your lips as you opened your grimy arms to your friend. You took a couple of threatening steps forward as realization dawned in Stephen’s eyes. “Come on over here, and I’ll give you a big hug to thank you for the compliment.” As if on cue, a couple of flecks of foam and mud fell from the underside of your arms and landed on the floor.

“Yeah, I, uh, I think I’m gonna take a rain check on that,” Stephen said, pulling a face as he took a couple of steps back from the doorframe. Moments later, though, his eyes widened as he began sliding towards you involuntarily, the Cloak rippling behind him as it pushed him towards you. “Hey, no, stop that—don’t—” Stephen began spluttering, digging his heels in and trying very hard to resist being pushed across the slippery wood floor into your filthy embrace. “If you get dirty, you’re going in the laundry with the rest of the robes,” he finally admonished the Cloak, who fluttered limply down, looking very much defeated. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

You dropped your arms, amused, but you also couldn’t help but note that Stephen’s threat had been more effective than you’d anticipated.

“Just to be clear, you do wash him sometimes, right?” You asked, turning to shrug off the second layer of your robes, which was nearly as grimy as the first had been. Fortunately, your base layer was relatively unsoiled, so you could at least walk to your shower without leaving a trail of muck in your wake. “Like, you’re not just letting him go about with all the dirt of the last couple of years on him and threatening him with the washer every now and then?”

As useful as it was to be able to wave your hand and magic the dirt off your clothes, it didn’t really have the same effect as actually doing laundry with good old soap and detergent. You hadn’t noticed any bad smell on the Cloak when Stephen had hugged you this morning, but still….

“What? No, I—of course, I wash him,” Stephen said, sounding mildly offended. “He just doesn’t like it very much. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I mean, I did know you when you first showed up at Kamar-Taj, so,” you replied, moving to your dresser and pulling out a clean set of robes.

“I’m never living that down, am I?” Stephen groaned.

“You were literally wearing what you told me was a nine thousand dollar Balenciaga coat while looking like you hadn’t seen the inside of a shower or a barbershop in six months, Stephen. I know you were having a dark night of the soul, or whatever,” you said, grinning at him, “but do you have any idea how many haircuts selling that coat could’ve bought you?”

“It was a nice coat, though,” he protested.

“Nine thousand dollars, Stephen,” you reiterated. “They make warmer coats for less.”

“I don’t see how this has anything to do with whether I wash the Cloak or not.”

“Just trying to make sure you haven’t returned to old habits. The Cloak deserves better than what that poor Balenciaga jacket got,” you teased, and Stephen snorted in amusement.

“I treat the Cloak like royalty, thank you very much,” he said. Despite the offended edge to his tone, he was fighting down a smile. “And I don’t think you’re in a position to lecture me on this right now, considering that you look like you’ve undergone some modern tarring and feathering ritual.”

“I really do, don’t I?” You snorted, looking down at yourself.

“You really, really do.”

“The things I do for the Mystic Arts,” you sighed. “I better go shower off before this mud dries any more. I’ll meet you and Wong downstairs for dinner in ten.”

“Sounds good. I’ll let him know,” Stephen said, turning to leave your room (this time with no resistance from the Cloak).

You were almost to your bathroom when Stephen called your name.

“Yeah?” You asked, turning over your shoulder to look at him. He was leaning against your doorframe again, one of his arms over his head, the other on his hip, and an absolutely unreadable expression on his face.

You expected your foot-in-mouth senses to start going off, but to your surprise, they remained silent.

“How was…I mean, was class good? For you?” He finally asked.

You couldn’t resist the slight upward quirk of your lips. It was cute when he cared.

“It was, yeah,” you said warmly. “I had a full class of twelve students, and Stephen, they were great. I know I say that about every group,” you said with a laugh when your friend went to open his mouth; it was impossible for you not to gush about your students, old or new, and he knew it. “But I really mean it this time. Every single one of them passed the theoretical exam, and they all got through the first three curses of the weekend. That hasn’t happened in ages.”

“That is pretty good,” Stephen agreed, a soft smile on his lips. “And here I was, worrying that they were holding you up with how awful they were.”

You laughed at this, shaking your head. Since when did Stephen worry about you?

“It was the opposite, actually. They had a lot of really great questions after everyone figured out how to break the new exploding Styrofoam curse,” you explained. “I don’t think they’re going to have any trouble with the practical tomorrow evening. They’re a talented bunch.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Stephen murmured, his blue eyes shining with fondness as he regarded you from across the room.

Sometimes, he was all right.

“Thanks. Now get out of here before I really do hug you,” you told him with a grin. Stephen raised his hands in mock surrender.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said and disappeared from your doorframe.

You waved your hands to magic away the worst of the mud and smoke and Styrofoam from your body and the pile of robes in your room before you hopped in the shower, though you didn’t really feel clean until you were under the warm spray of water, scrubbing your hair and body down.

When you were all toweled off and ready to put on your clean robes, though, you paused, thinking twice about your outfit choice. It was going to be just you and the boys in the Sanctum for the rest of the night, and it was a Saturday night, to boot. Surely, now was as good a time as any to wear some regular clothes for once. As much as you loved the Mystic Arts, it was nice to put on some comfy leggings and a shirt and just feel like a normal human being every now and then.

So you did precisely that, then grabbed your sling ring and portalled yourself downstairs.

“Hey, there you are,” Wong greeted you fondly from the kitchen counter, where he was spooning copious amounts of what looked like penne alla vodka from an enormous levitating pot into two similarly large aluminum food trays. He reached out to you with one arm, inviting you in for a hug as he worked, and asked, “How’d class go?”

“It was really good,” you said, reaching back for Wong and slipping into his embrace. He was warm and solid in your arms, and even with him half-hugging you and half-working, his hold on you managed to feel like the promise of steadfast shelter and friendship that it always did. “I’m sure Stephen already told you, but I have a brilliant group of sorcerers this weekend.”

“He did tell me, and I’m glad for you,” Wong said, relaxing his hold on you slightly, though you didn’t move away from your friend just yet. “I wish I got to see your new packing peanuts look, though.”

“Trust me, the look on Stephen’s face when I threatened to hug him and get him muddy was better,” you smirked, reaching over and grabbing a single creamy penne from one of the trays, managing to just barely dance out of the way as Wong moved his spoon over to swat your thieving fingers. As he went back to spooning out the penne, you popped your plundered pasta in your mouth, savoring its delicious flavors and moaning in appreciation.

“You stop that,” Wong laughed as you went back for seconds, unsuccessfully trying to block your path to the pasta with his spoon. “Stephen already stole two bowls for the both of you. Eat from those, instead.”

“Then who is all this for if not for your two favorite people, Wong?” You whined, quickly eating the second piece of pasta you’d stolen and licking the sauce off your fingers. It was clearly homemade and, as per usual with Wong’s cooking, it was absolutely perfect in every way.

“My book club. We do a potluck every week, and tonight’s my night to bring the entrée,” he explained, covering the takeaway tins with their metal covers and crimping the edges shut. Well, that explained why he had regular street clothes on, too. “Stephen has your bowl with him.”

Your eyebrows furrowed as you glanced around the kitchen while Wong gestured for the now-empty pot to take itself to the sink and clean itself.

“Where is Stephen, anyway?”

You thought it had seemed suspiciously quiet in here.

“He’s up in the library,” Wong explained, stacking the two tins of pasta one on top of the other, then hefting them into his arms. “He said you guys had some work to do or whatever. Hey, could you do me a favor?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Could you grab your sling ring and portal me over to that alley by the Hudson Park Library?”

You obliged, and Wong stepped through with his very heavy pasta trays, bidding you good luck with the Sorcerer Supreme while you thanked him for dinner. Once that portal fizzled closed, you opened another one to the Sanctum Sanctorum’s library and stepped through.

“Hey,” Stephen greeted you from a table wedged in between two full-length shelves stocked full of mystical tomes. He’d picked one of the tables that sat by the enormous front windows of the Sanctum; the late-evening summer light poured in through the paneled glass, limning his robes and hair in a soft glow and almost silhouetting him against the sky.

“Hey,” you said back, moving to take your place across from him at the table. He had his laptop open, a variety of pictures of ancient stone carvings already pulled up, and, as Wong had promised, two full bowls of penne alla vodka, both still piping hot. “Thanks for grabbing me some food.”

“Thanks for coming back to the Sanctum tonight and working on this with me,” Stephen replied, genuine gratitude in his eyes as you sat down across from him. “And, more importantly, for showering.”

A laugh bubbled out of you at this.

“Well, I wasn’t going to subject either of us to all of…that,” you chuckled.

“Thank the Vishanti,” Stephen grinned, a mischievous yet fond sparkle in his eyes. “Anyway. You ready to Scooby-Doo this shit?” He asked, gesturing with his head toward the images of the ritual site up on his screen.

“Show me what you’ve got, Sorcerer Supreme,” you grinned back at him, picking up your fork and diving into your bowl of penne.

“So like I said earlier, this is a ritual site up in the Transian Mountains,” Stephen explained, positioning his laptop to be a little closer to the both of you. With a slight stutter of his trembling fingers, he clicked on the first image, blowing it up to fit the full screen. “This is what it looks like when you’re approaching the excavation site. Note the numerous cairns,” he said, pointing out the small, manmade stacks of stones dotting the landscape. They appeared to encircle the base of the mountain, stretching on endlessly in either direction. “The people leading the expedition apparently thought that these were possibly grave markers, if their field notes are anything to go by, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Do we have any close-ups of these cairns?” You asked, feeling a hunch coming on.

“Yeah, and the close-ups are why I don’t think they’re graves,” Stephen said, flipping to the next image in the lineup. It showed one of the cairns at a reasonably close distance, and as you’d expected, it had been graced with a carving on the rock that made up its base: a six-pointed star, with an eye engraved where the triangles overlapped. “The six-pointed star has religious significance, of course, but my suspicion is that, in this case, it’s being used for its energetic purpose: to promote the balance of two opposing magical forces. The triangle, upside-down, and the triangle, upside-right, in perfect harmony.”

“And, of course, there’s the evil eye literally sealed within this balance, so long as it’s never broken,” you added, pointing to Stephen’s screen with one hand while you scarfed down some more pasta with your other.

“Then you think these are magical wards, not graves?” Stephen asked, glancing over to you and looking for your approval. Direct magical theory—spells, wards, relics—these were all his natural domain. Few sorcerers ever learned the indirect, convoluted language of curses and curse-breaking; it had always come easier to you than to him, the one area in which you excelled over your very talented friend.

“I do,” you agreed, and Stephen puffed up, obviously pleased with himself. “But I’m not sure whether this is meant to keep us out or seal something in.”

A shiver passed down your spine as you spoke, and you felt, in your gut, that it was the latter.

As Stephen continued flipping from image to image, showing you the ascent to the entrance to the ritual site, the two of you took turns zooming in on various images, noting anything that looked like it could be potentially relevant.

“Do you have something that I can write on?” You asked, frowning at what very much looked like a line of runes on a stone marking the path to the site.

“Yeah, hang on,” Stephen said, slipping his sling ring on and opening a portal to another table in the library. He reached through and gathered up a couple of pencils and an assortment of loose-leaf papers that were scattered on that table’s surface, then set them on the table before you as the portal fizzled shut.

“Thanks,” you said, taking one of the pencils and a sheet of paper and beginning to copy down what you could see of the inscription on the screen.

Over the next half-hour, you emptied your bowls and filled up sheets of paper with the runes and inscriptions you saw. They were written in a variety of ancient alphabets from all around Europe and even the Middle East, completely disparate in both time and space. It was clear someone wanted to tell as many people as possible exactly what they were getting into.

“Wait, I think this is the Elder Futhark alphabet,” Stephen realized as he flipped to the next image, zooming in on a stone that was partially in shadow.

“Nice find, Sorcerer Supreme,” you approved. For about the fifth time since the two of you had started your investigation, he beamed at your slight praise, his eyes lighting up and a ghost of a smile that told you exactly how pleased he was with himself crossing his lips before he turned back to the laptop.

Stephen always had to be the overachiever. At least it was sort of endearing sometimes.

“And this,” he said, zooming out on the image, then in on another stone. He frowned at the carvings, then glanced over at you for your opinion. “Is this ancient Aramaic?”

You squinted at the pixels, taking note of the shape of the markings.

“Nabatean, actually,” you corrected him. Stephen drew in and let out a slow breath at being wrong, frowning at the runes as if to commit their shape to memory. Which, you reminded yourself, he probably was doing. “Unless you’ve worked with curses of the Arabian peninsula, though, it’s an easy enough mistake to make.”

Truthfully, you were impressed that Stephen had been at least somewhat close in terms of geography and time period. You had the sneaking suspicion that he’d been trying to brush up on his curse-breaking in general.

“Thanks,” he murmured, glancing away from the laptop and over at you once again. Although most people would miss it, you saw the faintest flicker of uncertainty in his eyes before he pushed it back down.

It had to be hard, being Sorcerer Supreme. Everyone expected Earth’s most powerful Master of the Mystic Arts to know everything, to always have an answer to every situation, but that just wasn’t feasible for any one person to do.

Was it proving to be lonely for Stephen at the top? Where everyone was eager to either criticize him or abandon him if he didn’t have every unknowable detail already figured out?

“You’re doing good, Stephen,” you reassured him. It was the truth; this wasn’t his domain, and it didn’t need to be, either. Earth needed a Sorcerer Supreme who was powerful with spells and magical weapons and artifacts, who could think on his feet and approach even the most convoluted interdimensional problems with the surgical precision and skill that came so easily to Stephen. You, of all people, had no intention to castigate him for not knowing one tiny detail about ancient languages. Quite the opposite, actually: the fact that he was becoming fairly competent in even this relatively obscure branch of magic told you just how seriously your friend had been taking his duties.

“As long as you think so,” he said, offering you a slight smile before turning back to the computer.

His words resonated in your mind, chasing your thoughts away for a moment. As long as you think so. That was the heart of it with Stephen tonight, wasn’t it? He kept looking to you for praise and approval. He wanted you—you specifically—to tell him he was doing a good job on this. He respected you in your field, and he wanted you to respect him, too, as a budding curse-breaker and as your Sorcerer Supreme.

What a dork, you thought to yourself, glancing over at Stephen’s profile, though not without a certain amount of fondness in your eyes and thoughts alike.

“We should copy these down and translate them,” you said, returning your focus back to the laptop and zooming in on one of the stones with the runes. They appeared to be the most complete and the easiest to distinguish runes you’d seen so far; all of the other stones had been brutalized by the elements or even cracked in such a way as to make their full inscription unreadable. “Which would you prefer to take: the Elder Futhark or the Nabatean?”

“Elder Futhark,” Stephen said, sliding a blank piece of paper towards himself.

“Sounds good,” you said, pulling out your phone and searching up the Nabatean alphabet. Sure, you had books in this room that would have it, and you were at least familiar enough with it to recognize it, but the internet was undeniably more convenient and accurate when it came to translation purposes.

The two of you cross-checked with one another now and then, asking if this rune looked more like mannaz or degaz, and did this look like a shadow on the rock or part of the rune? Then, when you had your best attempts in your respective languages worked out, you both began the translation process into English, which you actually did need a couple of books for. They were easily found, though, since your translation books were staples in your curse-breaking work, so you knew just where to look for them. You helped Stephen now and then when he asked for it, watching him again light up when you gave him the occasional “good job” or “nice work”.

Soon, though, it became obvious that both translations were working out to say more or less the same thing.

“Beware, for Mount Wundagore lies beyond,” you frowned, looking back and forth between your translation and Stephen’s. “That seems to be what both essentially boil down to.”

“Mount Wundagore,” Stephen repeated. You felt cold all over as he said the words, but why, you couldn’t say. “I’ve never heard of it. Or read of it.”

“If you haven’t, then I definitely haven’t,” you said, frowning and flicking to the next image on the laptop. It bothered you more than you’d care to admit that you felt bad energy just saying the name of the place, but the only way to figure out what was going on here was to press onwards. “What’s this a picture of?” You asked, frowning at the photo that now filled the laptop screen.

“This was the closest anyone could get to going inside,” Stephen explained. The image was taken just outside a cavernous hole into the earth and appeared to mostly show a long string of runes carved in an arch around the entrance. Otherwise, it was impossible to distinguish anything in the black pit that was the depths of Mount Wundagore.

“Let me get this copied down, then,” you said, grabbing yet another piece of paper and doing your best to mimic the carvings precisely. The runes were interspersed with shapes and symbols, clearly magical in nature; this, you figured, was probably the first curse set to protect the site, though you weren’t immediately sure of the language it had been written in. “I feel like I’ve seen this language somewhere before, but I can’t pinpoint it,” you murmured as you continued to write.

Stephen shifted beside you—somehow, the two of you had wound up inching closer and closer around the circular table as you’d worked on the task at hand—and as he stretched his long legs in the underwhelming space beneath the table, his knee came to rest against yours.

“Legs feeling cramped?” You asked him as you finished copying the runes down.

“Sorry,” Stephen mumbled, moving his leg away.

“You were fine,” you said, penning the last rune and setting your pencil down. He readjusted in his seat, moving his leg back so it was extended and resting against yours again, and to your surprise, you felt warmth spread through your body at the place where the two of you touched, chasing away the cold you’d felt at the sound of Mount Wundagore’s name.

“Thanks,” Stephen murmured.

“Yeah, no problem,” you responded. “All this hunching over is starting to really hurt my back. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to try to fold your legs up in this little space.”

“My knees are killing me,” Stephen admitted. “Thank the Vishanti that this is the last picture.”

As he went to close out of the image, though, you had an idea.

“Hang on,” you said, and he stilled his hand, the cursor just hovering over the little x in the corner. “Can you turn up your screen brightness? I’m just…I can’t help but wonder if the camera managed to catch some of what’s inside this place, and we just have to brighten the image.”

It took Stephen a moment to find the brightness button on his laptop’s keyboard, but once he dialed it up to the maximum, the two of you couldn’t help but suck in a breath.

“Oh, wow,” you breathed, pulling out your phone to get a picture of the sight before you.

“Do you know what that is?” Stephen asked. “Or who that is?”

“I feel like I’ve seen that face before, but I don’t remember where,” you admitted, focusing your phone on the screen. Fortunately, there was little to no glare at this hour of the evening, and your phone was able to capture every inch of the enormous carving that appeared to show a face with long, sinuous tentacles sprouting from its jaw and the side of its head. “I think it might’ve been in a book here in the library, though.”

“Really?” Stephen asked, his eyes flitting away from the monstrosity on his screen to you. You put away your phone, chewing your bottom lip.

“Yeah. He doesn’t look familiar to you, too?” You pressed.

“No. I must not have read that book yet,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. One of his hands came up to play with the dark hairs of his goatee, a clear sign to you that he was, once again, vexed by his own lack of knowledge.

“You mean you haven’t read your way through the entire library yet?” You teased him, unable to resist. Stephen snorted, prying his eyes away from his laptop to look at you.

“I’m working on it,” he said, the edges of his lips quirking up just a little. A moment later, though, seriousness returned to his features. “Do you remember what the book might have been called? Or even what it looked like?”

You frowned, carding one hand through your hair.

“I’m trying to think,” you sighed. “But I don’t know if it’s going to come back to me or not. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Stephen said, fingertips still toying with his own facial hair as your foot-in-mouth senses began going off. “We can’t all have a photographic memory, after all.”

He was such a cocky bastard sometimes, and yet—

“You’ve just jogged my memory,” you said, bolting upright from your chair.

“What?” Stephen asked, looking up at you in confusion.

“Thank you!” You called, taking off as fast as you could for the section of the library that housed the books on the Inner Planes.

“Well, you’re welcome, I guess, but I’d like to know what it is that I’ve done,” Stephen said, following after you at a brisk walk.

“You said the exact same thing to me the day that I read about Mr. Tentacle Face there,” you explained, grabbing one of the library’s sliding ladders and dragging it down to the area of the shelves that you needed it in.

“What?” Stephen repeated in frustrated confusion, drawing near as you began scrambling up the ladder.

“It was a few months ago. You made some crack about how we can’t all have a photographic memory. I remember it because I almost made a joke about how I was glad I didn’t, so I wouldn’t have to remember that guy’s ugly mug,” you explained, reaching for the top shelf and beginning to work your way through the books there.

“Glad to be of service, in that case,” Stephen said wryly, his face suddenly very near yours as he floated up beside you with the Cloak of Levitation’s help. “What’s the book called, then?”

“I don’t remember its name exactly,” you said, eyebrows furrowing. “But I’m pretty sure it had something like the phrase Echelons of the Planes or whatever in it. And I think it was bound in red and black leather. Or maybe purple and black?”

“Echelons of the Planes, and maybe red and black or maybe purple and black. Great,” Stephen breathed sarcastically, beginning to skim his fingers along the spines of the many books at hand.

“Hey, you’re the one with the photographic memory. Shouldn’t you be able to tell me what I was reading that day?” You contended.

“You probably had the spine of the book down when you were talking to me, so I don’t know,” he fired back, giving you a slightly displeased look out of the corner of his eye.

“Or,” you teased him, slipping a couple of candidate books out from the shelves. None of them were what you were looking for, though, so you wound up nudging them back into place, “you don’t have a truly photographic memory.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Stephen scoffed. “And besides, it’s easy to prove wrong. Ask me anything about what I’ve seen or read.”

“All right, what did Wong have for breakfast nine days ago?” You asked the first thing that came to mind, glancing sidelong at your friend.

“Bowl of oatmeal with berries and avocado toast on the side,” Stephen returned immediately.

“That was too easy,” you decided. “I forgot that he was trying to eat all the avocados last week before they went bad.”

“Ask me something else, then,” Stephen challenged you, sliding another potential book out of its slot and deciding it was enough of a potential fit to keep.

“First line of the last book you finished.”

“For those engaged in the study of curse-breaking, this pocket guide should be considered essential,” Stephen recited without hesitation.

He had been studying up on his curse-breaking recently, then.

“That’s too easy, too,” you decided, pulling out a red-and-black book that seemed like it might match your earlier description. It fit the bill well enough, so you decided to hold onto it.

“Put me to the test, then,” Stephen said, his nostrils flaring slightly with irritation. “Stop playing games and ask me something obscure. Something from a long time ago.”

You hummed in thought, scanning the last of the books housed on the shelf you were on. No matches.

“First time I ever smiled at you,” you finally decided. You didn’t remember the event yourself; it had probably been insignificant enough that even Stephen, with his practically perfect recall, wouldn’t remember, either.

Stephen snorted.

“That’s your easiest question yet,” he said.

“What’s the answer, then?” You asked, trying to sound as if you were challenging him, but you couldn’t hide your own underlying curiosity. How could this be an easy question?

“It’s—you don’t remember, do you?” Stephen asked, turning where he was floating in mid-air to face fully towards you. He actually sounded somewhat astonished. You shrugged and shook your head.

“You do?”

“I was in my first week of training at Kamar-Taj, and I kept getting my ass handed to me by that big guy from Belarus in the open-hand novice sparring sessions. You took me aside and told me it was embarrassing for me to keep getting hit by the same guy with the same move,” Stephen said, a slight smile pulling at his lips. You felt a long-distant memory stir within you; you’d helped dozens of acolytes learn some moves at Kamar-Taj, but you did remember Stephen continually getting knocked around. He had looked so particularly pathetic each and every time he’d had to spar. “You showed me how to do a spinning hook kick to counter his speed and reach. I landed it on him the next sparring session and knocked him out cold.”

“I do remember that, actually,” you admitted with a quiet laugh. “You got in trouble for landing a headshot with a kick.” Not that Stephen had any ability to aim where it was actually going; he was clearly just hoping to connect with his opponent at all, and he’d gotten particularly lucky with the placement of his foot. Or unlucky, depending on how one viewed things, because the Ancient One had not been pleased with his reckless display. You were pretty sure even Mordo had called him arrogant for using a skill he had no control over in a friendly fight.

“Yeah, but that didn’t matter, because I caught sight of you in the crowd, and you were smiling at me,” Stephen said, his eyes softening. “You know…I’d lost all the millions of dollars of my personal fortune over the past year, but when you smiled at me like that, it felt like I had them all back. You have no idea how good it felt to have someone in my corner at Kamar-Taj for a change.”

You blinked at him, dumbfounded for once. To him, your simple gesture had meant the world; to you, it had been just another novice sparring day, and he’d been yet another newbie that you had a few weeks’ worth of training on, so you’d helped him off-hand, setting aside your numerous personal gripes with him because of how utterly defeated he’d looked after every sparring session.

“Actually, you have no idea how good it feels to still have you in my corner,” Stephen admitted with a soft chuckle, ducking his head and glancing away from you.

Your compassion toward him had forever altered the path the two of you took in life by forging the true start of your friendship. And now, years later, he still remembered the first smile you’d given him, even though, at the time, you hadn’t even been aware of what it was.

The realization made your head spin.

“I’ll always be in your corner, Stephen,” you promised him, your voice soft but steady. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.” Blue eyes flitted up to yours, shining with hope and gratefulness and something deeper, something that spoke of the depths of the unusual bond you’d managed to forge together. “Well,” you amended after a beat, realizing that standing on the ladder was beginning to become a bit uncomfortable. “Maybe on the ground, but—"

“Do you want a ride down?” Stephen cut in, reaching out to you with the hand that wasn’t currently holding one of the two books that seemed like it might be the book.

“Oh. Yeah, that…that would be nice,” you agreed, reaching back for your friend. His free arm wound its way around your waist, pulling you off the ladder and against his body, and you held tightly to his broad shoulders with your free arm in turn.

You were sure you could never feel so safe twelve feet off the ground in the arms of another.

“Do you remember the first time Wong smiled at you?” You asked quietly as the two of you began floating back towards the ground.

It was a silly question, but you had to know.

“No,” Stephen admitted, halting your descent and pulling back slightly to look you in the eyes. “Only you. There’s a lot of things about you that I remember with crystal clarity that I don’t remember about anyone else.” You were silent a moment, almost taken aback by the admission, but after a moment, a slight smile pulled at your lips, and you nestled back against Stephen’s shoulder. “And before you ask,” he rumbled quietly into your ear, “that’s technically episodic memory, not eidetic. It’s stored in a different area of the brain than photographic memory is.”

“You’re the neurosurgeon-turned-sorcerer here, not me,” you laughed. “So whatever you say.”

Stephen held you tighter at this, chuckling just a little as he let the Cloak begin lowering you both back down once more.

Your descent to the floor was slow and smooth, almost as if Stephen and the Cloak alike were being particularly careful with you. When Stephen’s feet touched down, yours were still a few inches off the ground because of the way you were holding one another. Gently, Stephen lowered you the remaining distance, smiling at you warmly.

“Thanks,” you breathed.

“Thank you,” Stephen returned, bringing his face closer to yours. In the rapidly vanishing twilight leaking through the library windows, he looked astonishingly handsome, and you were surprised to find yourself reacting to his proximity. Your heartbeat quickened as his hand slid up to the back of your head, his shaking fingers tangling in your hair.

You didn’t move to pull away.

Instead of the kiss you’d been expecting, though, he tapped his forehead against yours, the tips of your noses brushing together.

“For everything,” he added, his long lashes fluttering closed. You allowed the hand that had been on his shoulders to slide up into his hair, too, savoring the feel of his soft locks in your fingers, and you let your eyes close as you soaked in Stephen’s presence.

This wasn’t a kiss, but being nose-to-nose, mind-to-mind, and magic-to-magic as you were, it somehow felt even more intimate.

Words would be inadequate right now, you knew. How could you possibly respond? You’re welcome? You’re welcome didn’t begin to encompass what you were feeling. You were drowning in the realization that even the subtlest things you’d done for Stephen had meant the world to him and had shaped his world, and, in an astounding reflection of your own actions, your own world, too. He’d driven you crazy with his cockiness and sarcasm and wit for the past few years, and you were sure you could irritate him to no end in turn, and yet, time and again, whether death was knocking on your doorstep or whether it was a quiet Saturday night, you’d both chosen to be there for one another.

You’d always chosen him in the ways that mattered, and you trusted him to always choose you, and so you poured that feeling into your aura, hoping that Stephen would feel it and know.

When you felt the magic that was his very being warm in response, you knew he did.

“I, um, I have a list of reasons why I want you as my date to the Stark Industries Gala, if now would be a good time to hear it,” Stephen offered, his breath hot on your lips.

“I don’t think I need to anymore, Stephen,” you murmured back.

His eyebrows furrowed at this, and he blinked a couple times before drawing away, his hand sliding down from where it had tangled in your hair.

“Are you sure? It’s, I mean, I think that it’s, um, a pretty good list,” he stammered, obviously taken aback.

Oh. He thought you were turning him down.

“No, I—it’s not that I…I’m sure it’s a lovely list,” you said, and you were absolutely, positively sure of this. You were more sure of this than you’d been sure about anything in a long time. “What I mean is…I’ll go with you. To the gala. If you’ll have me.”

“I—yes, of course, I’ll have you,” Stephen blurted quickly, his eyes widening. “I’d, I’d love to have you. I don’t think I could survive the party without you, actually,” he laughed, and you couldn’t help but laugh, too.

“Was that one of the reasons on your list?” You asked knowingly.

“It was,” Stephen chuckled. “You’re, uh, you’re sure you don’t want to hear the rest of them?”

“Like I said, I don’t think I need to anymore,” you said.

Stephen regarded you for a moment, trying to figure out what it was you were trying to tell him.

“I don’t understand,” he finally admitted. “Why not?”

You took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to figure out how to explain it to him.

“I wanted the list because I was afraid,” you started, looping your free arm through his and beginning to guide him back to your work table.

“Afraid?” Stephen asked, turning abruptly to look down at you. There was something almost…protective in the set of his mouth and the crease of his brow as he said the word.

“Afraid. You literally drive me up the wall sometimes, Stephen, but…you mean the world to me,” you said. Somewhere in the back of your mind, gears were turning. Stephen did mean the world to you. You chose to be here with him, to make this Sanctum into a home with him, to stand by his side in all circumstances.

You loved him.

Oh, by the Vishanti, you were in love with the idiot who gave you mental alarm bells every time he was about to say something stupid. You loved every aspect of him, and you were in love with him, too, and how had it taken you this long to realize it?

“You mean the world to me, too, darling,” Stephen murmured in response, his piercing blue eyes locked on yours as the two of you continued to walk slowly, arm in arm.

His use of that pet name for you—clearly deliberate this time—didn’t escape your notice. You smiled at his affection, glancing away from his eyes and staring at the floor. His gaze was just too intense for you right now.

“When you just…assumed that I’d be going to the gala with you and said that I was the logical choice because I wasn’t Wong, I just…oh, God, I don’t know if I can explain this right,” you admitted as you both reached the table once more. You set down your book, slipping your arm out of Stephen’s and leaning your hip against the table. “But Stephen, you’re invited to places like the gala because you’re the Sorcerer Supreme. You’re literally a genius with more magical power than anyone on Earth. Everyone who’s anyone knows and respects you, and, honestly, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I admire you and respect you more than anyone else, which is why I couldn’t bear to be reduced to just the prettiest and most convenient girl for you to put on your arm that night.” You cleared your throat, which was becoming a bit thick, and pressed on. “So yeah. I was afraid—afraid that if I let you take me somewhere fancy just because I’m here and at least somewhat attractive—that if I let you get your way with this without even asking me because you’re the Sorcerer Supreme and who wouldn’t want to go with you to a gala—that eventually, that’s all I’d be reduced to in your eyes. Just…pretty and convenient.”

“No, I—you could never just be—that could never happen,” Stephen croaked hoarsely, reaching one shaking hand out to cup your face. “Never.”

You heard his unspoken words loud and clear, though whether it was just because you knew him so well or because you were still connected enough to his magic from your earlier moment together, you couldn’t tell. Either way, you knew, in his heart of hearts, he was telling himself that he’d done that to someone he cared about once before and had cast them away in the end, and he regretted it every day of his life. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake a second time.

You leaned into his touch, and he rubbed his thumb gently back and forth over your cheekbone. Despite the aberrant stutter that interrupted the motion now and then, it was nonetheless a profoundly soothing gesture.

“I know that now. When you told me about how you remembered the first time I smiled at you, I realized,” you explained around a lump in your throat. “I realized a lot of things, actually, but one of them was that I didn’t need a list of reasons why you wanted me as your date anymore. You always saw me as more than I ever realized you did.”

The hand on your cheek moved to the back of your head while Stephen’s other arm wrapped around you, pulling you into his blue robes and broad chest with a fierceness that he seldom exhibited. You held him tightly in return, feeling that familiar calm wash over you that always came from being in Stephen’s arms.

“I thought you always knew,” he murmured quietly, burying his nose in your hair. “I thought…I thought I was always so obvious about how much I care about you and rely on you. The only reason I ever assumed you would go with me was because of that, you know. Because you’ve always, always been there for me when I needed you. Whether I needed you to tell me to get my head out of my ass and my foot out of my mouth or to show me how to hook kick my mid-life playground bully, you’ve been there.” He drew a deep breath in, his hands shaking more than ever with the intensity of the emotions he was feeling as he pulled away slightly, just enough for him to make eye contact with you. His blue eyes flitted back and forth between your eyes as he searched for something in your gaze while he continued to speak. “I can’t imagine a world in which you’re not there. When I picture myself doing anything important—like going to the Stark Industries Gala—you’re there with me in my mind. In every possible future I could have, you’re there. You keep me grounded. You help me be the best version of myself. Do you know that every time I’m with you, I feel clear-headed, and when I hold you, I feel calm? Nobody else in the world makes me feel like that,” he babbled on. “Usually, it’s the opposite; most people drive me up the wall. Especially when they’re physically close to me,” he added with a snort.

By the time you could get a word in edgewise, you were smiling unabashedly up at your friend, filled with an undeniable sense of wonder.

Could you really call him just your friend anymore, though? You loved him. You chose him, again and again, and he pictured you in every possible future with him.

“You’re rambling,” you laughed, sliding your hand to the back of his head once more, letting your fingers card through the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

“Sorry, I just—“ Stephen began, but you cut him off.

“Don’t apologize. I love it,” you said, your smile growing. “I love you.”

“It’s just nerves—wait, what did you say?” He asked, his blue eyes suddenly wide.

“I said I love you,” you replied simply, and Stephen’s lips parted in shock before a slow smile spread over them as he took in your words.

“I love you, too,” he breathed in response, sliding his large hand up to cup the side of your face. Gently, he pressed his forehead to yours and allowed the tips of your noses to brush once again. “I’ve loved you for a long time.” Here, in this position, mind-to-mind and magic-to-magic, you could feel Stephen’s aura more potently than ever, as if all of his mental fortifications had dropped and his heart was laid bare before you; it burned bright and warm with joy and relief, all underpinned by a powerful current of love and adoration for you.

“I know that now,” you murmured. “I’m sorry that it took so long for me to see it.”

“I’m sorry that it took so long for me to show you,” he replied, tilting his head just slightly, enough so that your foreheads were no longer touching and, instead, allowing his lips to ghost over yours as he spoke.

You closed the distance between the two of you, pressing your mouth to his. The moment you did, his magic again surged and flared around you, sparkling with such an array of emotions it was almost hard for you to tease them all out. There was that same joy as before and the steady rush of love for you, but there was passion and eagerness and an undeniable need, too.

You moved your mouths together as if this was what the two of you were made to do to each other. His lips were warm and firm yet pliable against yours, his meticulously groomed goatee scraping deliciously against your soft skin with every movement that either of you made. You wanted more, more of him, more of the man you loved, and so you licked at the seam of his mouth, asking for entrance.

Stephen granted it to you immediately, allowing your tongue into his mouth with a low moan. It was a beautiful sound, more magical than anything you’d ever heard before, and you were immediately obsessed, devoted to hearing that sound tear from him again and again and again—

Except suddenly, something very strong was pushing the two of you away from one another, prying you out of the strong embrace of the Sorcerer Supreme with supernatural power.

When you looked down, you realized it was the Cloak, which had apparently decided to force the two of you apart.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Stephen asked the Cloak hotly, but it merely pointed to the two books on the table with one of its corners, then pointed to the two of you each in turn before emphasizing its point by opening the cover of one of the books.

If the Cloak of Levitation could speak, you knew it’d be saying that there would be plenty of time for you and Stephen to get it on later, but for now, you were supposed to be figuring out why seven archeologists had gotten themselves blown up in the Transian Mountains before any more archeologists managed to meet the same fate.

“Fine. Fine. I know you’re right,” Stephen declared, then mumbled under his breath, “I hate being the Sorcerer Supreme sometimes. Fucking responsibilities. Higher duties.”

The Cloak patted Stephen consolingly on the shoulder as he folded himself unwillingly into the seat he’d been in earlier, struggling to figure out where he wanted to put his long legs in the scant space under the small table. You moved to take your seat, too, as Stephen grumbled away, your back already aching in protest at the thought of hunching over for another hour or two.

“We should take this somewhere more comfortable,” you said, sliding the book you’d selected over towards yourself.

“What do you have in mind?” Stephen asked as he took his book in hand and finally let his knee rest against yours again, obviously keen on the thought of more leg space.

“I’m a big fan of reading in bed,” you said, trying to make your comment sound nonchalant as possible, though you couldn’t help the way the corners of your mouth quirked up in a sly smile.

To be clear, you reminded yourself as you felt your heart rate accelerate in eagerness, you really did plan to read through this book—or at least skim it—and figure out what was going on with Mr. Tentacle Face in Mount Wundagore. But when the mystery was solved, was in bed with Stephen really such a bad place to be?

It definitely beat this table, at the least.

“What a coincidence,” Stephen said, his eyes sparkling mischievously. “So am I. Yours or mine?”

“Yours. I think it’s bigger than mine,” you explained, already gathering your book and pushing your chair back to stand up. As you did, you smiled sweetly over at Stephen. “More room for work…and play,” you added, leaning in tantalizingly close to his ear as you uttered those last words.

Stephen’s breathing hitched. He turned to look at you as you pulled away, almost as if chasing your proximity to him, and though you were tempted to just give it to him, to press his mouth against yours in a passionate, open-mouthed kiss, you managed to hold back. Instead, you slipped your sling ring on and opened a portal to his room.

“You coming, Sorcerer Supreme?” You asked, stepping through the portal and into his room. He’d been watching you, almost entranced, without getting up himself.

Your foot-in-mouth senses began going off for the first time since this morning, though this time, they came in a different flavor than you’d ever experienced before.

“I hope to be,” he said, grabbing his book and his laptop as he unfolded himself from the tiny chair and followed after you.

Great. Now you were permanently aware of when he was going to make corny sex jokes to you, apparently.

You rolled your eyes and turned away from him, stifling a smile and letting the portal fizzle shut as soon as you could sense that he’d walked through it.

“Thousands of pick-up lines, and that’s what you go for,” you teased him as you threw your book on the silky red sheets that covered his enormous bed, though you couldn’t help but let a slight note of amusement drift into your voice. “A joke about coming.”

“I know. I know,” he groaned. “It’s just the first thing that came to me—” you glanced at him over your shoulder, raising an eyebrow. “Not—that wasn’t a pun. Shit, this is a trainwreck. I should just rewind time and try again.”

“Please don’t,” you begged him, flopping down on one side of his bed. “I don’t want to be subjected to whatever other terrible pick-up lines you can come up with.”

“Who says they’re all terrible?” He asked, climbing above you on the bed and hovering above you on his hands and knees. You blinked up at him in surprise; he was so broad above you and impossibly handsome. You didn’t expect this view to be so fucking good.

You steeled your mind and resisted the urge to just wrap your hands around his neck and pull him in for a kiss. He’d melt against you like butter if you did, his strong chest pinning you into the softness of his mattress, and—

The Cloak would kill the two of you if you did. Literally kill you. In fact, it was a miracle the Cloak hadn’t strangled you the moment you’d suggested the two of you go to his bed to “work”. The Cloak was most likely clinging onto its sense of trust in you by one single frayed thread at this point, and you needed to prove that fiber of trust in you to be well-placed by doing the morally responsible thing and reading this fucking book.

And besides, Stephen really did not deserve to rail you just for making the lowest-effort joke about the male orgasm you’d ever heard in your life.

“The jury—me—rules that they’re all terrible unless proven otherwise,” you grinned, putting both of your palms on his chest and pushing him off of you. He didn’t resist, rolling to the side so that he was laying on his back directly adjacent to you.

“Yeah?” Stephen asked, cocking an eyebrow at you and smiling in that way of his.

“Yeah,” you said, trying desperately not to think about how stunning he looked with his head pillowed on red silk, a couple locks of his gorgeous dark hair falling into his face and bringing out the sharp definition in his cheekbones. He glanced away for a moment, lips flattening in thought before he turned back to you.

“You know how I can tell you’re a sorcerer?” He asked out of the blue. You waited for your foot-in-mouth senses to go off, to even buzz faintly, but they didn’t.

Was this not a pick-up line, then?

“How?” You asked.

“Because when I look at you, it’s like you’ve cast a spell on me. Everyone and everything else disappears,” he murmured, turning onto his side to brush his thumb against your chin just under your bottom lip.

Suddenly, the Cloak rippled behind him, pulling him flat on his back on the mattress once again before scooping up the book he’d picked and thrusting it against his chest.

“Okay!” Stephen exclaimed with a wheeze as the air was knocked from his lungs. The Cloak began forcefully opening the cover of the book for Stephen, clear on making its intention known. “Okay! I’m done! I’ll focus now! Just—fucking—stop that,” he snapped as the Cloak grabbed one of his hands and drew it towards the book.

“Guess I better look sharp over here, or else the Cloak will come for me next,” you laughed, waving your hands to levitate your book in front of you and flipping it to the first page. The book was enormous; you figured it had to be a couple thousand pages, at least. There was no way you could possibly read through all that in one night, but fortunately, you just had to skim through this thing, really, and see if you could find the picture you remembered.

“Yeah, I’d strongly recommend not incurring the Cloak’s wrath,” Stephen grumbled, massaging his chest where the book had hit with one hand and waving his other to levitate the book, much as you just had.

“For what it’s worth,” you said, smiling up at your book as you magically flipped it to the next page, then the next and next. “I thought that line was actually pretty good.”

“Well,” Stephen said with a low laugh, glancing over at you. That same self-satisfied look from earlier, when he’d been hoping he was right about the curse-breaking, was written all over his face. “In that case, getting a little beat up by my own favorite relic was worth it.”

The Cloak reached around, fluttering the pages of the book menacingly, and the two of you laughed but returned your attention to the task at hand. [Part 3 here]

#stephen strange x reader #doctor strange x reader #stephen strange x you #doctor strange x you #stephen strange #doctor strange #stephen strange fanfiction #doctor strange fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #marvel #celerrie writes

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theharrowing · 3 years ago

Text

Boy Blue 💙 45: Did you miss me?

While going through a painful but necessary breakup, you meet someone who is patient, kind, and understanding; everything your last ex was not.

Or is he?

PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT

💙 Taehyung x Female Reader, Hoseok x Female Reader (kind of), Yoongi x Female Reader

💙 word count: 3.5k + images of text conversations

💙 college au, text message au, strangers to lovers, yandere, hurt/comfort, smut, fluff, angst, slow burn, slash, poly, major character injury & death, graphic violence, nsfw, 21+

💙 warnings: trauma, brief description of violence, drunk public fucking, stalking

💙 posted dec. 2021 | read on ao3

💙 beta read by @neoneunnajimin

this fic will end not with a bang but with a sharp, sudden intake of oxygen.

You cringe as you set down your phone, cursing under your breath for letting Yoongi work you up so fast and make you so angry. The logical part of your brain knows that saying these things to him is not going to do you any good; you hardly mean any of it, anyway. But you are so tired—too tired to think. And lately, with him, it is easy to get defensive.

When Hoseok knocks on your apartment door twenty minutes later, you prance over to the window, peeking out to make sure the patrol officer sitting in his car outside is awake and alert. Then, you make your way to the door and check the peephole, and, finally, you glance in a mirror on your other window that gives a fuller view of the outside hallway.

Although the police have not found a single lead to suggest that Taehyung is still alive and in the country, you prefer not to take your chances.

Hoseok has a big bouquet of wildflowers and a bag of snacks, which he brings into your bedroom, after kicking off his shoes, because you still have not bothered to buy a couch or anything to furnish any other room in your apartment. He sets the items on the bedside table and wraps you in a big, slow hug. Despite feeling pretty calm, you use Hoseok's exaggerated breaths to match and slow your breathing, standing several minutes like this, with your head pressed against his chest while his fingers slowly massage your neck.

Back in Gwangju, several months ago, while Jimin was comforting Yoongi in the middle of the night, calming him down when he would wake up screaming and wrapping him in a strong, tight hug when he felt like lashing out, Hoseok was there to wrap his arms around you and help you breathe. Sometimes you would wake up fighting for air, and he would be there, coaching you to inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale until everything stopped spinning again.

And when you came back to Busan without him, at first, things were mostly okay, but there were nights when you would call Hoseok crying, and he would do his best to help you over the phone. Hoseok came to Busan shortly after you moved into your apartment, to his own place rather than to Jimin's grandma's house, and remained someone for you to rely on to get through the tough nights. Since then, he has never stopped being that anchor of support when you felt adrift.

Things with Hoseok are affectionate, but it is never much more than that. You have tried to initiate sexual intimacy before, but he has always seemed hesitant, telling you that he does not want to rush things, which frustrates you at times, but Hoseok is your rock, your anchor and your support system, so you try to push those needs down, at least for the time being. You reason that you would rather have him sitting next to you with ice cream than not have him here at all.

Still, kissing Hoseok fills you with butterflies to the point that you worry you might just explode, and it is hard to keep your hands from searching his body, hoping for more. And it is harder still to push down the huge, aching, fluttering lump that threatens to choke you when he stops you, when he slows your hands down, when he tells you he is not yet ready.

For about a week, you have been playing with the idea of going to a bar, being in a loud, chaotic, public space, and having a drink or two for the first time in what feels like years—but in reality, has only been around seven months. The plan was initially for the four of you to finally come together for some quality time, but you have not messaged Yoongi in a while. You have been planning to apologize to him for saying such terrible things, and for generally being difficult, but you just...have not done so. You have no idea what to say. You never know what to say to him anymore.

Hoseok found a cute DIY space that reminds him of the one in Seoul, and he picks you up tonight for a trial run of being at a show in public. You wear a simple black t-shirt tucked into black jeans because your closet is not exactly extensive, and you are not sure you have the enthusiasm to put more effort into an outfit. Plus, Hoseok is in bright colors from head to toe, making up for your lack of energy in spades.

The venue is a bit larger than you had expected, with several rooms for people to dance and drink and socialize in, but the crowd is pretty tame, swaying to some slow, electronic music. Hoseok describes the band as, "if shoegaze and trip hop had a baby," and you are unsure what any of that means, but you nod and smile, accepting his description as gospel.

You definitely feel anxious about drinking, sipping your whiskey slowly, and adjusting to the feeling of gradually becoming lightheaded and giggly and relaxed, though you do jolt and gasp when people slam into you. Hoseok chats with strangers, introducing you to people, which is a little overwhelming, but you roll with it, glad to be out of the confines of your apartment, finally allowing yourself to relax and feel happy. You are—for all intents and purposes—full of joy and contentment, despite your anxiety, believing this may be a turning point for you and one small step towards leading a normal life again.

So when you see it—a mess of wavy, short blue hair—making its way through the crowd toward the bar, it blindsides you. First, you lose your balance, falling back against the bar countertop, and then you drop your drink, sending liquid and glass crashing around your feet in a loud yet distant smash. Everything spins around you as you gasp for air, frantically looking for Hoseok, who is wrapping his arms around you and ushering you through a short hallway, into a smaller room, toward a backdoor.

Outside you start to get your bearings back, and you fly into panic mode, scrambling to get the fuck away from this place as quickly as possible, desperately searching for a way to get to the street and back to Hoseok's car.

"We have to go," you mutter, wide-eyed, sweaty, and shivering.

"Hey, hey, shhh, relax" Hoseok's lips are pressed against your forehead while his arms hold you tight. "Tell me what happened."

"I s-saw him, Hobi. I saw Tae."

Hoseok exhales and inhales loudly, which you follow before he continues to assure you.

"The blue hair? Yeah, I saw him too. But that wasn't Taehyung, sweetie. I promise you, that was someone else."

"S-someone else?" Your teeth chatter, you are trembling so hard.

"Yeah, I noticed him right before you did, but before I could say anything, you were reeling. I'm sorry sweets; I wish I could have warned you." Hoseok's voice is warm and kind, and it feels like home.

"Okay," you whimper, nodding your head.

Okay. It's okay. You're okay.

Hoseok hugs you tighter. "Do you want to go home?"

"No," you all but sob, trying your best to hold it together.

You do not want to go home. You want to be able to be in public and feel normal again. You want it more than anything in the world.

Once you are able to catch your breath, Hoseok takes you back inside, and you make your way through the small crowds feeling a little wobbly on your feet but overall good; you feel brave and ready to try again. Blue hair is still at the bar, and now that you are not in the throes of fight or flight mode, you can see that it is clearly not Taehyung. He looks so unlike Taehyung, in fact, that you feel embarrassed for the way you reacted.

You also see, standing close to the blue-haired stranger, Jimin and Yoongi. Jimin, in all white like the angel he is, and Yoongi in all black, with hints of pink accentuating his perfect pale skin, as always. Yoongi is so beautiful your heart skips a beat, and you think about running over to say hi, but stop yourself, turning to Hoseok as your brave resolve quickly crumbles.

"Maybe I should leave, actually," you confess.

Hoseok looks worried and apologetic. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything, but I told Jimin we were coming here, and he may have drug Yoongi along without mentioning that we would be here for the same reason that I didn't mention it to you."

You feel nauseated. "I can't do this, Hoseok. I never apologized to Yoongi."

"Apologize to him now," Hoseok suggests, as if it is the easiest thing in the world.

"I can't just do that." Your voice cracks and you sound just as weak and pathetic as you feel.

Hoseok wraps you in another hug—something he does a lot these days. "He loves you. He will understand. Just go talk to him."

Yoongi may have loved you, sure, but does he anymore? Would he want to see you again? Would you be able just to pick up where you left off?

Hoseok's embrace loosens, and he takes you by the hand, leading you to where Yoongi and Jimin are. Yoongi's eyes widen when he notices you, and you watch him glance down at yours and Hoseok's hands before looking up and turning away. This was a mistake.

"I'm gonna get you another drink, okay?" Hoseok mutters into your ear.

As soon as Hoseok's hand releases, Jimin throws his arms around your neck and hops around excitedly. You try not to watch Yoongi walk away into the crowd toward a hallway leading to another room. You try not to imagine him slipping away completely as you close your eyes and hug Jimin back.

"He'll be fine, he's just grumpy," Jimin says in your ear, squeezing you tighter. “He’ll be back.”

For a while, you, Hoseok, and Jimin drink and catch up, not really addressing any of the elephants in the room, but you notice Jimin texting someone with frustrated body language and expressions, and you assume he is trying to get Yoongi to come back from wherever he left to. There is another bar in one of the other rooms, and Jimin mentions he is probably there, so you decide to go search for it. You have had a couple drinks, and your alcohol tolerance is shit, and you are tired of things being so weird and tense, so you swallow your pride and walk in the direction that Yoongi walked before.

As you go from room to room, you feel suffocated and overwhelmed. The crowd has begun to fill the place; every space feels packed with bodies, becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. You consider giving up and going back to the others again when the bar comes into view in the back of the room you have just wandered into. You stand on your tiptoes, squinting in search of Yoongi, before finding someone you think may be him.

The music in this room is a little more upbeat, and you notice a DJ in the corner opposite the bar. Everyone is dancing and swaying, and you anxiously shimmy through, ducking under elbows and trying not to knock into people's drinks until finally, you are at the bar. Yoongi is at the far end, leaning toward some woman, and for a moment, you wonder if it is best to just leave him alone and swallow down the wave of feelings that threaten to drown you. But decide that you have come too far just to give up and walk away.

When you tap Yoongi's shoulder, he turns around with a wide smile that quickly fades the moment he sees you. You swallow down the way that makes you feel, tugging your lips into an attempt at a smile.

"I'm busy," Yoongi grumbles before turning back to the woman he was talking to.

"Yoongi, can we please talk?" you shout over the music.

Yoongi waves you off, but you stand your ground, tapping him on the shoulder once more. When he turns to you this time, Yoongi looks angry, and you are unable to swallow it down as easily.

"Aren't you with Hoseok now? Where is he?"

“He’s not—he and I aren’t—“ You stammer, but then you give up and roll your eyes at Yoongi's petulance. "Fine. I'll go."

You are not fighting with Yoongi. Not here. The last thing you want to do is cause a scene. All you want is to heal and move forward, and it is loud and crowded, and it makes you uncomfortable anyway. So you turn and make your way back the way you came.

You feel defeated and a little angry, but this is partially your fault in the first place, and maybe it would be good for Yoongi to move on and rebound and heal and stop hoping for something more between the two of you again. And you know that you are lying to yourself when you think it is for the best—you refuse to believe that bullshit for even a second. You hate the idea of Yoongi moving on and that, as much as Hoseok has comforted you, it is not the same, and it is not enough.

But you are so tired—so fucking tired—and you do not want to fight, so you wobble through the crowd, this time a little less carefully as someone's drink splashes your arm, and you bump your head into someone's elbow, only able to focus on the exit so that you can continue to walk away and try to move on.

The hallway that separates this room from the next is less crowded, so you stop to catch your breath, leaning against the wall. As soon as you have a moment to breathe, tears threaten to overflow from your eyes, and you attempt to blink them away. You do not want to cry here of all fucking places; you would honestly rather not feel anything. But everything is too much, and it is hard not to get swept up in the undercurrent of it all. Neither of your anchors are here, so you lean your head back and breathe. And breathe, and breathe, and breathe, stuttered and unsteady, but as best as you can manage.

A warm, large hand grabs onto yours, and when you open your eyes back up, Yoongi is tugging you through the crowd, back toward the main room where Hoseok and Jimin are, and you hold onto his hand tightly, following his lead.

For a brief moment, you wonder if this is real or if you are still leaning against the hallway wall dissociating, but when Yoongi pulls you into a unisex bathroom, locking the door behind you, the sudden deafening of the music and the bright fluorescent light, and strong bleach smell coming from the urinal tells you that you are grounded in reality; all of this is really happening.

"I'm sorry," you mutter, your words cut off by Yoongi's lips against yours.��

Yoongi's hands frantically grab for your hair, pushing you against the door, and you kiss him back, opening your mouth to allow him to lick inside, grabbing him by the hips to pull him closer.

"I'm so stupid," Yoongi mutters against your lips. "I’m so stupid for always letting you walk away. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," you moan into Yoongi's mouth. "Everything is going to be okay."

And everything does feel like it is going to be okay. You know that you and Yoongi both have a lot of healing to do and that it might suck to break off whatever you were doing with Hoseok, but it is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.

When Yoongi grabs you by the hips and lifts you so you are wrapped around him, everything feels like it is going to be okay. When Yoongi's lips latch onto your neck and he presses his erection against your core, sending sparks of arousal coursing through your veins and causing your whimpers to echo off the ceramic walls, everything feels like it is going to be okay.

The way Yoongi sets your feet back on the floor before spinning you around and pulling your jeans from your hips is unceremonious, but you pant against the door, hands spread and holding on for balance. The way Yoongi spits into his hand before pumping his cock, coating it in the wetness, and lining himself up with your eager cunt is not the way you had pictured your reunion, but you do not mind; you want it so badly.

Yoongi holds onto your mouth as he fucks you hard from behind, muffling your moans and cries as he fills you so perfectly. His teeth latch onto your shoulder to quell his own sounds while his other hand grips your hip tightly, and the hints of pain mix so well with the pleasure that you find yourself quickly unraveling. The sound of Yoongi's hips slamming against your ass ring out and echo around the room—lewd and so perfect, music to your ears—and you lean your head back, pushing against Yoongi as you cum around his cock, squeezing him until he is pushed over the edge and filling you with his release.

It takes a moment for either of you to move. Yoongi wraps his arms around you, catching his breath before finally releasing and wandering off to grab some toilet paper so you can wipe yourselves off. You glance in the mirror and laugh at how wrecked you both look. You feel guilty about having to face Hoseok like this, but you do your best to straighten yourself out, sneaking glances all the while at Yoongi.

Beautiful, broken, perfect Yoongi.

Once you find the boys in the main room, they both know. How would they not? You are relieved when Hoseok pulls you into a tight embrace and tells you that he is happy for you, that he expected and even hoped that this would happen and that he will still be there for you when you need hugs and ice cream. Everything feels like, for the first time in a long time, it is going to be okay.

You all have one more drink before the guys close the tab with the bar, and you decide to head out. Hoseok offers to take you home so that you can pack a toothbrush and pajamas with the plan of bringing you back to Jimin’s place to continue hanging out.

Everything is good. Everything is okay. For once, you believe that everything is going to be okay.

So, when you pull up to your apartment, and you do not notice a patrol car out front, perhaps you should have been worried. Perhaps you should have asked Hoseok to escort you to your apartment, but it is such a perfect night that nothing could possibly go wrong.

Everything is good. Everything is okay. Everything is going to be okay.

When you enter your apartment and step over a small white rectangle that may have been slid under your door, dancing your way into your bedroom, perhaps you should have paused to look at it.

Perhaps you should have done many things in the moment, but you run to your bathroom to grab your toothbrush and then to your bedroom for an armful of flannel, and make your way back to your door, only stopping in your tracks finally when you get out into the outdoor hallway, look out toward the street, and noticed that Hoseok's car is gone.

When you finally bend to lift up the small white rectangle on the floor that must have been slid under your door, you can hardly believe your eyes.

As you turn the photo over in your fingers, you fall to the floor. Oxygen feels as if it has become solid and it crushes you, pushes you down, down, down against the wooden floor.

Everything was supposed to be good. Everything was supposed to be okay.

Instead, you are looking at a picture of Taehyung standing in Jimin’s grandma’s master bathroom. His hair is too dark in the image to be blue, meaning he could have passed you on the street many times over, and you would have never noticed.

And, of course, he changed his hair color. Of course, he would not leave it the same bright, obvious blue. Why would you think he would do something so stupid in the first place? Why were you always on the lookout for bright, obvious blue when it would have made more sense for him to blend in?

You reach for your phone with trembling hands, struggling to work the buttons, as you foolishly try to call Hoseok. You need him to come back. Where did he go? Why is he not here?

The longer Hoseok's phone rings and rings, the further and further you spiral into a state of panic. Finally, you end the call and decide that it is best to contact the police, but a notification comes through that catches your eye, and with shaking hands, you open it up, confirming your worst fears to be true, once more.

✨✨✨ the end thank for reading love you all bye sorry lol ✨✨✨

tag list: @dasexydevitt13, @giriiboyy, @ffionatev, @girl8890, @illnevertrustmyselfagain, @mwitsmejk, @peachy-skz0325, @starlight-night0, @skzleaf & @ysk101 ✨

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please don’t be a silent reader! comments & reblogs help so much (and likes are nice, too.)

#taehyung x reader #hoseok x reader #yoongi x reader #bts smut #bts smau #bts yandere #bts poly #this is the end wow #thank you all for reading i love you bye #sorry for the cliffhanger #but not really #until next time!!!!!#fic: boy blue

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sapphicquill · 4 years ago

Note

congrats on 100 followers friend <3 may I ask for anything with ler!Fjord bc the way you wrote teasing in your TAZ fic was so good? or lee!Lucretia during the Stolen Century arc being tickled out of her antisocial little shell if you're in a TAZ mood :) -Chock

Whoops. This is what happens when my whole life gets flipped upside down and I have to move cross-country back home out of no where! Sorry for the long wait, I'm finally making headway on these fics. I owe the entirety of this fic to @ticklishnonsense's honey-tongued because that’s the Ultimate Teasey Ler!Fjord fic and to @poesparakeet-fics for the plot because my smol brain could not come up with anything good and she gave me THE GOODS. Hope you enjoy, @chockfullofsecrets!

(ao3 link!)

Rating: Teen

Characters: Fjord, Caleb Widogast

Wordcount: 2423

After everything they’ve all been through, Fjord thinks he can handle most things. Spitting up salt water in the mornings, nearly getting impaled by strangers on a regular basis, Nott rifling through his shit—while he’d rather not deal with all of that bullshit, he can and that’s the important thing.

But the crushing weight of all the damn pining happening between Caleb and Essek might be the one thing Fjord absolutely cannot handle for any longer.

It had started innocently enough. Hands brushing and secret smiles and eyes briefly meeting before diverting, full of nerves and excitement and swirling butterflies. He’d experienced some of the same with Jester, but the two wizards were starting to get insufferable. It was painfully obvious to anyone in the room that they had a thing for one another, and even if it wasn’t, Fjord had overheard Caleb whining to Jester more than once about the entire situation, so it wasn’t like he was entirely oblivious to his own crush.

But apparently perpetually sad and stuffy wizards are really bad at just admitting what was right in front of their faces. Fjord’s worried that one of them might just explode soon, and that’s the entirely altruistic reasoning that finally inspires him to insert himself into the situation.

Caleb’s problem, Fjord thinks, is one of confidence. He gets too caught up in his own keen mind, tangling everything up in his head and overthinking and overanalyzing and panicking and deconstructing until everything’s just a jumbled mess of knots. He just needs a little push is all. A little something to nudge him past the trouble that is thinking and into acting. And Fjord thinks he knows a fairly good method of encouragement.

Thus, Fjord is currently standing in the doorway of the mansion library, trying not to reveal his presence too early. Caleb is folded over a desk with a pinched expression on his face that Fjord knows by now means he’s reached some sort of roadblock in whatever he was working on. In other words: a perfect time for an interruption.

“Productive afternoon?”

It’s a testament to how close the group has gotten that Caleb only sort-of flinches at the sudden sound of Fjord’s voice.

“Ah, nein, not really,” the wizard replies as he straightens up. His back makes an ominous cracking noise as he sits up and Fjord winces in sympathy.

“Gods, then maybe it’s time to take a break, hm?”

“Ja, a break…” Caleb trails off, eyes drifting back to the scattered parchment and books on the desk. Fjord resists the temptation to roll his eyes at the utterly predictability of their headstrong wizard.

“Okay, well now I’m making you take a break, Widogast,” he says as he marches swiftly over to Caleb and practically hauls him out of his chair. Caleb, unsurprisingly, goes willingly, letting himself be shuffled over to a nearby sofa.

With a huff, Caleb sits and begins massaging his temples, willing away either a physical ache or a swirling mass of snarled thoughts and ideas. Fjord lowers himself down next to the human and pretends like he isn’t thrilled over what he’s about to do.

A comfortable silence descends then. After a few more vigorous rubs, Caleb leans his head back against the leather of the sofa and closes his eyes and Fjord figures this is the best chance to spring the trap.

Quick as a slash of his falchion, Fjord twists from his spot next to Caleb and pulls him down into a horizontal position before caging the human in from above. He hovers over the now-prone wizard and tries not to feel too smug as Caleb yelps but doesn’t move an inch to try to wiggle away.

“Scheiße, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about something,” Fjord says casually as he can. Caleb gives him an exasperated look, complete with raised eyebrow and suspicious frown.

“And this ‘something’ requires you to pin me to a sofa?”

Fjord grins before scooping both of Caleb’s wrists up with one hand and pulling them above his head. Exasperation shifts quickly into a mix of disbelief, fear, and anticipation and Fjord is lucky that around his friends, Caleb wears his emotions very clearly on his face.

“Well,” the warlock starts, “I kind of figured that this particular topic would send you scampering off if I didn’t take some preventative measures.”

A fiery blush colors Caleb’s cheeks and Fjord tries not to laugh.

“And something tells me I thought correctly.”

Caleb makes a noise not unlike one Fjord’s heard from Frumpkin and finally starts to struggle lightly in his grasp, like his body is only now catching up with the rest of him. Fjord lets him, figuring that letting the wizard work himself into a bit of a tizzy will just make his own task easier. Caleb’s terribly predictable. As the human squirms minutely under him, Fjord lets his free hand curve subtly into a claw and hovers it just next to Caleb’s lower ribs.

“Now, see, I also think you might benefit from a little preemptive encouragement, because you’re the most stubborn fucker I’ve ever met when you have to talk about anything personal...”

Fjord trails off when he notices that Caleb’s eyes have locked onto his hand, mostly because he knows that the brilliant mage has connected all of the appropriate dots and will voice a protest in three, two—

“N-nein, Fjord, wait just a moment, there is no need for—”

Fjord slowly flutters his fingers, still poised a hair’s breadth from the stretched expanse of Caleb’s ribs, and Caleb cuts himself off with a hitched laugh-gasp, eyes wide as saucers.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to negotiate right now,” Fjord says, the edges of his voice tinged with a low growl as he keeps the motion of his fingers going. Caleb doesn’t really do much aside from grow ever so slightly redder in the face.

Without further preamble, Fjord finally moves his hand to meet Caleb’s torso. It’s like the wizard has been hit with a successful Thunderwave—his whole body jolts before tensing up so tightly he trembles. Continuing the fluttering from before, Fjord traces across the space between Caleb’s two lowest ribs and grins when Caleb lets out something between a giggle and a whine.

“Gods, you’re so easy to rile up, you know that?”

Caleb’s giggling picks up at Fjord’s words. He’d have pity on the wizard if it wasn’t so adorable. Still gently teasing at the softness of Caleb’s lower ribs, the half-orc leans forward until his mouth is right next to his victim’s ear.

“You’re just that ticklish, huh?”

Caleb thrashes, throwing his head from side to side so rapidly Fjord would be worried the human would hurt himself if he hadn’t watched this happen numerous times before. For good measure, he lets his fingers drift up Caleb’s ribs and lets out a small laugh himself as the giggles morph into airy, full-blown laughter. Exactly as planned.

“So you and Essek,” Fjord says casually as he straightens back up, pitching his voice a little louder to be heard over Caleb’s bubbly laughter. The wizard definitely seems to register his words if the cut-off gasp and even more desperate wiggles are any indication. Fjord laughs a little to himself at the adorable way Caleb scrunches his nose when the increased movement does little to deter his attack. Taking a little pity, Fjord pushes on, his free fingers swirling tight circles up and down Caleb’s right side.

“You know he likes you too, right?”

Fjord’s not exactly sure humans are supposed to turn that shade of red, but Jester’s got healing spells to spare right now, so he continues.

“And as amusing as it is watching you two dance around each other, it’s getting a bit old.”

“B-bitte, Fjord—!”

Caleb’s own laughter cuts off whatever plea was going to escape next. The wizard flops his head a bit side to side, like if he shakes enough he’ll clear Fjord’s words like trapped water from his ears. It’s downright precious and one hundred percent ineffective.

Adjusting his grip on Caleb’s wrists, Fjord lets his fingers trail up his captive’s ribs in the same slow pace he knows will drive Caleb up the damn wall. It’s a little impressive, actually, how easily this light tickling can take their resident wizard apart. Particularly useful at certain times. He can feel Caleb trembling under him, laughs high and desperate as the light tracing fingertips slowly migrate up to what both Jester and Molly affectionately refer to as his worst “death spots.”

“So, here’s my idea.”

His fingers flutter just below the space where his holsters normally are—fortunate Caleb feels comfortable and safe enough to remove them when at the house—and the wizard groans through his laughter.

“Either you promise that you’ll confess to Essek the next time he’s around, or I’ll just have to keep tickling you forever. How’s that sound?”

“Wh-aaat? Bitte, no, that is e-eehviil!”

“That’s kind of the point, bud,” Fjord replies around another laugh of his own. He floats his fingers up the scant few millimeters to the space between Caleb’s uppermost ribs without prompting and hopes that the wail the human lets out doesn’t worry the rest of the Nein. (It shouldn’t, not with the frequency Caleb makes noises like that.)

“I’m not letting up until you tell me the first words out of your mouth when you see Essek next are ‘Can we talk somewhere privately, Shadowhand?’” Fjord pitches his voice into a terrifically awful imitation of a Zemnian accent that has Caleb laughing, somehow, even harder. Though, on second thought, that might have more to do with the rapid little scribbles he’s got focused on the space above Caleb’s top rib than his attempt at accentwork.

Unsurprisingly, Caleb doesn’t say anything much in response, instead throwing all of his effort into laughing and squirming ineffectively. Fjord keeps a careful ear out for any hint of the safeword Jester had insisted everyone know about and respect upon pain of near-death, but the only thing coming out of Caleb is whimpered begging and a spray of foreign curses. Perfect.

Fjord takes a split second to send a silent apology to Jester, who will no doubt be massively upset she missed out on assisting Fjord with this bit of encouragement, but this was his game right now, dammit, and it was time to go for the kill.

(Would it be worth the inevitable tickling the blue tiefling would dish out later? Most definitely.)

“Alright, well, suit yourself, Widogast.”

With that, Fjord moves the tickling to Caleb’s exposed underarm and focuses the entirety of his attention on making the human melt.

With an impressive amount of core strength, Caleb attempts to jackknife in half to throw Fjord off. Fortunately, their wizard’s tricks are well known by now. Fjord barely budges as he keeps up the spidering under Caleb’s arm, letting his fingers trail just the slightest bit up the underside of Caleb’s bicep before reversing back down to the soft spot just above Caleb’s uppermost rib.

The fight drains out of the mage just as quickly as it revved up, leaving him loose and floppy and lost in the throws of his own cackling. Fjord would feel bad if he didn’t know how much Caleb was enjoying himself. Time to step things up a notch.

“You know how to get me to stop, Caleb. Do you really like the thought of me tickling you like this more than the idea of confessing to a crush you know is damn-well mutual? Really seems like it.”

More wailing, more thrashing, but still, no dice. Maybe a slightly different approach…

“Gods above, you’re just too ticklish for your own good, aren’t you?”

As always, Caleb responds viscerally to the mere word and that, of all things, seems to be the final straw.

“Scheiße, bitte! Habt mitleid! Ohhkay, I pr-promise!”

“You promise what?”

“Oh please, I caa-aan’t—!”

Fjord shifts from light tracing along Caleb’s top ribs to a solid press of his palm, steadying the human as his laughter slowly eases up. After a few gulps of air, Caleb continues.

“I will tell Essek how I truly feel when we next encounter him, I swear to you!”

“You’re absolutely promising me you’ll spill about your deep, undying love for Essek Thelyss the very moment he’s within twenty yards of you?” Fjord taunts, curling his fingers back into a claw at Caleb’s right side. The human tenses and anticipatory giggles start bubbling from him almost instantly.

“Ja, ja, I a-ahh-m!”

“Good!” Fjord says brightly, pulling his hand away from Caleb’s squirming form. He smiles down at Caleb, who looks about ready to protest the large hand still pining his wrists to the sofa, before lowering himself to speak directly into the wizard’s ear.

“And maybe after you two have worked everything out, I’ll have a little chat with Essek myself about how much you like this particular method of torture.”

Caleb looks a bit like he’s swallowed a toad.

“F-fjord, mein Gott, wait—”

“I’m sure Molly and Jester would be more than happy to help me tell him all of the best ways to tickle you senseless, hmm? They’re tieflings, you know how honest they get when tickling comes up. They’ll just gush about how much you love it when we wreck you until you can’t remember your own name.”

He isn’t even tickling him anymore, but Caleb is giggling, light and bubbly and tortured, all from Fjord’s teasing alone.

“Hell, maybe we’ll all get you the next time Essek comes by the tower. How’d you like that, him watching you get tickled by every single one of us until you cry and knowing you love every minute of it?”

Caleb’s just babbling in Zemnian through his laughter, eyes squeezed shut and a grin pulling wide at his lips.

“D’you think he’d join in if we asked him to?”

Caleb just keeps laughing. Fjord grins. Mission successful.

#tk fic #tk fic community #tickle fic #critickle role #critickle role fic #cr tk fic #lee caleb #ler fjord #prompt fill #chockfullofsecrets #100 follower prompt celebration #finally filling these bad boys #big thanks to poe for actually motivating me to write this thank yooooou #sapphicquillfics

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softboywriting · 4 years ago

Text

Gravitation | Nathan Bateman | Ex Machina

Summary: Twin Flames; a single soul that is split into two bodies. You and Nathan have a connection like none other. He has an idea why, and you’re about to find out. [Soft!Nathan] [Soulmates Trope] [No Use Of Y/N] [Assistant!Reader] [F!ReaderxNathan] [Swearing] [Pet Name] [Invasion of Privacy - Mentioned] [Drunk Nathan]

Word Count: 5k

|Masterlist in Bio|

The moment you met Nathan you knew there was something about him that was unlike any other person you had met up until that point. It wasn't his massive ego, his minor God complex, or his genius intellect that got your attention. It was his eyes. Something in his eyes held more than his big mouth could ever express, something familiar like you've known him since the day you were born and even before that. You doubt he knows it, that his gaze tells you every truth, every lie, every moment of his history leading up to the moment you met. He feels it though. That you can confirm. He feels something when you stare at him as he speaks and you know that it makes him uncomfortable in a way he doesn't know how to explain because he gives you looks as if you're something he's never seen, something he can't quite figure out. You are an enigma to him some days and it keeps him on his toes.

Two months pass as you live out your days with Nathan in his sprawling complex of a home slash research facility. It was strange how you came to be here, a memory almost it seems. You had been receiving emails for weeks from an unknown sender, something about a research assistant position. You didn't pay much mind, as you weren't looking for an assistant position. You wanted to land a job doing website building for Blue Book. That is what you applied for and that is what you have skill in doing. So when your phone rang in the dead of night and you found out it was the CEO, Nathan, calling you directly about the emails and the assistant position, you were shocked. One thing lead to another and you found yourself living with Nathan while he began building AI.

Being Nathan's assistant isn't exactly what you hoped for, but it's not bad. You get to see how he works, what makes that genius tick. He's not as bad as you had heard, not as full of himself, but maybe that's just because he likes you. Working with him consists of observing him, helping him document things, getting tools and equipment while his hands are full, doing facial tracking studies, talking out loud in long sequences while he records your speech patterns. Some days it feels like he studies you more than he works on the AI. Not that you mind, his gaze is undeniably attracting, so much fascination and wonder behind those wire frame glasses. He leaves you with butterflies and longing for more than casual touches.

______________________

"Nathan?" You call softly from across the lab table he is sitting at, pushing wires into the gel mass brain unit to hook it up to his laptop. "I have a question."

"Shoot."

"Why did you choose me?"

He looks over his glasses as his hands still against the gel mass. He's going to lie, you know this look. It's so easy to tell. "I didn't choose you, it was random, I needed an assistant and you were a good fit."

"That's not like you. You wouldn't have some random mediocre website builder be your lab assistant."

"It's not like me? How would you know?"

"Well, I've been here for two months and I've worked and lived with you nearly every day for all hours except for when I'm sleeping. You're too calculated, precise, and prideful of your work to allow some random person into your life like this. So again, why did you choose me?"

Nathan sits up, folding his arms over his chest as he looks at you with a small smile on his lips. His eyes meet yours and you can tell he's intrigued. He has that look, like you're something shiny and new that he has yet to figure out. God you love that look.

"Well?" You push insistently. He sucks at lying to you and he looks as if he's going to try again.

"I chose you because I studied you. For weeks I went through your data, your work, your photos and posts on social media. I selected you because I could see something in you that terrified me."

You raise your eyebrows. That was not the response you expected. The data thing did not surprise you, it's Nathan and he can do almost anything on the internet with the software Blue Book is built from. You expected an answer regarding your physical appearance, reducing you to the beautiful assistant, eye candy. Not that you terrified Nathan, which in turn terrifies you because you're not sure what about yourself would ever be deemed as such.

"Cat got your tongue?"

"Yes." You smile softly, turning your head away to break his gaze. It's too much. Too intense. "You've thrown me for a loop."

Nathan pushes away from the table and walks around it to sit beside you. He turns on the stool and tilts your head to look at him, fleeting fingers careful against your jaw, eyes meeting, faces only a few feet away from each other. "I chose you because I see myself staring back at me."

"What?"

"The eyes are the window to the soul. When I saw your photo I knew I had to meet you in person. I would have done anything to meet you, to see you face to face because I wanted to be right."

"Right about what?"

He gathers your hands into his and your heart beat picks up, cold sweat prickling at the back of your neck. "There is a theory that a human soul can be split into two people. It's interesting to consider, not that I believe it entirely. It's a bit of a fairytale and all. I'm curious though and I wanted to study it."

"So you brought me here to study me?" You swallow harshly. This whole time you've been part of an experiment it seems. Wonderful.

"I did."

"So I'm not your assistant. I'm your specimen."

Nathan drops your hands and stands up, walking around the lab slowly, pacing almost. He has never seemed so nervous. "You're still my assistant. You assist me do you not?"

"Yes."

"Then you're an assistant."

"Nathan. You know that isn't what I mean."

He chuckles. "Don't worry about it too much."

"I'm going to worry. You're studying me!"

Nathan sighs and walks back over to you, cupping your face in his palms as if to make you listen to him better and your heart threatens to explode. He has never been this physically affectionate with you ever yet his touch is so familiar. "I would be studying you anyway. You're my assistant, my little poseable doll, my muse which I collect data from."

"This isn't making me feel any better. Actually, I feel insulted."

"I'm not insulting you."

"Doll?"

"Fine." He says harshly. It's as close to an apology as you will ever get.

"Thank you."

Nathan drops your face and walks away again. He seems anxious now. He strides along the length of the brightly lit lab tables, hands in his pockets. The silence that fills the room is stifling, awkward, and increasingly thick with unsaid thoughts.

You slide off of your stool and wander toward the table in the enclosed chamber at the back of the room. There are mechanical body parts on the table, like a person laid out for an exam or a surgery. It's strange to think that eventually these parts will be a working form, these wires and plastic and metal plates will be an artificial life form that looks and sounds like a real human. You turn suddenly and look back at Nathan. He's staring, your fingers touching the shoulder of the body before you. It's as if you could feel his eyes on you, as if you could see yourself through them actually.

"What're you doing?" Nathan asks as he leans against the entryway, his tone far calmer than his eyes would portray.

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Let me tell you." He steps in the room and around to the opposite side of the exam table. "You're breaking my rules."

You pull your hand away and curl it against your side. "Am I?"

"Yes." He leans on the table, arms open, hands pressed to the cold top. "You're touching my work."

"Nathan I touch your work all the fucking time. I literally carried a leg across the lab for you earlier. What the hell are you talking about?"

"With permission. I gave you permission to carry that leg."

"Okay?"

"Did I tell you that you could come in here and touch this?" He gestures to the parts on the table. "Did you consider that it might not be a good idea to do that?"

"It's just laying here Nathan."

"But do you know that? Maybe I have something going on that requires these to be perfectly still."

"I put these in here yesterday. I laid them down and you haven't moved them since." You cross your arms and stare him down. "You're just trying to start a fight because you don't like the awkward tension in the room and a fight will change the subject off of why you hired me."

Nathan's head snaps up and he glares. Oh how he glares daggers right through your soul. You know you're right and he knows you're right. It's killing him not to have a comeback ready. He was so ready to fight about the AI parts that your breakdown of his thought process has destroyed all means of retaliation. It's satisfying, watching him flounder for a second.

"Cat got your tongue?" You say with the biggest smirk. His own words, his own choice of phrasing thrown back at him.

"See this is why you terrify me."

"Because I called you on your bullshit?"

"Yes." He turns and heads for the entryway. "You call me out before I even realize what I'm doing."

"So you didn't plan on coming in here and trying to start something?"

"No, I mean I did I guess but it wasn't a coherent thought. I didn't go "oh I'm going to start an argument now because I want to deflect this awkwardness", I just did it because....well I guess it was my instinct." He runs a hand over his head and braces it against the back of his neck. "I need to go for a run."

"It's raining."

"So?"

"Wear a coat."

"Are you my mother now?"

"You're doing it again." You point at him and he scowls.

"I'm leaving."

"I'll run a hot bath."

"For what?"

"For you when you get back inevitably cold and sore because you over do it on the trail."

Nathan growls, literally growls and looks pissed. "Stop! Just stop! Get out of my head!"

You walk out of the chamber and past him toward the hall door. "You'd like that wouldn't you?"

"Don't."

"Didn't do anything."

"You will."

"Maybe. Go run."

"Fuck."

______________________

You decide to do some research of your own while Nathan is gone. You're not supposed to get on his computer, or really contact anyone in the outside world as per your non disclosure agreement. There are exceptions though. You technically cannot discuss anything that happens in the complex but you can discuss everything else. You could call your parents but you've not had the best relationship with them since you took the job with Nathan. They didn't understand, thought you were being coerced by him and they never wanted you to be in the tech field. They wanted you to be a doctor or a nurse. If only they knew how much Nathan paid you. They would forget about that medical field shit so fast. Unfortunately your pay is related to the job so you're not able to discuss it.

You take a seat at Nathan's desk and bring up the center screen. You can see him on the security camera on the backside of the house. He's sitting on the open air deck, rain pouring down on him. Not running. This is actually perfect, you can make sure to get off the computer as soon as he leaves the camera view.

You pull up Blue Book and search "split soul theories". Tons of information pops up. You wade through the crap. Book titles, movies, songs and stuff. The only information you want is about the actual theory itself. Finally you find it, some spiritual website has the explanation you're looking for.

"Twin flames?" You mutter, skimming through the paragraphs of text.

The pages tell you about the theory that a soul can be split in two and those people are drawn together and are like two sides of the same coin. Kind of like soulmates but deeper, more connected, lives spanning every reincarnation. You shake your head. There is no way this is what Nathan is interested in investigating. It's too wild. He's a man of logic and science and biology. Not spiritual at all. Besides, you're not like him. At least you don't think so. Maybe you are...in some ways you can see how you're similar. That's disturbing and you're not going down that road.

The screen on the left is empty, the camera showing just a feed of the empty deck. Shit. You scramble to close the tab but it's too late.

"Oh dear, what are you doing?"

"Fuck," you whisper and turn around slowly to see Nathan standing in the doorway to the office. He's changed into his favorite white long sleeve and some sweatpants.

"Should I pretend you aren't on my computer with the browser open or should I just fire you now?"

"I wasn't doing anything against my NDA." You stand up and he gives you a look over his glasses.

He moves past you and sinks into his chair, turning abruptly to pull up your closed tab on the browser. "Twin flames huh?"

"Yep. Just looking shit up."

"Uh huh."

"Is that what you think we are?"

"No."

"Then what do you-"

"It's what I know we are." He turns back and raises his eyebrows. "You were watching me on the cams?"

You shrug. "Maybe."

"You're a little shit."

"As if you don't watch me when we aren't together."

"Touché." He stands and circles around to grab a book off the shelf behind you. He flips it open and starts scribbling something down.

You lean over trying to see and he tilts the book up. "What is that?"

"A notebook."

"Smart ass."

"I am." He gives his butt a smack and grins at you cheekily. "Don't worry what this book is."

"Secrets make enemies, don't you know?"

"Yes," he puts the book away on the shelf in plain sight. He knows you won't try to get it. You wouldn't disrespect his things like that, even though the lack of respect for your own is considerable in this house. "I have lots of enemies."

You roll your eyes. "That's because you're insufferable, Nathan."

"No it's because I have secrets."

"Wait, you just changed the subject...circle back here. What do you mean you know we're twin flames? How did I miss that?"

Nathan chuckles and puts his arm around your back. "You'll see, one day."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"Oh no it does." He guides you into the hall and closes the door behind him. "Once you think about it long and hard you'll realize it."

You walk ahead of him. "I don't get what that means and you're talking in riddles. I'm going to bed."

"I'm going to make dinner."

"And you're going to eat alone. Goodnight Nathan."

___________________

"I know you're awake." Nathan's voice floats through the door to your room. It's some time after midnight, days since you got into it with him about the twin flame nonsense. Yet it's been playing on your mind nonetheless. "Mi luna, can I come in?"

Mi Luna? What the hell is that about? He must be shit faced drunk. You know if you open that door you won't get any sleep. You also know he could just open it since his card is all access, but he is still asking. It's the little things.

"The door is open!"

Nathan peeks in, just his face appearing around the heavy glass door. "Mi luna, it's so bright in here."

"Yeah? I've got the lamps on. It's subterranean, remember? No windows."

He slides in and closes the door. As if someone were ever going to interrupt the two of you. "Lights off."

The lights go down to just the night lights under the vanity and in the bathroom remain on. You raise your eyebrows at the man walking so carefully across your bedroom. He doesn't seem to be stumbling. That's a good sign.

"What is mi luna all about?"

"Do you like it?"

"I don't know?"

"It means My Moon."

"Okay?"

Nathan flops down on the bed and crushes your feet under his butt. "I was thinking about pet names earlier. I hate them all." He's definitely drunk.

"But you like mi luna?"

"Yeah. Mi Luna y mi sol." He extends his arm up as if to touch something out of reach on the ceiling. "My moon and my sun. Sounds romantic."

"Romantic? Since when do you like anything romantic?"

He turns his head to look at you. You're glad you can't make his face out clearly in the darkened room. You fear his eyes will tell you more than you wish to know. "You make me soft."

"I make you soft? How?"

He lets his arm go limp, falling behind him on the bed. "You're so pretty, and you're smart too. So smart." He sighs heavily like a man with much on his mind. "I've had too much tequila."

You chuckle softly. "Oh boy."

"What?"

"I've never seen you drink it, tequila makes you a different kind of drunk."

"Yeah." He reaches out to you and you take his hand. He wiggles his finger tips against yours and makes a little do-do-do noise to go with it. "I wanna marry you."

"What?" Your heart stops and his hand goes limp under yours. "Nathan, what did you just say?"

"Nothing?"

"No you said you wanna marry me."

"If you heard it then why did you ask?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd lie."

He scoffs and sits up. "I didn't say that."

"Yes you did!"

"No I didn't. You misheard me. I don't even believe in marriage."

"Nathan."

"I'm going to the lab." He pushes off the bed and wobbles on his feet.

You kick his butt and he stumbles forward. "You're an asshole."

He looks back and even in the darkened room you can see his smile. "Am I?"

"Yes! Now get out of here. I want to sleep a few hours before you inevitably wake me up at an ungodly time despite having slept about three hours yourself."

He chuckles as he pads softly to the door.

"What's so funny?"

"I like waking you up early." He leans on the door frame, allowing it to support his body entirely. "It's my favorite part of the day. Your sleepy little yawns, heavy lidded eyes, they way your voice sounds so soft."

You ball your fists in the comforter and force down the butterflies that stir in your stomach. This isn't Nathan. This is a drunk lonely idiot. You can't catch feelings for him, he's your boss. It's honestly too late but that's not any of his business. "Go!"

"You like meeee!"

"Nathan please just go away!"

"It's my house. I don't have to." He teases and you throw a pillow at him. He laughs and slips out the door to avoid further projectiles.

You pull a pillow over your face and scream into it. He's frustrating, whiplash embodied. Fuck him and fuck how he makes you have butterflies in your stomach.

______________________

"Can I ask you something about the AI?"

"Any time." Nathan says as he punches at the bag hanging on the deck. He's been going at it for about an hour now.

You've been sitting and watching him, curled up on the bench wearing his white long sleeve shirt because it's cool out and you didn't want to go get something of your own. You've been sketching the scene of him boxing as if to preserve the memory. As if you won't be here again in a few days doing the same thing.

"Is this your first? The one on the table that we- you are building?"

He stops, steadying the bag a moment and giving you a troublesome smile. "No."

"What was the first one like?"

He returns to punching the bag in a steady rhythm. "She's human like. A little taller than me. I didn't get to make a head before the body malfunctioned."

You raise your eyebrows. "It was a woman?"

"Is. She is a woman, yes."

"She's still in around?"

"Yes." Nathan hugs the bag and looks at you almost lovingly, clearly excited to show you this AI he's kept a secret. "Do you want to see her?"

You stand from the bench you've been watching him on and he starts unwrapping his hands. You take note how his fingers look a little bruised, as if he were going too hard on the bag. "She's here?"

"Mmhmm."

"Why haven't you shown me?"

"You haven't asked."

"But we've been building a new one for this long. Why wouldn't you tell me you had another?"

Nathan grabs his glasses from the counter in the dining room as you pass through, following close behind him. He chuckles. "This new one is not going to be like the others."

"Others?"

"Yeah, the others."

"Nathan, how many are there?"

"Five?" He glances back and does a little hand motion to signify that he wasn't sure. "No, six."

You stop dead in your tracks outside the lab door. "Six? You've made six?"

He turns at the end of the hall and puts his hands on his hips. "I've been here for three years. Of course I've made six. Come on, do you wanna see them or not?"

You hurry ahead and step into where he's leading you. A lounge with big rock walls and built in cupboards. He scans his badge at the first cupboard door and opens it. Inside is half of a bot, no head, just a mechanical body with legs and no arms.

Nathan opens the next one. It has a head with a face, no legs but a torso and an arm. He opens the rest and you walk down the line. The closer you get to the end you realize they look more and more human. They have skin, and unique features, hair and everything. It's when you reach the last one that your heart stops.

Before you is a spitting image of yourself. It's as if you were made of wax. Not quite right but not off the mark. She's complete, no missing parts, but only her face is skin, the rest is the robot base model.

"Do you understand now?"

"I don't understand anything. What the hell is this?" You step back, hands clinging to your sweater at your stomach. "Nathan what is going on?"

"I built her last year. This is part of the reason why you terrify me."

"But you said...you said that you saw yourself in me and that's what terrified you?"

Nathan closes the door and stands in front of you. "You're freaked out, I get it. When I said I saw myself I meant my mind, my vision. Not like me, obviously you don't look like me. I see my soul reflected back at me."

You stumble back onto the futon and stare up at the man before you. "You brought me here because of that? Because you made a bot that looks like me?"

He steps forward and sinks down, squatting in front of you, hands landing on your thighs. "I saw you in a dream, a very vivid dream like I was in another life all together and I modeled her after what I saw because I couldn't forget. I had no idea you were real until I came across the twin flame theory while researching dreams and I decided to try and find you."

"But how did you find me?"

"Blue Book. Once I made her I scanned her face for recognition and found hundreds of matches. I cross referenced her specific features, rough age estimate, a few other things and then I found you."

You shake your head in disbelief. "I was trying to work for Blue Book. I put in dozens of applications. I was gravitating toward you all along."

"Yeah." He says breathily. "Yeah you were."

"You're my soulmate?"

"Mmmhmm." He rubs your thighs comfortingly. "It's more than that. Soulmate is a pretty blanket term but what we are is twin flames. A soul split in two that rejoins in every lifetime. I never believed in something like that, but that dream was so unlike anything I've experienced it changed my mind. I'm a man of logic and science not fairy tales and fantasies. It tore me up for a long time."

You let out a little bubble of laughter and you quickly cover it up because it's not funny, it's disbelief. "You? Nathan Bateman is my other half?"

"Don't say it like that. It's not funny."

"This is a gag right? You made that mold of my face and slapped it on the AI for this. You're fucking with me." You push him and he falls back onto his ass. "You're an asshole."

"What?!" He gets to his feet as you stand from the futon. "You think I'm lying to you about this?!"

"Yes! Why would a man like you ever believe in that stuff? You don't even believe in marriage. You're lying to get me to sleep with you or something. You're playing into my feelings and fantasies and hopes of someday finding someone to share my life with forever." You head for the doorway and Nathan grabs your hand to stop you. "Let me go. This is cruel. I never thought you would go this fucking far as to-"

"I would never do that to you." In one fluid motion he pulls you close, cradles your face and presses his lips to yours. Fireworks explode behind your eyes as they fall closed. Your heart races, body frozen against his as the world comes crashing down around you. All at once you're dizzy, breathless, excited. You're overloaded, overwhelmed and you don't know what is happening.

"Do you feel it?" He asks and you open your eyes to find him only inches away. The moment your gaze meets his you know he isn't lying. "You're the only person who I've ever felt this connection with. You know how picky I am."

"You're not lying." You mutter, remembering all the times you couldn't stop staring at him. The times when you couldn't remove your eyes from his once they met. The way you move seamlessly around each other, as if you knew each other's next move every step of the way. And most of all how you can't imagine being away from him, how you never get tired of being in his company. "Since we met I've had this feeling, and when our eyes meet-"

"We can't look away."

"Yeah." You lay a hand on his cheek, fingers fanning out over his beard. It's a strange feeling, foreign under your touch. "What do we do now?"

"We keep going."

"Keep going? Going where?"

"Ahead, with the AI, with our relationship." Nathan presses his head to yours. "Together we're going to make a perfect AI. If I hadn't started this, gotten this far into it and made the AI I based off of the dream I had of you, we wouldn't be here right now. You wouldn't be here, we wouldn't have met. I wouldn't be able to make the newest model without you."

"Yes you could. This isn't like you to say you need someone. Have you slept?"

He chuckles. "Yes I've slept."

"You could make this AI without me. You don't need me."

"But I do." He steps back, cradling your face in his hands, thumbs on your cheeks stroking softly. "You've been the key to everything. I can study your features, your expressions, your eyes...fuck your eyes, man. Sure I can get all the data from Blue Book like I did before but you're different. You make me think differently about everything."

You lean into his hand on your cheek. "Kiss me again."

"Don't have to tell me twice." He slides his arms around your back and pulls you flush against him. His mouth covers yours, a sweet kiss turning hungry quickly. He backs you against the wall, arms caging you in as he licks into your mouth. He lets out the softest moan as your hand explores his chest. It's the most vulnerable you've ever seen him.

You arch against him and he lifts your leg up as you hook it around his. You run your hand over his back and stop at his shoulders, cradling the back of his neck. "This is what Nathan in love looks like?"

He kisses along your jaw and pulls back, glasses a little askew. He looks wrecked, completely gone. Like he's drunk but on you instead of liquor. He smiles, pressing another kiss to your lips.

"You're damn right it is."

End

______

Thank you for reading. Please reblog if you enjoyed! - A

Header by delicate-venus

*****Note: none of my works should be posted anywhere outside of my linked accounts. I do not give permission to repost with or without credit to my accounts. Please notify me of any reposted works.*****

#ex machina #ex machina fic #ex machina fanfic #nathan bateman #nathan bateman fic #nathan bateman x reader #nathan bateman fanfic #oscar issac #oscar isaac #oscar isaac fic #oscar isaac character

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flameohotwife · 4 years ago

Text

'Til We Meet Again

Aang has passed. Katara is heading to the South to start anew without him, and finally begins to process her grief along the way. Written for the @kataang-week 2021 prompt: the sea & the sky

Read on ao3 or ffn

Everyone who remained was gathered outside at the dock on Air Temple Island. Saying goodbye to the gang was always hard, but this time was different. This time they were missing one of their own, and he wouldn’t be coming back. Not as they knew him, anyway.

They’d held a private sky burial almost a week ago, and the public memorial the previous day, so most of the dignitaries had finally gone. Katara looked out to Yue Bay and willed herself to keep it together just a little longer. The low hanging clouds were pale orange in the early morning light, reminding her of when they’d bent the clouds together a lifetime ago. A sob rose in her throat and she hastily swallowed it. Not yet.

Her friends and family huddled around her. Toph, Sokka, Suki, Zuko, and even Mai came in for one of Team Avatar’s notorious group hugs. She closed her eyes when a breeze blew by, trying to pretend it was him. That he was still there. If she could keep pretending, she might be able to make it.

Bumi, Kya and Tenzin came out of the house and down to the dock, bags in hand. “Everybody ready?” Bumi asked. He fidgeted uncomfortably with his bag, unsure what to do with so much negative energy.

“There’s been a change in plans,” Katara said carefully. All eyes sprung to her. She hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, yet. “You all are going on the ship as planned with Sokka and Suki. Tenzin, dear, I’m going to take Oogi. We’ll meet you in the South Pole.”

Tenzin’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open comically. He had inherited the need to intricately plan every detail of their trips from his uncle, and this was surely throwing a wrench into his itinerary. “Mother, please, come on the ship with us,” he begged. “Or at least let one of us come with you. Are you sure you’re…”

“I’m fine,” Katara snapped, cutting Tenzin off and assuring everyone there that she was anything but. Sokka stepped forward to put a strong hand on his nephew’s shoulder.

“She’ll be okay, buddy,” he said. “She needs some time in the sky on her own.”

Katara smiled thankfully at her brother. Of course he would understand her grief. He had been with her throughout all her worst times, after all. She obviously hadn’t taken to the skies when their mother died, but she knew he remembered the nights she spent out by the ocean alone, after the chores were done and the family in bed. She’d often returned to find him waiting up for her, a pot of tea over the fire. And now, after a week of being smothered by friends and family and strangers alike, all bringing condolences, Katara needed some air. She pulled her babies--now so much taller than her--in for a group hug of their own.

“You’re all so strong,” she started, fighting the tears pricking at her eyes. Just a little longer. “We’ll be together again before you know it. And I’m going to make you all go penguin sledding, since your Dad won’t be there to do it.” She pulled back with a twinkle in her shining blue eyes, kissing them each soundly on the forehead in turn before heading over to where Oogi had been patiently waiting to get on the ship with everyone. She nuzzled his face affectionately. “Ready, boy?”

Oogi grunted and licked her and a laugh escaped her throat. “Toph, Zuko, Mai,” she said, turning to face her friends who wouldn’t be joining them in the South Pole, “Thank you. For everything, especially this week. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

“Don’t be so sure about that, Sweetness,” Toph laughed, “I’m going back into hiding. That was too much people-ing for me. Maybe in another 66 years.”

“Well, you’re welcome at the palace anytime,” Zuko said. “We should get back to Izumi, though. Have a safe journey south, okay?”

“Yeah, don’t be a stranger,” Mai added dryly. Katara nodded, but Mai knew she wouldn’t be coming to visit the palace again. She and Aang had shared too many memories there. Maybe they’d see each other at smaller events, but it seemed Katara was going to retire from public view as well. She watched as her friend climbed up onto the giant bison’s head and Tenzin airbent her bags into the saddle for her. Her long hair, drawn up in a bun with her signature loopies, was more white than brown now, and Mai noticed far more wrinkles and worry lines on Katara’s face than she’d had the last time they’d seen each other, only a few months prior. Aang’s illness and subsequent passing had taken a physical toll on her, as well.

“Bye, everyone,” Katara waved one last time, sad eyes sweeping over each cherished face, and the place that had been her home for the majority of her life so far. That she had built with him. She could feel her heart squeezing in her chest, and knew she had to get out of there. “Yip yip!”

Finally, the wind whipped around her as they soared into the sky. It was such a familiar feeling, even though it had been months since she had left Air Temple Island while she tended to Aang, refusing to leave his side. But there was nothing tying her to this place--this home that they had dreamed of together and made so many memories in--anymore. Her children were grown and would be fine on their own, and her tether was gone.

Katara closed her eyes and just listened to the sound of the air moving against her ears. She had never felt as at home in the sky as Aang had, but after traveling with him so much throughout their lives, flying on a bison gave her a warmth in her chest that had been missing since he’d passed. She felt the walls she had built, trying to be strong for her children and friends, begin to crumble, and after keeping them in for so long, let the tears flow freely, sobbing to the sky.

Suddenly, she was 14, bending the clouds atop Appa with her best friend. She remembered being in awe of their ability to combine their elements to make something new, how much fun it had been; how it had felt like dancing, and how he had referenced that moment later, when they began to have children together, calling Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin their little “cloudbabies.”

She was soaring through the sky beside him on his glider to deal with the Harmony Restoration Movement. Learning to fly side-by-side on his glider with him had been something of an adventure, but when they did, it was like nothing she had ever experienced before. They were perfectly in sync, especially when they flew over the ocean. She remembered staring at the horizon, where the sea touched the sky, and the wispy clouds made from both of them coming together, and feeling so at home, like she had always been meant to be there, with him.

She was flying over the ocean with Aang, sitting back in Appa’s saddle and leaning into his warm chest. He was asking her to stay with him forever, and she was telling him she couldn’t live without him. Katara felt her heart shatter for the thousandth time since he passed, and he wasn’t there to glue her pieces back together again, like he always had been.

She knew she was resilient. That she had lost before, and would lose again, and that this pain--though it would never leave her--would become bearable with time. She knew her life didn’t revolve completely around Aang, and it never had, but she had spent so much of her life loving him so completely that now, with nowhere left for that love to go, she felt swallowed by it.

Alone, up in his element, without the people she always felt the need to be strong for (and the one person who had never made her feel that way), Katara let herself break. Again and again, as often as she needed to. The wind was comforting in an aching sort of way, and the crying was cathartic. She hadn’t felt this free since before Aang had fallen ill. Since the last time they’d flown together. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend he was sitting next to her, that the breeze was him teasing her, that this was all a dream. Instead she forced her eyes to the horizon, tears still streaming.

The sun had risen much higher in the sky since she’d left Air Temple Island. There was no more orangish-pink sky, but there was still a string of low-lying clouds that blocked her view of the sky and sea coming together. All of a sudden, that freeness she felt dissipated and an indignant anger rose in her. She was angry at those clouds and angry at the circumstances that caused Aang’s early death and angry that he wasn’t there to comfort her. It wasn’t fair. She felt cheated out of decades more time with him, of the chance to be grandparents together, or to really enjoy their golden years together. She erupted with a mournful wail, slashing at the clouds with her bending until they too exploded in a downpour.

Katara took some time then, to breathe, and to feel. To really, truly, deliberately feel everything she had been trying to avoid in the week since he died. Since he left her. She recalled another time her grief and anger had gotten the better of her, and how he had calmly, gently advised her, “let your anger out. Then let it go.” She could still hear his sweet twelve-year-old voice and see the concern in his grey eyes in the back of her memory. She took another centering breath, like he had taught her to do after the war when they were both haunted by nightmares and panic attacks, and as she exhaled, she tried to push out all the anger with the air. To rid her body and soul of any animosity surrounding her feelings about him.

She resolved to be at peace. To let her waves of anger and frustration flow like water, and let it go. She didn’t have a choice in the situation, after all; the only choice she had was how she responded.

“I love you, Sweetie,” she whispered to the sky. The tears were still tracing paths down her face, but it was calming, again like before. “I know you had to go. And...I know you would have stayed with me if you could. It’s just another Avatar trip--another Spirit World journey, only this time…” Katara paused, closing her eyes to allow the sorrow to pass through her in sobs before continuing. “This time, it seems so permanent. I know you said it’s not goodbye forever, that this will only last ‘til we meet again in the Spirit World, and then we’ll be together for eternity. But it just… it hurts so much more, being without you this time. I know I can be strong. I will be. I just miss you, is all.”

There was a gentle breeze that swirled around her hair and kissed her face. She opened her eyes in shock; it seemed so intentional, like bending, but he wasn’t there, of course. She smiled, though, and then she laughed, because she knew she would always find him. She had been destined to find him in that iceberg, and she would continue to find his spirit now in the playful air currents, or in the beauty of a field of flowers, or in the laughter of children, until she could find him in the Spirit World and they would be united once more.

She knew that as long as she could keep his spirit with her, she could get through this. That she could be happy again, for him, for their children, and for herself. She also understood that her decision to move to the South Pole was the right one, not only because it would be the best place to train the next Avatar in waterbending, like she had promised Aang she would, but because the open space would be perfect for her healing heart. Katara could live out the rest of her days there, surrounded by both their elements; by the sea and the sky.

#kataang week 2021 #the sea & the sky #SORRY for the sad!#katara #aang #kataang #atla #grown up gaang #cloud family #grief/mourning #i can't usually even read aang death fics but here i am writing one #I'M SORRY

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gojosatorou · 5 years ago

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Jujutsu Kaisen Week - Day 1 - Team Tokyo

Please accept my humble offering. It's kind of a mess, but really I haven't written anything in like 3 or 4 years.

Yuuji was in a great mood. No, slash that. He was in an amazing mood. And the reasons for his absolutely amazing mood were both staring at the movie playing on the TV in the common room.

Or read in AO3

It's not the first time Yuuji has watched a movie together with Kugisaki and Fushiguro, but all the other times it had been in a movie theater. Usually after a mission, the few times they weren’t completely wiped out and when Kugisaki didn't go ambling around on her own. And those times were good, they were great! But this time it was the three just chilling watching a movie, not in a theater, but in the relative privacy of the common room and with the lights off, that made all the difference.

The movie that was playing was one that Yuuji already saw, but one that Kugisaki had commented seemed interesting and that Fushiguro, after some prompting, admitted he hadn't seen and so Yuuji just couldn't leave it at that. And sure they were probably tired, the mission they had just came from hadn't been that hard actually, but it had been tedious and physically taxing. Who knew that a curse that came from the fear of lice would be that annoying to exorcize. Although, on second thought it did made a lot of sense.

Either way that was in the past, the curse was exorcised and now Yuuji was sandwiched between two of his favorite people.

With a small hum Yuuji dragged his eyes away from the tv to look at Fushiguro first, he was leaning back into the couch, legs kicked out and body angling towards Yuuji, his eyes blinking heavily at the movie. Yuuji couldn't hold the small smile that appeared on his face.

Then he turned his eyes to the other side, towards Kugisaki. She was curled up against the arm of the couch, curled up in a bunch of blankets. Huh, she kind of looks like a bean. He looked at Bean Kugisaki for a few more seconds and then returned his gaze to the tv as a warm feeling settled in his heart.

Today was shaping out to end with a good note. No one got hurt during the mission, there was movie night and even Sukuna had been quiet the who—

Something fell against Yuuji's shoulder interrupting his thoughts, his eye quickly moving to see Fushiguro's face smushed, eyes closed and mouth slightly open against his shoulder. He had fallen asleep.

Yuuji didn't know why, but he felt like this was something that needed to be shared. It was probably the giddiness that had fallen upon him since they had sat on the sofa.

“Kugisaki! Kugisaki! Look!” Yuuji whispered urgently, his eyes leaving Fushiguro's face to make sure Kugisaki was paying attention. She was uncurling, dragging herself from where she had made herself into a bean and angling towards Yuuji, peering over him to where Fushiguro was curled up. She was too, Yuuji noted, blinking heavily.

When he was sure he had her attention he turned to Fushiguro and said with a small giggle, his voice soft with the warm feeling that was in his heart (he was so glad he still could feel this) “Look at him he fell asleep!”

Kugisaki let out a small laugh “Look at him falling asleep in the middle of the movie. Just like an old man” She moved her hand and patted Fushiguro in the head softly. Then she moved and grabbed one of the blankets that surrounded her and dropped it over Fushiguro, the end of it covering part of Yuuji. So she was more affectionated when tired, good to know. After doing that she returned to her bean position. But instead of returning to the side of the couch she simply leaned against Yuuji. Yuuji didn't know how his heart could contain so much. He felt a giddy smile form in his face and didn't even try to stop it.

Yuuji turned towards the tv to continue watching, paying more attention to the two warm masses at his side than to the movie, basking in the moment. As time passed he felt Kugisaki's weight fall more heavily. And when he looked at her it was to see her eyes closed and her breath heavy. She had also nodded off. One of her blankets had fallen softly to cover up the part of Yuuji that hadn't been covered with what was now Fushiguro's blanket.

A laugh escaped him and Yuuji understood what Gojo-sensei was all about when he called them his cute students.

With a small sigh Yuuji sinked into the couch, melting against it. Kugisaki and Fushiguro falling more heavily onto him, burying him.

The softness of the couch, the warmth of his precious friends, the dim glow of the tv and the hum of the fan.Yuuji cataloged everything, he wanted to remember this moment properly.

He would have to wake them up soon. But Yuuji wanted just a little bit more, just a little bit more time like this . Wanted this moment to last as much as it possibly could.

This would be a good way to go. A proper way. Yuuji thought before closing his eyes.

“I wasn't going to wake them up!”

There were voices talking, breaking the lull of sleep. He couldn't quite make them out. Yuuji opened his eyes blearily to the light that was filling the room. So he fell asleep. Honestly it didn't surprise him, he had been really comfortable. After blinking away the grogginess a little Yuuji turned to look down and noticed that during the night Kugisaki and Fushiguro had pretty much exchanged positions. Now Fushiguro was curled up, his long legs just managing to fit in the couch. His head was over Yuuji's stomach and still was a heavy, warm weight. Before he had Bean Kugisaki and now he had Bean Fushiguro. What an amazing day it was shaping out to be.

Kugisaki on the other hand seemed too had renounced her Bean ways and had uncurled, legs still slightly bent, but away from her torso. She too was using his stomach as a pillow. Huh, Yuuji didn't think he was that comfortable.

But wait, if they were both asleep who had been talking. Yuuji moved his eyes through the room until they rested at Maki-senpai and Panda's wide eyes look. Ah so they probably hadn't meant to wake him up. And even if it really sucked to be awake right now, he couldn't help but to give them a dopey smile, it was nice seeing them. Yuuji wondered where Inukami-senpai was, if he was in the school maybe they could all have some big breakfast together, they could invite Gojo-sensei too, if he was around.

Making up his mind Yuuji returned from where his mind had wandered to see that Maki and Panda were looking at them with amused faces. “B-breakfast” Yuuji croaked, his throat dry.

Surprisingly appearing to understand what Yuuji meant from that single word, Maki-senpai said with a hum. “Yeah, it'd be nice to eat with everyone”. Maybe it came with the territory of knowing Inukami-senpai.

After that a vicious smile appeared in Maki's face, her hands moving to either side of her face only to come together with a vicious clap.

Kugisaki and Fushiguro startled awake, eyes wide open as they looked around. Fushiguro's usual bed head was 10 times worse than usual, and Kugisaki had the most baffled look he had ever seen on her face.

Maki continued to look at them with a smile “Come on if we are eating together, we are preparing everything together”. It was received by Kugisaki and Fushiguro's confused groans. They were still pretty much curled up against Yuuji.

The warm heavy feeling in his heart exploded and Yuuji let out a laugh. Today was truly shaping up to be a great day!

#jjkweek #jjkweek2020 #jujutsu kaisen #itadori yuji #kugisaki nobara #megumi fushiguro #I dont know if this could be considered spoilers #Maki and Panda havent appeared in the anime #but nothing is really revealed and they just appear at the end #my writing #Its been so damn long since i wrote for the last time #jjk spoilers #just in case

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sunflwrvolume6 · 4 years ago

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fifteen [18]

My hands itched for the warmth of his, fingers begged to lace with his, but that was little more than a one-sided desire. So I kept distance between us.

Harry didn’t feel for me what I felt for him, and that was fine. Painful to accept, but I did it, anyway.

[ao3 ☆ wattpad]

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The impromptu nap that I took with Harry seemed to have drained away any residual anger I felt toward him and his prank. It was too hard to hold onto, anyway. He made it impossible to not want to be around him, though it only made my feelings for him grow stronger.

The weather warmed enough over the next handful of weeks that our heavy coats were no longer necessary, and I took advantage of that as much as I possibly could. Even with a chill in the air, I relished only wearing a thick jumper as I walked around the town with Harry. Our walks were much less comfortable than before, and I only had myself to blame for that.

I was constantly tripping over my tongue, unable to speak without risking telling him everything and making a fool of myself. He often had to repeat himself in conversations, because I was too far lost in my thoughts of him. My hands itched for the warmth of his, fingers begged to lace with his, but that was little more than a one-sided desire. So I kept distance between us.

Harry didn’t feel for me what I felt for him, and that was fine. Painful to accept, but I did it, anyway.

The nickname I’d given him slowly morphed during that time - from Curly Sue to Curly Q and, finally, just Q. “Curly Sue” was reserved only for times when he was being incorrigible, though it was more of a term of endearment, a gentle and affectionate chiding when I needed a break from him pestering me. He rarely took offence to it any more.

More often than not, I heard him call me by my name, rarely “Star”. Ever since he gave me my Christmas gift, the moniker had become a mere memory, that fact left a bitter taste in my mouth, and the calmness he always brought to me was slowly drowned out by the sharpness of my jealousy, my hurt.

The time we spent together dwindled, the occasional walks all I had left of our pre-holiday relationship. Residing in the same house didn’t seem to matter much in that regard - I’d stay in my bedroom while he hung out with his friends. Even if Liza invited me over, it was almost a guarantee that I’d turn the invitation down. She was a great friend, and I was so thankful for her ever allowing me into the group. She just… wasn’t Harry.

I caught Anne and Robin exchanging worried glances whenever I would read in the living room. The looks, full of meaning and silent conversations, served to only frustrate me. They were concerned over nothing; I was fine. Absolutely fine.

Until I wasn’t.

Until early-April, when everything changed.

“Did you hear?”

Della skidded to a stop next to the table, pushing at Anthony’s arm until he scooted over, and she dropped to the empty space next to him. Her breathing was shaky, rapid, and she reached for Liza’s apple juice. We all waited until she caught her breath, but my skin prickled the entire time, something telling me this was only the beginning of the end.

“Megan asked Harry to the formal! And,” she started, pausing in an attempt to drum up our excitement, “he said yes!”

As Liza and Anthony exploded into speech, asking questions about the how and when and who told you this?, I stayed quiet, stunned speechless. It wasn’t entirely unexpected - I’d known without a doubt that someone would jump on the chance to have an amazing guy like Harry as their date - but still… it hurt.

Forcing a smile when Della caught my eye, I tried to join in on the conversation, but my heart just wasn’t in it. How could it be, when it was reminded that it wasn’t getting what it wanted? I eventually excused myself from the table, though the others didn’t even seem to notice me standing up. I grabbed my bag and rushed off. Liza called after me, but I didn’t bother turning around.

My feet carried me away from the school, no destination in mind beyond getting far from that particular discussion. The news shouldn’t have hurt nearly as much as it did, and Della’s words rang in my ears. My stomach churned violently, twisting over itself and spilling acid in my blood.

It was my fault. If I’d just gathered up the courage to ask him myself, maybe he wouldn’t have agreed to be Megan’s date. No, no “maybe” about it; he would have taken pity on the fact that I had no one to go with, and he’d have gone with me. As much as I hated the thought of his pity being the only reason, I loathed the fact that he was going with someone else.

“Can’t change it now,” I muttered darkly to myself, scrubbing a hand over my cheek when a tear slipped free. “You were an idiot, and now you have to pay the price.”

A stinging sort of numbness had settled over me by the time I decided to turn toward the house. It was unbearable, the prospect of facing the others - of facing Harry - but I knew Anne would worry too much if I stayed out much longer. She might have even told the programme directors that I’d been gone without permission or checking in, and then I’d have been kicked from the programme with only a few months left.

She instantly rounded on me the second I stepped through the door, her hands fluttering around as she helped me take off my jacket. All I could do was let her fuss; after all, who was I to take that from her when she’d obviously been concerned? Her lips were thin lines slashing across her face when she gathered my hands in hers.

“Where have you been? You’re freezing, darling.”

“I, uh -” I winced when my voice crackled, and her frown grew even larger. Chest aching, I cleared my throat and tried again, “I went on a walk.”

She peered more closely at me, her fingers coming up to brush against my cheekbone. “For three hours? What’s wrong, love?”

“Nothing. Just, just lost track of time, that’s all. I’m sorry for making you worry.”

She frowned but let me go. All I wanted to do at that moment was fall into her arms and cry - both from her kindness and from the jagged pieces cutting my chest open from the inside out. Instead, I manipulated my lips into a weak semblance of a smile and headed to my room. Guilt gnawed at my gut. I hated that she was worrying.

As much as I wanted to tell her what was going on, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her what I was thinking and feeling. Things were already awkward enough, and I refused to be selfish enough to make it even worse. And telling a mother that you were pretty much in love with her son who you only met because she was nice enough to open her home for you? That would have been the worst thing I could possibly have done.

The next two weeks slipped by. Days were quick, blurring one into the other, but the nights… they dragged on, spent staring at the ceiling or curled into a ball on my bed, wanting nothing more than to tiptoe down the hall to Harry’s bedroom. I never did, though. I barely spoke to him during waking hours, and I often caught him staring at me, confusion in his eyes. He never asked, though, so I never explained.

“Why are you - Seren? Aren’t you going to get dressed?”

I shook my head and finished rinsing the dish I’d just washed. Opening my mouth was an awful idea, especially right now. I’d spent the day listening to all of my friends talking about the formal. I had been asked to go, sure, by a very sweet boy whose name I couldn’t remember now. I said no - partially on instinct, but mostly because he wasn’t Harry.

Liza was annoyed that I declined attending, even as a group, but Della had all but strong-armed her into accepting that I would be at home tonight.

I felt a smidgen of remorse at having rejected him, considering he’d gathered up the courage to even approach me in the first place, and for not having given it all that much thought. I just wasn’t able to entertain the thought of going with anyone else. The worst part of it all, though, had been watching Megan and Harry together, laughing and chatting easily as I felt more of my heart break.

I had to admit that she made a better fit for him than I ever could. She lived in the same town and not an ocean away. She was funny and clever and brilliant. If I wasn’t so jealous of her, I’m sure she and I would have been decent friends. But I was. I envied her for her clear blue eyes, long dark hair, and flawless fashion outside of the school halls.

Most of all, I envied that she caught Harry’s attention in a way I never would.

It hadn’t gotten any easier to deal with the fact that she and Harry were an item now. Even if it was only for tonight, they were a thing, and I couldn’t change that. Harry had stopped trying to talk to me a few days ago, evidently growing tired of waiting for me to say something first. Though it hurt something fierce, I didn’t try to change it.

Anne’s hand on my wrist stopped me from reaching for the next plate, and she tugged me to face her while shutting off the tap. I sighed but forced myself to meet her gaze. Brushing a lock of hair from my face, she frowned at whatever she saw in my expression.

“Darling, talk to me.”

“I’m fine, I promise,” I whispered after a moment, swallowing thickly against the tears. “I’m just… I’m not a big fan of dances.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. No need to worry about me.”

She nudged me to scoot over, and I reached for a dishtowel to dry the clean dishes as she took over the washing. We worked in silence, though my thoughts were far from the task. Maybe she could see that, since she didn’t say a word. Besides, how could I possibly think of anything but the fact that just down the hall, Harry was readying himself for the formal.

“Oh, you look so wonderful!”

I looked back over my shoulder, absentmindedly wiping the dishtowel across the plate in my hand, at Anne’s pride-drenched voice. Something tightened in my chest at the sight of Harry, stood just inside the room, smiling awkwardly under his mother’s compliments. She was right, though. He did look amazing.

The suit he wore fit him like a glove, and his hair had been tamed from the wild curls he usually sported. Not a thing was out of place in his appearance. Even the uncomfortable smile on his face was perfect.

Harry let his mother embrace him tightly, though the long-suffering expression on his face was clearly exaggerated. His green eyes met mine over her shoulder, his grin slipping, and I swallowed before pivoting on my heel. Chest aching and throat closing with tears, I sniffled as quietly as possible as I faced the sink.

The plate slipped from my fingers, bounced off the edge of the counter, and hit the floor with a crash. Shards of porcelain scattered across the tile, a sea of shattered ceramic on white linoleum. My face grew hot and cold simultaneously, and tears welled up in my eyes. Stomach churning, I clapped a hand over my mouth, but it did no good: My sob bubbled out of me anyway.

Anne was at my side in an instant, arms wrapping around me without hesitation. I didn’t have the energy - or desire - to fight her off, so I buried my face against her shoulder and let my tears stain the collar of her shirt.

She made soft shushing noises as she guided me away from the jagged remains of the plate, pushed me to sit in a chair at the table, and ran a hand over my hair before heading off for a dishtowel. I covered my face with the towel, and the room filled with the telltale clatter of a kettle being placed on the stovetop.

The tears kept coming, soaking into the fabric and painting my cheeks. Somewhere under the pain and jealousy, mortification sprang to life, stretched its limbs as it roared its presence. I never wanted any of them to see me like this, least of all Harry.

Eventually, I managed to calm down enough to drag in unsteady breaths, and Anne sat in the seat beside me, her hand comforting as it rubbed circles into my back. A mug of tea slid into place in front of me, and I managed a wobbly, grateful smile in Harry’s direction.

I couldn’t maintain eye contact for long, not with the way he was staring at me with so much - too much - concern. The towel scratched at my cheeks when I wiped away the tears, and I held onto that unpleasant sensation on my skin, kept myself grounded with it.

Nobody spoke, the room damned with the silence, but their gazes were heavy on me. Words failed me. There was nothing I could say to explain my reaction, not without spilling the truth of everything I’d bottled up for so long. I cleared my throat quietly, stared down at the pale yellow towel in my hands.

“You’re going to be late picking Megan up,” I reminded Harry, and the words nearly choked me.

“I want to make sure you’re okay.” He hesitated then rested his hand in my shoulder; I subconsciously, instinctively, leaned into the warmth of his touch. “It’s only a dance. You’re... you’re my friend, you’re more important.”

“I’m fine. Please, go. Have fun.”

“Are you sure?”

I’m not. The small voice in my head rebelled against the lie I so easily told, but the lie worked. He stopped acting as if I was a house of cards on the verge of collapse, heading toward the front door. Anne pressed a gentle kiss to my temple and stood. With an order for me to leave the mess on the floor, she walked out of the room with her son, but I didn’t miss the worried look he tossed back to me over his shoulder.

I waited until they were out of sight before pushing to my feet. My knees shook violently under me, and I had to take a moment to breathe, in and out, measured inhales and exhales designed to ease the turbulence in my soul. Once I was steady enough to walk without falling, I reached for the broom and dustpan.

There was something about the glittering shards of blue-painted porcelain being swept into a pile and dumped into the bin that said more than I could ever understand.

#fifteen #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #one direction #one direction fanfiction #hsff #1dff #long-lost friends #missed chances #original universe #ou #15 #unnknown writes dumb stuff

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wroteclassicaly · 7 years ago

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Fiercely Vigilant

Michael Langdon / Reader

A/N : Requested by an anon was a jealous Michael. I made him jealous of the emotional friendship the reader has with Mr. Gallant. Hope you all like this! Feedback is welcomed! Let me know how my writing of Michael is, cause’ I’m quite nervous about it. Hope you enjoy, Anon! Keep the requests coming, folks! ;) - Kristen

Warnings : Smut, nasty language, some violence, Michael being a cruel asshole Anti-Christ. I think that about covers it.

You have to laugh at yourself for seeking out a dictionary, of all things to read. Another reason hand in hand with your status of sizzling gray to be ridiculed for. But really, you need to extend your vocabulary on describing this place that stretched beyond basic "This is bullshit. I'm bored. I'm hungry. I'm horny." pleas of exasperation. You were all starting to get on your own nerves. Even the purples were drained on energy most evenings.

Except Coco. That woman never shuts the fuck up. Whatever is in her cube must be a higher dosage. Perhaps Meade is sneaking in tranquilizers? Sleep deprived, wiping your blurry eyes you find yourself laughing at images containing everyone in the compound combusting into trunks and tails, humps and Dumbo ears.

Jocular. This is the word you're currently stuck on, fingernail pressed tightly into worn paper.

"And then she cut my credit card off like it was my dick, which, by the way, she wanted to suck. I'm like, honey, you're not a Hemsworth brother." A deep voice butters into your absurdly caught giggles. He raises a manicured chocolate brown brow, peering first at the thesaurus in your lap, then you. "Should've known that's what you were laughing about. You're such a fucking weirdo." Gallant pouts.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." You snort with a mildly affectionate pat to his strong hand, that is resting across your ankle.

"You know I could ask you to wipe my ass instead of talking to you, right?"

Though his tone is meant to be more dignified, you know he's not serious, just being sour. You understand him though, oddly enough. Which is something most people don't here. He's not purple through and through. Coco might be Barney though, jury still has its vote out on that one. If there was a jury alive.

"I'd rather manscape you," You say tiredly, closing your words up, holding tightly to your new nightly read.

Relaxing, a sigh to accompany, Gallant's posture goes slack beneath his velvet smoking jacket, his fingers back to caressing the overworked heels of your stocking clad feet. It's rare. So fucking rare for this deep of a companionship to have formed between two more opposite people. The grays work for elites and leaders here, they do nothing but serve and take what little they are permitted. They don't have night long conversations, sneak down into the library after the fires are put out to search the library together for soft core porn or even poetry, and they don't share secrets they'd never dare tell anyone else, and they sure as hell wouldn't be caught together so casually, a gray looking as if she's an elite's queen, feet in his lap, being pampered to, when she is supposed to be kissing the radiation soaked ground for the chance to serve here, to live what life she can.

Yet here you both are, closer than Gallant's friendship with Coco, closest thing you've ever felt for another human being since years before the bombs fell. It's an unexplainable thing, you feel compelled towards Gallant's company and he to yours. Beneath all his shallow and hyper - vibrant exterior is someone in pain, angry. So you soothe him, you listen. You two be. You two are.

"Ugh, I can't believe you touch her more than a straight man would. If you wanted to touch a woman then you know you have me. This is so idiotic." Comes a slouchy whine to your left on the couch across from you two. Her dress fans around her the moment that she hits the cushions and your eyes roll, feet tensing in Gallant's lap with a tight flex as they also slide out.

His exterior is changing, fighting a gapped bridge where he's more settled, to his stuck up and snotty attitude that comes so natural to him that he breathes insults over air. You don't give him the chance to decide which persona he's taking on, for you've got your book tucked away, all too aware as you stand, knowing how much time it has taken to get you relaxed enough that your chores are way behind. A plummet frolics inside your muscles, all melted things hardening like ice, shocking, spilling sharp through your veins in spreads. Tucking away your yellow treasure into your apron, you go about fluffing pillows in chairs, checking candles, making sure things are in perfect order. Doesn't matter how clean things are, they can always be knuckle raw, fingernail bed bleeding - cleaner.

They're talking now, a secret smile cracking into the corners of your mouth at Gallant still directing his part from the conversation your way. "Wish I at least had Fifty Shades in these hands. With the right lighting and a little Christian Grey, it makes one happy man."

"Nora Roberts sounds pretty good. What I wouldn't give for a solid insta feed though, holy shit in Louboutin heels. " Coco agrees, sighing into a melancholy trail off.

"You know what I think?" Gallant has you both looking his way again. When he sees in special delight that he's got your attention, he edges on his seat before continuing, fingers tightly clasped together, licking his lips in thought. "I think Langdon has some kinky shit he brought with him around here somewhere."

"Like what?" Coco is damn near exploding now, bunching her knuckles white against the rustling fabric of her dress.

And you, your feet forget what the floor is and they sink as they still to hold you up. The mention of the man that's been combing your subconscious, your consciousness, your dreams, your fucking nightmares and your nerves, automatically hatches a slash through any calm serenity you've previously picked up. Everyone here has been obsessed or occupied with thoughts of and about this cooperative man. He claims salvation by test, paradise promised by sanctuary. While others are starved for stars, your last hopes are seeing their final hours.

There's no way someone is just going to come here, make this much of an impact, promise such things, then use hideous humiliation to gain a dangerous upper-hand without a flaming hellfire catch. It doesn't help you that in your previous life you were too scared to start drama when McDonalds messed up your order. Forget keeping your calm around Langdon, especially in your interviews. You feel stupid, guilty you even let yourself ease off knowing he's still very much present. Gallant has these looks he shares with Langdon, ones that baffle you, irritate you, worry you.

Guess he's handsome's favorite. Like you have a chance no matter what orientation Langdon is.

"Chains, leather, lots of fucking leather." Gallant damn near moans himself into the floor, snapping your reverie, your ears rearing back zone impact into their conversation.

In this moment you want to simply blend in with these people for the sake of solitude. Despite your weariness to whisper Langdon's name, let alone what you're about to say, you can't help a hot excitement prickling your flesh. "Like maybe a sex swing he hangs from like Tarzan?"

Coco looks more intrigued than you've ever seen her, Gallant is sliding his tongue over his lips more than necessary. Yep, you've succeeded in getting your naughty point across.

"Gray girl has a nasty ass mind. Gotta say that I'm impressed I wasn't the only one besides Gallant, looking at his dick. What you can see of it through that designer coat. I bet he has a studio of things back at the sanctuary. I can't wait for him to take me there." She babbles on, back resting into the plush couch, coasting on her own fantasy.

~*~

You didn't say goodnight to either elite after your little sexy pillow talk and wishes session. Gallant escorted Coco off to her room, the two of them gossiping about sex swings and fresh air, as you tried to lug your large mop bucket up the winding staircase. The heat from the candles is dizzying, your vision blotching out around your thirsting lips. You'd kill Venable for a drink of water right now but you're already behind. Thanking your newly acquired upper arm strength, you heave the heavy tin onto the landing, safely tucked away for you to start your last night time task.

By the time you've scrambled back down to pick up your propped mop, an electricity seems to charge the air, candles swaying without breeze. You know he's here before you actually know. Your body bows in his direction like a violent tornadic spin-up, your dingy boot paused cautiously on the final top step, your fingernails biting into the wood of the mop handle. Langdon is doing what he does best : observing you like a wild beast, something even predators are afraid to speak of. You don't tell yourself to calm down, you know it's ill advised and won't work with him.

"Working late tonight?" He pesters, Cheshire smirk pressing his beautiful features, though his eyes this playful mood does not reach.

You shut off your brain that's screaming alarms at you head on fractured, blurting out whatever you come up with.

"I am, Sir. Which is my fault. I got caught up, I was -"

"Talking to Billy Idol?" He cuts you off, your jaw snapping shut.

"Billy Idol?...." You give yourself a second to leap the reference, shaking your head. So Langdon is pop cultured.

"I was talking to him, yes. And trying to finish my work. I didn't know if he or Miss Coco would require my services, so I stayed around the area."

You think you're coming out strong, halfway truthful but you believe in your words, your grip loosening slightly. That strength is shattered within moments. It's as if you can taste fire on the air, its nasty breath singing your neck. You rear back to see Langdon's polished boot kick your tin bucket to the front of the stairs and over, sending it crashing to its side, soapy water drenching your skirts and flooding the stairwell. There's a red hot heat to match your fearful shock, French kissing your disgusting embarrassment, rolling right into the sheets with your unbalanced temper.

You catch your upper lip wobbling, much to Langdon's unguarded pleasure. He sloshes his shoe to splash some water up at you, laughing, like he got what he wanted in some sick form of vengeance. You didn't think he noticed, nor cared enough to try to upset you this way. Guess that's not how things truly work with him. Your silence halts his laughter, forcing your curiosity to face him.

He's watching you watch him, but this time it's as if you're on equal footing. You're seeing through one another. He tilts his head, his hair casting brief shadows across his sharp face. He's fucking undeniably breath taking. You're trembling, he's recharging, no, he's surging on your emotions.

"Maybe you'd like to have Mr. Gallant assist you? Somehow though, I don't think he'd be pleased with this line of work, nor your presence in this state. Which is why it's difficult to understand why he puts himself in your pathway when he's walking on marble and you're the mud stained earth."

"I-" You suddenly fight for the air Langdon is invisibly holding vice, hostage max.

"Though if you promised to fill his hole with Venable's cane, then hold him after, maybe he'd indulge you."

There's a spark he recognizes with astonishment, not blocking, not surprised to get you, but for the first time powerless to bewilderment. You aren't thinking, you're feeling. Feeling your way through every damned patch of thorns, of bullshit, using your hands to battle your way. Your palm connects with a warm, muscular-bone shaped flesh, fingertips brushing slight into plump, soft lips. The echo your hit on Langdon causes is haunting, an eerie flush dusting across your skin.

You would swear on everyone's lives here that you saw nothing human in his eyes moments after he gets his bearings. Your pride is short lived, arm suddenly branded by his painful grip, hot like an iron, banishing your bones to dust, muscles twisting in being drug to his room, his office, whatever it is. Your body is seemingly everywhere at once, the room flying violently past your vision. Your legs crumble at the same time your back collides-tailbone first into the heavy double doors, locks sounding, making you itch. Langdon is tossing you by your wrist into his desk, your hip jutting into its sharp edge.

Scrambling back you decide it's fight or flight. He's already circling you, unyielding, so you need to do this. Propelling backwards behind his chair you reach for something glass, a stupid paper weight, holding it tightly. "I'll smash your fucking skull into your brains, Langdon, and I don't care what will happen to me after. It'll be worth it to see you die if you fucking touch me!"

You don't want him to meet death's door, though, you are startling to realize you've felt this way since you laid eyes on him, and that sets off a powerful lurch in your step, paperweight slipping, forgotten, rolling around his approaching feet. You let him grab you, let him seal your fate, permission all granted. If someone is going to die then it will be you, you just can't hurt him. He grips your apron strap, your book clattering in a thump, and then you're one with the cold floor below you, inches from the confines of the area rug. When he straddles you, you forget how to breathe, choking.

Bowing up, then down again, your arms fold to your sides, body holding. Langdon descends above you like an angel forged out of dark, enriching blood, whispering things like wings to his shadow, his coat black feathers you hunger to stroke. His leather clad legs have you caged in, his chest eases atop yours, his hair cascading a private curtain to enclose you in fate. His nose nudges yours, not giving in, changed, in synch with this newly slow dance tempo. You're gliding, gliding somewhere where only you two can walk on the dance floor, where the music exists solely for your ears.

This is more terrifying than you had felt before with him. Suddenly you're unsure of anything you've ever done in your entire life, questioning every waking decision. Hitting him is all you can be proud of, because it led to this. And this.... this scares you, being moved by violence towards a dangerous soul, it binds you. Langdon's ring clad finger strokes down your chin, across your jaw, up to your cheekbone to smear around dried tears of humiliation that you never knew you had cried.

He's got a red patch wound across his mouth from your imprint, an urge to lick at the skin, taste your hot hit on him tempting enough you feel your pelvis jolt off the floor, directly colliding with his.

You shiver into motions you can't control, gasping on cans of air that reach Langdon's lips. He tastes them, drawing his fingers back down the path they came, working to cup your breast through your apron and your overshirt. If you thought his presence fucked your nervous system up, then you know you're going to hell in a handbasket now. But you don't have time to question it, no. Langdon easily brings you up onto your shaky footing, holding you around your waist, fingertips skimming your breast, whilst he lets his other hand grip your tightly worn and issued twist at the top of your head, pulling until it releases your hair.

You sigh into a pregnant tremble, your head lighter, everything spinning, spinning to stillness. For an unusual amount of moments Langdon is quiet, observant in concern, defeating his voices to silence. He won't hurt you, not really. He can't.

The fact that that wasn't what actually upset him stirred his demon, spoke to his soul. You were guarded around him, shielding yourself by sheer emotion. No magics, no seduction, no wit. You didn't want him to see, but you let that idiot Gallant inside. The one that was so desperate for love Langdon was honest to Satan scared he'd try to find something with you.

Physical or not, he couldn't bare it.

"Why did you do this? I don't understand what happened," You whisper gently, seeking.

"You're an obstacle I did not expect to find here, nor do I want you. Gallant is a fucking problem. I should end you both, drive a fucking stake through your hearts as you're embracing. What a sweet little death for two insatiable romantics." And he's mocking you again, only this is tipping over into the bottom of the ocean cruel.

You scoot from his grip, appalled at what he's implying. Is the male ego that thick? Even now?

"Then you're not who you claim to be, because if you were, you'd know that Mr. Gallant would carry you over this buildings' threshold, ride off in your god forsaken carriage with you and leave us here to fry feed the cannibals." You finish, ignoring the sting in your eyes at him stating clearly what you already know.

He doesn't want you. But you shouldn't care beyond lust and competing for affections, having him when no one else does, that should be all you want. Not hurt that runs so damn deep you want to carve your heart out and demand he step on it, finish you. What's this otherworldly reason for wanting someone you don't even know, a sociopathic egomaniac - to love you? If love were to catch you, wrap itself around you like poison-why is it running so ahead of you that an abyss can't even capture its rapture, with a.... a man like this?

Langdon can read you so well again, continuing his monologue, spoken tongue to mouth, yours.

"Given the right environment, deprivation of human contact until the body cries out for something, any-fucking-thing, emotional stimulation, anyone can become more than they should, or ever knew that they could be together, Y/N." His voice is speaking to you, not down on you. And he's moving closer again, forward.

You don't know anything but this man on this earth. Who is everyone? Who the fuck are you? You just want to be in him, he in you. Together. No separation. You don't fight Langdon's touch, his forehead softly propping against yours. "I want every single part of you that you cling to, so I can shatter you, then put you back together. I want you to let me in the way you let him in."

Fucking breathe, don't forget that. No, you can't use Langdon's air. Not yet.

"I may not want you, but I need you. I shouldn't, but I ache for you. And I've eaten, but I could ravish you until there is nothing left but what I desire to be." He's crowning your chin in a gentle touch, feather-like, almost as if you can share the drumming pulse right from his fingertips through you. He too is a little more shaky, something you are too slack-jawed to comprehend.

It settles like snowfall, quiet enough for live clouds to form above your heads. Langdon guides your cold and sweaty palm to wipe off on his shirt, taking note to your nerves, not entirely objecting. He still likes you squirming. You're swung by a force so inhuman, you believe it has prayed over you in hisses, forever winding into your skin. There's no turning back, but you knew that from the moment he got here.

You're moving, like ghosts, fast paced, not quick enough. There's orange and yellow blurs pattering across your vision in fuzzy shapes, candlelight. This place is leaving you flabbergasted. It's like any other room but it's his. His sanctuary.

Your body is laid back across some sheets, stretched out like an art exhibit on the mend, striving for greatness. Langdon's coat is off, his scarf following, drifting into the chair you were unaware is here. You don't know exactly what you should do, your animalistic instincts trying to snap their violent jaws through leashes of your thinly held self-control. There's a wisp that snaps an air so warm you bite into your cheek, fisting the covers beside you, head lolling to the side, a moan vibrating throughout your entire body. You arch to it like a willing prisoner on the verge of her freedom.

What are you doing to me? You don't voice it, all stomping surround sound guides it. You sense cosmic connection, fucking space extended, mother nature pumping your blood. You wither around like a fish on dry land, thirsting for a stream of whatever Langdon offers you. Maybe you can hear music, anything you wish.

Are you dreaming? Did you fall on those stairs? What is this?

"Don't restrain it, don't hold back, don't let the human reservations consume what your body wants. I can smell you," Langdon breathes, giving you his supply, knees pressing into his bed. "How openly ripe your heart is, how I want it bared to me, unguarded, the way Mr. Gallant takes you to try and make his pathetic existence matter."

"I'm not, I'm just," Fuck, it's like he's controlling the weather in here, executing your every attempt at a clear breath. " We talk, that is it, Sir. I'm just here to be whatever it is they deem me-"

"Bullshit!" Langdon roars, arms wildly flailing out, posture still staying perched nearer to your knees. "You're spouting a previously written verse. How dare you think you can lie to me, even now? Even after you struck me and I never slit your weak, little throat?"

His temper doesn't level quickly, not like you're used to seeing if he's irritated. The changing movement coaxes you to be bold once more, tears nearing your lash line, shame dripping past your slick thighs. "If you know I'm so weak then why are you getting off on trying to keep proving I am, Langdon? That seems below you, doesn't it? Like me, like I am to Gallant outside these walls. Hell, in them if he could have a shot at something more, a shot at you."

His brow raises, chest shapes his ribs visible beneath his black undershirt at your usage of his last name. He notices your acidic hiss as you spit out the last part of your sentence, zeroing in on him. It's clear. So you dislike your friend's adoration, yearning for him? So many complicated layers between human beings.

He wasn't aware he clouds his own knowledge. This further proves that you're unhinging him to a sway he can't fathom. A sturdy hand filters above, up, to lay beside your knee, your body still locked in place. "You envy one another in ways, then you act as if you care for each other, despite everyone here thinking you belong outside, or that you should be licking the very floors they fantasize were built for them."

"It's not that way all the time. Better than nothing, knowing him more than they do," You softly respond.

"And this is why you continue to let him in? Because his presence feels good enough to make you forget the loneliness?" Langdon questions, seemingly so very interesting now he's tilting his head, making his hair fall over his eyes. You want to object to those beautiful things being covered, but you remain mum. He's got it and he lets it click.

"We share the most degrading human emotion," says Langdon, this time dropping a knee to your right, lifting himself above you slowly.

"Is that the answer to why you're interested in me and Gallant, Sir?" You rasp, wanting to scoot away, brain warning you, everything else unraveling fast.

"Michael." Another knee that presses, bringing him atop you like your dark angel. For a moment you think he knows Gallant's first name, then it sweeps you into a magnetic design, your thighs hitting his kneecaps.

"Use my name however you see fit, Y/N. Let me break this lonesome disposition inside you. Give it all to me, not to a worthless attention seeking man. I don't care what he wants, I don't care if he doesn't pine for what's between your legs. He'll overtake you before either of you know it."

"He's doesn't want me like that," You stutter. "You're mad because I won't fold into you like the rest?"

"You won't let anyone in but him, when I should be already inside you." Michael confirms, as if this is so obvious a rat could figure it out.

"So just your ego. To conquer. Okay then, I'm out." Your body does start to move this time, salty tears spilling, bypassing your wishes, before Michael completely wipes himself from your space. You have to blink a few times to make sure you can still see him, far away, like he can move without even walking. He's not close enough, you want to hit him, take him, taste him, give all he wants even if you're terrified. How can he mess with you like this? It must be in this air, polluting, veiling.

"We share jealousy, you and I. But together we can cure it, rid ourselves of unsatisfaction." His back is firm against the heavy wooden door, candlelight curving out every space you can see from your placing. "If you let me in, let me be the one to break those walls down and build mine around you."

"Michael, please.... Just." You choke on your stretching gasp, a fist to your throat, arm holding across your lungs. What more can you say? He wants you to stop being guarded, stop letting what little you let out with someone that isn't him. Some man that reeks power, god-like, is chewing on his lip, wetting it, unbuttoning his shirt to smooth his fingers across his glowing flesh, what he lets you see of it.

"Open your fucking legs." Michael barks out, striding quickly, meeting in front of you.

A searing heat releases your leashes, uncaring. You sink your teeth into your lip, trying to draw blood, needing to taste something soon. You throb even more than you have been, tumbling, spinning, stumbling into Michael Langdon. Doubt is trying to wave itself in there, more warnings. Michael cuts them away, peeling back his shirt without eye contact faltering, muscles in his neck moving.

"You could have anyone here. This is too easy. There's better people for you." You try one more time. Denying yourself, this is insanity at its finest.

"I don't want anyone else this way, I never really have had the use for it beyond release. These morons here, they don't count for that kind of time. I want this endeavor to be...worth it." The fabric of his shirt drops at his booted feet, his entire chest expanded to your line of sight. He's taut, not overly so. Skin slightly tanned, creamy to blend. His muscles are strong, but they're not overpowering, no, that is elsewhere.

He radiates everything your mother warned you wasn't good, but you can't let this be wrong when it feels so fucking right. You attempt for your final-failed try.

"I can't please you, you're judging me as if I'm some key you've finally gotten. I'll disappoint you, Michael, I will." You berate yourself in shameful truth, already petrified of shedding your clothing, your skin, warped against his hard body, all the while you're pussy is growing more damp, threatening more tears if it's not attended to.

He gives a sigh so loud it could be a beasts' rumble. It lets him give his body to you, pressing over you, so hot you're sharing his heartbeat, breasts straining to be freed, to feel his delicious skin that houses whatever he is. He dips, rolls his hips like a snake dancing for its helpless prey, knees working against you, pelvis thrusting in tilting circles. Your apron, your skirt goes up your body, over your knees, his leather covered legs nudging it, commanding it around your hipbones. His knuckle moves so fast that it's not until you hear fabric rip, a shining glint off his ring that vanishes between your thighs, its sharp body slicing the fabric of your stockings apart down the middle, leaving a gateway to your panties, closer to you.

He's not talking, he's performing. His ringed finger circles your navel, brushes back and forth across your abdomen, spelling, shaping, mapping the elastic of your underwear, causing you to shake away, not getting anywhere. It goes on like this for what feels like an eternity. Just him testing you, stroking, getting your body slick with perspiration that sparkles like jewels in the rooms' lighting. And when you think he's done talking for tonight, planning to take, he startles your glazed over gaze at his working fingers - that pause on you.

"I'm not judging you by your cunt," Michael unravels on a long brush with a deep breath, inhaling you at the same instance he cups you warm, firm, fingers slipping between your sticky folds, kept covered by your sopping cotton panties. "Although, if I were.... yours would be filled with my cock, womb drowning in my seed. And that's something I'm not willing to give to just anyone, Y/N."

This time you do get closer to him on your own accord, hands finding purchase by nails biting painfully into your palms, pumping to push against his chest. He hums, a genuine grin pleasuring his features. Easing, you're sharing a way into you, he's finding you, you're coming together. He's denying you now that he sees you want it, teasing you, however. You bite off painful insults, he's chuckling, swiping a finger in circles, pushing down so hard you cry out.

Michael is saying something that you try to wake up for in your swollen state. He's showing you his damp finger, commenting how your juices coated him through a layer of fabric. You're halted, stamped to his watchful eye, the pop of his finger sucking your taste off. "You want to touch me more than you want my fingers to spread you apart, don't you?"

You're whimpering, nodding yes, trying to keep a hold of being here, but you're slipping, losing yourself in him, damn near begging.

"Don't hold back. Tell me what you want and then we'll take it, Y/N, together."

"Break me down and be with me, Michael." You find yourself answering immediately, right away, throwing yourself off this precipice.

Hefty arms draw around you and they drag you close, hands working to free you of your apron, buttons ripping, scraps, meaningless clothing everywhere. You need to get back to what Adam and Eve were. Bared, nature covering them barely, concealing enough to birth their story. You and Michael. You want nothing to stand between you two.

Concept of time isn't meaning anything anymore, it's rare and stops for you. Your clothing piles beside the bed, Michael's boots thump to hardwood, your hearing swerving in and out, sensitive to each sound you hear past your roaring heartbeat churning blood through your ears. You engulf tightly, parting your legs further like he called for, heels of your feet pressing into the backs of his strongly moving knees. Your hands are shoving themselves to the button on his pants, impatient, maniacal. He can't stop to assist you, too caught in pressing his lips to your collar bone, leveling a reward to your breasts in stride.

Firm planes of muscular structure drag across your nipples that harden with temperature, the promise of temptation full-filled. You have his zipper down by the time he's taking a neglected peak into his mouth, a gasp thrust into the air from you. His hair trickles across your chest, soft and sweeping. You maneuver a scoop into each side of his leather, noting he's simply wearing thin boxer briefs that cling to him like a wet t-shirt would. It lights you like no other.

Desperation doesn't cover what possesses you in this instance, so close to having this, taking this with him. Exerting yourself to extract this specimen form his too tight for any one person - bottoms, causes you to grit your teeth to challenge. Michael sucks, kisses, prods his tongue at your nipple, paddling the pumping throb your cunt is beating into you. A willing dance partner you sway in his steps, swallowed by his shadow, his solid golden fresh skin glued to your heaving body. You want to cry wantonly that you're coming, yet Michael hasn't touched you enough for it to peak.

Then again.... he doesn't need to, he.... he just. Can. You can't explain how the wheels in your head are turning as your bodies meet over and repeat. You're spinning in suspense, hung out to float, cunt clenching around nothing, recognizing him already, as if its been made to house him. Patting yourself on the back is what you want to do, a giggle tossing over your bare shoulder, Michael's pearly whites grinning into your skin.

You've gotten his leather pants down below his ass, eager fingers measuring bravely. It's there, it's thick, silk with slick, straining deliciously that you're salivating, not shy like you'd pictured you be in all your fantasies. Drawing your nails like claws protruded, your rake them down his shoulder blades which work to hold him up, streaming his back, resting purchase on his ass, then you give it your all, both of you swirled into a gusting gasp. Your sense of smell is stronger, alive, heady to the copper you know you've set free tearing into Michael's skin. It pleases you.

This King reigns in his self-control, eyes damn near black, blowing out all that icy blue. His lips red and wet, inviting you to taste your own salty sweat off his mouth. A kiss, an offering. You launch at it, granting yourself permission to tangle your fingers into his air, wrapping around your wrists, yanking in your fist. Each movement you make glides his heavy cock through your slit, rudely scattering what is overflowing from your pussy.

He's getting huffy, you're abruptly impatient. Michael finally frees back, lingering his look on you, fighting for his own oxygen. He's flushed, soaked, needing. And it's you whose to give it to him. You're to surrender.

It's what this whole thing was about. Letting him in.

Dropping your legs from around his lower waist, you watch him, unsteady breaths trampling your chest cavity into pathetic particles, then you slosh two fingers in voyage all across your dripping sex. Your thighs shake, knees struggle to frame this. His eyes are nearly growing impossibly black, almost hollowing him out. If it hurts then oh well, but you can't keep going on like this. You have to have him before the next second passes.

"Come here," You whisper, using your hands to separate your folds for him.

Alight, mischievous with a given gift, Michael takes his cock through your lips and gives no formal warning. Only foul, filthy, fitting, and desirable.

"You're going to let me push my cock into you now, aren't you? Fuck you until I'm emptying myself inside you, hiding." He dribbles to his knees, holding you by your thighs, keeping you shown. "Do you want me to hurt you? I can make it hurt, oh how I can make it hurt." He's dropping by your ear in a bend, lips letting you in on this choice.

"Michael just take it all, you can have it all. It's yours, it's been waiting for you," You belt out, whimpering like a frightened animal, spooking Michael into a fast thrust.

It's brutal, it stretches you beyond your means, bouncing your body up the bed. Those razor claws sink to Michael's wrists, your ass trying to meet his experimental rhythm, fast and punishing. You can hear everything full blast again, like a roaring train louder than the bombs were, the destruction, the night noises, the loneliness. Michael walks his fingers down your ankle and drags your leg over his shoulder.

You turn to press your face into the bedsheets beside you, a searing pain locking your muscles around him so hard you can feel your sticky wetness seep out from around where you're joined. He strikes a hand out and forcefully cups your chin in his hand, moving up and down in front of you, like he's gliding. Your mouth is shaped to form an O, not able to look away, pinpoint.

"I want you to look down and watch me fuck your selfish, greedy cunt." Is Michael's demand, wrought out iron to steal and every other damned thing you can think of that holds structure.

Who are you to refuse? Intrigued, ride hitched, you hang onto him, dash into his painful thrusts and moan loud enough to wake whatever is left of the world's population. You're swollen around him, your thick and creamy arousal pooling all over the sheets, noisily mashing at his cock, against his balls with each slam they make against your ass.

"That's it, Y/N. Let me in, let me deep inside. I'll never leave you."

"Michael, fuck, more, let me kiss you."

He surprises you both by answering without pause, biting into your plump lip, licking his tongue into your mouth, letting his lips workout the breaths he tries to inhale -into your shared airspace. You release his wrists, moon marks a bracelet of markings to him. He nuzzles your breast, hips slamming into the bed just as you grab his neck's nape, cradling. And then it happens faster than either of you knew you needed it to. He gives a little more into you, focused, discovering.

Piles of debris could've fallen on you both, unbeknownst to you. Michael barely grazes your clit on an upstroke that hits a slick spot you didn't know exists, sending your cunt to sheathe him tightly, your warmth milking his cock, raining down on him that he curls into you, crying out. You're overheated all too much, shivering, panting, an explosive shake clasping your pussy, pulling until you're boneless, Michael's body lax to keep atop you. You feel like your ears are hearing static. Only white noise and Michael Langdon.

It's a deep-set fascination watching his cum spill back down your thighs, white and hot. You lick your lips, already starving for so much more. It's there, it has to be. Michael doesn't put himself away yet, instead hums looking over you, settling in front of you on his knees. He's gotten the key and this door is sealed behind you both.

#ahs fanfiction #michael langdon fanfiction #michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x you #ahs apocalypse #anon request

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dawnquafam · 6 years ago

Note

So my friend thinks that Arthur and Mera's relationship in Aquaman was rushed, forced, awkward and cheesey *snorts* do you have an argument against all that?

Rushed? Forced? Rushed? Forced? RUSHED? FORCED? I have never seen a more natural romance in any fandom, and coming from me and my countless fandoms, that is saying something. And if your friend thinks Aquamera is awkward and cheesy, I can’t even begin to imagine what they think perfectly natural and beautiful looks like. But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

(Under a cut because this got long because I have feelings about this, and I also added some photographic evidence, because FEELINGS)

When they met, did they immediately hit it off? Nope. But not because of each other. Arthur had a resentment against Atlantis as a whole, but he still respected her, and when she saved his dad, he was genuinely grateful and listened to her because of it. She had her doubts about him being Atlantis’s next true king because he’d never been to Atlantis, but unlike most Atlanteans (even Arthur’s own brother), she never once called him a half-breed mongrel bastard son, and she trusted Vulko enough to give him a chance. So not a perfect start, but the foundations are solid.

Fast forward to the attack on the safehouse. She genuinely tried to rush out to protect him – it was Vulko who held her back, and she hesitated to leave him all the same. And when she called him an imbecile to Orm? She was protecting him (or trying to, anyway), not insulting him, because even though she did believe it at the time, she wouldn’t have said it to his face otherwise. Then when Orm called her his betrothed in front of Arthur? The way their faces fell. She didn’t want to marry Orm, and he already liked her enough to be hurt by the revelation.

(I mean look at this. Does that look like a woman who’s happy about her engagement, or a man who doesn’t care that she’s engaged to his brother?)

And then when he was fighting Orm. The way she rushed off to save him. (I don’t have a pic at the moment but that wasn’t the face of someone who didn’t care.) That wasn’t the action of someone who didn’t care. The safehouse was one thing – a few soldiers she could’ve killed to keep them silent. But she saved Arthur from Orm in front of the entire kingdom (or at least a big chunk of it). There’s no coming back from that, as she told him on the plane. Mera gave up her home to save Arthur.

Cut to the plane, where he’s genuinely listening to her and not at all taking lightly what she gave up for him, right before jumping out of a moving plane without a parachute to follow her through the frickin’ Sahara Desert (not a good place for Atlanteans!) even though he was convinced she was lost. And even though she could’ve, she never said “I told you so” after he fell into the ruins.

And when they held hands? It was instinctive. He just grabbed her to protect her, and he didn’t even notice until he saw her looking. They’d known each other, what, a day? And they were already that comfortable and familiar with each other’s presence. It was also here, when she said “You do your best thinking when you’re not thinking at all” and he said “Something something trident,” that her attitude towards him made the final shift from annoyed to affectionately amused.

Sicily. SICILY. THE WAY HE LOOKED AT HER!!! She was adorable and excited and he loved it. Not because she was seeing the good in his world, but because she was happy. AND! THE! FLOWER! It’s not just anyone that you eat a flower for, solely because you don’t want them to feel awkward and ruin their happiness. It was also here that she started to truly understand him – why he loved the surface world so much, how smart and brave he really is beneath the devil-may-care act.

(I mean look at this!! Look at them!! They’re not even making eye contact!! This is just how they watch the other when they’re not looking!!!)

She was genuinely impressed by his knowledge of the statues, and you cannot tell me they wouldn’t have kissed (or at least almost kissed) after “Not bad for an imbecile, huh?” “Not bad at all” if Manta hadn’t so rudely interrupted them.

(Tell me they’re not in love. Tell me they’re not ready to kiss each other. I DARE YOU.)

The way Arthur shoved her behind the column! Thinking of her safety before giving a single solitary thought to his! And the way she screamed his name when Manta blasted him away! She would’ve destroyed Manta right then and there if she’d had the chance, because at this point, Arthur is her imbecile. Which shows in the way she cradles him and begs him to wake up. Right after he used what might’ve been his last breaths to warn her. In agony and on the verge of passing out from being stabbed, slashed, burned, thrown off an exploding building, body slamming a massive bell, and more, Arthur’s only thought was Mera’s safety.

(She also put his hair into a bun when she was patching him up and I just love that so much for some reason.)

And the sunset conversation on the boat! She was encouraging him so hard, telling him that all of her doubts were gone, and she knew he would be the one to save her home and the world. And he trusted her. Maybe he didn’t believe her yet, but he trusted her confidence in him enough to face the same creatures that he thought killed his mother, an action akin to her giving up her home for him.

Don’t even get me started on the way they held hands before jumping off the boat, or before facing the vortex. They were already at the point where just holding the other, knowing they were beside them, gave them enough courage to face the army of monsters that had murdered Arthur’s mother and countless other Atlanteans before and after her. And when he jumped out of the water screaming her name!!! Again, Arthur’s only concern was Mera’s safety.

And she was so proud when he came out of the waterfall with Atlan’s trident! Proud, and relieved because she doesn’t want to lose him. And her confidence in him, the way she had come to fully embrace the human half everyone else detested – “Last time, he was in his element. This time, make him fight in yours.” The last Atlantean who told him to embrace his human half was his mother. So hearing Mera say that, and knowing she truly believes it? Would’ve meant the world to Arthur.

And the kiss!!! The battle kiss to end all battle kisses!!! The cinematography alone on that kiss holy crap. The way she grabbed him and kissed him, and he was surprised at first, but then his arms slowly rose to hold her waist- asdjkehfireufhur THE KISS. And how happy he was after, joking around when he’d been terrified the moment before, and she was joking around too, and was basically like “Don’t you dare die.” And again, during his rematch against Orm, Vulko had to hold her back from rushing to help him, because her first instinct is to protect him.

(I don’t have a pic of Arthur after the kiss, nor the room to put him in before it - curse the 10-pic limit - bUT LOOK AT HER! LOOK AT THE CHANGE IN HER ALONE! I’M!!!)

But lemme tell ya, as perfect as that battle kiss was, that’s not my favorite kiss. No, it’s the forehead kiss. Where Arthur’s just so happy she’s there that he can’t resist giving her a little peck on the top of the head, grinning like a lovestruck idiot the whole time, and the way she was glowing with happiness both when and after he did it. It doesn’t get any purer than that folks.

(I know the quality sucks but look at this! Look at them! They’re in love!)

And it was all natural. There was no single jarring moment of “Oh, that’s when they fell in love.” She leapt into the ruins annoyed at his idiocy, but in every quip she made inside, you could hear the gradual shift to affectionate amusement. Every time their gazes linger on each other, it’s a little softer, a little more full of love, until that final kiss. There’s no grand quote like Starmora’s unspoken thing or Scarlet Vision’s “I just feel you.” They never even say the words “I love you.” Because they don’t need to. You can see and hear in their actions how much they love each other. It’s all subtext except in the moments where they’re actively thinking of it, but it’s still there, their love story is still there in every single scene. And frankly, no romance novel or movie could ever hope to top it.

#aquaman spoilers #aquamera #arthur curry #mera #anon #dawn answers stuff

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flosiovis · 6 years ago

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♡ >:3c

SEND ME A ‘ ♡ ’ AND I’LL TALK ABOUT WHAT TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP I COULD SEE OUR MUSES HAVING (no longer accepting)

HELLO YOU LITTLE RAT

Lluvia, Antonio is to Lorenzo as uncle Joey is to uncle Jesse, the puppy to his ferret, the clownfish to his anemone, the (iconic pair here)

ANTONIO WILL SUPPORT LORENZO UNTIL HE straightens his hair on a whim and then Antonio will gently spray him with water because come on man what’re you doing it’s not 2012 anymore we’re past that. Let’s go get gelato and look at the fat pigeon from down the street!

I mostly say this because Antonio has the overwhelming need to pick up Lorenzo over his shoulder and leave whenever Lore has a petty fight to pick, like haggling at the market, and he also wants to inspect any potential lovers under a microscope for him just in case because YOU NEVER KNOW, THEY COULD BE CATFISH-SLASH-KILLERS, HE WATCHED THE MOVIE AND -, that sort of thing.

I always figured it was the type of relationship where it’s a pair that could work together *rose in mouth* romantically, but they aren’t synced up or the attraction isn’t that strong romantically/sexually/whatever-ly - but their Good Buddy Meter is off the charts

What they would need to work on is 👀 jealousy (some it rooted in self esteem issues, some of it actually well founded) and finding the proper ways to go about things. Antonio has a history of hopping from friend to friend, being very affectionate and then going cold or introverted, which is damaging EVEN IF Lore knows it’s just “one of those days -> weeks”.

Just because it’s typical of him doesn’t mean it’s great to experience, nor does it mean that it’s acceptable. But shutting off in return or exploding at each other isn’t acceptable either, especially with two folks who are tender of heart and have very strong, passionate feelings about literally like everything.

luve dem bois, good pair, adore

#ty bb #HOPE U LIKE #askitaliaromano

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yeomanaxel · 5 years ago

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Inkbolt - Chapter 1

A desk gleamed in the moonlight.

A pile of parchment sat on the desk.

A bottle of ink shone near the pile.

A feathered pen leaned in the bottle.

The door creaked open, and a young man stepped in. He closed it behind him and swept into a high-backed chair. He slipped a blank parchment from the pile and flattened it on the desk in front of him.

He picked up the pen, dipped it twice, and began to write.

Chapter 1 – Biting the Powerline

The black nothingness of space shone with a million stars. One of them, once a bright yellow just a decade in the past, now glowed a sickly red, its putrid light bathing a small, glittering planet.

The surface of the Earth gleamed like a blinding gem, under a dark maroon sky. Mountains and oceans glittered, forests bursting with bright colors mankind would never see. Cities basked in the sunlight, their streets filled with sparkling figures, caught in acts of terror and debauchery. One statue held a club in his emerald-colored hands, the bright glass of a television store inches from the weapon’s tip. Another woman, frozen mid-scream, stared at the sky as if seeing the Devil himself, her eyes red as rubies and her teeth hard as diamonds. Another woman stood behind her, her crazed grin petrified and her golden knife affixed to the ends of frozen arms.

The land drunk the weak light, bathed in it, and in its embrace became beautiful, hard, and cold. Only a few pockets of warmth could be found, hidden in shrouds of ugly cloth. One such pocket, the former capital of a ruined nation, sat near the edge of an island off the coast of a great, crystalized continent. A wind blew over the land, fluttering the thick cloak that covered the city. It slipped in, caressed the ancient buildings, and chilled the skin of two old men.

The men scurried down streets like rats in a maze. Their clothes, worn but clean, clung to their thick bodies in all the wrong places. Their eyes darted faster than their feet, scanning every window and crevice. The man in the lead, larger than his companion, slowed in an alleyway, his breath heavy with fatigue. The other man, his lip hidden in a tangled mustache, stopped beside him. They took one last look, and sat down roughly, scraping their coats against the brick behind their backs. “Told you we’d make it,” the larger man snorted, his voice posh and dismissive. His hands clutched tightly to a pink purse, at odds with the drabness surrounding it.

The man, known to his companion as William Flisp, smashed the zipper between two of his sausage-shaped fingers and carefully pulled it along the length of its teeth. The companion, known to Flisp as Gerald Gunton, always marveled at how delicately Flisp touched everything with his fingers. Could he be afraid of breaking something if he gripped it too hard? Perhaps there lay a story behind his friend’s methodical hand usage, though now wasn’t the time to inquire about it.

The purse had been stuffed with bronze bullet casings, at least a hundred of them. Flisp licked his lips, eyes bulging at the sight of so much money. “We fuckin did it,” he breathed. “We got the keys to the kingdom right here in our bloody laps.”

“Your lap, not mine,” Gunton remarked.

“Your language is filthy.”

Both men jumped to their feet, their eyes shining with rage and surprise. Flisp’s knife slipped from his sleeve and into his fingers. They twirled it menacingly.

A man stood before them. No, Flisp thought, not a man, just a boy. An older boy, but a boy just the same. A fucking pretty boy scavenger.

The boy stood tall and lean, his back straight and his legs long. He had warm brown eyes that contrasted with an angular face, and pale skin offset by jet black hair that rested to his shoulders.

Gunton made the first move, hand clenched in a fist that sailed toward the boy’s unexpressive face. With a quick step to the side, the punch hit nothing. The boy caught the arm and snapped it with an unnerving level of ease.

The thief grunted in pain, but he didn’t cry out. He’d suffered worse. Then the boy shifted his stance and pushed, jerking Gunton forward into the knife of his partner in crime. The look of stupefied horror plastered on Flisp’s face quickly mirrored Gunton’s, as the latter man stumbled forward, left arm useless, stuck like a pig ripe for the slaughter. The boy moved from behind, ripped the blade out, and threw it at its owner.

Flisp brought his arms up, catching the knife in mid-air, its tip centimeters from his nose. He barely had time to sigh in relief before his crotch exploded in an agony that forced the purse-snatcher to his knees. His face crumpled under the force of a steel-tipped boot, and his head bounced off the pavement with a cracking sound so loud it rattled his brain.

Conscious thought had almost left him when he felt something plunge into his chest.

A few minutes later, the man, eighteen years in body but a little older in spirit, strode out onto the road, the purse under his arm and the knife twirling in his own fingers. He didn’t like scavenging for weapons, but the blade had been outside during the Varnishing, and a thin leather wrapping failed to hide the golden gleam of the handle. The blade itself shone blood-red, though the actual blood dripping from it dulled the effect.

He eyed the weapon with a satisfied expression, wiping off the blade with a napkin he found in the purse. He couldn’t afford to dirty his black coat and pants, or the gray shirt underneath. He hoped Ms. Deus wouldn’t mind its absence.

As he walked, he slipped a large map out of his coat pocket, unfolding it and carefully observing its contents. Currently, he stood on Denmark Road, deep in Camberwell, his destination to the north. He slid his finger across the paper, trying to retrace his path. Once he had it, he refolded the map and broke into a light jog; the sun would be setting in a few hours.

His path took him over alleyways and intersections full of rubble and wreckage. Through tunnels formed and unformed by explosions, still lined with ash. Past a trio of Oldies, their clawed, shaking hands hovering over a tiny barrel fire. The foolish would surely try to mug or mingle. He knew better.

On he strode, progress hamstrung by the state of the city. He kept track of the time using the faint glow of the red sun, its light just strong enough to illuminate the vast tarps but never great enough to Glass. Except where the fabric had torn; bright beams had slipped through to form columns of light in the gloom. Dozens of statues stood beneath them.

He passed a subway tunnel entrance carefully, wary of the dozens of Oldies slithering about its stairwell. He sneered at their bent backs as he went, wondering if they would eventually die out and free up the Underground. His thought was interrupted by a ghastly groan from behind. Spinning quickly, the man slashed at the Oldie’s gray throat. Blood the color of sewage flowed out, and the humanoid collapsed before he had a chance to alert his brood. The man sprinted away, not taking chances.

Onward he traveled, until finally, the bridge stood before him, the only one still sound over the Thames. The three-headed streetlamps that flanked it shone no light, but they didn’t need to. Long electric wires stretched across the sides of the bridge, providing walls of light bright enough to ward off Oldies. The lamps served as their pillars, allowing hundreds of bulbs to illuminate the walk to Westminster. Where the power source was, and how it still remained operational, was something the man badly wanted to know.

Beyond, he saw a different light, muted but warm. Thousands of candles flickering in lanterns, affixed to the battered walls of the Parliament Houses, and shining in their windows. Big Ben’s hands, eternally fixed at 5:15, stood out against the bright clock faces, the glow of which seemed to push against the red glare of the sun above.

And this was only what could be seen from the bridge; the candles burned across all of Westminster, so many that some Londoners had begun to call it Wax Town. Always affectionately, of course, and never when in the company of west-enders. The man smirked at the small speck of civilization still struggling to remain solid in the miasma of this world. He longed to enter into its comforting embrace.

But first, he had to confront his shadow.

He spun around and brandished his knife. “Show yourself,” he ordered calmly.

At first, no one appeared. But the scavenger trusted his senses. He began walking forward.

“Stop!”

An older man stepped out from behind a brick wall, smeared with graffiti long faded. His hair, thick and white, covered his head and lips, and his stout figure had an easy stride, as if he often took long walks despite his age. His dark skin and fierce eyes reminded the boy of an American movie star from before the Varnishing, though he couldn’t quite recall the name. Jackson something, or something Jackson, perhaps. The man’s arms wrapped protectively around a thick manila envelope, dirty but serviceable. His grey longcoat pockets bulged with bottles, and the monstrous backpack on his shoulders bent his frame.

Detecting no threat in the man, the boy lowered his knife, eyes still suspicious. “Who are you?’

“Just a traveler,” the man said amicably. He shook his shoulders, highlighting his burden. “What about you, young man? Out catching flies?”

The young man scowled as he snapped his jaw shut. “I don’t like being teased.”

The older man smiled again. “Apologies. My reasoning behind such rude talk is my weariness after a very long walk, and with such a heavy load to bear I’m on the verge of tearing my hair.”

The young man quirked an eyebrow at the particular speaking pattern, then gestured toward his own back. “I’ll take that for you. Got nothing better to do.”

The older man placed his pack on the ground, carefully, as to not disturb the bottles. The young man slid it on and continued moving forward, now with a companion.

They walked in silence for some time, the lights of Wax Town getting steadily brighter. As they neared the halfway point of the bridge, both were surprised to see that one of the lamps was active, its three heads glowing white. Strings wrapped around it held up dozens of small boxes, full of multi-colored lights even brighter than those on the walls.

Distracted by the sight, the rhymer tripped, his leg having caught one of the jagged ends of a piece of concreate. The young man quickly steadied him, making sure to keep his pack balanced as he did so.

“Thank you. It’s not often that I receive a helping hand in this weary land.”

The young man smirked. “You like to rhyme.”

“It passes the time. Would you like a lime?” The rhymer produced one from his coat. The young man took it with a grateful nod, before tearing into it with his teeth. He marveled at the taste of the juice, which wasn’t as bitter as he had expected.

“How did you come by such fresh fruit?”

“A little artificial light goes a long way, in making the sweetness of a lime stay.”

He snorted. “Must be a strong light. By the way, I never got your name.”

The old man performed a little bow. “William Tybalt, former literary professor at the University, at your service.”

“Which university?”

Tybalt shrugged. “How should I know? I was teaching Shakespeare too often to find out.”

He chuckled. “Name’s Damian Volta, and I’m at your service right now.”

“True, very true. But I needn’t trouble you for long. To burden others is a terrible wrong. And it seems like you have a burden of your own.” His eyes glanced at the pink purse, still resting in the crook of Volta’s arm.

Damian grinned accusingly. “How do you know it’s not mine? Maybe I like the color pink.”

“I recognize it,” Tybalt said. “I happen to know the owner of that bag; she’s a nice old hag.”

That surprised Volta, his countenance immediately darkening. “If that’s true, then you’re not as wise as you look, Mr. Tybalt. I could be a purse snatcher, having murdered Ms. Deus and currently making off with her possession. And you’ve given me your possessions. What would stop me from killing you too?”

At this, Tybalt belted out a hardy laugh. “I saw your altercation with those sods earlier today, Mr. Volta. Ms. Deus loves her guns; ff you had tried to rob her, she would have blown your ass right out of her parlor and into the bloody sewers!”

The sudden abandonment of his rhyming scheme coupled with his filthy language caused a scowl to form on Volta’s face, but he understood Mr. Tybalt’s logic. “Well then, how do you suppose those two villains were able to take her purse in the first place? If I beat them, but she could beat me, then she would have beaten them too.”

Tybalt nodded. “Indeed, indeed. But Ms. Deus has become quite forgetful in her golden years. She might have dropped it somewhere.”

Volta relaxed. “And that’s precisely what happened. Left at the ration pit, then picked up by those blokes and carried off into the night. She’s lucky I saw what happened and gave chase.”

The two men became lost in memories pertaining to the fearsome but motherly Ms. Deus, as the light began to steadily decrease above them.

Shaking off his ruminations, Tybalt stroked his facial hair, peering at Volta oddly. “You’re not from Britain, I think. Volta sounds Italian, but with your accent, faint as it is, I’m going to guess…Germany?”

“Austria,” Volta corrected with a smile. “I make it fery faint ven in zee brezence of others, zen I layer ein Pritish accent offer it, zough I’m schtill vorking on brounciazion.”

“Hahaha, seems like you’ve got it down pat to me!” Tybalt smiled, and Volta knew immediately that he had found another good friend. The Lord knew he needed them.

“I can do an American accent as well,” he continued. “Though it’s not as good. I either sound dead inside or too pissed to walk straight.” It was then that his eyes drifted to the manila envelope in Tybalt’s arms. It was the largest Volta had ever seen. “What’s that?”

The older man smiled fondly at his possession. “My life’s work. Or, the latter part of my life’s work. Tell me, have you ever heard of One Piece?”

Volta considered the name. One Piece. It sounded like a title, not a description. But nothing came to mind.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“It’s a wonderful tale, really, so full of life it puts me in a tilly.”

“You made that word up. Cheater.”

Tybalt laughed again. “Actually, Tilly is shorthand for nearly all utility vehicles produced in Britain during the Second World War, as well as the name of a now long-defunct American retail clothing company. I bought this coat from it.” He flapped his arms demonstratively. “But in any case, One Piece is a comic book series from Japan, written by a man named Eiichiro Oda. It’s about pirates.”

“Pirates?” Volta questioned. He found himself becoming slightly interested. “Like Treasure Island?”

Tybalt chucked, the chuckle of a man with too much to explain and enough patience to explain it again. “Yes and no. It’s a fantasy story; think Treasure Island penned by Tolkien. The main character is a young man by the name of Monkey D. Luffy, or just Luffy for short. First names are last in Japan, I believe. He wants to be the King of the Pirates, so he assembles a crew of young adventurers like himself to help him accomplish his dream, such as the Three-Sword Style master Roronoa Zoro, and the cunning, money-loving thief Nami.”

Volta frowned in thought. Zoro? Swords? The inspiration was obvious to him, but how did Three-Sword Style work? And how could you be the king of piracy?

“King of the Pirates? Sounds like a mad fantasy.”

“It very much is, but the title is a real position in the world of this story, one that many pirates seek. Luffy and his crew must overcome a great many enemies to obtain it. There’s a lot of action and violence. Do you like those kinds of stories?”

The knife sank into his chest, slipped out, and sank again, over and over, until the pool of blood surrounding his chest matched the one around his head.

“Not really.”

Tybalt nodded, before going on with his explanation. “You see, the story was nearing completion, but it still had a way to go before the end. It was released weekly to the UK in an online magazine, translated into English. I kept reading until 2020, but at that point…

He trailed off, looking haunted. Volta grimaced; it had all begun that year. “Japan got hit first in the war after news of Rainbow’s trajectory came out. The story died with the author.”

Tybalt sat down hard on a piece of broken stone, any discomfort he felt not reflected in his suddenly sunken face. His age seemed to seep into it. “My wife…she loved nature. She worked as a biologist, studying plants in Peru when Rainbow hit the sun. Not getting a chance to say goodbye…will always be my biggest regret. Failing to finish One Piece will always be my second.”

The sudden change in subject matter took Volta by surprise. He grimaced; dealing with people’s woes wasn’t his strong point. Awkwardly, he patted the crestfallen Tybalt.

He looked up, and Volta saw a determination in his gaze so strong it seemed to singe his eyes. “I can’t do anything about the former, but I sure as hell can about the latter. I’ve gathered every bloody scrap of information Oda gave his audience about the world, the characters, the powers, and the lore. I’ve spent this decade of destruction carefully collecting everything that genius man made. That pack you carry? Every volume, magazine, art book, and data card pertaining to One Piece lies within. Would you care to take a look?”

Volta found himself at a loss for words. The man had spent ten years reconstructing a long-dead comic book series? In a world where basic necessities grew scarcer by the month?

But Tybalt did not lie; placing the knife in his teeth, his inspection of the pack revealed well over a hundred volumes of bright, colorful covers and uncolored but energetic drawings, depicting such a strange collection of images and events that Volta could barely take them all in.

Notebooks lined internal pockets, and a quick sweep through a few only heightened Volta’s respect for the man. The number of characters was immense! And he had birthdays, heights, favorite foods, and decent sketches of them all?

Even more impressive was the large, folded-up timeline that seemed to stretch on and on, a mammoth accomplishment in its own right. One date stood out; in bold letters, BEGINNING OF SERIES, LUFFY SETS OUT TO SEA: MAY 5th, 1522. The stuff before that point dwarfed what lay ahead of it. How much lore did this series have?

“It’s…impressive,” he said.

“That’s not all. Should this collection fall into the wrong hands on this barren land…”

“We’re back to rhyming now?” Volta grinned. “Your rhythm’s off.”

William rolled his eyes. “…as I was saying, if something happened to that pack, I have a Plan B to preserve Oda’s legacy.” He uncrossed his arms, revealing more of the envelope. It wasn’t just huge; it was a monster. Volta had seen thinner dictionaries.

“I rewrote One Piece in literary form; I couldn’t replicate his art style if I practiced for a century. Should I ever fail in protecting Oda’s true work, I want to replace it with something nearly identical.”

Volta quirked his brow again. “That’s a bit aroggant of you.”

“Oh, indeed, but if I won’t do it, who will?”

No one, Volta thought. Because it’s not really important. What he actually said was, “You said ‘nearly’ identical. Sweetened it a bit?”

Tybalt grinned cheekily. “Oh, I may have added in a worldwide religious organization, among a few other original ideas. Plus characters from other shows I liked to watch, all long gone now. I gave them all their own story arcs, so as to not interfere with what Oda has written too much.”

Volta grinned. “So you essentially wrote a bazillion pages of high-quality One Piece fanfiction. You bloody madman.”

“Hahahaha, oh, yes, absolutely!” Tybalt wiped a tear from his eye. “Damian, do you know how important dreams are?”

Volta sighed. “My goal is to survive, and to help others do so.” And to eliminate anyone who threatened that goal, but he kept that to himself.

Tybalt shook his head sadly. “If only things were different…I hope you find a passion as strong as mine one day, Damian. A dream you can follow until your last breath. The world isn’t gone yet; no not yet.”

Volta nodded slowly, hiding his annoyance at the deeply misplaced optimism. What good were his dreams if all means of achieving them had withered away? He applauded Tybalt for managing to make his a reality, but it wouldn’t last. It never did.

He carefully put everything back in the pack, almost certain the bright colors and drawings wouldn’t survive the month. “For you to give me permission to go through your pack implies a level of trust I don’t deserve.”

Tybalt shrugged. “You seem like a nice enough fellow. Gracious, is the sky turning yellow?!”

Damian looked upward and gaped at the dull yellow glow that permeated the thick shroud above. A sickly feeling began to well up in his gut, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something horrific loomed.

“What the hell?!” Tybalt pointed at one of the tears in the tarp, where a better view of the outside could be observed. Yellow clouds billowed. The wind began to pick up. A thunderous boom filled the air.

“We need to move,” Volta stated firmly. He hoisted the pack and started jogging toward Wax Town, Tybalt right behind him.

They didn’t get far when the storm hit. Bolts of lightning burst through the shroud, striking buildings like vipers. A bolt of pure, white fury descended upon the lamp of many colors, igniting it in a blaze of flame. The boxes burst, spewing colorful death, and the cords snapped, dancing as they whipped toward the ground. Volta turned just in time to see them flying toward him and his companion.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he pushed Tybalt forward with all the strength he could muster, flinging the great pack from his shoulders toward him in the same movement. The old man grunted as he got knocked further back by his own stuff, the envelope falling from his hands, bottles of ink flying out of his pockets and shattering on the ground. Volta growled, placing the knife back in his teeth as he reached down with both hands to grasp the life’s work of the pirate enthusiast, hugging it close to his chest and rolling.

It didn’t matter. The cord lashed furiously toward the young man, as if possessed. Its length slammed into the ground, the frayed, sparking end whipping up to hit Volta’s knife. The blade lit up crimson as electricity washed over it, burning the teeth that clenched it and melting the surrounding gums and flesh. Volta felt his eyes bulge as his head received a discharge strong enough to toast a small animal, and his body contorted wildly.

A second lightning bolt streaked out of the sky and slammed directly into Volta’s chest. Then another, and another, until a dozen blinding blades surrounded the writhing human, flash-frying him until his arms turned black and his grasping fingers crumbled to dust. A final bolt struck right into the center of the envelope, igniting it.

The ink pooling around him began to boil and evaporate under the intense heat, black clouds of vapor enveloping the burning body. An ominous red glow broke through the yellow clouds above.

Then the lightning started to scream. Tybalt covered his eyes with his hands, thumbs jammed into his ears. He sobbed a prayer to Mother Mary, his body trembling and cringing, half-expecting the horrible light to consume him next.

And just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

All was still. The light that shone through Tybalt’s hands disappeared, leaving him in comforting darkness. The sound that had nearly burst his aged eardrums had gone silent. Shivering, William opened his eyes.

The surrounding area looked blackened, scorched so badly that little pockets of flame danced on the wind. The light walls had collapsed, cords and pieces of glass burning and melting all across the bridge. The dark clouds above remained, and Tybalt saw that lightning still danced within them. It seemed, to his imaginative and panicked mind, as if the cloudbank was in the process of digestion. Shaking his head, he inspected his pack and found it slightly singed, but its contents unharmed. He winced and reached a hand to his cheek, feeling a cut where a flying shard had sliced it.

Groaning, he rose to his feet, lurching toward the place of impact, and suddenly his wound lost all importance to him. In the center of all this destruction, so great that it had surely alerted all of Wax Town by now, was a single, unblemished envelope.

Well, almost unblemished. A single black raven lay embedded on it, formed out of what Tybalt knew to be the ink that had spilled from the ground.

With trembling hands, the old man picked up the thick, spotless envelope, cleaner than it had been before. He felt tears run down his cheeks. There was a God, and He was good.

But of Volta, no sign remained.

.~===)==============={%}

The cloud hovered above the vast tarp for an hour more, before moving on into the fading light of the evening. It left the city behind it and traveled over the frozen sea, its yellow body pulsating in tune to the beat of its own thunder.

Just as the deadly sun finally disappeared beneath the horizon, the great yellow cloud began to ascend into the heavens, rising higher than any cloud should have been able to. In the blackness of night, it darkened, twisted, and became a vast, glorious raven, flying into the void of space with a cry no human would ever hear.

.~===)==============={%}

The black nothingness of space shone with a million stars. One of them, still the bright yellow it had been millennia ago, illuminated a large blue world, bisected by a band of red.

Upon this world’s great sea sat a small green island. Within this island lay a thick patch of forest. And amidst the forest’s trees stood a young, tall, very drunk swordsman.

Colors swirled around Zoro. His left and his right seemed to switch every now and then, sending him forward into backwards. The disorientating effects of the South Blue vodka he had consumed eleventy-eleven minutes ago churned through his body like greasy oil in a hot summer’s day.

He squinted. Had that chipmunk always been there? It sure as hell hadn’t been welding (wielding?) a machine gun welded to its arm.

The squirrel took one look at him and screeched, firing its shotgun at the same time. Zoro dodged effortlessly; he could move at the speed of light after all. Like that monkey, some marine wouldn’t shut up about yesterday. The chipmunk jumped right at his face, and he impaled it with ease. The body slid down the length of the blade, it’s pink blood foaming out of it like cotton candy. The furry corpse soon followed, puffing and fluffing into the sweet, sticky treat. Zoro didn’t eat it. Because it became bark.

Zoro had impaled a tree.

He groaned and sank to his knees. His head throbbed. It sobbed drunken tears. Kuina had sobbed just like it once. Before her death (has it really been seven years since then?), before their final duel, she had sobbed quietly to herself, unaware of Zoro’s presence. He hadn’t understood what there was to cry about then. He knew now.

Zoro threw up onto the tree.

Hey, that’s a fun color! Black, the color of Mihawk’s sword, if rumor is to be believed. Rumor. Tumor. Humor. Words that rhyme seem so on the dime today…

Zoro passed out.

.~===)==============={%}

When he awoke, the world seems more real to him. A good sign. Then a giant penguin cut through his neck with a butcher’s knife, and things went to hell again. So many birds, so little time. The forest floor turned red with their blood.

Two hours of chaos, beaks and heads and flippers everywhere.

Three hours. Things began to die down. The blood disappeared. Why had it lasted so long?

Four hours. Zoro now considered himself sober, which was a shame because he wasn’t and wouldn’t be for another thirty minutes. Still, he came close enough to stop slashing the trees into thick cylinders of oak. And his sense of direction had returned! What a relief.

He stumbled through the woods and came upon a beach. Sandy and long, with the crystal clear ocean beyond and the wreckage of his excesses behind him. The cool air smacked the half-lucid swordsman and further relaxed his hyperactive senses.

That is until he saw the vampire by his side. At least, Zoro thought it to be one. A sparkly type, if it sleeping in the sun was any indication. Considering his options carefully, Zoro drew Wado, miraculously unblemished after the past thirty-four hours, and walked slowly toward the monster.

“Die, bloodsucker.” He stabbed the blade down. Instantly the creature’s black tattoos sprang to life and blocked the attack. Vibrations down the length of the sword nearly caused Zoro to drop it, but he instinctively tightened his grip and stepped back, wary. What type of vampire could do that?

The tattoos bled back into the skin, forming intricate flame patterns across the chest and stomach. It took only a second for Zoro to realize that these markings, which he had failed to see previously, also wrapped their way down the arms and the legs, and probably covered the crotch as well, though he couldn’t tell through the creature’s bleached, torn shorts.

Hesitantly, the swordsman reached out and tapped the vampire. Cold to the touch, but getting warmer, and the tattoos did not attack. Carefully, Zoro rolled him over. More tattoos, flame spirals all gravitating toward a black raven in mid-flight, on the upper center of his back. The blackness of the ink contrasted with the paleness of the skin, only stopping short of the hands, feet, and lower neck.

A thought occurred to Zoro’s almost fully sober mind. Could this monster be a man? Zoro opened the mouth and was nearly blinded by the glint. He grunted and covered his eyes, turning the head away from the sun.

Not a single sharp tooth, but they all shone red. As if a ruby had melted on them.

He was human after all, though a strange one. Zoro wondered if he came from a foreign land, cut off from the rest of the world. Like the Wano Country his sensei had always spoken so highly of, but more savage and tribal, a place where the sun didn’t shine. A place where tattoos lived.

Was he even still alive?

Zoro checked for a pulse and found one, weak but steady. For a brief moment, the swordsman contemplated CPR. Then he imagined himself kissing the man, and settled for punching his stomach instead.

“Gruh!” a spray of sea water splurted out of him, splashing Zoro’s startled face. He grunted and wiped it away.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!” The man screamed, his hands snapping up to his eyes. For a brief moment, Zoro feared he’d tear them out, but instead, he covered them with his fists, his body trembling, wracked with convulsions. The screams went on for over a minute, but just as Zoro prepared to knock him out, he fell limp, his frame sagging in the sand.

Slowly, carefully, his fists fell away, and his eyes, a warm brown that contrasted so heavily with the rest of him, squinted up at the sky. He eyes opened wider and wider. His chapped, pale lips parted and his arms fell limp at his sides.

He stared. For a very, very long time.

Zoro watched, deeply wary, hand on the hilt of Wado Ichimonji.

The lips closed. They fluxed in speech.

“Blau.”

Zoro blinked. Blau? Oh, blue.

“Blau. So blau. Aber nicht glänzen. Schaue ich in den Himmel?”

The swordsman had no idea what he was saying, if it was anything at all. But he recognized the tone of a question, and gave an answer. “Yes.”

The man continued to stare, his eyes never shifting, the pupils never dilating. They began to grow wet. Zoro watched, with a feeling of increasing, inexplicable heartache, as the man’s eyes overflowed with tears. They poured down the sides of his head and formed thick wet spots in the sand, almost puddles. Snot crept from his nose, and his lips trembled weakly.

He spoke again, and his voice changed. “Whoever you are…unless I’m talking to myself in English...say it again.”

“…yes. You are looking at the sky. And it’s blue.”

Joy. Infinite, deep, overwhelming joy. Zoro looked upon it as it filled the man’s face, and suddenly his own eyes were wet. He wiped them, then turned away, as the man began to cry.

.~===)==============={%}

“He should be dead,” the Dr. Huno huffed. “I’ve never heard of someone swimming from one island to another.”

Zoro shrugged. “Can’t say that’s what happened, but it’s my best guess.”

The poor fellow had conked out soon after his sobs had turned to whimpers and sniffs. After swallowing a few mouthfuls of saltwater (the ultimate soberer, in Zoro’s humble opinion), he had hoisted the near-naked man all the way to Lettuce Town, where Saint Carrick’s Hospital was stationed.

Dr. Huno’s obnoxious attitude aside, the place had fully stocked treatment rooms, complete with extra-large beds equipped with a dozen attachments for cast hanging and stabilizing. The young swordsman wondered if the majority of the town’s budget went into this place every month.

“Well, clinically speaking, your friend should be alright given rest and three meals a day, which we’re happy to supply for three thousand berries a day.”

Zoro blinked. Talk about cheap. How the hell did the place stay open?

“Of course, the stay itself will be ten thousand a day.” Dr. Huno adjusted his glasses, pinning Zoro with a condescending expression. “You don’t seem to have much cash on you.”

“I’ve got some saved up in a storage locker in town,” he said. “I’ll pay all the expenses.”

Huno nodded. “Very well. If you’ll excuse me…”

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Zoro alone with the sleeping stranger. He could get the money later; he slumped into a chair, gazing at the bed’s occupant in confusion.

Who was he? Where did he come from, to speak another language? Had he truly swam across the ocean?

Zoro did not know, but he intended to find out. He looked strong, and if he came from a place of strength, Zoro was interested.

He only lasted three minutes waiting for the man to wake up before dozing off himself.

.~===)==============={%}

Hours passed, and the only sounds one could hear in the room were the chirping of birds, and the snoring of sleeping men, peacefully slumbering their way through the early afternoon. Eventually, Volta opened his eyes, before wincing at the light he still wasn’t adjusted to.

After a minute or so of rapid blinking, Volta sat up, looking around with a suspicious gaze. Someone was sleeping in the corner, an Asian man who looked a bit younger than himself. His hair was an unusual light green, the sun reflecting off hidden golden strands within. Three swords lay tucked under a green cloth belt of some sort. He didn’t look particularly dangerous at the moment, resting as he was.

Volta put one hand on his chin, another on the top of his head, and cracked his neck nosily. The swordsman snorted, alert in an instant. Volta found himself impressed by his reaction time.

“Hey, you’re awake,” the man stated.

Volta nodded. “Your voice…you’re the bloke from the beach. You told me the sky was blue.”

The man pointed toward the open window. Sunlight streamed in, the sky just as blue as it had been before. Volta stared intently.

“…have you…never seen a blue sky before?”

“Not in ten years, since I was eight.” Volta blinked; he was usually tight-lipped about himself. He turned away from the light, its beauty distracting.

The man nodded as if he understood. Volta suppressed the urge to sneer at him. “Name?”

“Zoro. Roronoa Zoro.”

“Damian Volta.”

“Heh, not a bad name.”

“You as well.”

Volta’s wheels turned slowly at first. Roronoa Zoro…not a bad name, but an odd one. The man looked Japanese, on closer inspection, but he spoke like an American. Could he be in America? No, that wasn’t possible, America had…

so he assembles a crew of young adventurers like himself to help him accomplish his dream, such as the Three-Sword Style master Roronoa Zoro, and the cunning, money-loving thief Nami.”

Roronoa Zoro.

“Wait.”

The wheels, formerly picking up speed, halted, shook, and groaned. Damian’s pale skin turned gray. He stared at Zoro’s swords, his eyes wide. “Roronoa Zoro… do you happen to know a man named Luffy?”

Zoro shook his head, slightly unnerved. “Can’t say that I do.”

Volta turned his gaze to the ceiling, as if catching sight of something both wondrous and disturbing. “What year is it?”

“1520.” Zoro glanced at a nearby calendar. “Today is May 5th.”

A man without Volta’s rigorous mental training may not have remembered much of what happened before the horrible lighting strikes, but for the quite literally other-worldly man, everything was clear. Including the timeline he had glanced at. A silly, mad smile broke out on Volta’s face.

Zoro took note and slowly stood up. “You alright?”

“…fffffffpahahahahahaPAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

Zoro’s hand instinctively went to his sword, the positively insane laughter ringing through the room. Immediately Dr. Huno and his orderlies came rushing in, and he prepared a sedative.

Volta’s laughter still vibrated off the walls as the man himself went under.

.~===)==============={%}

Zoro was still there when Volta emerged from unconsciousness again. The sun, on the verge of dipping its bright bottom beneath the horizon, spilled golden light into the room.

It took him very little time to conclude the impossible. “I’m in One Piece,” he whispered.

Zoro blinked. “What did you say? Did…did you just say One Piece?”

But Volta had already reconsidered his statement. If his working theory was correct, that the lightning had…fazed him in, somehow, then it couldn’t have been into the actual story, the one he had pushed away from him. He had picked up the envelope…

“Bloody hell…I’m in the fanfiction of the story.” Volta’s eyes seemed to get wider and wider as he whispered these words, so low Zoro couldn’t make them out. “I was holding it when…and I’m here two years before the story even starts! Va…vat on earth…”

Zoro felt himself getting nervous. Was Volta insane after all? “Oi,” he called out from across the room, his angry tone hiding his trepidation. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Volta lay stunned, so much so that he didn’t comment on the bad language. He remained silent for a minute, trying to think of what to say. His mind was awhirl, all his conceptions of the universe collapsing like a house of cards.

But despite the shock, horror, and confusion he felt, he didn’t forget his training. Draining his head of all unnecessary thought, he allowed calm to overcome him, and he directed a level gaze at the swordsman. “I apologize for startling you; in all honesty, I don’t know what I’m talking about either.”

The swordsman blinked at the abrupt change in tone. “I see…”

Volta sat up, doing his best to not let his emotional turmoil show. “Again, I’m sorry, but I must ask again. Do you know a man by the name of Luffy?”

Zoro frowned. “No.”

“Hmm…I knew a man named Luffy once. I’m not sure why I thought you’d know him.”

Volta didn’t want to lie to this strange, oddly likable swordsman, but who the hell would believe the truth? He had much to think on, that was bloody certain, but first, he needed to extricate himself from the conversation. “Honestly,” he continued, “I don’t really know much about the world outside of my former home, so you’ll have to forgive my ramblings.”

Zoro frowned; it was clear to him that Volta wasn’t interested in explaining himself. But the swordsman dropped the questioning, intrigued to hear about this man’s home. “Where are you from? It must be pretty isolated; I’ve never heard that language before.”

Volta sank into his bed. “I’m from an island called...Austria.” He put a hand to his forehead, annoyed by his stumble. Did he really consider Britain his home? “Ah, heard of it?”

“Can’t say that I have. Is it to the south of here?”

Volta shook his head. “It’s very far away, in a stretch of ocean rarely traveled.” His gaze became unfocused, as if he was seeing something beyond the room. “It was a beautiful place. Nowhere else could you find hills so green, or mountains so blue. Water so pure. Cities so clean.”

Zoro raised an eyebrow. “Was?”

Volta nodded, his smile fading. “For a time, life was good. But…news of a serious calamity began to tear apart the people there. It came to war. And then the calamity struck.”

The bedridden man clenched his blankets, a look of pain warping his features. Zoro wondered if he was reliving a painful memory; if the look in his eyes was any indication, it must have been bad. The swordsman found himself reflecting back on his own most traumatic moment; seeing Kuina’s corpse, its face shrouded, the skin already pale and clammy. That day had been…had been…

“The sky,” Volta continued, snapping Zoro out of his painful remanence, “became covered with smoke and ash. The war destroyed everything…after a decade of fighting, only a few hundred were left.”

“A few hundred?” Zoro exclaimed. That was often the population of smaller islands. Just how destructive had this war been?

Volta’s eyes grew misty, and his lower lip twitched. “I lost my friends, my home…everything I’d ever known. Everything but my body, my mind, and my bloody dignity. And I knew I had to keep those intact.”

Zoro understood. “You left.”

“You have to understand, we have little contact with outsiders,” Volta explained. “Even before the conflict began. Leaving the island was practically unheard of. Our boats were mere fishing vessels, nothing suitable for long-term travel.”

Volta turned to look at Zoro, a fire in his eyes. “And I didn’t care. I stole a ship and fled as far out to sea as I could. I don’t think I would have minded if I had drowned in a tempest; anything would have been preferable to that bloody hellhole.”

Zoro cracked his knuckles, his gaze intense and empathetic. “I didn’t see a boat under your ass when I found you, so I assume you did hit a storm eventually.”

Volta sighed. “Language, and you assume correctly. Not sure how I got out of that one alive, honestly. But I must have been carried farther then I thought; I saw no islands on the horizon before the tempest fell upon me.” He chuckled to himself. “Must have pulled one hell of a blinder to end up here.”

The two were silent for a while, both thinking along the same lines but in different directions. Volta felt relieved that Zoro had bought his story, close to the truth and yet so far. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how the man would react if he told him what had really happened.

Zoro very much didn’t buy it, not entirely. The raw pain and weariness in Volta’s voice, and at such a young age, definitely confirmed his dark story as genuine in its horror, but the account was undetailed, vague in its scope.

It was probably even worse, the swordsman thought grimly. So traumatic he probably didn’t want to talk about it. He decided to stop questioning him on his past, lest he provoke a bad reaction.

“Well, you got out,” Zoro stated abruptly. “What do you want to do know?”

Volta rubbed the side of his head with his palm. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I never planned for the future beyond bunking out of there.”

“Bunking?”

“A colloquial expression; it means ‘escaping quickly’ where I’m from.”

“What about those tattoos?”

Volta pulled his sheets down, careful to hide his shocked reaction from the swordsman. Where the bloody hell had those come from? He could figure it out later; already, he needed another story. It didn’t take much time for him to concoct one.

“I gained them in battle,” he stated confidently. “I wasn’t always running from the war, only when I realized that it wouldn’t end until everyone was dead. The flames are a mark of bravery and strength.”

“And the raven on your back?”

Volta didn’t even blink. “Speed and cunning.”

Zoro nodded. “Have you killed anybody?”

Volta gave him a flat stare. “What do you think?”

“Not condemning you for it; I haven’t myself, but that could change soon. I work as a bounty hunter.”

“Bounty hunting? Sounds a lot like what I used to do.”

“What was that?” It suddenly occurred to Zoro that he was doing exactly what he had promised himself he wouldn’t, but Volta seemed unperturbed by the questioning.

“Assassination.”

Zoro couldn’t help himself, he barked a laugh. “That’s pretty fucking different from bounty hunting!”

“Ffffpahahaha, gracious, do you kiss your mum with that mouth?”

The two found themselves laughing uncontrollably for a few seconds, if only to relieve the tension and somberness that had consumed the room.

“Hey,” Volta said, his grin returning. “Would you be interested in a partner?”

Zoro blinked, before giving him a contemplative look. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’d like to have one, but I don’t want my personal growth to suffer. I have a dream, and getting help from someone else might impede on that.”

Volta frowned. “What is it?”

The swordsman unsheathed one of his blades, the one with the bright white scabbard. “To become the world’s greatest swordsman,” he spoke reverently. “Bounty hunting is a good way to make money, but it’s ultimately a means of increasing my skill. Some of my bounties have been challenging opponents; and every time I defeat one, I get just a little bit stronger, a little bit closer to achieving my dream.”

Volta nodded. “I understand how important goals can be. Long was it my goal to leave my own personal hell behind me.” Another lie, and a bitterly ironic one at that; Volta felt adrift, his entire world swept away by what could only be described as a nightmare. How could he get back? Could he get back?

Another thought struck him, one that shocked him to his core; did he want to go back? To a place of violence, death, and despair? Where every attempted justice was countered with a dozen atrocities? Where the world had literally died under his shoes?

Volta stared out the window again. This world still thrived; and if the story was as long as the pack content had suggested, it would thrive for years. Perhaps forever, barring another meteor screwing up the sun. And what were the chances of that?

The pale man leaned forward, his eyes suddenly alight. He was free; free from his apocalypse. He thought of Wax Town, and the people he had assisted there. He felt guilty for being so quick to dismiss them, but there were people here he could be of service too. Thousands of people, millions, perhaps billions.

He could make a difference here. He could have a dream.

“Some of your bounties may be traveling in groups, for added protection. Or have subordinates, like a bandit leader. Better to have some backup if you get surrounded, no?” Volta spoke these words, but his mind was far, far away from them, and Zoro could sense it.

“You’ve got a point,” he stated, then fixed a hard stare on Volta, bringing him back to reality. “But I’ll need to test your strength first. I’m not gonna be responsible for dead weight.”

Volta smiled. “Understood.”

Zoro had little time to react as the seemingly weakened warrior sprang from his covers, grabbing hold to one of the attachments and swinging his body around to slam Zoro with a kick. The swordsman grunted as he blocked with the re-sheathed white blade, the force of the blow still sending him flying out the open window and toward the ground two stories below.

Growling, he twisted in mid-air, landing on his feet without much trouble at all. Volta sailed right after him and slammed his fists into the white scabbard, causing Zoro to slide across the rough, unpaved road leading up to the hospital.

Volta began flexing his arms and legs, cracking the joints cathartically. Zoro whipped out his still sheathed blades, placing the white one in his mouth and the black ones in his hands. Volta raised an eyebrow, before smiling in understanding. “Ah, so that’s how Three-Sword-Style works.”

“You think I just keep a spare on me?” Zoro smiled through clenched teeth, an oddly eerie display. “Come at me if you dare.”

Still wearing nothing but his bleached shorts, Volta rushed forward, his body low, his arms thrown back. Zoro swung for the head, level to his chest, but Volta jumped at the last second, pushing off the sword and flipping over the stunned swordsman to deliver a kick to the back. The blow sent Zoro flying again, this time into a tree. Volta stared at his own foot in shock. “The hell…”

“Hah, you’re not half bad!” the swordsman shouted, standing up without any noticeable limp or wince. He craned his neck from side to side, and his grin became predatory. “My turn.”

He was fast, faster than Volta expected, faster then what a human should be capable of. And to his own amazement, he was almost as fast. Zoro rained blow after blow upon him, imagining his blades as mere bamboo shinai, careful to keep them from slipping out of their scabbards. Volta blocked and dodged, his footwork light and jumpy, almost skip-like in its movement.

They danced across the road, back toward the front of the hospital but never too close to the gob-smacked nurses smoking on the front steps. Dr. Huno stared down from a second-story window, paper and pen ready to jot down a bill for damages.

Volta shifted to the offensive. He launched one straight lead after another, precise punches to either wind or force back. Zoro blocked or tanked them with little more than a wince, before retaliating with a stronger blow of his own. More than once Volta had to retreat from a surprise strike from the sword in Zoro’s mouth, which he had mistakenly assumed to be too limited in its range of motion to be effective.

Zoro outmatched him, he could see that now. His bladework, seemingly hamstrung by the weight of the scabbards, still flowed and weaved around Volta’s own defenses now that the swordsman understood them, striking more blows then Volta could hope to dish out.

“Why...huff huff…aren’t you using your tattoos?”

“What?”

SLAM!

“Ugh!”

The unusual question threw off Volta’s concentration, allowing the swordsman to slam both of his black scabbards into his bare chest. Damian flew across the ground and slammed into the same tree he had knocked Zoro into, splintering a good chunk of its trunk. Many of its golden leaves instantly withered and crumbled, provoking a cry of alarm from the gathering hospital staff.

“You’re not using your full power!” Zoro shouted. “You’re not letting your tattoos block my strikes like you did on the beach!”

“What are you talking about!?”

Zoro frowned. “Your tattoos can move! Don’t you know that!?”

Volta’s look of shock answered Zoro’s question. “What the hell,” the swordsman muttered. “Is it some sort of unconscious ability?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Damn, this guy keeps getting weirder!”

“Hey, are you just gonna stand there!?” Volta exclaimed, slowly getting up out of the shattered tree. Splinters decorated his shoulders and back, some of the wounds already seeping blood. They didn’t seem to faze the fighter, who smiled at his opponent.

Zoro’s grin was just as vicious. “Why not? Come and get me!!”

Volta rushed him again, like a bird bursting from its cage.

.~===)==============={%}

Warriors, those that absorb fighting and make it the center of their lives, often find a true understanding of others through the duel.

Volta was not a ‘true warrior’ in the same sense that Zoro was, but he had fought enough times in his life to recognize true strength and respect it. Especially strength as great as Zoro’s; the man fought with inhuman power and skill.

Strangely, it seemed Volta now did too. Nothing had changed about his fighting style, but his own physical prowess had increased significantly. Enough to shrug off destroying a tree with his back, and to take sword blows without his ribs shattering into dust. Was this the level of power that all strong fighters in this world had?

But it wasn’t just strength that made Volta respect Zoro more and more as the hours crept by; it was his honor. He never resorted to cheap tricks or low blows, things Volta unleashed without hesitation or remorse. The man fought like a lion but never struck like a snake.

For Zoro, Volta’s cheap tactics annoyed but did not offend; he had expected as much from a self-proclaimed assassin. The reason Zoro found himself respecting his opponent, in turn, was because of his determination. Volta fought like a rat against two cats, unexpectedly vicious and very aggressive. There was little defense; only swift dodges and swifter blows, from hands, feet, and even the head a few times. Zoro’s arms bled from a dozen nail cuts, and his right shoulder threatened to fully dislocate after a punishing chop.

Once again, the sun fell under the horizon, and the two fighters, bloodied, bruised, and slightly broken, fell flat on their backs, gasping for air. The pain they felt couldn’t wipe the grins off their faces.

“It’s…huff…so odd,” Volta breathed, struggling to hold his arm out in front of his face. “I feel…huff huff…stronger and faster than I…huff…ever have before.”

“Really…huff…in that case, you may be stronger…huff…then me already.” Zoro tapped his opponent on the shoulder, right in the center of an especially large flame. “I don’t know…huff…what these are…huff…but if you learn to control them…huff huff…you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”

“Does that mean…huff…I’m too strong to be…huff…your partner?”

Zoro groaned as he snapped his shoulder completely back into place. “Heh, don’t…huff…flatter yourself. Sure, why…huff…the hell not? I could always…huff…use a meat shield.”

“Fffpahaha, can’t…huff…wait.”

The wind blew across the land, chilling their sweat-slick bodies and leaving them shivering on the bloody road. Dr. Huno watched them angrily from the front steps of the hospital, his glasses reflecting the light of the sun.

“…you know…huff…I ever thought…that after what I’ve been through...huff…I’d make a friend so soon.”

“Heh, from partners to friends…huff…huh? We’ve only…just met.”

“I know…huff…and I don’t really care.”

“…yeah, me neither.”

Funnily enough, neither man remembered who exactly said what that day, right before they both passed out from their injuries. All they remembered was a shared feeling of joy, for something they had both lost, they had found again, after years of being without it.

From this unexpected but mutually desired friendship, two journeys would spring.

One journey would take a friend through a hell of metal and blood, wounds and pain, victory and defeat, friends and enemies, glory and humiliation. A journey that would end with a duel that would determine the fate of many, and of one.

The other journey would take a friend through something very different. Something darker then the blackest ink and more blinding then the brightest bolt. Something that soared above the ravens and flew with the eagles.

Something that would bring him into the center of the world.

And into battle with the man who would change it forever.

Author's Note I’m not sure why I didn’t just do this in the first place. Tumblr is a place to share work, not share links! Here’s chapter one! I’ve also created artwork for this fic, which I will post shortly. Yeomanaxel, the Verified Yeo.

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erineverly · 5 years ago

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thornrosed‌:

“I’m not sure. Hopefully it won’t happen.” Chuckling, it’s a good thing that can’t happen because he wants to keep making her blush and blush. “Well if she doesn’t speak up, that’s her problem. Guess she’ll have to keep bein’ miserable during something that should make her feel the complete opposite.” Which is ecstasy Slash can’t even bring his girlfriend. How embarrassing. “No, too late. There’s no turning back down. That ass is too fineeee.” Snickering, peeking around her waist just to get a look of it. “Oh yeah, I was still teetering on the tail end of my awkwardness at that point. Then again, you could make me like that now.” Shrugging, smiling amusingly. She just did— just a few minutes ago even. “We would be the biggest weirdos. We would be horny for each other, but wouldn’t know how to act on it.” Laughing, that’s too weird. “Yeah, sometimes.” But mostly girls. “Ha ha!” Flinching when he gets hit, he takes it from her and wraps it around his waist to make a nice towel skirt to keep his junk from hanging free. “Mmmkay.” Humming, leaning down, kissing her thigh right next to the skin on her middle then turning her around to kiss her left butt cheek. “I didn’t know what her you were talking about, so I did both.” Snorting, leaning up with a smirk. “You look a little…” Flustered. He’s smirking more, grabbing her sides and lifting her out of the shower so strongly before placing her down safe and sound. “Oh, okay. I get it. You need to wipe something else instead.” Handing her the towel, stifling a laugh. Indicating she’s wet. “Hell yeah it is.” And now he’s sitting down on the toilet lid, head turning, eyes watching her go by him naked. It is his lucky day. Gosh. He will definitely give her another hug. “Okay, butterflies it is. I can’t wait to see you in it. And well, my jammies are just boxers.”

“You’ll have to give me one of yours. It’s only fair if mine explode because of you.” Giggling, she playfully pinches one of his cheeks as if inspecting whether they’re good enough for her to steal. “Slash isn’t a mind reader and it’s Meegan’s fault for not telling him but... Don’t you think it’s a bit strange? How he’s never noticed that she’s not having too much fun?” She lowers her voice, feeling bad for discussing their friends’ private matters behind their backs. “It’s never too late to restore your innocence. I could help you. The first step is you have to stop looking at my butt.” Laughing at how adorable and goofy he can be, she gently smacks his arm before using both of her hands to cover her backside. It’s the kind of compliment that steals her breath away and makes her blush. “I don’t know what it is about you being a cute dweeb but I really like it. Everyone else thinks you’re this tough rock n’ roller and only I know the real Axy Baxxy. It makes me happy. I don’t want to share my sweet strawberry with the world. It’s our secret,” she coos, hugging his neck and kissing his cheek. She takes great pride in having the ability to turn him into this bashful church boy all over again. “Yeah, we would be even weirder than we are now. We would suffer and argue a lot because of all that tension.” The sexual tension that they wouldn’t know how to get rid of. “Girls don’t really talk about weenies.” Or at least her friends don’t. “It’s not nice to laugh at someone else’s pain,” the brunette scolds, looking elsewhere. She doesn’t want him to see the vast grin that’s threatening to overtake her visage. It’s almost impossible for Erin to stifle her giggles when he’s being a dork but she tries her best. “Axl!” Gasping when he plants not one but two kisses on her skin, so dangerously close to her most private parts, she holds her breath and blushes. All it takes is the faintest touch and she’s turning into a shy, love-struck teenager. Shaking her head, Erin doesn’t really trust her tongue to form a coherent sentence so instead, she wags her finger at her boyfriend and utters, “no, no.” She didn’t think he’d actually kiss her butt ( or her thigh for that matter ). She makes a mental note to herself to never underestimate him. “I was talking about my butt and it was a joke, you silly cowboy.” The scarlet hue of embarrassment tinges her cheeks, deep and glowing, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary at this point. She’s averting her gaze again, butterflies fluttering inside her belly. “A little what? It’s all because of your cold hands. They literally took my breath away.” Giggling awkwardly, she’s a terrible liar but it doesn’t stop her from fibbing to save herself. A squeak falls from her lips, blue eyes shining brightly. Her hands instinctively find his shoulders and hold onto them even when her feet are back on the ground. His strength never fails to impress her. It’s so manly and incredibly attractive. Enamored, she can’t utter a word but her fingers slide down his arms, affectionately caressing his muscles. “Don’t be gross or I’ll have to smack you again. I don’t need to wipe anything else.” Huffing, she rolls her eyes and refuses to take the towel from him. He can keep it or hang it back on the rack, she doesn’t care. “The craziest Valentine’s Day ever.” It takes her a moment to find the right lotion but she can feel Axl’s gaze on her body and it makes her heart skip a beat. She never thought that she’d be able to attract his attention so easily. It’s flattering, strokes her ego in all the right ways. She eventually picks the pink bottle up from the counter and turns to face the redhead, beaming. “Got it!” She announces, taking him in, marveling at his body in all of its glory. He’s so beautiful that she doubts he’s more than a figment of her imagination. Closing the distance between them, she cups his face with her free hand and coos softly, “my lion will smell like a fruity dessert.” It’s her lucky day, too. She gets to love on him in all the pure ways and it’s the best thing ever. “I know but maybe I could pick which ones? I promise not to choose the Mickey ones.” Giggling, she runs her fingers through his hair as her eyes continue to study his features.

#thornrosed

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curlicuecal · 8 years ago

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Let’s Be Outcasts (Kankri/AR) ch 11/?

Part 2 of cyber!bunny Apocalypse ‘verse (tumblr)

ch: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

read on AO3

Summary: Divergent AU where AR and Li'l Seb get kicked into a new universe with some snazzy new cyborg bodies. They’re still working out the bugs.

In which AR discovers that kidnapping rarely solves more problems than it creates, Mituna breaks out of a lab (with some help), and Seb continues to take good care of his Bro.

Chapter Summary:

it’s show and tell time :3

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Ch 11.

"This is it?"

You take extreme satisfaction from the way Kankri’s nose wrinkles. "You know, you should try for a more encouraging tone when I'm revealing myself to you. Confused distaste really does not set the mood."

Kankri rewards you with a furrowed brow stare-down that could frost a furnace. "I hardly think hauling me halfway through an influx zone while you wander in circles and make cryptic comments qualifies as 'revealing.' And the innuendo is noted and not appreciated." His expression changes slightly to superiority. "I am starting to doubt you have anything of merit to reveal."

"Oh, burn." You clap a hand to your heart. "Hit a guy in his exceedingly meritous soft spots, why don't you."

He sniffs and returns his attention to the artifact before him. You confess, the pair of concentric metal rings around a meter wide disc in the dirt are somewhat underwhelming.

"While I would, of course, hesitate to distress you by casting aspersions on your... soft spots, it appears you have led me to a nondescript hole in the ground. Perhaps you could explain the relevance? And why you believe this would merit an exchange of incriminating personal information on my part?”

"Well, for starters, it's not a nondescript hole in the ground. It is a nondescript piece of machinery retracted into a steel-armored shaft and sealed into a hole in the ground. And for seconds, I heard that use of ‘incriminating’ and I would like to take a moment to register my ‘I called it’, ‘I told you so’, and ‘you totally have interesting secrets’, redeemable later.”

“It’s Game tech,” Seb puts in, then twitches an ear. “Kinda.”

Kankri’s eyes flick to Seb, lips pressing together over something he doesn’t want to share with the class. Seb looks blandly back, absently tapping the little broken vacuum bot to correct its course as it starts to wander. He’s halfway to making a pet of that thing—assuming the pair of you ever get the toolset to finish fixing what you broke.

Kankri returns his frown to you. “Let me see if I understand this correctly. You claim you were sent here, specifically, to this only recently documented and still mostly unknown ancient influx site, to find this specific piece of previously undiscovered outworld tech, which your ‘other’ siblings somehow knew the location of and directed you to find.”

“It was more like a mini-quest. Or a scavenger hunt. Or a junior jumble.”

“We had clues,” says Seb, who seems to have appointed himself your translator. This is kind of hilarious, when you think about it.

“And now that you’ve found it you intend to…?”

“Well, if it’s anything like the other ones, the control console will be tucked somewhere in the surrounding block or ten. So, predictably, our reward for finding a thing is to have to find more things. Hands up who’s surprised at the bitter irony of the world.”

Kankri actually turns toward Seb like you are not a model of clear and direct speech.

“Now we break it,” Seb says.

“By finding the control console,” you conclude, agreeably. See, exactly what you said.

Kankri appears to have choked on his indrawn breath. “Excuse me?”

“It’s hella hard to break things that are currently underground and encased in steel. We usually prefer to open them up first. And then skip straight to breaking the remote instead. It’s teenier.” You tug your left glove off with your teeth, mostly managing to maintain your expression of bland innocence.

“That is not—hsssst. Surely even you realize you can’t just go around destroying ancient artifacts.”

You look at him with genuine curiosity. “Why not?”

“Because, because—“ Kankri’s mouth works like he can’t decide what should come out of it first. “Do you even have a reason?”

“Sawtooth said to,” Seb says, with perfect confidence.

You shrug, crouching down beside the panel of retractable plates that seal the shaft opening. “What the bunnybot said. I come, I see, I wreck shit. And I live in breathless anticipation of the day when someone bothers to explain why they want me to do things.” You raise an eyebrow ironically at Kankri. “Care to make my night?”

He presses his lips together, crossing his arms almost defensively across his chest. And yet—his head tilts slightly to one side and he pins you with that pensive stare, the one full of thoughts you can’t read. He examines you for a long moment. You only realize you’ve paused in anticipation of the verdict when he sucks in a long breath and blows it out again. The slightest, arch hint of an uptilt touches the corner of his mouth. “I believe an exchange of secrets was suggested. I don’t see any reason to change my stance on matters when you have yet to satisfy your end of the proposition.” His surety ruffles. “–proposal. –accord.” It’s hard to tell under the sun-flush, but you think his cheeks might have warmed. He frowns repressively down at you.

You smirk back. Your pulse thrums victory. It’s the closest he’s come to a verbal agreement to terms and you’re tipsy on adrenaline, the biological high daring you to go, go, go, push the lines, break them. “Well,” you drawl. “I aim to satisfy.”

You’re not even sure what reaction you’re looking for—anything, possibly. Kankri blinks and tilts his head a little more. Unaccountably, your cheeks heat.

You decide now is an ideal moment to shift your ground and attack from another angle.

Aware of him watching, you brush dirt from the panel and address yourself crisply to Seb. “Hey li’l bro. I’m going to skip a step and see if I can’t wake up the system from here. Think you can put those ears to work?”

“Mm.” Said cybernetic bunny ears lift straight up, gone to point. Always ready for a task. Then he hesitates, studying you with his always unreadable face, body language gone uncertain. “It’s okay?”

“What is?”

Seb captures the disc of the damaged vacuum bot, holding it trapped near his chest. His shades mask the flick of his eyes, but his head tilts just slightly towards the circular panel, and back to you. “It won’t …hurt?”

You blink at the panel. “It’s not alive, Seb.”

His ears fold flat in rapid annoyance. Not what he meant apparently. You bite your tongue and wait for him to find his words. “You,” he says after a minute. “Last time you were...” He makes a vague, frustrated swooping gesture with one hand, the other still holding the bot by his chest. When emotive hand movements fail to adequately capture whatever he’s trying to express, he ends with one of the General’s hand symbols. …Not okay.

You have a brief flash to the way it felt, when you died with those assassin-bots you synced with; when you died with the headset of that human you murdered; when you woke up, blank and disoriented to find Seb waiting for you in anxious silence. He’d taken that last bot to pieces, all around you.

Seb watches you, now posture still uncertain, expressionless face fixed on you like your answer matters to him. You heart does a dumb organic clench-y thing.

“It won’t hurt?” he asks again, and there is absolutely no way you won’t say whatever it takes to fix that note in his voice pronto. Hell, you’ll be whatever it takes. You wonder vaguely if this is a thing guardians do, or if you just have a lot of ground to make up.

Luckily, you are fucking aces at convincing displays of arrogance.

“Nah, kiddo, not even. I’ve been practicing.” You made one failed attempt and broke that little bot with your brain. Does that count? You’ll work with it. You bat at his hair through his hoodie, something between a pet and an affectionate swat. “Hey. I’m a Strider, aren’t I? I hella got this.”

There’s something equal parts exhilarating and terrifying in the way he takes you utterly at your word, relaxing instantly. He nods once, ears going all perky and expectant, and flips the little hovering bot safely away into his sylladex.

“You up for this?’

“Strider,” he points out, his own tiny portrait of utterly confident arrogance, and dear god but you love this kid.

“Cool.” You’re aware again of Kankri, hovering nearby, unwilling to interrupt, but still clearly about to explode with the desire to interrogate and/or lecture you. Probably a combination. Find out what you’re doing and then tell you why you’re wrong. You fight your mouth’s desire to curl upward. “I think you’ll be able to locate the console by sound once it engages,” you tell Seb. “Not sure how close you’ll need to get—“

He makes a scoffing noise. You raise an eyebrow.

Seb bounces impatiently on his toes. “I can do it.”

“Sweet. I, on the other hand, am completely winging this. Fortunately I am a supremely sophisticated artificial intelligence slash almost person and I have carefully calculated the ideal balance between risk and efficiency. I’ll try not to accidentally self-destruct the city. Wish me luck.”

Seb offers a fist bump.

Kankri has drawn several steps closer, evidently unable to help himself any longer. “Strider, what are you doing?”

You flash a smirk at him. You don’t mean it to be quite so wide or grin-like, but it turns out that way anyway. “It hardly counts as show and tell if there’s not a demonstration. Besides,” you add off-handedly, “you keep going on about what a hurry you’re in. Maybe this way we can get your friend’s attention.”

Kankri sucks in a breath, but, for a wonder, just re-crosses his arms and settles back to watch. His expression looks torn between disapproval, concern, and poorly suppressed, ravenous curiosity. His red-tinted eyes are bright and concentrated on you.

You extend your ungloved palm confidently toward the flat metal surface of the circular panel. You think you hide the moment of hesitation before your hovering hand changes tack to land lightly on the outermost concentric ring instead. You totally know what you are doing. This is a clever and efficient idea and will definitely not blow up in your face.

Or you suppose you should say it will blow up exactly the intended amount, since that is kind of the goal here.

Seb watches you with serene confidence. Kankri is a silent pressure bomb that might or might not go off, also watching you.

You sprang into this whole plan somewhat on the spur of the moment, but you are at least 93.4% sure that you are making this decision based on your extensive and well-reasoned analysis. Kankri’s appalled fascination is just a bonus.

…You are 100% certain you are stalling. (—the last time you did this you broke that little bot; wrecked something you couldn’t fix—) Right, enough. Even focusing on your shittiest of motivations has got to be better than succumbing to an attack of nerves.

Before you can waste any more time running in embarrassing mental circles, you flatten your hand, press the circuits in your palm close against the metal below. You extend that inner programming, laid into your shades, laid into wires and metal somewhere in your brain, somewhere behind your skull where that core part of you is still numbers and code struggling into the shape of a human. You extend yourself, reach your limits. Push farther.

Connect.

The machinery in the ground below you lights up behind your eyes in crimson red lines and then you’re unfolding rapidly outwards, racing along electric pathways, splintering your mind and becoming bigger in the process.

In one part of yourself you are aware of your organic form kneeling in the dirt, head tilted forward in concentration, Kankri and Seb watching from steps away. The red shine of the lit rings in your shades tints your vision.

(“Are his eyes supposed to—?” Kankri starts. “Mm,” Seb says. “They glow. Wait.”)

In the other part of yourself—

You have only the vaguest sense of its physical shape: tall, like the others, retracted down below the ground like an antenna at the world’s largest carwash. The device’s programming is ancient and alien in a way that’s familiar. Once upon a time, you think it might have been a kernel spire, but you are not the only thing changed in a new world. You have your own suspicions about what function it might serve now, here in this place.

Sometimes you just have to make peace with the fact that your function in life might be to break the internet.

The device is largely shut down, the greater part of its programming locked behind closed points at the edge of your awareness. You probe automatically at those dormant threads, your mind already reaching to expand your dominion, to map that tantalizing web of possibility.

You don’t need the control console, you could take the whole thing from here, push farther, figure it out, make it yours--

No.

You call yourself sharply back. Somewhere, your fingers scrape across dirt and metal and Kankri says your name. (Grass under your hands and an ache in your head and you pushed so hard you broke it.) You started this with a plan, with a calculated, acceptable level of risk. (You can see Seb, hesitating just at the edge of your vision, standing right there.) Now is not the time to experiment. Now is not the time to indulge in thoughtlessness, now is not the time to forget that your actions have consequences. (Now is not the time to pretend you still don’t care.)

You gather yourself and reach, instead, for the single, dim thread that links this device to something smaller and more complex. You splinter once more, just a tiny fragment of yourself, and you send that fragment skittering down that connection with the simplest, least chancy of commands.

You turn the system on.

You stay only long enough to get a sense for what processes are initiating and in what order, for the timeline you’ve committed yourself to. The goal here is remote console on long enough for Seb to find it and for you to manually trigger the self-destruct functions on that end, but not so long that the entire underground antenna array completes deployment and starts... networking or whatever else it is giant mystery artifacts do. You can’t be certain of Sawtooth’s broader motivations for destroying these, internet-related or not, but you have the idea that turning them on instead would be bad.

Digging around in the system from this end is still tempting, but not so tempting that you can quite overlook the irresponsibility of playing with the trigger of a bomb you are currently sitting on.

Which isn’t to say you couldn’t handle it if you wanted to.

But, no, right, you’re not doing that because Seb and Kankri are right there and you the master of responsibility and shit.

Time to go. Distantly, you set a little timer running in your shades and ignore the cascade of unpleasant associations that want to trigger. (--helplessness, isolation, an empty world falling down around you--) Instead, you set about reeling in the pieces of your mind, struggling to assemble the fragments of yourself back into something that can fit in the limits of your flesh, into this organic vessel that still doesn’t quite feel like your own.

Disengagement comes by pieces, reluctant. You’re aware that you’re entirely in your body a good few minutes before you can gather your thoughts enough to think anything more usefully coherent than ‘I have a heartbeat’ or ‘I am moving air with my lungs.’ You take a much longer breath than you need to, think about pressure differentials and your diaphragm and the circulation of oxygen into your bloodstream, and then you blow out the breath and blink blearily. A flicker of red light vanishes from your vision.

Kankri hovers in arm’s reach—he’s, huh, a lot closer than before—his brows furrowed and teeth caught in his lip. You think maybe you have some thoughts about this, but you will have them later when you are not dissociating like a motherfucker.

You have toes, but they don’t strike you as real.

“Hey,” you say, with what you assume to be your voice.

“Can you hear me now?” Kankri asks.

“No, I am just a very vivid audio-hallucination.”

He narrows his eyes at you. “If you didn’t speak nonsense the majority of the time it would be easier to distinguish when you are delirious. Or pan-damaged.”

“Ha.” You are a font of stunning repartee. “Got you. With my plan. You had an emotion.”

His eyebrows arch up, then furrow down again. “You are disoriented. Your sibling suggested you might need a short recovery period.”

You look around, but don’t find Seb in the open, dusty space. “Where is he?”

“He went off ahead to find your control conso—whoa.” Hands fly out to steady you as you nearly capsize. You drop back to one knee.

Standing. Maybe not yet.

“Are you all right?”

You contemplate the hands bracing your shoulders—slim grey fingers, neat dark claws, subtle callouses. He has ink stains all along one side of his palm. “…Buffering,” you say, blankly. No, wait. “I’m fine. Just give me a sec.” You are fine; you’re totally chill. You just need to gather your thoughts.

His hands are very warm. And distracting.

Kankri steps away so abruptly you almost fall again. “I—please excuse me. That was extremely discourteous of me. I didn’t mean to—er. Distract you.”

Annnnnd you said that last part out loud. You blink into his not entirely sun-reddened face while a wash of adrenaline-fueled mortification scours the fog from your brain so you can really experience this moment. Great job. Smooth.

“Although frankly, I don’t know what else was to be expected when nobody explains to me what I am meant to do about a situation. You’re having some kind of, of reactive episode and I don’t have the first idea how to handle your biology. —that was not an innuendo.” Kankri pauses and cracks one eye, peering down his nose. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

You blink some more, open your mouth, stop, and then decide to never return to this topic ever again. The last five minutes never happened. You will fight anyone who says different.

“Which way did Seb go?” you say instead, pushing briskly to your feet and swaying only slightly. You can’t be certain, but you are pretty sure a non-fake guardian would not misplace their tiny human nearly as often as you do. You and Roxy—Dirk and Roxy’s ectoparents were dead and still managed to keep track of you. Them.

Bad thoughts. You brush dirt from your knees.

Kankri watches you narrowly. “He left in that direction. I believe he intended to mark the path in some way.”

“Awesome. Let’s go.”

You set off back into the mismatched city streets, hopping a low boulevard wall to claim the broken concrete of a crumbing sidewalk, set at diagonal angles to the buildings around. Kankri follows you without argument, apparently deep in thought. You’re starting to dread the phenomenon.

“You never answered my question,” he says, finally. He vaults the pole of a sideways streetlight one-handed. You very definitely do not admire the technique.

“It seems you have a slightly optimistic view of my decipherment abilities re: whichever of your heaping pileful of questions you’re referring to. Gonna have to add an antecedent to that, brosef.”

“Are you all right?”

“My rightness is at 100%.” You spy a flicker of red cloth up ahead, turn to the left to find a throwing star pinning the scrap to a weirdly immaculate street sign. The characters don’t look like anything you recognize from Earth or Alternia, but who knows? “I am composed of purest, undiluted correctness, pressed fresh from the finest accuracy vineyards.”

Kankri’s lips press in irritation. “Why do you insist on doing that?”

“It’s a factory setting.”

“It is no such thing. And that’s a very de-personizing and prejudicial analogy to use.”

Pfft. He’s all fluffed up like he’s fully prepared to take offense on your behalf, claim it for his own, and argue to the death over it. It’s sort of flattering and insulting all at once. (And uncomfortably warming, like hands intruding into your space. But mostly the former.) Your lips quirk. “I’m using flippancy as an emotional distancing tool. Don’t harsh my groove.”

“…I see,” Kankri says. His narrowed eyes on you suggest he doesn’t, at all, but he intends to latch on like a bullshark and figure it out on point of principle.

Stubborn. You tap a little tempo against your thumb, smile a bit at the fact that you can, and turn towards yet another shuriken and colorful fabric scrap down an alley to your right. A few small white chitinous creatures have crawled up the brickwork to examine the fluttering fabric. Rows of faceted blue eyes watch you stroll down the narrow space, followed close on your heels by an endlessly pushy troll. Your mood from earlier has returned, energized and full of reckless possibility. “Sure that’s the only question you want answered?”

You can actually see his pupils dilate. His eyes are very dark.

“Got the ‘show’ part taken care of on this little white elephant secrets exchange. Aren’t you curious about the ‘tell’?”

He hisses out a breath. “Yes.” And then, when you don’t immediately fill the silence: “Well?”

“I didn’t hear a question, bro.”

He glares at you for a long moment, practically bubbling with indignation. Then he folds his arms and lifts his chin—an interesting feat for someone currently navigating a cityscape obstacle course. “From what I can gather—not the least of which being your ignorance of the most basic cultural mores and common courtesy—it’s reasonably possible that you came through an influx site. You’re outworld. Old world. Am I close?” Each word of the question hits the air with pinpoint precision, pure challenge.

Your heart kicks up about a dozen more beats per minute. The sensation is either awesome, or it’s going to kill you. “That’s a thing?” you hedge, probing. “People just. Dropping in.”

Kankri slants a look sideways at you, along one sun-cracked cheekbone. “…Hypothetically. In stories. They say that’s where the first travelers came from, generations ago. The finned empress and the white queen and the twin empires of Ebon and Bone to settle the world. But you won’t find many people who believe that as more than legend. Artifacts, yes. Structures, whole cities even. It all came from somewhere. Maybe many wheres. But influx rate has been declining exponentially for sweeps and sweeps. The vast majority of influx sites are ancient and inactive.”

His voice has gradually acquired lecture tones, like he’s distracted himself with his own words, but his next sentence is all sharp insinuation again. “If you leave aside legends, nothing—I beg your pardon—no one organic has been documented in an influx in recorded history.”

“But you’re a believer.”

“My custodian liked to tell me bedtime schoolfeeds.” His voice is very dry. “Speaking of stories—I would, of course, never wish to demean your capabilities or intentions, but I note that the ‘tell’ portion of your agreed upon disclosure appears to be singularly lacking in actual telling.”

He does have a way of using a lot of words to make his insults harder to notice.

Your heart’s beating so fast you feel almost sick with excitement.

When you don’t respond immediately, Kankri stops in the middle of the crooked, asphalt-paved alleyway. He folds his arms, raises his chin, and faces you down directly. “Talk, if you please.”

Well. When he puts it that way—and talking is kind of your specialty. You lick your lips and take back off down the alley, just to be moving. Glancing back, you tilt him the strange, wild edge of a smirk.

What was it he said about wiggler stories? Oh, yes:

“Once upon a multiverse, a bunch of dumb kids played a Game…”

---

next>>

#cyberbunny au #kankri vantas #hal strider #ar x kankri #lil seb #ccwritings #GUESS WHAT #i upd8ed :3

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