#or something to that effect. can’t remember her exact wording

[freddyyeti]

Y’know sometimes I forget that it is Not a good idea to talk mental health stuff with my mom because This Is My Mom We’re Talking About 9 times out of ten reasoning with her is like talking to a brick wall

[sapphiresaphics]

EDITORIAL NOTE:

I wrote this months ago and since then Amanda Overton, one of the key writers for the show, was asked about this exact question and has answered publicly that “Caitlyn does not know Ambessa set up the attack on the memorial and if she did know she would not have joined her.”

I am leaving this post up in its entirety because while you can take her word as gospel, I do not think that negates my analysis based entirely on what was presented in the show itself. You are entirely free to disregard this analysis if you want, but I think it still holds some value because when you critique media you often don’t have the word of god (from the creators of the media) to explain every facet and you should be allowed to interpret things differently if it feels like it’s presented in the media that way.

Anyway, please enjoy or disregard this post if you want.

———————

Because I don’t think just describing it is as effective, let’s go through the scene where Caitlyn becomes the general. (Note: These gifs have been edited for time and comprehension.)

What’s important to remember before watching this is that we’ve been shown many times now that Caitlyn is a detective. She has the unique power to walk into a crime scene, observe the surroundings, and make logical deductions from the enviroment.

With that in mind look at Caitlyn’s face here after the initial shock of being nominated. She looks down and her eyes start twitching. She’s thinking hard about something.

And then we cut to Ambessa pounding her chest and see glimpses of her henchman arranging the attack on the memorial, in addition to her silencing all the loose ends that could lead back to her. I don’t think this is just for our benefit, I think this is a glimpse into Caitlyn’s mind. (Gif sped up for time)

And then we cut back to Caitlyn, who is now looking around at her surroundings and watching the peer pressure start to unfold. As Maddie and the other Enforcers begin to beat their chests in rhythm to Ambessa’s prompting, Caitlyn looks back up at Ambessa with hatred. Watch those brows furrow.

In this moment Caitlyn KNOWS. She knows Ambessa set up the attack. She knows she was wrong for attacking the undercity. She knows she fucked up by letting her anger at Jinx get the best of her and for creating a rift between her and Vi. And most importantly… she KNOWS that Ambessa is using her.

Note that Caitlyn doesn’t start moving forward until after Ambessa says “come, child.” And when she finally does start walking forward it’s with a slow deliberate knowing pace. She even turns her head and keeps her eyes glued to Ambessa as she walks past her. She may not know WHY Ambessa is doing this, but she’s not stupid. She knows what her name unlocks, having just spent the past 2 episodes abusing her namesake’s power.

But the writing is on the wall now. She has no choice. Whatever it is Ambessa is doing, she can’t stop this nomination. She will have to accept the power. And I think here she is finally FINALLY realizing how fucked up she is. She has just become Marcus. A pawn in a larger game. And the ONLY benefit she can see is that she can use this power to find Jinx and bring her to justice, so her memory of her mother can finally rest.

And Ambessa knows this too. That’s why she leans in and whispers “your mother will have Justice!” And that’s when Caitlyn finally assumes the role of martial law general.

She doesn’t want to be there.

She doesn’t want that power.

But she can’t turn away now.

She’s stuck.

And she KNOWS it.

[antimonyandthyme]

remember this?

Makeup’s directive was one word: wet. There’re rain towers going on, but they’re still spraying Carlos with UltraWet for added effect. Carlos ends up looking thoroughly soggy. A little like a dog left in the rain for too long, getting colder by the minute. Too sad for anyone to leave outside, really. Oscar’s standing close enough to see the goose pimples breaking out on his skin.

He’s still gamely smiling through his shivering though, smiling at everyone, including Oscar. Oscar looks away. On good days he can manage not to stare. Today Carlos happens to be half-naked.

There’re technically no stunts on the docket, but Oscar still needs to be here. Carlos is meant to throw himself to the ground in the scene, and the most innocuous of actions can somehow turn dangerous in Carlos’s hands. An exaggerated fall, a warm coffee cup, passed over in apology.

Everyone’s a little tense, on account of George barking at them to keep their mouths shut. Stop making this place sound like an office breakroom, there’s an intense scene today. If you need to chat, do it elsewhere. Better still, just don’t. As a result, costumes hasn’t come over to laugh at Oscar wearing the same hoodie for three days in a row, and Oscar, for lack of anyone to talk to, goes back to staring at Carlos.

Lighting has turned Carlos’s skin garish on purpose, highlighting the trauma makeup around his ribs and the jut of his hipbone. Purple vivid enough to make Oscar glare, ascertain for himself it isn’t real. Carlos has done scenes with a broken toe before. He fancies himself an artist, working through the pain. Oscar came the closest to anger when he’d found out. Took them days before they could look each other in the eye again, after Oscar had raised his voice on set for what seemed like the first time in his career.

James and Carlos are huddled together, running through the shots. Wide angle then medium close-up, and then it’s all Carlos from there. From past experience, Oscar knows it won’t take long to set up. Carlos might wink and charm and make small talk about the game on the weekend, but he’s never once come unprepared. When James calls for action, it’s deathly quiet, anticipatory-like.

Oscar’s spent so long being annoyed at Carlos’s face that he’d almost forgotten how many cracks can break its surface, like shifting sand on a dune. He’s been betrayed, left for dead by his blood brother he’d sworn allegiance to. Someone he’d take a bullet for. And he’s left with nothing, not even the shirt on his back. Reading the script the first time Oscar had skimmed through this portion. Emotional outburst, yeah, they’ve all seen it.

Except he wouldn’t call the shape of Carlos’s mouth an outburst. It’s moving in ripples, like it doesn’t know how to lay itself flat. And his eyes—his eyes. Oscar can’t seem to look too long, has to flick his gaze from the monitor and then to the man in front of him, shaking now, the rain finally pierced through, then back to the monitor again. Carlos isn’t crying, not yet. He may as well be.  

The smallest of movements, Carlos’s feet stuttering forward in the mud. Unconsciously, Oscar leans forward, like something in him is trying to crawl the distance between them. He can sense the tilt of Carlos’s centre of gravity before it’s happening, the call of the ground. The script supervisor has one hand over her mouth. James is so close to the monitor screen he might be kissing it. It could be rain on Carlos’s cheeks, but not a single person here would doubt his tears.

Oscar’s had his legs taken out from underneath him when he’d been part of action sequences back in the day. Hit so hard his breath is forced from him, had to lie inmoving for a long, long time before he could even think about getting up. It’s a difficult feeling to describe, the air leaving your lungs. When Carlos’s knees strike the ground, Oscar knows the exact sound punched out of Carlos’s throat like a memory.

It’s an age before James calls cut on the close up of Carlos’s broken expression. Oscar doesn’t understand his sudden impatience, the need to haul Carlos up himself. He roots his feet to the ground stubbornly and allows James to have the first few words, hears Carlos say, Let’s go again.

Only then, escaping urgently from behind his teeth, “Your knees?”

“Ay, Oscar,” Carlos says. “I did not break them like I broke my toe.”

A reminder Oscar definitely doesn’t need. He wants to shake this man, he wants to wipe his face clean. “Just making sure,” he says stiffly.

“You are worried, yes?” Carlos says, sounding oddly hopeful. “About me?”

“Sure,” Oscar says, because when it had seemed they had genuinely crossed a line with each other after the injury, it’d been a sickening time. Not being able to joke with Carlos, or groan out loud when he claimed he wanted to perform another stunt by himself, made Oscar awful uneasy. He’ll say what he must to appease Carlos, that’s always been the game. Never mind that his answer morphs Carlos’s expression into something bright and beautiful.

“Only because I know you’ll kneel until your knees bruise.”

“Oh ho,” Carlos says. “You’ll find out it takes more than that for my knees to stop working.”

Oscar blinks.

Carlos blinks back. “Uh,” he says. He gestures to somewhere behind him. “I have to, uh. We’re going again. I asked James—I want to do it another time, so we’ll. We’ll go again.”

“Uh huh,” Oscar says, voice embarrassingly high. “Okay. I’ll. Just be here.”

It must be his imagination, or. Or it must be makeup, adding a dash of warm blush on the palette of Carlos's face. No one notices, and then Carlos turns around and proceeds to cry on camera like he hadn’t just insinuated he’d get on his knees for—

Thud. Carlos hits the ground again, and goes and gives another Oscar-worthy performance, and all Oscar can think of is.

Red, wet cheeks. Purple knees.

[t-horn-n]

— waterstrider

pairing: simon “ghost” riley x reader (female) 

genre: fluff ?

summary: watching you and ghost become you and ghost.

word count: 1 158

There is a certain inconsistency with you that Ghost is able to sense but not quite place when you first join the task force.  You’re the sort that wears her heart upon her sleeve.  You like to fill the room with your jokes and anecdotes and quips.  You spill your guts to the point that Ghost knows more about you and your idiot brother and how your parents have just retired) in the first six months following your arrival than he knew about the Captain in the first three years of knowing him.  On the internet, they would call you one of those people who can’t be mysterious because you yap too much.

Still, there is something that sets you apart from just any old civi.  And it is not simply that you’re good at staying calm in stressful situations, nor that you’re not half bad at military strategy.  Rather, it’s that you’ve compartmentalised yourself into the part that you offer to people (your brother, your parents’ retirement) and the part that you keep tucked into your chest, hidden beneath your ribs.  It’s an illusion, you see, that sense of complete transparency that you project.  

It was years ago, now.   When the scent of high school still clung to you and you were marginally more stupid than you are now.  You got yourself ensnared with the wrong, mean, borderline sociopathic sort of people so quickly that it was a real life example of the snowball effect.  Initially, it was just one time you brushed off your last period class to go around town with these guys you met at the convenience store to get back at your brother who, at the time, had a habit of being overprotective.  

Long story short, the whole situation ended with fingerprints around your neck and your head held down in the river behind the grocery mart that everyone was sure was a mafia front.  You remember being hauled out of that river with astonishing accuracy.  You remember the temperature of the water and the exact thoughts that raced through your mind.

Of course, over the years you recovered, squeezed the silty water from your lungs and learned some common sense.  But events like that are somewhat sticky.  

One of your motivations to join the military was to find the self-confidence to never feel like you did coughing up water and dirt, after all.  

You were wary—cat-like—when you first joined Ghost and the rest of the 141, but that’s just how it is in the military most of the time.  And after a few weeks you were bantering with them like you had known them for years.  Truly, it seemed as though you were the most normal one out of them.

What they don’t know is that you don’t like showers.  Or at least, you don’t like the sensation of the water beating on your face.  It feels like you’ll just forget how to breathe and the water will fill your lungs again.  So instead you’ll stand at the edge of the shower, wetting a soapy washcloth every evening after training.  

You’ll never go swimming, of course.   You won’t take the chance.  Even when you can see the bottom, an irrational, bone-deep paralysis traps you in this space where your thoughts are very loud and your body feels very far away.  It’s fine, though.   There isn't a great deal of demand for aquatic soldiers.  

You don’t like sleeping under a lot of covers either, but you’re a cold sleeper and you don’t have control over the temperature on base, so you layer hoodie over hoodie at night.  Inevitably, you look like a mass of sentient fabric if you ever  encounter one of your  peers in the kitchen late at night.  

Talking is how your little dance with Ghost started, though, late night encounters aside.  Sometimes, you would open with a joke on the way back to base from the training grounds and he would reply with his own and you would both feel a special sense of connection that is a little different than that most often found in  military task forces.  It wasn’t brotherhood, like what linked Ghost to Soap and Price and Gaz.  

On other occasions, you all would be at a bar on the weekend, making the cheap beer taste better with each other’s company.  You and Ghost would be perched on your barstools and he would be telling you about some stunt Soap pulled years ago while the other three men kept each other entertained.  You two would still be there after Price, Soap, and Gaz sobered up in the late night air on the way to the bus stop that took them back to the base.  You would blink and then it was midnight and you were on the bus with all of the other witching hour vagrants that got on after spending too much time staring at the bottom of a glass, but you wouldn’t even see them because you were too busy listening to Simon and his wonderfully deep, tired voice.  You would be pressed shoulder to shoulder, each staring at your feet or your hands.  

There are very special times, too.  The kind that you will remember the sensation of—the moment’s taste, its colors, its imprint on your mind—even after you’ve forgotten the time and place and the words said.  Like when Ghost becomes Simon.  Like when he tells you about his mother and the man she was married to.  Like when he presses his lips to your neck and instead of feeling cold and wet and gross like you expect it to, he just sighs, warmly, in a way that makes you feel like you’ve been filled with helium.

Then, when that dance you were doing becomes more confident, when you start pulling and twisting each other about the dance floor rather than just hoping you’ll brush the other’s hand as you glide aimlessly around, those compartments that you have successfully preserved for the last decade shift, somewhat.  They don’t break, by any means.  Simply, they are rearranged.

Simon runs hot.  Especially when he sleeps, which means that when he crashes in your quarters you de-layer and tuck your cold feet between his calves.  Simon is also a big man, though.  So when he rolls over on to your chest in the middle of the night, you are startled awake.  You remember the pressure as the air in your lungs was replaced by something denser.  While he sleeps—deeply, as he always does in your quarters—you stare at the ceiling, watching the fuzzy darkness undulate over and around itself.

Eventually, you will tell him why you can’t tolerate your face being covered while you sleep.  You’ll divulge the contents of your nightmares.  Someday, his past and yours will be murmured into existence whether on a late-night bus back from town or in his bathroom as you brush your teeth together on some random Thursday night.

— m. list

[nicole-timey-wimey-stuff]

Negan x Fem!Reader

You were never a choice

Negan x female reader (Dead City Era)

Warnings- angst, swearing, mild smut, adult themes, age gaps, betrayal, Negan is a warning himself, not really canon, my terrible writing. 18+

Word count - 3.5K

This has been sat in my works for a while, just managed to finish it. Severe writers block recently.

——————————————————————

You can’t really pinpoint the exact moment it all started, was it the times you’d come to his cell to bring him his meals, unknowingly falling into casual chat, was it when his teasing during these meals would cause your face to heat up, as you tried to hide the warmth painting your cheeks. Did you start developing something as early as that?

Or was it when he left to join the whisperers and you were left with a feeling that could only be described as a stone in the gut. When he arrived back he told you everything that went down, then he looked at you expectantly, as he told you how he refused the Alphas advances, like that meant something. Almost as if he was saying he hadn’t been unfaithful, when you hadn’t even been close to being together? Who knows, but there was always an unspoken something.

Was it when the whisperers were defeated and you threw your arms around him, relief washing through you like a storm after a drought. Or maybe it was when you jumped in to defend him when Maggie wanted him dead, how you then left with him before convincing him to come back to Alexandria again. You’d fought side by side to take down the dictatorship that was the commonwealth, and when he was taken away as a prisoner to some camp, you didn’t sleep a wink that whole week, a constant nausea plagued you, a dread that you would never see him again, that they’d killed him.

So naturally when he’s escaped and found his way back to your group, you ran to him, you ran to each other. Fiercely embracing one another, Maggie had asked “What was that?” But you’d told her he’d become a friend, and one of the only people who had stayed by your side. She’d believed you, but thinking back to it now, that was probably only because you were still trying to convince yourself. It was that same night, whilst you’d all made camp that he’d told you how he really felt.

Snuggled up into Negan’s side you laid your head on his shoulder, effectively using him as a human pillow. Earning a loud scoff from Daryl as he walked past. He may be your friend but he didn’t agree with your friendship with Negan, Daryl would never forgive him, no matter how hard Negan tried.

The camp fire flames were casting a golden glow on your features, you looked at peace for the first time in a while, you looked beautiful, Negan thought. He got so lost in his thoughts, that the sentence came out his mouth before he even had time to process it. “I love you Y/N”, you’d looked up at him in sheer shock, “You don’t need to say anything back, hell I don’t expect you too. But I had to say it before I never get the chance too again” he explained.

You just nodded, tears in your eyes as you placed your head back down on his shoulder. You couldn’t go down this road now, you still had so much fighting left to do.

Once the commonwealth was defeated and everything had settled, everyone went their separate ways. You think that maybe you’d all needed a break, a rest and some time to gather thoughts. You’d all been fighting for so long, it was only natural that you all needed some space.

________________________________________

After you all separated, you’d gone with Negan, finding a small cabin in the forest, setting up a electric perimeter fence and for the first time in a while you felt safe. Everything was going well until you’d gotten into an argument with him, you can’t even remember what it was about now. Your safety maybe? Or leaving without telling him for a hunt? Either way a shouting match occurred, until you smashed your lips into his to shut him up!

Before you knew it clothes were being ripped off, kisses becoming more and more heated, your back hitting the bed as he began moving on top of you, pulling him closer you wrapped your legs around him, it grounded you, reminding you that he was here, you were both safe, at least for now. You were so lost in your thoughts you didn’t really register where this was going till you felt him enter you, his hips meeting your own, causing you to let out a loud gasp. It was hot and needy and passionate, the last 6 years of buried feelings were poured into that one moment.

Sweat glistened on your bodies as you both chased your highs, his hand carding through your hair, pulling your mouth back up to meet his once more. His thrusts becoming harder and sloppier as you’re reaching that pinnacle moment. “Fuck I love you sweetheart, I love you so fucking much” he cried, “Shit Negan I’m gonna!” Then white blissful static, toes curling as your bodies meld together, pleasure coursing through you both.

After that night you literally couldn’t get enough of each other, it was up against walls, on counter tops, on the ground in the mud if it was safe enough. You’d argue, then fuck, you'd have a near miss moment, nearly loosing each other? You’d fuck. You were like horny teenagers again, despite you being in your late 20s and he in his late 40s now, well close to that anyways as who the hell knew in an apocalypse.

You’d never said those words back to him though, some days it would get to him, others he was just thankful you were with him, whatever ‘this’ was. Still he always told you he loved you, hoping one day you may say it back. The closest he ever got was “You worried me asshole! Where were you?” It was your own way of saying you were scared for his safety. To be honest, If it didn’t feel like a term of endearment by now, he’d almost be offended at how often you called him an ‘asshole’. But he’d always just give you his signature wolfish grin and say “I know”.

________________________________________

And so the years passed just like that, until one day you’d found yourself caring for a teenage girl. Becoming almost adoptive foster carers to Ginny, whilst on the pursuit of finding her somewhere safe to go. Watching Negan with her stirred something in you, what would he be like as a dad? He was good with her that much was for sure, and it caused a certain ache in your ovaries watching it. If the world wasn’t so dangerous would you consider starting a family with Negan, what would a little you and him look like? Would they have your hair? Or his beautiful Hazel eyes? It saddened you that you’d never know.

“You alright there sweetheart? Ya were off somewhere else just then” Negan interrupts your thoughts, “Yeah, sorry I’m all good.” You answer, giving him a quick unconvincing smile. He walks over to you, cupping your cheeks, “You can talk to me you know that baby?” He asks, “Yeah I know” you agree, pressing your lips to his for a quick peck.

The sound of a twig snapping startled you apart, turning around your eyes meet those of someone you never thought you’d see again, Maggie. “Maggie? Oh my god!!” You cry rushing over to embrace her. She hugged you back with just as much enthusiasm. “I can’t believe it’s you, where have you been? Is everything ok? Wait where’s Hershel?” You rambled off.

“That’s why I’m here. A lot has happened since I saw you last. I need your help, I needs both of y’all’s help” Maggie declared, with a terrified and desperate look in her eyes, one that resembled a scared rabbit, backed into a corner. “Yeah Maggie, of course we will help” you agreed. Causing Negan to let out a sigh of defeat, he hated anything that put you in harms way, and this felt like trouble.

________________________________________

Maggie explained everything to you both, how Hershel was taken from her, how she needed to rescue him, and how his capturer was one of Negan’s old men, a deranged man who now called himself the Croat. This was going to be dangerous that much was sure, but Maggie assured you that Ginny would be looked after, somewhere safe.

So after dropping the young teen off, the three of you made your way to manhattan.

You’d yet to see somewhere as run down as New York had become. Towers crumbling, cars piled up, and everything had a hazy grey colour to it. Probably from all the dust gathering, but it made it feel even more eerie like something from a 1990s horror film. Catching your shiver as you took on the scenery Negan walked over and took your hand, something that did not slip Maggie's eyes, “Everything alright sweetheart?” He asks, hazel pools gazing into your own.

“Yeah, I’ll be happy to get this over with I think, it’s creepy as hell here” you grumble. Negan snorts a small laugh, “Yeah I’ll agree with you there baby” he hums. “I mean if ya want we can just turn this ship around, go back? I’m all for it actually.” Negan continues on his tangent making you smile, “I know, I know you hate it when I’m putting myself in danger, but at least we are together this time.” You offer, Negan sighs giving a small nod, it was useless trying to talk you out of something, once you’d made your mind up.

That evening after an eventful day of dodging walkers, groups of unsavoury looking people and collapsing buildings, you’d found yourselves a safe little apartment to hull up in for the night. “You take the first rest sweetheart, I’ll keep watch” Negan offered pointing to the back bedroom, it was in a relatively clean condition, with only a small amount of dust gathering on the surfaces and you couldn’t lie, you really needed some rest. “Yeah ok, but come wake me in a few hours?” You ask, Negan nods in agreement, giving you a sweet peck on the lips, before you make your way to the bedroom. “Night Mags” you call as you leave, you’d ask her to come rest too, but with Hershel missing you knew it would be pointless, “Yeah night y/n” Maggie replies.

Once you’d left the room Maggie turned her attention to Negan her eyes narrowing, “So what is this then?” She gestures between the closed bedroom door and Negan himself. “What do you mean?” Negan replies with a sigh, he knows where this is going. “You and y/n? You’re clearly together, I don’t really know how she can forgive you, let alone endorse the thought of a relationship with you, but clearly she has.” She grumbles.

“Yah, we’re together. Have been since we left after the commonwealth.” Negan replies, watching Maggie's expression carefully, he can see the disgust on her features, her face an open book whether she wants it to be or not.

“Look Maggie I know you don’t understand, hell I don’t expect you too! And I don’t really know what to say to you. Except that I love her an insane amount, I’d never do anything to hurt her, and I will strive each day to deserve the forgiveness she’s astonishingly given me.”

“You! Love her! Don’t make me laugh Negan, you aren’t capable of love.” She sneers.

“Well I do, whether you believe it or not Maggie I do love her. It’s simple really, I will be by her side loving her until she sends me away.”

“She may one day, you know that. Send you away. She may tell you she loves you now, but that could all change” Maggie says.

“She hasn’t, not ever”. He sighs.

“Never what?” Maggie asks confused.

He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this, but it all just comes out. Fleeing his mouth before he has time to process it.

“She’s never told me she loves me, not once. I tell her all the time, but she’s never said it back” he admits, sad smile on his features.

That shocked Maggie, even she could tell after years of being your friend, and knowing you as well as she does, that you care for him deeply. She can see the way you look at him, the way you always check on his whereabouts and wellbeing. How in crisis your eyes will always fall to him, even just to make sure he’s still beside you. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Why do you stay then? If she doesn’t say it back?”.

“Because like I said, I love her. And after everything I’ve done…… I’m just thankful she’s with me at all. I’ll take whatever I can get.” He offers honestly. She gives him an accepting nod, she gets it, he’s always had a soft spot for you, he is probably just happy for any chance you give.

Negan doesn’t know why he’s being so open with Maggie, he supposed he wants her to see his genuine feelings for you, that some part of him is actually human. That he can love, and that here’s here with them to find Hershel, because despite what she thinks, he can do the right thing.

________________________________________

The next few days seemed to be disaster after disaster, the first day it wasn’t even midday and you were running from the enemy, you’d found out where the Croat was hiding and you’d been given a gruesome show from Negan with his unamusing knock knock joke. Maggie's face at that moment, will be cemented in your mind forever. You’d given Negan a very pointed look, one what said “REALLY!”

He’d given you a shrug in return and a look that said “well it had to be done”, with a huff of annoyance you’d stomped forwards to catch up with Maggie leaving him in the dust. Causing Negan to let out a sigh, his ego deflated once more.

He mulled over Maggie’s words in that moment…

“Why do you stay then? If she doesn’t say it back?”.

Why did he stay? He really didn’t know at this point other than the fact he loved you, and he knew he really did, he knew the feeling all too well, he’d felt it once before with Lucile, not with his other ‘wives’ who weren’t really wives at all.

But he loved Lucile, truly loved her with every fibre of his being by the end, and he felt that way about you too. That’s why he couldn’t leave and he knows it, he couldn’t bare to lose another person he loves, but sometimes he wonders why he bothers because you clearly don’t feel the same way, you couldn’t, could you?

He’s a monster, you’re with him for convenience and his master skills in the bedroom. He finds himself smirking at that thought, but other than great sex and protection which lets face it isn’t what it was, he’s not getting any younger, what would you possibly want from this relationship. These are the thoughts that constantly run rent free through his head.

________________________________________

The rebel group you’ve teamed up with have been kind in helping you find Hershel, they have been suspicious of Negan though, he can feel the constant weight on his shoulders as their eyes fall on him in frequent glances. They are currently all sharing a meal together, trying to be civil, you all have the same mission in mind, end the Croat.

But the frequent stares are quite frankly starting to piss him right off, you’ve noticed too, he can tell from the fact you keep giving that guy Luther the stink eye, every time he eyes up Negan.

After the meal Negan had offered to wash up, a good willed thank you for feeding and helping them, but after ten minutes Luther was on his back, throwing up questions before pulling out a wanted poster of Negan.

Negan felt himself deflate, really? This was really how this was going to go. Luther began to recite what was on the poster “antisocial, prone to extreme violence, with above-average intelligence and charisma” he rambles on without giving Negan a second to defend himself, “You need to leave, I want you out of here” Luther demanded.

Negan let out a cocky laugh “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Luther started sizing him up, clearly gearing up for a fight.

“I really hope this doesn’t turn into something it doesn’t need to,” Negan says to Luther, trying his best to stand his ground against the burly man, who felt twice the size of Negan's lean frame. He was tired and fed up of this whole damn mission, the last thing he needed was a confrontation with Luther.

Not to mention it would put a huge spanner in the works.

But before he can react Luther’s cornered him in, grabbing a frying pan Negan tries to fend him off, but when that doesn’t work he grabs the only thing to hand, a cheese grater.

Negan acts fast scraping the utensil across Luther’s face, causing the beast of a man to scream out, thrashing against Negan harder, until the fight quickly ends with Luther stumbling backward impaling himself on a pipe, Negan steps down forcefully crushing Luther’s head to finish him off.

Negan then has to hide the body, making some bullshit excuse to Luther’s whereabouts. This was getting more complicated by the second, he wishes now more than ever, that he could scoop you up in his arms, and take you back to that little cabin in the woods, the one you’d both made home.

That night he held you in his arms tentatively running his fingers through your messy locks, as your head slumped against his shoulder. He felt lucky to have you in this shit hole of a world, he had one small ray of sunshine and he wasn’t about to loose it, even if it meant abandoning this mission. Although he knew you could never leave Maggie to deal with this on her own.

With a sigh he allows his eyes to close joining you in peaceful slumber.

________________________________________

It has all been a trick, Maggie had calculated this whole thing to bargain for her son back. Tossing Negan in exchange. As you stood there atop a rusting truck, walkers snapping at your heals, you begged your old friend to reconsider.

“Maggie please don’t do this! I’m begging you! We can work this out together, get Hershel back without loosing anyone.” You pleaded.

“I’m sorry y/n it’s the only way. I’m sorry it’s hurting you, I would never want to hurt you if I had another way. But I’m not sorry it’s him, he deserves all this and more.” She answers as a group of people swarm in to detain Negan.

“NOOOO!!!” You scream, desperately trying to get accross to Negan.

Taking a deep breath you brace yourself and leap across the abandoned cars, narrowly missing the undead. Negan’s quick to grab your arms steadying you.

“Jesus woman, you could have killed yourself, why would you do that!” He growls, before locking eyes with you, the sight softens his features as his heart breaks at the cascading tears that spill down your face.

Pulling you into him he shushes you, “It’s ok baby, I’ll get out of this I always do. Listen! I want you to go back to our cabin, stay safe and I’ll meet you there when I can yeah?” He encourages.

“If you think I’m leaving you here for one second Negan, you don’t know me at all” you yell.

“I know somehow you chose to be with me, and I will never understand how. But I’m thankful for it everyday sweetheart.” He says, tearful smile on his face as he grips you that little bit tighter.

“No Negan you’re wrong” you shake your head, more tears running down your cheeks. Gently cupping his face you pour your heart out “You were never a choice, loving you was never a choice, my heart did it as easy as breathing” You admit.

“You love me?” He asks, speechless for the first time. Nodding you trembled “Yeah Negan, I’ve always loved you. And if they take you now I will find you, no where in this world will be fucking safe from me! You hear me? I promise you”.

And you meant it, you’d hunt them all down, no one could stop you.

Negan fought with more determination now, throwing the men back with vigour, you loved him! Him of all people, he wouldn’t let this be the end for you both, he’d fight for you, for your quiet life in the cozy little cabin you called home, for the possibility of a family with you, for this unbreakable bond the two of you had created in this dead world.

[very-straight-blog]

I can’t remember the exact word she used and I don’t feel like looking it up honestly lol but Olivia during her Aegon is my biggest disappointment thing also said something to the effect of him not being coachable or something like he won’t take direction. And that just ISNT TRUE???? Like do I need to replay the throne scene with Otto where he listened and changed his orders until he made a good point himself about paying the people making the weapons for war. And Otto knew it was a good point and shut up. Also Alicent herself talks so much about how Aegon listens to her but every time she gets the chance to help him she shits on him. I’m so sick of everyone else’s failures being blamed on him

In the second season, we literally see that Aegon is ready to learn and grow, to become better if he has a purpose. He shows up at The Small Council meetings on time, actively participates in them, listens to Otto, tries to be a good king for the smallfolks, and takes care of his son. We see that he's ready to change. That's why Olivia's words are so annoying, she's just lying about the events of the show. The problem isn't about Aegon, but about Alicent who constantly expects the worst from him and remains unhappy no matter what he does.

[stardusthuntress]

Pinup From the Past

Echo x afab!reader 

Word Count: ~3k 

This was entirely inspired by this fanart of Echo doing a pinup pose by @el-niphrendil… hope that’s okay with you, friend! It’s one of my favorites on here! 

Summary: Echo’s mischievous, younger self may or may not have done some flirtatious things… some remnants of which may or may not be discovered by his parter, and one thing leads to another… 

TWs: this is basically pure smut with a touch of plot as a lead in; reader admits to have too small of a mouth to truly eat him out, but it’s just a short mention at the end; echo is a bit self conscious about his post-Skako body, but once he gets going he’s insatiable! Very NSFW! Smut with plot, basically… also reader is self conscious because she can’t fit him into her mouth, but Echo is always encouraging and they find a way to make it work! And remember, irl, wrap it before you tap it, folks! 

Somehow you found it, hidden on his datapad when he gave it to you so you could look for something for the upcoming mission. You didn’t even know he had it, let alone that he once did something like that. 

You’ve been staring at the photo, jaw on the floor for some time now. Still amazed that this is your boyfriend, and damn does he look hot! 

he enters the room before you’ve noticed and asks what you’re looking at, having only seen your back. 

You quickly lock the datapad, tucking it into your chest for good measure. “Nothing!” You quickly cover, effectively doing the exact opposite of what you hope. As the failure to hide the fact that he caught you dawns on your slow-to-catch-up mind, heat rushing to your face. 

Echo sighs, his expression growing weary. “Wish I could inspire a look like that from you, Love. I just don’t have that part of me left.” He sighs. 

You stare at his aghast. So He doesn’t know what one look at him does to you every single day you’ve been togther! 

He turns to leave the room, a defeated slump in his shoulders. 

And it kicks you back into gear. You grab his shoulder and hold out the datapad, showing him the picture of him that you were staring at. 

His complexion suddenly goes through a variety of colors. First pale, at his shock that you found that. He didn’t even know he still had it. Then pink, realizing you were staring at him, and then a slight green tinge colors his face, afraid that you’d realize what he lost. 

“Actually, you can. And you do. Everyday!” You tell him. “But I had no idea that you had a wild side to you! Where’s that been hiding?” 

He chuckles nervously, “That might have died at the citadel, Love. Lost it when I lost the rest of me.” He’s looking at the floor, unable to look at you. 

“Well, if the mischief maker that dares Omega to race is still in there, I bet the wild side is too. Perhaps we can find a way to bring it back out, huh?” 

“But I don’t look like that anymore, Ill just disappoint you. I can’t even get it up anymore…” 

You lean in and nibble on the spot just below his ear, “Maybe… I could…” you suggest, suggestively, lips teasing his hunger for you. 

Echo’s arms tightened around you when your lips close on his neck, and he groans. 

You back him into a wall, and lean on him, pinning him in place. Though, pinned is more figurative than anything. He could easily push you off or simply pick you up and put you somewhere you weren’t crowding him if he wanted to. 

“Tell me about this day,” you gesture with the datapad, “Tell me about what inspired you to do it, what was on your mind to make your smirk like that, and let me help you take off those clothes. You look more muscular now than you did in that picture, I’ll give you that.” You trace a finger over the bulge of his arm, of pure muscle. “And tell me what you wanted to come from posing for something like this, and if you still want that. We can find that spark again, Love. Even if it’s a little different now. I bet it’s still there. I bet it still teases you with lust-filled dreams at night.” 

“Mmmmm, they’re better now. The dreams. Now they feature the woman of my dreams.” He smirks, trying to let go and love you the way he wants to. 

You giggle and nuzzle into his neck and chest. 

He wraps his arms around you with a pleasant hum. 

“What do you like so much about this?” He gestures to the datapad. 

“Hmm”, you take a moment to look at it, biting your lip as your eyes trail hungrily over the photo. “Well, aside from the fact that you’re barely wearing anything,” you smirk, “I like the tattoo… I like the look in your eye… I like the pose… and I must say what you’re doing with the belt is especially enticing…” you trail off, eyes glazing over slightly as you continue to ponder the photo and what it makes you want to do. 

Echo just stares at you, jaw on the floor. Takes him a moment for his thoughts to catch up to the real world. “Well… I can’t say the belt was particularly comfortable there. It did sorta chafe and pinch a bit.” 

“Ouch,” you acknowledge, shifting in his arms. 

but he doesn’t realize what you are up to until he feels your soft hand cup his groin through his blacks. 

Echo inhales sharply, looking down at you with awe and swallowing hard. 

“Seems like it still aches, just thinking about it?” You ask playfully, looking up at him to make sure he’s okay with your touch. 

Echo has lost his voice. He tries to use it, but nothing comes out, and he finds himself needing to pick his jaw up off the floor yet again. So instead he grips you tighter, eyes wide with hope, and he nods, not sure what you’re going to do next, but knowing he will very likely enjoy it. 

“Maybe I can help with that too, my brave and handsome trooper,” you whisper against his cheek. 

Echo’s eyes drift closed and he shivers at your boldness. 

Your free hand drifts up to the back of his neck, encouraging him to lean his head against yours in a keldable kiss as you rub the back of his neck. 

Your other hand remains between his legs, gently massaging up and down his length through his blacks. And then sliding down to caress his balls. 

Echo’s arms tighten around your waist and he groans, turning to press a long kiss into your cheek. 

You hum contentedly, gripping just a bit tighter and rubbing just a bit firmer. 

He tries to keep from bucking into your palm, but he’s not entirely successful. Especially with you so willingly touching him like this. 

“I could kiss it better?” You offer. 

Echo’s head shoots up, his eyes wide and excited, “You — uh, you don’t have to,” his cheeks flush with heat at the notion of your lips on his most sensitive parts. 

“But what if I want to?” You whisper back, lips achingly close to his. 

Echo can barely process your proximity, let alone what you just said. And he can only think of one answer… his lips crash into yours as his hand cups the back of your neck. 

You immediately return the kiss, opening willingly as he licks your lips, and groaning into his mouth. 

“Need you,” he mumbles against your lips. “Bedroom?” 

You beam up at him, sneak one more kiss onto the corner of his lips, and turn to lead the way, his hand gripped tightly in yours. 

But before you can even take a step, you’re swept off your feet as Echo scoops you into his arms. 

“Please, allow me,” his chivalrous, flirtatious side surfaces, eager to do something sweet for you after your all too sensual handjob. 

He carries you away, and you wrap your arms around his neck. When he hastily swats the controls to close the door, you let your lips find his neck. 

He groans, trying to focus long enough to actually reach the bed to settle you both into it. Though the temptation to take you on the floor is strong, but he knows his back needs a soft bed, and you deserve the comforts of one. 

Finally he finds the bed with his knees and scrambles onto it, still cradling you in his arms as you suck passionately at a spot on his neck that’s driving him wild. 

He settles on top of you, pressing you hungrily into the bed with a deep kiss as he finds his place between your legs. 

He starts tugging at the hems of your clothes but you stop him. 

“Na, uh. This is about you, handsome,” you whisper, trailing kisses down his neck to distract him. 

Echo’s groan turns to a grunt of surprise as you flip him onto his back. 

“But—“ he starts to protest. 

You seal his lips with your own, licking into his mouth and stealing all his coherent thoughts away. 

You smirk down at him when you break away, panting. “Let’s get those clothes off you, Babe,” you instruct, but Echo is putty in your hands as you unfasten the last vestiges of armor he’s still wearing today, quickly tugging the tops of his blacks open and running your hands all over his chest. 

Echo watches, enraptured, as his armor is discarded and his upper half laid bare for you as you lean down to trail kisses from his earlobe - where you whisper about kissing his manhood, and anything else that hurt - down his neck and across his chest to the remnants of the blue handprint tattoo over his right pec. There you kiss around the periphery of it, and then follow the scar that emanates from his missing arm through the middle of the tattoo, and lick his nipple. 

Echo tries to resist curling around you but is unsuccessful, and you hum affectionately into his chest as you continue to suck on his nipple. 

Then your lips trail down towards his abs as your hands once again cup his length and balls. 

Echo’s mouth falls open as he groans again, knowing he is fully yours now. His hand finds your neck and rubs it sweetly. 

As your lips trail over his abdomen, your lips brush the cool metal of the rivets adorning his middle and you pause to look at them. 

Echo looks down and turns away, embarrassed, “I know. They can’t get rid of them. I asked if they could, but—“ but again he is cut short by your lips as you make eye contact and kiss every single rivet on his abs and chest. 

And then you smirk up at him and lick around one, Echo throws his head back, his hand on the back of your neck twitching. 

So you lick and suck lightly on each and every one… and then trace the groves of his abdomen with your tongue. 

And by the time he has forgotten your original goal, your hand that continues to caress his length and balls slips up to fiddle with the fastener on his pants. 

He is reminded of where you are heading with this when you break away from his abs to eagerly and hastily pull open his pants and begin tugging both his pants and undergarments off his hips. 

Panting hard, Echo can only comply with your eagerness, lifting his hips for you to take his pants off far faster than he expected. 

As you turn back, you press a gentle kiss to the head of his cock, where it is starting to stand proudly at your ministrations. 

You look up at him and smile brightly, surging forward to press him back into the pillows with a fervent kiss as you shift to lay so that you have direct access to his hips and groin. 

And then you break away from his kiss with a mischevious smile and settle yourself at his hips looking at his cock like it’s a priceless statue in a museum you’ve been dying to visit. 

“Couldn’t get it up, huh?” You tease, “I think we’ve found a solution to that problem, Love.” You tell him with a smile, catching his eye before you lean forward and place a soft, quick kiss on the side of his cock. 

Echo moans, your lips felt so soft! 

You softly trace a finger up and down the underside of his cock, and feel his hand grip the inside of your upper thigh. Encouraged, you cup his length in your hand as you place chaste kisses from the tip slowly all the way down his length. Then it’s your turn to grasp his inner thigh and prop his legs open for you. 

Echo is in heaven and his noises are music to your ears. You can’t help but lick your lips at the excitement of it all. 

You scooch forward to position your head between his legs and press a wet kiss to the spave just between his length and balls. 

Echo props himself up on his elbows, gasping loudly, an excited look in his eyes. 

So you look him in the eye, quirk your brow, and lick a long stripe from that spot up his length, and around the tip to collect the precum leaking from him on your tongue. 

Echo can’t believe it as you swallow and bite your lip, hungrily. 

Out of view, he feels the hand he ccan’t see fondling his balls again, and he can’t help but grind into you just a bit. 

You smile and chuckle playfully, peppering kisses all over his cock, especially the head… quickly followed by kitten licks leading down, down, slowly, until you reach his testicles, and licking and kissing every inch of them too. 

Echo’s strong arms tremble, struggling to keep him propped up at your ministrations. 

And then you’re licking around the rim at the tip, letting one hand return to his testicles and the other stroke slowly up and down his length. It’s once you lick back over the tip, letting your eyes close at the taste of him that he finds he needs to let go. 

“Babe, I — nnnnnngh — I’m gonn— aaahhhh!” Echo can barely get the words out. 

“Where do you want—?” You ask, gently. 

“Let it paint me, not your pretty face,” his voice is strained and fast as he tries to give you time to pull back. He beckons you towards his chest with his scomp. 

You smile, and position yourself over his chest hungrily meeting his kiss with fire and all the enthusiasm you can muster. With one hand you gently run up and down his length, and over the tip, pausing to massage the wetness there. 

Echo’s hand tangles into your hair as he cums loudly, never breaking the kiss as you coax him back to his senses. 

His head falls bck onto the pillows as he pants, looking at you like he’s never been so in love before. 

You take the time to lick the warm ropes of his seed from your hand, as you watchi him. 

“Stars, Mesh’la,” he gasps. “Fuck! That was hot!” 

He peppers kisses across your cheeks and nose as you finish sucking his release from your fingers. 

He chuckles fondly, “You didn’t even put me in your mouth, and you didn’t need to. Kriff that — I —- Wow!” He lays back, just looking at you for a moment. 

You smile back, “I’m glad I didn’t need to, I’m a bit too small to do that comfortably to anyone,” 

Echo chuckles again, “Well, you don’t need to anyways!” 

You hide in his shoulder, grinning. 

“I’m still curious what convinced you to take that photo, and what was on your mind when you were posing for it.” 

Echo grinned smugly, “honestly my Brother’s and I did that when we were a little too wild one shoreleave. It was Fives idea… he even got Rex to do one! At the time I was just hoping I’d get a chance to find a sweet, but wild woman who wanted to be at my side if I survived the war…” 

You hummed, and kissed his cheek. “The look on your face suggests there may have been a few more wild ideas you had in mind at the time?” You prompt. 

he sighs, “I can’t hide anything from you,” he chuckles, surprisingly grateful to be called out. “I, uh… always wanted to use my strength to… uh, take a woman standing up,” he admits, sheepishly. 

“OoooOOOOOooh!” The gleam in your eye encouraging him to want to try it with you, tonight. 

He rests a hand on your hair, applying just enough pressure to encourage you to lean forward and kiss him once more. He rewards you with a deep kiss, tongues tangling to learn each other’s taste by heart. 

“I thought I’d gotten rid of every copy of that holo after Skako… I’m guessing Rex snuck it onto my datapad in the hope that you’d find it after I told him about you… guess I owe him thanks now.” He smiled, brushing your hair from your face. A wild look takes over his features as he smirks at you. “Your turn.” He whispers, flipping himself on top of you. 

Your surprised gasp, breaks into a grin as you throw your head back and laugh with joy. “You don’t have to, Babe,” you tell him. 

“Nonsense,” he’s already trailing kisses across every inch of skin he can find. “I really want to ask you to ride me, but after your magic touch brought back something I thought was gone forever, I think you need some attention first. Let’s get your clothes off,” his hand and scomp are readily stripping you of your clothes as quickly and eagerly as you did for him. And he’s thrilled at the way you giggle happily beneath him as your body is revealed to his soft touches and wanting lips. 

…and yet he still won’t let you ride him until you’ve cum on his tongue and he’s gotten a chance to take you standing up, thrusting up into you with your legs wrapped tightly around his hips as he stares deep into your eyes… 

Please don’t steal my work! I pour my heart into these so if you like it please reblog to share instead of reposting it! And NO dropping it into an AI to finish it for me! That’s stealing my work and feeding it to an AI without my consent. It is not okay to give an AI something you didn’t write yourself! 

[spaceman-earthgirl]

Supercorptober 2023 Day 7: Love

ao3 fic link. series link.

“I love you.”

The first time Kara says those words, Lena freezes, not used to them. She’s heard them before, a couple of times from Jack and Sam, but before that, her memory of the words gets a little fuzzy. Once, Lillian had said it, just once, but never from Lionel or Lex.

Before that, her mother used to say it a lot, she thinks, those memories are vague and possibly dreams that she’s clung on to for too long, that have morphed into something that wasn’t real.

So when Kara says them, they fill her up and make her freeze as Kara takes the bag of Chinese food from her hands, unaware of the effect the simple words are having.

When her hands are empty, she realises why Kara really said the words, they have nothing to do with her and everything to do with the food she’s already opened and eating.

Kara gives her a curious look, prompting Lena to move and join her, the lightness draining from her chest. Just for a moment she feels sad for even believing that Kara could love her.

Why would Kara love her?

But then Kara is grinning around her food and her smile is infectious, filling her with something different. Kara may not love her, but she loves Kara.

---

“I’ll talk to you later, love you.”

Lena’s heart stills at the words, Kara already gone from the other end of the line before Lena can even think to respond.

It’s such a throwaway comment at the end of a phone call, something she’s heard Kara do before, remembers the last phone call with Alex had ended the exact same way.

Lena can’t help but hope Kara means them.

---

“I love you.”

The words are mumbled, Kara curled into Lena’s side, head tucked into Lena’s neck as they watch a movie.

There’s no mistaking Kara is talking to her. There’s no other reason Kara could be saying them unless she means them.

Doubt creeps in though, even as Kara snuggles closer. She lets Kara’s warmth soothe away her insecurities, at least for right now. She’s not used to this, not used to having someone who cares as much as Kara does.

Lena knows that’s true, knows that Kara cares about her, but love is another thing.

---

“I love you,” Kara slurs, stumbling into Lena’s side, and all Lena can do is laugh as she attempts to keep her best friend up right.

She feels warm all over, and it’s not just from the alcohol, though she’s had considerably less than Kara.

The words don’t scare her anymore, don’t make her doubt herself and Kara’s feelings, they just make her feel happy and loved.

Because Kara says them all the time now. Lena’s never said it back, has tried once or twice, but the words always get stuck in her throat.

Even now, as Kara grins at her, looking proud of herself from staying upright even though Lena is doing half the work, Lena can’t say them. She’s lost in Kara’s bright smile, in the way Kara’s eyes are crinkled and the freckles scattered across her cheeks.

Lena winds her arm securely around Kara’s waist. “Let’s get you home.”

---

“I love you.”

The words feel foreign, but so right as Lena says them. She’s never meant words more, and judging by the soft smile Kara is looking at her with, she thinks Kara knows that too.

“I love you, too,” Kara says and there is no doubt in Lena’s mind either, that Kara means them the same way she does.

“I love you,” Lena repeats, because now that it’s out there, now that she’s seen how much the words mean to Kara, she never wants to stop saying them. She may not be used to this kind of love, but she knows she’s going to have to get used to it, because Kara isn’t going anywhere.

And then Kara’s leaning forward and Lena can’t help but say them again. The fourth time she says them, the words are mumbled against Kara’s mouth and Lena couldn’t be happier.

[narrynukezankielover]

If you are a Sam or Jared fan don’t read this. The beginning of season 7 (im on ep 8) is extremely hard to watch. I’ve read people saying that when Cas dies Dean gets depressed and suicidal but I wasn’t prepared for how bad it gets. I thought he just went into certain situations before thinking about it or something but the fact he’s drinking way more then he usually does, he had to give himself a pep talk to go home with a girl (clearly he didn’t want to do it he just thought it’s what he does so he had to do it but I’m glad he didn’t since he’s not in a good place) haveing nightmares and not reacting to certain things the way he normally would is bad enough but then telling Bobby that if he is dead he was going to put him and Sam in the car and drive into the water (can’t remember his exact words and considering I bawled when I heard it I’m not going back to find out his exact words) but then when he seen that Bobby was alive he wasn’t even overly happy he just said “oh you’re alive” and then he was just going to let the god guy kill him without even trying to help Sam come up with a way to stop him is just heartbreaking. They try to say it’s a combination of Cas dying, Sam’s hallucinations and killing misses but he has done stuff behind Sams back before so killing her wouldn’t cause that much guilt on him. He has dealt with Sam not haveing a soul which he said just creeped him out and Sam being addicted to demon blood and that didn’t effect him so I don’t think he’d get that depressed over Sam hallucinating the only new thing is Cas being dead. After the end of season 6 it makes a lot of sense for him to act that way now.

I hate that the show makes Dean seem like the asshole self centred one but it’s Sam who’s those things. Dean is always looking out for Sam (and now Cas), protecting Sam and now even though he’s going through so much he’s still worried about Sam and asking him how he’s doing. Sam is watching Dean go through one of the hardest times in his life and yet the only time so far he asks Dean how he is it’s about the friend of his Dean killed. Seriously? He was standing right next to Dean when Cas trench coat washed up and yet Sam never said a thing about the whole thing to Dean. I actually really hate Sam for this.

Now that I know a bit more about season 7 then I originally did (Misha being fired) I now see the scene of Cas trench coat a bit differently and in fact I see a bunch of scenes a bit differently. I now see that first scene as more the actors real feelings. Dean is so upset because Jensen is upset of Misha not going to be around anymore and Sam basically not caring (he literally just stood there and didn’t have any reaction to what happened) because Jared probably wasn’t overly upset about Misha. I’m not saying they’re not friends but they are definitely not as close as Misha and Jensen and he was probably happy that the spotlight would be back on him again instead of Destiel. I think this is also shown in the other eps. I understand Sam is going through his own stuff but if Cas and him were friends I would think he would at least be sad that Cas is dead.

[i-arch-my-backula]

Bleach: David TLB x GN! reader

This is a little something I've been working on. I want to try and write more regularly but I've been pretty busy trying to balance everything in my life. But I found the time to write this for y'all so I hope that y'all enjoy it.

Content included: Brief mention of smoking, shorter, around 850 words

“I can’t believe that you’ve been doing this for as long as you have been.” You say draping an old, raggedy, heavily bleach stained towel over David’s shoulders. He chuckles and takes a drag of his cigarette. “I swear you’re so high maintenance sometimes.” You say in a teasing tone, picking up your rubber gloves and snapping them on. David blows out the smoke and crushes out his cigarette on a rock nearby. 

“Well at least now I have someone competent to help me. Apparently it takes three vampires to decently bleach my hair.” He says in a sarcastic tone. David has that iconic bleach blonde look. He already has that naturally blonde hair but he likes his to be platinum, so you have to use a volume 15 bleach to get it at the perfect tone. He has a system he’s described to you. Every six weeks he cuts his hair and bleaches it with volume 15 bleach for 18 minutes on the dot. Now that used to take an entire day with the three other goobers running around here, but now it’s just you and him in the cave. 

“When did you even start to do this? I thought hair bleach was only invented in like 1920 or something.” You say, picking up the bowl of bleach as you start to mix it with the brush. 

“It was invented in 1950, I was there when it first hit the shelves. But before that I just used hydrogen peroxide, which wasn’t as effective as this stuff is now. I remember this one actress from the 30’s who was a bottle blonde, I think she coined the term 'platinum blonde’. Too bad I can’t remember her name.” He says, tilting his head back and looking over at you. 

You roll your eyes and turn his head back forwards as you pick up some of the bleach on the brush and you start to apply it to his head, first the back then towards the front, the same every time. 

“Well I’ll have to go find out who she is so I know who gave you the idea to start doing your hair like this.” You say as you start to apply the bleach to his roots, you’d use hair foils if you had enough time to go buy them at the beauty supply store, but of course Paul got impatient while waiting for you to buy the bleach itself. “How do you feel about Billy Idol stealing your look? Or did you steal his?” You ask in a joking tone, turning his head slightly to apply the bleach on the sides of his head. David chuckles too before he replies. 

“I’ve been bleaching my hair since before his great grandparents were born. But I did take up the mullet after him.” He says, smiling to himself as you finish up on his left side and you move over to the right side. “How’s it looking?” He asks. You pick up a hand held mirror for a moment before you remember vampires can’t see themselves in mirrors and you laugh.

“It’s looking good so far. You’re lucky you don’t have super thick hair or you’d be here all night.” You say, picking up more bleach before you apply it to his hair. You’ve got the amount you use down to an exact measurement. By the time you’re done with his hair there’s barely bleach if any left in the bowl. 

“Where’d you even get these skills? I don’t think you’ve told me the stories behind it yet.” He says, looking back at you again before you turn his head straight again and you go back to bleaching his hair. 

“I’ve been dying hair since I was 12. Being a weirdo and being friends with weirdos does that to a person.” You say, focusing your attention now on the top of his hair, picking up more bleach on the brush before you start applying it to his hair. “I quickly learned to wear gloves after staining my hands blue while dying my friend's hair black. I’ve also learned that purple fades the fastest and red lasts forever. I also have a color wheel I bought at a garage sale when I was 15 just so I remember that for when I’m dying hair.” 

David chuckles and taps his fingers on his thigh. “Well I’m glad your hair dying skills haven’t gone to waste just yet.” He smiles to himself before he speaks again. “You could go to a cosmetology school. I mean you could make money off of dying people's hair.” You laugh and shake your head. 

“I don’t think that cosmetology schools are ever really open at night.” You say, scraping up the last bits of bleach from the bowl and finishing off the top of his hair. You pick up a small timer and you set it for 18 minutes. “Besides, I’d much rather get my money pickpocketing people like the rest of y’all do.” You say in a bit of a joking tone as David chuckles with you. 

[sourw0lfs]

dance with the devil - part eight

No one look at me. My three fics for STRBB has taken over my brain.

Words: 509 | Rating: E (mostly parts 1 & 2, but also future parts) | CW: no warnings this time! except Eddie's continued bad time

part one || part two || part three || part four || part five || part six || part seven || part eight || part nine || part ten || part eleven || part twelve

Eddie turns to Steve and blinks, once, twice, thrice.

“I just admitted to being dead and being one wrong move away from going to Hell, and you want to know how this effects you?” he asks incredulously. “You really are something, aren’t you?”

And maybe he’s being a little mean, a little unfair, considering the scene he walked into not even a handful of hours ago now, but Eddie can’t find it in himself to actually care. Maybe he’d be a little more sympathetic if he could remember being alive, but he can’t. He can’t, and he doesn’t know if he ever will again.

“You’re dead,” Steve bites back. “At, apparently, twenty-three. I think my still being alive is more important.”

It takes every bit of self-control for Eddie not to laugh, because this would be his luck. He would get assigned to the actual rudest person on Earth. “Well, you worry about that, and I’ll worry about the eternal state of my soul and whatever the fuck happens if I fail this.”

It’s not an ideal situation. It’s so, so, so far from ideal, but Eddie doesn’t really know what else to do. Not with Steve apparently being the prickliest little motherfucker in existence.

“How about we worry about both of you? Is that something you two can compromise on?” Robin asks with the judgiest raised eyebrow Eddie’s ever seen.

Eddie rolls his eyes at her, noticing that Steve does the same. “If we must,” he grumbles.

“Glad you can be reasonable,” Robin thanks him sarcastically and Eddie thinks he might be back to hating her a little. At least Steve seems equally miserable. “So are you stuck just following Steve around and keeping him out of trouble or what?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“I don’t need your help,” Steve gripes as he crosses his arms.

Eddie snorts, probably louder than he really needs to, but it’s fucking funny. “Says the guy that would be in jail right now without me,” he points out, bearing no thought on if Robin knows the predicament Steve found himself in that morning in full or not.

She doesn’t seem surprised, so Eddie takes it as her knowing.

Steve huffs at him, rolling his eyes so hard Eddie has to wonder if it hurt. But he doesn’t open his mouth to protest, and that’s good enough for now. It means they both agree that Steve would be fucked if Eddie hadn’t been there, and that’s a start. If they could keep that being the worst of their time together, Eddie might think himself lucky, but he’s never had much luck. He did, after all, die at twenty-three.

“Either way,” he continues on when no one protests. “I’ll try to stay out of the way as much as I can. Only intervene if I think there’s danger.”

Because for all he could use his newfound angelic magic for things like making sure Steve didn’t trip over an untied shoelace or that he always has exact change, Eddie really doesn’t think that’s his job.

Tags below the cut as always!

@chaosgremlinmunson @soaringornithopter @hbyrde36 @shares-a-vest @dreamwatch @quevadilla @tboyeddie @penny00dreadful @momotonescreaming @stevesbipanic @dawners @steddiejudas @just-my-latest-hyperfixation @estrellami-1 @vthx @lolawonsstuff @gleek4twd @littlebluejane @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lawrencebshaggoth @sadisticaltarts @queenie-ofthe-void @r0binscript @anaibis @hairdressersdoitwithstyle @goodolefashionedloverboi @spookednsaucy @anne-bennett-cosplayer @flustratedcas

[inkstainederudite]

Chapter 1 — Knowledge Is Not Power

(Word Count: 2,146)

Eric x Reader (Eventually)

There is a certain kind of silence in Erudite that no other faction has.

It is not the silence of peace. Not the hush of comfort or the absence of noise. It is the quiet hum of judgment. The sterile stillness of people who listen before they speak, observe before they act. Every movement, every breath is calculated. Controlled.

(Y/N) wakes to this silence, as always.

Her room is exact—just like everything else in her life. Walls painted a cold, functional shade of pale gray. A steel-framed bed, the sheets tucked tight at ninety-degree corners. A single bookshelf. Two tablets stacked neatly on her desk, charged overnight. Everything in its place. Nothing out of order.

She sits up slowly, blinking away the remnants of an uneasy dream. One she can’t quite remember, only that it left her jaw clenched and her chest heavy. The kind of dream she would never admit to anyone. Not here. Not even to herself, if she could help it.

Her bare feet touch the cold floor. A shiver climbs up her spine.

The Erudite compound is always too cold. They say it keeps the mind sharp. Logical. Undistracted. (Y/N) isn’t sure if that’s true, but she’s long since stopped questioning it out loud.

She dresses in silence: soft blue blouse, dark slacks, a sleek, dark gray sweater that hugs her arms like armor. Not a single wrinkle. She checks the mirror—not for vanity, but for precision. Her hair is braided and pinned in a style approved by her mother. Her expression is unreadable, her eyes steady.

That’s what people see when they look at her: steady. Composed. Just like Jeanine.

But they don’t see the thoughts constantly turning just behind her eyes.

They don’t see the weight.

The halls of the compound are already alive by the time she steps out of her room.

Not loud—never loud—but full of motion. Glass doors slide open on whispered tracks. Screens flicker on as people pass. A group of analysts cluster around a table in one of the common rooms, debating something about resource allocations for the Factionless districts. Their voices are low, clipped, precise.

(Y/N) doesn’t stop. She walks past them, silent as a shadow. No one greets her.

Not because they don’t know her.

Because they do.

She is Jeanine Matthews’ daughter.

And that means she is watched.

Not spoken to. Not trusted. Watched.

She’s learned to move quietly. To answer questions before they’re asked. To never show hesitation—even when it burns in her throat like acid. The wrong tone, the wrong look, the wrong question could be the beginning of the end. Not because she’d be exiled. No. That would be too kind.

Because her mother would notice.

The dining area is bright with artificial sunlight.

Erudite engineers designed it to mimic natural circadian rhythms, though (Y/N) doubts they’ve ever bothered to test its actual effectiveness. She steps through the glass doorway and immediately sees her mother, seated alone at the long central table.

Jeanine Matthews is already reading, a tablet in one hand, tea in the other. Her posture is perfect. Not a strand of hair out of place. Her white coat is crisp, the Erudite insignia gleaming on the lapel. She looks like a statue carved from ice—flawless, cold, and utterly unyielding.

(Y/N) approaches quietly and takes the seat across from her. Her breakfast is already there—protein-enhanced toast, a single boiled egg, half a grapefruit. Calorically optimized. Precisely portioned. No room for preference.

Jeanine doesn’t look up from her tablet.

“Your aptitude test is today,” she says, her voice as calm and impersonal as a data report.

“I know,” (Y/N) replies, keeping her tone equally flat.

Jeanine finally lifts her gaze, eyes scanning (Y/N)’s face with surgical precision. “You’ve always scored well on assessments. I expect this will be no different.”

There is no warmth in her voice. No pride. Only expectation.

(Y/N) picks up her fork. “Of course.”

A pause. A sip of tea.

Then Jeanine sets the tablet down, folding her hands over it. “Remember what I’ve taught you. Logic is not just the foundation of Erudite—it is the foundation of civilization. Emotion obscures truth. And truth, above all else, is what sustains order.”

“I understand,” (Y/N) murmurs, slicing a neat section of grapefruit.

“Good.” Jeanine’s eyes narrow slightly. “Because deviation from one’s designated faction, particularly when one is well-suited, reflects not just personal failure—but ideological dissonance.”

(Y/N) doesn't flinch, but she feels it. That subtle pressure. The weight beneath the words.

“I have no intention of failing,” she says.

Jeanine leans back. “No one intends to. But some… are born divided.”

And there it is. The warning. The test before the test.

(Y/N) lowers her gaze to her plate. Her hands are steady. Her voice is smooth. “I am not divided.”

Jeanine says nothing. Just studies her for a beat too long, then returns to her tablet like the conversation never happened.

But (Y/N) can still feel the silence between them. Heavy. Chilling.

Like a knife pressed to glass.

The glass walls of the Erudite compound reflect a world made of angles and edges. There is no softness here—no unnecessary texture or color. Everything exists because it is useful. Everything functions because it must.

(Y/N) walks the corridors with practiced efficiency, her bag slung over one shoulder. The materials inside—notes she doesn’t need, schedules she already memorized—are symbolic more than practical. Carrying them gives people a reason not to question her. And in Erudite, appearances are often more important than truth.

Not that anyone would dare question Jeanine Matthews’ daughter. Not out loud.

The halls are populated with scholars, analysts, and researchers already hard at work. Some peer into microscopes, others into screens filled with cascading data. Conversations float through the air like low-level static—dense with terminology, stripped of anything resembling emotion.

Her footsteps make no sound on the polished floor.

As she passes, a few heads turn—but they don’t acknowledge her. They assess. Her existence registers as a variable to be noted, not a person to be spoken to.

She doesn’t mind. Not really. This is how it’s always been.

A group of newer Erudite  slightly older than her gathers outside one of the lower labs, tablets in hand. She recognizes most of them. Nolan is among them—tall, sharp-cheeked, always too quick to smirk at someone else’s expense. He leans against the glass wall, glancing up just in time to see her approach.

“Well, if it isn’t Erudite royalty,” he says, voice pitched low but clear. Just loud enough to make sure others hear.

(Y/N) doesn’t slow down.

“Off to your aptitude test?” Nolan continues. “Or did your mother already rig it for you?”

She pauses—not because the words sting, but because they’re so predictable. She turns her head slightly, just enough to meet his gaze.

“I suppose we will be finding out soon, won’t we?”

A few of the others exchange looks.

(Y/N) turns away, already moving.

She doesn’t get satisfaction from the exchange. That would imply she cares what he thinks. She doesn’t. She just understands the value of silence—and when to break it.

Outside, the courtyard is bathed in morning light. Artificial, of course—the compound is surrounded by mirrored barriers and holographic sky panels to mimic natural weather cycles. Still, the sunlight feels real enough on her skin. Almost warm.

She pauses near the central garden—an ornamental space filled with symmetrical rows of trimmed hedges and genetically optimized plants. Everything about it is designed for efficiency. Even the flowers bloom on schedule.

A small child, no more than five, stumbles past her, chasing a rolling toy. A woman—likely a researcher—swoops in seconds later to retrieve him, offering a hushed apology before guiding the boy away. The moment is brief. Gentle.

(Y/N) lingers longer than she should, watching them.

Jeanine would call it a waste of time. Unnecessary sentiment. But something about it—something about the soft curve of the boy’s smile, the way the woman’s hand rested on his back—sticks in her mind.

She tucks it away. A mental snapshot. Something to revisit later.

Then she hears it.

A distant thunder. Not weather. Not in Erudite.

The Dauntless train.

She moves toward the edge of the courtyard, where the glass arches give a sweeping view of the city below. Her breath catches—not visibly, of course—but enough that she feels it in her ribs.

The train barrels across its elevated tracks, metal screaming, smoke trailing like a banner behind it. It doesn’t slow. It never does. And from its sides—leaping like sparks from a fire—are the Dauntless.

They jump.

From a moving train. From impossible heights. They roll, land, laugh like gravity is a suggestion.

She watches in stillness, the scene unfolding like something out of a simulation—too chaotic to be real, too vivid to ignore. They move with such wild, unfiltered energy. She can practically hear it echoing through the compound’s reinforced walls.

And then—

She sees him.

Not the first to jump. Not the last. He doesn’t throw himself from the train like the others—he descends from it, brutal and clean, landing hard and rising harder. His coat flares behind him like the wing of a dark bird. His eyes are sharp, cutting across the courtyard, and for a fraction of a second—

He looks up.

Right at her.

Their eyes meet.

The breath she didn’t know she was holding stills. It’s not attraction. Not yet. It’s something stranger. Something older. Like the moment her simulation results flicker on screen—like seeing a new variable in an equation that once made sense.

Unaccounted for. Unbalanced.

He looks away.

She doesn’t.

The walk to the testing chamber is long.

Not in distance—Erudite buildings are designed with ruthless efficiency—but in weight. Each step is measured. She isn’t being watched, not obviously, but the eyes of the faction are always present. Data logs. Surveillance nodes. Performance analytics. Even here.

Especially here.

(Y/N) keeps her posture flawless. Her expression neutral. She has practiced this version of herself for as long as she’s been able to walk—the daughter of Jeanine Matthews must never betray uncertainty.

But inside, her thoughts crackle. Not with fear. With momentum.

The train is still echoing in her mind—the blur of movement, the way the Dauntless flew through the air as if daring the world to break them. And him. The one who didn’t leap so much as descend. Eric. His face has been stamped into her memory before she even made the conscious decision to store it.

She remembers him now. Not from files, exactly, but from fragments. A name that floated through old documents and departmental murmurs. The Erudite prodigy who defected to Dauntless and rose too quickly through the ranks. Ruthless. Efficient. Intellectually gifted but temperamentally flawed.

She never paid much attention to the gossip.

But now she wonders.

What made him leave?

What made her stay?

She arrives at the testing room on schedule—precisely one minute early. Not enough to seem eager. Just enough to be noted.

The door slides open with a soft hiss. The room inside is sterile and dimly lit. White walls, metal exam chair, a terminal glowing pale blue. A woman waits, dressed in regulation Erudite uniform—hair tightly coiled, face drawn and professional.

“(Y/N) Matthews,” the woman says, more a confirmation than a greeting.

(Y/N) nods. “Yes.”

“I’m Tessa. I’ll be administering your simulation.” Her voice is pleasant in a way that’s clearly rehearsed. “Sit down. We’ll begin shortly.”

(Y/N) crosses the room and lowers herself into the chair. The synthetic material is cold against her skin. She places her hands on the armrests, fingers relaxed. She does not fidget. She does not ask questions. She knows better than to break protocol in front of Erudite personnel—especially with her mother’s name attached to hers.

Tessa adjusts the interface at the terminal, then turns to her with a small, clinical smile.

“Just a serum injection. It will induce a controlled hallucination. Your responses will be monitored.”

(Y/N) nods again. She’s read the files. Studied the process. It should feel familiar.

But it doesn’t.

Tessa rolls over a tray. The needle is long, gleaming silver. The vial at its base glows faintly violet—biochemical compounds suspended in memory-enhancing nanofluid.

(Y/N) watches without blinking.

“This may sting,” Tessa says, more out of formality than concern.

(Y/N) doesn’t flinch as the needle pierces her skin.

The moment the liquid enters her bloodstream, the world tilts.

Not violently.

Just… away.

The last thing she sees before her vision dissolves is the soft blue glow of the terminal.

And the faint reflection of her own eyes—still open, still focused—as the simulation takes hold.

[yowyowyaoi]

Kisame’s Daily Texts from the Akatsuki

From Deidara

Me and Tobi found a big muddy hole full of earthworms, let’s go fishing! 😁

We finished it last night, sorry 

I was just teasing him!

Exploding or boring?

Not a tea person but thanks anyway 

LMAOOO he probably pissed himself 🤣

Pls tell Itachi I’m not gonna hurt her I just want to pet her for a while!

Leader said he’ll kill us if we do it again so no probably not 😓

You gotta use the conditioner too or else it won’t be effective 

I’ll ask him but he don’t really like places like that. Says they’re too happy 🙄

From Hidan

If you have two does that mean one sleeps while the other fucks or ?

No offense but it’s literally so boring I can’t sit still that long 

I would say he’s giving you blue balls but.

Can’t imagine giving a shit but 🤷‍♂️

Tried that once. Got the mask halfway off and suddenly felt like I was drowning. Never again.

Old bastard said no 😑

You need to watch him he takes like two bites and pushes the plate away 

How? Half of us are gay half are insane and some are both 🤣

One dick, two dicks, your dicks, BLUE dicks! Lol get it??

From Sasori

Thanks but water erodes my “skin”.

I’m done reading it, you can borrow if you like.

Please make sure he puts on sunscreen he’s too stubborn to listen to me.

Don’t really remember all that well but I believe it was ice cream.

He has to *want* treatment and so far he’s turned down every offer Kakuzu or myself has made.

They make for more appealing puppets if they have some unique physical characteristic while they’re still living.

I’ll probably marry him some day but first he has to work on not blowing himself to bits.

Oh of course. You know you don’t need to ask.

From Kakuzu

Hey I almost beat you and I’m 60+ years your senior.

Just this once … no charge. Worth it to see him freak out like that.

I’m not very well-versed in animal anatomy but I can take a look and try my best.

EVERYBODY pays. Itachi too.

Fits nice. My thanks.

This place is falling apart, if it’s not one thing it’s another.

It’s annoying but I don’t see any serious long-term effects.

From Konan

That’s so sweet, thank you ☺️ 

Write down the exact kind for me, I’ll pick it up the next time I go to the market.

He’s a sweetheart isn’t he? 🥰

I’ll take your word for it, but ducks are so cute I don’t think I could eat one.

Come to my room I have some eye drops that’ll help him.

If I let that happen no work would ever be done and they’d likely kill each other.

So many miles, with these heels it’s hard on my feet.

If you want it that rare then there’s really no point to me cooking it at all 😒

At this point the yelling has become background music.

Me on one shoulder and Itachi on the other. You big show-off 😁

From Tobi/Obito

You only beat me because Deidara distracted me!

Forty cookies isn’t even that many. Plus Itachi ate two more.

Kakuzu said to earn the money myself so I stole one of his bounties 🤷🏻‍♂️

Itches. A LOT.

Can’t stand tea but if you have any hot chocolate, yeah.

You should hang out with Zetsu more often then. Like one never-ending picnic.

He really wants to go but I don’t have a pole. You have a spare?

Yeah but he might let us get a fish-tank if YOU said you needed it, like for health or something 

Sushi? Isn’t that cannibalism?!

Fuck him AND his perfect ass. Literally and figuratively.

Don’t give me that “kid” shit, we’re like the same age!

From Zetsu

You want to split that guy’s leg with me? He was very fat, lots of good meat 😋

He’s a good man but doesn’t his dubious emotional state concern you?

It’s a lot like hearing two voices at once. Constantly. 

It’s no fun if they don’t scream a bit first. You know this.

I did the scouting; that lake about five miles up the road is both deep and fairly clean.

Let’s hide under his bed and scare him. I bet money we can get him to soil himself while crying for that damn Jashin 🤣

From Nagato

I thank you for the tea. It helped me to sleep.

Well, keep an eye on him.

The pain is worse when I stand but Sasori is working on prosthetics for me that may solve the problem.

As long as you return in time for your next mission.

Get that looked at as soon as possible. We can’t afford to have you out of commission.

I do, but she deserves so much better than myself.

I’ll speak to Kakuzu about getting you a new one.

If you two are going to do that, please keep it away from our hideouts. It disturbs Konan to hear the screaming.

From Itachi

I ate this morning. Promise.

That wasn’t Hidan’s fault, I’d forgotten to take my pill so my reflexes were slow.

Just consider it. Uchiha Kisame. Say it out loud. It’s beautiful 😌

Can you check if I left that shirt in your room?

Dei and I went there last night. The manager banned us for life because Dei set off a C3 in the men’s room. 😑

Fine. You buy the skirt I’ll “model” it for you.

Sad. Come stay with me please.

You worry too much.

That picture is for YOUR EYES ONLY. 

Aww what do you mean? Kitty loves you she’s not trying to eat you!

It’s one that Konan gave me. It’s really good you’d probably like it too.

Tea?

I didn’t *fall* in, he *pushed* me. Big difference.

Mom taught me when I was younger. I can teach you too if you want.

You’re mine too. Always ❤️

[waytooinvested]

Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 11

This and previous chapters are also on AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clinical trial for Q-wave brain stimulator.

Trial subject 1. Session 5

First official sleep study: subject agreed to an overnight sleep study, during which two periods of Q-wave treatment are to be applied for 40 minutes each, one commencing during the deep sleep stage and a second at onset of REM sleep.

11.11pm – Deep sleep phase treatment commenced.

11.51pm: First treatment application successfully completed: blurring evidenced on Q-scan slightly extended to 0.7mm

2.07am: Following initial treatment dosage subject was allowed to complete one full sleep cycle at rest, followed by commencement of second treatment application on entering REM sleep

2.19am: Negative effects of Q-waves observed, treatment aborted.

Q-wave brain stimulator trial terminated with immediate effect.

Everything had been proceeding exactly as they had been anticipating. The deep sleep phase had been perfect, and to begin with the REM sleep treatment seemed even more promising, with the blurred patch expanding by 0.4mm within the first seven minutes. Success had seemed inevitable.

Then Lena looked over at Kara and saw the thin ribbon of blood trickling from her nose, and her heart stalled painfully in her chest before thumping back into action at twice its usual pace. She bypassed the dial completely and yanked the plug out of the wall to stop the Q-wave generator, then ran to kneel beside the bed.

‘Kara? Kara, please wake up. Are you okay?’

Kara stirred sleepily, blinking up at her in evident confusion as Lena tugged at the straps and pushed the Q-wave cap off and away with one hand while the other tenderly cradled her head.

‘What is it, did something happen?’

‘Do you feel alright?’

‘Of course, I’m totally fine. I was having the strangest dream though. I was flying, and... I think I was carrying you’.

Lena forced a laugh that might more properly have been called a sob as she remembered saying almost those exact words to Kara after she had been poisoned by Edge.

And after she had saved her life yet again...

It was a piece of real memory, and that Kara had it at all should have been incredible news, but combined with the nosebleed all it did was prove Lex had been serious about the dangers of forcing her to remember.

What if Lena had looked up five minutes later?

What if it had been too late?

Kara could have died tonight because of her.

She could have died.

‘Anyway, I don’t suppose you woke me to hear about my weird subconscious. Is everything alright?’

‘No, I’m afraid it’s not. I’m stopping the trial’.

The bed frame squeaked in protest as Kara sat up abruptly, looking properly alarmed for the first time since her rude awakening.

‘What? No! It’s been going so well, you can’t just stop!’

‘We have to Kara, you had a nose bleed’.

‘Don’t be silly, I never get-’

But the protest died as Kara reached up to touch her face, then examined the smear of red on her fingers.

‘Huh’.

‘I’m so, so sorry, I really thought this was going to be completely safe. I can’t say for sure that it was caused by the Q-waves, but I’m not willing to take that chance. If there is even the slightest possibility that this is hurting you, we are not doing it again’.

‘But it’s only a little one. Couldn’t you just… do some checks on the wave frequency or whatever before we try again? I would feel so awful if you cancel the whole project just because I had one tiny nose bleed, especially when I feel completely fine and it might not even have been caused by what we were doing. Think of all the people you were going to help’.

I was going to help you. That’s all. It was always just you, and now I can’t even do that.

‘No, I just can’t take that risk. I’m sorry Kara, but it’s over. I’ll just- I’ll find another way to continue the work. Come on, we’d better give Alex a call and get you over to the DEO so they can check you out properly’.

It looked like Kara wanted to protest further, but after taking in Lena’s expression for a few moments she apparently decided there was no point, and nodded reluctantly.

‘Alright, if you really think we need to stop, then I trust you. There’s no need to wake up Alex though, she’ll only fuss and there’s nothing wrong with me’.

‘Oh, we’re waking Alex for her sake, not yours. Otherwise she’ll be looking at a life sentence for my murder after she finds out I didn’t tell her about this so she could check you out for herself. What’s a bit of lost sleep compared to that?’

Kara rolled her eyes, a look of fond exasperation on her face that could have been for Alex or Lena or both as she picked up her phone to call her sister.

‘You two are as bad as each other, you know that?’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Kara had been checked out, cleared, and taken back to her apartment, the core task force for Project Atlantis (as Operation-get-our-girl-back had become more formally known) gathered for an emergency meeting to discuss what had just happened. Given that Kara had been cleared medically and was now back in her own home none the wiser this probably could have waited until morning, but when Kara had called Alex, Alex called J’onn, and the others were already en route to the DEO after Nia had seen something troubling in her dream, so they had decided not to wait.

J’onn, Nia, Brainy, Alex, and Lena.

There were a few other agents who knew Supergirl’s identity and therefore part of what they were working on, plus James, who was helping to hold things down at Catco, but the five of them were the only ones who knew everything, and Lena was glad she didn’t have to admit her failure to a bigger audience.

She had already presented the progression of the trial and the hopes she had had for the sleep study, and now went on to explain how it had gone wrong shortly after starting the REM treatment stage. For a long minute everyone was quiet as they examined the scan progressions Lena had just given them, then Alex banged a fist on the table and swore.

‘It was going so well. I really thought we had the answer’.

‘The probabilities looked quite promising, I too am surprised that this happened’.

‘So what do we do now? Do we dial back the treatments? Make them shorter, or less frequent?’

Lena had nodded along in commiseration with Alex and Brainy’s comments, but at J’onn’s contribution she stopped, brows drawing into her boardroom “someone just suggested dangerous cost cutting measures at the children’s hospital” expression.

‘Of course not. This is it for the Q-wave stimulator, I’m terminating the trials effective immediately. I assumed that was implied’.

The nosebleed was proof that her premise had been flawed, and it was sheer luck that the whole thing hadn’t ended up a lot worse than it did.

Kara could have died tonight. She could have died. She could have-

‘I’m not certain that is a logical course of action Lena. My calculations show only a 6.3% chance of further injury to Kara if the sessions return to being carried out while she is conscious, and with greater spacing between-’

Now Brainy too?

‘That is 6.3% too much. I’m sorry, but this is not a debate. It’s my device and I am telling you that I will not let any of you use it on Kara again. If I have to smash it to pieces and destroy the schematic to make sure of it I will not hesitate’.

Alex raised her eyebrows, reaching out towards Lena as if she was going to put a soothing hand on her arm, though she stopped short of actually touching her.

‘Woah, hey, there’s no need for that, we’re all on the same side here. But we don’t have another plan – if we can’t use Q-waves, what are we going to do?’

‘For now, nothing, Kara’s brain needs time to heal from the trauma it’s just experienced. Maybe in a few weeks we can think about trying something new, but until then-’

‘A few weeks?’ Alex interrupted, extended hand withdrawing along with the conciliatory tone. ‘We can’t wait that long. We’re barely holding things together as it is without Supergirl.’

At another time Lena might have been sympathetic, but right now the image of blood running down Kara’s face while she lay apparently unconscious (just sleeping in fact, but the seconds when Lena had been unsure if she would ever wake up again had felt like an eternity) was hovering just behind her eyelids ready to ambush her the moment she closed her eyes, and Alex’s protestation seemed flimsy at best.

Kara could have died tonight.

Lena could have killed her.

The roil of panic she was trying not to acknowledge boiled over, and her reply lashed out like a whip.

‘National City survived for years without superheroes. Are you really telling me that you can’t last a couple more months without your little sister holding your hand?’

Alex slammed both hands down on the table, her own tenuous grip on her composure snapping under the weight of Lena’s goading.

‘DAMN it Lena, this is not about me! Do you realise that Kelly nearly died confronting Malefic? He was seconds away from forcing her to cut her own throat. Seconds. I can’t let that happen again!’

‘And I can’t let you risk hurting Kara to make sure it doesn’t!’

‘You think I want to? She’s my sister, I love her more than almost any other person on the planet, but we have to be realistic. Kara is not the only one in danger here!’

They were both standing now, eyes locked, though Lena wasn’t sure when or how that had happened. If the two of them had been alone they would have fought it out until they had vented what they needed to, then calmed back down enough to figure out a new plan together, but they were not alone. J’onn interrupted their glaring match with a stern throat-clear, looking between them like a disappointed teacher with two unruly pupils.

‘That’s enough, both of you. Will you please sit down so we can discuss this rationally?’

Lena was prepared to ignore him and continue their debate to its conclusion, but after a few more seconds of crackling tension Alex flickered her gaze to J’onn and nodded stiffly, a part of her apparently still reacting to the authority of her former boss. She dropped back into her seat looking partially (though not entirely) chastened, and after a moment Lena followed suit more slowly, schooling her own features to avoid showing any hint of similar emotion herself.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care what happened to Kelly.

She was actually the one person connected to this little group that Lena had not entirely cut contact with after she’d found out about Supergirl, and she liked her very much. It was awful to think that she had so nearly been hurt, and if there was anything Lena could do to keep it from happening again, then she would. But she was a scientist, and a researcher, and she could not in good conscience support the continuation of a trial that would put her subject at a greater level of potential harm than was warranted, especially after having assured them that they would be entirely safe.

And she would not allow Kara to be harmed. Not for anyone. Not even if it meant every other person in the city suffered for it.

‘Thank you. Lena, you may be right about continuing any form of physical intervention at this stage, but Alex is also right that we can’t wait too long to do something. So, I suggest we stop trying to break down the barrier with external force and take a different approach entirely’.

J’onn paused, looking round to check he had everyone’s undivided attention, then continued before anyone (Lena) could raise objections.

‘Sometimes Martian powers will kick in without conscious direction when presented with imminent threat to life, and I think a similar instinctive approach could work for Kara. A survival reflex could bring back her powers without having to pass through her conscious mind, allowing the memories to follow after them once the way had been opened up and avoiding the potentially dangerous weakened pathways created by the Q-wave treatment’.

‘Interesting… Like avoiding the locked door in her mind altogether and instead creating a hitherto undiscovered window. I predict that that course of action would have an 84.2% chance of success’.

There was a beat of silence while Lena waited for J’onn to add something that would make his idea sound more sane, but it appeared he was done speaking.

‘Are you actually suggesting that we should put Kara’s life in danger? That’s your safer plan?’

J’onn raised his hands, fending off the argument they both knew was still simmering just below the surface.

‘Controlled danger. Something we could set up and monitor, and bring her out of if needed. She wouldn’t be at any real risk’.

Controlled danger.

Inducing hypothermia until Kara’s muscles gave up shivering and her heart slowed and eventually stopped.

Pressing on her throat to make her fight for air, her eyes wild with terror as she tried to free herself of the constriction.

Submerging her in water and watching her thrash and struggle, breaking the surface only to be drawn back under without having managed to take a breath, water replacing air in her lungs until at last she went limp and sank out of sight, just like-

‘NO’.

Her muscles tensed, ready to jump to her feet again, but Alex broke in before she could manage more than that single, reactive syllable of negation. It was probably lucky that she did, because for all her years of social training, Lena wasn’t at all sure her own response would have been as measured as Alex’s.

‘Sorry J’onn but I’m going to have to side with Lena on this one. We need Supergirl back, but we can’t take the chance on something going wrong with that plan. Even if we made some artificial danger that we could fully control, if it was real enough for survival instincts to kick in, it would also be real enough that something could go really badly wrong. Besides, that still leaves a 15.8% chance of failure for a plan that would be seriously traumatic to Kara, and that is way too high’.

‘It doesn’t have to be real danger. If we put Kara into a simulation-’

‘That doesn’t negate the trauma of thinking she’s dying!’

Lena’s volume was creeping up again, but she managed not to actually shout.

‘Maybe not, but Supergirl is tougher than you’re giving her credit for, and we can’t afford to take a kid glove approach on this one. Kara would want us to try it if it meant reducing the risk to the rest of National City caused by her absence’.

‘Kara has no idea what’s going on, so she can’t really express an informed opinion right now, can she?’

‘Exactly. That’s why we have to make a decision based on what she would want us to do. You’ve worked with Supergirl before, when have you ever known her to choose her own safety over someone else’s?’

J’onn had a point. The Kara Lena thought she had known was someone who had needed her protection, who had stood behind her when danger threatened and let her take the lead. It had made her feel strong, protective, trusted to keep her friend safe, and that trust made her believe she really could be an immovable object between Kara and whatever threatened them, no matter how bad things got. Now she realised with a pang that Kara’s attempts to hide were in reality her trying to slip away to return as Supergirl, and whenever she had she had immediately put her own body between Lena’s and the source of danger, and Lena had let her. Of course she had. Supergirl was the girl of steel.

But right now she was just Kara, and whether she wanted them to or not, all of those old protective instincts surged at the idea of standing back and allowing her to be killed, even if it was only in a simulation.

Lena folded her arms and stared steadily back at J’onn.

‘Well then. Maybe it’s time someone made the decision for Kara that she would make for them.’

‘Maybe… but I think you’re wrong about what that would be.’

She laughed, but there was no humour in it.

‘You’re telling me that Kara wouldn’t keep the truth from someone to protect them, whether they would have chosen that for themselves or not. You’re telling me that.’

J’onn had the grace to look uncomfortable, but he still didn’t rise to the provocation.

‘This situation is different from Kara choosing not to tell you about her Kryptonian identity.’

‘Yes, it is. Because finding out the truth wouldn’t have fucking KILLED me!’

‘No one is going to let that happen!’

‘You literally just suggested that we should try that exact thing and hope that the barrier breaks in time for Kara to save herself. Tell me J’onn. Would you be saying the same thing if it was Alex’s life? If she lost part of her memory, and the fastest way to get it back also risked giving her a major stroke or a fatal brain hemorrhage, would you do it? Or would you decide that a kid glove approach might be better if we were talking about someone other than Supergirl?’

‘Lena, that’s not f-’ Alex started to protest, so Lena snapped her attention to her instead.

‘How about if it was Kelly? Right now Kara is more vulnerable than a human, so you can’t argue that we should push ahead because she’s Kryptonian and her body can take it. It can’t. Not right now. So would you risk leaving Kelly brain dead for the sake of a few weeks? Brainy, how about you? Would you think a 6.3% chance of killing Nia was acceptable? Or you Nia, if it was Brainy? I know things are difficult in the city right now, but the world is not in immediate danger, and Kara is safe like this.’

There was utter silence around the table, so thick it would have taken a machete to cut through it. Nobody quite met Lena’s eyes.

‘You’ve made your point Lena’. Alex finally said in a subdued voice, fists clenching and unclenching on the table before her.

‘You’re right. We’re used to Kara being physically a lot stronger than she is right now, and we need to take that into account with whatever plan we make. Maybe we should to go right back to the beginning and look over all the test results again – see if there’s anything we missed the first time round and-’

‘Um… Alex? Maybe I could try something else first?’

Everyone turned to Nia, who until now had been silently watching the argument pinging from Alex to Lena to J’onn and back round again like it was a game of ice hockey.

‘What are you thinking Nia?’ Alex asked.

‘Well, I’m not sure, but maybe there’s a way I could reach Supergirl through Kara’s dreams. It would be less direct than the Mind space because dreams aren’t supposed to be literal, it’s all more vague and symbolic there, so she might fight it less. Plus what Lena told us about the flying dream shows that maybe that’s where the cracks are going to appear’.

‘Oh.. yeah, you could be onto something!’

‘An excellent proposal Nia’.

‘I agree, that could be a good compromise’.

They all looked at Lena, waiting to see if she was going to object to this plan too in spite of everyone else’s support for it. And to be honest, she would have been more comfortable continuing to approach the problem with science rather than something as wishy washy and unpredictable as “magic”. But then… so would Lex. He would be much more likely to anticipate and plan for anything she could do with science than Nia’s dream powers, especially when even Nia didn’t entirely understand how they worked. It was by far the best option on the table at the moment, even if it did mean she was going to have to trust Kara’s treatment and welfare to somebody who wasn’t her.

That part was going to be a wrench after all this time feeling so sure she could crack it, but in a way it was also a relief. For the last few weeks Lena had not so much been burning the candle at both ends as throwing the candle into the centre of a blazing fire and keeping it from melting up entirely by sheer force of bloody mindedness. Between working on the Q-wave stimulator, keeping L-Corp running and spending more time than ever with Kara as part of Project Atlantis, not to mention check in meetings with the rest of the task force, it had been weeks since she had had a full night of unbroken sleep, and that was starting to take its toll. She sighed.

‘I’m in too. But if we’re going ahead I think Alex or I should be there during the sessions so we can keep an eye on Kara and bring her out immediately if she starts showing dangerous symptoms. Sorry Nia, it’s not that I don’t trust you to take care of her, but if you’re in a dream state you might not be so aware of what’s going on physically’.

‘Sure, I’d be fine with one of you two being there – it might be easier to explain as a group thing anyway’.

Around the table shoulders visibly relaxed as the tension eased, and the general mood finally began to shift to something more hopeful – optimistic even – as they started discussing how Dreamer should approach the task. Now that their course was decided Lena sat back and let the conversation go on around her, half listening but making no attempt to direct the flow, or even step into it. It wasn’t like she knew much about powers in any case, and she needed a minute to collect herself after what had just happened.

In the heat of the argument she hadn’t cared what bridges she was burning or what the fallout from that might be just as long as she was keeping Kara from being hurt, but now it was over she felt slightly... unbalanced by the experience. She wasn’t sorry that she had stood up against the suggestion that they should suffocate Kara for her own good (or whatever other ridiculously dangerous alternative J’onn would have come up with), but had to admit, if only to herself, that the way she had gone about it might not have been entirely prudent. Because she wasn’t the top-of-the-food-chain CEO here, whose word had to be obeyed by the majority of the people she came into contact with whether they liked it or not. In fact, now that they no longer needed her technology she wasn’t really anything to this group, and the idea that they might realise as much and drop her from the project made bands of panic tighten around her chest all over again.

She couldn’t walk away from this now. She was in too deep for that. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.

Not to Kara, but not to the rest of them either, because somewhere along the way she had stopped thinking of these people as adversaries she was forced to partner with to achieve a shared goal, and started to think of them as… something else. People that she cared about, and whose company she would miss if it suddenly disappeared from her life.

The hours she spent with Brainy working through technical details and swapping jargon-based humour that no one around them understood.

The coffee breaks with Nia when she and Dreamer both had cause to be at the DEO Headquarters, and the conversations they had that had begun, very lightly, to touch on families and the otherness that both of them experienced in their own different ways.

The camaraderie with Alex and mutual needling that increasingly felt like their own private in-jokes, and the fact that despite all the teasing (and even sometimes fighting), she was the first person Lena wanted to call when something well wrong with Project Atlantis, because Alex cared about Kara as deeply as she did.

Even J’onn, despite a somewhat awkward beginning, was becoming a respected colleague that Lena could almost forget had also posed as her best friend while she opened up about her love life and family insecurities…

Alright, that last one still stung, but they had been making progress. She didn’t want to just throw it all away now, no matter that that was exactly what she would have to do sooner or later, when Kara got her memories back.

‘Lena?’

She blinked back into the room, chagrined to have been caught zoning out just when she most needed to justify her presence here.

‘Sorry Alex, what did you say?’

‘I just asked if you could make next Monday instead of Thursday for the next Atlantis meeting’.

‘Oh-’ She was still in then. For now at least. ‘-Yes. I might need to move a couple of things around, but I can make Monday work, definitely’.

That meant there would be a few extra days until the next meeting, and Lena resolved to spend them (or as much of them as wasn’t already taken up by L-Corp) proving that she could still be a valuable asset to the project. Somewhat regretfully she let go of the extra couple of hours sleep per night that she had promised herself following the end of the Q-wave trials, and instead allocated the time to the study of dream interpretation. Because while it was true that Lena was just about as unmagical as it was possible for a person to be, she was excellent at research, and there was bound to be something in the established body of peer-reviewed literature that would begin to explain the mechanics of Nia’s power. If she could only find it then they would be able to take a scientific approach to determining the right way for Dreamer to get through to Supergirl, and that was something Lena could do in her sleep. The bands around her chest loosened, and she took what felt like her first full breath since she had looked up to see Kara’s blood staining her pillow.

‘How long do you think before you’re ready to get started Nia?’

Is there time for me to express ship some pertinent reading material from overseas, or should I only look locally?

‘Well, there is one snag I’m going to have to work out first... It turns out that Kara doesn’t actually know that I’m Dreamer anymore. That memory must have been pretty tied up with her own identity as Supergirl, and she has just blocked the whole thing out. So. I think before I can start on any of this stuff, I’m going to have to come out to Kara’.

[vargassdottir]

=✮Green + Gold✮=

[MCU Loki x Amora]

PRELUDE

=Masterlist=

Please see the above linked “Masterlist” for all warnings and disclaimers about the fic, thank you.

[Chapter One]

Looking back, Loki couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact moment he realised the effect Amora would have in his life, but he could tell anyone to near enough the second, should they ask and he even be inclined to answer, the exact moment he became aware that he loved her. That she was more than just some meaningless fling, a competitor in magic, a near constant aggravation or as close to a friend as he could picture. No, they weren’t the right titles for her. Love felt alien to his head, at least in this form.

The moment itself wasn’t a grand one, no daring proclamations of affection or fanfare, but an afternoon basking in Asgard’s sun, sitting atop the side of the keep with legs swinging over and a ‘relatively’ short drop down into one of the courtyards. Dressed simply, both of them, no fancy adornments in hair or excessive jewellery and brocade, no illusions, just simply at their most real. Sat beside one another, smiles on their faces, and the sun hitting her bright green eyes in such a way that it seemed to reflect it and send the refractions of light bouncing off into the air again. He can’t remember if they said anything before it, after it, or what they did surrounding the moment itself.. Only that glimmering jewel of a few seconds. The peace, the warmth of the sun, and her radiance.

He wasn’t a stranger to sharing his bed with beautiful people, men or women, or other forms of being in general for that matter, but they were distractions. Fleeting and, in the moment, thrilling encounters that satisfied whatever urge he had at the time but always short lived, never repeated.

Amora was.. Intoxicating. It’s the only word he can think of to describe it. Being around her made him feel like he was pumping something into his veins that left him tingling all over, her scent something he wished he could breathe in and never let it fade, and her touch made him feel like the lightning his brother so adored, electric and set his hairs on end. It was overwhelming and all consuming and frankly, he revelled in it. He needed it. He needed her. And that scared him beyond anything else.

The idea that he would not just want someone, but need someone in his life, someone that could be taken away or turned against him, someone that would give him cause to listen, someone that he would want to be around and protect and who wants to be there for him in return? It shook him to his core.

Lying on emerald silks, pondering this, the God of Mischief was brought out his trance-like state by the feeling of soft, warm skin upon his. His blue eyes finding her own closed one’s twitching as he glanced to his left. Amidst his introspection he almost had forgotten where he was, stretched out in his bed with her now tucked into his side, his arm had been stretched open towards her that she had since rolled into after her dreams gave her cause to move from her earlier position. Her scrunched up brows and frowning lips caused his own mirroring reaction at her discomfort, whatever was knocking around in her head evidently unpleasant, so he fell into the familiar pattern of idly brushing his hand up and down her back and upper arm in a comforting gesture, which caused her features to relax within seconds.

How was it, he wondered as he fell back into his own head, that a few decades before this moment he could only just about remember her favourite colour, if only because she wore it often, and now he could subconsciously recall what to do to her calm her nightmares, how to ease her pain or something as simple as what she prefers to drink at a feast (despite all appearances, “ale over wine thank you very much”). How does someone become this important to him, that his instinctive reactions to her behaviour are so attuned to what she wants?

When did it happen that her own aptitude for his needs was so near telepathic that he sometimes wondered if she was reading his mind without his knowing?

Strange, what difference one person can make to the course of a life, Loki thought, before rolling himself around his golden-haired beauty, tucking her head under his chin and drifting back into a lazy slumber.

[allegra-writes]

"Various Storms and Saints" Part II

Armand x Daniel Molloy

NSFW

Warnings: Role play, power play, sex toys, consensual dub/non-con. Look, Armand is one kinky bastard.

Dedicated to @faerywhimsy because when one of the greatest writers of the fandom tells you they would like to read more of a certain story, you sit your ass down until midnight and GET IT DONE.

MY MASTERLIST

Daniel Molloy was too old for this shit. A short few decades ago, when he had been an intrepid reporter with too much courage and too little sense, he had never thought twice about grabbing a hammer and helping the Mauerspechte to tear down the wall, standing in front of the tanks in Iraq or sleeping inside the ruins of a dilapidated building while the bombs fell from the sky in Sarajevo. Hell, only twenty years before he had used his own body to shield a woman and her child from an angry mob in Gujarat, and it had been one of the best decisions he had ever made in his life. But now, with the big seventies biting his heels and a terminal disease prognosis, he was forced to admit maybe, just maybe, his Indiana Jones days were over. He was pretty sure he had dislocated his shoulder slamming it against the -not particularly sturdy- door, and he could feel his foot throbbing from where he had kicked the lock down. At least he had succeeded in that, even if the only reason were his trusty old Docs he had owned since the eighties and refused to throw away. He tried not to think about how pathetic it was the fact that those boots were his longest-standing relationship. 

“Doctor Du Lac? Doctor Du Lac, stay with me!” Lightly slapping the cheeks of the young man lying on the grey couch, Daniel tried to keep him awake until the paramedics arrived. He had no idea what he had been given or how much of it, had no idea if he was about to overdose or if the loss of consciousness was the intended effect of whatever it was on his system. By the way the man’s wrists were tied together and his state of undress, he could infer it was, but there was no way to be sure. All he was sure of was Dr. Louis De Pointe Du Lac had gone, was still going, through something traumatic, and it was both a mercy and a cruel trick from fate that he had programmed their date for that exact day and time, that Daniel had for once arrived somewhere a little early, just in time to stop the attack from becoming something even worse, but too late to stop it from happening altogether. 

“Mo- Molloy?” 

That was good, recognition was good. It meant his brain was working, somewhat. 

“What happened here? Do you remember anything?”

A mumble was all the reply Du Lac was capable of. Daniel had to lean until his face was mere inches away from his to be able to make out the words.

“L’estat…” Du Lac was repeating, like a litany, “l’estat, l’estat…”

Daniel cursed internally,

“I’m sorry, I can’t- I don’t speak French” He was fluid in Spanish and Italian, could manage Gujarati, Bosnian, Serbian, and even knew a few words in Ukrainian and Arabic, but French had always eluded him. Now, someone needed his help, was trying desperately to tell him something and Daniel didn’t have a clue what it might be. Taking out his phone, he quickly opened the app and recorded Du Lac’s slurred words. Maybe he would be able to figure them out later. “I’m sorry, son” 

Daniel apologized again, but Du Lac didn’t seem to resent him, on the contrary, he was holding onto Daniel’s hand with as much strength as he could, his face filling with panic when the older man went to move away to let the paramedics in, only settling down once Daniel was in his line of vision again. 

“Mister Molloy? I’m Tammy, you called 911, didn’t you?” An alarmingly young officer approached him as two METs loaded Du Lac onto a gurney. 

“Yeah, I did” Daniel replied, feeling suddenly very tired. The adrenaline kick was finally fading.

“I have to ask, did you move him? Touched anything? Did you put him on the couch?”

Daniel shook his head,

“No, that’s where he was when I managed to break in, I took the throw blanket from the back of the couch to cover him, but other than that I didn’t touch anything, didn’t want to contaminate the crime scene”

The officer smiled approvingly, Daniel tried very hard not to feel condescended. 

“Thank you, that will be very useful if the victim decides to report”

“Wait, if he decides to report?” 

The officer seemed unphased,

“Well, the department might investigate anyway or transfer the case to our SVU if we find there is enough evidence to suspect a crime, but that will have to wait until we can talk to Mister De Pointe Du Lac”

“Enough evidence to suspect a crime? Exactly what do you think this is, some BDSM shit? some role-playing gone wrong?” Daniel could almost feel his blood pressure rising,  “I heard the struggle, I had to break the god damned door! The guy was naked and tied up with zip ties for fucks sake!” he had been a queer man in the seventies, he knew what kink looked like, and this wasn’t it.

“Believe me, sir, I know how frustrating it can be, but it’s the procedure and there is nothing I can do to change it,” Her face softened, her tone turning concerned. Daniel didn’t know which one he despised more. “Now, you need to calm down. Are you feeling alright? Would you like me to tell one of the paramedics to check you out?”

Daniel shook his head again, biting his tongue so as not to bark at her that he was old, not decrepit. Fucking useless cops.

“Is there anyone you want me to call, maybe a family member? To come pick you up?”

With narrowed eyes, Daniel informed the officer that he was perfectly capable of making his own way home, thank you very much. As it was, if anybody back home found out what he had been up to, he would have enough hell to pay without an alarming call from the police. 

Luckily for him, when Daniel arrived, he found the apartment empty, all the lights out, and a dirty coffee cup still on the counter, letting him know no one had been home since morning. Thank god for the small mercies, Daniel thought as he settled in his office, hoping to grade some papers for his university job, the one that actually paid the bills. Well, his bills anyway. However, he didn’t manage to read more than a handful of essays before the bell interrupted him.

“Aayat is that you? You lost your keys again-" Daniel stopped short in the middle of his sentence as he opened his front door, uncomprehending. 

There, standing in the middle of the hallway, looking at him with huge Bambi eyes, was not his daughter as he had expected, but him. 

Dressed casually in dark jeans, a vintage Loyola University sweatshirt, and black sneakers with red soles that betrayed their price tag, stood Armand Ahmedov, looking for all the world like the ordinary, everyday TA Daniel knew he wasn't. 

There was nothing ordinary about that boy, not his lustrous black curls, nor his perfect golden brown skin, and definitely not his Caravaggio angel face. Armand was too pretty and too brilliant to be anything but trouble. 

“Good evening, Professor Molloy” He greeted, overly formal, making Daniel frown.

“Armand, I’m not in the mood for-”

“Please, professor” The boy insisted, undeterred by Daniel’s sour face, “This will only take a minute”

Somehow, Daniel doubted that. He let him in anyway. 

It was a somewhat awkward walk through the apartment and back into his office, though Daniel had no reason to be nervous. At least not yet. Decorum mandated that he sat at his desk, so he did exactly that. But Armand came to a stop before it, eyes still fixed on Daniel. Sighing, the old men motioned at the chair in front of him, then and only then Armand took his seat.

“So, mister Ahmedov, I assume this isn’t a social visit…”

Armand had the decency to look embarrassed,

“It isn’t, and I apologize, both for the late hour and for inconveniencing you in your home.” Yeah, right, Daniel thought. Yet he couldn’t deny that watching the normally stoic young man, proud to the point of arrogance, fidget anxiously with the sleeves of his too-big sweatshirt was kind of endearing. 

“As I’m sure you noticed, I haven't turned in the last homework you assigned us yet…”

“No extensions” Daniel shot back automatically, “That’s the rule. A deadline is a deadline”

Armand blushed. He honest to god blushed.

“A- actually, between my other assignments and my job at the paper, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it at all”

Daniel scoffed,

“So what are you doing here? Do you expect me to just give you the credits for free?”

Armand gulped, lowering his eyes, suddenly unable to meet Daniel’s.

“Not… not for free, professor” He stammered, “I… I could make it up to you”

“I… what?”

The young brunet took a deep breath, seemingly gathering his courage before raising from his chair and rounding the desk. Instinctively, Daniel turned his chair toward him.

“I can make it up for you, professor” Armand repeated more firmly, letting his fingertips caress the dark mahogany of the desk. Daniel couldn’t help but zero on the movement. “Anything you want me to, I’ll do it”

“Armand…”

“I’ve noticed the way you look at me, professor” Armand interrupted his attempt at protesting, “The way your eyes linger on me, the way they trace my movements in the classroom. I like it. I like your attention on me”

Now that Daniel did not doubt. If it was something Armand seemed to thrive on, was attention. 

But Daniel wasn’t that kind of man. He had never fantasized about sleeping with a student, in fact, he felt a deep disdain for those in the faculty who did get involved with a student. Even when all parts involved were adults, he could never get over the ick factor of it all.

“Listen, Armand-” He tried again, but the boy stepped forwards, boldly taking hold of Daniel’s knees and separating them to make room as he fell to his knees, and the little voice of conscience in Daniel’s head fell silent.

“I can make it good for you, professor” Armand’s voice coaxed, softly making its way to Daniel’s ears, muffled by his own blood racing inside his veins, not exactly in the direction of his head, “Let me make it good for you…”

Daniel shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t. It was wrong and it was twisted, it was the lowest, the most despicable way of taking advantage of someone. 

And he wanted it. 

Looking down at the big doe eyes of the boy kneeling between his legs, Daniel realized he wanted it. 

"Please, Professor Molloy" Armand pleaded, perfect little mouth puckered into a pout. The little shit, "I want you to do it. I want you to use me"

There was a beat, then two, as Daniel tried to get hold of the meager strands of his feeble self-control. And then he lounged.

Bending almost in half, Daniel crashed his mouth against Armand’s hot and moist one, plunging his tongue into it at once in a hungry, messy kiss. Armand offered no resistance, letting the older man ravage his mouth to his heart's content, only breaking the kiss when the need for oxygen forced him to. Emboldened by Daniel’s response, Armand went for the button of his slacks, but Daniel got hold of his wrists, stopping him.

“Professor, what’s wrong?” 

Fuck, he sounded so young, so vulnerable. It made Daniel want to wreck him. 

“You thought it would be so easy, didn’t you? That you’d walk into my house, begging all pretty, then suck my cock and I would give you an A, just like that?”

Armand frowned in confusion,

“I- I thought…”

“Get up” 

“But-”

“Now!” Daniel commanded with as much authority as he could muster with a raging hard-on tenting his pants. The young TA scrambled to obey. Daniel noticed with satisfaction that he was sporting a bulge in his pants of his own. 

“On the desk” He leaned back, making room for Armand to sit in front of him, “Legs open”

Daniel would be lying if he said it didn’t send a little thrill through him, to see the beautiful boy do as he was told, even going as far as placing his palms flat on the desk at either side of him, submissively, waiting to see what Daniel would do next. 

He decided that what he wanted to do next was indulge. 

“Take your sweatshirt off” Before the words were done leaving Daniel’s mouth, the boy’s maroon sweater and t-shirt were on the floor. Apparently, Armand was a very good boy. Who would have thought?

Of course, that was Daniel’s last coherent thought for a couple of minutes, the amount of bronze skin exposed enough to cause eighty-six billion neurons to go out of commission.

“Fuck, you truly are pretty”

Armand’s whole demeanor changed, softening somehow. Relaxing. And Daniel was rewarded with a deep, tender kiss. A sensuous affair of tongues sliding against each other, neither dominating nor dominated, kissing for the sake of kissing, for the sake of sucking the boy’s plush lower lip into his mouth and feeling his silky soft curls between his fingers, of coaxing those delicious sighs and little whines out of his throat. It whetted Daniel's appetite till he was ready to devour. 

With an oh-so-gentle shove to Armand’s shoulder, Daniel laid him back on his cluttered desk like a feast, knocking over pens and papers and even his goddamned laptop. Nothing mattered to him more than the boy with the sun-kissed skin currently under him, moaning sweetly as Daniel bit bruises down his neck. It was a herculean effort to part from Armand long enough to tear those criminally tight jeans from his body, getting briefly tangled in his red soles before brute strength alone forced them to hit the floor with a thud, one after the other. The kid had committed to the role, Daniel had to give him that: The lack of underwear was somewhat expected, but to see him like that, to see Armand’s skin smooth, clean shaved everywhere, well… there was something so lewd, something so dirty about it, whatever was left of Daniel’s feeble self-control snapped. He gave Armand no warning, no chance of bracing himself before taking his entire length into his mouth, swallowing him whole, relishing in the wordless scream he let out.

Armand’s cock was long, all of him was, and so thick that, even if he relaxed his throat and breathed through his nose, Daniel had no chance of getting any air into his lungs unless he retreated a little. Armand didn’t seem to mind though, clutching at the edges of the desk so hard his knuckles were white, looking at Daniel through big, wet dark eyes.

“Pro- professor…” 

Daniel smoothed a soothing, possessive touch down the boy’s sides, his ribs, his bony hipbones, before pinning them down to the wood, and starting to bob his head up and down, letting the mushroom head of Armand’s dick hit the back of his throat, swallowing around it on every other stroke. Those were efficient movements, designed to get the boy off as quickly and hard as possible. Professional movements perfected in dirty bathroom bars and dark alleyways during the seventies; Armand, experienced, proud, and worldly as he was, didn’t stand a chance. It took no time at all for his eyes to shut and hips to spasm, trying in vain to buck blindly into the mouth that never faltered, never went faster, but simply knew exactly just how to extract the pleasure out of him in the most economical way. The boy came with a shout, nearly causing Daniel to choke, little strings of milk white dripping down Armand’s cock even as Daniel chased them with his tongue. No one could say Daniel Molloy didn’t clean up his messes.

Once he was done, he didn’t waste any time in niceties, flipping up the dazed young man and manhandling him until he was bent over the desk, his chest against the cool wood and ass up in the air. Armand was much too tall for his feet to dangle over the floor, but he was too surprised and disoriented to find purchase on it anyway. It wasn’t until Daniel took his wrists and secured them to the small of his back with one of his pale, wrinkled hands that the boy started to struggle. Daniel released him, jumping back as if he had been electrocuted.

“Babe? Shit, are you ok?” When Armand didn’t reply at once, Daniel stepped around, ignoring his ancient, stiff knees as he lowered himself directly into Armand’s line of view. 

To his surprise, his lover’s face, far from distressed, was smiling pleasantly, almost peacefully. However, it wasn’t entirely reassuring, Daniel himself was well acquainted with that hazy limbo, where the body felt floaty and the world blurry, and nothing that happened to him felt a hundred percent real. He knew how important it was the other person was completely conscientious not to cross any limit or betray your trust, even unintentionally, in such a vulnerable state.

“Babe, come back to me,” He demanded, snapping his fingers in Armand’s face, “tell me your color. I need you to tell me what is your color…”

That seemed to do the trick, his boy’s eyes slowly focusing on him, 

“Green, Daniel. My color is green” He replied in an almost bored, mildly annoyed tone. Yup, his Armand was back alright, “consensual non-consent is something we agreed upon before, remember? My color is still very green”

“Right. Sorry, just checking”

Armand rose to his elbows.

“I appreciate your attentiveness,” he reassured his husband, “now shut up, and fuck me”

“Aye, aye, boss” 

Just like that, Daniel slid back into character. Flattening his palm between Armand’s shoulders, he shoved him onto the desk again, letting his hand trail down all the way to his ass, where he grabbed handfuls of both cheeks on each of his hands, parting them to get a look at Armand’s tight little hole. 

And he was pretty sure he almost had a heart attack. 

There, resting between Armand's muscular buttocks, designed to be completely unnoticed under the clothes, rested an elongated stripe of silver metal, with a clear shiny stone right where Armand’s entrance would be. If Daniel had to take a guess, he'd bet the stone was real. Leave it to Armand to come to him wearing a diamond-encrusted buttplug. 

“Jesus fucking Christ” Daniel muttered, feeling light-headed, to horny too even stand straight, “You’re going to be the death of me”

“Don’t say that, beloved” Armand protested, breaking character, “I would never do anything to hurt you”

“Hmmm… is that so?” Hooking his pointer and middle fingers on the little handle of Armand’s toy, Daniel pretended to consider his words, “And what would you do for me? What would you do for your dear professor?”

A long, pitiful sob left Armand’s lips as Daniel started to slide the toy in and out, slowly, fucking him with it. But he arched like a cat, offering his hole up, encouraging the professor to keep going. 

“Anything” He finally moaned, “anything”

“Will you let me fuck this pretty little ass raw?”

Armand seemed to hesitate before replying, a little shakily,

“Yes, Professor Molloy”

“Very well then” Daniel played with the plug just a few more seconds before taking it all the way off and tossing it away somewhere into the shadows of the office. Then, he made a show of taking off his belt and unzipping his pants as unhurried and loudly as possible, savoring the anticipation, the growing tension in the boy's locked muscles. 

"Lube?"

"Jeans' pocket"

Daniel slicked himself up and then squirted a generous amount of the viscous liquid straight onto Armand’s crack, watching the boy flinch a little at the coolness of it. Holding onto the boy’s hipbone, he lined his cock with his fluttering hole and pushed inside.

It was tight. Real fucking tight. Deliberately so, Daniel was sure of it. Armand was very well acquainted with his exact girth, there was no way he had chosen the wrong-sized plug by accident. Taking a steading breath, gritting his teeth, he undulated his hip, burying himself just a little deeper, but Armand’s body jerked forwards, instinctively scrambling away from the burning of the intrusion.

“Oh, no you won’t” Daniel breathed out, draping himself over the younger man’s back, letting the weight of his body trap Armand against the smooth, cold wood of the desk, “Isn’t this what you wanted, baby? You did this on purpose. You want it to hurt, you want to feel my big fat prick tear you apart…” The sweet, chaste kiss he planted on Armand’s shoulder somehow felt more perverse than anything they had been doing, “Don’t worry, baby. Daddy knows just how to give it to you”

Holding onto the boy’s shoulder for leverage, Daniel pushed in again, slow but inescapable, reclaiming the meager inches Armand had managed to gain back, muffling the boy’s cries with his lube-wet hand. Giving himself completely over to his dirty old man character, Daniel soothed mockingly into Armand’s ear,

"Relax, baby. It'll get better the more I fuck you"

He continued the corkscrew movements of his hips, even as Armand trashed beneath him, trying in vain to find the edge of the desk with his hands, wether to hold onto for leverage to dislodge Daniel off his back or simply to ground himself, Daniel didn’t know nor took the chance to find out. Soon as he was finally flush to the boy’s perky little ass, he withdrew, only to slam back in. There was nothing Armand could really do to fight him anyway, pinned as he was between his lover and the expensive mahogany he was staining with his sweat and his spit, falling from his parted lips as he was speared over and over by Daniel’s cock.

"Fuck… feels so good… could fuck this tight little ass for hours…" He was laying it in in earnest now, rocking the boy back and forth with the violence of his thrusts, knocking whatever stationery was left on his workspace over. Armand’s sobs had changed their pitch, his lover no longer able to hide the pleasure he was feeling at Daniel’s assault. 

"Yes, just like that, scream my name… you sound as pretty as any whore…" 

The moan that escaped Armand’s mouth at the name-calling was obscene. Daniel loved it.

"You like that, don't you?.. You like being my little whore, want daddy to use you till you're sore…" He reached under Armand then, hand wrapping around his still semi-soft cock, making him jump. Daniel chuckled darkly, "To sensitive, baby? Is it too much?" 

Armand buckled his hips but there was no escape for him, if he moved forward he jerked himself on Daniel’s hand, if he moved back, he only impaled himself further on his cock. Daniel never relented, never slowed his rhythm even as the boy started to shake, but he did offered a way out,

"You know what to say if you want it to stop…" He panted against Armand’s curls, "just say the word and it's over… What is-fuck… What is your color?"

"Green!" Armand yelled, grinding back to meet Daniel thrust for thrust, "greengreengreen… so green! Harder… Master, fuck me harder, please!" 

Daniel cursed. Armand had never used that word before. It was obvious something had unlocked inside his husband, he was quivering and mewling under him, hand searching back for something. Daniel grabbed it, interlocking their fingers as he started milking Armand’s cock, fucking him as hard and fast as he was able to. Armand went limp under him, melting into the desk, moaning with abandon, clenching around Daniel’s cock in time with the movements of his hand on his own dick. 

"You want it harder baby?.. " Daniel was barely coherent himself, too caught up in the feeling of Armand’s velvety heat around every inch of his cock, the perfect friction sending shock after shock of white hot pleasure through his old, frayed nerves. It was pure animal instinct, the way he shoved one of Armand’s knees up on the desk, changing the angle so he could shove himself deeper, tearing a new wave of cries out of his boy. His hand went still, simply cupping Armand’s dick, protecting it from getting smashed against the wood, but it didn’t matter, the back and forth movement of his thrusts providing enough stimulation as the bulbous head of his cock hit Armand’s prostate over and over again. 

"That's it… come for me… come with me taking you like this… Fuck, Armand!.. So perfect, taking my cock so deep… Wanna fill you up… wanna come so deep I'll be spilling out of you for days…" 

The dirty talk seemed to finally drive Armand over the edge, his muscles locking up, whole body tensing up, squeezing Daniel’s cock so tight it physically hurt. It was too much for the old man, who couldn't help but burst at the pressure, coming so hard, his vision went black for a few seconds. He collapsed on his lover’s back, gasping for air as Armand seemed to do the same. 

"That was…"

"Yeah"

"I'm…" Daniel trailed off, making Armand chuckle. The older man closed his eyes, thinking he could die happy like that, with Armand’s laugh vibrating through his chest. 

"I know, beloved. I know."

On shaking arms, Daniel lifted himself away from his husband’s body, but didn't make it very far, collapsing on the chair closest to him. Armand let out a little displeased noise at the loss of his lover’s warmth and weight. He rose immediately, on what Daniel was proud to notice, also very unsteady legs, just so he could go climb on his lap. 

Daniel’s arms wrapped around him instantly, a reflex at that point, nothing felt as natural to him as having Armand in his arms anymore. 

Burying his nose on the dark curls, he inquired,

"Are you ok, babe?"

The brunet on his lap laughed softly. 

"Shouldn't I be the one asking you that? Need I remind you that this was my idea?"

"And how long exactly did you have this idea?" Daniel hummed thoughtfully, "Is this what you thought about in class? Me railing you on that desk?"

"In front of the entire class," Armand confirmed, unashamed, "but you didn't even look at me twice"

"That's bullshit and you know it," Daniel protested. Armand had made sure he noticed him, antagonizing him at every turn, challenging his every teaching, "But you're right, I would never had allow myself to think about one of my students like that" 

Even after Armand stopped being one of his students, Daniel didn’t dare to think of him like that, to even dream he could have this with him. He had been attracted, of course, he had eyes and Armand was fucking gorgeous. But even after an entire summer of coffee sharing and debating about everything from the possibility of life after death to war, from the physiology of morality, to alien life and the fucking Fibonacci sequence, it had taken Armand crowding him against a wall in a deserted museum after hours, blindsiding him with a kiss that stole all of his breath away, for him to understand that the beautiful young man was trying to date him. 

Of course, Daniel had been completely his after that. 

"You made me wait so long, my beloved…" Armand complained, whiny and sulky. Daniel didn’t even try to resist the impulse to bite that pout off his lips.

"Hmmm but I made it worth your while after that, didn’t I?" He countered after they broke apart, nuzzling at the bronze skin of his husband’s neck. Armand retaliated by trading his long fingers through Daniel’s soft silver curls, nails scratching pleasantly at the sensitive skin of his scalp.

"That you did, lover mine. That you did…" After a couple of minutes went by without Daniel replying, he looked down. "Daniel, are you falling asleep?" 

"No, of course not" The older man lied, opening his eyes for good measure. Armand did not buy it.

"You know, we have a perfectly good bed, one with a bespoke mattress that won't leave your back feeling sore in the morning…" 

"Don't wanna move just yet" Daniel half explained, half decided, tightening his grip around Armand to stop him from moving either, "comfy now"

His husband sighed in fond exasperation, 

"Fine. But only five more minutes."

"Aye, aye, boss" 

The last thing Daniel saw before closing his eyes, was Armand’s besotted smile. yb