#prepared microscope slides

[scribefindegil]

What I've learned from a couple weeks of engagement is that I'm going to be pretty chill and flexible regarding like 98% of wedding stuff however I am already conducting an exhaustive survey of every bakery in our metro area because that is the only way to acquire a cake that lives up to my standards.

[ceilidho]

fear of god

There's someone outside the spacecraft. You don't remember them being part of the crew. Part 10 masterlist

-

Only after incinerating the original samples do you second guess your actions.

Too late by then. By the time it occurs to you that it might’ve been smarter to keep the samples to reference later, they’re already in biohazard bins, autoclaved and in the process of being incinerated, flames dancing behind the glass. 

You can only watch dispassionately. Mistakes made in crisis; you keep yielding to the thin stretch of fear across the vanishing point of your paranoia and hoping you won’t make the same mistake again, only to repeat the same pattern. 

Over lunch in the mess, you bite back your anxiety and ask Gaz to come by the lab in the morning in order to draw another vial of blood. He spreads his legs under the table until his knees taps against yours.

There’s a glint in his eye when he smiles. “Something wrong with the one from yesterday?”

Stare and swallow your pride. “I…accidentally contaminated it. Can you come by?”

“Of course, doctor. Anything for you.”

You grit your teeth to avoid snapping at him in front of everyone else, the mess full for a change. Under the table, you press your knees together until your legs tremble. 

True to his word, Gaz comes by first thing in the morning, perky enough to rub you the wrong way. You slept poorly again though, so it’d be hard to rub you the right way. 

“You look tired, love,” Gaz observes quietly, the paper crinkling under him as he sits himself down on the exam table.

“I am tired.” Your voice is subdued, weary, but somehow the thought of being vulnerable in front of him doesn’t scare you the way it once did. Your dynamic these days is an interesting one. Two people in on the same secret. It makes you feel almost close to him in a way, a shared intimacy that doesn’t extend to the rest of the crew. 

“Didn’t get enough sleep?” he asks.

“No, I—” 

A man stands at the end of a long corridor, shrouded in darkness.

You are powerless to stop him unless he wants to be stopped.

He is coming for you. He is holding out his hand and waiting for you to take it.

You rub your forehead where it aches. “No. Not enough.”

Hadir follows not long after, the door sliding shut behind him as you prep the syringe. You don’t respond when he says good morning, not in the mood for pleasantries or conversation with everything else going on. It’s hard to feel up to being friendly when this whole situation feels like a thinly veiled attempt to monitor you, like you’re the untrustworthy one when two feet away, Gaz sits with a serene smile on his face and twiddles his thumbs. 

There’s a small pleasure in plunging a needle into his vein again, but you’re not cruel enough to try and make it hurt. You’re not even sure if you could. 

He doesn’t so much as wince. 

You’re much more efficient about it with Hadir hovering over your shoulder, immediately transferring Gaz’s blood into capillary tubes after drawing it from him and flitting to the other side of the room to place the tubes into the centrifuge. It’s not a long wait—ten minutes tops—but you spend it hunched over the centrifuge. On the other side of the room, Gaz and Hadir chit chat like nothing’s wrong. 

The second the centrifuge beeps, you pop the lid and remove the tubes. Perfectly separated; no different than the day before. You repeat the same steps as Hadir watches, pipetting the supernatant fluid into a new test tube and preparing the slides, shoulders tense the whole time. Waiting for him to stop and correct you. 

It never comes—as it shouldn’t. You may not be above question, but you’re good at your job. You wouldn’t have messed up something as simple as a blood test of all things.

Then, you sit down in front of the microscope. 

Something in your gut tells you what’s going to happen before it does. You slip the slide under the microscope and lean forward into the eyepiece only to find perfectly normal red blood cells. No strange wandering cells bending into confounding shapes. Just erythrocytes sitting peacefully on the blood smear slide, not overlapping and not too widely spread apart.

You look over at Gaz when Hadir takes your place, the man still sitting on the examination table as if waiting for your permission to leave. The smile on his face is as placid as ever, almost affectionate. You’d almost believe it too, if you didn’t know any better. 

Why are you doing this? You wish you could just ask him outright. It borders on the cruel. Like a humiliation ritual, the both of you knowing that the blood cells under the microscope aren’t what they seem. Why are you putting me through this?

His eyes twinkle. Because I can, they say. 

It doesn’t take Hadir very long to come to the same conclusion as you. 

“Looks all good to me,” Hadir pronounces, smiling brightly when he pulls away from the eyepiece. “See, doc? Yesterday’s must’ve been a fluke.”

You nod instead of answering. It seems trivial to respond with words; nothing you could say would express the deep well opening up inside of you, the ever widening gap between you and the reality you once took for granted. All you can do is sit there in silence as the two of them leave together.

That seemingly no one aside from you can seem to articulate or even comprehend the magnitude of the situation at hand is starting to get to you. 

Deep within every quiet corner of the universe lie the seeds of destruction; a throbbing, cancerous heart. There’s no epiphany there though, no revelation or moment of enlightenment to shock you to your core—you know that life and death are inextricably intertwined, an egg nesting within another egg. Supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies. Figs and wasps. Beginnings and endings.

Now one is knocking at your door, asking to come in.

The day severs itself into two when Farah finds you making a cup of tea in the galley. Your guard is already up when the door slides open and she marches in, so geared up to be scolded that you flinch at the sound of the door sliding shut. 

“We need to talk,” Farah says. Her tone brooks no argument. You’ve been dreading this confrontation, but you aren’t particularly shocked by its arrival. News travels fast in confined spaces; gossip faster. You knew from the second that you got Hadir involved after promising that you wouldn’t share your misgivings about Gaz with anyone other than Farah that this would be coming.

“Now?”

“If you’re not busy.”

You’re not and you know she knows that, so instead of arguing you just nod and pour your tea down the sink, following her out of the galley.

She steers you down a hallway away from the main corridor that leads towards the brig and several supply rooms. At the end of the hall, the brig just around the bend behind her, Farah stops and turns to face you, arms across her chest. Her face is set in a stern cast. 

“Why did you ask Hadir to help you with a blood test? He’s not the ship’s medic.”

That being her first question does come as a surprise. You’d assumed she’d immediately tear into you about involving Hadir in your arrangement, not interrogate you about leaning on another crew member for advice and support. 

“I didn’t ask him to. He volunteered.”

“Why did he volunteer?”

“I…thought there was something wrong with Gaz’s blood sample from the other day. I asked him if he could confirm if there was something wrong. I just needed a second pair of eyes.”

A terrible idea in retrospect. You should’ve anticipated Hadir’s reaction and the subsequent fallout. 

“He told me about what you said yesterday. About Gaz. Do I need to be concerned?”

“Well, I am concerned about Gaz. If you’d seen his blood the other day—”

“I mean concerned about you.”

You blink, floored. “Concerned about me?” you ask in bewilderment. “What did I do?” 

“You told Hadir that you didn’t think Gaz was human. How is anyone supposed to take that? You might not like him, but he's part of the crew now, and insinuating that about someone on the crew is—”

“Wait, wait—I’m sorry I got Hadir involved when I said I wouldn’t, but—I thought when you said you’d keep an eye on Gaz that it meant you…had similar suspicions.”

She looks at you strangely. “I never promised to keep an eye on Gaz. What are you talking about?”

Her response leaves you at a loss for words. Suddenly and acutely aware that you have been having two separate conversations—you assuming that Farah’s frustration stemmed from involving her brother when she previously asked you not to, and her assuming something entirely different. 

“Yes, we did,” you insist. “You told me the other day that you would as long as—”

Something moves in the shadows. 

Your eyes flick towards it instinctively. Then your body goes rigid.

A slender, dark eyed woman watches you from the end of the hall, her lips tilted up in an enigmatic grin. Half-shrouded in shadow, you notice her only because you catch her moving in your peripheral vision when she shifts her weight to one leg. You notice first the familiar stripped headscarf wrapped around her head. Then, the smaller details of her face—full eyebrows and aquiline nose, the soft rounded corners of her jaw pulled tight with her smile. 

“Doctor?” the Farah in front of you asks. Your tongue feels heavy in your mouth, blood pressure spiking. 

The other woman takes a step into the light. It’s Farah in shape and appearance, but there’s something off about it. Like you’re aware now of something intrinsically lesser about it when shown in opposition to the real thing. 

The Farah in front of you frowns, concerned at your sudden silence. You’re aware now of how much more solid she is, real as a gut punch. Real as grass beneath your feet back on Earth or the heat of the sun on your face, all dulled out in space.

“Did we talk the other day?” you ask. “The other day—after the navigation system was fixed?”

And her eyes say it before her lips do. 

“We haven’t spoken in days. I stayed back to help Alex after that meeting.”

Cold reality flashes briefly before you: hollow voices and replicas. What have your eyes been seeing? Reality laps against the smoothened rocks of your mind. Do you know what’s happening to you?

Can you trust what’s really in front of you?

The thing behind Farah wearing her face approaches without sound, coming closer and closer until it stands right beside her, mirroring her stance, its face screwing itself into a similarly serious expression. Double vision. Your vision is blurry around the edges, fear making you tremble something fierce. 

You keep waiting for Farah to notice it standing right beside her, for her to suddenly turn her head and see it there, but she doesn’t. She stares at you with mounting concern. 

And then you blink, the two versions blurring and then overlapping. 

Your throat makes a sound like a whimper. You take a step back, the metal clang of your boot against the floor jarring in the silence. 

“I have to go,” you whisper, the blood draining from your face, your lips almost numb.  

She calls after you when you turn around, hurrying back down the hall whence you came, but you don’t stop, breaking into a run when you hear Farah come after you.

Rat in a maze. Mouse in a trap. You scurry down corridors knowing that there’s no place to run to. At every point, there is a wall past which you cannot go. Hauntingly familiar twists and turns, everything saturated with the memory of itself, the same walls you’ve seen innumerable times. The ship fills with low creaks and hollow sounds, cramped quarters and over familiarity to the point of suffocation. 

And then the nothingness that waits for you right outside the ship. Billions upon billions of miles of dark emptiness surrounding you, only occasionally interrupted by pockets of cold clouds of gas, even more seldomly coming together in precisely the right way for a star or planet to be born. 

Set in contrast with the vast infinity just beyond your walls, the ship feels impossibly small. A tiny speck floating through the cosmos. 

You wish you could wrench a window open and climb out of it. 

You can feel it swell up in your chest at first, bigger and bigger, stretching you around its immensity. Suddenly unable to take in a full breath, your chest too tight for your lungs to fill. Your body is somewhere else behind you, on a ship drifting through space, no certainty that you’ll ever return home. Earth is so far away—tens of millions of miles away from you and no way to get back. 

There’s a hand on your nape suddenly. 

“Hey,” a low voice murmurs. “Are you alright, love?” 

You don’t answer, heaving for breath. Chest collapsing in on itself. A dying star; tiny, tiny light flickering in and out of existence. Hands sweating profusely. Heart hammering against your chest so hard it hurts. 

“I’m with you, love—I’m not going anywhere.”

The voice murmurs low in your ear again, susurrus but too far away for you to make out. Then, a hand on your low back guiding you away, tucking you into a soft, warm place. You go with it. Dark. No blinding artificial lights blinding you. 

“C’mon, breathe with me,” the voice guides you. “Deep breaths. In, out, in, out—”

You follow their instructions, taking in a shaky breath and holding before expelling it. 

“There you go—that’s good,” he praises softly.

The come down is rough. All that adrenaline dumping straight out of you, heart still lurching in your chest. You’ve never had a panic attack before, but you know what to expect in the aftermath and it doesn’t disappoint. You might as well have been hit by a truck for how much your body aches. 

When you finally have the wherewithal to look around and take stock of the situation, you notice that you’re in someone else’s quarters, the lights dimmed until only a sliver of light penetrates through the dark. It’s one of the smaller rooms, no porthole to gaze out through into the blackness of space—only a cot and a folding table mounted into the wall. 

Crouched in front of you, your limp hands held in his while his thumbs rub soothing circles on the backs of your hands, is Gaz. 

Your horror is a beast on the periphery of your consciousness. Too depleted for it to overwhelm you. But you feel it balloon in your chest even though it doesn’t have the strength to move you. 

“Love, listen—shh, no, no, no,” Gaz shushes you when you try to cry out. “No, enough, you need to calm down. Just let me speak, alright?” 

He shuffles closer to you until he looms over you, your knees spread wide to accommodate him. You get a better sense of his true size from this angle, the man composed of solid, compact muscle, his narrow waist deceptive, giving him a leaner appearance from afar than up close. You know now how much room he can take up when he wants to. 

“None of this is your fault,” he says. He shifts, releasing your hands to cup your elbows instead, smoothing his hands up your arms. “You’ve worked so hard to show them the truth, but they just don’t want to see.”

“It’s—they can’t see because of you—” you croak. 

Gaz shakes his head. “No, no. If they wanted to, they’d see through it. Like you have.”

“No—you’re doing something to me.” 

His lips flick up into a smile. “Doing something?”

“You’re making me see things that aren’t there,” you whisper, shrinking into yourself. “I don’t even know what’s fucking real anymore—you’re scaring me.”

Even this close, you smell nothing. No heat emanates from his body or breath puffs from his lungs. It’s like a monolith looms over you, staring down at you through eyes that you can see but cannot comprehend. For all intents and purposes, he looks like a man. But he is not; he is something altogether different. 

A habitation of otherness smiling down at your unraveling interiority.

“I can make them believe you. I can help them see it with their own eyes. Would you like that, love?”

He says it with so much tenderness, stroking the backs of his knuckles over your cheek. 

“What do you mean?” you ask.

He doesn’t answer at first. You’re stuck gazing into his eyes. 

“What I mean,” he says, leaning in until his words are all you can hear. “Is that I can take away every shadow of doubt from their minds until all that’s left is the cold clarity of certitude. Show them what I’ve shown you.”

Gaz cups your face in both hands, fingers spread wide over your cheeks and neck, drawing you in until your lips brush against his. Softer than you expected, with a touch of texture. You don’t know what to think of him anymore, whether it’s your lips touching his now or whether this is all happening in your head. 

Then your lips part and he sighs into your mouth. His lips glide over yours, tenderer than you expected. Soft and wet; silky. Warmth spreads across your chest, everything suddenly concentrated on his kiss. It deepens almost naturally, your hands lifting to fist in the collar of his shirt and drag him closer to you, exhaling harshly into his mouth when you pull back to breathe, only to fall back into him again. Mouth tasting of something you can’t put your finger on; almost ambrosial. 

Is this what he’s wanted this whole time? The thought vanishes as soon as it comes. You’re a ball on a tether swinging in circles, a small planet orbiting this sun. And you’re slowly, but surely, sinking into him, gravity pulling you so close that you can feel the heat of flames against your cheeks. 

He breaks the kiss and your eyes flutter open to find him staring back at you through half-lidded eyes. “Well?”

“Please.”

Gaz smiles against your lips.

[namism]

deceiver | hange zoë

➳ categories: canonverse, commander hange, female squad leader reader, fluff, yelena loves women (don't ask)

➳ word count: 4.3k

➳ summary: It's normal for soldiers to be happily married, but when it comes to your marriage with Commander Hange Zoë, the entire regiment doesn't believe it.

➳ notes: for reference, this is wim and this is holger. also, i like to imagine that spouse hange simps for you so much that they ended up assigning you as the new squad leader of the fourth squad lmaooo

➳ cross-posted on ao3

"There you are!"

You turn around to see Hange enter the office and shut the door promptly with a loud thud. You flinch upon the sound. Curious as to what you’re up to, the Commander strides toward your station, where rows of microscopic slides sit for preparation.

Standing behind you, Hange rests their chin on your right shoulder and hugs your waist loosely. They watch you place a cover slip on a wet sample.

They hum.

"Just seven minutes ago, your squad was looking for you at the dining hall, which led me to think, 'Hmm… what could my beautiful wife be up to on this fine afternoon?'" You roll your eyes, snickering. "I would have never guessed that she'd be scholarly working at my office when she could've worked at hers."

"Oh, Hange," you say with a shake of your head. "Who am I to pass up on the opportunity of working at a larger space during my free time?"

You pipette a drop of infusion to a new slide.

"I admit it's messier here, but the Commander always has nicer things, and I happen to be married to them."

Hange pinches your cheek before kissing it.

"Ha-ha, cheeky. That's why you’re my wife."

Hange leaves you to your devices and walks around their desk. They pour themselves a glass of water before looking out the window. They watch a pair of new recruits walking in the quadrangle.

Hange smiles to themselves. The sight reminds them of when you first met, back when you couldn't even stand within three feet from them out of embarrassment. Hange was from the graduating class two years above you, and by the time you joined the Scouts, they had already earned their spot in the regiment's chain of command.

"What are you thinking of?" You appear beside them, having left your work on the counter. Hange giggles and points at the two suspecting love birds in the courtyard below. "Ah. From the 107th?"

"Yep! Looks like us, huh?"

You snorted.

"No way. They don't even seem to talk to each other. You, on the other hand"—you elbow Hange gently—"ran your mouth all day long until my ear fell off."

"You loved listening to me talk!" Hange retorts. You look at them, unamused. "Alright, I might have annoyed you at first, but you secretly loved having me around."

"Unfortunately, I did," you say with a sigh. Hange pats your head, laughing to themselves.

Suddenly, a knock sounds on the door. Hange orders them to enter.

"Commander!" A soldier from the 106th Training Corps calls with a salute. “Captain Levi requests to see you.”

Patting your head turns into combing your hair. Hange continues the endearing action as they raise an eyebrow at the soldier.

“About what?”

“About a prospective meeting with General Zackly, sir.”

“I’ll be there in a few.”

The soldier salutes again. Before leaving, he sees the Commander tell you something before kissing you on the lips. When the Commander looks back at the door to see him still standing there, he runs out in a hurry and shuts the door sheepishly.

Scurrying away from the scene, he runs into a friend.

“Hey, Holger,” the soldier greets. He looks at Holger worriedly as if he’s seen a ghost. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, Wim,” he replies. He looks over his shoulder, gawking at the hallway he just came from, the one leading to the Commander’s office. “I was wondering…”

Wim squints his eyes at Holger’s mumbling. He tilts his head to the side.

“I can’t hear you.”

“I was wondering…” Holger mumbles the other half of the sentence.

“I still can’t hear you.”

Holger steps forward. Wim follows. Leaning closer to his friend, Holger whispers into his ear.

"I was wondering, is the Commander seeing someone? Maybe one of us, the Scouts?"

Wim is taken aback.

"How would I know that?"

"Because!" Holger hisses. He takes a cautious look over his shoulder to make sure that no one else is around before proceeding. "The Commander... They were with the Squad Leader of the Fourth Squad when I entered their office."

"Hmm..." Wim thinks to himself, rubbing his chin. "Why would you suspect a relationship over that?"

"Because the Commander kissed her!"

Wim's eyes widen. He stands there speechless, but he communicates with Holger through his eyes, asking for an affirmative answer to a question he never spoke: "Are you telling the truth?"

Suddenly, you emerge from the end of the hallway, humming a melodic tune as you flip through the yellowing pages of a book. The two soldiers stand there, unmoving. They cannot run to save themselves.

"Why, hello there," you greet with a sweet smile upon passing them. You close the book. "Do you need anything?"

They salute. Holger shakes his head.

"No, Ma'am! We were on our way."

You nod.

"Great! Because trust me, you don't want the Commander finding you dilly-dallying in the hallway of their office." You laugh lightheartedly, but Wim and Holger can't find it in them to laugh along as they fear their superior more than anything. "Anyway, off you go, and have a nice day, you two!"

As you walk along your merry way, the two soldiers look at each other dumbfounded before tending back to their duties.

Locomotives are great Marleyan inventions.

It turns out that locomotory wheels are conical in shape to avoid derailment when the tracks turn at a certain point. Connie remembers Armin mentioning something about centrifugal force, a concept he doesn’t understand enough to engage in intellectual discussion, but something he wants to ponder on to find out if it's worth learning in order to build the tracks from the Walls to the harbor.

The last time he checked, he doesn't really need to account for "centrifugal force" when laying steel on the ground. Connie may not be as intelligent as Armin, but he can understand that far. So really, he doesn't understand the need for Armin to ramble about "centrifugal force" under this scorching heat.

Mikasa hauls ultrahard steel from the cart to the end of the track. As she works on the welding, Armin chases Sasha around who has called dibs on the last pint of water. Connie and Jean curse behind Eren's back for suggesting they work on the railway instead of the new recruits who probably have nothing better to do.

Connie wipes the sweat off his forehead. Catching his breath, he decides to slack off for a few minutes. He watches Jean defeatedly sit on the ground panting, his fedora hat shielding his face from the sun.

Connie snickers. He finds the fedora hat on Jean funny. He looks like a rich snobby civilian from Wall Sheena.

To his left, Mikasa lays the blocks of steel neatly on the railway. Connie notices the scar she got from the Battle of Trost four years ago and the bandaging around her right arm that covers a tattoo of the Azumabito's crest.

Everyone has tiny details of themselves that normally go unnoticed, it seems.

As Connie wonders what his would be, he hears the clopping of hooves from the distance, followed by you, Hange, and Levi on horseback.

Connie helps Jean back up and they form a circle around the new arrivals.

"Ah! Working hard under the sun, I see?" Hange teases the group while Jean complains. You laugh beside them, bringing your left hand to cover your mouth. Connie notices.

"Since when did you guys get so tall?" Levi clicks his tongue, peering up at him with an irked expression. Connie continues to stare.

He doesn't know if he's seeing things correctly. For all he knows, it could be the heat messing with his brain. On your left ring finger, however, sits a metal band with a sparkling stone on its bed. Even as you put your hand down, Connie ponders on this discovery and zones out for the entirety of Hange's chattering.

He only manages to hear they cannot count on Hizuru to negotiate with other nations before staring at your hand like a creep. No one seems to notice his gawking, though, because he gets lost in his thoughts for a solid minute.

The last time he checked, you didn't wear a wedding ring, and you weren't into wearing jewelry at all for the fear of losing them at work. Although Connie isn't your closest friend, he believes he would have never missed out on this very important information about your life, given that you have survived many battles together along with the crew.

"...The world can't see our faces. Why would they ever trust us?" Connie snaps out of his thoughts and watches Hange throw their hands out. "So... let's meet them ourselves. If they don't understand who we are, we just have to teach them."

Meet them ourselves? Connie thinks to himself. We're going outside?

As the others reflect on the idea, Connie thinks of what he would do and should do upon arrival at the Marleyan mainland. He once again zones out, now staring at Hange as he does so.

Wait, what's that?

Closing his eyes, he shakes his head. Beams of sunlight bounce off Hange as they wave their hands around while speaking.

He narrows his eyes. Hange stops moving. They drop their hands to their side.

He sees it.

A metal band fits perfectly on their left ring finger, slightly different from yours in design, but too similar to conclude one thing.

Hange and (Y/N) are married?!

Connie looks into the distance, wide-eyed. He begins to rack his brain for clues, idle instances and memories that could have hinted at your relationship.

He focuses too much on his searching that he doesn't even notice you, Hange, and Levi retreating to the Walls and leaving him and the squad once more.

It must have been the heat yet again when he sees Hange put a discrete hand on your waist as you pass them on horseback.

Ever since the formation of an alliance with Paradis military, Onyankopon has been running around non-stop with Yelena to speak for the Anti-Marleyan volunteers. As expected, he rarely gets a day off without running into trouble, but when he does, he makes sure to enjoy it all by the ocean, where the Marleyan chefs have set up a dine-in food service by the dock.

He's sharing a table with Yelena when he hears a familiar voice fast approaching. His face lights up.

"Hange!" he greets the Commander with his hands up in the air. Hange sits on the chair beside him. "What have you come here for?"

"I ran an errand nearby, so I decided to come." Hange waves at one of the Marleyan chefs and shouts their order. The chef nods silently, his anger for the island devils long gone. "What are you up to?"

"I was thinking of some improvements for the gear you use to move around." Onyankopon hums, thinking if it would be a good idea to bring it up now. "Although that could be a discussion for another day."

"I would love to hear it!" Hange looks at the blonde woman sitting across them. "What about you? I take it that you've explored the island by how much work you've been doing."

"Unfortunately, nobody can beat the Commander in that sport," Yelena replies. Hange laughs bitterly. "I've been doing well, thank you very much. The people at Shiganshina are surprisingly welcoming, but I prefer the ones at Wall Sheena much more."

Yelena sips on the green tea in front of her. Hange stares blankly.

"O-oh! I'm guessing it's the weather or the district architecture?" they assume. Yelena shakes her head.

"While I fancy those things, I believe Wall Sheena has much more interesting… women. Some of them I eye particularly," Yelena remarks. "Has that ever happened to you, Commander?"

"W-well," Hange stutters, unsure of what to say, "no, it hasn't."

"Oh." Yelena smirks, placing her chin on top of her hand as she leans forward, studying Hange. Suddenly, she looks at their left hand intently, making them follow the direction of her stare. "Then what could possibly explain the new band on your finger if it weren't for a charming man who sought after you in the richer districts?"

Hange mentally sighs. They roll their eyes inside their head.

Onyankopon clears his throat.

"I believe I should stay out of this," he says, leaning back on the chair.

"It's alright. This is just small talk," Hange reassures him by giving a joyful response. They look back at Yelena. "Anyway, I find the outer districts more homey than the inner ones, but to each their own. I would have to correct you on two things, though. First of all, I was never sought after. I chase."

Yelena tilts her head to the side, intrigued. It seems very Hange-like to busy themselves chasing after people.

"And the second one?"

As soon as the food arrives, Hange grabs the big glass of water and downs half of it in one go.

"I have never felt interest for a man. Surprising?"

Yelena chuckles.

"Right, I should have detected it that far. No, it isn’t surprising," says the blonde. "I find women endearing as well. I apologize for my assumptions."

"I apologize, too." Onyankopon bows his head in guilt albeit being a spectator. Hange waves their hand to dismiss them.

"That's one lucky woman, I would say. It isn't often that you meet and marry a Commander," Yelena continues. Hange doesn't know how to feel about her persistence, but they've observed Yelena to be very persistent over the past two years. Her nagging is expected. "So? If she doesn't live in the inner Walls and the Commander doesn't have the time to roam civilian grounds... do we know her?"

Hange saw this coming. They knew Yelena would be able to deduce that far.

Instead of a proper response, they shrug.

"No idea, but as perfect as she is, I can tell you that you wouldn't get along well." Hange looks at Yelena's plate, steaming with food. "She would pick at your food if she had your meal, then she would give me the rest."

Hange invites Onyankopon to take the first bite and they begin to dine. Yelena is left laughing at herself.

"You got me, Commander Hange. I'm sure she is beautiful like the ones I'm fond of from your regiment."

"Of course she is."

As Onyankopon shifts the subject into something else, Yelena eats her food piecemeal, thinking of the mysterious identity of the Commander's wife. You must be a soldier yourself, but Yelena hasn't noticed anything out of the ordinary from the many people Hange surrounds themselves with. Yelena can usually tell when people are together thanks to her keen eye. It should be generally easier to find out who you are since there isn't a lot of women Hange is associated with, but her radar is still deeply challenged.

She shrugs. She'll figure it out in time.

Months later, the new gear comes in.

You open your trunk. As expected, the gear is similar to that of the Anti-Personnel Control Squad's. The main components of the vertical maneuvering gear are still there, save for the blade compartment replaced by single-use cartridges and pistols. The gas cylinder is wider than the ones from the previous gear, now attached to two axles strapped to the back harness.

You look to your right. Mikasa's equipment is missing the set of firearms in favor of blades. She stares at her trunk.

"We need you at the forefront in attacking the intelligent Titans," Levi speaks behind her. "No use in giving you stupid pistols. You can kill humans even with blades."

Mikasa nods. You look at your gear once more. No blades, just pistols.

"I'm guessing this makes me in charge of the human killing?"

Levi thinks to himself.

"Not quite."

You knit your eyebrows.

"Hange has other plans for you. Ask them."

Later that day, the Scouts are ordered to try on their gear and practice zipping around the Forest of Giant Trees to get accustomed to them. You and your squad watch as Mikasa flies around, flawlessly carrying four Thunder Spears on each arm.

A hand rests on your shoulder. You look behind you to find Hange in the new gear and the complementary black suit, their oval glasses replaced by goggles. You nod to your squad and they disperse promptly, leaving you and Hange alone.

"Looks like you've done it again, Commander. At long last, there are no major issues with the gear."

They sneer.

"It wouldn't be possible without the Anti-Marleyan volunteers. I owe half of it to them." They examine you in your uniform, eyes scanning your entire body like they haven't just done so a couple of minutes ago. "That sure suits you. Have you gone around?"

"No, actually," you tell them after muttering a shy 'thank you'. Suddenly, you place your hands on your hips as you remember something. "Hey, wait a second. Why don"t I have blades in my trunk? Are we not letting the Fourth Squad attack?"

Hange looks at you, unsurprised, as if they expected such a question.

"I need you to stay on the airship as backup," they reason.

You look at them dubiously.

"Just me?"

"And your squad."

You shake your head.

"I don't know. There seems to be a hidden motive behind that."

"Are you questioning my decision?" they challenge.

"I'm questioning you as your wife," you say, another one of your tricks to dodge insubordination. Hange scoffs. "What exempts my squad from this?"

"Squad Levi will be at the frontline if we're up against the Nine Titans. Your squad will only attack when things go astray. Until then, your job is to scout aerially and make sure that nobody intrudes."

You open your mouth to argue, but Hange hooks their gear to a nearby tree.

"Last one to get out of the forest is a loser!"

"Hey—!" Your words are interrupted by them flying away at top speed. You grumble. "Ugh, Hange!"

Launching a grappling hook on the nearest tree, you propel yourself forward as you chase them with all your might. Hange takes a sharp turn halfway through, but you predict their actions a second too early. They whiz past trees in random directions, passing fellow soldiers in the same uniforms that camouflage them all too well, but your agility allows you to keep up.

"Wow, you're getting too close," they remark upon looking over their shoulder and finding you only two trees away. "Maybe I should keep you with Levi at the frontlines— (Y/N)!"

"HELP ME!"

The operating device that controls the right grappling hook of your gear stops working the moment you dislodge the left hook from the tree behind you, sending you free-falling from 70 meters in the air. You press on the right-hand device again but to no avail. You try the left, but the steel wire is visibly stuck after immediate retraction.

The wind blows the hair away from your face as you free fall. All it takes is approximately 3.8 seconds for you to hit the forest floor, but when you protect your head and brace for impact, you are caught by Hange just in time.

"O-oh my gosh—" you try to process your thoughts as you clutch your heart.

Hange settles you down on the ground. The Scouts nearby halt their training and land on the surrounding tree branches, observing the aftermath of the incident. Members of your squad and Levi's arrive moments later, followed by numerous soldiers with inkling curiosity at your desperate shriek.

Still shocked, you tug at Hange's suit to thank them, but they look furious.

It's not your fault, but you feel small under their gaze.

Hange is a different person when mad.

"Are you okay?!" they ask frantically, one hand patting your body for any signs of injury as the other holds you tightly. Hange repeats the question, but you can't answer properly as you try to come into terms with the shock. You've used broken equipment before, but none of those instances were as life-threatening as this.

Hange notices your body trembling, and they take it as a sign to stop asking you any further.

"I'm sorry, love. I'm not mad at you, I just... ugh!"

Their face contorts into frustration once more. How is it possible that everyone else's gear is working perfectly fine, but yours isn't? Hange made sure to keep their instructions clear as the new equipment were distributed among the soldiers: keep the Fourth Squad's and Squad Levi's the most defect-free.

As Levi approaches, Hange remembers the engraving on the body of the device that should be present in everyone else's gear: a unique serial code that should differ from each one. They gently turn you on your side to check the engraving.

Their blood boils.

"Everyone, stop whatever you are doing!”

In the far distance, you can hear the soft whirs of the anti-personnel maneuvering gear coming to a halt, clearly hearing the voice of their Commander.

“Alright, now tell me which USELESS DIMWIT in the Walls decided to give MY WIFE the broken gear that I instructed MANY TIMES to get rid of before coming here?!"

The entire forest remains quiet, possibly even quieter than before. The Scouts stare at the Commander, reflecting on their words with mouths agape.

They collectively don't know which piece of information to process first: the fact that Commander Hange is fuming in anger of a possible sabotage or the fact that they had just revealed your marriage. Somewhere in the crowds of soldiers, a few gasp at the latter detail.

Albeit still trembling, your face heats up at Hange's outburst, feeling a hundred different pairs of eyes looking down at the both of you.

You shake Hange's arm.

"I-I'm okay, you were there just in time, Hange—"

"Until I find out the idiot who did it, nobody is leaving this stupid forest!"

"Oi, Hange. Have mercy on your wife." Levi points at your shaking form. Your head faces the ground, afraid to look up given the commotion. Two of your squad members rush beside you for comfort. "It could have been intentional. Don't act rashly now."

Hange inhales deeply to respond to Levi's statement, but they hesitate as rationality strikes them. They momentarily let go of you to push their goggles to the top of their head before squeezing your hands tightly.

"I'm so sorry. Change out of your gear and leave with your squad. I'll meet you later."

You find it better to follow than to disobey them. Standing up from the ground, you immediately lean in for a hug. Although not as intimate as you normally would, Hange embraces you back and you feel even more eyes peering at the two of you.

"Thank you so much. I love you."

"I love you, too."

As you leave with the Fourth Squad, Wim and Holger stare at each other, their jaws reaching the floor. They can't communicate freely in the environment they're in, but their wide eyes are enough to articulate the incredulity and satisfaction of knowing that they were right all along.

By the foot of the trees, Connie stands in between Armin, Jean, Eren, Mikasa, and Sasha, who are equally dumbstruck by the revelation.

Connie looks at Sasha, whom he has amazing telepathy with.

Did you know this? Sasha asks. I did not know this.

I think I knew this, Connie replies.

How do you 'think that you know this'? Sasha asks again. Either way, that's not fair! I didn't know!

Connie shakes his head. Nobody did for certain. Maybe except for Captain Levi.

The ride back to the Survey Corps headquarters is silent. You're too shameful to talk to your squad members as close as you may be, but you're grateful for their understanding of your boundaries.

On your way to the headquarters, you pass by the Anti-Marleyan volunteers with Yelena notably in the crowd. Her face brightens up the moment she sees you in the new maneuvering gear; she thinks you look a thousand times prettier than your day-to-day style. She makes her way to your sauntering horse, then tries to catch your attention with a friendly wave of her hand.

Before she can speak with you, one of your squad members taps her shoulder and shakes his head. Yelena slows down her pace and decides to lag behind with the man who had tapped her.

"Squad Leader (Y/N) doesn't want to speak to anyone at the moment," your squad member explains. Yelena raises her eyebrows, awaiting further explanation. "She is following Commander Hange's orders."

"What does the Commander have to do with whom she speaks to?" Yelena asks, finding it ridiculous that Hange would impose such a dumb rule for you to follow.

The man looks panicked.

"Well... she is the Commander's... wife," he replies, unsure if he should be spreading such information that was only revealed to him not more than 20 minutes ago. Yelena nearly stops walking.

What the hell did he just say?

A random memory from many months ago occurs to her.

Onyankopon, the Commander, and the Marleyan chefs. The dining service by the harbor. Yelena noticing the wedding band on the Commander's finger. Commander Hange mentioning their preference, making their interests clear.

Yelena deducing that they were married to a fellow soldier.

"Apologies, but I will be on my way," the man bids goodbye and commands the horse forward to catch up to the rest of the squad. Yelena is left by the side of the road, alone in shock.

She chuckles bitterly.

Out of all people, she thinks to herself.

At the very least, Hange was telling the truth. You are beautiful.

[bee-calm]

tbhk but they're lab-based phd students- because sometimes you just need to make the most self-indulgent au you can think of

nene

marine microbiology

talks to her culture plates, swears it makes them grow faster

tries to put cute labels on her samples then can’t remember what ANY of her shorthand means the next day

forgets her pass and gets locked out at least once a day 

algae clip-art in all of her presentations

sings in the microscope room, thinks nobody can hear her singing in the microscope room

once thought she’d re-written scientific dogma then realised she’d put a decimal point in the wrong place

thinks transcriptomics is witchcraft. is currently doing transcriptomics.

brings chocolates for the rest of the lab, is everyone’s favourite because of it

became best friends with aoi when they somehow managed to double-book the flow cytometer

could read those papers she’s been saving for weeks, OR she could spend two hours changing the colour scheme on her figures 

amane

materials chemistry, probably something space-exploration-aligned

pure synthesis, if it’s bigger than a kilodalton then he doesn’t want it anywhere near him

if there is an unlabelled round-bottom flask in the lab freezer then there’s a 90% chance it belongs to him. claims he can tell the chemicals apart by Vibes alone (amane voice: nmr is for Weaklings)

worlds messiest fume hood, yet somehow the worlds most immaculate desk-space. (currently the biggest scientific mystery the rest of the lab is working towards) 

will tell people (read: kou) that biochem isn’t real chemistry just to cause problems 

really good at teaching project students

also really good at scaring the project students by pretending to drink the toxic chemicals

extensive lanyard pin collection 

nobody has ever actually seen him go home

has a set of glassware-themed coffee mugs. much debate as to whether or not he just stole them from the lab.

kou

structural biology

just a guy and his 10 litre E.coli grow-up

once spilled an vat of LB all over the bacteria room. legend has it the stains are still there to this day

banned teru from the cryoEM room after he walked in and the entire setup almost crashed 

likes modelling structures, wonders why his computer is always running so slowly, fails to consider that the 5 pymol projects he has open at all times may have something to do with it

serial offender for walking home still wearing his goggles

thinks mammalian cell work is witchcraft 

incredibly chaotic labwork processes, still somehow gets the results anyway. most common saying: ‘this is not going in the methods section’

once dropped his earring into the liquid nitrogen tank, has still not lived it down 

has a framed photo of his first crystal on his desk

ongoing war with mitsuba over whether electron microscopy is real microscopy or not

keeps taking on side projects for other people, has yet to realise that this may be the reason he never gets to go home on time

teru

molecular biology

theory x1000, ask him a question after his presentation and there’s a 90% chance he’s got a bonus slide already prepared to answer it

benchwork also x1000, that person who asks ‘oh can i try?’ and gets amazing results first time on the experiment you’ve been trying to get right for weeks.

cell culture x0, banned from the tissue culture room, WILL contaminate any flask put within 5 feet of him

the machines hate him. the centrifuge keeps trying to eat his samples. the plate reader breaks on him at least once a week.

serial weekender

stickler for lab safety, can and will send out threatening emails reminding people to wear their gloves and lab coats

once drew the entire signalling cascade for his target molecule from memory on the whiteboard in a lab meeting and it was impressive enough that nobody has wiped it off yet 

keeps doing horrendous timecourses, can be found taking plate readings at stupid o clock in the morning 

aoi

immunology 

the flow panels she manages to pull off are a constant subject of awe and horror 

likes working weekends because it means nobody can hear her verbally threatening her cell cultures when they’re not behaving

can fit a scary amount of information onto the lid of an eppendorf tube

when stressed can be found hiding out in the plant biology greenhouses. has made friends with some genetically modified tomatoes

rocks up to the lab meeting with publication-ready figures for an experiment she did yesterday

the source of 90% of the passive aggressive post-it notes around the lab

everyone dreads her post-presentation questions. will dissect your experiments and do it with a smile.

started off working normal hours but has gradually become borderline nocturnal over time

teru contaminated her cells once, has been using it as leverage to make him collect things from stores for her ever since

keeps giving akane’s email to sales reps instead of her own so she can get free stuff without ever being contacted by them again

akane

biophysics 

scary single molecule data, deliberately puts huge equations on his presentations so nobody will ask him questions

might as well get paid lab tech wages too, chronically stuck on stock solution duty

crashed the lab computer trying to run one of his datasets on it

the only reason the lab has a booking system for the equipment. anarchy would prevail if he wasn’t around.

will go off to do photobleaching experiments and emerge hours later looking like a cave creature

keeps having to fix the equipment that teru breaks

perpetually receiving emails meant for aoi by people who got their names mixed up

also perpetually receiving emails from the company sales reps who aoi told his email to so she wouldn’t have to deal with them

says he needs to stop working weekends, then suddenly it’s saturday and he’s stuck in the microscope room with teru again

has somehow acquired a small army of project students (none of them are studying the same thing as him)

incubation time= coffee time

mitsuba

cell biology

made a cell line, treats it like it’s his baby

trust issues, won’t let ANYONE share his reagents. serial pipette hoarder.

neat lab book, can still somehow never find where he put his protocols or what concentrations he used his antibodies at

could probably win an award for his immunofluorescence images, someone automatically turns the lights off when it’s his turn to present in lab meetings bc he’s guaranteed to have cool microscopy to show

thinks bacteria work is disgusting. ensures kou knows this.

[emerging from a 5-hour session in the microscope room] what day is it?????

loves his work, doesn’t act like it (the reagents smell bad. the lab benches are dirty. people keep using the milk he brought to put in the fridge. nobody cleans the water bath. if there’s nothing to complain about, he’ll make something.)

threatens to move to industry at least once a day 

outright refuses to do weekends

found the perfect colour scheme for his graphs, considers this the highlight of his entire degree

any minor inconvenience is an excuse to go to the cafe on campus

natsuhiko

innate immunity, infection

zebrafish models

nobody is sure if he bought a tie-dye lab coat or if it’s just that badly stained

has absolutely named his fish (doesn’t actually remember which is which, but the sentiment is there)

forever followed by a gaggle of project students. is constantly reminding them to do as he says, not as he does 

incubation times are a suggestion, not a rule (read: keeps getting distracted and leaving his experiments way longer than necessary)

convinced he’s going to be patient zero of the zombie apocalypse when he accidentally creates super-salmonella and infects himself 

serial distractor, WILL chat to people while they’re in the middle of a 96-well plate

isn’t going to eat the LB agar, but the temptation is always there

someone bought him the ‘women want me, fish fear me’ hat for his birthday, keeps it on his desk

the confocal microscope hates to see him coming (5 hours is a short session when you’re trying to take z-stacks of an entire fish)

sakura 

drug discovery 

probably dabbles in synthesis, plays orchestral music while running columns bc apparently it gives them better separation 

tea drawer in the office, WILL pull out an entire teapot during their incubation times 

best dressed person in the lab, at all times

eternal struggle of dangly earrings versus the samples they’re leaning over

neat handwriting, still terrible at labelling eppendorfs (what are the lids so small for)

incubation times to the second

runs BIG experiments, has mastered the art of the plate plan. made a template which has somehow ended up distributed around the entire department 

ceo of not replying to sales rep emails 

mildly allergic to the nitrile gloves, the drawer below the tea drawer is the hand cream drawer

earphones + cell culture is the ideal de-stress activity

over-prepares for presentations, will spend 2 weeks rehearsing an informal flash talk

probably the only person who actually sends their lab coat to get washed

mei

tissue engineering 

has designed all of her labmates a mug with terrible research-relevant science puns on them 

invented side-projects, has probably got a collaboration ongoing with every other lab in the department 

bought a label printer for her reagents, has way too much fun with it

thought a week-long experiment was bad? try two months

life goal is to get to try making DNA origami just to say she did it

keeps starting doodle chains on the lab whiteboard

experiment worked= sweet treat to celebrate

experiment failed= sweet treat to commiserate 

probably did a masters in the microbiology department, they keep trying to convince her to switch projects back to them bc her streak plating was gallery-worthy

picks up her lab coat and 10 pens fall out of the pockets

sold her soul to parafilm

tsukasa

RNA therapeutics

goes in cell culture with no gloves, still somehow doesn’t get contamination 

that one insane person who actually enjoys the stress of working with RNA

doesn’t even do SDS-PAGE but still has coomassie stain all over his lab coat 

keeps launching dry ice rockets 

homebrewed a microfluidics system in the lab, it makes weird noises at night and everyone is slightly terrified of it

keeps materialising in the corner of the microscope room when mitsuba is in the middle of taking images. the cause of many a dropped slide.

plots his data in excel

worlds worst file names. no system, no dates, just a keyboard smash and a prayer

who needs desk space when you can just move your laptop into the lab

gave into temptation and tasted the cell culture media once. it was disappointing 

either the most incoherent presentation you’ve ever seen, or a major scientific breakthrough, no inbetween 

[bohemianblasphemy]

Ok imagine reader who rivals Billy’s freak. Every time he makes a joke she one ups him. So one night he’s drunk and they’re both trying to compete to prove who’s the dirtiest when Reader lets it’s slip she’s never done anything EVER. Not even holding hands. Billy proceeds to change that taunting her for acting so experienced while she’s all hazy from being kissed for the first time

I. Am. Obsessed.

Billy couldn’t stand it.

The way you just had to add your two cents into everything he’d say - any joke had to have your own little spin on it to make the others laugh harder than he ever did- and it drove him mad.

You knew it pissed him off, and you loved pushing his buttons.

Sitting across from you at the dingy bar, he listened as you had one upped him once more with a dirty joke, causing raucous laughter from other bar patrons. He swigged his drink, grunting at the sting of liquor.

“Is that all ya got sweetheart? Wait until I tell ya about the time I took a bird back to mine and I-“

“Oh please…” you teased him. “I’m sure you’re not as dirty as you claim, you wouldn’t know what dirty looks like if it hit you in the face.”

You could see the absolute frustration through his scoff, smirking at the fragility of his demeanour as you found yourselves sitting away from the populated area of the bar, in a intimate corner booth- just the two of you.

“Alright then. tell me love- what is the dirtiest thing YOU’VE done?” He challenged, holding his fresh glass of whiskey- a stark difference to your Tequila Sunrise.

Although you laughed at his challenge, you couldn’t help but feel… observed a little too closely- as if you were a specimen on a glass slide under a microscope.

Behind the mask of your cheeky, smutty quips was someone who is inexperienced- not even an encounter such as holding hands, the textbook definition of innocence. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but you couldn’t help but have that facade up.

Clearing your throat, your mind went through multiple false scenarios that you could use as an example.

“Well- there was a uh… sex party! Yeah and there was, so many… um-“ you tried to make your case convincing, but to no avail- the brit seeing seeing right through your ‘story’.

“You are an absolute liar. Cmon… surely there somethin’ there in that filthy brain of yours.” He tapped on the wooden table, watching you closely as you were lost in a fog of thoughts- nothing was coming to mind.

Butcher raised a brow, looking at your eyes as they tried to avert his gaze- your cheeks tinted pink.

“Oh my fuckin’ god…” his mouth went agape as he realised what was happening. “You ain’t done anything have ya?” He whispered, leaning across the table- seeing your cheeks burn brighter.

“Okay fine Billy I haven’t done anything okay?” You admitted, squeezing your eyes closed, preparing for any and all teasing comments from him.

“Well fuck me sideways…” he chuckles, taking a few sips of his drink. “So, by anything you mean… anything?”

You sighed and nodded. “Yeah… nothing. Just- nothing.” You looked down at your lap, feeling somewhat embarrassed by your admission, however suddenly you felt Billy’s index finger drag under your chin- making you look at him.

“Cheeky fuckin’ minx you are, ain’t ya?” He grumbled as he looked at you. “All that talk and no one has ever kissed or touch ya before…” his eyes flicked from your eyes to your lips, seeing your breath hitch from that small action made him chuckle again.

“Poor thing…” he pouted, pinching your chin between his thumb and index finger and pulled you just that little bit closer to him- your faces just a few inches away from each other.

“I can help change that for ya, ya know?” Your eyes widened at his offer.

“Y-yeah?” You whispered timidly, feeling as if your heart was to burst.

“Yeah doll…” he smiled looking at your lips and then gazing back up to your eyes, wanting to make sure that it was okay to make a move- in which you nodded eagerly.

He took your face in his hands, pulling you towards him and placing a soft kiss to your lips.

The feeling of him kissing you for the first time was indescribable, the subtle taste of liquor on his lips made the whole interaction all the more addictive.

Butcher was the first to pull away, but you were so in the moment that you didn’t pull away and just moved forward, wanting- no, craving more of him. You couldn’t think, your mind in a haze as you processed your first kiss.

“There ya go…” he said quietly, using his thumb to swipe your bottom lip. “Wasn’t so bad was it?”

You couldn’t say anything, just a simple shake of your head as you looked at his smug face.

Well, judging from your expression… you seem like you want more.” He teased slightly, seeing the neediness in your eyes.

“And I would love ta give ya more…”

[lilyflowerstories]

These Violent Delights | 2

Pairings: Jacob Black x Reader, Edward Culled x Reader

Summary: Y/N Swan is just like every other girl and she likes it that way. Normal is fantastic. Normal creates a functioning member of society. Normal is the reason she moved to a small town to live with her police officer father... only to find out that she gets the farthest thing from what she wanted. // Twilight Re-Write.

Warnings for the series: light violence, light angst, light smut

Word Count: 3.4k

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿

The entirety of the lunch period, you couldn’t find the stomach to eat much. Your bowl of tomato soup only had a few spoonfuls taken out of it. But all the saltine crackers were gone. You had gone over and over in your head what you would say to Edward. Now that he was here, you couldn’t remember anything. You had never been in a real confrontation anymore. You took a glance at his table again. 

He looked different than before. Not terribly different, but enough that you noticed. His skin looked less pale and less stretched over his skeleton. The dark circles underneath his eyes aren’t there anymore either. Now, you could see why people said he looked perfect. 

The bell rang and you silently cursed. You couldn’t have been given more time? Reluctantly, you went with Eric and Mike to your biology class. Eric and you looked over when Mike started frantically digging in his backpack. 

“Ah, shit. Hey, tell Mr. Donoghue that I left my textbook in my car and I’m going to get it.” 

“Okay.” 

Mike ran as fast as possible while the two of you continued going to class. Eric sighed before turning to face you as you stood right in front of the doorway to bio class. 

“Hey, so, about prom, I’m the one in charge of communicating with the dj. I’ve lived my whole life here so I know my music choice sucks so I’m gonna need your playlist.” 

“Okay, when?” you asked as you pulled out your phone to jot down that note. 

“As long as it’s before the month ends, that’s cool. And then dates…  I was wondering do you think Ang—” 

“How you liking the rain, Arizona?” Mike shook out his baseball cap that got soaked in the rain from the run to his car. 

“Guys! Class is about to start. Please take your seats,” Mr. Donoghue cut off whatever Eric was trying to say. If it was important, he’d get back to you later. 

Unfortunately, his lab partner and your lab partner were back so you had to sit with Edward Cullen. There was a slight smile on his face as you walked towards your lab bench. Before you got a chance to say the prepared speech, he spoke. 

“Hello. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself the other day. I’m Edward Cullen.” His voice was smooth like coffee and somewhat low in its sound. “You’re Y/F/N Swan, right?”  

“Y/N.” 

You didn’t give him a chance to say anything else, turning your head to listen to Mr. Donoghue’s lesson. He must have been in cahoots with the universe because his assignment was partner work. The prize? A golden onion that has no value until he comes up with what it stands for. At least only one person could look through the microscope at a time. Edward pushed the device towards you. 

“Ladies, first.” 

“Why were you gone?” You looked in the microscope. “And it better be a good answer too… It’s prophase.” 

“Mind if I check?...Yeah, I was out of town for a couple days. It’s prophase.” 

“Like I said and the empty chair next to me told me that much.” 

“Personal reasons.” 

“Do personal reasons involve rude interactions?” 

“Uh, no. I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t the best day for me before you showed up to class.”  

“Apology accepted, I guess.” 

“So are you enjoying the rain?... What?”

You tried to stop laughing. “You’re asking me about the weather?” 

“Yeah, I guess I am.” 

“Well, no, not really. I’m not really a fan of any cold or wet place.” 

Edward chuckled as he checked another slide. 

“What?” 

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s anaphase.” 

“Mind if I check… Anaphase.” 

“Like I said,” he joked. “If you don’t like the rain then why did you move to the wettest place in the continental United States?” 

“Baseball.” 

“Baseball? It’s also anaphase. Do you want to check it?” 

“No, I believe you.” 

Edward listened intently as you retold your story to yet another person about why you were in Forks, asking questions when necessary. You guys continued to do your work and talk. He carried the golden onion prize as he escorted you to your locker. 

“Why didn’t you move with your mother and Phil?” 

“Moving once means moving again. Phil could get a second contract next year and we’d be in California or Maine or some stupid place like Delaware.” 

“But now you’re unhappy staying here?” 

“It’s complicated.” 

Edward paused. “I’m sorry, I’m asking too much. I’m just trying to figure you out. You’re very difficult for me to read.” 

“Well, asking questions like a normal human bei— hey, did you get contacts?” 

“No.” 

“I swear your eyes were black last time I saw you, now it’s like a golden brown color.” 

“Uh, no. It’s the fluorescents.” 

He walked away before you could say anything else. You didn’t see Edward until school ended and you went to your truck. He and his siblings seemed to be looking directly at you but you thought you were just being paranoid. You turned back around to dig through your bag for your keys. The screeching of tires caught your attention but it was too late. Tyler’s van was barrelling towards you and your feet couldn’t seem to move. 

Now was not the time to find out that your flight or fight response was the dreaded third option of freeze. You could see Edward, four cars away, staring at you in horror. His mouth dropped open. The same as all the other faces that were about to witness your death. Almost everything moved in slow motion.

The hunk of blue metal slid towards you, you felt something grab your waist, you were pulled down to the ground, and a pale hand was on the van that wasn’t hitting you. You stared at the dent in the metal caused by the hand before turning your head to make eye contact with Edward. 

He stared at you for a moment before letting go of you and running away. You were suddenly surrounded by people asking if you were alright. None of them seemed to have noticed Edward wasn’t there. The next thing you knew, you blacked out. 

The lights of the hospital were blinding when you finally came to your senses. The door opened with a vengeance and in strolled your very anxious father. He wouldn’t calm down no matter how much you tried to speak with him, threatening Tyler’s license and everything. It’s not like it was his fault his tires skidded on ice. You mouthed an apology before shutting the small curtain that divided the two hospital beds. 

“Dad, Dad I’m fine. Okay? I was lucky that Edward was there, no injuries.” 

“Edward?” Charlie turns to Dr. Cullen. “Your boy?” 

You cut in before the doctor could even get the chance to say anything. It seemed like he was going to lie. 

“Yeah, he got to me so quickly.” 

Dr. Cullen gave you a tight smile. “It sounds like you were very lucky. You just need to sign some paperwork, Charlie, and then you are good to go.” 

After Charlie signed the paperwork, he went to warm up the car before you had to drive to the school to get your truck and then drive home. You turned the corner to one of the vending machines when you stopped after seeing Carlisle, Edward, and Rosalie talking with each other. It didn’t seem like a friendly conversation either. They were definitely arguing. As if they could hear you just breather, the three of them turned towards you. 

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” you asked. 

Edward looked reluctant as he made his way towards you. “What?” 

“How did you get over to me so quickly?” 

“Y/N, what are you talking about? I was standing right next to you.” 

“No, you weren’t. Don’t try to lie through this either. You were across the parking lot. I know what I saw.” 

“And what was that?” 

“You stopped the van with your hand.” 

Edward’s somewhat amused face turned cold. “Well no one is going to believe you anyway. Can’t you just thank me and we just drop it?” 

“Thank you.” 

“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?” 

“Not at all,” you tell him, determined. 

“Well, I hope you enjoy disappointment.” 

You went home that night with more questions than answers and the oddly sneaking suspicion that someone was watching you. You went to the bathroom and took your shower while thinking about how Edward stopped the van. So far, you had no concrete answers. You went to bed without any answers as well. Although you did wake up in the middle of night after having a strange dream about Edward. 

You tried to not think about that as you went to school the next day. The buses were already up front when you parked, ready for the field trip that you were positive wasn’t going to be very fun. Edward and his siblings, Alice and Jasper, walked past you. Mike popped up in front of you. 

“Hey, you’re alive, Arizona!” 

“You need more than a van to take me down.” 

The two of you laugh as you hi-fived. 

“So I was wondering, are you going to prom?” 

“Um, I don’t know yet. Charlie said I get two free no questions asked days if I go but me and dancing… it’s not pretty.” 

“Well, do you know if Jess is going?” 

“Mike!” you gasped. “Are you trying to ask Jessica out?” 

“Lower your voice, please. Okay, I may have had a small crush on her since we were seven and I am choosing to ask out my very good friend to prom.” 

“She’s going. I’m going dress shopping with her and Ang next weekend.” 

“Okay. Okay, cool.” Mike walked off before coming right back. “Do you think she likes me?” 

“Most definitely.” 

“Sweet. Thanks, Y/N/N. You’re the best.” 

He got on one of the buses while you got on the other. Tyler sat next to you, plugging your headphones into the jack on his phone. You nodded along to Blue October’s “Hate Me” as it played. The two of you didn’t talk at all but stared out the window like you were in a music video and listened to music until you reached your destination. 

The greenhouse was… interesting. That was the nicest way you could put it. Maybe it would have been nicer if you all weren’t cramped in the small walkway between the plants. Mr. Molina and Mr. Donoghue were trying their hardest to get people to water the plants or give them soil. 

“Now, I’m gonna make a steaming cup of compost tea.” 

He handed it to Eric. You laughed as you heard a very panicked yell. 

“No! Don’t drink it! It’s for the plants.” 

“What’s a no questions asked day?” a deep voice behind you asked. 

You nearly jumped out of your skin. Turning around, you saw the classic peacoat and never out of place hair of Edward Cullen. When had he even come up behind you? 

“You know you’re not helping your case. How’d you even hear that?” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

“Dude, you never answer any of mine. You don’t even say hi.”

“Hi.” 

“Please try to act less like a human. Are you gonna tell me anything? Preferably about the other day.”  

“Yeah. I had an adrenaline rush,” he said clinically. “It’s very common. You can Google it.” 

You paused and looked at him. “You’re a terrible liar. And a no question day is when I tell Charlie I need to do something or go somewhere and he asks no questions. It’s a mutual trust betwe—” 

You tripped but felt air and two cold hands grab you instead of feeling your face kiss pavement. 

“Careful,” Edward said as he set you upright again. 

“Thanks. So are you going to answer any of my other questions?” 

“Um. Ma—” 

“Y/N/N!” Jess stepped in between you two. “Guess who just asked me to prom?” 

Edward took the opportunity to slip away. 

“Who?” you feigned ignorance. 

“Mike! I’ve been hoping since forever but like he actually asked me.” 

You and Jess talked the entire way out of the greenhouse and onto the buses, forgetting about Edward and wanting to ask him more questions until it was too late. You weren’t going to think about him for the rest of the day. You had a father-daughter/mother-son date with Charlie, Jacob’s mom, and Jacob. Which meant going to a restaurant because both Charlie and Sarah worked long hours and weren’t going to cook. And Billy was doing his physical therapy for walking so there was no way anyone would force him to cook. 

You went to pick up Jacob at his school while his mom picked up Charlie from the station. He was still inside when you reached the school. It felt stupid signing the visitors clipboard when the school day was already over but you did it anyway just in case. When you made it to a hangout area for students you spotted Jake with his friends. 

You’d like to say they were your friends too but you never got very close with them over the summer. Embry usually went somewhere with his mom, Quil’s grandfather kept inside most of the time, and Seth had sports.

And their acquaintances you knew even less. Paul and Jared were always one grade level above you all and hung out with themselves. Sam didn’t seem to like any of you despite being only a couple years older than you and having even a smaller age gap with Paul. And Leah didn’t come around because either her loser younger brother was there or Sam was there which sucked because you wanted another girl around. 

“Hey, Y/N,” Embry said as you turned the corner. 

“Hi, guys. Jake, you ready?”  

“Yeah. See you guys later.” 

He nodded at his friends before getting up to stand next to you. Your fingers twitched as he intertwined them with his own. He rolled his eyes at the wolf whistles from his friends, laughing when you threw up a middle finger while the two of you walked away. 

“So where are we going?” you asked. 

“Who picked last summer?” 

“Charlie.” 

“Oh, nice, so it’s my turn.” Jacob looked something up on his phone. “Smuggler’s Bar and Grill, sound good? It’s in Port Angeles though.” 

You shrugged. “Eh, I’ve already finished all my homework and Charlie doesn’t go back to work until the graveyard shift. Go ahead and text them our choice.” 

Your truck pulled out of the school parking lot and headed towards the highway. Jacob fiddled with the radio for at least one decent station while you drove the hour it took just to get to Port Angeles. Honestly, you didn’t mind the time. The drive, surrounded by trees, was comforting. Especially with your best friend. 

If you and Jake weren’t singing to songs, you were gossiping about school. There was no need to catch up on anything else. Jake was one of the few people you texted nearly everyday despite being so far away most of the year — including the fact that he had a secret girlfriend for three years. Whenever he wanted to get her a present, he would text you what it was and would pretend he was sending it to you so Billy and Sarah wouldn’t get suspicious. It worked. They didn’t find out even after the two broke up. 

You guys pulled into the restaurant and waited for your parents to show up. Like you predicted, Sarah already analyzed the entire menu and knew what she wanted to order. Jake held up his phone. 

“They said they’re twenty minutes away and the food takes that long to prepare so order for them.” 

“I’m surprised she got Charlie to pick something ahead of time.” 

The two of you went in and got a table like they said. The host smiled a bit too sweetly as they called over a waiter. You and Jacob looked at each other and came to the same conclusion at the same time, silently gagging. There was no way they thought that you guys were on a date. Absolutely not. Was it because you were holding hands? The two of you pulled apart but the damage was already done. 

The waiter sat you down at what you could tell was the restaurant’s nicest booth by the best window that would let you look out onto the water. He handed you the menus and left to give you alone time to think. 

“Just gross, no offense,” you said. 

Jacob shrugged. “None taken. I would never date you, you’re, like, my friend.” 

“Same. Too weird… Do you think they’ll give us free dessert if we are though?” 

“Do you want to play it up?” 

“Absolutely.” 

Jacob gave you a smile you had never seen before but assumed he must have given to his girlfriend. He laid his hand across the table for you to grab. You took it with no problem — Jake’s hands were always warm and still a bit soft since he wore gloves when he worked on cars and bikes. His thumb stroked the back of your hand and he set the menu down to look at you. Almost like magic, or like they’ve been secretly watching, the wait staff came over. 

“Are you two ready to order?” he asked as he set down two glasses of water. 

“Ladies first,” Jake let go of your hand, ready to scoop up your menu when you finished speaking. 

“Um, does the shrimp scampi have a smell?” you asked in fake concern, hoping the waiter would catch on to teen angst of potential bad breath before a first kiss. 

“Oh, no, I got you, honey.” He had a noticeable southern accent. “What do you want to drink?” 

“Iced Tea, please. Oh, and a Caesar salad with ranch dressing.” 

“Got it. And for the young sir?”

“I’ll take the Not Your Mother’s Mac and Cheese along with a lemonade. Oh, and our parents are chaperoning but they’re a little late. Can we get them one clam chowder and one Hawaiian chicken sandwich both with Ruby tonics? What is a ruby tonic?” 

“Oh, I’m so glad you kids are too young to know what it is. Your food will be ready in a minute.” 

He took the menus and walked away. You could hear him gossip to the rest of the staff about chaperones. Jacob grabbed your hand again, giving it a peck. 

“You know he’s totally gonna bring you breath mints. Did you really ask if the shrimp would smell?” 

“Hey, I had to sell it. What brand do you think it’ll be?” 

Jake kissed your hand again. “Lifesavers. They scream not obvious for teenagers asking.” 

“You say this from experience?” 

“Ehh with Elle a couple of times.” 

“Really? I can’t believe you had your first kiss and girlfriend and I couldn’t even get a date for homecoming. You’re still a virgin right?” 

“Yes. I am still a loser virgin.” 

“Hey, I’m a virgin.” 

“Well then in that case virginity rocks.” 

You and Jacob cheered and clinked glasses before laughing when you were unable to hold it anymore. He moved over to your side since the two of you would have to be sitting together anyway once Charlie and Sarah showed up. He took the opportunity to sling his arm around you while you snuggled up to him. The two of you could clearly hear awes. 

“If we actually get free dessert,” Jacob whispered. “We need to do this more often.”  

Your parents came in exactly when the food came out. They looked at the two of you weirdly as you awkwardly broke apart. You shook your head before Charlie could say anything. They went with it like you had asked.  Your parents could do absolutely nothing but shake their heads and smile as the waiter brought out free cinnamon rolls in to-go boxes for not just you and Jacob but for the “chaperones” as well. 

You guys left a generous tip, cleaned up the table, and left the restaurant. You and Jacob clinked the to-go boxes together. 

“Here’s to fake boyfriends.” 

“Here’s to fake girlfriends.”

✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾ ✿ ✭ ☾

| next |

[twigg96]

Don’t Push It

Pairing: Daryl x GN! Reader

Era: Alexandria (Pre-Season 8)

Pronouns: You/They/Them

Warning: Crack, Eugene being a perv, Angy Daryl, Protective Daryl, insinuated spicy scene, forgiveness of Eugene

A/N:

Hello lovelies. I would like to state that I think Eugene is a very unique character and I adore him in a very special way. I have many HCs about him and might release them eventually but for now please enjoy this fic. I just wanted to state for the fact I do not hate Eugene even though I placed him in a not fantastic light here!

The warm summer air buzzed with excitement in the Alexandrian homestead. Gardens were planted in the early spring and only now were starting to begin to produce flowers and food that the community so desperately needed. The sweet smell of earth's nectarous vegetables and fruit mixed with that of fresh cut grass, a scent you had never known you would ever miss so much in the apocalypse. It was a smell so heavenly you wished you could bottle it up.

Sitting on the garden wall with one of your freshly picked winnings you perched your leg up, resting your elbow on your thigh to help stretch out your aching back.

“Hell of a harvest.” Abraham murmured wiping a thick layer of sweat from his brow.

“Might be too much to use at one time…” Sasha sighed shaking her head examining the bounty standing next to Abraham. She stared down at the bushels of veggies and fruits the community had grown counting out loud. "It would all go bad before we'd use it all..."

“Could can it. Could make good jam and preserves.” You suggested taking a bite of the veggie you held in your hand.

“Or dry ‘em out.” Daryl murmured popping out of the crops covered in soil as your boyfriend tossed another bushel of carrots onto the pile.

“Could rehydrate them in stews or jest eat them like jerky.” A hum of affirmation rolled through the group as you all eyed the feast sitting in front of you. No matter what you chose, Alexandria was going to be well fed for a long time.

Glancing over your shoulder at footsteps crunching down the gravel pathway towards the gardens toward you and your group, your first instinct was to tense and prepare yourself for the worst. This world had hardened you. Made you jumpy and pessimistic.

His eyes plastered to the rocks beneath his feet you felt your body recoil. Eugene had never been someone who made you feel comfortable to be around. He always eyed you a little too closely, analytically. And this time as you saw Eugene trudge in as if with a purpose and a mission not even bothering to acknowledge Abraham or Sasha as they greeted him, you felt more like prey in his sights in his eyes than ever before.

Your stomach sank as his intent gaze turned from the ground onto you. He eyed you as if you were a science project he was so desperately trying to get ready for a middle school science fair. Or maybe an ameba that he was studying under a microscope desperate to understand. Your breath felt heavy in your lungs when you looked at him, so you turned your gaze to your fresh breath of air. To Daryl who all but shot Eugene with his glare. The scientist pissed him off in a way way too many could. He made him feel dumb and insignificant. He asked him questions to deliberately make Daryl feel stupid and uneducated. A nerve that the Dixon was very sensitive with and thus you were very protective of.

You shifted where you sat on your perch upon the wall watching as Eugene took his place right in front of you, just a tad too close for comfort.

"Hello... I'd like to formally request a private audience with you." The doctor's thick southern accent did not accompany his attempt at "proper communication" well. Instead he just sounded like he was parodying Shakespeare to a point it was painful and inappropriate. But that was Eugene... and he was in fact inelegant in some aspects... but profoundly knowledgeable in most so you let it slide in some cases.

This one however had you cocking your head and raising your brow in a sort of amusement at him.

"Private audience? What do you think I am now Eugene?" You teased. The doctor nodded, his throat bobbing as he swallowed thickly, staring at the ground in thought for a mere second before meeting your eyes once more.

"Someone worthy of it... a monarch... a deity even." He mused. Sitting up straight in surprise you glanced behind the portly man to see Abraham pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"God damn it Eugene..." The red head hummed with a giggle from Sasha by his side. Daryl however did not seem amused by any of what was going on. His glare planted firmly in the middle of Eugene's back.

"Shut up Abraham." Eugene bit out harshly.

"I said I wanted ta talk ta them in private... so get out." He ordered pointing down the path he just came up.

Abraham rolled his eyes and sighed his mustache fluttering with the act. But he didn't move. Instead he his hand wound tight around Sasha's, his eyes meeting yours, silently reading your face. He was friends with Eugene, yes. Best friends even. But that wouldn't stop him from kicking his shit in if he ever made someone uncomfortable, especially someone he considered a friend. But you just shrugged offering Abraham a little smile. It was Eugene... what's the worst that could happen?

Abraham didn't seem to like that answer.

"Nah... We're stayin'." He growled glaring at the back of Eugene's head.

"Can't fucking tell me what to god damn do." He hissed with Sasha nodding by his side.

"Damn right. We were here working..." She hissed crossing her arms over her chest. Rolling his eyes Eugene gestured for you to follow walking a few steps down the path.

"They ain't comin'." Daryl growled defensively, making Eugene jump nearly a foot in the air as he turned to stare wide eyed at the archer then back at you who hadn't moved an inch.

"Daryl's right Eugene..." You hummed sending your archer a loving look that only somewhat softened the bristles on the man.

"I'm here to work even if I'm here on break right now. I can't just walk away... and really whatever you have to say... you should be able to say to my face with everyone else around." You said more confidently than you currently felt.

Waffling on his feet for a moment Eugene murmurs soft and low to himself. So low in fact that you couldn't hear what he was saying beyond your name and privacy. You did however hear Abraham and Sasha murmur to themselves about finding some serious 'help' for the poor guy. Maybe medication or a trip to Dr. Denise later when the gnome of a man looked back up at you, determined once more.

"Fine." He stated walking to stand back in front of you. Somehow even closer this time so he was between your crisscrossed legs.

"I'll just condense what I had to say down to it's bare essentials, since we are in a public place. Much like how you would distil ingredients for some chemical bonds." He drawled. Closing your eyes you scrubbed your face but nodded.

"Sure Eugene..."

Whatever... You think.

"What's up?"

Taking a deep breath he steps closer so that he was pressed up against the wall which you sat, clearing his throat he met your eyes staring at you as if you were the cure for cancer.

"I just think yer the bee's knees." He mused.

Awe that's actually pretty sweet... You think, your shoulders relaxing and a soft smile gracing your lips.

"I'd very much like ta lay you out like a firm steak and pound you out on the counter top until your soft and tender." He said smirking up at you with all the confidence as if he had just solved world hunger... even going as far as to lay his hands on the wall on either side of your thighs.

You gasped completely appalled staring back down at him, completely shocked and mortified you blinked and shook your head. Truly you were not entirely certain you had just heard him correctly. And by the looks on friends' and more importantly boyfriend's faces it seemed they weren't sure about what they heard either.

"I want to split you open and eat you like Sunday dinner after church."

WHAT THE FUCK?!

Your mind defrosted. You'd definitely heard him right that time.

What the fuck? WHAT. THE. FUCK?! What gave him that idea?

One glance back you nearly broke into tears. With laughter and embarrassment. Abraham stood eyes wide, mouth agape staring at Eugene like he was the missing link. Beet red you couldn't tell if it was because he was royally pissed or if he was just as embarrassed as you felt.

Sasha glared. She glared hard with intent. You had a feeling if Abraham didn't have her wrist in his hand she might have slapped the ever loving shit out of Eugene.

But then Daryl... God Daryl was unreadable. He looked somewhere torn between murderous and betrayed. It had taken you months to get Daryl back out of his shell after everything on the road... after the prison. If it weren't for you and Rick... He might not be in Alexandria at all. Your heart broke. A cold fear fell upon your shoulders. Daryl could fall back into it. Retract. Leave.

In your thoughts you'd missed what Eugene had been saying. He just kept talking... and talking... and talking. He always did. But this time was different, it was vile, filthy degrading things coming from his mouth. Things that made you angry and sickened and embarrassed.

"-tell you about how I could use my knowledge of science in the bedroom. I am smarter than you in everyway which is a huge turn on."

Enough...

"Oh and don't get me started on-"

Shut up...

"You should let me-"

Glaring daggers at Eugene you stood on the edge of the wall, now a full body height taller than him. Not that he seemed to mind one bit. Creep.

"Shut the fuck up." You hissed, feeling dirty as he nodded greedily at you. Hopping off the wall you landed on your feet beside him. Grabbing him by the collar you shoved him hard into the wall knocking his head into the the rocks. The shiver of pleasure that ran through him made your skin crawl.

"Let me get this through your thick fucking skull." You hissed getting into his face. "I do not want to have sex with you. I will never want to have sex with you." You growled shoving against him. But instead of an immediate pleasured sound he seemed to just examine you once more.

That is until you felt the presence shift behind you from emptiness to tense and protective. A dirty calloused hand gripped your forearm pulling you back a step to stand behind the archer's back to see his wings.

"They ain't gonna repeat it... but I sure as fuck will." Daryl growled stepping up nose to nose with Eugene.

"Don’t fuckin’ push yer luck. Stay the fuck away from 'em. If I ever see you houndin' round them again... I'll beat yer ass." He hiss tilting his head threateningly.

Eugene shivered and shook. His eyes wide in terror searching for yours and Abraham's for what you could only assume was assistance. But as you stood there, feeling not a drop of empathy for him, Abraham and Sasha came to stand beside you. Slamming his hand into the wall beside Eugene's head Daryl huffed.

"Hell if I even get wind of you comin' near them again and it's not for somethin' life or death. I'll beat your ass." Shoving away from the wall Daryl eyed Eugene with a shake of his head, distaste dripping from his expression.

"Ya think yer such a big man. Can do whatever the hell ya like jest cause ya can throw a few big words round... ya ain't shit. Now fuck off." He hissed walking over to you wrapping his arm around your waist. A dark angry look filled Eugene's eyes. One that sent shivers down your spine and creep to hide behind Daryl once more.

"You think just because you have strength that they are attracted to you. But you are an ignoramus a-" His rant was short lived. Daryl only had to move slightly, pretending to pull back in preparation to punch Eugene before the doctor was scurrying down the path faster than anyone had ever seen him move before.

"I'm gonna have a real stern talk with him... Excuse me" Abraham sighed scrubbing his hand down his face as he followed down the path to follow his friend. Sasha however waffled her feet her eyes flicking between Daryl and you.

"I'm going to just... go harvest... over there if you need me." She said awkwardly moving to the other side of the garden where she could very much still hear and see you both.

Slowly Daryl turned to face you his eyes glimmering with something dark and dangerous.

"Daryl..." You whispered shaking your head softly a pout playing on your lips. Slowly Daryl's fingers curled and unfurled around the nothingness that was the air. His piercing blues scanned down your body sending a shiver down your spine. You opened your mouth a breath was all you could take before his hand shot out and gripped your neck backing you into the wall he looked down at you with an intensity that brought goosebumps to your skin.

"He do this before? He hurt you?" Daryl growled protectively. His grip on your skin wasn't tight. But inviting and comforting. Reaching up to his wrist you felt him release his hold. Bringing his hand up to your lips slowly you kiss his knuckles then the palm of his hand.

"My love..." You whispered. "I would have told you in a heartbeat if anyone came near me."

Daryl watched you. Studied your actions. His hand relaxing against your lips. Fingers unfurling to take up your cheek and hold it as he pressed his forehead against yours.

“Fuckin better have.” He whispered softly. His eyes meeting yours. A deep yearning sucking you in as he met your lips, wrapping his arm around your waist possessively. Pulling you tight to his body you felt his need press into your hip. His tongue tangling with yours before trailing down your lips and jaw to the soft spot on your neck.

His breath caught in his throat. Words going unsaid Daryl pulled away glancing down the path Eugene and Abraham had just walked down. The soft glint in his eyes melting back into a hateful tone.

“Hey…” You whisper. “how about we go for a ride?” You ask interlocking your fingers in his. Cocking a brow Daryl simply blinked at you.

“Yeah. Why not?” You ask smiling up at him. “We can. Grab our gear from the house. Go to Aaron’s get some supplies. Tell Rick and make a week of it. How’s that sound. Just us outside the walls for a week?”

Lifting the side of his thumb to his mouth Daryl chewed and picked at it for several minutes, glancing over to where Sasha had wandered off to.

“Would you like that?” You whisper stepping forward slowly. Reaching up you wrapped your fingers around his wrist gently caressing your thumb across his skin, gentling his hand back to your side away from his mouth. Blue eyes met yours and you couldn’t help but swallow the thick nothing that got caught in your throat.

“Yeah…” He murmured. “Yeah let’s get the hell outta here.”

The ride to no where was soothing for the both of you. The rumble of the bike both lulled you into calm and ushered in a heat neither of you could ignore. Holding tight to Daryl’s middle your hands roaming did nothing to help the situation. The first safe place you found became the loudest once secured.

Scratch marks adorned your back. Sweat dripped down both your skin as you pressed your lips together. Murmuring of I love yous all throughout the night.

When you both returned a week later. Throughly happy, pleasured, relaxed and with treasures a plenty for Alexandria; Eugene, Abraham, and Sasha stood alongside Rick at the entrance. Daryl looked back at you. Waiting for your blessing before turning off the bike. Patting his side you nodded. You’d hear them out.

“I… would like to throughly express my apologies.” Eugene said softly, waffling his feet. “I acted irrationally and inappropriately. That was completely unacceptable. I hope we can continue to be friends.” He finished, glancing to Sasha and Abraham.

Sighing you glanced to Daryl. The murderous glint and anger was gone. Though he was waiting. Watching. He was watching you. Waiting on your reaction as much as you were watching his.

“I forgive you.” You say turning to Eugene, hugging Daryl tight around his middle. “I forgive you but I’m not happy with you.” A relief washed over Eugene though he nodded a serious look to his face.

“Understood. I have crossed a line I should never have crossed. It will not happen again.” He murmured. Hugging Daryl softly as if soothing a growling guard dog you smiled. “Good.”

[yeet-me-dad-dy]

The Arcane - Chapter Four - Anomaly

Summary: You find an anomaly in Viktor's blood. He takes you down to see his old doctor. You meet Vander.

Characters: Viktor x Male Reader (Dr Raven) x Jayce (Eventually)

Warnings: Blood

Words: 2,408

After Viktor departed from your lab, you set the centrifuge, prepared a slide, poured yourself a drink, and sat down to examine his blood more closely. It was clear right away that something was wrong.

“What the…?” you mumbled as you gazed through the microscope.

His red blood cell count was fine and the cells were dispersed nicely – not too close together, not too far apart, not clumped up in groups. But there was an… anomaly. Around the white spot of hemoglobin at the center of each cell was a blue ring.

That’s why his blood seems purple. The red and blue are mixing. You made a quick, preliminary note of the observation. Without more testing, there was no way to know whether this anomaly was strictly discoloration, or if it was something more serious. Was it preventing the cells from transporting oxygen throughout his body? You would have to separate a cell and look more closely at the… mutation? Toxin? You weren’t sure. Normally, this kind of mystery would delight you. You were excited at the prospect of making new discoveries, of course, but you were also worried. Would the research you were conducting on your own blood be able to fix a problem you’d never seen before and hadn’t accounted for during testing? The best way to find out what would happen if you mixed your blood with Viktors was to do just that.

You prepared a secondary slide, focused the microscope, then pricked your finger. Carefully, you picked up a tiny bit of your blood on the end of a scalpel and dropped it into Viktor’s on the slide. You peered through the lens, holding your breath. With other samples of diseased blood, the common trend was that your blood would mix with the foreign sample and dissolve whatever anomaly it found present, whether that be an infection or something else, rendering it harmless. From there, the theory was that this bi-product would be filtered out of the blood when it traveled through the liver, and then be disposed of in the urine.

That was only a theory, however, because none of your subjects ever survived long enough to prove it. For some, death took seconds. For others, minutes, hours, or even days. For all of them, though, it was excruciating.

And this was why: After a few seconds of contact with your blood, Viktor’s cells began to burst. You expected no less. The main focus of your research was figuring out how to make your blood less volatile. You couldn’t figure out why it had the effect it did, and while some of your research had proven promising in delaying the inevitable, you had been unable to stop it entirely.

This small test was a good sign, despite the outcome. This proved that your blood could remove the anomaly from Viktor’s cells if it turned out to be harmful. You just had to find a way to get it to work without killing him, which is what you’d been trying to do for the last hundred years with no success. You sighed and leaned back in your chair, pinching the bridge of your nose. There were other tests to run, other observations to be made. It could be that the blue ring was nothing more than a strange pigmentation phenomenon and wasn’t hurting him at all. It could be that his previous doctors had been so focused on this strange blue ring that they had completely missed a more obvious answer. The human body, so intricate and complex… Everything was connected. If one thing went wrong, everything was affected.

You stopped by Heimerdinger’s office later that evening, around five, with dinner for Viktor.

“The apple wasn’t enough?” he asked slyly when you set the bag of take-out on the desk next to him.

“I’m afraid it’s going to take more than an apple to keep this doctor away. Sorry,” you smirked.

“What if I throw it hard enough?”

You chuckled and pulled up an extra chair to sit next to him. He put down the notes he was organizing for Heimerdinger and opened the bag to see what you had brought him. A fresh, hot, healthy meal awaited him, and while he didn’t usually have much of an appetite, the smell of it was making his mouth water.

“Any breakthroughs?” he asked as he fished the fork out of the bag.

“Breakthroughs? No. Curious observations? Many.”

“Do tell.”

“There’s still more testing to be done, but what I can tell you is that your blood is healthy, except for one thing.”

“Oh?”

You nabbed the orange out of the bag and peeled it for him.

“There’s an… anomaly," you explained. A blue ring around the hemoglobin in each red cell that shouldn’t be there.”

“Anomaly indeed,” Viktor agreed, his brows furrowed. “So what does this mean?”

“Like I said, there’s more testing to be done to find out what that ring actually is and what effect its having on your body. It could just be pigmentation.”

“But then, what’s causing it?”

You shrugged.

“That’s the million dollar question. A question I’m afraid I’ll have to take a lot more samples in order to answer. Samples of more than just your blood.”

He tilted his head to the side, not quite understanding.

“Plasma and bone, primarily.”

Oh. Those were not pleasant samples to give.

“But those can wait for now” you assured him with a soft smile when you saw the sick look on his face.

After dinner, you took Viktor to your lab to show him the slides and explained what he was seeing, chatting at length about the possible causes and effects of the mysterious blue ring. Then, when the sun finally dipped below the horizon, it was time for Viktor to show you to the Undercity, where you hoped his medical records could be found.

The Undercity was damp and smelly, with a comforting darkness pierced by blinding neon lights. The gaze of every Trencher was on you and Viktor as you wound through the narrow, muddy streets, some glittering with greed as they took in your expensive clothes, and others darkened by fear when your red-hot gaze found theirs. You were on edge and Viktor could tell.

“Relax, will you?” he said as he limped along.

“Not sure I can do that,” you chuckled dryly.

The streets became thinner, the buildings more dense and compact the farther down you traveled. The deeper he led you, the thicker and more oppressive the air became, as well. It didn’t take long for Viktor to start coughing.

“Stop, Viktor,” you said, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. “I can find my way from here. I want you to go back where the air is nicer.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but another coughing fit overtook him. When he finally got control of it, he nodded.

“I’ll met you on the bridge.”

“No,” you shook your head. “I want you to stay close. Meet me at the edge The Lanes.”

Worried I’m going to get mugged, are you?” he smirked.

“Of course I am.”

His smirk fell, and he frowned.

“The people of The Undercity aren’t animals, doctor.”

“No, but some of them are desperate, and you would make an easy mark.”

“That applies to people in Piltover, too, you know.”

“I know. Which is why I would be asking you to stick close if we were up there, too.”

He sighed. He wanted to be offended, to argue that he could take care of himself, but instead, he found your protectiveness… endearing.

“At the edge of The Lanes, then,” he agreed.

It wasn’t a long walk back, and anyone who so much as looked at Viktor shied away when they saw you watching. He would be fine. As he limped away, you turned and continuing deeper into The Fissures. The air down here wasn’t necessarily toxic anymore, thanks to the filtration system that House Kirraman had installed years ago. But it was still heavy, and, gods, the smell. Like sulfur and sewage. The people down here regarded you with mistrust. Topsiders didn't come down here unless they were there for shady dealings. You didn't belong... Or did you? You were scary enough to fit in, that was for sure, but your clothes betrayed your status. You yourself were an anomaly in the veins of The Undercity.

You approached one of the first people you encountered, but she scurried away, hissing obscenities, before you could ask your question. It took you quite some time to find anyone willing to point you toward Viktor’s former doctor. When you did finally find him, you were not impressed in the least. Actually, you were appalled. The “hospital” was nothing more than a run-down shack. It may have been a proper hospital at one point, but now it was nothing more than dirt and grime on some old boards.

A bell chimed overhead when you opened the door and stepped inside. Somehow, the air in here was even stuffier than out there. You curled your lip, disgusted at the state of the place. It didn’t look like it had been cleaned in years. Bottles with various colored liquids filled shelves alongside ancient medical tools. You were thankful the glass on the bottles was so filthy. Some of the things floating in them were… questionable. You weren’t sure you wanted to know exactly what they contained.

An older man with a potbelly appeared from a door in the back. He wore a leather apron, stained with old, dried blood, and the frizzy white hair atop his head stuck out at odd angles. He was hunched and limped when he walked, and one of his eyes seemed to be glued permanently shut with some kind of greenish pus. He looked more like a mad scientist than a doctor.

“How can I help?” he asked with a voice like gravel, resting his fat, filthy hands on the reception desk.

“My name is Doctor Raven. I’m here regarding a former patient of yours, Viktor. I need his medical records.”

He didn’t react for a moment, and you wondered if he’d heard you at all. Finally, he nodded slowly.

“Viktor, yes… I remember now.”

“Do you have his records?” you asked.

He grumbled and looked around.

“I think… Yes…”

He shuffled back into the back room and was gone for ages before finally reappearing with a file. He handed it to you, and you were thankful you’d worn your gloves as you took it from him. You opened it. Three pages.

“This is it?” you asked, glancing up at him.

He shrugged.

“There wasn’t much to record. Bad bones, bad blood.”

You scoffed and shook your head.

“Thanks,” you mumbled as you turned to leave.

He cleared his throat loudly, catching your attention, and you heard him shuffle up behind you. He glared at you, his hand out, palm up.

Of course.

You fished a few coins out of your pocket and handed them to him, careful not to make contact.

You were frustrated and in poor spirits when you met back up with Viktor. He stood when you approached, eyes bright and curious.

“Did you find him?”

You held up the file.

“Not sure it was worth our time, but yes.”

He took the file and thumbed through it.

“This is it?” he asked.

“I asked the same thing.”

“I visited him hundreds of times while I lived down here, and this is all he has…” He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“I’ll make do,” you assured him. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

You stuck close to his side as you picked your way back through the broken streets to the bridge, giving more than a few warning growls to those with greedy eyes and sticky fingers. You stopped halfway across.

“Go ahead,” you said. “I think I’m going to linger for a bit. I want to have a look around. This place disgusts me, I won’t lie, but… It’s also exactly the kind of place I want to help. The kind of people I want to help.”

Viktor smiled.

“Take your time, Doctor.”

You did take your time, talking with those that would give you the time of day, asking about their health and their woes. You knew that the Upper City didn’t care much for those below, but you didn’t realize the full extent of their neglect. You were glad that Viktor got out of there. Eventually, you found your way to a bar called The Last Drop. The barkeeper greeted you heartily and asked what you’d like to drink. You declined the drink politely and instead continued your investigation.

“Yeah, things can get pretty bad down here,” he said quietly. “We don’t have much in the way of medical attention, but the doctors we do have do what they can to help. On top of that, the food down here isn’t great. We have plenty of seafood, but fresh fruit and vegetables are few and far between.”

You nodded, listening intently. He leaned forward on the bar.

“What’s a fancy doctor like you doing down here anyway?” he asked, more quietly.

“I came with a patient, to get medical records from his former doctor. I’ve only been in Piltover for two days, and I have to admit, I’m not delighted to see how they treat this part of their population.”

He scoffed.

“Topside couldn’t care less about what goes on down here in the Trenches.”

“Yes, that’s the conclusion I came to as well,” you said quietly.

“Sure I can’t get you a drink?” he asked. “You look like you could use one.”

You chuckled.

“No, thank you. I should be heading back. Thanks for talking with me.”

You tried to give him some coin for his time and information, but he refused with a chuckle.

“No need for that, Doctor. You just do what you can to help the people down here, and we'll call it even. Hey, what’s your name, before you go?”

“Raven,” you answered as you stepped down from the barstool. “Doctor Raven.”

“Vander,” he said, offering his hand.

You didn’t want to touch the Fissures doctor, but Vander’s hand, you didn’t hesitate to shake.

“Until next time, then, Vander.”

You bid him farewell and made your way back toward home, following the path illuminated by the silver glow of the moon.

[gosciencecrazy]

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[mawofthemagnetar]

The door to Doc’s lab squeaked open, and Etho shuffled in lazily. The man himself was standing at a lab bench, fiddling with something- on the bench beside him, a machine the size of a filing cabinet was whirring away noisily. Etho paid it no mind.

“Got the last of ‘em for ya.” He said, holding up a jar of blue slime and giving it a shake, “The last artifake.”

“Perfect,” Doc rumbled, peering in at something through a microscope.

“So, uh, do we have an answer? About the Iskallium eye?”

“Hmm? Yeah, we do. That’s definitely Iskall’s eye. Same materials, same composition, same power supply- matches all the diagrams he gave me when asked. Only difference is, all the artifakes are beat to hell. I don’t know what could possibly have caused these dents, man. Does Tango-?”

“Tango is saying the same thing Tango said yesterday, which is, quote, “they came with the dungeon!” Etho rolled his eyes, leaning up against a workbench that was cluttered with his hard-won artifakes, “So, ah, any luck? I’m risking my life in there for this, you know that, right?”

“You’ll respawn,” Doc muttered, holding a hand out and waggling his fingers. Etho dropped the jar of speedy slime into Doc’s metal palm with a clank, and Doc moved whatever he was examining off the microscope and set about preparing another slide.

“So,” Doc said, “There is a commonality, across all items.”

“Oh?” Etho echoed, hopping up on a bench and shoving a well-loved pickaxe out of the way, “And what’s that?”

“A dusty...residue...thing. Tastes and smells like spent gunpowder, like a rocket that’s just been fired,” Doc said, dropping a slipcover on top of the slide, “It’s fine, particulate residue.” Doc shrugged, and slid the sample of slime onto his microscope, peering in for a closer look.

“And it’s...EVERY artifake, you said?”

“And every artifact, I’ll bet. Keralis’ slippers were a goldmine- just choked with the stuff. Seriously. I put them into a bag and shook them and a ton of that dust came out.” Doc twiddled the focus knobs, and sighed.

“There's more of it. Man, and it's even, like, mixed into the slime! I’m gonna have to ask Jevin for a sample when he’s around next so I can compare.” Doc nodded, and Etho smiled behind his mask.

“Soooo... that’s it, then? The mystery of where the heck Tango got all these artifacts from is...magic dust, I guess?”

The machine dinged, like an egg timer, and printed something out on a long strip of paper. Doc extracted it, and started to read over his results.

And as his eyes scanned down the page, he went very, very still.

“Doc? What’s happening?”

“Etho. Composition of this dust...it’s rock.” Doc said slowly.

“...Rock dust? And?”

“Roughed edges. This rock has never seen water.”

“...Which means...?”

“This rock hasn’t been oxidized. Predominantly...reduced. No clay, no mica...which means...”

“Doc!” Etho sighed, “What are you trying to say, here?”

“Every single one of these artifakes is covered in moon dust.” Doc said flatly.

Etho swallowed.

“Wherever the dungeon is getting these artifacts-” Doc started, hands trembling.

“-Is someplace we didn’t get lucky last season.” Etho finished, "Ah. O...kay."

Both men stared at the jar of slime in silence.

“...Cool. Well, anyway, have fun with your crisis. I’ve got three more frozen shards left!” Etho said cheerfully, and he skipped out the door.

[bitch-potatoes]

Prompt: comfortable 21/10/24 @rosekillermicrofic

Word count: 945

It's long so below the cut :)

Evan was rudely awoken by the sound of an intermittent... siren? Blinking sleep from his eyes and pressing his glasses over his nose, he noticed the TV in the bedroom was on. He was almost certain he'd turned it off before falling asleep.

The screen was scrolling a message on repeat, Evan squinted to see it through his eyes, which were not taking kindly to the brightness.

"This is a BBC public service announcement. Please standby for more information"

Evan groaned, pushing himself up to sit up and leaning over to shake Barty awake. He whined and pressed his forearm over his eyes, blocking out the light from the TV. Sometimes Evan thought he was lucky to be deaf, he couldn't hear that annoying blaring sound at all. Evan shook him more insisitantly, trying to wake him up properly.

He frowned as he squinted up at Evan "the fuck?" He mumbled, sitting up as well and scanning the TV with his eyes. A monotonous, probably AI, voice began to speak as the words scrolling past changed.

"A global emergency has been declared, remain inside and await further instructions from local authorities"

Evan couldn't help but think that was a bit vague. He stood up and glanced out the window. Outside people were driving away far above the speed limit, and military vehicles were chundering along. One particularly strange thing was armoured vans with the biohazard symbol plastered on them.

Barty seemed to appear at his side, too good at creeping around for his own good. He glanced out the window while adjusting his hearing aids in his ears. He grinned maniacally and rubbed his hand together. "I think it's the zombie apocalypse, Rosie," he murmured almost excitedly. The TV blared the same message again. Somewhere in the distance, there was smoke from a fire.

"Why the fuck are you so comfortable with this?" Evan exclaimed, already digging through his belongings and stuffing things into a bag. He was appalled that Barty not only seemed to be completely free from anxiety but enjoying this whole ordeal.

"I've been researching this," Barty practically giggled with glee, ducking out the way of the window as a bright light travelled past. Barty pursed his lips, seemingly thinking hard for a while.

"This might be my fault" he ended up announcing nonchalantly. Diving over the bed and pulling a set of keys from his bedside table, he didn't even bother to pull on proper clothes before he burst out the bedroom in his boxers. Evan followed, though actually dressed, as Barty flung himself down the stairs and opened the door to the basement.

The basement.

Barty's idea of a home laboratory.

"Shit shit shit shit shit shit" he sung out the curse to a little rhythm, pressing a palm into Evan's chest and silently instructing him to stay put while he dragged open drawers and searched through notebooks. Jotting things down all the while, he seemed thoroughly stressed.

"I had a tiny little breach... a single roach escaped, I thought it was just a miscount but that was about a week ago and that's the perfect incubation period" he muttered under his breath, pulling a mouse out of a tank and carefully swabbing it's mouth and preparing some sort of microscope slide. After a few minutes, he placed the slide onto the viewing platform and peered into the eyepiece.

"Fuck" he mumbled, coaxing Evan towards him with a hand gesture. Evan walked over ensuring he didn't touch anything. Barty guided him to look into the microscope, Evan didn't know what he was looking for.

"Do you see a sort of spider web pattern over some of those cells?" Barty prompted, searching through a drawer for something. Evan squinted. He could sort of see what Barty meant - between some of the little globs were lines sort of like plant roots.

"That's hyphae," Barty explained softly as Evan looked at it harder, trying to understand. "Imagine if a mushroom is an apple, the hyphae is the tree," Barty mumbled. His fingers flexed around Evan's T-shirt, riding it up slightly. Evan presumed it was a nervous fidget until he felt a sharp stab against his stomach as Barty pushed the plunger of a syringe.

"What the fuck Bug?" Evan yelped, stumbling back from the microscope and watching as Barty injected himself with a similar looking syringe. Barty shrugged.

"Vaccine," he said simply, carefully disposing of the syringes in a biohazard bucket. "I've been working on genetically merging features of valley fever with zombie ant disease," he added. As if that was a casual hobby. Just when Evan thought Barty couldn't surprise him.

"Why would you actively try to make a human compatible zombie virus?" Evan asked, the panic settling in as Barty frantically checks agar plates with various labels - some of them had tiny mushrooms growing inside them and based on the look on Barty's face that was not good.

"I don't know why Evo, I wanted to know if it was feasible," Barty said defensively, still searching between plates with tiny bits of paper on them. Some of them had none of the weird fluffy white stuff, hyphae?, where the paper was, and that seemed to be a good sign. Maybe?

"Just let me deal with it... you should be safe, I gave you the vaccine I developed, and that's never not worked.... but you are the first human subject, " Barty mumbled, jotting down notes about the plates he was looking at.

"I'll fix this, I swear to you, Bear." Barty smiled at Evan. It was a sheepish smile. But a smile none the less. Maybe things would be okay.

[drafthearse]

The Micromosaics of Henry Dalton

Henry Dalton was born in 1829 in Bury St. Edmunds, England, where his father was a prominent physician. Growing up with a passion for science, young Henry was drawn especially to microscopy which was enjoying modest popularity among the lay public at the time. By his mid-thirties, Dalton was well-skilled as a micrographer and had gained renown among European naturalists for his intricate preparations constructed entirely from diatoms and the scales of butterfly wings. [...] After devising a design, Dalton would collect numerous butterfly wings of multiple species from all over the world. Carefully stripping off individual scales with a needle, each scale was then sorted by color, size, and shape creating a extensive palette. Boar bristle in hand, Dalton would then transfer each scale to the slide. Positioning a scale was a laborious task, one that required the use of a microscope and a small tube through which he would breathe to gently move each scale over the glass to its appointed position. Once in place, Dalton would crush a small tiny spot of the scale against the slide, allowing internal oils to act as a natural adhesive. Many of Dalton's remarkable micromosaic preparations would require as many as one thousand individual scales.

[poguesofthebau]

microscope, part two

read part one here :) summary: you and steve had just enough privacy to have an actual relationship, but your friends still didn't fully understand your boundaries. slowly but surely, their tendency to barge in started to drive you insane.

word count: 6.5k pairing: steve harrington x fem!henderson!reader tags: @nix-rose-q @anea08

"seriously, y/n. all i'm saying is that i think you'd really love d&d if you gave it a try. don't knock it 'til you try it!"

you scoffed from your place in the driver's seat of the car, throwing your brother a dubious look as you took a right turn. there was only about another minute left of your ride home from school, and you'd been bickering the entire time about your steadfast refusal to learn and/or play dungeons and dragons. "dustin, our lives are like an actual game of d&d. fighting demogorgons and the mind flayer and vecna might be a cool concept in theory, but i think experiencing it in the flesh kind of ruins the fun."

although he didn't notice until after he was done talking, dustin's response was mostly lost on you. you'd been listening intently at first, fully prepared to carry out the lighthearted debate to its end, but the familiar brown bmw that suddenly appeared in your rearview mirror quickly took precedent over bickering with your little brother. you found yourself donning a giddy smile at steve's impressive timing-- he'd opened family video that morning and worked until 2, giving himself just enough time to stop back at his house to shower off the smell of vhs tapes and strangers before meeting you at your house as soon as he possibly could-- and almost running the last stop sign on the route to your house to get to see him faster. you took the final turn into your driveway a little fast, slightly jerking dustin around in the passenger seat as he made his concluding points about the joys of playing d&d. it was only when he looked at you to see what had caused the harsh turn that he realized you hadn't been listening to him at all, and before he could question it, steve was pulling into the driveway behind you.

"jesus christ," dustin remarked dramatically. "you gave me whiplash because steve is here? you saw him yesterday!" you spared a brief moment to stick your tongue out at dustin in a childish response before swinging open your car door and seeking out the boy you'd been waiting all day to see.

you'd slipped into steve's arms as soon as you wriggled out of the car, ignoring your brother's groan as you greeted your boyfriend. dustin made a few disapproving comments as he ascended the stairs to your house, not bothering to offer his older friend an actual greeting before heading inside. waiting until you heard the click of your front door shutting behind the boy before releasing steve, you leaned up to peck him on the lips a few times.

"hey, baby," steve said contentedly, leaning in again to kiss you on the cheek as you smiled up at him.

"hi, stevie."

once you'd been greeted sufficiently, he reached into the backseat and retrieved your backpack, slinging one of its straps over his shoulder and sliding his opposite hand into yours. from there, you guided him into your house, only pausing on the walk to your room to call out a warning to dustin, who was now in the kitchen searching for an after-school snack. "do not come in my room. for anything. don't even knock. got it?"

"ick," he said, making a disgusted face at you over the fridge door. "like i want to know what the two of you do behind closed doors."

and with that, you escaped into your room, steve discarding your bag and his keys by the door and immediately climbing into your bed as you changed into sweats. once you were redressed, you crawled under the comforter with him, shifting around for a few moments before finally settling into the perfect position for doing absolutely nothing.

the peaceful bliss lasted all of twenty minutes.

you laid with your head tucked under steve’s chin and his arms wrapped securely around your waist, eyes closed in content as you listened to the older boy describe his day at work. you weren’t falling asleep to his voice, but the sound was distancing you from the day’s previous challenges. that was the thing about steve: he didn’t need to try, but he always remedied a bad day, or brightened a dull one, or calmed a chaotic one.

he was in the middle of a story about his worst customer of the day when the sound of the doorbell ringing through your house interrupted him. your closed bedroom door kept the noise from being too loud, but it was enough of a distraction to make him pause and look to you as you cracked your eyes open in annoyance. "dustin will get it. go ahead, keep talking," you insisted when your eyes met steve's. he nodded, fighting a smile of adoration as he watched you nuzzle a little closer to him and close your eyes again.

just as he inhaled and opened his mouth to continue, the doorbell rang again, three times in a row. a low noise escaped from the back of your throat-- steve would later refer to the sound as a growl-- and flipped over in steve's arms to face your bedroom door. "dustin, get the door!" you yelled, knowing the boy could hear you at that volume regardless of where he was in the house. you hesitated then, making sure the doorbell wasn't going to ring again before looking at steve over your shoulder. "it would be a god damn shame if, after everything we've survived, i was driven to murder dustin over a doorbell."

"i don't think anyone would blame you," steve joked. "anyway, it's probably just a girl scout or something. but i mean, we'll never find out since you forbade dustin from coming in here." before you could ask if he'd rather be hanging out with your little brother than laying in a bed with you, he quickly added, "not that i'm complaining."

you huffed, leaning back until your body made contact with the pillows behind you. steve reached out a hand to grab one of yours, gentling tugging your arm up until it was extended enough for him to kiss the hand as you spoke. "i don't want girl scout cookies. i want an hour to lay in this bed and do absolutely nothing with you before i start to think about how much homework i have to do."

steve let out an exaggerated sigh, still holding your hand to his chin as he looked off into the distance dramatically and shook his head. "i remember when i had homework to do," he said longingly. "seems like it was a hundred years ago."

you laughed heartily, just beginning to call him on his bullshit-- "you never even did your homework, steve!"-- when there were three loud bangs on your bedroom door, followed by a momentary pause, the squeak of the doorknob turning, and a slight gust of air as the door swung open. "what the fuck--"

"is everyone decent? why don't you people answer when someone knocks?" to your complete surprise, it was max. she had one arm tossed over her face to obstruct her view, and her tone was demanding but also slightly playful. when neither you nor steve responded, she peeked over her forearm, confirming that everyone was clothed, and dropped her arm altogether. "of course you're in bed together. what's it been, two months since you two made it official?"

"five months, and we're not doing anything," steve immediately rebuked. he still had his fingers laced through yours, but he'd dropped your clasped hands onto the bed between you when max had burst into the room. "and even if we were, you're not supposed to be here!"

"max," you interjected before the two of them could engage in any more bickering. "i assume dustin told you we were in here and aren't looking for any more company, so what's so important that you put his life in danger by coming in anyway?"

the redhead huffed, dropping her backpack onto the floor beside yours and moving to your desk. she plopped down into the chair, spinning until she was facing you and steve again. "i need advice." again, neither you nor steve responded, both wearing expressions of anticipation as you waited for more details. she rolled her eyes, sighing again before admitting the full truth. "relationship advice."

"oh," you said, once again surprised by the younger girl.

clearly just as dumbfounded as you, steve still needed some clarification. "from us? why us?"

"i don't know, because you guys are, like, totally and completely in love and obsessed with each other and talk about everything and never seem to have any relationship issues?"

"i wouldn't say we never have issues," steve said thoughtfully. "there was that time you slept through our date night and all my phone calls and the sound of me ringing the doorbell eighty times."

"that was an accident! it had been a long day," you whined, whacking steve in the chest when he laughed at you. "okay, well what about the time you got that girl's number in the parking lot when you were picking me up from school?"

"hey, hey, that wasn't my fault! and i told you about it because i didn't want you to think i was--"

"o-kay," max interrupted, clearly running low on patience and not quite in the mood for a recap of all your past relationship drama. "will you guys help me, or not? because if you're too busy cuddling or whatever it is you're doing under that comforter, i'm gonna have to talk to nancy, and that will just be... weird."

you sighed, closing your eyes for a second to reminisce on the past twenty minutes when you'd been alone with steve. it wasn't that you didn't want to help max, or weren't willing to hear her out about her problems; she was like a little sister to you, and you always wanted to be there for her. however, her timing was absolutely horrendous, seeing as all you were currently interested in was looking at and talking to and being near steve. nonetheless, you bit back your selfish desire to send her away and nodded solemnly. "sure, we'll try. what happened?"

and so the next 45 minutes were spent with you, steve, and max having an in-depth conversation about communication and boundaries and compromise in a relationship. you and steve had listened intently to max, his hands busying themselves by gently fiddling with your hair or your fingers as you tried to focus all your attention on the younger girl. (by the end of the explanation, steve felt strongly as though he knew way too much about max and lucas's relationship.) when she finished explaining her fight with lucas, the two of you gave her all the relevant advice you could muster up.

with the right words of wisdom and affirmation, max seemed to relax enough to conquer her initial panic over the situation. a sense of accomplishment washed over you as she stood up and retrieved her backpack, thanking you for your help as she headed for the door. just before she walked out of your room, max paused to take in the sight of you and steve with an indecipherable expression. all she said, in an approving and matter-of-fact tone, was, "you two are cute," and then she was gone, seeming determined to solve her problems with lucas sooner than later.

feeling slightly confused but glad to be alone with your boyfriend once again, you turned in steve's arms to face him with another stunned glance. he smiled down at you, leaning in and kissing you sweetly. against your lips, he muttered, "we are cute."

the following day was friday, and you couldn't have been more excited for a week to end. school had been hellish for you recently, and you hadn't been completely certain that you would survive the week. luckily for you, the universe allowed you to function long enough to fulfill your plans to spend the weekend at steve's house while his parents were away. for obvious reasons, your mom was under the impression that you'd be spending the weekend with robin, but you'd given dustin a heads up on the ride home from school that if he had any sort of supernatural and/or otherworldly emergencies, he'd be able to get a hold of you at steve's.

much like steve had done after work the day before, you rushed home from school to shower and pack a weekend bag. not wanting to waste any extra time by going into his room to have an entire conversation, you called out a quick, "i'm leaving!" to dustin and hopped in your car.

it was a fifteen minute drive from your house to steve's; with a reasonable amount of speeding, you made it there in ten. you could feel your heart twitching in your chest at the thought of how close you were to quality time with your boyfriend as you pulled the keys from the ignition and yanked your bag out of the passenger seat.

the front door of the house was swinging open as you approached the porch, and you and steve were exchanging goofy, excited grins the moment you made eye contact. "hey there, handsome," you called to him. you ascended the small set of stairs and dropped your bag by your feet, stepping into his open arms and feeling yourself relax completely. the anticipation was over, and you were nothing but satisfied to finally be with steve again instead of just looking forward to it.

you retreated from the hug slightly to peer up at steve, earning a grin from him as his eyes met yours. before any words could come out of his mouth, though, his face completely transformed; all traces of his lovesick smile were lost and any endearing greetings were forgotten. his eyes had darted to something behind you, and steve remained frozen with you in his arms. you looked at him quizzically as he stared behind you with his brow furrowed, quickly opting to spin around in his arms to see for yourself what was so shocking.

the sight that met your eyes when you turned was one that made your heart sink to your stomach within a millisecond, panic immediately flooding through your body as your eyes settled on the area steve was staring.

it was dustin.

he was riding his bike as fast as he possibly could-- probably faster than he should-- and you could hear him panting in exhaustion before he'd even rode onto the driveway. he stumbled off the bike clumsily, knocking the kickstand down haphazardly and rushing up the porch steps until he stood right in front of you. "i-- have-- an emergency," dustin said through heavy breaths. he was visibly distraught, covered in sweat but also donning a crazed look in his eye that he reserved for especially urgent moments.

you stepped out of steve's arms then, reaching out and grabbing dustin, turning his face in your hands and scanning his body for injuries as you questioned him. "what's wrong? are you hurt? did something happen?" you couldn't find any external wounds on the boy's exposed skin, nor any rips or tears in his clothes, which was a good sign. still, you were anxious to hear whatever it was that had led your little brother here so soon after you'd left him at home.

he exhaled and inhaled deeply, putting in visible effort to slow his breathing as he looked between you and steve. "it’s suzie— she’s pissed at me,” he said breathily. “we were supposed to talk last night but i totally forgot because i was busy doing my stupid latin homework and then i crashed as soon as i finished it and now she thinks i bailed on her, which is ridiculous, because there’s no one i’d rather talk to than suzie, but still, i’m screwed. i need advice.”

you let your hands fall to your sides, blinking slowly as you took in everything the boy had just rapidly word-vomited to you. you could've been mistaken, but you didn’t think you’d heard anything about supernatural and/or otherworldly attacks. “dustin,” you said blankly. “i told you to call me if you had a real emergency. this… this does not qualify. and even if it did, that’s what phones are for.”

dustin began to protest, saying something about how his love for suzie was otherworldly, but was cut off by steve. “hey, hey, you little butthead. no back-talking to your sister, you hear me?” if you weren’t so frustrated by dustin's interruption, you might’ve smiled at steve’s protective instincts. instead, you raised your hands to your head, massaging two fingers against each of your temples and trying your hardest not to strangle the only sibling you had. as you self-soothed, steve continued to bicker with dustin. “what the hell is with you kids and coming to us for advice, anyway? we’re not running a couples’ therapy service here, you know!"

“yeah, i know that, jackass,” dustin responded sarcastically. the boys each displayed their designated ‘brotherly fighting’ grimaces for a moment, and dustin eventually admitted to what had led him there. “max told me about how you two helped her figure out her shit with lucas. so i thought, i bet my big sister and my old friend could help me out too, but apparently i was wrong. god forbid the two of you spend a little time guiding the youth of the world into adulthood instead of sucking face in a dimly lit room.”

you narrowed your eyes at him threateningly as you responded. “we only helped max because she barged into our house unannounced and guilt tripped us-- kind of like you’re doing right now. has anyone ever told you alone time is essential for a good relationship?”

"look, are you gonna help or not? it's fine if you don't, i'll just have to live forever with the memory that you value max's happiness more than mine even though you don't share a bloodline with her. no big deal."

you took a deep breath, mentally cursing at yourself for your inability to say no to any of those little hyperactive children, and gestured for dustin to follow you and steve into the house. "let's go, my little idiot. and get my bag, too."

you heard dustin murmur something that sounded like the word bullshit but decided to let it go as you followed steve through his front door. dustin was close behind you, still grumbling under his breath as he lugged along your (admittedly, overpacked) duffel bag.

"and, by the way, how the hell did you bike here so fast?"

saturday morning was deemed a rest period for you and steve.

it had taken just over three hours for dustin to leave steve's house the night before. he ended up cooking and eating dinner with you-- which was quite awkward, since steve had decorated two of the table placements to set a romantic atmosphere-- and then helping clean up afterward at your insistence. even once he claimed he was leaving, the boy lingered for another half hour, asking 'clarifying questions' until you finally threatened to call suzie and sort it out yourself. by the time dustin was on his way back home, you and steve felt more like exhausted parents than a teenage couple who had a house to themselves for a weekend. beyond a few loving moments while you got ready for bed together, the remainder of your night was uneventful.

upon waking up the following morning, the two of you moved with the utmost leisure. time was plentiful enough that you let steve try--and fail, as you knew he would-- to make you pancakes before you properly remade the batch for the both of you. once you'd both finished eating, steve convinced you to hop in the shower with him for a little morning reset.

at one point during your time in the shower, you both heard steve's landline ringing from the room over. you'd pouted and asked if he needed to answer it, but he brushed off the idea immediately, claiming, "if it rings again, i'll answer." the phone let out a few more rings before falling silent again; once it stopped, you and steve completely forgot it had rung in the first place.

around fifteen minutes later, you'd both exited the shower and were back in steve's room. you were in one of his t-shirts and a pair of pajama shorts, propped on the bed as you watched steve move about the room. the sweatpants hanging from his hips were all he'd dressed himself in, not having bothered with putting on a shirt, and he was doing every simple task from tossing dirty laundry into a hamper to spritzing cologne on himself to rubbing a towel into his hair to dry it off.

"okay, sweetheart," he said, suddenly stopping at the foot of the bed to face you directly. "what's the plan for the day?"

you let out a whine, dramatically flopping backwards on the bed into a laying position. "i don't want to do anything today." steve laughed at the claim, trailing around the side of the bed and crouching down until his face was level with yours. when you met his stare and saw the disbelieving smile playing his mouth, your expression shifted to something more of a stern pout. "i'm serious, harrington. my plan of action is me, you, and this bed for at least 60% of the day."

"hm, that doesn't sound too bad," steve said ponderously, reaching out a hand to brush back the hair framing your face as he feigned thought. "60% of the day; how long is that? 13, 14 hours?" steve was standing as he spoke then, gradually shifting positions until he was sitting on the bed with his face hovering a few inches from yours. "i can think of a few good ways to pass the time, if you need some ideas."

you leaned forward the slightest amount, your head lifting off the pillow just enough to goad steve into closing the remainder of the gap between you. his mouth pressed against yours, lips slipping into place so naturally that steve couldn't even remember what it was like to not be kissing you. within a few seconds, he wasn't sure whether or not he was breathing anymore; if he wasn't, though, he was sure that you were doing it for him in some magical way that only a soulmate could. there were no thoughts in his mind aside from you, and how you tasted like the toothpaste he kept in his bathroom and smelled like his body wash mixed with your lavender shampoo and how your skin felt like home underneath the old t-shirt you'd grabbed from his dresser and how much he loved you. as far as he was concerned, the rest of the world had fallen away for the time being and there was no one or nothing else, not even gravity holding you down or stars floating in the sky. you wanted the day alone with him, and, yes, steve was very much willing to spend the rest of his day doing nothing but kissing you.

neither of you were sure how much time had passed by the time steve made the effort to slip your shirt up your body. he used the hands he had resting on your hips to push the fabric upward, and only paused to trace his thumbs over the bare skin of your chest, a sensation that made you part your lips and gasp lightly. a low chuckle escaped from steve's mouth-- his natural response to getting any sort of rise out of you-- and he moved to lift the shirt over your head. just as you shifted forward to help him out a little, a shrill sound was blaring from steve's bedside table.

the phone was ringing again.

steve pulled away from you, prompting yet another whine to make its way past your lips. "sorry, babe. just a sec, i swear." his hands slid back down your sides as he apologized, fully disentangling himself from you and moving to answer the phone. "hello?"

you muttered something snarky under your breath as he engaged in conversation, tugging the t-shirt back down and crossing your arms in annoyance. yes, steve had said that he'd pick up the phone if it rang a second time, but you'd kind of assumed that the idea of getting you naked twice before even leaving the house was something he would've been more invested in than taking a phone call.

a tiny voice in the back of your head was scolding you for being mad, reminding you not to blame steve for the lack of privacy you two got. it wasn't like he wanted to be interrupted every time he got you alone. it was just the way things went with a friend group that functioned so much like a family; everyone wanted to get a hold of mom and dad for one reason or another.

you glanced over at the brown-haired boy in an attempt to distract yourself with the forever-entertaining activity of admiring him, but the expression he now wore made it kind of difficult to focus. his eyes had widened and his brows raised, and the 'o' shape of his mouth immediately told you that he'd just heard something startling and, most likely, disruptive. before you could ask who it was or get close enough to overhear the other person's voice, steve was speaking again. "i-- yes, i heard you! jesus christ," he said rashly. his tone of voice narrowed the list of potential callers down to one of your close friends; if you had to guess, you would've put your money on it being dustin again. "okay, fine. i just need a while to confirm. yeah, yeah, robin. i'll call you back in five minutes. bye."

"robin?" you asked when steve looked at you again. "why are you confirming something with robin in the next five minutes, steve?"

"well, apparently we both forgot," he started to explain, putting emphasis on the reminder that you, too, had the same lapse in memory as he did. "but the plan for today is actually to hang out with robin!"

you opened your mouth to deny his claim, only to spontaneously recall exactly what steve was talking about. instead of speaking, you dropped your head into your hands and let out a pitiful groan. "i can't believe i forgot about that."

it had slipped both your mind and steve's, but robin had indeed insisted that you both spend a day with her that weekend, and you'd all settled on saturday. part of her justification, which you'd deemed valid earlier in the week when steve wasn't milliseconds from taking off your clothes, was that she 'hadn't spent enough quality time with the two of you outside of work and school during the last few weeks.' the other part, which steve consciously chose not to relay to you, was that she 'needed to revive her hope in true love by being around your true love, which is the truest love she's ever seen.' mostly, steve didn't ever want to repeat that sentence due to how ridiculously dramatic and mushy it was. on top of that, though, steve knew you, and he knew that you hated being the center of attention. having your friend surveil and analyze everything you and steve did was a surefire way to drive you absolutely insane. you wanted to be able to fly under the radar sometimes; not to be invisible, necessarily, but just to blend into the background of a moment without your actions being spotlighted. so, in order to prevent you from feeling any impending dread before or during your time with robin, steve decided to spare you that one detail.

peeking out from behind your hands, you met eyes with steve. "do you think we could get out of it?"

scrunching his nose, steve shook his head lightly. your head slid back behind your hands in response, and steve sighed. "unfortunately, i think the longer we put it off, the worse it'll be when we finally do it. i mean, you know i love robin, but she's pretty obsessive." when you didn't react to words, he reached out and grabbed your wrists, gently pulling on them until you submitted and dropped your hands altogether. once your face was exposed again, steve's hands found his way onto either side of your head and he leaned in close before speaking again. "if you really don't want to go, i'll call her back and cancel. she'll have to get over it eventually."

for a few seconds, you just looked at steve. it seemed like a second chance at the effort you'd made a few minutes earlier; there was a lot to admire about him, and in just a moment you were able to take it all in and soak in how much you loved him. without thinking, you suddenly careened forward and pressed your mouth to steve's hastily. he was visibly surprised by the display of affection when you withdrew, which earned him an amused smile and another peck on the lips. "call robin back and tell her we'll be at her house in half an hour."

and so, the plan to spend the day in bed went down the drain.

"you're sure you're not mad at me?"

"no, steve, i'm not mad at you. i'm mad at everyone else."

it was the next day, and the likelihood of you finally being alone with steve for more than twenty minutes at a time was beginning to feel more and more unrealistic. (sure, the two of you were currently alone in his kitchen, but you wouldn't have been surprised if you blinked and suddenly another person was in the room with you too.) the last three consecutive days had been tainted with your friends' problems, and the inability to turn any of them away was officially impeding your happiness. you'd thought you were doing a decent job of keeping your dissatisfaction hidden from steve, but the questions he began asking on sunday morning clearly proved otherwise. so, not only were you gradually losing your composure, but steve was also noticing how on edge you were feeling.

"is this about what robin said last night?" you glared at him from across the kitchen table, a pointless attempt to scare steve into dropping the subject. instead of shying away as you'd hoped he would, he gave you a knowing look and continued to press the matter. "we both know it is, so why don't you just admit it?"

"fine, steve," you said harshly, crossing your arms and leaning back in the wooden chair you were sitting in. "i'm mad because robin basically said that we're not significant as individuals and that us being a couple is the most interesting thing about either one of us. are you happy now?"

he sighed, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table. "that's not what she said, y/n. you know she doesn't actually think that."

"maybe not consciously," you argued. "but the only thing she thinks about when she sees one of us is that we're dating the other. ever since we told them we're together, everyone just thinks we're, like, some token flawless soulmate couple that never has problems and never needs to spend actual alone time together because, 'their relationship is already so perfect!' and yeah, i love you more than i ever imagined i could love another person, and i don't ever plan on losing you because you are my soulmate. but that doesn't mean i don't need you to take me on dates sometimes, or spend an afternoon doing nothing in bed, or whatever else stupid fleeting high school relationships are about, because i do! but, no, we can't have any time for any of that because everyone just wants us to exist near them so they can have their faith in love restored and have us magically give them all the answers to being in a relationship."

there was a brief pause when you stopped rambling; steve wasn't completely sure if you were finished with your monologue, and he knew better than to interrupt when you were on a verbal warpath. he was certain you were done soon enough, and a rush a guilt accompanied the words he carefully selected in reply. "i knew they were getting on your nerves, but i didn't realize it was bothering you this much."

it was you who sighed this time, feeling your own shudder of guilt as you processed the upset tone in steve's voice. "i didn't want you to realize it. i was hoping they would eventually ease up a little, but it turns out they're just as invasive now as they were before we were official, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better."

"what can i do?" steve asked, moving around the table and toward you. within a moment he was standing beside you, and you had to tilt your head slightly upward to clearly see his face. "i know you said you're not mad at me, but i still feel guilty about you feeling this way and not being able to talk to me about it."

"i should've talked to you about it," you admitted. "i know i could've, and i feel better now that i have. i just didn't want to complain about them, because they're our friends, and my little brother, and i am glad they trust us enough to talk about their problems with us. but sometimes i just want to be with you. only you. does that make sense?"

he smiled at you softly, reaching out and pushing your hair away from your face. "yeah, that makes sense." his hand dropped down to your shoulder and slid halfway down your upper arm. "just try not to be mad at them, y/n," steve gently insisted. "you know they mean the best. christ, they can save the world time and time again, but they're not too great at just being normal. i just don't think they really get it. i mean, dustin and max are basically just kids, and robin is... hyperactive. they know you care about whatever they have to complain about, so you're the first person they want to tell. and it just so happens that i'm always with you when they come around. they don't really consider any other factors."

suddenly your brow was furrowing, and you were slowly shaking your head. "no, i don't think that's it."

"you think they're intentionally venting to you just so they can get on your nerves?"

"no, not that. what you said about them wanting to tell me things and you just happening to be there. that's not true." steve was clearly uncertain of what point you were trying to make. his hand fell from your arm as he tried to process what you were getting at. instinctually, your hand was grabbing his again as you fought back a smile at how unknowing he was; he really had no idea how the people he loved so dearly saw him. "those kids love you, steve. and you're robin's best friend. yeah, they want to tell me about whatever's going on in their lives, but they want to tell you just as badly."

steve's expression transformed from clueless to appeased in the blink of an eye. he grinned at you foolishly, giving your hand a squeeze. "you think so?"

you couldn't help but laugh, a boisterous sound that filled steve's heart to the brim with adoration. "yes, steve, i think so."

sparing a moment to admire you as you caught your breath from laughing, steve leaned down to press his mouth to yours sweetly. when he pulled back a few seconds later, you grabbed onto his shirt, using the fabric to guide his lips back to yours again. you kissed him until you felt a little lightheaded in the way only steve could make you. even then, you kept him close. his face was only a few millimeters from yours when you locked eyes with him, and he flashed you another grin. "my parents' flight won't be in until late tonight. wanna go back upstairs?"

you flashed him a smile of your own, kissing him chastely before standing from your chair. "we're definitely going back upstairs."

he began to lead you out of the kitchen, moving swiftly toward the stairs that led to his bedroom. to no one's surprise, his movements were halted when the sound of the landline ringing was echoing through the room. you could faintly hear the same sound traveling downstairs from steve's room. he looked back at you, wearing the look of a deer caught in headlights as he tried to decode your expression. you dropped your head onto his shoulder, eyes falling shut as you released a giggle. at this point, all you could do was laugh. "we're cursed, stevie."

in a sudden shift of emotions, steve recomposed himself and took a step toward the ringing phone. you looked to him in surprise, but knew he had no intentions of explaining his plan to you beforehand. in response to your joking comment about being cursed, he said, "not if i can help it." then he snatched the phone off the hook and uttered a quick greeting. his eyes closed momentarily as he listened intently to the voice on the other line. (it was lucas this time, calling with what felt like a centuries-old request for advice from you and steve.) you laughed at his intense concentration, using the hand that wasn't wrapped in steve's to cover your mouth and stifle any sound. "nope!" steve was suddenly shouting into the phone. "i'm not available, and she's not available. unless you want to deal with me, try again tomorrow. get on your stupid walkie and tell that to everyone else, too! don't call back!" and with that, he slammed the phone back onto its hook.

"wow," you said through yet another laugh. "i thought you said we shouldn't be mad at them?"

"yeah, we shouldn't be mad. that doesn't mean we should be nice when they call." by then, you'd begun guiding steve along the path through his house to the stairs. clearly, he'd handled the issue of being interrupted for the day, so there was no good reason not to follow through on your plans to head upstairs. "they're worse than the god damn telemarketers."

"agreed," you said, turning the final corner and starting to head up the carpeted steps. "they're lucky we have better things to do than spending the day yelling at them."

"much better things to do," steve echoed as he cheerfully followed you up the stairs. "but they still might include some yelling."

needless to say, the phone didn't ring again for the rest of the day.

[starrysturnz]

where the love light gleams

pairing. vampire!matt sturniolo x human!reader

summary. matt hasn’t celebrated a holiday in decades. a lonely, unfulfilling existence is nothing to be cheerful about, in his book. but there’s something different about this particular christmas— he’s not quite so lonely anymore.

warnings. mention of the death of a parent, an unserious joke about domestic violence, somewhat sensual toward the end?? angst if you smear this fic on a glass slide and look at it through a microscope.

word count. 1k

author’s note. OKAY SO i apologize for the fact that the only fic from this countdown that was posted on time was the first one… 20% success rate :D basically i’ve learned to pre-write anything i plan to release on a specific date lol. anyways i was traveling and then i got sick sooo not ideal conditions to focus on writing. thanks for sticking with me on this tho! i hope u like this one as much as i do!! kisses :3

masterlist | taglist | starrysturnz’s christmas countdown

© starrysturnz. all rights reserved. dividers by @cafekitsune.

it was the perfect evening. firewood crackling in its hearth, the smell of half-baked cookies wafting in from the kitchen, and polar express playing on the tv as y/n lay cuddled up under her favorite fuzzy blanket with her boyfriend, matt.

his fingers toyed lazily with her (admittedly, ugly) sweater as she laid her temple against his shoulder. tilting her head up to admire his face— his strong jaw, his striking eyes— she said, “i can’t believe you’ve never seen this movie before. it’s a classic.”

his head turned slowly to face her, eyes lagging behind on the screen for a second before speaking, “just never really been into christmas movies, i guess.”

there was a hint of something hidden in his voice… amusement, maybe? like he knew something she didn’t. y/n got that vibe from him occasionally— like she was on the receiving end of an inside joke that she wasn’t a part of— but she mostly chose to ignore it. today, however, the urge to pry won her over.

“how come? your family didn’t celebrate holidays growing up or something?”

it was an innocent question, matt knew. he’d expected she might be intrigued by his utter lack of knowledge regarding common christmas traditions. this was their first big holiday together, and she was entitled to some curiosity. but he couldn’t tell her the truth… yet. it wasn’t exactly the time.

besides, the honest answer was a real mood killer— how could he tell her he’d spent the better part of the last century avoiding holiday festivities at all costs? that he didn’t see any reason to celebrate his miserable, cursed existence? way too much explaining, so not enough time. plus, it made him seem all dark and self-loathing, and while yeah, that might’ve been the case, he felt it was far too accurate to edward from the twilight franchise… and being compared to that idiot in any capacity made him want to stake himself.

so instead, he offered her his prepared answer: “no, no, it’s not that. just, i dunno… my mom passed around the holidays when i was young, and it sort of overshadowed the magic of it all, y’know?”

it was the perfect fib— just dark enough to be believable without leaving room for any follow-up questions. and it’s not like it was a total lie; matt’s mother really had died around christmas when he was a boy, and it did put a damper on his holiday spirit.

y/n’s expression softened into one of genuine empathy, and she mustered her best comforting smile. “’m sorry. that must’ve been really difficult.”

“’s okay, that was a long time ago. besides, now i get to experience all your creepy CGI movies for the first time right next to you, so it all worked ou— hey!”

matt rubbed the assaulted spot on his arm as if her little swat had actually hurt at all. (truthfully, he suspected that not even a human would’ve been bothered by her attack.)

“i’ll have you know this movie is a staple from my childhood,” she stated matter-of-factly. “so be nice, or else next halloween i’m making you watch monster house.”

⁺⁎˚

“the cookies should be ready by now, don’t y’think, love?” matt asked, nudging his girlfriend ever so gently in the ribs, making her giggle. “i might not be a christmas expert, but santa can’t visit if the place has burned down, can he?”

“yeah, yeah. i’ll go get them, you stay here,” she ordered.

moments later, y/n was padding back into the living room on her bare tiptoes— the only part her leg warmers didn’t cover— with a decorative reindeer plate full of warm strawberry jam cookies, lightly dusted with powdered sugar. she situated herself back under the blanket, setting the plate on her lap.

matt, eager to try one of the delicacies, reached for the one on the top, only to have his hand smacked away by an irritated y/n.

“ah! do i need to call the cops on you for domestic violence? because you just love hitting me today, hm?”

“only when you do stupid stuff. hands to yourself, silly.”

“but then how am i supposed to…”

his words trailed off as she lifted a cookie between two fingers, raising a brow at him expectantly.

“oh,” he grinned cutely, opening his mouth. his eyes fell shut of their own accord as the treat pushed past his lips, and he found himself savoring the taste. matt never really believed in love as an ingredient in baked goods, but he had to admit, he could taste it in y/n’s food every time.

“so?”

“they’re incredible, darling. really delicious, seriously.” his smile widened at her pleased expression, clearly happy with herself for having impressed him. not that she had to try very hard. “if i grab one of these, are you gonna hit me again?”

“mm. i guess not.”

matt’s hands reached into her lap, snagging the plate from her entirely, setting it atop his own legs.

“hey, wha—”

“sh,” he quieted her protests with a whisper, grabbing a cookie and admiring the adorable heart-shaped design for a second before his eyes flitted up to her face. the corners of his lips quirked up just barely, and then his free hand was softly gripping her jaw. “open up.”

y/n obeyed almost immediately, save for the half-second she spent processing what had just happened. then, she was chewing on the warm pastry, practically melting in matt’s grasp as his thumb swiped at the edge of her mouth to clean the powdered sugar there.

“good?” he asked after a beat. she swallowed.

“mhm.”

“told you,” he teased, now setting the plate on the coffee table and pulling the girl into his lap instead. he heard her heartbeat pick up in her chest, and he placed a soft kiss against her cheek just to hear it skip once. the movie on the tv had been long forgotten.

y/n’s arms wrapped around his shoulders securely, a happy sigh escaping her lips.

“merry christmas, matt.”

for the first time in many years, matt found himself smiling at those words. he held her tightly against his chest.

“merry christmas, darling.”

taglist: @toslayy @stylessuperwhore @sofieeeeex

[spidercatweb]

No Big Deal ★ Greg Sanders x reader

Warnings: none! this is fluff! gn!reader, new lab tech!reader, Greg being helpful and kind, they're so silly!!

Description: r is a new lab tech and breaks something by accident. r gets panicked about it but Greg helps clean up and reassures that it's okay.

Word Count: 607

Request: "Maybe you can write a fic where the reader is the new DNA tech, perhaps they mess up while running a sample and start to panic, but Greg reassures them and then helps them redo the test"

A/n: First Greg fic!! yippiee!!! hes such a silly guy and i love him and i want him so bad.. so here we are... fic about him! thank you so much to the person who requested this!! very cute idea :3

You're the newest addition to the team. Working in the crime scene investigation field has always been your dream, and you're finally there. You've been working with the Las Vegas Police Department for about a month now, and you're very happy with your placement, even if it's a little nerve wracking to be around so many experienced CSIs and lab techs.

***

"Y/N, are you able to compare these two hair samples?" Catherine stands in the entrance to the lab with two evidence baggies in hand.

"Um- yeah, yeah I can do that. Of course." You give her a smile and a nod as she hands you the samples. "I'll get the results to you as soon as possible."

"Thanks. See you soon." 

***

Greg is on the other side of the lab, running samples from different swabs. You take a moment to observe him, he's blasting music while mixing solutions. You think it's cute, but also a little annoying. Maybe you should invest in some earplugs. He sways and bobs his head to the upbeat tune, his messily bleached hair somehow looks good in the lab lighting. You try not to giggle when he starts mouthing the words of the song while dripping a sample onto a microscope slide.

You snap your focus away from him the second he looks up at you. You have work to do, no time for staring.

Once you start the DNA testing process, you're on a roll. You don't forget a single step, working quickly and precisely. All you have left to do is put the samples into the machine that collects their information. Easy. You walk the glass tubes across the lab incredibly careful- 

The sound of shattering glass interrupts your thoughts. One of the test tubes slipped out of your hands.

You quickly place the other tube into a secure holding spot in the machine before panic sets in.

"Shit, shit, shit." You drop to the floor to gather the shattered glass in your gloved hands. In the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of Greg heading right towards you.

"I’m really sorry, it just slipped out of my hand, I didn't mean to-"

"Woah, woah, it's okay." He crouches to help you pick up the broken glass. "Really, it's not even close to the worst mistake that's happened in this lab." 

"It's my first month here, I don't want people to get the impression that I'm clumsy or something. That's not a very good quality for lab work."

"It being your first month here just means you'll get better over time. I promise, I know that from experience."

The two of you stand up and place the broken glass in the garbage. You grab a paper towel off of the table to clean up the spill.

Greg puts out his hand, offering to take it. 

"Here, let me. You can get a second sample ready."

"Okay." You give him a thankful smile as you go to prepare another sample.

When you return, you walk even more carefully than before, using both hands to hold the test tube. This time, it successfully reaches its destination. You begin the comparison process in the machine with the press of a button and let out a relieved sigh.

"See? Everything's fine. No big deal." Greg gives you a reassuring smile. "If that happens again, just let me know, and I'm here to help. And I won't tell anyone about it. Your secret's safe with me." He winks at you before returning to his work on the other side of the lab. You feel your face heat up as he leaves.

Thank you for reading! <3

Feedback is very much appreciated!

My requests are open!

🪻

[nardo-headcanons]

Writing Scientist Characters

this post is mainly an excuse to post a certain list of lab supplies I've made for a friend and infodump about lab work. but feel free to use this as a little resource when writing characters who are scientists and/or lab nerds. who knows, maybe it'll be of use.

General thoughts

Many people think it's a stereotype that scientist or nerd characters talk using complex technical jargon. While that is true to an extent, there actually is some kind of lab jargon. It varies across different labs and fields, but one thing they have in common is that it seeks to simplify, not the other way around.

gelelectrophoresis becomes elpho

microbiology becomes mibi

deioninized water becomes aqua dist

biochemistry becomes BC

sodium hydroxide becomes NaOH

They will probably not call a glass of water "silicon dioxide and h2o".

...and more. feel free to get creative. If you're writing in any other language than English, you can throw in one or two anglicisms as well. Also, most scientists will never gatekeep their work, and in an opposite fashion, will not shut up about it unless you make them. And no, most chemists do not know the entire periodic table by heart, only the most relevant elements. (main groups and a few commonly used metals of the subgroups) When it comes to characters doing the lab work, keep in mind that there are a lot more people involved than the scientist themself. Most scientists are more occupied with paperwork and data analysis, it is the laboratory technicians and assistants that do most of the practical work. They often have more lab experience than the scientists themselves.

Things you can have your lab nerd character do instead of making random chemicals explode

writing a lab report (and losing their mind over excel)

degreasing the glass bevel stoppers

removing the permanent marker from beakers (labeling is important)

complaining about the lack of funding of [their field] research

cleaning glassware

preparing specimen for examination

googling the most basic equations for their report

checking if the glassware and utensil collections are complete

steal single use plastic pipettes from their lab

pirating expensive textbooks

A list of laboratory supplies and utensils you can have them work with

Laboratory general (chem + bio)

Erlenmayer flasks, beakers, precision scales (3 digits), glass rods, metal spoons/spatulas, screw on glass flasks (autoclave compatible) test tubes, stopcock grease, dispensers with sanitizer and hand cream, gas burners, heating plates, eppendorf pipettes, pipette tips, Peleus pipetting aids, squirting bottles, liquid and powder funnels, incubator/drying chamber, round watch glasses, magnet stirring plates.

Microbiology Autoclave, petri dishes, agar plates, innoculation loops (reusable and metal), clean bench, microscope slides, microscope, drigalski-spatula, test tubes with clamping lids

Histology

Paraffin bath, water bath, scalpels, scissors, razor blades, microtomes (rotating microtome, slide microtome and freezing microtome), histocinette, tweezers (various kinds), ocular

Biochemistry

Sequencing robots, eppendorf tubes, gelelectrophoresis chambers, centrifuge

Analytical Chemistry

Photometer, kuvettes, burettes, mass spectro meters, UV bank (for chromatogrophies), pyknometers, melting point meter, porcelain mortars, pH paper, analytical scales (4 or more digits)

Prep Chemistry

Tripod/standing material, miniature lifting platforms, spiral condenser, colon condenser, round bottom flask (three necked and y- necked), filtration material, Separating funnel

Electrical engineering

Electric generators, Soldering iron, Clamp connectors, plugin connectors, ohm’s resistors, plug in lamps, condensers, transistors, PCBs, amperemeters, voltmeters, multimeters

Mechanics

Tripod/standing material, metal hooks, metal rods, mechanical stop watches, marbles, metal springs, Newton meters, laser motion detectors

Optics

Prisma (various kinds), various glass lenses (concave, convex, biconcave, biconvex), laser pointers, optical bench, mechanical iris diaphragm, looking glasses, monochrome lamps, lamp filters

Most used chemicals

Deionized water, ethanol, NaOH, HCl, H3PO4, NaCl (+ physiological NaCl solution 0.9)

Useful websites for writing science stuff

DNA sequence generator (simple): http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~mmaduro/random.htm

DNA, RNA and protein sequence generator: https://molbiotools.com/randomsequencegenerator.php Annealing temperature calculator: https://tmcalculator.neb.com/#!/main

Medicine name generator: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/medicine-names.php Anything chemistry related: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=chemistry

Commonly used software:

MS Excel

Yenka

CASSY Lab

LabView

SpectraLab

LIMS

LaTex

Slack

Scientist friends, feel free to add onto this.

Have fun writing!