#return of Ghost's Gloves but Beans...

[hardware-sparks]

She's like if a cat got a human body. Which is true

[frudoo]

Just an itty bitty teeny tiny thought about biker 141 finding themselves the sweetest little pretty thing.... Most people are terrified of them for good reason, Price as the club president, Ghost as his VP, Gaz and Soap are two of their top guys. It's a sight to see them on or off their motorcycles but then there's you. The sweet little thing who runs across the boys somehow and instead of showing an ounce of fear, you give them a brilliant smile and talk sweetly to them. The boys decide then that you'll be their shared old lady.

Idk something about Biker!141 traveling through the states and meeting a pretty lil southern waitress with a heart of gold <3

Warnings: Reader's coworkers + most townfolk are prejudiced assholes. Mentions of food, and getting way too friendly with strangers (this is fiction, stay safe irl please)

The diner falls silent the second everyone hears the roar of the motorcycles’ engines coming to a halt in the front parking lot. The cooks start cussing, the parents start pulling their children closer, the busboys go to hide in the back. But you, a sweet, naive waitress on your first week, are completely unbothered. You greet the four huge, rugged men clad in leather jackets and dirt-covered jeans as they walk through the door, telling them to sit wherever they’d like.

     Your boss, wide-eyed and baffled, grabs the back of your apron and drags you into the kitchen. You brush her off with an exasperated huff, eyebrows furrowed at the middle-aged woman.

     “Steer clear of those men. I’m gonna tell ‘em to beat it,” she tells you matter-of-factly, wrinkled arms crossed over her chest.

     “Don’t be ridiculous,” you roll your eyes, retying your apron and shoving past her, out of the kitchen.

     You’re surprised to see that most of the patrons have left the diner, wads of cash left on their half-empty tables to cover their bills. All of this just because of some men that look a little different than them? It doesn’t sit right with you. You pull out your little notepad as you approach the table they chose, putting on your kindest smile. They all smile back—even the one with the weird mask has crinkles around his eyes, giving him away.

     “I’m so sorry about that wait. What can I start y’all off with to drink?” 

     “Waters all around, sweetheart,” the one with the mutton chops hums, closing his menu. 

     “Alright… and have y'all decided on food?” You begin scribbling on your little tablet of paper, nodding between each of their orders.

     The meatloaf special for mutton chops, extra potatoes, no green beans. A cheeseburger for the one with the mohawk, onion rings instead of fries. Fried catfish for the last two, with fries (because they have taste, according to the pretty one with the scar on his cheek).

     “I’ll have that right out for y’all,” you smile, giving them all a little wink before returning to the kitchen and putting their ticket on the line. 

     The cooks all give you glares, and your boss even gives you the cold shoulder, but you pay it no mind as you fill up four glasses with water and arrange them on a tray. As you balance the platter on your fingertips and make your way back to your table, one of the busboys sticks his foot out and trips you, sending both you and the waters sliding across the floor. You’re absolutely humiliated, pushing yourself up on your sore knees and dusting off your uniform as tears stream down your face.

     The one with the mask hurries over, offering his hand to help you back onto your feet. Your bottom lip trembles as you look up at him, a pitiful little whimper escaping your throat.

     “I-I’m so sorry about that, I’ll go get you new ones right now,” you sniffle, expecting him to chew you out.

     Instead, he cups your round cheeks in his gloved palms and thumbs away your tears, shushing you softly. Despite not even knowing him, you allow yourself to melt into his touch.

     “No apologizin’, lovie,” he grunts, “No’ your fault. Tha’ fucker always givin’ you trouble?” 

     “Hm? Oh, n-no, not usually,” you explain, carefully pulling away to clean up the mess on the floor. “Thank you- um…”

     “Simon,” he introduces himself, giving you a nod before going to sit back down with his mates.

     You mutter his name under your breath to remember it as you drop the broken glass in the garbage, drying off the tray and placing four new fresh glasses of water onto it. This time, the journey to the table is successful, and you hand each man their drink with a polite smile, still slightly embarrassed. They all make it a point to thank you with more enthusiasm than is needed, and the ones you don’t know introduce themselves as John, Kyle, and Johnny. 

     When the bell dings, signaling that their food is ready, you suck in a deep breath and place their dishes onto your tray, praying that this one won’t get dropped. Thankfully, you make it back with fully-intact plates, thanking the heavens that the cooks had sense enough not to burn the guys’ meals. You’re about to turn and allow them to enjoy their food, but John spreads his legs and taps one wide thigh, signaling for you to take a seat. You’re not entirely sure why you do it, but you comply, and he wraps an arm around your waist as he eats and converses with the group. 

     They’re all good company, constantly telling jokes that get you giggling, or pushing flirty little remarks your way. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy the attention, but eventually your boss comes over to snatch you off of John’s lap. You can practically see the steam coming out of her ears as she drags you into the kitchen once again, face red and eyes wild with rage.

     “You’re fired,” she grits her teeth, forcefully undoing your apron and pulling it off of your body.

     “Go to hell,” you retort. "You'll fit right in."

     You don’t let her see, but your eyes are blurry with tears as you grab your purse from your locker and shove your way out the front door. You’d forgotten how chilly it was outside and now you’re shivering as you pull out your phone to order an Uber. When you hear the little bell on the door jingle, you flinch, half-expecting it to be your old boss coming out to hit you with a broom. Instead, a warm leather jacket is placed over your shoulders and a strong arm pulls you against a firm body.

     “Jus’ me, dove,” Kyle grins, rubbing your arm with his hand in an attempt to warm you up quicker. “The lads’re takin’ care o’the bill. Be out any second.”

     You nod and rest your head on his shoulder, protesting only half-heartedly when he takes your phone from your hands and cancels your Uber. 

     After a few moments, the other three men pile out of the diner, adjusting their gloves and wiping sweat off their brow. John sniffs and smiles at you warmly, pointing towards where their bikes are parked. Kyle helps you put his jacket on properly as he walks you over, and all four of them line up next to their respective rides. You shyly sway in place as they look at you expectantly.

     “Well, hen? Take yer pick.”

[the-kr8tor]

hiii katy. i am officially obsessed with cowboy!hobie and i'm pretty sure i've read everything anyone has ever wrote about him at this point. so here i am asking for more. i have no thoughts - brain empty- but him using his lasso... so maybe? pretty please?

(hope you're having a magnificent day/night <3)

I'm glad you like cowboy! Hobie!! Thank you for requesting, I hope you like it ❤️

Pairing: Cowboy! Hobie Brown x fem! reader

Word count: 1.5k

Tags: no use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, cowboy au, wild west au, cw suggestive, cw food mentions, cw blood and injury. FLUFF

ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ

The smoke from the campfire signals life from just under the cliff edge facing the raging rapids. Pink and orange hues illuminate the vast dusty plains of the west, tumbleweeds pass by with the blowing winds; and the quiet prevails with no one else but Hobie, his trusted horse, and hopefully you waiting under the belching grey smoke.

He fixes his hat on top of his head, piercings glimmering as he smirks triumphantly. Your cat and mouse chase has finally come to an end, all the running and hiding comes to a close when he spots your seated form next to the campfire. The fiery embers illuminate your features, shadows dancing on your pretty face, eyes shining under the destructive fire.

“I was waiting for you.” You flick your eyes over to his form, lips curling into an amused smile. “Your meal's getting cold.”

Hobie chuckles under his breath, the reins under his gloved hand tightens in his hold. “What's for supper?” His horse huffs, hoof kicking dirt and dust.

“Rabbit, specially caught for you. And some beans to remind you of your old country.” You stand up, dusting your pants.

He sucks in his teeth, eyes glancing over to the river nearby. “I don't miss the old country that much.” When his green eyes return over to you, you're sitting on your horse, grinning from ear to ear. His hands slowly reach for his lasso.

“Oh I'm sure you miss something.” You send him a flirty wink. “Me perhaps? Don't pretend you don't like the chase, Hobie.” Your horse neighs in agreement.

He smiles, a ghost of amusement flickering from his jade eyes. “You've had me runnin’ after you for about four months now, love. Sorry for not playin’ along today, just a bit tired is all.” He clicks his tongue to make his horse step closer to yours. His hand wraps around his lasso on his belt.

“Oh poor bounty hunter.” You coo sweetly.

“You know what happens next. You have to come with me, love.”

You feign a tired sigh, your grin says otherwise. “If you tried your luck tonight we would've done just that. Well, after dinner of course, I'm a romantic, you see.”

“I would have said yes but your three grand bounty makes me think twice.” Hobie tamps down a laugh, heat prickling his cheeks. He has found that you've had that effect on him. “You know me, job comes first.”

“That's too bad. Maybe on our next date then!” Rearing your horse, you make her kick the boiling pot, spilling its hot contents and the heated coal all over the ground, startling his poor horse. You leave him in the dust once again.

Hobie bites his lower lip to stop an excited guffaw from escaping. He follows quickly, right after he briefly calms his startled horse.

Wind nips at his cheeks as he jumps over broken down trees, dodges rocks and cliffs, and soon after, he sees your form in the distance. With victory already in his grasp, he takes his lasso, swinging it expertly over his head. Calculating his throw, he aims, lasso flying over head.

“Wha–!” The rope cinches around your torso, wrapping you in its rough hemp, making you fall off your horse harshly on the dusty ground. “Fuck! That hurt, Hobie!” Head throbbing, you hear footsteps running frantically towards you. Instead of meeting with the end of a pistol, you feel his warm hands gently hold you. “Ow. Was that necessary? I thought we had something going on, cowboy.”

Hobie takes his gloves off to examine your bleeding forehead. There's a cut just above your brow, but other than that, you're alright. He sighs in relief, hands still carefully holding you in place. If not for his lasso around you, you'd think your handsome bounty hunter actually cares for you.

“Sure, I'm alright, Hobie, nothing to be worried about.” You sarcastically say, one eye closed as blood ebbs from your cut down to your eyelids. “I just hit my head, no biggie—!” The second you meet with his worried eyes, you clamp down. Hands suddenly clammy, mouth turning dry, and stomach doing somersaults, you haven't seen him this close to you. His eyes are greener than anything you've ever seen, pools of the greenest of clovers; and face chiseled to perfection. He looks wonderous in this light. And surprisingly, he looks like he actually cares. “Shit.” You say under your breath, flirty exterior crumbling around his boots. Your voice wakes Hobie up from his lovestruck gaze.

He clears his throat, palms now hovering above your arms. “You look alright.”

Light lines up with his head, an orange halo appears, bathing him in its glow. “I think I have a concussion.” You swallow down your sudden bashfulness.

His brows furrowed, hand tentatively reaching for your chin to carefully check you again. “Does your head hurt?” His voice is soft, and his hand is warm and softer than you thought despite his callouses. You think it all adds to the mystery of the famous bounty hunter right in front of you.

His touch alone almost made you want to surrender. Almost.

You flutter your lashes, “do all the men back in England look just as good as you?”

Hobie lets out a chuckle. A simple act that has the butterflies in your stomach fly wildly. “Just a handful of us.”

“I'm lucky then.”

Hobie squeezes your chin, for a moment, a comfortable silence hangs in the air. You could sit there forever and just look at him. He feels the same way with his fingers brushing along your bottom lip. The river behind continues to flow, water crashing loudly against the rocky river beds just a jump away from the cliff behind you.

Suddenly, his horse neighs behind him. Popping the bubble of affection around the two of you. Hobie clears his throat, and you look away, flustered. He takes his hand off your chin to help you off your feet wordlessly. Tying the lasso around you, he keeps his hands to himself, or tries to as you watch him with your eyes that are practically shaped like hearts. A trait that is unheard of from a feared outlaw like yourself.

“I have to bring you in.” He sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

Arms bound to your sides, you tilt your head to meet with his downturned eyes. “D’you have to, hm, cowboy?”

Hobie straightens up, lifting your head up with his thumb pressing under your chin. He leans close, stealing the breath from your lungs. “I'm not a lawman. So I don't have to.”

You smile sweetly, “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

Hobie chuckles deeply. “But three grand is enticin’.”

“More enticing than me?”

Hobie inhales sharply, as if he's trying to restrain himself. From doing what? You suppose you have to find out.

He makes a move to walk away to grab your horse, but you stop him with your hands grabbing at his belt buckle, fingers wrapped around the cold metal as you yank him closer to you. Your arms might be bound, but your hands remain free to your sides.

“Why don't you answer my question, cowboy?”

Hobie's eyes flick over to your hand, heart thudding loudly in his chest as he bracelets his fingers around your wrist. His thumb brushes along your pulse point, feeling your heart sync with his own.

“Because you'd love my answer to that, love. But my debts won't.”

Leaning close, you reach his lips with your own floating dangerously close above it. Briefly, you both stand there, indulging in each other's presence. Feeling like you two are the only people left in the whole world. A life with you flashes in the back of his mind. And your vision fills with only him.

With pursed lips, you slowly let go of his belt buckle. One finger at a time. “Okay then.”

Hobie feels like you've stolen his heart right there and then. Fitting well with an outlaw. Hell, he'd even let you keep it since your heart is in his grasp too.

“‘Okay?’”

You shrug, backing away. “Yeah, okay.”

“Just like that?” His fingers linger on your skin for a second. You're a mystery to him, a mystery he'd like to get to know better.

“Mm-hmm, just like that.”

Hobie blinks, shaking off his doubts. “Stay there.”

“Yep, staying right here, cowboy. Not going anywhere.”

With him walking off towards your horse to hitch it with his own, you waste no time to run off towards the edge of the cliff.

“Shit!” Hobie scrambles to get to you as you jump off. His fingers graze the ropes, and you even have the audacity to wink at him as you plunge down towards the cold water. He yells after you, watching the water with his quickening heartbeat, waiting for you to resurface. “Fuck!” Starting to take off his hat and jacket, he prepares to jump after you. “Hold on!”

Before he could dive, he sees you waving at him as the currents carry you downstream. He sighs in relief, muscles relaxing, chuckling to himself.

“See you later, cowboy!” You yell at him, floating down like you're having the time of your life. Blowing a kiss at him, your eyes stayed on him whilst he watched you go until he's barely a dot in your vision.

He hears your horse gallop away, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. His horse nudges him with his snout, huffing and puffing at him. You've won once again.

“See you later, love.”

[callofdudes]

Hi this my first time requesting, if you do head canons, can you do ghost head canons where he has a crush on you. Please?

Hello 👋 of course I can do that for ya ☺️ I hope you are satisfied with them.

Ghost has a crush on you.

Ghost wouldn't pick up on it right away. He was very sheltered as a kid and romance wasn't his main concern, even as a teenager. He joined the military early on life so the thought of a relationship absolutely NEVER occured to him.

He starts to pick up little signs though. Whenever you smile his way or greet him in the morning he can feel his stomach twist in a way it's never done before. You start to become a big part of his daily thoughts and he starts to purposefully seek you out.

When you first join the task force he isn't sure about you. He's a man built on trust and constant betrayal so you're a threat to his environment. But you are on the softer side. You start to bring him tea in the morning when he's stocked high by paperwork and start idle conversation during training.

He starts to realize that a lot of things he would do alone start to include you.

He found himself excited to spar with you in the morning or to join your table in the lunch hall. Every small thing you do makes him feral in a way he's never experienced.

It's platonic, but the first time you hold his hand he's a disaster. A. Fucking. Disaster. He wants to swat you away and curse you out for touching him without permission. He wants to pull away and find a corner where he cannot be bothered. And another part of him drops his shoulders and sits/stands there in bliss. The feeling of your warm palm soaking through his gloves. How you grasp his hand so firmly and yet it's so reassuring.

Ghost doesn't understand his feelings so he often gets frustrated with you and himself. He'll mutter and even yell at himself sometimes at night about what he was letting you do to him. Whatever it was. He'd lay awake in his bed thinking of you and all the conversations you'd had that day as his stomach drops in this weird way.

Tries admitting himself to the ICU for heart problems after you giggle at a very sarcastic joke he makes.

You're not dating yet but you for hell better treat him right. Bean is very hurt on the inside and it'll take a lot of nurturing for him to come clean to you about his affection.

He's scared when he takes off his mask in front of you and the others. Of course the others were seeing his face for the first time excepting Price. But something about the way your eyes locked. You looked over every scar. His jaw, his throat and his messy untamed hair. He almost felt ashamed. He felt so small until you smiled and nodded in what almost looked like approval.

Refuses to show you again though, even if you ask.

Being completely unsure of his emotions he grows protective over you. He has become very alert of when other men talk to you or when women give off a flirty remark. It makes his insides hurt and it confuses him as to why he cares.

Now, when he does figure it all out, he cannot, and will not come forth. You could kiss him on the lips and he won't say a word.

He physically can't say 'I love you'. Not because it isn't true, but he's never heard it said to him before, and he's never said it. He doesn't know love or how to love. He's scared of commitment and hurting you.

So instead he'll start leaving little notes and gifts in your sector. He'll watch from his desk filing paperwork as you walk in with a smile and a box of mints in your hands.

When you get hurt out on the field he panics. He does everything he physically can do protect you on missions and is even more alert on stakeouts. If there is a threat to you better rest assured Ghost is putting himself between you and the threat even if it's a fucking train.

What you do for him, he starts to do in return. He is always up first so when you get up and make it to your desk, Ghost is already there with a warm cup of coffee for you. You always see the way he stiffens and his eyes light up when you thank him.

Scary guard dog privileges.

Going on nightly patrol? He's your shadow. Going to a secondary base? He's your shadow. Bring harassed or annoyed. He's your fucking shadow.

It took a while of back and forth of witty remarks and hour long conversations but eventually you manage to confess to him. You were terrified because Ghost was a rollercoaster of mixed signals that whole time.

"I love you, Simon Riley."

Literally just stared at you.

And then slowly nods his head.

Your getting nervous at this point. Does he like you? Does he not like you? Is he about to kill you for saying such a thing? What do you do?

Simon over there is sweating bullets because. What does he do? The most beautiful person in the whole world is staring at him with love and adoration equal to a puppy and has just confessed to having the same tumbling stomach syndrome as himself.

"me too."

"You like you too??" You gulp.

"No! Me- you! You and me- fuck. I feel the same. I think. But I'm not sure yet."

You understand. He's a bit shy suddenly, surprisingly. He gets the hang of the whole boyfriend thing with your help. Though he's certainly an extraordinary man.

Has never kissed so when you roll up his mask and place your lips upon his... HOLY FUCK. Do it again. He's got no damn clue what he's doing but he will hold your neck as if you are glass and try to bring you ever closer.

He will suffocate himself on you until he's literally forced away. His new favorite thing to do is kiss you. Every chance he gets he'll kiss you. (Hates PDA though.)

He's very touch starved so you have a lot of work to catch up on.

I hope this works! I will die on the hill that Ghost is clueless at first on how all the love stuff works. ❤️

[stargazingellie]

lazarus is risen

chapter five: the theseus problem

(masterlist) (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

hello beautiful people! here's the fifth installment :)

synopsis: After deciding to let Abby live, Ellie has returned to Jackson. But given everything she's lost, it no longer feels like home. She's sad, she's confused, and above all else, she is so, so very lonely. So when a group of strangers shows up and offers her a second chance, she might just take them up on that. Ellie must decide between staying in Jackson – and living with the ghosts of her past – or leaving in search of new meaning. Whatever she decides, her choice will have far-reaching consequences – not just for herself, or for Jackson, but for all of humanity.

Or,

Ellie saves the world, maybe?

(ellie williams x reader, post-tlou2, useless lesbians, slow burn, cross country road trip, lots of references to greek mythology, etc.)

Theseus: Legendary Greek hero known for his many deeds, including slaying the Minotaur in the Labyrinth of King Minos.

[Lucy]

As she packed their belongings next morning, Lucy noticed the large water jugs in the back of the truck bed were beginning to run low.

“Hey, is there a river or something around here? We could use a refill,” she said, motioning to the jugs.

Alvaro pulled a map out of the glove compartment and held it flat against the side of the truck. He pointed to a spot near some intersecting highways and said, “We’re right outside of Cheyenne. Looks like there’s a big lake a few miles north of the city. Some kind of nature reserve, maybe. Could be worth checking out.”

Within a few minutes, they were on their way. Lucy settled into the middle seat with her feet propped up on the armrest in front of her. To her right, Ellie let out a wide yawn.

“Hey, no yawning allowed,” Lucy teased. “How’d you sleep?”

“Alright,” Ellie replied, trying to stifle another yawn. “Just haven’t slept outside in a while.”

“Well, we’ll have to find you some coffee or something.”

Ellie scrunched her nose in disgust. “God, no. Anything but coffee.”

Lucy laughed. “Okay, not coffee. How do you feel about tea?”

“Better than burnt bean water.”

Lucy looked at her inquisitively. “You know tea is just leaf water, right?”

Ellie shrugged and smiled, looking out the window. “I said what I said.”

A short drive later, they got their first view of the lake in question. A large building with a glass roof stood on its shore with tall trees and long vines growing out of holes in its shattered roof. On the side of the road was a weathered sign whose letters were still barely visible:

Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Visitors Entrance

“A botanical garden! Alvaro, did you pick this just for me?” Dr. Reynolds teased. Alvaro stayed silent as he drove, but in the rear view mirror Lucy could see a small smile creep onto the officer’s otherwise stern face.

When they got out, Alvaro and Jacobs immediately retrieved the large jugs from the back of the truck. As they made their way to the edge of the lake, Lucy asked, “Can we help at all?”

Keeping his back to her as he dipped the first jug beneath the water, Jacobs said flatly, “No, we’ve got it under control. We’ll get going after an iodine treatment. Just sit tight.”

Lucy shot Ellie a knowing look and rolled her eyes. “That’ll take at least half an hour. Can we walk around at least?”

“Sure, just don’t wander too far. Stay within earshot,” Jacobs replied.

Dr. Reynolds pointed to the path skirting around the lake. “It looks like there’s a nature walk along the shore. There are signs posted about local flora and fauna.” He began down the path to the right without bothering to see if anyone was following. “You know, plains wildlife is incredibly fascinating due to its…” His words became unintelligible as he walked away, leaving the two girls standing alone together.

Lucy looked at Ellie, who seemed amused by the older man’s behavior.

“He really loves his job, doesn’t he?” Ellie asked.

Lucy watched her father as he became engrossed by the leaves on a nearby tree. “Yeah, he does.” She looked around, taking in their surroundings. “There’s a sign that said ‘Labyrinth’ that way,” she said, pointing down the path behind them. “That could be interesting, right?”

Ellie shrugged. “Yeah, I’m cool with whatever.”

Lucy gave the other girl’s arm a playful nudge. “Well don’t sound so excited.”

Ellie laughed. “Sorry, sorry.” She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “I have literally never heard something more interesting in my entire life. Is that better?”

Lucy grinned. “Much. Let’s go.”

As they walked, they came upon the large building with the glass roof. Around the back, a large door stood ajar, revealing the overgrown foliage within the building. Lucy stopped and peered at the towering plants inside. 

Coming up behind her, Ellie motioned to a sign just inside the entrance pointing towards the gift shop. “Think there’s anything good in there?”

“If you’re in the market for a souvenir t-shirt, maybe,” Lucy replied.

“You wanna check it out?” Ellie asked.

Lucy suddenly felt her pulse spike and palms start to sweat. As much as she loved the idea of getting lost among the dense greenery, the enormous plants blocked most of the sunlight coming from above, making it especially dark in the shadows.

“Oh, uh, I don’t know, Jacobs said not to wander,” she said uneasily.

“Okay, no worries. We can keep walking,” Ellie replied nonchalantly as she turned back towards the path.

Lucy’s eye caught on the faint scars lining Ellie’s arms from past encounters. She looked at the worn backpack slung over the other girl’s shoulders, and at the canvas shoes which seemed on the verge of falling apart. Everything about Ellie indicated that she had lived a long life outside the protective walls of a QZ – exactly the opposite of Lucy. Lucy suddenly felt incredibly insecure, and – though she couldn’t quite explain why – felt like she needed to prove herself to Ellie. Impress her, even.

“No, wait,” Lucy blurted out. “We should look around. There could be some useful stuff in there, right?” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

Ellie casually reached into her belt and pulled out a pistol. “Yeah, could be. You have a gun?”

Lucy reached in her bag to retrieve her weapon. “Oh, uh, yeah.” But I’ve never needed to use it, she thought to herself. 

Ellie stepped through the door and said, “Alright, c’mon.” Lucy took a deep breath, then followed Ellie inside.

From what they could see, the main room was empty. The only noise was the sound of a light breeze rustling the impressively large leaves of the overgrown plants. As they quietly made their way through the aisles of the exhibit, Lucy became transfixed by the girl in front of her. Her strong arms, the tattoo on her wrist. The way the green light of the foliage brought out the green of her eyes. Lucy shook her head to snap herself out of her thoughts.

They came to the wide entrance of an adjacent room whose contents were completely obscured by the thick offshoots of a low hanging tree. Ellie stood to the side and pulled back a branch to make a small hole. “Ladies first,” she said with a playful smile.

Lucy met her gaze and felt a sudden warmth rush to her cheeks. She returned a shy smile and ducked under the branch. When she stood up, she noticed a large fern to her left. She pointed to the plant as she turned around and whispered, “Look, you’re matching!”

Ellie made her way under the branch and rolled her eyes. “Ha-ha, very funny,” she whispered back, flashing a grin.

Suddenly, Ellie’s grin disappeared as her eyes caught on something over Lucy’s shoulder. Lucy spun back around and saw exactly what Ellie was looking at. Lucy almost let out a small cry, but before it could escape her Ellie’s strong hand clamped over her mouth. Ellie kept a strong grip on her as they watched a clicker pass just a few feet in front of them.

Lucy’s heart was beating so loud she was surprised the infected didn’t attack them right then and there. Lucy felt Ellie’s chest pressed against her back, and noticed the other girl’s heart beating just as hard. They stood there, frozen, until the clicker was far enough away and Ellie could loosen her grip.  Ellie quietly replaced her gun with a knife, and gave a stay here signal as she moved away from their hiding spot. Lucy watched Ellie silently follow the clicker,  put it in a chokehold, and sink her knife hilt-deep into its neck. She slowly lowered it to the ground as it gave a few final twitches. Once it lay still, Ellie gave the O.K.  for Lucy to follow.

Lucy made her way over to where Ellie stood, heart still pounding. “Thanks,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Don’t mention it. Look,” Ellie whispered as she pointed across the room to a doorway labeled Gift Shop. “Almost there.”

“Almost there,” Lucy repeated, more to herself than to Ellie.

After carefully making their way through the overgrown aisles, Ellie slowly pried one of the Gift Shop doors open. Lucy flinched as the door gave a loud creeeeak, but nothing stirred. On the opposite wall, glass doors leading back outside allowed sunlight to spill in and cast a warm glow around the room. Ellie investigated the wall to their right as Lucy wandered to the left, letting her fingers trail over the racks of clothing. She made her way to a display near the register, which held packs of wildflower seeds organized by climate region. She found the packets labeled Southeastern United States and tucked them in her bag.

A voice came from right behind her and made her jump. “Find anything good?” it asked. Lucy spun around to find a pair of green eyes looking down at her.

She laughed at her own jumpiness and replied, “Yeah, I found some wildflower seeds. What about you?”

Ellie held up a t-shirt that read:

I SURVIVED  THE CHEYENNE LABYRINTH

“I win,” she said with a smirk.

“Woah, okay. Didn’t realize it was a competition.” Lucy took the shirt and held it up to inspect it. “Guess we really have to see this labyrinth now, huh?”

“You know, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this.” Lucy frowned.“I mean, they could at least have a Minotaur statue or something.”

She and Ellie walked along the edge of a circular clearing. In front of them lay concentric rings sandwiched inside of each other, forming multiple circular paths. Knee-high strips of grass formed buffers between the cracked cement walkways.

“A Mino-what?” Ellie asked.

“You know, the half-man, half-bull who lived in an underground maze. The Athenians had to sacrifice kids to it until some guy named Theseus killed it.”

Ellie winced. “Oh, yikes.”

“Yeah. Its mom fell in love with a bull and gave birth to a monster. There was nothing else to feed it so it just ate people.” Lucy shrugged. “The Greeks were unhinged like that.”

“Yeah, that’s one way to put it.” Ellie thought for a second, then said, “You think it knew what it was doing?”

Lucy furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if it’s half-human, do you think it felt bad about hurting other humans? Like was it aware of what it was doing?”

Lucy pondered her question. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it like that. I hope not. I mean, he didn’t choose to be born like that, right? It just happened to him. It’d be kind of horrible if he was just stuck watching himself do those things without being able to control it.” She shook her head. “I can not believe you’re making me sympathize with a cow right now.”

Ellie held up a finger. “Half-cow,” she corrected.

Lucy rolled her eyes and gave Ellie a playful smack on the arm. “You know what I mean.”

As they meandered their way through the rings, Lucy stopped abruptly at one of the cracks in the pavement. Weather and time had worn away at its edges and loose pieces of cement lay scattered around the seam. She crouched down to inspect a golf-ball sized chunk in her palm.

“That’s some interesting, uh… cement,” Ellie said.

Lucy remained silent for a moment as she gazed at the object in her hand. Memories of her brother floated around her head. “Do you think people are like that?” she asked, almost inaudibly.

“Like… what?”

She tore her gaze away from her hand and peered up at Ellie. “When people get infected, you think they’re still in there?”

Ellie’s face fell as she understood what Lucy was asking. “I don’t know. Maybe for a little bit, but I hope not.”

Lucy looked back at the object in her hand. “Yeah, me too.” She placed the piece of cement in her bag as she stood up. “I hope I never have to find out.”

Ellie pursed her lips and nodded in agreement. As they walked back towards the truck, Lucy felt Ellie nudge her shoulder.

“Sooo… what’s with the cement? You building a road or something? ‘Cause you’ll need more than just that piece, you know.”

Lucy smiled to herself. “No, it’s for, uh… it’s for a collection.”

“A… cement collection?”

Lucy laughed. “No, wise guy. A rock collection. I know it wasn’t really a rock, but it’s close enough.” She paused before continuing, “My brother… he used to collect them around the QZ and from little research trips our dad took us on. Said it was a reminder of everywhere he’d been. After he died I started doing it to feel closer to him and I just… never stopped, I guess. It sounds dumb when I say it out loud, though.”

Ellie shook her head. “No, it’s not dumb. It’s… sweet.” She smiled warmly. 

Lucy felt herself blush and quickly averted her gaze. “Thanks,” she smiled.

They rejoined the rest of the group just as the water jugs were being loaded back onto the truck. Dr. Reynolds smiled at them as they approached. 

“You missed out on some very cool trees. Did you see anything interesting?”

Lucy looked at Ellie, who raised her eyebrows as if to say, You wanna tell him? 

“Uh… no, pretty uneventful,” Lucy said. “Visited the Labyrinth over there. Pretty underwhelming.”

“Ah, bummer. Did they at least have a Minotaur statue?”

“No! Can you believe that?” Lucy laughed.

Alvaro locked the gate on the back of the truck. “Alright, we’re good to go.”

They all climbed back into the cab of the truck and took their usual seats. As they pulled out of the parking lot, Lucy resumed her usual position with her feet on the middle console. And, as usual, three people squished into the back seat meant her and Ellie’s bodies were forced to touch. 

Un-usual, however – and slightly unnerving though not entirely unpleasant – were the butterflies Lucy felt in her stomach because of it.

[arotechno]

O. basilicum, part v

This is the secret about grief: somewhere between the ages of ten and thirteen, Basil stopped thinking very often of his parents, or of Ace, or of Swallow’s Point. It wasn’t that he didn’t miss them—but it was a longing for a home that did not exist any longer. It ached, deep within the open well of his chest, but only in the way that his knee still seized up on him from time to time, never to truly heal.

He still didn’t know what had become of his parents. The price you paid for harboring a Heartless child was said to be a steep one. Do not speak of it, they’d told him. You’ll bring death upon this house.

Don’t speak of it. That was how it always was, wasn’t it? You can live as you are, just live it in silence. You’re still human, just defective. Hide who you are. Know your place. Keep quiet, and never speak the truth aloud. You’ll ruin us all.

A sharp snap pulled Basil out of his thoughts, and he looked down at his hand to find that he’d crushed the beans he’d been shelling in his fist. Damn. He hadn’t realized he’d been gripping them so hard.

Basil pushed the anger and frustration down, way down. He didn’t know if his parents had heard tales of the curse that had been said to plague him, or if they’d have sent him away if they did. It wasn’t something they ever discussed. Basil never even told them about Ace—one’s own child was a different story, but someone else’s child whom they had no real reason to protect? Well, there was no telling what they would do.

It was better not to know. It was better to assume they were as good as dead rather than ask questions, like why they’d never come looking for him. Better not to face the possibility of rejection. Better to let ghosts continue to be ghosts, haunt him always as they may.

Basil returned to shelling beans. Looking around the garden, it seemed no one had noticed his minor episode.

This was the other secret about grief: it never actually got any smaller. You simply had to grow around it, like a meadow around a line of sharp brambles. Eventually, it didn’t seem like the only part of you anymore. It became easier to ignore, and most days, that was just fine. But touching it was just as painful, even still.

Frida said Basil was growing like a weed. Dusty always disputed this, saying that she should choose something more respectable, like a poplar tree or the humble spinach, but Basil didn’t mind the comparison. Wildflowers were like weeds, after all—hardy little things, growing where they may not be wanted, but beautiful all the same.

Basil grew up around the pain, sprouting like summer grass and digging his roots into Verdigris’ fertile soil. After three years, the vestiges of his old life were likely lost forever, but no amount of hurting was going to change that.

A shadow loomed over Basil. He looked up from his work and saw Dusty standing over him with a tin cup of water outstretched in one hand, the other clutching a pair of dirty gloves.

“Break time,” they said.

“I’m not done shelling.”

“Don’t care. Drink.”

Begrudgingly, Basil accepted the cup and took a sip. The water was still cool, having been kept in a canteen in the shade all afternoon. The weather was growing cooler and the days shorter, but the sun was still warm most days.

Dusty settled down in the dirt beside Basil with a grunt, leaning back against a fencepost. They removed their sunhat and let their long hair spill out, then dropped the hat onto Basil’s head.

“I don’t need to rest,” Basil said.

“Maybe I do, and wanted company. Besides—” Dusty gave him a side-eye “—you were shelling aggressively, and you usually have steadier hands than that. That’s why I asked you for help in the first place.”

Basil sighed, staring at his hands in his lap. His fingernails were caked with grime, dirt smeared across his palms. He clenched them tightly, then released them, feeling the anger wash through and away from him like a hot breeze.

“I’m alright,” Basil said. “It was just… I got upset for a moment, but it passed.”

Dusty just hummed and reached for Basil’s unfinished basket of beans. So much for needing a break.

Basil often came to help Dusty or the others with the community garden. Dusty had a passion and a knack for gardening, and the arrangement gave them someone to share that knowledge with and Basil something to keep himself and his fidgeting hands occupied. Plus, it got him out from under Frida’s feet for the day. It was a win-win situation.

“You’re allowed to be upset,” they eventually said, tossing a shell aside. They worked much faster than Basil had. “You’re a traumatized thirteen-year-old. Who is telling you not to be upset?”

“Me,” Basil said without thinking.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be angry. I don’t like the way it feels. It feels like someone else is controlling me, and I can’t stop it.”

Basil sank back into the quiet of the garden. There were only a few others milling about, mostly down by the far gate, but the admission made it feel as if the whole town were watching. The setting sun cast the sky a dusty pink to match the blush rising on Basil’s cheeks.

“Basil,” Dusty said, “you just have to accept that this is who you are.”

“What if it’s not?” Basil looked up at them pleadingly. “What if I don’t want it to be?”

“Then you can change, if you try. But shoving it all down inside of you isn’t going to help.”

“Did you do it? Change, I mean.”

Dusty laughed. “Kid, I’m changing all the time. I left my family behind years and years ago, because I could only stay with them if I denied and hid everything about who I was. It was hard, and it isn’t fair that I had to burn my whole life down to build one I was happy with. But it happened. And I don’t regret it. I regret that life is unfair. I definitely regret that somebody ever tried to hurt you for being who you are. But I’m becoming who I want to be more and more every single day, and that I don’t regret one little bit.”

Pensive, Basil clutched at the hem of his sweater, uncaring of the dirt. “I know who I am,” he said softly, more to himself and to the plants than to Dusty. “I’m Heartless, and there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“No way! Me too!”

Basil scowled. “Dusty, I’m being serious!”

“Well, have you ever given a really good shout about it?”

“What?”

“Now, it’s my turn to be serious.” Dusty grinned, nudging him with their elbow. “Go on, let it out. Nobody will care. I promise you’ll feel better, I do it all the time.”

There was a chance it was a prank. But Dusty wasn’t the type to embarrass Basil like that—at least not when he was already upset. So Basil shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it all flow out of him like water in a stream.

“I’m Heartless,” he shouted, “and there’s nothing wrong with me!”

“Atta boy, Basil,” Dusty cheered. “Again, louder!”

Basil staggered to his feet and leaned out over the garden fence, shouting into the day’s dying light over the hillside.

“I’m Heartless, and there’s nothing wrong with me! I know who I am, and no one can hurt me!”

Once he started, Basil found he couldn’t stop. At his side, Dusty had also gotten to their feet and was whooping and hollering along with him.

“They tried to get rid of me,” Basil continued, “but I don’t care! I know who I am and I won’t let them stop me. I’m going to be happy. I’m going to get better! And I’m going to do it on purpose!”

Basil cut himself off and opened his eyes, panting. He felt lighter, but raw, like those spiny brambles had snaked their way out of his ribcage through his mouth. Down at the other end of the garden, a few looked on amusedly, while others cheered him on in return.

“There we go,” Dusty said. “Feel better?”

Basil stood quietly for a moment, looking out beyond the garden’s edge at the setting sun. Then, his face split into a grin, and he nodded. It didn’t feel like a revelation. More like a reaffirmation of what he already knew, a moment of striking clarity that although the anger and sorrow of grief would creep up on him from time to time, he did not have to be defined by it.

The past was in the past. He could let it stay there, even if he would never truly be free of it.

On his way home that evening, Basil stopped by Hank’s door. When the man opened up, Basil asked, without greeting, “Do you remember when you first took me to the Ridge, and you said you would take me anywhere I asked? Back to my hometown, if I wanted?”

Hank blinked at him for a few moments, and then chuckled.

“Yes, I remember. Why?”

“Well, I’m not going back. I don’t want to leave Verdigris. I’m staying.”

Hank cocked his head. “I’m happy to hear it, kid, but I thought that was pretty much clear already, seeing as you’ve settled yourself in here so well after three years now.”

“I know,” Basil said simply, before turning on his heel and marching himself home, cane in hand, leaving Hank to scratch at the top of his head in bewilderment before chuckling to himself and going back inside.

[magalidragon]

Hi bby, for the ask game.

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

🎃 Do you write fics for certain holidays? Which is your favorite holiday inspired fic?

Bonus (cause you know I'm greedy 🤭)

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

Thank youuu!

Because I know you love it. 🥰

Let’s do this!

🥺: Any interaction where Jon props up Dany and encourages her or supports her no matter what she’s facing. I get so emotional and want to scream 😂 I also have to say any time a bébé is involved with those two.

🎃: Hahaha easy answer— I LOVE holiday fics. Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Halloween, Flag Day….give me a holiday fic and I’m in Heaven. And my fav holiday fic? Really? We all know it’s “bad santa” 😂 Those beans are my fav.

🤲: Oh I wish I had more of a snippet to post but you know it’s been bonkers 😂😂😂 from “Priceless”, chapter 2.

"You're doing it wrong!"

"No, put it there!"

"That's not right, stop!"

Jon threw his hands in the air, irritated beyond belief at his ex-wife. He was just trying to <i>help</i> and here she was tearing apart the map, subjecting it to chemical tests and gods knew what else to see if there was something else hidden on it. They were going stir crazy to begin with, since it had been over a week since they set off for the search and were finding nothing near the coordinates that the map indicated.

He growled at her. "I'm trying to help you, so check <i>there</i>!" He jabbed linen glove-clad finger on the parchment corner, where they'd attached the newest piece to complete the map. Dany, on the other hand, was insisting on combing the upper corner that had already been studied, because she said any code would be there, based on past Valyrian maps with codes.

"You're not helping, you are in the way!"

The yacht stateroom they'd turned into a lab was too small for both of them and all the equipment she'd dragged onboard with her. He made a face. "Fine. I'm going to go dive, we're finishing the sonar sweep of the area."

Dany sniffed, returning to the map. "It won't be there."

He didn't disagree with her. The map was hiding something; he just couldn't place it. He stood beside her silently, staring at the bottom portion. He narrowed his eyes on the jagged tear that separated the map he'd grown up with; with the new piece added on. Dany had adhered it together via some sort of material, the lightbox it was placed on shining up through the thin paper.

Except it was darker there.

He pushed his glasses down from where he'd used them to keep his hair out of his eyes, zeroing in on that section. He ran his fingers on the corner, brow furrowing. After a second, he stopped.

He felt like he was being watched. And not like Ghost watching him when he took a piss or walked around naked.

Very slowly, he lifted his eyes, and spotted her. Oh, she was trying to hide it, but when he put his glasses on she’d paused, and started looking at him. He chuckled.

Oh Dany. Dany, Dany, Dany.

Jon was going to have fun with this.

[analyzingadventure]

Ghost Game, Episode 21, The Spider’s Lure

SO AFTER WHAT THE OFFICIAL ACCOUNT SHARED ON TWITTER, I AM CONCERNED

Is the bastard boy back. Is the big meanie returning this episode. What the fuck is gonna happen to cause that

On a happier note, ARUKENIMON RIGHTS! HELL we’re even gonna see the human form from Zero Two! (Thanks Twitter preview, I guess)

Anyways here we go

Oh those are some creepy eye-- OH GOD

Fuck that’s creepy

So uh, we have like. At least one (1) canon human casualty in the series so far. But that was an accidental death, a tragedy.

Are we now upgrading to straight up murder

OH. OH THOSE SOUNDS. OH NO

OH NO. OH JESUS.

THE BABY GLOVES HAVE COME OFF I GUESS

I WANT TO BE HAPPY AND GUSH ABOUT SEEING HER PRETTY LITTLE FACE AGAIN BUT I’M TOO FUCKING HORRIFIED RIGHT NOW

Such a pretty young lady... Full of human meat... :(

You’re not sus at all honey, not sus at all... (You know atually, considdering the red outfit you could make an easy Amongus joke here)

You know, before the episode aired I was joking with friends how now all GG has to do is bring back Doctor Mummymon (with his PHD) and have these two befriend and everything would be amazing, but... Alas... Mummymon was a sweet bean... I don’t want these two to meet anymore... ;_;

Ah, so they’re using “Archnemon”... I do prefer that localization too, since that is the correct way to spell to root word here, but I heard the “Arukenimon” localization was like a tribute to SMT so I had somewhat switched to that... Sorry I find localization just fun to ponder about, anyways back to watching the kids get eaten alive I guess

Oh great, we also got bunch of Dokugumon here, just a big ol’ Spider Family

She’s so spoopy ;___;

Oh look, those displays there, they kind of remind what Kaiser had going on for him... What a cute reference... Haha

Oh, there’s survivors still...

YUP. WE HAVE A BODY COUNT. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

How many fucking Dokugumon are in this facility, jesus christ

Oh no they’re all caught

Oh jesus, fuck

DO NOT EAT THE BABY BOY’S BRAIN (does he even have a brain)

NO

NOO

NAUGHTY BOY IS BACK, OH BOY

I mean I guess at least the Baby Boy will live to see another day

Oh boy... These she goes...

“It’s not time yet”, wat

Wat

Baby Boy is back! But wat

BLACK GALGOMON?!

WELL.  THAT WAS AN EPISODE.

Next episode... A Kiyocchi episode? Seems like fun. No clue what Digimon will show up. Honestly I am okay if the next episode is a bit lighter so I can have more time to fucking recover from this one, because jesus fucking christ

[sugasugawarau]

Haikyuu!! as Texts my IRL Friends Have Sent Me

Because my friends are stupid (sorry, I meant comedical geniuses) and I love them 😽

Warning(s): Nothing except for the highs and lows of unfiltered idiocy and some swearing

Karasuno

。Daichi: Don’t get me wrapped up in your polygamic mess

。Sugawara: One Direction split into 5 directions 😍

。Asahi: Please stop triggering my fight or flight response I’m begging you ;;

。Nishinoya: Me but in French = bonjwhore💕

。Tanaka: CAN’T A MAN HAVE A WAIFU SHRINE AND A BODY PILLOW WITHOUT BEING THREATENED BY THE FBI

。Kageyama: You see the problem isn’t going to sleep, it’s the waking up part that’s the real issue here

。Hinata: Hypothetically if people were candy,,,what flavour would we be?

。Tsukishima: I like being mean to him

。Yamaguchi: God needs to open his Animal Crossing game and see how badly things have gone since he left

。Yachi: I accidentally ghosted my counselor 💔

。Kiyoko: He’s intellectually hot and politically informed but I don’t like men

Aoba Johsai

。Oikawa: No I didn’t hand in my final project I burned it out of spite because she doesn’t deserve any of my effort 😋💕

。Iwaizumi: I could fight him or I could just show him a mirror and he’d go blind from the ugliness of his own reflection; important thing is either way I will win

Nekoma

。Kuroo: Thank u, am pusyslayr

。Kenma: You should sell both hand and feet pics to double your income (capitalist king)

。Yaku: No because fuck you

。Lev: Who said I don’t wanna get stabbed 🤔 You can’t speak for me I know my rights

Fukurodani

。Bokuto: There was a bunch of glove boxes at work today and I said “how glovely” but you weren’t there to hear me :((

。Akaashi: My personality is carried by my deteriorating mental health and my motivation is being sustained solely on caffeinated bean water

Shiratorizawa

。Ushijima: Was no one going to tell me that white strawberries exist? People can grow white strawberries..I want to do that

。Tendou: Daddy Phil is dumb...Dummy THICC 🥴

。Semi: Call me Mr. Worldwide because I am currently ✈️going thru it✈️

。Goshiki: They always say GOshiki 🚶‍♂️👈 but never STAYshiki 😿🤞

Inarizaki

。Kita: Technically I don’t have a mom okay I raised myself

。Suna: (In response to “I’m not a hoe”) Hoekay

。Osamu: Not to be a gourmet chef or anything but do you ever get so tired of thinking that you just want to deepfry the shit out of your brain

。Atsumu: I’ve never felt so turned on (to a photo of David Suzuki as a thumb)

【Return to masterlist】

[shadow--writer]

Bittersweetness

Julian x mc (no pronouns used!) -- set in universe -- after upright endish

Word count: 4.5k

TW: none!

Tags: hurt comfort, fluff, angst, loneliness, Julian works too much, a little spicy at the end but nothing nsfw

~~~~

Some days it was hard for me to fall asleep. Some days it was even harder to wake up. Julian was always out or working, leaving me with the small ache in my chest as I thought about him. 

He was working when I fell asleep at night and was gone when I woke in the morning. 

Some days I’d wait up for him, reading and practicing spells. He’d come through the door, smelling sweet like mint and cinnamon and bitter like medicine. His hair would be a ruffled mess, eyes tired and sagging. Purple bags made permanent residence under his eyes and his lashes would brush his cheeks lazily as he blinked. 

Tonight I pretended to be asleep when he came in. Just to see what he’d do.

His voice was thick with exhaustion as he watched me pretending to sleep. “Ah asleep again,” he whispered, peeling off his gloves and boots. Off came the shirt and pants and then his sleepwear.

He never wore anything much during the summer. Just some low hanging pants a friend made for him. Venezuela was always sticky and too hot during the summer months making wearing anything else a chore. 

The bed sighed under his weight as he sat down, running a hand through his hair. There was a small chuckle from him, it rumbled from his chest and sent a spike of warmth threading through my stomach.

“Hey there sweetheart,” he said, scooting closer to me. He brushed my hair out of my face. I struggled to keep the peaceful look on. He planted a gentle kiss against my forehead, combing my hair away from my face and across my pillow. “I love you, you know. Even if I can’t be around as much...work is picking up now that the clinic is being talked about. More and more housecalls and people getting sick.”

There was a sigh as he settled into bed, arms wrapping around me. His legs tangled into mine, his nose buried into the back of my neck. His breath was warm against my skin. I let out a small sigh myself, sinking into his touch.

“I promise I’ll take a day off soon. I just need some time...to get back into things,” he murmured, lips ghosting my neck. “Thank you darling. Thank you.” A whisper. A breath. 

And he was out. 

I let out a small gasp of breath, feeling warm tears slide down my cheeks. 

I missed him.

I missed him so much it hurt.

~~

He was gone when I woke up. The only sign he was really there was the small cooling dent in the bed and the feeling of breath on my neck.

I got to my feet, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. It smelled like him. Like leather, cinnamon and coffee. Something bitter lay under all of it. Something bitter coated my tongue and heart. 

As I moved to the kitchen I noticed that the apartment smelled nice. Like honey and coffee beans. 

I shuffled into the kitchen, tears springing to my eyes when I saw he made coffee and breakfast. The source of the good smell. By my plate of pancakes was a little note. His handwriting was messy as ever but over time I learned to read it. 

Hello my love,

Sorry I had to go so early. I swear I’ll be home earlier tonight. Things are getting very busy and I might need to hire new help soon. Which is both exciting and scary I’ll admit. 

I hope you like this peace offering of mine. Pasha taught me how to make these. It was a lot of trial and error. 

I love you more than the sun in the sky darling dear of mine. One of these days I’ll prove it to you. 

See you tonight. 

Yours,

Ilya

I held the note to my face, tears stinging my eyes. Weeks. It had been weeks since we really talked. Talked without one of us sleeping or pretending to sleep. 

I kissed the note softly, bringing it down to hug while I sat down. 

The coffee was sweeter today. He knew how I liked it. The pancakes were perfect if a bit toasty. I smiled a little. He wouldn’t stop until they were absolutely perfect. Even if I was happy with how they were now. 

My smile faded at the edges as I looked out the window at the rising sun. The day was already warm and sticky. It always was like this in the summer. Couldn’t catch a break. 

I knew Julian was right next door. Easy enough distance to go. 

But he was probably busy. He always was. 

I finished my breakfast, getting up to wash the dishes and think for a moment. Spotting the rest of the dirty dishes in the sink I knew I had a few good hours of washing with my thoughts.

As I scrapped off the plates I thought about what I could do. I could try making him lunch and bringing it over. 

My heart fluttered at the thought. 

Yes. That’s what I’d do. Make him something too. 

I quickly finished up the dishes in the sink. Forks and spoons went into their drawers and I set a few pans on a towel to air dry. 

Tucking the dish I held into a towel I set to work. 

I knew he liked warmer lunches and soups. Even in the summer. But there was something said about eating something that left a trail of warmth as you ate it. 

I was no Mazelinka but I knew he’d appreciate the sentiment. 

I got to work on a sweet potato mushroom soup. We had extra potatoes that I didn’t know what to do with. So what better way to use them than for lunch?

I peeled and mashed the potatoes, slicing up the mushrooms with care and a small hum. I grabbed a clean pot, setting it to simmer over the stove. In went the potatoes then spices. It made the house smell like butter, cumin and sweet potatoes. While I waited for that, I sliced up some plain bread with sharp cheddar. 

I made lemonade and tucked it into a cooling glass. I had extra, maybe I’ll freeze it and make lemon popsicles to share later today.

I quickly made my own lunch, standing back to admire my hard work. Breathing in I coughed a little. The air was stifling already and it wasn’t even noon yet. 

But soon his lunch was ready. I packed it into a paper bag, hoping he’d be there so I could give it to him myself. I quickly got dressed and tugged my shoes on. It was a quick trip next door, then I’d go to the market to get things for dinner. 

He...he probably wasn’t going to be back in time for dinner anyways. 

I bit my cheek as I pushed my way inside the clinic. Inside was the same as always. Large bookshelves filled with different books ranging from research to adventure novels. Kids lay on the ground with little toys and colouring books as they waited for their checkups. 

The secretary brightened when he saw me walk in. “Ah! Dr. Devorak is in his office around back, you made it just in time he just finished up with his last patient before housecalls!”

I blinked, and then smiled. “O-Oh thank you! I brought lunch for him.”

The secretary’s eyes sparkled with mischief as they took in my barely thrown together appearance. “I’ll keep people away for as long as I can,” he said with a wink making me blush. 

“No need we won’t be doing much! I’m just bringing him lunch.” Another smile. “Just lunch.”

“Whatever you say. He’s back in his office, last door down the hall.”

Face red and heart racing I whisper another thank you and move down the clinic quickly. There voices from some of the other doors, but I ignored them, knocking gently on the door labeled ‘Devorak’.

“Ah yes? Come in! I was just heading out to lunch!” Julian’s voice. 

My heart skipped a beat at it. We were both awake this time. 

I pushed the door open a bit more with a smile. “Hey darling,” I said. His eyes went wide, and he broke out in a grin. 

“Sweetheart! Y-You came to see me!” I closed the door with a small click, making his eyes jump to the sound. His cheeks warmed but he still smiled. “Mmm and what’s that smell?”

“Lunch. I made you something. And of course I came to see you, you silly duck. The shop is closed today for restocking. Asra was going to drop by later to help out so I’m free.”

“And you made me something to eat?” His eyes welled up. “Darling you didn’t have to do that!”

“I did. And I won’t be taking no for an answer.”

“At least eat with me!”

My eyes widened a fraction. I did bring my own lunch, I was going to see if Portia wanted to eat with me and then go around the market. 

But now that this opportunity appeared…

“Are you sure? Don’t you have work to do?”

His face was ashen pale. He really needed sunlight. “No no I’m on my lunch break now! Besides, I’d like to spend this time with you. I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

I bit my cheek from snarking at him. It wasn’t his fault, but it still hurt. 

Even so, I smiled softly. “Yeah. I’d love that.”

He grinned, patting the chair next to him. I sat down, handing him the paper bag. “Mmmm sweet potato soup?”

“I warn you I’m no Mazelinka-”

“Darling, you made this, making it even more special to me.”

I turned away with a smile, my cheeks warming. “It’s nothing special.”

“It is for me. And it smells so good, darling you are a wonder.”

I giggled. “Well you already made breakfast for me so I thought I’d return the favour.”

He kissed my cheek, digging in. 

I ate as well, slowly to savour these stolen moments with him. We talked about this and that. The leech dealer and her wife. About the different kids that would come in. How excited he was to get his day off and spend it with me.

“Where would we go?” I asked at that question.

He stopped talking, his hands dropping what they were doing. “Huh?”

I tucked my legs up into the chair under me, scooting closer to him. His eye twinkled. “Where would we go?”

“Well...I was thinking we could go for a boat ride in the fixing up flooded district.” He was leaning in closer to me. 

“And then?”

“After rocking the boat with some fun activities…” I let myself smile. I had an idea what activities he’d do in that poor little boat with me. “We’d go for a walk up in the meadows right outside town. Into the fields and by that great big willow tree by the stream.”

“And?”

“We’d have a picnic! We’d fool around in the wheat, maybe play hide and seek.” I giggled. That sounded lovely. “And once it gets dark I’ll take you down the stream and up this little rock formation I found. There we’ll stargaze together before you fall asleep and I have to carry you home.”

“And when I wake up at home all cozy in our bed…?”

He kissed my forehead, then moved to kiss my cheeks. “I’ll hold you. Cuddle and talk together. Run my hands through your hair, press your body against mine. Never let you go. We’ll fall asleep like that together and in the morning wake like that together.”

“Then I’ll get up first and make breakfast.”

“I’ll come down tired and grumpy that you left me.”

“I’ll kiss you as an apology and give you your coffee and we’ll talk some more.”

He kissed my nose, my browbones. “After breakfast we’ll call on some friends and go out together and maybe stay the night with them.”

“Going to the Rowdy Raven for a pint first.”

“Of course.”

I laughed, throwing my mouth open and my head back. He grinned at the sound, kissing my chin and the skin just below. “I love you,” he murmured. 

I let out a small hum, brushing my hands up his arms. He shivered at the small caress. I opened my mouth to respond. “I-”

“DOCTOR!” The secretary burst in. He caught my eye, and winced with apology seeing where we were positioned. I didn’t feel embarrassed. 

Just...sad.

“Ah! What’s wrong?” Julian snapped back, getting to his feet. I watched it all unfold, hurt snapping through my bones. 

“House call. Broken leg. Fell off a horse. Bone is sticking out. Mother is frantic with worry. Kid is fifteen.”

Julian winced, quickly packing his bag. “Tell her to wait a moment and I will be right there.”

He turned to look at me. I must’ve not been hiding my hurt very well because he frowned. “I’m so sorry darling I’ll make it up to you-”

I waved him off, forcing a smile. “No no! I can’t ask you to pull away from a kid in need. Go on and help him. I’ll be here.”

His eye swam with worry and concern. “I’m still sorry, my love. I’ll be home tonight. Early. I promise.” He kissed my forehead, and hurried out the door. 

I knew that was a lie. Things always got bad after dark. The night got sticky and warm. Heat strokes, bar fights, sneaking out. He wouldn’t be back until late.

I looked down at my lap, at the empty dishes on his desk. At the mess of paper and messy handwriting. My picture was at one end of the desk, another frame of us together next to it. Our friends all smiling at the ocean. 

I curled my knees to my chin, looking at the door he left from. 

“I love you,” I whispered to nothing but air.

~~

Dinner went cold two hours ago. I put away the leftovers an hour after waiting. I fell asleep soon after that, angry and bitter at the world for taking him from me like this. 

I missed him so much that it was clear on my face. 

I startled awake at three in the morning from a dream. A good dream or bad dream I didn’t know. I just knew I trembled alone in the dark, my skin clammy with the summer heat and my own sweat. 

My cheeks were stiff with the salt of unshed tears as I got to my feet. I pulled socks on over my toes, trying to keep as quiet as possible when I snuck down into the kitchen to get some water. 

Julian was fast asleep on his side of the bed, legs sprawled out like a starfish. He looked peaceful and I didn’t want to disturb that. 

It was a nightmare I decided. I had a bad dream. My stomach was tied in knots and my hands still trembled as I got water from the sink. My tongue was coated in something bitter and I just felt...empty. 

The bad dream aches would go away soon, only to be replaced with the almost homesick feeling.

I loved him. Don’t get me wrong I loved him so much. 

But I didn’t know how much longer I could keep going without hearing his voice in the morning, eating with him just...being with him. 

I stood by the counter, swaying my hips a little as I drank water. The water washed away the stale taste in my mouth but did nothing to help the bitter feeling. My hands slowly stopped shaking and my body stopped aching as I moved. 

“What’re you doing up so early?” I stopped what I was doing, turning to see Julian running a hand through his hair. His pants hung very low on his hips, his feet bare. The moonlight seemed to make him glow. His eyes softened as he looked at me. “Bad dreams?”

Wordlessly I nodded. 

He crossed the distance between us, wrapping me up in a hug. “I know I’m late to comfort you. I know I haven’t been the best in these last few days. These last few weeks,” he whispered to my hair. 

I didn’t say a word, not wanting to interrupt this moment. I just closed my eyes, breathing him in. We swayed a little, rocking from foot to foot. 

Then he pulled away from the hug, letting my hands slide down his arms into his waiting palms. He held my hands gently, slowly drawing me into a slow dance. 

Letting one hand go he spun me. The movement was slow, his other hand brushed my hip. A whisper of a question. 

When I stopped spinning I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him in closer. Almost immediately his arms went around my waist, his face buried in my neck and mine in his. 

His hands shifted my nightshirt up, his fingers cold as ice against my sticky warm skin. I let out a small gasp, making him smile. 

Squeezing my eyes shut, I leaned into the touch. His fingers danced up and down my sides, running down my ribs and resting on my hip bone. I pressed a soft kiss into his neck making him let out a small gasping breath. 

“I want you,” he whispered. 

“I want you,” I responded. 

“I’ve wanted you for so long. Here. In my arms. With me. Alone,” he said, kissing the side of my neck and my jaw. “Soft touches and kisses. Just you and me. I want...I want to touch you.”

“Touch me then,” I breathed, my voice seeming to come out in a gasp. 

He smiled, kissing my cheek. “As you wish.”

His hands moved from my sides to my face. Down my shoulders and arms. His fingers were so cold, but they felt nice against my clammy skin. His brows were pinched in worry, love and guilt shining in that eye he always kept covered. 

“It must’ve been one hell of a nightmare,” he said, brushing at my cheeks with his thumbs. 

I nuzzled into the touch making his breath hitch. “It must’ve been but I don’t remember it now.”

He brushed a kiss at the spots he touched. I wanted to huff in annoyance. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to spin me out of control until all I could see and touch and taste and feel was him. 

We danced around the kitchen in slow swaying movements. He was humming a slow bittersweet tune. One that made me feel as he did. 

He was guilty. He hated leaving me alone. Leaving me missing him as he missed me. 

He pulled out of my touch, bringing my hands down to his face. He planted small kisses on my palms and fingertips. Then following the trail he lay with his fingers he kissed up my left arm. My skin tingled with goosebumps at the touch of his lips. 

He pressed soft kisses on the inside of my wrists, tongue flicking over the veins and skin. He was gentle with me. Oh so heartbreakingly gentle. 

He moved up my arm. To my forearm and then my elbow. His lips were a ghost over my skin, making me arch my head back as he moved. 

Farther up my arm now, kissing my biceps and the soft skin right before my underarms. Then he planted kisses on my shoulders, nipping at the skin there. The muscle where my shoulder met my neck. When he bit down softly I let out a gasp, my hands tightening against his arms. 

He smiled, tongue flicking over the spot as he resumed kissing up my neck. When he reached my face he planted one final kiss on my jaw and left me craving his warmth once again. 

Holding his hands I swung our arms up and down a bit as I planned my move. He was here with me. I had him all to myself in these quiet moments in the morning. The moon was our only witness, the only light to see him by. 

He was strong, my Julian. Broad shoulders and strong arms. Broad chest leading into a small waist that I could wrap my arms around so easily. A face with strong lips always with a smile on them. Grey eyes. Grey eyes filled with so much adoration for me it hurt. Messy auburn hair falling around his face in soft waves. 

I haven’t gotten to look at him, truly look at him in a while. 

I repeated what he did to me moments prior. I kissed his hands. His large calloused hands that had seen so much blood. Helped so many. Let go of more. His breathing hitched as I kissed each of his fingertips. 

I kissed his wrists, biting softly at the skin there, just kneading it between my teeth for a heartbeat. His heart thudded softly. Soft feathery kisses up his forearm and against his elbow. Up his biceps, pausing at each scar to give it it’s own kiss. 

“Oh darling,” he breathed. 

I said nothing, just kissed his shoulders. “You have very cold hands,” he whispered as I ran my hands up his chest. 

I kissed the skin of shoulder meeting neck, raising my eyes to meet his. “I should say the same about you.”

He chuckled, the sound cutting out as I took the skin between my teeth. “Oh,” he said, his voice turning into a soft moan that warmed my stomach. 

I let it go too soon, and I knew it was too soon when he let out a small huff. Hiding my smile with more kisses I moved on. 

Up his neck, biting softly and kissing as I went. He squirmed a bit, hands moving down to my waist. Fingers drummed along my hips, drumming to the tune of his choked hum. 

I came to the spot I knew he liked biting best. The muscle behind his ear, meeting his jaw. I kissed it softly, before biting down. 

The noise he made sent sparks through my veins. A breathy mix between a sigh, moan and groan. 

He made it again when I flicked my tongue over the spot I bit. 

“Careful now darling,” he breathed, chest heaving against my fingers. His heart thudded so quickly against my touch. “I might just need to have you noooooooo-” he let out another moan, cutting himself off as I bit down on the spot again. 

“Hush now my love,” I whispered, moving on to kiss where his jaw met his ear. He let out another hum of pleasure. 

“Mmm I love you,” he whispered. 

I planted a kiss on his jaw, his cheeks, the tip of his nose. The bridge of his nose. I had to stand on my toes to kiss his forehead, him bending down to the touch. 

“I love you too,” I whispered as I kissed his temple. 

“Mmm kiss me,” he murmured. 

I let out a small giggle. “I am kissing you.”

His eyes snapped up to meet mine. “No I want a real kiss.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Please.”

The pleading tone of his voice made me pause. I grinned, making him wilt a little bit, the two of us still swaying and shifting our weight from foot to foot. 

“Say it again.”

“Please.”

I held his face in my hands. “One more time?”

“Only if you say it back.”

I giggled. “Please?”

He didn’t respond, just kissed me. I didn’t care that he didn’t say it again. I didn’t care that I felt sticky and warm. 

I just cared that he was here with me. 

I moved my hands from his face, wrapping my arms around his neck again. He leaned into me, making me hold onto him for balance as he pressed me against the counter. 

His lips were needy. Begging mine. Pleading with me. They whispered things we left unsaid. They whispered apologizes and littles pleas. 

I only hoped mine held the answers. 

“Darling,” he said, lips brushing against mine with the word. 

I slowly opened my eyes, he was so close. So close. So heartbreakingly close. Illuminated by moonlight he seemed like some ethereal being. 

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “Julian...you don’t have anything to be sorry for. You got caught up in work that’s f-fine.” My voice caught on fine. It cracked. 

He knew it wasn’t fine. 

“You stuttered,” he said, nuzzling my face. “That means you’re lying. It’s not fine. I know it’s not fine.”

“But-”

“Let me finish. I got caught up because everyone is getting hurt all the time. There aren’t many doctors or help in my clinic. I really do need to hire.” I let out a breathy laugh. “I’ll set that up tomorrow. I swear it.”

“You haven’t come through with your promises as of late.”

He kissed my cheek. “I know and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. For not...trying.”

“Darling you of all people have nothing to be sorry for!” He sounded offended. 

I offered him a small smile. “But I do. I didn’t try. This is a two way street. If I want something I need to give something in return. I love you Julian, and I’m sorry for not trying. Not trying to see you. Not trying to see if you can take a break.”

“Sweetheart. Love of mine. My darling. Dearest. You understand how important work is to me, and that’s why you stayed away.”

I looked away. “I do. But I still care about your wellbeing and I should have said something.”

There was a small rumble from him. A chuckle. “We both should have to be honest.”

I laughed. “Yeah, we should’ve.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

He took his face out of my cheek, kissing me softly. “For loving me. The mess that I am.”

I didn’t argue with it. He was a mess.

And so was I.

“Thank you for loving me. All my broken pieces,” I said, pulling him closer. “And for helping me find my pieces still missing.”

He kissed me again. And again. 

“Broken is not the same as unfixable my dear. And you are wonderful and perfect no matter how many pieces seem to be broken or missing.”

I sealed my mouth over his, breaking away after a few moments of just enjoying how he tasted. Smelled.

Felt.

“Well Dr. Devorak. I’m here now. With you.”

His eyes lit up with mischief and something more. “Alone…” he said.

I kissed his cheek. “So what are you going to do about it?”

He picked me up, making me let out a small squeal. I wrapped my legs around his waist, clinging to him like ivy. His arms fell back around my waist, squeezing my butt making me laugh. 

With another sweet kiss to my lips he whispered, “I guess we’ll have to see.”

The door to our bedroom clicked as it closed. 

[giorno-plays-piano]

The Void

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x mutant!Reader

Warnings: yandere, obsession, HYDRA’s experiments, brief mention of suicidal thoughts, captivity, home invasion, stalking, kidnapping.

Words: 2381.

Summary: Once an ordinary human, you keep running away from both HYDRA and Avengers, knowing what your powers will be used for. The problem is the Soldat picking up your trail.

P.S. The reader is somewhat dark-ish in this one.

________________

Carefully slipping inside the laundry room through a broken window, you landed on the cold concrete floor and shivered, hoping you could find a really warm blanket somewhere upstairs.

Although you still felt a bit ashamed breaking in the houses of other people like that, at this point it was the one and only alternative you had. Of course, there was always an option to submit to HYDRA or whoever else was hunting you down, but you didn’t really appreciated it, simply trying to stay away from both heroes and villains since to you they were all the same. You knew perfectly well once somebody captured you they’d be using you for murdering other people.

Thankfully, laundry room wasn’t locked, and you started wandering the house, peeping into each and every room. Watching photos of the family the house belonged to, you felt guilty again. These people weren’t at fault you were homeless and chased out from every damn place on the Earth, but you still took what was theirs just because you could find no other way to live. Well, at least you tried to leave the place as it had been prior to your break-in, except a broken window in the laundry room and canned beans you’d eat.

God, you could kill for a bowl of homemade chicken soup. You barely remembered eating it before HYDRA captured you a few years ago. Of course, they didn’t try to starve you there, but you couldn’t call what they’d been giving you real food either. Thinking of your cell and those meals made you squeeze your eyes shut and take a deep breath. Everywhere was better than there, so you needed to put your shit together and take whatever fate offered you.

It was getting late, and you glanced at the tiny window in the basement, wrapped in a big grey comforter you brought from upstairs. You never slept in the rooms of other people, not knowing when the rightful owners of the houses you broke in could come back. Generally, you didn’t have problems with people, either escaping before their return or finding your way out secretly without them knowing somebody was hiding in their basement. However, sometimes you had a feeling people hunting you were coming close, and you didn’t risk getting too comfortable. Today was one of those days, and you bit down on your lower lip. These ones were probably not HYDRA operatives - they’d never risk attacking you at night when your powers were at peak. Nevertheless, it didn’t mean whoever was coming for you was harmless. You had to be prepared.

That’s it. Somebody was approaching, you could feel it in your bones. It was probably the one and only thing you were grateful to HYDRA - you were nearly invincible in the dark.

Silently leaving the comforter on the floor near an empty can, you got up, moving to stand near the wall behind the door, hardened black mass blocking tiny windows and leaving the intruder only one way to get in. You hoped they weren’t bringing explosives as you still had a hard time compressing the darkness around them - a month ago it resulted in some serious damage done to the house where you were hiding.

But this time was different: there was only one man who came for you, A strange man, though. He had a metal arm, and his body… It was something you had never felt before. The man was like that Duracell bunny they showed in TV ad, enhanced to the point he was barely human, probably.

But he was still just a man, now all alone with a monster like you.

When he entered quietly, leaving the door barely open, you blew it off its hinges. You had very little patience - now you would have to have a sleepless night, trying to find a new hideout as far as you could from this place and hoping HYDRA wouldn’t track you down. Its operatives were way more creative in their attempts to catch you: that mirror box trapping light nearly killed you last time.

Wrapping your fists into black mass like boxing gloves, you punched the man, but he quickly moved away, apparently, more skilled in combat than you were. Well, whatever, you thought as the darkness disintegrated on top of your skin, and then the intruder got a direct blow to his stomach without you getting near him. Coming to you at night was a suicide.

You kept beating him down until he dropped to the cold floor of the basement, beads of sweat and blood shining on his skin as you pinned him down, completely unharmed. You did your best to avoid the vital organs, but it was probably unnecessary - you could literally feel the soldier regenerating while he laid down, staring at the ceiling. Was he HYDRA’s creation just like you were? Or did good guys make beasts like him, too?

“I won’t do anything to you,” you told him, coming closer to look into his surprisingly handsome face, “but I’ll kill whoever you send to catch me next.”

“HYDRA’s… coming after you.” The soldier muttered, coughing and wincing from pain as you towered above him.

“You or them, doesn’t matter much.”

A part of you felt remorse for beating the stranger so bad he couldn’t rip the restraints holding him down despite his enormous strength, but the other part made you remember you were the victim, not him. The only thing you ever wanted was living like a human being, not a lab rat or a weapon of mass destruction used by whoever hold you hostage.

Besides, if this guy didn’t know the nature of your powers before attacking you, now he certainly did. It was unwise to let him live - he would definitely let his masters know - but you couldn’t force yourself to end him. Killing wasn’t nice. You had never enjoyed it.

“Avengers can protect you.”

What? Did the man work for them, then? You smirked, shaking you head.

“Avengers can’t protect themselves. Now please be quiet and let me leave. We’re done for today.” Turning your back at him, you went to grab your backpack and then put a few cans in it to continue your journey, tired and upset you couldn’t rest despite travelling all day long.

“I can help you.”

You abruptly turned to face him still chained to the floor and clenched your teeth. This was what HYDRA’s men were telling you year after year. Helping you, that what they were doing.

“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to plant spikes right through your tongue.” You hissed at him, going back and watching him with his pretty mouth finally shut. “If you wanna play a hero so much, go wipe HYDRA out and forget I’ve ever existed.”

The soldier stayed silent, and you exhaled angrily, marching through the basement to the stairs and quickly going up. God knew how many people could be waiting for you outside of the house - Avengers were usually gathering together on the missions, even you knew that from occasionally seeing them in the news.

Shit, it was going to be a long night.

________________________

One more month was gone as you continued to run and hide like the world’s top criminal, chased out of many cities where you could find peace for at least a couple of days. Now it was mostly one-night sleepovers anywhere you could find. You finally understood what being a mad dog meant - sometimes you thought you could kill for those canned beans you hated so much before.

Slowly, but surely you were running out of options where to hide. The only place now was the forest surrounding that little town where you relocated after your brief encounter with HYDRA two days ago. Forest was a bad place to be. You had very little skills allowing you to survive out in the wild for long. The more you thought about that, the more you realized you had, in fact, only one option left.

Suicide. Only then you could become truly free of that mad chase and ensure no one would use your abilities for killing others. You already had enough blood on your hands.

And still, when you though of black spikes piercing your head, you were shaking. It would be so much easier if somebody just shot you when you weren’t looking.

Huh, what a cruel world you lived in, you thought while finishing a can of chicken ham - God, you didn’t even remember when you ate something so delicious. It was harder to imagine killing yourself after a good meal, but you still considered the option, looking at the carpet with a dull expression on your face.

You were euphoric after your escape from that facility where you were held, and now you were thinking maybe it was better to just wither there like all those countless men and women before you, unable to contain their enormous powers in pathetic human bodies. What was the point of being so strong if you couldn’t have your life back? What were these powers for except the destruction? You’d gladly exchange your fantastic abilities on a chance to return home to your family. That is, if HYDRA let it be, which was unlikely.

You blinked, tired to the point you barely felt your own body. If they’d decide to come for you now, you probably couldn’t dodge the attack this time.

But it wasn’t HYDRA who came for you - with a syringe in your neck, you suddenly fell down to the floor, watching the handsome face of a man who had seemingly emerged from the wall behind you like a ghost. What was that? Was he like you, too? You didn’t sense it in him the first time, but maybe the soldier was more dangerous than you anticipated. Well, he certainly was, you thought as he carried you upstairs like a firefighter escaping the burning house. Would he lock you down in a cell, too? Would he let his masters experiment on you for the sake of humanity? Would he kill you once you closed your eyes?

Before the soldier reached the front entrance, you had already lost consciousness under the influence of the drag he injected.

The darkness that followed should had been calming, soothing, as you only felt safe in complete darkness, but you couldn’t find your peace: it was cold and lonely and scary when you were falling down deeper and deeper into the black void. Did he kill you, then? Was it the end? Would you spend your eternity in the dark?

It certainly felt like eternity before you woke up, still in the middle of nowhere, but feeling a soft mattress beneath your back. Your arms and legs hurt - it felt like you were tied up to bed. However, the fabric of your clothes was nothing like the ones you wore before the assault. It felt soft, and smelled pretty nice, too.

But you still saw nothing, nothing at all. Everything was pitch black.

Were you in a dark room? A cell? Whatever, you could work with it, you though and called the darkness as if it was a part of you.

And nothing happened.

You called again, then once more and once more, but the darkness didn’t free you. It didn’t answer to your plea - it wasn’t there at all.

Suddenly, you realized there was no darkness surrounding you as you heard a subtle buzz of dozen projectors directed right at you. The darkness was in your head because they blinded you.

You were screaming and crying and jolting on the bed, trying your best to break free, crush the metal headboard, do anything at all to just touch your eyes, discover what they did to you as you felt nothing but numbness and some tingling. Did they pluck out your eyes? Did they take them out because it would be easier to control you once you lost your eyesight?

You didn’t know whether you were still screaming when you felt a stranger’s hand on your cheek as he sat down on the bed. Exhausted and horrified, you tried kicking him, but the restraints kept you in place as he lowered his head to your face, “it’s alright. You’re safe.”

Oh, it was him. It was the soldier who had emerged from the wall of the house you were hiding the last time.

“What did you… do to me?” Breathing hard, you yanked your head to the side to avoid his touch. Huh, safe, that how he called it. HYDRA or Avengers, there had never been any difference to you.

“I had to temporarily blind and drug you. The effect will wash off in a few days.”

With that, you forgot how to breathe for a couple of seconds. Temporarily? Did it mean you eyes would be alright? Did he not pop your eyes out of their sockets?

“Please, calm down. I won’t hurt you.”

You stayed quiet, but not because the soldier asked you to. You just laid there, listening to the buzz of the projectors and thinking you would be able to see something again. For a few seconds you were filled with a bitter sense of triumph. Maybe you were crying again, though you couldn’t really feel the tears streaming down your face.

Oh, how could you wish to die? How could you even think of committing suicide? No, no, never again, even if you’d have to break each and every bone in the bodies of your enemies, and rip their heads off. Whatever it takes just never to return to that black void again.

“No one knows you’re here.” The soldier said somewhere close to your face, and you furrowed your brows. “HYDRA won’t find you.”

“Until you push me to the battlefield.” You sneered, still furious he did such a horrible thing to you, leaving you here like that.

“Avengers don’t know you here either.”

Laughing sarcastically, you fell silent as you felt his flesh hand touching your cheek and brushing the hair out of your face.

“Don’t worry, I will fulfill your wish.” You could smell the metal of his breath. “You won’t exist for anyone but me.”

_______________________

Tags: @finleyjayne​ @alexakeyloveloki​ @helenaeisenhower​ @villanellevi​ @hurricanerin​ @void-hoechlin​ @abyssaint​ @heeeyitskay @chris-evans-indian-fanfic​ @navegandoaciegas​ @rosalynshields​ @brattycherubwrites​ @sllooney​ @angrythingstarlight​ @soleil-dor​ @lookiamtrying​ @buckysbunny​ @iheartsebastianstan​ @stargazingfangirl18​ @ninefuckingoneone​​

[your-persephone-writes]

rogue

summary: you’re in A Mood™ and your man will do anything for you pairing: nomad!Steve x reader (what? I KNOW) a/n1: nomad!Steve and his beard (a warning, always) a/n2: NSFW, SMUT, and by smut i mean filth, face riding, praise kink, a hint of choking (if you squint), cursing, tactical gear and fingerless gloves, no plot whatsoever (plot? i don’t know her), complete disregard for grammar and syntax :’) a/n3: ok listen, i have a filthy mind and a thing for nomad!Steve so i needed to get this out of my system. blame it on @yikeswtfmate​​​ who supports and encourages all my thots thoughts and ideas. ilysm this one is for you, jelly bean a/n4: pls enjoy responsibly and stay hydrated

He is always so good to you. Loving Steve, caring Steve, gentle Steve. Your Steve pulling soft whimpers, moans and orgasms out of you one after the other, sweetly. So good to you, so good for you. All night. Every night.

But not tonight.

Tonight there is fire and desire in his eyes, boiling in his veins, pouring out of every scar and wound on his skin, there is darkness and lust. Tonight he is no Steve, no honey, no sweetheart, no baby. No. Tonight he is yes Captain, yes Sir, yesyesfuckyes. And you want it that way. You want him that way. And he can never say no to you.

Tactical gear still on, hands resting on his belt, standing in the middle of your bedroom, watching, waiting patiently as you take off that last small piece of blue lace keeping him from tasting heaven. From tasting you.

His eyes roaming your body, pupils blown as if he is seeing you naked for the first time, heat crawling under your skin, taking over your body, already curling your toes. Fists clenched, fighting his instinct, his hunger to touch you, to hold you, to be inside you. But that’s not what you need tonight. And tonight it’s all about you. And he can never say no to you.

A silent nod from him and you lean back on dark silk sheets and feathery pillows, a path opening up for him, warm, wet, begging to be explored. His footsteps light as he comes closer, bed dipping, knee between your thighs, hands caging you, his frame hovering over you.

“Oh sweetheart, look at you,” his husky voice vibrating low in his chest, syncing with your body, “dripping honey and I haven’t even touched you yet.” He knows, fuck he knows how much you need this, how much you need him, and only he knows how to tame that need. 

“Be a good girl, tell me what you want. Do that for me baby, please?” his hand ghosting over the valley of your breasts, knuckles grazing the sensitive skin, leaving tiny goosebumps behind, wrapping softly around your throat. Thumb caressing your jawline, fingers pressing just so as he leans closer.

“Tell me what you want, show me and I’ll do it for you. Anything for you.” Lips whispering, nibbling on your earlobe, beard scrapping the soft skin of your pulse, breathing you in, exhaling all his desire for you. “I wanna smell you, taste you, dip my tongue in your honey, pull out those moans that make my cock so hard.”

Half closed eyelids, fingers wrapped on sheets, thighs spreading, shaking, words struggling to be set free from your lips. “You know what I want. Fuck, I....” You could hear the smirk forming on his lips. “Baby, language. And manners. Now, tell me what you want.” 

Well, fuck this and fuck Steve Rogers (you would, later) because there you are, breaking down, giving in. “I want you to make me come.” Your hand cupping his face, your words landing like soft whispers on his lips. “I want you to stop talking and make me come, Captain.”

A low chuckle bubbled from his chest, “Is that what you want, sweetheart? For me to stop talking? I thought you liked it.” He lets his fingers wander, tease, stroke, return between his lips glistening with your taste. “You want me to stop talking? Make me.” Your hand tagged in his hair, his fingers anchored on your thigh, slowly rolling your body on top of him, love marks blossoming, a light blue shade like his eyes.

You straddle his thick thighs, rolling your hips slowly, your soaking wet core finding friction and relief on hard kevlar. You can feel his cock pressing against you, aching, throbbing, pulsating to be set free and find solace deep within you. God, you love this man and every inch of him, every scar, every wound, everything about him. The thought of him buried deep in you is enough to draw out a groan so low, enough to almost send you over the edge.

“That’s my girl.” He praises and worshipes with every word, guiding you higher and higher up on his body, a trail of your sweetness behind. “Let me get a taste of you, I wanna feel you clench around my tongue.” God he is filthy and crude and nobody knows that but you, you with your soft breasts and hard nipples, your puffed lips and soaked pussy now a few inches from his face, his mouth. Your throne.

He stares in awe, taking in the sight of you on top of him, cheeks flushed, hair disheveled, chest heaving, skin dripping. His queen for his throne. “Go on, honey. Take what you want, take what you need. Let me see you come undone for me.” 

His hands crawling up your sides, stroking the soft curve of your breasts, the worn leather of his gloves scratching your nipples. His breath thick and heavy against your core, fingers gripping tight on the soft skin of your hips now, bringing you lower, lower, fuckyesyesyes lower. Rolling, sinking, flooding the room with your scent, his mouth with your taste.

You are tugging his hair for purchase, your eyes where the two of you become one, his moans shooting from his chest to his tongue straight to your cunt, heat spreading through every nerve, cell and inch of your body. Beard burning between your thighs, greedy tongue diving deeper, nose nudging your swollen clit, mouth opening wider, ready to swallow you whole. 

A fraction of a second is all it takes, all you want, all you need and he knows it. He feels it, he feels you clenching, shaking, shuddering. His eyes open wide, his fingers tightening, and in a fraction of a second he breathes a “be a good girl and come for me. Come on my tongue baby, and I’ll lick and drink every single drop you give me. Please.”

And it’s that fraction of second and everything it holds, everything this man, your man, put in there, that makes stars and galaxies come alive behind your eyelids and has you coming undone and apart. Hard. On his tongue. On your throne.

[pippki-writes]

Nessun Uomo è un’Isola

It started with the shadows. When he wasn’t looking at them, he would swear they had moved in the sentient sort of ways shadows had no right to. Or they would dart with furtive purpose just beyond his vision, but whenever Oriano would look, nothing would be there. The shadows would move gently, normally, the lights of the paths peacefully mixed around by the rustling leaves.

Paolo would have told him he was just being paranoid, but Oriano couldn’t bring himself to mention it. Even if the carbonieri did not come to their little island to enforce the quarantine, the handful of them still left on San Servolo took the duty seriously. Paolo and Oriano were the only ones staying in their particular dormitory building, on opposite ends, and every evening before and after Luca dropped off their dinners they would hang out of their windows over the lagoon and shout conversation from one side of the building to the other. It just didn’t seem like the place to mention passing worries over shadows, when there were so many more important things to worry about.

“What do we do if the supply boat doesn’t come?” asked Oriano.

“You worry too much,” said Paolo. “There’s always the vaporetto. Good old number 20 would never abandon us here. But even if the groceries didn’t come, and the devil himself stole our vaporetto line, look—” he pointed south and east, where the long inhabited sandbar of the Lido stretched across the lagoon, framing their view from the southwest corner of the island. “We could easily swim over. If you’re not afraid of a little lagoon water.”

“Nah,” replied Oriano, “it’s the shit swimming in the water that worries me.” But Paolo had a point, and he would know—Paolo was in his 30s, and had lived in Venice his whole life. If he said the vaporetto wouldn’t leave them cut off, then Oriano trusted that he could always find his way off the island if needed. Not that he had somewhere better to be. Oriano was only 19, with no family or home to go back to in America. When the classrooms had closed, and all the foreign students had gone back to their countries, their barista Oriano had stayed.

“We would find a way off,” said Paolo. As the handyman of the island, Paolo felt certain he could put together something that would float the short distance between the closest corner of San Servolo and the Lido. Wouldn’t even be a full kilometer, and the lagoon? Not even that deep, for the most part. Could probably push along the bottom with a broom. He lapsed into silence, wondering what materials on the island might float and not be too culturally damaging if taken for such a purpose, while Oriano stared across the lagoon at the sunset. Like nearly every other sunset since he had come to San Servolo some six months prior, the riot of clouds and color was one of the most beautiful sunsets he had ever seen.

In the mornings, Oriano made cappuccinos. The cafe and the kitchen were in separate buildings, so it felt safe, while Luca made breakfasts, for Oriano to make some halfway decent coffees to go with it. Luca would leave Oriano’s breakfast waiting in the cafe, and Oriano would leave Luca’s cappuccino on the little table outside the kitchen, and as they distributed caffeine and nutrients they managed like ghost ships passing in the night not to come across one another. Oriano wore his mask while he made the cappuccinos, and washed his hands at least twice more than he thought was necessary. Disposable cups. Disposable food-handling gloves. Disinfect everything, especially the outside of the bags that everything came in, even the bag of espresso beans, unloaded by Luca and Chiara from the supply boat each week. As long as the supplies lasted, Oriano would keep up this routine. It gave him something to do.

He left the last cappuccinos of the morning on the little table outside the housekeepers’ building and went back to his room. His room, like Paolo’s, had been designed to serve as student housing—the atmosphere was sparse, utilitarian, and duplicated. Two each of small beds, desks, nightstands, and uncomfortable chairs on the easy-to-clean stone floor. One bathroom with sink, mirror, shower, toilet, and bidet—that had been amusing. Oriano hadn’t known what the bidet was for, and had used it to hold a muddy pair of work boots until he could clean them, but Paolo had seen them there first, and gave him no end of good-natured shit for it. Oriano did not put boots in the bidet anymore.

There was also a TV—ancient and pointless, picking up only a few channels filled with convoluted daytime Italian soap operas too rapid fire for Oriano to keep up with. The only thing Oriano really cared about in his room was the window. The first day he’d settled into the room he had hated it. Even by himself in the room, it was small and cramped, and the operation of the air conditioning was beyond him. But as soon as he threw open the window, he realized why the room was worth keeping—unlike the other dormitory, the housekeepers’ building, and the administrators’ rooms, all the rooms in this building were directly on the lagoon. It was a straight drop down from Oriano’s second story window to the blue-green water below, facing almost directly into the unbelievable beauty of the setting sun. Back when the tour boats were still running, they passed close enough that Oriano could easily hear them talking about San Servolo— “It started as a Benedictine monastery” —and he would lean out the window to give a small wave, watching as dozens of people waved enthusiastically back.

He missed them.

They took turns spending time outside on the island. No one would have come to police them, but it seemed like the right thing to do, minimizing contact as much as they could.

Since he got to spend the morning walking back and forth all over the island from the cafe, Oriano took his turn after the sun had set. San Servolo was not a big island—a bit wider than the length of a football field, and not even a quarter mile long, but the trees throughout had a way of making it feel bigger than it really was. He appreciated the trees for that.

As he walked toward the front of the island, he thought about something Paolo had said in their conversation that night. People were claiming they were seeing more dolphins returning to the lagoon, swimming through the canals of Venice. Was it true? What else might be returning?

This was when Oriano began to hear the sounds.

At first, it sounded like water. Hearing water was not unusual—he was surrounded by water, the sounds of the tides gently lapping against the brick walls of San Servolo had become the serene backdrop to his everyday life. But this was different. Extra. More. It sounded like someone had recorded the sound of water and was playing it back ever so slightly wrong, from somewhere above. Oriano looked around, straining to hear. It sounded like it was coming from the small square tower by the library. Oriano took a few steps in the direction of the tower—the wrong sound of water playing was definitely louder—and he thought he saw a flicker of movement, of light shifting into shadow, through one of the arched openings in the tower. He wanted to go get Paolo, but his curiosity got the better of him.

Oriano took the stairs on the back side of the tower up to the second floor. To the right was the door to the library. To the left, an open arched path looking out and leading to the tower. Oriano willed his feet to be as quiet as possible as he approached the open room of the tower, the sound of water growing louder, his heart racing with the unknown of what he might find. He turned the corner into the room and found...nothing. The lights that illuminated the paths below reflected orange shapes around the room, through the leaves of the trees and the open stone arches of the tower. The peculiar quality of the sound of water had fallen away, and all he could hear was the waves of the tide slapping the bricks just as they always did.

“Which island is that?” asked Oriano, pointing to the forested island due west that was preparing to hide away the setting sun.

“La Grazia,” said Paolo. “Made from medieval trash, basically. Once was a convent, turned into a gunpowder storage that blew up in the middle of the 1800s. Spent time as an infectious diseases hospital until...late 20th century? Before I was born anyway.”

“Hm.” Oriano wondered what kind of creatures inhabited the abandoned islands around them. San Servolo was home to five domestic cats (three of whom looked exactly the same), and whatever manner of birds and lizards those five cats had not yet killed. “That one?” he asked, pointing to the next island south of La Grazia.

“San Clemente. Like us, another insane asylum. My own nonna still says ‘going to San Clemente’ for people going crazy. Also like us, spent time as a monastery and a military property. I think San Clemente was a garrison, ours was a hospital. At any rate, now it’s a hotel.”

“Do you think it’s haunted?”

“I hope so. Rich bastards. If they can afford to stay there, they deserve to be haunted.”

“What about here?” asked Oriano cautiously. “Is our island haunted?”

Paolo paused for a moment and rubbed his chin. “Haunted?” he asked thoughtfully. “Well...we certainly have history. But if you want haunted, either Lazzaretto Vecchio over there—” he leaned far out of his window, pointing left to the island they could just barely see to the southeast “—or the infamous Poveglia there—” he pointed straight ahead, to a forested island with a single bell tower rising above the treeline “—those two are your best bet. Lazzaretto Vecchio is small, but they’ve found over fifteen hundred bodies buried there so far. It was Venice’s first quarantine island for the plagues. And Poveglia...it was an insane asylum too, but they say one of its doctors brutally tortured, killed, and mutilated his patients there. Who knows how many. See the bell tower? They say the doctor fell from it to his death. Or was pushed. Or jumped, gone mad himself.” Paolo shrugged, all possibilities equally valid for haunting. “And Poveglia was a plague island too, before it was an asylum.”

“Was every island a plague island?”

“Not every island,” replied Paolo, patting the windowsill. “Ours wasn’t. But there is a lot of common, repeated, and violent history shared among these islands.”

Oriano nodded, watching the sun slip behind the trees of Isola della Grazia, leaving the sky a bruised and angry pink.

For that night’s walk, Oriano decided to simply sit at the end of the wooden dock that the supply boat used, listening to the waves. He squinted, trying to block out the lights of the channel markers to make out the shapes of the trees across the water. The abandoned islands were low, dark anomalies rising slightly from the water against the sky, hidden beyond the reach of the channel marker lights. The inhabited islands nearby were comforting—the constellation marks of civilization and electricity strung along the Lido meant people were there, even if he couldn’t see them. The darkness of the likes of Poveglia and La Grazia gave him an uneasy feeling of ignorance.

If he could just go to those islands, to know what was there and see for himself, then maybe he wouldn’t feel this way. No, that wasn’t true. He felt like he had walked over every inch of San Servolo now, and still he could sense secrets hiding in the trees, in the shadows between the lighted paths.

He wondered what kind of trees grew in the soils of such twisted histories.

He ignored the sounds that night—this time, from across the water in the directions of unlit darkness, he could hear the sound of singing, the feeling an anxious emotion, sounds and lyrics in a language Oriano didn’t recognize. The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and Oriano hurried back to his room, pretending he had not heard anything.

In the morning, there was no breakfast waiting for Oriano in the cafe.

Oriano ran over to the kitchen, but Luca wasn’t there. Luca stayed in the housekeepers’ building on the back of the island, and Oriano ran down to it, past the dormitories and lovely old clusters of trees, past the cats doing their morning stretches.

“Shit,” said Oriano, skidding into the locked door of the building. He didn’t know which room was Luca’s. His mask was back in the cafe. He started pounding on the main door.

“Luca? Luca??” he yelled, trying to see in the ground floor windows, alternating between beating on the door and rapping his knuckles on the windows.

On the second floor, a window scraped open. Oriano stopped and stood back to look up as Chiara poked her head out.

“Oriano? Is everything okay?”

“Luca wasn’t in the kitchen this morning. I’m—is he—can you check on him?”

Chiara quickly ducked back in her room. A couple other windows opened as the others staying in the building looked out to see what the commotion was. Oriano could hear Chiara beating on another door inside, and breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Luca’s familiar baritone shout “Oh dio mio!”

Everything would be okay.

He let their distant conversation in Italian wash over him. Sounded like Luca had overslept, which wasn’t like him but honestly, time had long since lost all meaning here. It was understandable.

And then Oriano heard Luca cough.

Was it a cough? Was Oriano the only one who had gasped when they heard it?

There are so many reasons for a cough. Did Luca smoke? Was it pollen season? Did San Servolo even have a pollen season? Surely it must, with all these rare plants and trees. Oriano’s heart started racing with his thoughts. Chiara leaned back out of her own window.

“Oriano, do you think you could do breakfast today?”

Oriano ruined about half a dozen pancakes before he decided the day’s breakfast would be cereal.

Paolo distributed dinner that evening. He found deep in the freezer something resembling an Italian riff on a Hot Pocket, in sufficient quantity to feed everyone, and most importantly they were very difficult to ruin. It was the sort of culinary monstrosity that would have brought great shame on his family if they knew of it, but they tasted okay and required no thought on his part to make happen.

Oriano waited until Paolo was back in his own room before he brought his dinner in, leaning on the windowsill while he ate. The sun had already set, but Oriano did not feel like walking the island.

“I’m worried about Luca,” said Oriano, almost too quietly for Paolo to hear.

“I’ve known Luca for almost twelve years,” said Paolo, waving his hand with dismissive confidence. “Luca’s fine.”

Oriano brushed the crumbs from his hands into the water and looked up. “What is that?” gasped Oriano. From the darkness to the south and west, steaming white clouds on the water seemed to be pressing toward them. Already the view was getting hazy, a chill threading through the air.

Paolo laughed. “It’s just the fog, Oriano. La nebbia. You really worry too much.” Paolo sighed. “Get some rest, okay?”

Oriano nodded, but he knew he would not be sleeping.

After some debate in the group text the next morning, Paolo volunteered to take over kitchen duties. He wasn’t exceptionally skilled at cooking, but he and Oriano were better isolated than everyone else. And everyone wanted Oriano to keep making coffee for their breakfasts.

Oriano walked to the cafe in the front corner of the island. Paolo had found a supply of Pop Tarts that had been imported for the American students, and Oriano’s allotment of cold breakfast pastry sat outside the cafe on the little table.

Luca was fine.

This was just a precaution.

Oriano ate absentmindedly, looking out over the grounds of San Servolo, toward the kitchen, the housekeepers’ building, the trees, Luca. The fog had come in overnight, putting a sullen grey haze over everything. When he looked out over the water, he could not see the other islands nearby, but at least he could see through the fog well enough on San Servolo. Oriano knelt down as the sweet grey cat of the island approached him outside the cafe, meowing patiently for some of his food.

“You won’t like it,” he warned her, breaking off a small corner and setting it on the ground.

Principessa sniffed the fragment disdainfully, gave a disgruntled meow, and walked off. Crumbs for the birds, then.

Oriano went into the cafe and turned on the espresso machine, waiting for it to warm up. Luca had texted the group to tell them he felt fine and not to worry. But what would they even do if he wasn’t fine? Being isolated on this island had felt like its own form of protection, an insulation from the chaotic news reports Oriano spent too much time looking at late into the night on his phone. But they weren’t protected at all. They were trapped like everyone else.

Oriano made his rounds, dropping off cappuccinos, and stopped by the brick walls to gaze out the iron-grated openings. He could hear the water, gently tapping the confines of the island, but the unseen haze of the lagoon felt unnaturally quiet.

There wasn’t much to look at out the window that night. The fog was thicker now, and Oriano couldn’t see the channel markers only a few hundred feet from where he leaned against the windowsill, balancing a paper plate full of pasta.

“Not spaghetti,” said Paolo emphatically, “Bigoli in salsa, a Venetian classic. Granted, this particular sauce was frozen and reconstituted and not handmade by my grandmother, but I think it defrosted quite nicely, and even I can cook pasta.” Paolo finished off his helping, gently tossing his plate into the trash. “Though I don’t know what we’ll do when the frozen food runs out. If I have to actually learn cooking rules, we might starve.”

“I’ll swim for the Lido before it comes to that.”

“Hopefully Chiara ordered sensible, idiot-proof groceries.”

Hopefully Luca will be back to making the food soon, Oriano thought. But he didn’t want to say it, because saying it admitted the possibility that things could turn out differently. Better not to say anything at all than to speak bad realities into existence.

For a while, they sat in silence, looking out into the quiet nothingness of the fog on the lagoon.

“Quarantine,” said Paolo finally. “It’s an Italian word, you know, quaranta giorni, forty days. That’s how long people coming into Venice from plague infected places had to wait before they could actually come into the city. Waiting out on these islands.”

“Do you think we’ll be holed up forty days?”

“Forty days, and forty nights, and who really knows if the end of it will ever come?”

Even though the fog was thick, Oriano decided to take a walk after dinner. He could still see at least a hundred feet in front of him, and that was good enough. What did the sailors and merchants do, hundreds of years ago, waiting forty days to see if it was safe for them to make their way into Venice? Did they worry? About themselves? About their friends?

Did they walk around as he did now, thinking about the trapped souls quarantined before them?

The fog felt like a blanket as Oriano walked. When the nights were clear, Oriano always had a sense of his place on this little rectangle of land in the whims of the tides, but as the fog drew close, he felt only the island, stretching into infinite unknown possibilities.

Walking along thus lost in his thoughts, Oriano almost didn’t notice a pair of boots sitting beneath a tree, nor did he fully process the way the fog moved strangely from the branches, curling into patterns, like a canopy of lace hanging down and around the boots, a curtain of uncertain purpose. Oriano did a double-take, the hair on his arms prickling at the sight. With the fog pressing ever closer, it felt like the island was holding its breath. As if the act of frozen waiting could allow the impossible to rise up before him. Cautiously he walked closer to the tree, holding his own breath without realizing he was doing so, but as he approached the mists slipped away, and the boots stretched out languidly, resolving into the form of Principessa.

Oriano let his breath out with a sigh. “What are you doing?” he accused her. She fixed him with a look. “What am I doing?” he asked on her behalf. He was nervous. He was jumpy. He was just being paranoid. He tried to tell his heart rate to go back to normal, but normal felt like a concept he’d already lost. What else would he lose before all was said and done?

Some time after midnight, Oriano gave up on rest. He looked around his room as if something there might distract him, but Oriano kept little of entertainment value in those cramped quarters. He was keyed up, and being still only wound him tighter. He decided to take another walk. Maybe this time a walk would calm him down.

As soon as he stepped outside of the building, he could see nothing but the fog. Everything was a spectral white, the lights of the path nothing more than slight and hazy bright spots in a sea of impenetrable mist. Oriano hesitated. He couldn’t even see beyond a foot in front of him.

The fog coated the air in silence. Oriano couldn’t hear the waves hitting the brick retaining walls outside the dormitory. He moved a few steps in the direction of the bricks, hoping to hear the water, and he couldn’t tell if he was hearing the water, distant and muffled, or if he only imagined that he did. He thought about going back to his room, but when he turned around, he was not certain which direction the building was in. Surely it was just behind him. He glared in a few directions, each as placidly white as the last. He heard an unearthly chirping from deep within the mists, and his stomach and heart crashed into each other in unexpected fear.

“It’s just the fog,” he whispered to himself. But the fog tasted like the thought of trees, and the weight of centuries. Oriano knew better than to run. He sat down on the paved path, pulling his knees up to his chest, and waited for the morning to find him.

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid

Pairing: Klance: Keith Kogane/Lance Mcclain

Tags: Vamp Lance | Klutz Lance | Idiot Keith | Shiro & Keith are adopted brothers | Enemies to idiots( ...I mean) | Enemies to idiots | Mentioned mpreg | Lance isn’t a full vampire( but keith is a full idiot) | Idiot Lance | Paranormal Investigators Pidge & Hunk | Hunk is a scaredy cat | Lance has a black cat name Blue | Fluffy bits | Lance is 44 | Hunk is 24 | Pidge is 22 | Keith is 26 | Shiro is 30 | Bottom Lance! | Vampire dynamics are a bit whack | Smutty bits | Mentions of men making babies | Lance might be a vamp but it turns out he’s useless | Lance’s mum’s name is Miriam | Papi Jorge | Keith is a special flower | Comin’ at ya in bite sized pieces | Fluffy dumbarsery with some tears | Slow build because they’re stupid heads | BOM are hunters | Shiro & Lance are lowkey bros | Keith’s got issues( but he’s got trauma to work through...that’s why he’s repetitive) | Updating tags to include mgreg themes | Not beta-ed | If pining was an Olympic sport these fools would share gold | Langst | Klangst | Hurt and comfort | 

Summary: Lance has lived a pretty simple life since being turned into a vampire. He’s got his house, his cat, and his two besties that have no idea he’s a vampire thanks to his awesome acting skills... He thought he was happy, that things were fine, that he wasn’t drawing too much attention to himself... and then he met Keith.Big, dumb, hot, emo, stupid Keith. Keith that went and flipped his life upside down, because, seriously, Keith really was a special kind of stupid.Vampire Lance x Vampire Hunter Keith

READ ON AO3

People sucked. People truly, madly, unequivocally, completely and totally sucked. That’s why Lance had brought his farmhouse outside a the tiny speck of a town barely found on most maps. He hadn’t lead a particularly long life, at least not when compared to others suffering from the same condition as he had, yet in his short time, he’d come to hate people. Don’t get him wrong, he didn’t hate everyone. He had two best friends that meant the world to him, Pidge and Hunk. Both paranormal investigators, and both blind to his unusualness. No. What Lance held issue with was the continued hunting of his kind by the Vatican. His “ancestors” may have bathed in blood, and sacrificed virgins, all that kind of hooky-huha that one reads in scary stories, but before he’d been made a vampire, he liked to think he’d been a happy enough well liked kid, and he liked to think that even these days he still carried an air of that charm whenever he was forced from his home.

Garrison was a tiny town 50kms away from Platt City, founded during the Third World War, the city held plenty of ghostly secrets which had drawn both Hunk and Pidge to the area. Boasting a single Main Street, the highlights of the town were limited to tourist traps and three pubs on the Main Street. It was while studying at Platt University that he’d met both his best friends, twenty years his juniors, yet thanks to his unwanted immortality his body had stopped maturing roughly around the age of 18, making it easy to join the crowded university with a few falsified papers. His intention was to refresh his legal skills in order to keep up with the time’s. With the help of his Mami, he’d moved somewhere small and private, to a dead beat town that accepted weirdness as an everyday occurrence thanks to the tourists that came to see the ghosts of soldiers passed. When he’d been a kid, he’d always dreamed of being an astronaut, yet had chosen law to help those less fortunate in some kind of redemption for his condition. Being immortal meant keeping up with the times, though his house retained much of its old “Victorian” charm. Plus, with Platt being so close, it made for an easy drive up there every three weeks to pick up new blood bags. He was in no way a stereotypical vampire other than his need for blood. He wore glasses, because his eyesight was so good his mind couldn’t process everything he was seeing. This came with the unfortunate side effect of being clumsy as hell. He’d come from a Catholic family, meaning he believed in the presence of God. He’d also never drunk from a human, and never taken a human as pet or a lover like some did. When he wasn’t tagging along with Pidge and Hunk to ensure they didn’t accidentally summon something nasty, most of his time was devoted to providing low cost family legal advise.

Perhaps because he hadn’t been born a vampire, he’d retained many of his human ways. Sunlight didn’t turn him to ashes. Garlic gave him pretty bad stomach cramps and indigestion, which could be fobbed off with the excuse of an allergy. Silver gave him hives, again, something that could be passed off as an allergic reaction. He refused to harm animals for blood. He refused to bite another human, despite the fact a bite wouldn’t turn one anyway. They needed to be drinking his blood for that to happen, and after how he’d been turned, there was no way he’d ever do that to a mortal. He showed up in photographs, though his eyes always came out red instead of their usual bright blue. Mirrors weren’t exactly his friend, but not because he couldn’t see himself, instead because he hated seeing himself. They didn’t magically show his “vampire face”, instead they reminded him he’d never grow old. At the ripe age of 44 he looked 18. Even when he turned 100, he’d still look 18. It was thoroughly depressing. Unlike some vampires he didn’t have a coven, or a pack. His house only held him and his cat Blue, who he’d found as a tiny kitten under the steps leading up to the porch. She’s was black, fluffy, and an absolute princess in his eyes. Other than the general upkeep of his house, blood costs and the very occasional splurge on new clothes, most of the money he made went to spoiling his little princess. He wasn’t sure if Blue was part vampire, her teeth had always been sharp, as kitten he’d dug her out by the scruff of the neck, her tiny little teeth were far too cute as they buried themselves into his hand. She’d never acted like she was, but she also preferred to stay inside and had a personality that rivalled some of the most twisted “Queen” vamps he’d met. Then again, everyone knew cats were temperamental arseholes, so maybe Blue was simply being the snobby cow she was born to be.

All in all, Lance had nothing to complain about in his life. He was happy, content, safe in the knowledge no one about to ruin that anytime soon.

*

Pulling into the parking lot of their usual dive, Sal’s burgers wasn’t the most popular place in town, making it the perfect place to hang out. Located 10kms out of town on the road to Platt City, seemingly an inconvenience the locals, most of Sal’s customers came from tourists needing to stop because their kids needed the toilet. A few of the older locals had dedicated seats at the service bar, and maybe one or twice a week people spiced it up from their usual coffee shops on Main Street, but all in all, the lack of customers is what Lance loved about it. The whole place looked as if the 50’s had left it behind, from its pastel pink exterior to the cheesy green and silver breakfast stools at the c go heck board service bar. From his parking space he could already see Pidge and Hunk waiting for him in their usual booth. Hunk’s head thrown back as he laughed at something, probably at Pidge’s expense.

Cutting the engine, Lance grabbed up his wallet, phone, and gloves. He wasn’t exactly the warmest of people to begin with, but this freezing weather was likely to turn him into an undead popsicle. Already dressed in his favourite khaki jacket, Lance did a quick double check pat down before climbing out his battered blue four wheel drive. She was old, had one too many rust spots and didn’t like starting on days like today, but he’d had her since he’d graduated college the first time around. His Mami was always nagging at him to get rid of her, to use some of his money to buy something better, something that didn’t have roll down windows and a dodgy CD player. His first car was his first real taste of freedom after being turned. They’d been through a lot together, leaving him unable to say goodbye to her. That’d be like cutting him own arm off.

Sal gave him a wave as Lance walked in, the man was a teddy bear under his perpetual 5 o’clock shadow and greasy apron. His policy seemed to be that if someone couldn’t respect him like this, they weren’t worth his respect in return

“Hey’a there, Lance. Pull up a seat and I’ll bring your usual over”

“Thanks, Sal. You’re the best!”

Sal grumbled, Lance pretending he didn’t hear every low word about him. Bringing up that Sal secretly liked him well enough would only leave the old man flustered. For the sake of their “friendship”, he played along with Sal’s mumbling translating into how much of a pain he was. With a bounce in his step, Lance headed over to Pidge and Hunk, throwing himself into the booth as he wrapped his arms around Hunk

“Lance!”

“It’s soooo cold! Warm me up!”

Hunk hugged him back

“I’ve got you, bro! You’re freezing...”

“And you’re late. You were supposed to be here half an hour ago”

Lance sighed dramatically as he rolled his eyes at his favourite tech gremlin

“You know how she gets in cold weather”

“Who? There better not be anything and wrong with my Princess”

“Pidge, you should know by now that when Lance talks like that, he’s talking about his car... right?”

Lance grinned

“Of course I’m talking about my girl. And my Princess is perfectly happy. Blue was curled up under my blankets when I left”

Pidge pouted at him

“You could have brought her with you. I miss my Blue cuddles”

“You could try coming by the house. She was in a mood when I left”

Lance had a backpack carrier for her, but Blue would have frozen her perfect little toe beans out in the weather today. He’d left the heated blanket on a timer for her, unable to keep from spoiling his princess. Pidge’s hand left her laptop keyboard to grab her mug of coffee

“But your house is soooo far away. Anyway, we’re here to talk about work. I was on this forum last night, and someone swore they met a werewolf. Can you imagine? Hunk told me to stop scaring him”

Hunk... Hunk was the biggest ray of sunshine Lance had ever met. The poor man got every single form of motion sickness know, but that never once stopped him. He was terrified of ghost stories, not the best constitution to have when one is a ghost hunter... No, paranormal investigator. He’d been told there was a difference, but honestly it all sounded the same. People loved to think of the unknown, that world existing just out of their everyday mundane lives. Having been in that world for as long as he had been, Lance would happily pay for a boring mundane life

“I wasn’t scared... I’m... cautious”

Pidge clucked at Hunk, Hunk flipping her off. Laughing at him, Pidge wasn’t easily swayed

“You’re a chicken. What about you, Lance? Do you believe in werewolves?”

Werewolves were dicks. He’d bumped into a few over the years, and they’d done nothing to persuade him that they weren’t. The only thing they had going for them was their commitment to their mates and family, other than that, they were testosterone filled morons with claws.

“I don’t know... I feel like they’d all be too stupid to hide their existence”

“Wolves are incredibly smart... Fine, let’s put that one the back burner. Now, about work, there’s a group of tourists that want to come through the old hospital. The visitors centre in town gave me a call about it. Apparently they pay reeeeeeally well”

They’d have to. The old hospital was “cursed”. It’d been converted into a professional centre, but three years after the renovations they closed the building down thanks to the high number of injuries. If there were ghosts there, it was doubtful they’d care to bother with the employees. They all had their own issues. Lance held the opinion it was more a spate of psychosomatic symptoms resulting from the first accident. The building had been handed back over to the town, where it’d sat empty until it reopened as a military museum. With a bored sigh, Lance resigned himself to the fact that Pidge had already gone ahead and decided this was happening. Patting Hunk on the arm, the big man let him go

“When is this all supposed to be happening?”

Pidge’s eyes twinkled with mischief. Lance loved that about her. The top of her head barely came to his chin, but her pint sized stature didn’t stop her. She was always up for a laugh, and frightfully adapt with all things technology based. One of their first conversations came about because Lance had dropped his phone down the stairwell, smashing the screen as it bounced. Seeing her notice pinned up at the campuses cafe, he’d reached out to her with no idea they’d still be besties so many years later. From memory she had an older brother who was as much of a nerd as she was, while her mother and her father both worked in some private sector. He’d met them once over a family dinner Pidge dragged him to, seen them half a dozen times on their front steps as Pidge fled from their parental yelling, and finally been stuck in a very awkward conversation with Pidge’s father, Sam, when he’d found Bae-Bae, the missing family dog who Pidge had brought along on one of their ghost hunts

“Tonight. We’ve got permission to start once the museum shuts for the day. The tour starts at 8, so we’ll go in, set up, have something to eat, then scare the shit out of them at 8”

“You didn’t tell me it’s tonight!”

Poor Hunk. His poor heart had no time to come to terms with this. His worrying only made Pidge smile wider

“Relax, it’ll be fiiiine. Lance is coming with us. He’ll protect you from anything spooky”

“Why do I have to protect you? What are you going to do? Sue the ghosts for giving you the heebie-jeebies? Sorry, that’s not my specialty”

Pidge slid her glasses down to the tip of her nose as she puffed her chest out

“Ha, he, ho, I’m Lance and I have a fancy law degree! Those ghosts better think twice before looking at me”

Lance laughed way too hard, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes, his black frame glasses nearly falling off. Pidge pushing her glasses back into place as Sal brought over Lance’s pancakes and coffee. The man simply placing them down before backing away without a word

“Oh my god, Pidge. That was awful”

“It wasn’t that awful. So, Hunk, you’re in snacks for the night. Lance is in charge of driving, and I’m in charge of the tech. What are we forgetting?”

“That we value our lives and don’t really want to do this?”

Pidge sank lower in her seat, a soft thud coming as Hunk gasped in pain

“What was that for?!”

“Being a chicken”

“I’m not a chicken”

“Are too...”

Picking up his fork, Lance calmly cut in on their fight

“Children, don’t make me seperate the pair of you. Hunk, you’re big, brave, and very manly. Pidge, you’re so fucking short you couldn’t even covertly kick him under the table. If we’re going out, I need to stop by home on the way. Blue needs her wet food for the night, and no, she’s not coming tonight. It’s going to storm as it is”

Crossing her arms, Pidge slumped back in her seat

“You just want to keep my Princess all to yourself. Hunk can leave his car here and we’ll take yours”

“I thought my house was too far away to visit?”

“It’s not when you’re the one driving. Hurry up and finish your pancakes, I wanna go already”

Lance looked down at the forkful he’d been about to load in his mouth, purposely cutting the stack in half to annoy Pidge. Scoffing down Sal’s pancakes was an insult to the man who’d made cigarette ash in pancakes edible. The lack of hygiene may have been another reason why the locals stayed away, but when you’re immortal, standards kind of went out the window

“Laaaaance. Nooo. What are you doing?”

“Enjoying my breakfast. Order another coffee... actually, order some warm milk, I can see you practically vibrating from the amount of caffeine in our bloodstream”

“I’ll have you know that the level of blood in my caffeine stream is just fine. Plus, you’re like the only person in the world who enjoys Sal’s pancakes!”

“Oi! I heard that, Katie Holt!”

Pidge ducked down further in her seat at Sal’s voice. A couple of regulars laughing at her embarrassment, as Pidge blushed

“Now look what you’ve done”

“Not my problem, Pidgeroonie”

“Watch your back, I’m going to get you tonight, then steal away Blue”

Lance shrugged, unfazed by her threat. Tonight would be another lame arse tour under the belt, the most exciting thing they could expect was some jump scare.

[willow-salix]

Isolation update! I was planning on doing the prompt of "Sight" for @gumnut-logic challenge for the next chapter of the big fat fic (which I'm still gonna do) but this came out too. So I let the boys roll with it.

Day 76 of Isolation on Tracy Island

“Scott?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you know anything about this?” I held up my headphones, which had been previously missing for maybe the last eight months and that I had just found in the cutlery drawer.

“Yeah, they’re headphones.”

“Thank you Captain Obvious, I meant why are they in with the knives and forks?”

He shrugged. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because you were hiding socks around the place for over three weeks.”

“Only because it took you so long to give them back to me. I started after we watched Half Blood Prince, I thought it would make you laugh but you just kept ignoring them.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t realise you needed to be freed!”

“Of course I did! I was your house elf!”

“House elves do chores! They don’t sit around being fed and demanding attention!”

“I’m a progressive house elf that is fighting for elf rights!”

“No you aren't, you’re a lazy bum!”

“Lazy? Me?”

“Yes, you!”

“I will never understand the conversations you two have,” John muttered as he pushed past us to fill his mug with the coffee I had just brewed.

“It’s affectionate arguing,” Scott laughed, sliding his mug over to John for a top up.

“So no one knows why my headphones have just suddenly turned up from wherever they vanished to and magicked themselves into the kitchen?”

“Nope,” Scott gave up waiting for John to pour him a drink and stole mine. I narrowed my eyes in his general direction. John slid a fresh cup over to me. Such a great guy.

“You know,” John mused. “I found one of my world geography books in the bathroom cupboard.”

“I found my utility knife in the piano stool,” Virgil added, wandering over to snag some toast that had just popped up.

“I just made that,” I told him.

“Thank you,” he continued to butter it. I stared at his plaid clad back for a few seconds but when he failed to burst into flames I gave up and dropped some more bread into the toaster.

“Now that I think about it,” Scott mused, “I found my guitar pick in the fruit bowl, the one that I got from that little shop in Texas. I thought I lost it for good years ago but it just appeared out of nowhere.”

“Something strange is going on,” Virgil declared. “If stuff we lost is returning there has to be a reason for it.”

“Parallel universe,” I answered confidently.

“I don’t think that's a thing,” Scott said gently.

“Apports then?” I offered.

“No, I don’t think...what’s an apport?” Virgil asked.

“An object conjured out of nothing by a ghost, obviously.”

“I don’t think this is the work of a ghost, love," John said, squeezing my shoulder as he passed by to take a seat. “There’s only one person that borrows things without asking and that’s Gordon.”

“That was going to be my next guess,” I admitted.

“Yet you went straight for ghosts and different universes?” Scott asked, clearly bemused.

“Well, maybe, just for once, I wanted something interesting to happen around here that I could actually deal with,” I huffed. “Sue me.”

“Only you could think ghosts and different realms were something that’s easy to deal with when you were the one that screamed and climbed me like a monkey because a crab ran over your foot on the beach last night,” John laughed.

“Crabs have pincers, any sane person would get away from one of them,” I pouted, reaching for some toast off Virgil’s plate. Honestly I don’t know why we don't just have communal plates in this house, no one seems to eat their own food.

“So what are we going to do about Gordon being a kleptomaniac?” I asked.

“We’ll deal with him after breakfast,” Scott decided, leaning over and biting the corner off my toast. See? No boundaries whatsoever.

***

The klepto in question was sneaking suspiciously around the lounge when we tracked him down and we caught him in the act of leaving a magnifying glass behind a book on the bookcase.

“Busted,” Scott yelled, making Gordon jump about a foot in the air.

“So it was you that’s been leaving our belongings scattered around the house,” Virgil sighed.

“Why are you doing this?” John asked, although his tone said he was debating the wiseness of even posing the question and was unsure he actually wanted an answer.

“Can’t a guy do something nice for his family?”

“He can when he’s not the one thats been stealing things in the first place,” I shot back, arms folded, foot tapping.

“I’m offended!” Gordon gasped dramatically. “A Tracy doesn’t steal unless its Virgil and a bell takes his fancy-”

“That was one time and it was an accident!”

“I may borrow things,” Gordon continued.

“For three years?” Scott snorted.

“I borrow on extended loan-”

“Without permission,” John added.

“But you always get them back eventually,” Gordon finished triumphantly. “I got bored and cleaned my room and it was like unearthing buried treasure. I may have forgotten that I borrowed a few things but you’ve got them back now, so no harm no foul.”

“Is that all you needed to return?” Virgil sighed.

“There might be a few other things scattered around,” Gordon admitted.

“Go and get them,” Scott ordered.

Gordon staggered in half an hour later weighed down by a massive box overflowing with his plundered loot.

“Seriously?” Scott gaped as the box thumped down on the table.

“All of that?” Virgil couldn't believe his eyes.

“Not surprised,” John muttered.

“How did you manage to borrow all that?” Alan asked in awe, having been summoned from his pit to claim any lost items that may have fallen into Gordons possession. “I’m not even allowed to borrow a pen.”

“It’s because he doesn’t bother asking,” John told him.

“That’s where I’ve been going wrong!”

Gordon shooty finger winked at him.

“No!” I yelped, intervening for the first time and grabbing Alan, pulling him into my arms. “Do not corrupt this precious bean.”

“Too...late,” Alan wheezed, trying to escape my python like grasp.

“Oh, sorry,” I let go and Alan took a dramatically deep breath.

“What’s in the box, Squid?” Scott asked.

Gordon tipped the box up and out tumbled a mass of things that shocked even me.

“That’s my baseball cap,” Scott snagged it.

“My gloves,” Virgil claimed them.

“That’s my camera,” John snatched it up. “I thought I left that behind on the beach and the sea took it.”

“Well, technically the sea’s representative did,” I giggled, then noticed something in the middle of the pile. “Why do you have my headscarf? You know that I use that when you guys force me to get in a boat, it makes me feel fancy.”

“Are those my sunglasses?”

“Yes, I broke mine and was going fishing.”

“Is that my lipstick?”

“Yeah, I used it to draw blood on my neck so I could be a zombie at halloween.”

“There’s my ocarina.”

“It was so weird I had to try it.”

“Is that my belt?”

“Yeah, remember that date I went on with Penny? It went really well with those navy pants.”

“I thought I lost that harmonica.”

“I was going through a depressed week and wanted to play the blues.”

“Is that my cologne?”

“Same date.”

“Why do you have my toothbrush?”

“I used it to clean the sand out of one of Four’s filters.”

“My playing cards!”

“Yeah, I wanted to learn card tricks.”

“My travel chess set!”

“Four of the pawns are missing now, sorry.”

“Seriously, my drill?”

“I wanted to put up a picture.”

“Why did you need my tie?”

“That's classified.”

“That’s my favorite pen.”

“Yeah, I’ve got no excuse for that, I used it, put it in my pocket and forgot about it.”

“Gordon, why do you have my flip flops?”

“Mine broke and your’s were nearest.”

An endless stream of lost objects had suddenly returned home and it was a tad overwhelming but along with his more recent acquisitions were items that hadn’t been seen in forever.

“I remember this game!” Alan exclaimed, grabbing the box. “John and I used to play it all the time when I was little. You had to be astronauts and fly through the meteor showers and land on different planets and fight aliens. It was great. We had the best scores, no one could beat us.”

“Actually, I had the best scores,” John corrected him.

“No way, it was a team effort, we played that together every night after I got home from school.”

Virgil chuckled.

“What?” Alan looked confused. “Why are you laughing?”

“I may have taken the batteries out of your controller and just let you think you were playing.” John admitted.

“What! That was one of my greatest achievements in life!”

“Alan, you went into space when you were thirteen,” John pointed out.

“Oh yeah!”

Virgil spotted a book and picked it up. “I haven’t seen this since we were little.”

“Oh, I remember that one,” Scott smiled. “Mom had it when she was small and she used to read it to us every thanksgiving.”

John was busy sifting through the pile. “Hey, my first star globe, why do you have this?”

“Remember when I used to get upset when Dad went away? Well you used to point out all the different stars to me on it and where the moon was near them.”

“Oh yeah,” John smiled, “I remember that, I let you borrow it to keep beside your bed so you could see where Dad was every night.”

“That’s my old teddy bear,” Scott smiled, picking it up and sitting it on his lap. “I left him with you when I went to college.”

“I know, I told you that I was too old to have a plushie in my room but you insisted. I passed him on to Alan and when we moved I guess he got packed up with my things.”

“That’s the children’s guitar that Mom taught us to play,” Virgil picked it up and strummed a few cords but the tuning was terrible.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Alan said quietly. “In fact, I don’t remember much of any of this stuff.” He gestured to the pile of things that still remained scattered on the table top. “I don’t know that pencil sharpener, that snow globe or those shell bracelets, I don’t know any of it.”

“Neither do I,” I reminded him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“I don’t have any memories of them so they don’t mean anything to me.”

“But that’s what’s so great about things and why I keep telling your brother that not everything has to have a use all the time. Things are there to remind us of the good times, just the sight of them can conjure up images, but they are also there to encourage us to share those memories. I used to love looking through my Nan and Grandad’s cupboards because I discovered so many things that were interesting,” I told him. “I’d ask them about them and they would tell me where they got them or who they belonged to before they got them and it was so nice to see the joy that the memories brought them. Pick something and ask about them, let’s share memories.”

Slowly Alan reached out to touch the small pile of shell bracelets.

“Where did these come from?”

“We were on a trip to the beach,” Scott started.

“Gordon was running all over picking up little shells and bringing them back to Mom,” Virgil continued.

“She ended up with a huge pile of them,” John laughed. “But Gordon didn't want her to put them back.”

“She ended up asking Dad to drill a tiny hole through each of them and she made them into bracelets for us as a reminder of the vacation,” Scott picked up the story.

“We wore them for a few days but Gordon kept stealing them because he loved the shells,” Virgil added.

“I remember that,” Gordon smiled. “There’s a picture in the album of me wearing them all, I don’t look any older than five.”

Alan picked them up, rubbing one of the shells between thumb and finger. “Why are there five of them?”

“Because Mom was pregnant with you at the time and said that you were there too so you should have a bracelet,” Scott smiled, reaching over to take one. “This was mine.”

One by one the others each claimed a bracelet, leaving Alan with just one.

“You’re right, that’s a nice story to hear,” he admitted, slipping the bracelet over his hand.

“Hey, here’s an idea,” I suggested. “This has been a mad few months, how about we start a new memory box and in ten years time we’ll look back in it and remember the longest vacation ever.”

“Yeah,” Alan nodded. “That could be cool.”

The box slowly filled up with bits and pieces.

Here are some of them.

-Some of our finished colouring pages.

-Gordon’s tablet that hadn’t recovered from its unscheduled dip in the bath.

-Brains’s broken glasses and a broken piece of his microscope that fell off of Alan when we played human buckaroo

-A small pile of post-it’s which Scott had used on April fools day to label everything in the lounge.

-The rubber spider John had pranked me with.

-A pair of the bunny ears the boys wore to deliver Easter eggs.

-The empty bottle of ‘Chill Pills’ Scott got for his birthday.

-A selection of our pictionary artwork.

-The beauty blender Virgil ruined on Gordon’s face.

-An empty popcorn bag Alan found stuffed between the couch cushions from one of our many movie nights.

-One of Scott’s socks that hadn’t been found before.

-A gaudy necklace from our lip sync battle

-A clue list from our scavenger hunt

-A shell I picked up on the beach the day they taught me to surf.

-The evil Furby

-The purple wig we made John wear (he was very glad to donate it to the memory box)

“OK, so, we don’t take anything out but we can add more for as long as isolation goes on?” Alan confirmed.

“Yep,” I nodded. “Who’s going to be in charge of keeping it safe?”

“Gordon should,” Alan said. “Since he seems to be the keeper of everyone’s things.”

“Even without permission,” John muttered, tucking his pen into his pocket in case it went walkies again.

“Actually,” Gordon said, “I think Alan should look after it for us.”

“Really? You mean that?” Alan grinned.

“Sure, kiddo,” Scott agreed. “After all, they’re your memories too

[canyousevmyheavydirtysoul]

Bodyguard IV: Vegas Lights (Chapter One) (B. Urie x Reader)

RIDING SHOTGUN IN A S.H.I.E.L.D SUV with Brendon in the driver's seat, you rested your arm on the car door and looked out across the vast expanse of noise and bright lights known as Las Vegas. Sin City was the one place that had eluded you in both your personal and work related travels, and now that you were finally able to experience its mezmirising beauty and uniqueness in person, you felt giddy.

Unsurprisingly, your partner felt the exact opposite.

He hated, with a capital HATED, returning to Vegas. Nothing good ever happens in Vegas. Why the fuck were they stationed in Vegas?

"I love coming back to Vegas," Ambrose piped up from the backseat, poking his head in between your and Brendon's seats, "Good things always happen in Vegas. I'm so hyped that we're stationed in Vegas."

"Say 'Vegas' one more time and I'll throw you out of the goddamn window."

The Lunatic scrunched up his face and poked the side of Brendon's jaw. "Who pissed on your battery? Lighten up."

With a low growl and an angry glare, the icy agent elbowed the Hound in the chest, propelling him back into his seat. Everyone else in the car seemed overjoyed at the prospect of visiting the illustrious city, and that only added to his irritation.

"This isn't a joke," Brendon's stern voice chased away the excited buzz in the SUV, "We're here for a mission, nothing else."

"I'm sure we could squeeze in a little bit of sightseeing," you chided, looking to the driver with a raised eyebrow, "Or are you determined to spoil this trip for everyone with your..." you made hand gestures all around him, "angst?"

He stared at you blankly. "Nice to know I can count on you to take missions seriously. Really," he looked up at The Hounds in the rearview mirror, "I'm so lucky to have all of you with me."

"Buzzkill."

"Guys, Urie's right, okay?" Ever the voice of reason, Rollins leapt to the icy agent's defense. "Until we close this one, every ounce of our focus should be on the mission. OOO, 100% ARIBICA BLEND!"

Scooting closer to the door, Rollins pressed his face against the window and gazed up in awe at the giant billboard advertising ground coffee beans. From the opposite end of the back seat, Reigns gave a condescending stare.

"Every ounce of our focus, huh?"

Rollins gave an unapologetic shrug, then turned to his fellow Hound with wide eyes. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find decent coffee back home? I don't think you do."

"Okay, but what has that got to do with the mission?"

"Nothing, but it's just-"

"Can everyone shut the fuck up?" Brendon snapped, hitting the steering wheel frustratedly, "Please. Shut the fuck up."

Startled by the agent's sudden outburst, the rest of you stared unblinking at him, then shared a wide-eyed look before settling into your seats quietly. The drive into the city continued with an uncomfortable silence hanging in the air and a sense of agitation prevelant in the SUV.

Brendon was frowning, hands gripping the wheel tight as he focused on the road ahead. You'd sneak a glance his way every few seconds, just to make sure he wasn't about to veer the vehicle off of the road out of anger.

And to try and decipher what the hell was going on with him.

He was colder than usual, barely paying you any mind and brushing off every bit of communication from your part. Any slight comment or minor inconvinience set him off, resulting in everyone around him falling victim to his death stare and overly harsh words. It was as if he was constantly on edge, and for the sake of everyone's wellbeing – including Brendon's own – you needed to get to the bottom of it.

From the onset, it was crystal clear that the prospect of being on a mission in Vegas was not an exciting one for your bodyguard. The moment Dallon spoke those two syllables during the mission briefing the previous afternoon, the colour drained from Brendon's face and his jaw had pulled taught.

Much like now.

You looked at him, watching as tiny beads of sweat started forming along his forehead, but didn't say anything. Instead, your hand moved to where his was gripping the steering wheel, and your fingers closed around his white knuckles.

Without tearing his gaze from the road, he twisted his hand so that his fingers could intertwine with yours.

✧✧✧

A short while later. S.H.I.E.L.D safehouse, Las Vegas.

"Talk to me, Weekes."

Brendon rolled up his sleeves as he strutted into the room, stopping next to where you sat at the head of the glass table; Dallon's hologram loomed over the centre.

"Alllllrighty then," the techie's animated voice flooded the room, bringing everyone to attention, "Let's start with a bit of a recap, just to make sure that those of us who never pay attention are all caught up."

Looking down over the rim of his glasses, Dallon tossed a patronising look in Ambrose's direction.

"Wha...?" the Lunatic looked up from the tablet in his hands, genuinely confused. The rest of you rolled your eyes.

"My point exactly. ANYWAY," Dallon shook his head before running through a breakdown of what was already known, "We've got a series of abductions occuring in major cities the world over. Victimology is consistent – young, healthy couples who seem to have been runaways. They've been reappearing a couples weeks after their disappearances and displaying superhuman abilities. Now..."

The techie scooted his chair closer to the screen, and began clicking away on the keyboard. "We don't have much more than that to go on, buuut I did find something interesting..."

Each of your tablets lit up with new information, and everyone began studying it immediately. It was a world map littered with red dots.

"There's been twenty reported cases so far. Those are the locations. Notice anything interesting?"

Rollins picked it up first, trailing one gloved finger along the screen. "They're following a pattern. Starting in Toronto and ending in Cape Town, then repeating the hits."

With a toothy grin, Dallon pointed his Chewbacca pen at the Hound. "Bingo. They hit Toronto last weekend, and the next location following the pattern is-"

"Vegas," Brendon finished, eyes glued to the map. "We don't have much time."

"Yeah, we don't have a plan, either," Reigns reminded, resting his forearms on the tabletop. "We have no idea what we're dealing with, or how to go against it."

For the first time since sitting down, you spoke. "It's simple, really."

All five males turned to give you their undivided attention.

"Brendon and I will pretend to be a runaway couple, they capture us, we take them down from the inside out," you shrugged, standing up, "Easy as that."

Brendon narrowed his eyes slightly, giving you an icy stare. Your suggestion was a tad surprising to him; things were still severely fractured between the two of you. It wouldn't take much for your simple plan to backfire.

Picking up on his thoughts, you lolled your head to the side and blinked at him. "Unless you have a better idea?"

The brooding agent gave the smallest shake of the head.

Clasping your hands together, you pressed your lips in a tight smile. "So it's settled, then. We'll get to work in the morning. But until then..." Spinning on your heel, you looked to Rollins with a raised brow. "Coffee run?"

"Fuck yeah!"

The Hound was on his feet and next to you in a matter of seconds, and you playfully ruffled his hair as the two of you headed for the garage.

"Brendon."

Dallon calling for him caused Brendon to focus solely on the techie once again. He gave an expectant look.

"There is one tiny detail I forgot to mention..."

_______________________________

Thank you for reading x

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