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tameodesza · 7 months

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Dead Ends (BretShawn) ch.1

masterlist | AO3 link | ch.2>>

Summary: After stumbling upon a cabin in the woods, Bret's quest for food turns into him meeting a fiery blond instead

a/n: starting off spooky season with a zombie au (tho I have a folder full of unfinished drafts 🥴)...sounds about right

Date: May 6, 1996 Time: 9:07pm Location: Outskirts of Calgary

Bret’s boots crunched softly against the soggy leaves on the forest floor as he navigated his way through a thickly wooded path with only one goal in mind. He needed to find his way back home.

It had been over a week since his bunker was raided, forcing him away from the only family he had in the post-apocalyptic world – his younger brother Owen.

Bret still couldn’t wrap his mind around how he’d gone from surviving comfortably in his brother’s bunker to fending for his life every day against zombies, or Walkers as they were commonly referenced on news outlets at the start of the outbreak.

It was still a mystery as to what spawned the virus. Was it a mad scientist? Did it come from a diseased animal? Was it created by the government for population control?

Bret and Owen had spent many months brainstorming various conspiracy theories, but the answer remained unknown.

Now that the bunker was no longer a viable home and his brother was nowhere to be found, Bret was on a mission to head back to his childhood home.

Although he’d been shown nothing but death and carnage for the past week since he began his lone journey, Bret still held onto hope that his parents were safe and alive. They had to be. That thought alone was the only motivation keeping him sane at the moment.

Bret headed down another winding trail, shoving stubborn branches out of his way before his feet came to a stop at what lay before him. There in a short distance stood a small wooden cabin, most of its windows boarded up with no light peeking through from the inside.

The logical side of Bret told him to keep moving, to walk past the cabin unknowing of the possible dangers that lie inside. However, the rumbling of Bret’s stomach was a reminder that desperation could lead a man to do irrational things.

He approached the cabin slowly, convincing himself that he was just going to check it out, that maybe he’d get lucky and find some food or weapons that the previous owners left behind. He further surveyed the area and noted that the cabin seemed to be vacant, luck seeming to be on his side.

“Please don’t be wrong,” he uttered to himself.

Bret made his way towards the back door of the cabin, double-checking his surroundings before twisting the doorknob. He let out a sigh of relief realizing that the door was unlocked.

“Ok, in and out, Bret. In and out,” he reminded himself as he opened the door to see what appeared to be the laundry room.

Bret slowly closed the door behind him before treading lightly out of the laundry room to the living room. With the majority of the windows being boarded up, Bret moved through the small cabin with much difficulty.

Through the dim light, Bret was able to make out the shape of a couch that sat across from a broken television. But there was still no evidence of the cabin being occupied, so Bret continued moving forward to finally find what he’d been looking for. The kitchen.

As he scanned the room, his eyes landed on a few chocolate bars sitting on top of a microwave. He also spotted some canned vegetables stacked in the corner of the countertop.

Without thinking twice, Bret made a beeline for the chocolate bars and stuffed them into the pockets of his jeans to save for later. Then, he grabbed a can of green beans, quickly becoming frustrated as it was hard to lift the metal tab with his short nails.

Just then, his fingers stilled when he felt the pressure of something poking at his lower back. He heard a rough voice with a slight southern accent say menacingly, “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t bust a cap in your ass.”

Bret’s whole body froze at the unexpected presence as he stammered, “H-Hey, I don’t want any problems-”

“Shut the fuck up and put down my shit.”

Bret slowly lowered the can back onto the counter before raising his hands in surrender.

He attempted to turn around, but stopped at the stranger hissing, “Don’t you fucking move! I’ll pull this trigger and leave you for the Walkers. Don’t fuck with me.”

Bret gulped, wishing he’d listened to the part of him that said to avoid the cabin.

The man behind him proceeded to say, “Now, tell me why you’re in my cabin stealing the food that I worked hard to get.”

Bret’s heart rate quickened, hands shaking in the air as his nerves set in. “I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

The stranger tsked, “You damn sure didn’t try to find out. What all did you take?”

“I didn’t take anything-”

“Don’t you fucking lie to me! Where’s the chocolate?”

Bret sighed in defeat saying, “My front pocket.”

“Just like I thought. Take it out and set it on the counter. Slowly. No funny business.”

Bret did as he was told, setting the chocolate bars on the counter before raising his hands back up in the air. “There.”

“What else?”

“That’s all, I promise.”

“Fuck you and your promises. You come into my cabin, steal my shit, and expect for me to believe anything coming out of your mouth? I should kill your ass right now just for that.”

“You’re right,” Bret quickly added, not wanting to further piss the man off. “Whether I knew someone was in here or not, I tried taking your food and I was wrong for that.”

Bret’s goosebumps rose as the man’s humored breath brushed against his cheek. “Well, at least you know. Now,” the man led as he leaned closer to Bret’s ear. “I’m feeling a little generous tonight, but only because I really don’t feel like dealing with another dead body. So guess what? I’m going to let you go, and I don’t want you coming back. Got it?”

Bret rapidly nodded, “Yes.”

“Now, run along before I change my mind.”

Bret slowly lowered his arms as he said, “Ok. Ok, I’m going.”

The smart thing for Bret to do would have been to leave the house with his tail tucked between his legs, thankful to still be alive. But as previously mentioned, desperate men tended to do irrational things.

As soon as Bret felt the pressure of the gun lift from his back, he swiftly turned around to send a flying elbow to the man’s nose, the gun being knocked loose in the process as it fell from the man’s hand and flew far out of reach across the tiled kitchen floor.

“Fuck!” The man shouted as he clutched his nose.

Not wanting to waste any time, Bret grabbed two cans of food and a chocolate bar before trying to run past the stranger. However, he unexpectedly received a knee to the gut which caused him to drop the food onto the floor. He then felt a hard closed fist hit his cheek.

Bret hit the floor in a groan, slightly out of it. Running on pure adrenaline, Bret scrambled to his feet to throw a punch of his own.

And that’s when he finally locked eyes with his attacker whose voice certainly didn’t match his appearance.

He was a beautiful man, which was hard to come by these days for obvious reasons. And even in his rugged state, the man made Bret do a double take as he quickly looked him over – pretty blue eyes, scruffy beard, and long blond hair. Unfortunately, Bret didn’t have much time to admire the man’s beauty due to the kick to the balls he received.

Bret let out a cry of pain as he folded over and grabbed his crotch in agony.

With Bret now immobile, the man turned around to make a lunge for the gun. But with what little strength Bret had, he grabbed the blond man’s ankle causing him to trip and fall face first onto the floor.

Bret kept a hold on his ankle to prevent the man from crawling towards the gun. Then the man turned onto his back and kicked Bret in the face, prompting Bret to drop the man’s ankle as he clutched at his head in pain.

Now that he was free, the blond got up on his feet in a haste. But at that moment, both he and Bret came to a stop at the sound of a gurgled snarl coming from outside the cabin. They slowly turned their heads toward the kitchen window hoping they’d heard wrong.

Then there it was again. Another loud snarl – this one a bit closer.

“Shit, it’s Walkers,” the blond said as he ran towards his gun, picking it up and tucking it into his holster before running out the kitchen.

Bret stood up painfully, still nursing his aching crotch as he followed the man into the living room. He watched as the blond packed a medium-sized bag before saying, “They must have heard the commotion.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say as the man turned towards Bret with an accusatory finger, whisper-shouting, “A commotion that you caused!”

“Me? You were the one threatening to shoot!”

“That’s beside the point! I’ve been staying here for weeks with no issues. Then here comes your klepto ass trying to steal my shit!”

“You-”

Another snarl pulled them from their heated discussion.

The blond walked up to a boarded-up window and peeked through a small gap to see three Walkers approaching the front steps of the cabin. But that was the least of his concerns as his eyes locked on the cluster of Walkers approaching the cabin from a far distance.

Bret was startled as the blond suddenly moved from the window, shoving him out the way as he ran back to his bag to fit anything he could in the limited time he had. Bret looked on clueless as to what was going on.

“What did you see,” he asked urgently. But the blond ignored him which led to Bret asking, “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” the blond relayed as he slung his bag on his back. He headed towards the back door, saying over his shoulder, “I don’t care what you do.”

Unfortunately, the blond threw open the back door to reveal two Walkers lurking around. He quickly slammed the door shut and locked it before heading back to the living room. “We’re surrounded,” he threw out as he walked past Bret.

Bret caught him by the arm saying, “Wait. What’s the plan? We need to find a way out of here.”

The blond snatched his arm away saying, “We aren’t doing shit. I work solo and I’m finding a way out of here.”

The two men jump at the sound of a loud bang coming from the front door followed by pounding at the back door of the cabin.

The blond grunted, gripping his hair in frustration saying, “Fuck, come on. I don’t have time to deal with this shit.”

The men ran to the bedroom and made their way towards the window. They tried to lift it, but the window wouldn’t budge.

“Shit, this thing probably hasn’t been opened in ages,” the blond squeezed out in a grunt. “We’ll just have to break it.”

Before Bret could warn against the noise possibly alerting more Walkers, the blond picked up a small wooden chair and smashed the window open, the glass shattering into multiple pieces.

The blond rushed to get out the window, gaining a few small cuts on his hands in the process. As soon as he landed, he ran, not waiting for Bret to catch up.

Hearing the front door burst open, Bret rushed out the window as well, collecting a few scrapes on his hands along the way. He dropped from the window in a thud, quickly hopping up to make a run for it.

But out the corner of his eye, he saw the same blond man with his back against a tree as he struggled to fight off a Walker that seemed to catch him by surprise.

After the altercation they’d just had, Bret had every right to leave the man to fend for himself, but he wasn’t that kind of guy.

Bret pulled out a knife from his pocket and ran in the blond’s direction. As soon as he was within reach, Bret raised the knife above the Walker’s head, driving it straight down into its skull causing the Walker to immediately cease its movement.

Bret pulled out his knife and shoved the Walker aside before looking at the blond in concern asking, “Are you ok?”

“Not until I get the hell out of here. Now move!” The man shoved Bret out of the way to take off running through the forest. Bret had no choice but to follow him as there were Walkers approaching in every other direction.

The men ran for miles nonstop, careful not to trip as the trees blurred past them on their escape into the night. They continued running until the blond slowed to a stop, resting a hand on a nearby tree as he panted heavily trying to catch his breath.

Bret stopped not too far behind, bending over as he placed his hands on his knees desperately gasping for air.

Seeing that Bret was still with him, the blond complained, “You’re still following me? I told you I work solo.”

Bret stood tall, stretching his back as he responded, “I wasn’t following you. I was running to safety just as you were.”

“Well, we’re safe now. So you can leave.”

Bret raised a brow at the man. “How about you show a little more gratitude after I just saved your ass?”

The man marched towards Bret as he said, “You saved my ass? Please. Things were just fine before you showed up roaming through my shit. Now I’m out of a cabin. Fuck your gratitude.”

Bret rubbed tensely at the back of his neck as he watched the blond man stump off to sit at the base of a tree.

As harsh as the words were, Bret could understand the man’s anger. If he hadn’t been snooping in the cabin, none of this would have happened. And to be honest, he did feel guilty about it. But how was he to know any of that was going to happen?

Bret apprehensively approached the man, making sure to keep a safe distance as he didn’t want to get kicked in the nuts again. “Look. You’re right. You are in this situation because of me. I’m sorry.”

“Keep your sorries to yourself. It’s not going to change anything,” the man sneered as he stared blankly at the ground.

Bret decided to throw caution to the wind and sit on the ground next to the man, his invasion of privacy not going unnoticed as the blond looked at him like he grew two heads.

“Just listen to me,” Bret said with his hands stretched out defensively.

The man rolled his eyes, looking forward as he chided, “Oh, this should be good.”

“I…I want to make it up to you.”

The man scrunched his brows together as he turned to look at Bret. “All you’ve done is fuck shit up. What could you possibly do to make this up to me?”

“I think we should stick together.”

The stranger let out a loud snort, genuinely humored at the ridiculous request. “You’re joking, right?”

“Just hear me out. I’ll watch your back. I’m from around here, so I know the layout of the land. And it seems like you’re pretty skilled yourself. I think we could both benefit from teaming up.”

It was apparent to Bret that the man before him was a little rough around the edges, but he also saw him as a potential asset. The man seemed to have more experience than him, and, selfishly, Bret could really use his help.

However, his hope dwindled when the man responded sharply, “I don’t need your help.”

So Bret tried a more logical approach.

“I’m sure you’d benefit from having an extra pair of hands around. You’d have another person to help scrounge for food, to watch out for Walkers, for added protection-”

“I don’t want your damn protection. I’ve made it this far by myself just fine, so why would I want you weighing me down? I don’t need you around me making irrational decisions.”

Bret answered smartly, “Says the guy pulling out a gun like it’s a free for all.”

“Oh, forgive me for being a little on edge when we live in a world full of fucking Walkers!”

Seeing that he was only making the blond more agitated, Bret considered it a lost cause. He stood up and dusted off his pants, the blond’s eyes following him intensely. “Ok,” Bret said dejectedly. “I’ll leave then. Just wanted to help.”

Bret backed away hesitantly, his eyes lingering for a moment on the blond beauty before turning away to head who-knows-where.

He’d only walked a few feet when he heard the blond call out behind him. “Wait,” the man said with a hint of annoyance.

Bret paused his step, turning around as the blond walked up with crossed arms saying, “Fine.”

Bret gave a look of surprise. “Fine?”

“Fine,” he reiterated with an affirmative nod. “But only because I need someone watching my back while I take a piss.”

“Oh,” Bret said, unsure whether to be offended or respect the man’s honesty.

The blond walked a few steps closer, just inches away as he stared Bret down with a straight face. He said lowly, almost ominously in warning, “But just know that the moment you fuck up, I’m out.”

Bret swallowed nervously before nodding and holding up a hand as best as he could in their confined space. “Ok, deal.”

The blond looked at Bret’s hand for a quick second before walking away saying, “Come on. I’d like to find shelter before daylight.”

Bret looked on dumbfounded as his hand hung in the air, not receiving the handshake he’d expected. Shaking off the cold shoulder, he moved quickly to catch up to the man.

They ventured through the thick forest in an awkward silence. Well, it was certainly awkward for Bret, the only sound to break the silence coming from their shoes against the ground.

In an effort to break the ice, Bret cleared his throat saying, “I’m Bret, by the way.”

However, he didn’t receive a response as the blond continued to look ahead focused on not tripping on fallen branches.

Bret looked at him warily, the man’s expression was unreadable. He asked, “Can I know your name?” He again went unanswered, prompting Bret to say in an irritated huff, "If we’re going to be teammates, it’ll do us some good to at least know each other’s name.”

A short quiet moment passed between the two before the blond said curtly, “Shawn.”

Bret had to hold back asking ‘was that so hard.’

“Shawn,” Bret repeated to ingrain the name into his head. “Nice to meet you.”

Bret nearly facepalmed once formal greeting left his lips out of habit, especially considering that the circumstances of their meeting was anything but nice.

Thankfully, Shawn didn’t seem to harp on it, the blond instead asking, “Where were you headed before you rudely broke into my cabin?”

“To be fair, the door was unlocked,” Bret said lightheartedly. But seeing that Shawn didn’t see the humor in it, he said earnestly, “I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t care.”

Bret sighed tiredly, carefully stepping over a large fallen branch before answering, “Home. That’s where I was headed. I wanted to see how my parents were holding up. Took a shortcut through the woods to get there and that’s when I found your cabin.”

Bret had to stop himself from walking ahead of Shawn when the smaller man came to a stop. He gave Bret a confused look, saying flatly, “You’re headed home. Why the hell would you do that?”

The question came out rudely, but Shawn was genuinely puzzled. Every neighborhood he’d come across was either a ghost town, filled with Walkers, or was a hotspot for unfriendly run-ins with other survivors. It was the last place he’d want to lay low.

Bret took some time to respond, a bit taken aback by Shawn’s question. His eyes drifted up to the starless sky, breathing deeply before answering, “The last time I saw my parents was Christmas day. I’d promised them I would visit them again soon, but I was so busy with life that I never made the time. I just kept putting it off. Then all this shit happened, and it was too late. So… I don’t know. I just need to see if they’re ok.”

Bret was well-aware of the possibility that his parents had met an unfortunate fate, but he couldn’t dwell on that. The guilt of not visiting his parents weighed too heavily on his guilty conscience, and in his mind, this was the only way to fix it.

Bret was too buried in his thoughts to feel Shawn’s eyes watching him inquisitively, thoughts of his own swirling beyond those blue eyes.

Shawn was a brash man, molded to be so by the harsh experiences he’d faced since the outbreak began. But as cold as he could be, he had the decency not to express his true opinion – that it was more likely that Bret’s parents had turned into a five-course meal for Walkers by this point.

Instead, he looked back at the path ahead and walked forward to continue their route as he asked, “How long do you think it’ll take to get there?”

Bret snapped out of his stupor to catch up to Shawn as he answered, “If we don’t run into any trouble along the way, maybe a week.”

“A week,” the blond repeated to himself with a nod.

Bret almost ran into Shawn as the blond stopped suddenly, slinging his backpack forward to rummage inside of the bag. Bret stiffened at the sight, not knowing if the blond would brandish another weapon his way as he had back at the cabin. However, Shawn’s hand emerged from the bag holding a slightly melted chocolate bar.

“Here,” Shawn said gruffly as he forced the bar into Bret’s palm.

Bret, not expecting the kind gesture, said appreciatively, “Thank y-”

“Don’t get all sappy about it,” Shawn muttered as he zipped up the bag. “I at least want a partner who’s not malnourished.”

After securing the bag onto his back, Shawn set foot once more down the dark path. As Bret followed, he couldn’t help wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

#divider cr: @firefly-graphics #dead ends #zombie au #hartbreak #shawn michaels #bret hart #bretshawn #bret hart x shawn michaels #alternate universe #wwe fanfiction

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fireemblems24 · 2 years

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Azure Gleam Ch 6

Dimitri fans stay winning. The only route where I actually feel the need to put spoilers in the title - at least for anyone who's played Three Houses.

STORY

Oh, wait, we DON'T fight at Arianrhod battle? Count Rowe falls off screen? Man, Edelgard taking Ls all over the place.

I love how Arianrhod is unconquorable but fell right away. Lamo.

Is Edelgard keeping Aruendel imprisoned? I thought she had no clue where he was.

Dimitri struggled with his revenge issue for a moment there.

Annette is so smol. 😭

The way Dimitri says "Imperial snake" with so much venom.

Someone came with terrible news. Count Rowe escaped. Should've just killed him.

Oh, wait, they got attacked by mages. That's TWSITD? And Dimitri knows they're behind Duscur? Suspecting Cornelia is behind it. Glad that we'll get to deal with her again. She's a great villain.

MAP & SIDE BATTLES

Mannnn between the hurricane, not having internet, and last week being a nightmare for work, it's been sooooo long since I played AG. I had most of GW Ch 6 done when the hurricane came through, so it really has been like 2, 3 weeks? (not that I'm complaining, the flooding is just getting even worse in some areas)

Ahhhhh, I'm always so happy when I remember Flayn and Seteth are on this map.

Man, thinking about Post-CF Flayn makes me so sad. Like I know some people think it's oh so great she and Seteth can live, but they'll spend the next few hundred years on the run, terrified to trust anyone with their true identity. And Flayn hates that. She wants to hang out with friends and go to school. The fact she gets that teased and gets tossed into an even worse way of life if she survives CF is so sad. And she has to see everyone celebrate Rhea's death and act like her race is responsible for human greed too.

Ingrid knew Miklain was abusing Sylvain 😭

Dimitri's no nonsense. He's like "if Miklain acts up, kill him" to the soldiers. Like, that's hardcore.

Mannnn, Sylvain is interesting here. He's supporting Dimitri's decision with Miklain I'm betting in no small part because he wants to undo the reliance on crests and knows Miklain could help that.

The bubble over Felix says "It really pisses me off." So Felix being Felix. Annnnd Felix is annoyed with Dimitri for not telling him everything. So more Felix talking about Dimitri, lamo.

Man, the Blue Lions are always so intense. Everyone here is talking about Miklain or Ashe finding a way to deal with Lonato's death or Duscur generals talking about murdered family. AG goes hard.

Ohhh, if Dedue trusts Duke Infan, than I do too.

I was right about Dimitri and Count Gloucester, he just admired Rowe for surrendering quickly and sparing the people.

I get to kill Count Varley. Cool.

Why does Dimitri know so much about which plants you can eat 😅

ASHE & DEDUE C SUPPORT

Ashe is such a cinnamon roll. He's already wandering around while it's late outside and stopped to pick some yarrow because of its healing properties.

Gardening bonding incoming. Ashe noticed Dedue's hobby.

They're both missing the greenhouse :(

Dedue wants to visit Lonato's garden. He also wants to know why Lonato knows so much about herbs. Good question.

Dedue's into medicinal herbs.

These two are too sweet 😊

FELIX & MERCEDES C SUPPORT

He better be nicer to her than last time. I'd love to see her chew him up, lol.

Ohhhh yesss, we're finally talking about Felix's cat thing. Felix really is a cat in human form.

Felix taking in injured stray cats 😭. Mercie and Jeritza did too 😭😭. And they had to hide it because they wouldn't killed it 😭

Mercie "We left my brother behind. Next sentence. "Still, I wonder what happened to that cat." 🤣 Jeritza found dead.

Cat is attached to Felix and won't leave. 🤣🤣🤣 People (and cats) ignoring Felix's being tsun is what I live for.

Mercie is like "quit whining, Felix. You have a pet cat now." lamo.

FELIX & SYLVAIN C SUPPORT

Oh, this time it's Sylvain calling Felix out for fighting reckless. It's a reverse uno from their Hopes' supports.

"You don't look like a man who's achieved some fantastic new enlightenment." Sylvain just slayed Felix.

Now they're arguing about who got in trouble more as kids. I love that, lol, makes them really feel like childhood friends.

Ten bucks says Felix got in the fight defending Sylvain's honor (or Dimitri's).

Sylvain's like you can't die because you mean too much to Faerghus and Dimitri. And then talks about how much Felix means to Dimitri.

Wait, wait, wait - important line here "reforming the entire social structure of pretty much everything . . ." Sylvain on Dimitri. Eat shit "StAtUs QuO dEfEnDeR" argument.

Soooo the "Sylvix" support so far is all about . . . Dimilix 😅

I don't mind this in the slightest, but I suspect someone on the writing team was a shipper on deck OR they were as sick as I am of people saying "CF Felix makes sense because he HaTeS dImItRi."

Felix throwing the same arguments at Sylvain. Good on him.

"You're the complete opposite of integrity." Felix, that's your friend 😭😭.

So Sylvain did some growing up it seems.

SHEZ & RODRIGUE C SUPPORT

Finally got Rodrigue's C support. Took long enough.

Shez complaining about the cold brings back memories lol. I used to live in the North.

Hearing her talk about lamp-lit streets covered in snow makes me miss winter sooooo badly.

Cool detail that messengers ride pegasus during the winter. I think someone mentioned that on here before.

Lamo, Dimitri and Felix followed a pegasus and nearly froze to death as kids. Poor Rodrigue.

Man, this is why the Blue Lions are the best. All these little stories from the past in the supports. Other houses don't get this.

SHEZ & DEDUE B SUPPORT

Shez looking out for Dedue. Good.

Soldiers giving Dedue shit 😭😭.

Shez can sympathize with the soldiers. Wtf. No way. I'm questioning them. (I could either agree with them or question them)

Dimitri put Dedue in a position often given to nobles. Good. Deserved.

Shez says she naturally get's under people's skin, and Dedue's just like "true." lamo.

Commoners bonding over the resentment nobility feels towards them for Dimitri elevating them.

I like how Shez's solution is to just prove themselves. It feels very shonen lead and like what Shez would say.

This was a good support balancing being about both characters.

FELIX & INGRID C SUPPORT

Nooooo, not Glenn 😭😭😭😭

Ingrid found a spur. It's Felix's, but actually Glenn's.

Ingrid's calling Felix out for being a softie for keeping hold of a memento.

And now he wants to give it to her 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I'm actually tearing up in real life over this. I'm so over attached to this group.

Glenn told Ingrid before anyone else about his promotion 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I was not expecting that support. That support needs a warning. How did that??

Felix being sweet is my weakness, though.

Not going to lie, sometimes going through support after support feels like a chore. But never with the Blue Lions lol.

SHEZ & SETETH C SUPPORT

Fodlan's #1 husbando support incoming.

Seteth thinks Shez could've impacted Fodlan's future if she continued to study at the Academy and it wasn't shut down.

Seteth admits he's suspicious of Shez. Which . . . I mean it's Seteth.

Man, every time someone doesn't trust Shez, it just makes me love Dimitri's take on her powers even more.

Seteth defending Rhea. You love to see it.

Lamo, he wants Shez to stay away from Flayn and Rhea.

What's funny about that is Shez doesn't have a C support with Flayn (B & A though), so it's almost like she listens until they're more familiar with each other. And OFC Rhea doesn't have supports . . . . again . . . .

MAIN BATTLE

I love how Byleth sides with whoever you're not playing as lol.

Dimitri wants to help Shez achieve her goals (defeating Byleth), and Shez is like "appreciate it, but focus on the war" lamo.

Dimitri is obviously projecting. Shez is explaining how they're not THAT upset about Byleth killing their former teammates. And she's like "you gotta get used to death when it happens all the time or it's too much weight." I think we ALL know where this is heading.

Shez is like "you've let things weigh on you too much" too true.

Though it's kind of sweet that he's trying to help Shez out lol. In his own way.

Awww, yeah, Dimitri over here suggesting they recruit Byleth now. I'm pro-Dimileth, tbh. Even IF I may prefer other ships a bit more, I still think it's pretty sweet.

Dimitri's like "what if we pay more than the Empire?" Like, Dimitri, WHERE ARE YOU GETTING ALL THIS MONEY??? Lamo. He's already in the poorest nation taking in all the refugees from Edelgard's mess and paying an army. Like he must have a finance genius working for him or something.

Kinda cool that AG suggested recruiting Byleth first.

Time to recruit Bernie. Never again will I leave her alone with Edelgard when I'm not monitoring her.

I feel like this is the most tactics I've seen a Fodlan leader use in a map battle ever. Dimitri's giving orders to explicitly ignore Byleth, which is different from every other route that says to attack Byleth before pulling back. He's doing it because he knows Byleth is too strong. Same for the Death Knight, who they trapped. It's pretty cool, actually. No one else has done anything like this.

Dimitri forced Jeralt to retreat right away, lamo. And then beat up Alois. I think . . . my Dimitri might be a tad over leveled. He's level 30. Everyone else is level 20. I may . . . use him a bit more than the others lol. But he just . . . kills everything.

Pretty smart tactics actually. Dimitri had all the strongholds captured, then focused on getting the Death Knight, then on Byleth. So securing the area, then picking off the threats.

Oh, cut scene. Sothis! I think Shez woke Sothis up. But let's be real. It was actually Dimitri who did all the work. Legit I had everyone else picking off Jeralt's reinforcements. My Dimitri took Byleth on by his lonesome.

Oh, Byleth and Sothis fighting??? Ohhhh. What's going on?

Sothis kicked Arval's ass lamo.

I'm sure I'll eventually get this discussion on the other routes.

Shez's rivalry seems so low key. Shez prioritizing recruiting like Dimitri suggested, lol.

Sothis is being a dick to Byleth. ngl. Kinda treating Byleth like a car she's driving.

Arval and Sothis seem to hate each other more than Shez and Byleth do.

I just . . . can't get beyond Alois abandoning his family to follow Jeralt around.

Oh, Byleth hair-color changed. Don't know if that just happened or not. Yep, Byleth just said something. Jeralt seems alarmingly unbothered his kid now has mint-colored hair and eyes for no actual reason. Like what if you woke up one day and -bam- you're a redhead. Wouldn't you be a bit, um, concerned?

Alois saying nothing about having to fight his old friends. Oh, there it is, finally. Man, they really stripped Alois of all his character and turned him into what the fandom claims Leonie is, a mindless Jeralt simp. But he has his jokes, I guess??

Nice to see Jeralt isn't interested in fighting Rhea. Just ignoring her. Fair enough.

Wait . . . Dimitri is leaving? Does that mean I don't have him? OMG. I need him. He's my OP unit. No.

Oh, Sreng. That's cool. They're actually getting involved. And Gautier is in trouble :( Will Sylvain leave too? Or is this the next battle?

Ohhh Annette called them peaceful. Ouch. Sylvain was quick to correct her, though. Poor girl just didn't know. Appreciate they gave them a realistic reason to attack though. Needing fertile lands was a real world reason stuff like this happened.

Yes, Shez, tag along. Please. Don't make Dimitri leave all on his own. I need him ahh. Oh, great, that's not where this is going.

DEDUE AND RODRIGUE. NO. Why. This sucks. Ugh. I lost 3 units this chapter???? WHYYY? Unless I am with them?

Leaving Felix in command is cool, though.

Dimitri just said "protect every last one of them." Oh, the change there lol.

Annette comes to like Dimitri's elbow lamo.

XXX

#azure gleam #fire emblem #fire emblem three hopes #three hopes #three hopes spoilers #azure gleam spoilers

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thicksimpx · 2 years

Text

Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4| Ch 5 | Ch 6 | ch 7 | ch 8 | Ch9| Ch10 | Ch11| Ch12| Ch13| Ch14 | Ch15 | Ch16 |

Summary: Leaving the soul society for “research” - desperately looking to find answers, anything that’ll help him take down the Spirit king.. that is until he meets “HER” - She has him enamored, desperate and most of all curious… there’s something about HER

“Sometimes we do bad things for the people we love. It doesn’t mean it’s right, it means love is more important”

Warnings : 18+ , mature content, mature language, possessiveness , stalking , murder/gore, rough penetration, creampies , fingering, masturbation, cam girl y/n, Lots of Psychology lessons 😂, violence, public sex, unrequited love.

(Aizen POV)

Class finally ended. As each student left they came up and dropped their papers into the bin on my desk. I had to admit, this class was deep.

"Professor Aldridge" a voice called. Lowly groaning I look up and to my surprise it was y/n.

"Mrs L/n what a surprises. You're usually the first out the door. To what do I owe the pleasure"

She waited until the last student walked out the room to start talking. "Uh, I just wanted to apologize for my lateness. "And um, Here's my paper. I'm not happy with it so , if I get a bad grade I'll do it over or whatever "

"I'm sure your paper is great Y/n" I took my glasses off and smiled. "If you have and trouble with assignments you're always welcome to schedule time during my office hours. I'll be more than happy to assist you." Im hoping she does schedule some time. I'll be able to be alone with her. Alone with y/n ....

"Thank you" she smiled. "Um have a great rest of your day sir" she said awkwardly and fast walked to the door. Stopping shit turned around and said "you should get contacts"

Before I could questioning her statement she was gone. Was she flirting? That was a compliment. She has a thing for older guys right ? Oh y/n you sneaky girl, don't say things like that, it makes me think you want me.... The way I want you.

—-

That Night

Y/n is home alone today. So far no one as came over and it's already 12Am. I bought a little fold up chair this time so Atleast i can be comfortable watching my girl. as I settled in, I noticed she was moving things in her room around. followed by her applying some make up, and a wig with some bunny ears.

A few seconds later from her large window I could see her sitting down at her desk smiling and talking as if someone else was in the room. I glance over and it was just her computer screen. no .. she's not... I straightened up in the chair and moved closer to the window to try and hear what she was saying a bit clearer.

(y/n pov)

Your hands felt up towards your chest. You cupped breast and kneaded them. The action alone made him breath a little harder. "It's been too long since I've cum hard and good." you sigh. "you know, I'm going to be honest with you guys. Normally someone would come over and do this for me, but he hasn't called in a while." you breathe out as the tips of your fingers trace your cunt.

"oh this? "You are crazy" you chuckled responding to a comment You licked your lips. "You like? It's not as pretty as my red outfit some of you like some much but I thought you'd like this one too"

"Oh wait, one of you sent me a gift that I planned on using tonight. you dont have to tell me who you are" you smiled as you left to rummage for something. You came back into view holding something and sat down quickly and close as you fixed the laptop to your liking. Once you were back in the frame you showcased a bottle of lube And a very big red dildo.

Admiring the gift you smile into the camera. "thank you to whoever bought this." you said as you eyed the toy. "its big but we can definitely make it fit" you pressed the tip to your lips, tongue darting out to lick it.

(Aizen POV)

Everything she said sounded like a whisper to me. I couldn't believe it. My y/n was a cam girl. she was giving everybody the chance to see what should belong to me.

Although she's showing everyone over the internet, im right here. With the perfect view. the perfect show just for me. Oh y/n are you teasing me now? I feel a little overwhelmed. What I'm seeing, everyday I learn more about you y/n. is this real?

My head, it feels oh so light from what I was witnessing. One hand wandered down between her legs and played with the hem of her panties, occasionally hovering over the hollow between leg and pussy before she pulled the white lace aside to fully reveal her beautiful puffy cunt. I snapped a quick picture, who knows if ill be lucky enough to see this sight again. I watched as she lubed up the red dildo and begin to push it inside of her. Inch by aching inch she pumped and the wet squelching sounds made my dick jump. I wish it was me, my dick... ill give it to you so good.

Unbuttoning my pants quickly my dick jumped out and I palmed it as I watched. It was hard, I didnt know if I should watch her face or the way the dildo easily slid into her. everything about her was perfect. Looking at her even her feet were perfect symmetrical toes, clean nails just like the rest of her .. perfect

"I'm full, so fucking full" I hear her cry out. she tested the waters by thrusting the toy slowly in and halfway out. "God I'd give anything for this to be you, I bet you feel hot to the touch" she moaned. I know.. oh I know my love. She was lost in it, pumping the toy in and out almost to the rhythm of my stroking as if she knew I was watching and wanted to match me

"I am... I wish I was, you wouldn't need that thing" I groaned softly, hands gripping my balls as she arched her back and spread her legs. Oh what a good girl you are y/n. doing all of this just for me. I had to admit that observing her cunt becoming slick and glazed with her juices bit by bit, smacking noises coming from it as she thrust with her toy was charming. I never knew I needed this. It did not escape my attention how she was circling her lower body, she's about to cum.

I spit into the palm of my hand for some additional lubricant which made the motions even smoother. At some point, I must have lost my mind and he instinctively moved his hips and thrust into my hand as if I was was the toy she was using. "Oh god daddy!" she shouted as she pushed the dildo as deeply as possible and went to touch her clit.

Her shivering frame and tense like movements alerted him to how painfully close she were. Y/n, shit, baby I want you to cum for me. it felt good to know I was the only one who knew her name these loser perverts dont know you the way I do.

"I-I wanna, oh god, cum w-with you" She moaned as her hand slithered down to her clit. I nodded, "I can't deny you princess" I muttered.

She rubbed her most sensitive bundle of nerves and came chanting "daddy" over and over as each wave hit her harder than the other one. Each spurt landed on my leg, stomach and the floor as I groaned. "who knew we'll be moving so fast in our relationship babe, Getting off to each other like this" I laughed lowly cleaning myself up with some tissues I had in my pocket.

"um what are you doing"

I turned around and spotted a homeless man standing in the doorway to the room I was in. "how long have you been standing there?"

"long enough to spot you yanking it to that girl there. she's a hot piece of ass aint she. Ryan told me about her.. heard she does this every other Wednesday"

interesting. "so other homeless come here too?" I asked. the man just shook his head and said not really.

"oh then let me show you what I saw from the eighth floor, there's really good stuff we can jerk off to up there friend" I said quickly stuffing my self back into my pants and prompting him to follow me to the steps. without hesitation he came. fucking idiot. ill kill each and every one of you who come her to watch my Y/n.

—

#bleach aizen sosuke #bleach aizen #black reader x bleach #professor aizen sosuke #black reader #aizen x y/n #aizen sousuke #aizen x you #aizen

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kohanayaki · 3 years

Text

.:Time and Time Again:. (Marauders Era x Reader) Ch 2

As you reconcile with Sirius, he reminisces on how you came to be friends despite a rather rocky start (mostly told through flashbacks taking place in the Marauders era).

LINKS: CH 1 CH 2 CH 3 CH 4 CH 5 CH 6 CH 7 CH 8

________________________________________________________

Ch 2 .:Pranks and Past Prejudices:.

~Previously~

“I was about to see if you were awake,” Sirius admitted with a small grin, “Seems we both had the same idea.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, stepping aside slightly so you could come in. If the Sirius Black from your school days had offered you into his room in the dead of night, you would have slapped him upside the head; but things were different now, and so were the two of you.

However, as you glanced around the room you almost laughed at how remarkably unchanged it was, and why wouldn't it be? He hadn't lived here since he was sixteen, and he was only living here now because he preferred this house to an Azkaban cell by a small fraction. While the rest of the house was set in deep tones of obsidian and gray, save for the green Slytherin theme of his younger brother's room, Sirius' room was all warm shades of red and gold, Gryffindor paraphernalia covering every inch of it from Quidditch trophies and old banners to a tapestry he had stolen from the Great Hall when they'd won the house cup that year.

The room was littered with memories of your school life— a set of charred robes from when he and James had drunkenly lit the Quidditch field hoops on fire, an old Beater's bat that he had broken in half during the Cup finals, an old Gobstones set you used to play with in the courtyard, and stacks of classic rock records that you and Remus had gifted him for the holidays. A muggle toolbox sat in the corner of the room from when he'd made improvements to his enchanted motorbike that couldn't be done with magic, which you were certain his parents were mortified by.

Posters of bikini-clad women were plastered across the wallpaper, and you recalled the day he told you his mother had a fit when she realized he'd used a permanent sticking charm on them so she couldn't take them down. Said posters were still present, but mostly covered up by all the photos of him and his friends from their school and early Order days— the only noticeable sign of change you could see from his moving back in. It was truly like some sort of time capsule.

As soon as you tore your eyes away from the room and turned to focus on its owner, a tense silence fell between you two. This was the first time you had seen Sirius in over a decade. The last time you two spoke, he was in chains being led away to Azkaban. What was there to say? How could you possibly think things could go back to the way they were?

“Sirius,” your voice cracked with emotion as you said his name, and when you saw the look in his eyes, so similar to the look he'd given you when he was in that horrible barbed cage during his trial, the dam just broke.

You practically threw yourself at him, sobbing quietly into his shoulder as the fabric of his shirt bunched up in your trembling hands

“I'm sorry,” you said, “I am so, so sorry I didn't believe you, Sirius. I didn't know, I didn't—”

“(Y/n), it's okay,” Sirius said softly.

You almost jumped at his gentle touch, his arm wrapping around your waist and one hand coming up to pet your hair. It hurt him to see you like this, that you went through this much because of him.

“There was no way you could have known,” he said, resting his chin on top of your head as tears continued to stream down your face, “There was no proof that I wasn't the Secret Keeper. We'd decided to make it that rat at the last second. Only James and Lily knew and, well, they couldn't exactly attest to my innocence.”

Hatred bubbled up in his chest at his own mention of Pettigrew, but he forced it down for you, his expression softening as soon as he looked at you. “That was bad judgment on my part, I suppose,” he said in an attempt to lighten the mood, although twelve years in prison was a difficult matter to joke about.

“I should have just believed you,” you muttered into his collar. Sirius' other hand reached out to cup your face, wiping the last few tears from your cheeks.

“Come now, even Moony thought I'd done it,” he said, a small smirk finding its way to his face, “I know what it looked like. . . I don't blame any of you for not believing me. So please, don't blame yourself for this, (Y/n). You're still my best friend.”

“Oh, now you've done it,” you sniffled, laughing despite yourself as fresh tears spilled over. Sirius laughed along with you and yo u could feel the sound reverberate through his chest, rich and melodic. Warm.

He wrapped both his arms around you, holding you tight as you two chuckled like a couple of idiots, standing there glassy-eyed in the middle of his room. If anyone else had bore witness to the scene they'd have thought you'd gone mad, but in that moment you couldn't care less. Your body had been buckling under the weight of your guilt and how much you had missed him. Hearing him say that he still considered you his best friend. . . that was more than you could have ever asked for.

Sirius swelled with pride as he saw he was able to make you smile, something he'd long considered a small victory. He couldn't believe how much your relationship had changed. If someone had told him all those years ago that you would turn out to be someone he couldn't imagine his life without, he wouldn't have believed them. But he supposed life was unexpected like that. . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1973 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ever since the day you'd stood up to him, James Potter found himself increasingly curious about you. Of course he and his friends continued to pick on Snape, but when you were around to fend them off it became more and more difficult to do so, something that the leader of the self-proclaimed Marauders decided was cumbersome.

James insisted that to get to Snape they would have to take you down too, since you were so keen on protecting him.

“We need to cut the head off the snake,” he had said.

And so, slowly but surely, James shifted the cross hairs of his mischief-making from Severus Snape to you. It started out small; a Bat-bogey hex here, some heat sensitive combustion power under your cauldron there. What he didn't expect in the slightest was for you to actually retaliate with pranks of your own.

Quidditch season had just ended as the year came to a close, and James, who was supposed to be helping clean out the Gryffindor tent, was lying on his back and fiddling about with a golden snitch he'd found wedged in the wooden scaffolding. His head perked up as he saw the Lily across the pitch, walking next to you and chatting. He clearly couldn't care less about what, as he had no problem interrupting your conversation.

“Hey, Evans!” he hollered, heading towards you two.

As soon as Lily spotted him she rolled her eyes.

“And now we're walking faster,” she muttered, grabbing you by the arm and tugging you along.

“Aw come on, I just wanna talk,” he said, quickly catching up with you. Before long he had jogged a few paces ahead, turning around to block your path. “Hey,” he said with a smirk. He was wearing his Quidditch practice uniform, broom in hand.

“Merlin, you are nothing if not persistent,” Lily huffed.

“What can I say? I'm a Chaser~”

“Goodbye, James,” Lily deadpanned at the pun, and he quickly moved in front of her again.

“Wait, wait! Just watch this, okay?” he insisted.

You bit back a smirk, grateful he hadn't paid you any mind until now.

“Trust me, you've never seen anything like this before,” James said cockily, willing his broomstick to hover a few feet off the ground and hauling one leg over to mount it. However, as soon as his arse hit the wood, his entire body phased right through it. He groaned as his tailbone made unceremonious contact with the ground, his broomstick now hovering above him. As soon as he looked up the stick dropped and plonked him on the head, solid again.

You burst out laughing, revealing your wand that had been obstructed from his view by your sleeve.

“(Y/n)!” Lily looked at you in shock, hitting you in the arm playfully but unable to fight the laughter that rose in her chest. It was nice to see him get a harmless taste of his own medicine.

“Well, you were right, Potter,” the redhead said, “I've never seen anything like that before.”

James' face flushed with embarrassment while you two walked away, gathering his broom and whatever remained of his pride. You wouldn't get the better of him again.

Or, at least that's what he told himself until the beginning of your fourth year.

________________________________________________________

James strode down the corridors leading to the Great Hall with a pep in his step. It had been an unusually peaceful morning; despite having slept in, he wasn't in much of a rush to join his friends who had already made their way to breakfast.

The real reason for his quick pace was because he couldn't wait to see your reaction to his latest prank. It was a classic, amped up a bit thanks to a tube of ink from one of the “magic” markers at Zonkos. He hoped you liked your new look, because you were going to be saddled with it for a while.

As he walked through the courtyard he shot a wink to a fourth year Hufflepuff girl he recognized from his Divination class and she covered her hand with her mouth, turning away from him slightly as she tried to hold back the giggles that spilled from her lips. He gave himself a pat on the back, oblivious to the fact that the laughter was directed at him, an unawareness that stayed with him up until the moment he threw the doors to the Great Hall open. The gasps and laughter that followed him only grew as he sat down at his usual spot. Even his friends were staring at him, wide-eyed and unblinking.

“What?” James ran a hand through his hair in confusion, “What are you guys—!!”

As his hair flopped in front of his face his peripheral vision was curtained with the brightest shade of neon turquoise he'd ever seen.

“No,” he said, “no, no, no way!”

He grabbed one of the food trays, dumping the pastries that were on top onto the table. Peter squeaked as he caught a few that were about to fall, setting them down quietly on his own plate.

James stared at his reflection in the shiny metal, and sure enough his once pristine brunette hair was colored the bright blue of the magic marker whose contents he'd dumped into your shower bottle the night before.

“Did you like the shampoo?” a voice behind him asked innocently.

He nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned around to see you, your hair colored the same bright blue shade. Now he was thoroughly confused.

“It smells nice, right?”

“How did you. . . if I. . . why is your hair—”

“A simple connection charm on the shampoo bottle,” you said, “anyone who touches it receives the same benefits and results of the next person who uses it within three hours. In this case, you landed yourself a dye job and a hell of a keratin treatment, so you're welcome. The spell was already on the bottle to begin with; pretty convenient when you have dorm mates that can all save on buying product, and besides it can be kind of nice to skip a hair wash day every once in a while. I suppose I should thank you, I didn't have to do any shopping or sneaking around for this one. You did all the work for me.”

You put your hand to your chin, pretending to study him for a moment.

“You should take care of that fast, though” you said nonchalantly, gesturing to his hair, “you don't look nearly as cute as I do in this color, Potter.”

To further prove your point, you waved your wand around the crown of your head, and with a quick utter of 'aufero hue' the blue in your hair seemed to melt right off the strands, leaving behind your natural (h/c) locks. The color swirled around the tip of your wand in an aqueous state for a moment before you flung it aside. It landed with a splat! against the Gryffindor table, staining a section of the wood that same shade of bright blue as if it had grown that way.

“I'd do it for you myself, but I don't want to,” you smirked, “ Perhaps you could take a few remedial classes to learn the color-leeching charm. Have fun figuring something out!”

And with that you flounced away, leaving behind a very embarrassed, very blue, and very reluctantly impressed James Potter.

He may just have found himself a proper rival.

Sirius scoffed from where he sat.

“Oh please, the stupid charm can't be that hard to do,” he said, taking out his wand.

“Not that I don't have faith in you, mate, but I'm probably better off seeing if Slughorn has anything for this,” James said.

“Why don't you just soak your head in some Valerian water? That's what takes the color out of potions, right?”

“Peter, he might go bald if he does that.”

“Oh.”

_______________________________________________________

James would go on to land a few good jokes on you too. There was one night where you had snuck into the Prefect's bathroom and emerged with a mermaid tail, which was pretty awesome until you realized you had no way of getting out of the tub. From then on, you and James would continue to try and get the jump on one another, marking the start of your now-infamous fourth year prank war. It entertained the students and infuriated the faculty. Gradually, your pranks on one another became more light-hearted, meant to amuse the other person and make them laugh rather than actually hurt or humiliate them.

“Very funny, (L/n),” James said as he walked up to you, his body turned around 180 degrees from the waist up so he had to shuffle backwards to face you. You laughed, nearly choking on your pumpkin juice as you saw your handy work.

“What are you, five?”

“Right, because you're so much more mature stalking and bullying my friends,” you quipped back.

“I really don't understand how Snivelus is your friend.”

“Severus,” you said crossly, “and for the record, I really don't understand how Remus is yours either. He seems like a nice guy.”

“Har har,” James rolled his eyes, “Now would you turn me the right way 'round already? I've got Quidditch practice.”

“Nah, I think you're fine to play like this.”

“Honestly? Not a bad tactic. I can cover my blind spot and stare at my own ass while I fly.”

“Who's five now?” you grinned.

As the months went on, instead of storming over to each other and slinging insults, your interactions with James became more akin to playful banter. And frankly, Sirius didn't get it. You were a Slytherin, and a pureblood at that. Hell, you were a descendant of one of the 28 pureblood families. Everything about you went against everything he believed in and relished in getting away from each year when he would leave home to go to school. You were in the same house as those stupid blood purists, you probably were one yourself—

“You're glaring.”

Sirius blinked, snapping out of his stupor as Remus nudged him in the shoulder. He said nothing, slowly returning to eating his dinner as he tore his eyes away from you, sitting at the Slytherin table with Snivelus, Evan Rosier, and his younger brother of all people. He stabbed at his roast potatoes a little too harshly and his friends traded looks among themselves.

“You alright there, mate?” James asked cautiously.

“Fantastic,” Sirius said, shoving another forkful of potatoes into his mouth to avoid saying anything unsavory as he spotted you heading towards their table.

“Coming to the library today, Remus?” you asked the boy to his right who looked up at you in surprise.

“Oh, sure thing,” he said, “I'm off for the night.”

“Great, we can study for Arithmancy then,” you said. Remus nodded at your suggestion and you gave him a dazzling smile, walking off with your books.

“Since when did you two get so chummy?” Sirius bristled.

Remus rolled his eyes.

“We're just studying for the upcoming mid marks,” he said, “They’re proficient in Ancient Runes and History of Magic. As a study partner it's. . . refreshing.”

“Oi, are you calling us stupid?” James rose a brow.

“Your words, not mine,” Lupin grinned. He saw Sirius' bothered expression and sighed, collecting his things.

“You might get on if you bothered to get to know them,” he told Sirius out of the others' earshot, slinging his book bag over his shoulder before heading off in your direction.

You only continued to grow inadvertently closer to James throughout your fourth year, your prank battle coming to its epic conclusion with the two of you joining forces against some particularly nasty upperclassmen. Your practical jokes subsided, your quips and passing insults were traded for real conversations and walking each other to class. You hated to admit it, but he'd grown on you— especially with him letting up considerably on bullying Severus and annoying Lily lately.

All the while, the closer you got to James the more irritated his best friend became. In Sirius' mind, the more time you were spending with James the less time James was spending with him. They hardly hung out alone anymore. And since James started hanging out with you he started mellowing out, which made Lily start hanging out with him, which made him even more tame. Sirius just wanted his best friend back.

“You do realize that issue would largely be resolved if you weren't so bothered by hanging out with both of them together, right?” Lupin had brought up one night as Sirius was airing out his frustrations.

“I'm not going to bother making friends with someone whose family is so wrapped up in blood politics they forget to be human beings first. Trust me, I've met their mother enough times to know.”

“Have you ever asked them about it?” Remus pressed.

“I don't really need to, do I? They're a (L/n). Open your eyes, Moony!”

Remus' brow furrowed, a shine in his eyes akin to sympathy as he regarded Sirius.

“Perhaps it's you that needs to clear your vision, friend.”

A/N: Thank you all so much for the unexpected early support on this story! I have a lot planned for it~ If you’d like to be added to the taglist just let me know !

Read chapter 3 here!

Taglist: @blackpinkdolan @sleep-i-ness @parker-natasha

#harry potter #the marauders #marauders x reader #sirius black x reader #james potter x slytherin!reader #james potter x reader #remus lupin x reader #regulus black x reader #harry potter x reader #harry potter fanfiction #marauders era #marauders fanfiction #marauders #severus snape x reader #severus snape #multi chapter #marauders x you #marauders x y/n #post azkaban sirius

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lepusrufus · 3 years

Text

Double edged scalpel ch. 8

Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7

Summary: Fluff? Smut?? Stuff???

---

It was still early morning, if the bright light and faint chirping coming from out the window were anything to go by. Cassandra had been awake for a while, her body not needing nearly as much sleep as humans did.

She looked down to where Nicole's face was pressed on top of her chest, cheek slightly squished against the skin. Sleep had turned her features into soft lines, unlike her usual nonchalant façade that she wore like a crown. Though the dark circles under closed eyes were still present and, Cassandra mused, probably a permanent facial feature at this point.

The brunette couldn't help the small smile that curved her lips. She couldn't remember the last time someone had been in Nicole's position, so willing to let themselves be embraced by the shadows of the castle and wear the title of her "lover" with such grace. She wasn't even sure someone had been there before.

Though as endearing as the sight was, Cassandra was starting to get bored. Nicole's position half on top of her meant she couldn't really move without waking her up. How much sleep do humans need again? Eight hours? She was pretty sure it'd been eight hours. Besides, what harm would it do to stay and cuddle for a while, not that anyone other than the small redhead in her arms would ever be allowed to know about her apparent love for such things.

She hesitated for a second, the memory of Nicole jolting awake not too long ago making its way to the forefront of her mind. She would have to be more careful than Bela had been, opting for the gentlest way she could muster, fingers gingerly trailing down her cheek.

Cassandra frowned when the redhead flinched slightly at the touch, but soon let out a content hum upon hearing her name whispered by the brunette. Nicole didn't even bother opening her eyes. Instead, she nuzzled into Cassandra's neck and tightened her grip around her waist ever so slightly.

"Mmornin'," she said as if she actually had any intention of getting up.

"Slept well?" The brunette asked, shifting to lay on her side and starting to play with the long auburn locks sprawled on the pillows.

The reply she got was little more than a hum as her half asleep lover shifted and readjusted her position. Nicole's hand started to gingerly trace her spine upwards, then down again, on her waist and then stilled for a moment. She finally opened her eyes and looked somewhere past the brunette locks blocking her view. The arm on Cassandra's waist was removed and stretched towards the nightstand for a few seconds only to fall back on the bed accompanied by a soft groan.

"Can you pass me my phone…" Curse you, short arms.

To her dismay, Cassandra started to laugh at her struggle, earning herself a sleepy glare. She did oblige though, turning slightly and picking up the small object from the nightstand. With the phone finally in hand, Nicole unlocked it and let out another groan at the hour.

"It's so fucking early."

"It's 8 a.m." Cassandra raised an eyebrow when the redhead simply tossed the small object on the bed, probably never to be found again given it's sheer size, and turned back in her arms with an almost childish whine.

Nicole really wasn't a woman of many words in the morning.

"Why'd you wake me up so early?"

"I was bored," Cassandra answered simply.

Of course.

After another small groan, Cassandra decided to change tactics. Her hand moved from red hair down Nicole's bare back. She felt her breath hitch when she got to her hip, slender fingers going in ever so soft circles over the skin and the fabric of her underwear.

That seemed to wake the redhead up at least slightly. Her lips started to lazily move across collarbones, leaving a trail of kisses and an occasional nip. Then up her neck, hand now tangled in dark hair and giving it a light tug to tilt Cassandra's head and get better access to the spot right under her ear. She left a light bite there and the brunette let out a small moan, hand now fully gripping Nicole's hip and pulling her closer.

Cassandra's thigh, now placed between her legs just right, was hard to ignore but Nicole was a woman on a mission. She shifted her weight, now fully straddling the brunette and continued her trail of kisses along her jaw until she finally reached soft lips. Cassandra moaned in their kiss when Nicole's fingers came to rest around her neck, giving it a faint squeeze. She slipped her tongue past slightly parted lips and her other hand started to slowly trail lower.

The sense of satisfaction she got from Cassandra's impatient whine was hard to describe. Revenge for getting woken up so early.

"Just touch me already," Cassandra broke their kiss momentarily, and the redhead decided to be at least a little lenient.

She shifted her hips, giving way for her hand to wander beyond black lacy underwear. One finger started to circle her already wet entrance ever so lightly, causing Cassandra to buck her hips impatiently.

"Nico- ah!"

Her complaint was cut short by two of Nicole's fingers entering her. Cassandra squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip, stifling a moan.

The rhythm of her fingers was slow at first, enough to elicit a few more groans from the brunete, but her pace steadily increased. It wasn't long before Cassandra was grabbing at the sheets, not trusting her claws on Nicole's back anymore, and trying to clench her thighs together.

Nicole kissed along her neck as she came, the pace of her fingers slowing until Cassandra relaxed under her. Then, she pulled her hand away and sat back down on the soft sheets, taking in the view of her lover trying to catch her breath. When golden eyes finally fluttered open and looked up at her, Nicole grinned.

"Thought you didn't need to breathe."

"Do not get cocky with me." To her credit, Cassandra tried to glare, but her eyes were soft and lips turned into a small smile.

Sweet revenge. Although, Nicole mused, if Cassandra woke her up this early again she'd make her beg.

"I think we should start getting ready."

They still had a few hours to spare, but being early never hurt anyone. Cassandra seemed to have other plans though, as she placed a hand around Nicole's throat and pushed her down into the pillows.

It was Cassandra's turn to straddle her hips, her much taller frame giving the impression that she was a predator ready to sink its teeth into a meal. Paired with the devilish glint in her eyes when she leaned down to whisper against Nicole's lips, it was all too hot.

"And not return the favor? Who do you take me for hmm?"

So much for revenge.

---

Arranging tools next to the autopsy table has always been oddly relaxing. Repetition and the soft clinking of metal against metal when the scalpels were placed in their place. The leather gloves as she slid them on her hands. The apron that was waiting to be put on. All a comforting routine.

With some time to spare, she went to stand behind Cassandra, who was scribbling something in one of the many notebooks she had around. Many, Nicole had learned, as opposed to just one that magically appeared everywhere. She looked over her shoulders to see what she was writing and frowned.

She had one of the textbooks from Nicole in front of her and seemed to be correcting old notes from god knows how many years ago. Notes in german.

"Do you… speak german?" Nicole inquired. She wasn't necessarily surprised but it was weird it had never come up.

The brunette only let out an mhm and finished scratching out something, replacing it with the information from the book. In english. "And french, italian, hungarian, and some russian. My russian's really rusty though, been a long time since it was in use around here."

Okay. Impressive. Nicole supposed that being immortal does come with benefits such as infinite time to learn different languages. Cassandra let out a chuckle at her surprised look.

Then she checked the hour and snapped the notebook shut. Showtime.

Clank

They both froze.

Their eyes darted to the door, left slightly ajar.

Clank

"You… heard that right?" Nicole's question was so low, it would've probably gone unheard if not for sensitive vampiric ears.

"Loud and clear. Stay here."

And she should have really. Cassandra was strong and could take care of herself. Whatever was making noise was probably a bored prisoner wanting to quicken their demise.

But the sinking feeling in her gut gave her no peace. Whether it was worry for Cassandra, the fear that crept up her spine at being left alone, or a mix of both was anyone's guess.

She grabbed one of the scalpels from the tray.

It gave her a false sense of security as she slipped through the door and down the dark corridor connecting the study to the cells.

One of the perks of being small? You can hide almost anywhere. And this was no exception. The shadows hid her well while she stepped for the first time past old cells. Some run down, some full of devices not unlike the ones in the room she had just exited.

She could hear a growl up ahead and came to the realization that it belonged to Cassandra. She was frustrated at something and Nicole wondered if being there was really a good idea. Most likely not. But she came all the way there, might as well see what got the brunette so upset.

She started walking towards the sound of heels against stone and was about to call out Cassandra's name when a shadow caught her eye. She froze.

From where she was, still enveloped by darkness, she saw something peeking around a corner at her lover, but it's back almost completely turned to her. Someone, she realized as she strained her eyes to take in more details. A man, no taller than Cassandra, ragged clothing and something shiny in hand.

Panic took over when she realized that shine came from the reflective barrel of a gun, half in position and ready to shoot. Shoot at Cassandra.

She sprung forward, stealth be damned with how loud her boots sounded against the stone underfoot. The sound alerted Cassandra, who turned in her direction wide eyed. It also alerted the man, who spinned on his heels and let out a choked scream that seemed to ring in her ears.

The sound died in his throat when the scalpel was plunged in his neck, through the trachea and whatever other veins and arteries the blade found in its path. He leaned back against the wall, disgusting gurgling sounds making their way past bloody lips.

"Nicole!" Cassandra was by her side in the span of a second. She wanted to turn to her but instead she stumbled forward, almost crashing into her arms.

Something was wrong.

Adrenaline was finally starting to leave her body and instead searing pain was making its way in her muscles. Her head was starting to spin but she managed to look down only to see a crimson stain on her abdomen. An ugly contrast with her white uniform, really.

Her ears were ringing, but she faintly registered Cassandra let a long string of curses spill past her lips.

Then she was picked up, the wound in her abdomen sending jolts of pain with every hasty movement. She couldn’t help crying out when Cassandra presumably reached the dungeon steps and started ascending.

Staying awake was becoming an increasingly hard task. No matter how much she tried to keep her eyes open, it resulted fruitless as black splotches were starting to obscure her vision.

She finally let her lids shut, her head slumping against Cassandra's shoulder as nothingness started to envelop her foggy mind.

#cassandra dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu x maiden #unhinged maiden™ my beloved #fanfic #double edged scalpel

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the-wild-wolves-around-you · 3 years

Text

hear those bells ring: chapter 4 (a deaf!bakugo x reader fic)

Summary: Bakugo and Reader finally get a moment alone, and important conversations are had. Over dinner of course ;)

Pairings: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader; Katsuki Bakugo x You

Rating: M(ature)

Warnings: Adult language.

A/N: Sorry for the wait on ch 4, but it’s over 10k, so hope that makes up for it lol Anyway, hope you enjoy!

~*~*~ No spoilers or anything. This is just a self-indulgent AU fic with aged up characters. Everyone’s in their mid-20s. Fic title is from a song called “Achilles Come Down.”

Ao3 Link: Here

Ch 1 Tumblr Link: Here

Ch 2 Tumblr Link: Here

Ch 3 Tumblr Link: Here

“Great. See you then.”

The words ricocheted around your head like pinballs, and all you could do was stare as Dynamight turned on his heel and strode out of your ruined shop like he couldn’t stand to be there a second longer.

“Bak—bro, c’mon!” Red Riot, or Kirishima as he insisted, called after the blond, who didn’t stop. Then the redhead turned back to you, clapping his hands in front of his face and bowing his head. “I’m so sorry about him. He can be a little…”

“Direct?” you offered when the hero trailed off into silence for a beat to long.

“I was gonna say he can be a little bit of a dick, but that sounds better,” Kirishima laughed, and you felt your face flush when he aimed that charming grin in your direction.

You’d heard stories of how charismatic Red Riot was. He was a popular, mainstream favorite hero. The gossip magazines were always covered with his shirtless pictures that never failed to rile up the female population, even Mrs. Kojima and her old lady friends.

But nothing could have prepared you for being in front of him, for having him wink and smile at you, even if you logically knew he wasn’t coming onto plain old you. He was currently wearing a dark hoodie and non-descript jeans, but you could still see the definition of his muscles through the bulky clothing, which definitely wasn’t helping matters.

“W-Well, I’m sure you and D-Dynamight have more important places to be,” you stuttered as you averted your eyes. “I-I don’t want to keep you from any hero business.”

“Alright, alright, I can take a hint, I’ll get out of your hair,” Kirishima chuckled as he held his hands up.

Your face burned even hotter, if that was possible. “N-No! I mean—”

“Just a joke.” The redhead winked at you again as he started to back up toward the front door, his boots crunching over glass and debris. “I’ll see you later, though. Oh! And, uh, make sure you’re on time tonight for Bak—Dynamight’s pick up. He really hates tardiness.”

“Noted,” you murmured as your stomach bottomed out inside you.

“Don’t look so terrified!” the pro hero laughed, pausing in the frame of your broken doorway. “I promise he’s not so bad once you get to know him. All bark, no bite, remember? But if he does bark at you too much, just let me know, and I’ll be sure to leash him.”

Kirishima shot another sharp-toothed grin at you, and you strained your facial muscles to try and flash him a small smile in return. You weren’t very successful, since Red Riot’s bright expression dimmed a fraction, but thankfully he didn’t come back into the store.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” he said in a more serious but reassuring tone. “We can get breakfast! I know all the great places around the agency.”

“O-Okay.” You didn’t know what else to say. Why was this pro hero offering to take you to breakfast? Was this just because of the news? You’d seen how the media had been tearing into Dynamight the last two days, calling him reckless, arrogant. Several interviews with the other heroes who’d been on the scene didn’t help matters, either, since by their accounts, they almost had the villain handled before Dynamight stepped in.

Maybe Red Riot was just trying to butter you up so you didn’t help with Dynamight’s crucifixion.

What the redhead didn’t know, however, was you couldn’t say a word against the blond, even if you wanted to.

“Okay,” Kirishima echoed and drew you out of your thoughts. The pro hero flashed you one last smile and put two fingers to his forehead in a jaunty salute. “Have a good rest of your afternoon and evening! And when you get to the agency, if you need anything, just let our PR manager Nao know. Take care!”

With that, the redhead pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt, slipped on his sunglasses, and ducked out of your store. Seconds later, he was gone.

A beat of silence passed by, then two, and then you felt your knees give out from under you as you collapsed to the floor. Pain flared through your lower legs as you struck the hard, debris-strewn tile, but you barely registered the discomfort. Your breathing started to quicken, coming out in harsh pants, and the two paper bags in your arms crinkled with the motion.

“Fuck,” you exhaled as tears blurred your vision, lifting a shaky hand to grasp tightly at your hair. “Fuck.”

You’d been so stupid. Yesterday, when neither Dynamight nor the police came banging down your hotel room door, you thought maybe you were just being paranoid. That the blond pro hero hadn’t noticed anything unusual, and you could just go living your normal, unimportant life.

Of course, the universe just had to prove you wrong.

Because if you had any doubts before, they were gone now, evaporated under Dynamight’s hot, crimson glare.

He knew your secret, and he was going to confront you about it. Tonight. Why else would he insist on picking you up? Alone. You’d heard Red Riot say he was patrolling this evening, so he wouldn’t be around to play buffer between you and Dynamight, which provided the perfect opportunity for an interrogation.

But what could you do? Refuse? Dynamight didn’t seem to be the type to take the word “no” very well. Run? The expression you’d seen on his face before he left clearly told you that you wouldn’t make it very far. Besides, where would you go? Your parents were in America, and as you embarrassingly admitted to that detective the other night, you didn’t have any friends.

And, until your apartment and shop were renovated, you didn’t have a place to sleep, and you didn’t have the spare money to live out of a hotel, so the agency was really your only option.

Well, there was prison, too, you supposed. Maybe Dynamight was just going to pick you up and take you straight to the police station.

He’s not going to turn you in, a small, hopeful voice inside of you said. He would have already done so if that was his goal.

There was logic behind that sentiment, but it offered you no comfort.

Because if Dynamight didn’t want to turn you in, what did he want from you?

~*~*~*~*~

“Mrs. Kojima,” you sighed for the millionth time. “I’m going to be fine. And I really can’t take all of this with me.”

You gingerly passed the large paper bag full of glass food containers back to Tadashi, Mrs. Kojima’s teenaged grandson, who stared at the bag with the hunger only a sixteen-year-old boy could achieve.

“Fine?” the old Japanese lady scoffed, narrowing her dark eyes at you. “You would be fine in a nice, fancy hotel, not in a building with those… those… delinquents!”

“Delinquents?” you couldn’t help but laugh. “They’re pro heroes. Famous pro heroes, some of the top in the country.”

“If they’re so good, they wouldn’t have destroyed your home,” Mrs. Kojima huffed before she used her cane to nudge her grandson. “And Tadashi, give the poor girl back her food. Your face is too gaunt to be healthy, girl, and don’t think I can’t see those circles under your eyes.”

The boy sighed as he stared longingly at the homemade food, and you could have sworn he was drooling, but he obeyed his grandmother and extended the bag to you again.

“No, please, keep it,” you insisted as you waved your hands in front of you, taking a step back. “I-I don’t know if there will be a place to keep food in my room, and I don’t want to bother them too much.”

“You should bother them, since they’ve been such a bother to you,” the old lady said as she nudged you this time with her cane. “You are too nice. I always say this. You need to be more selfish.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” You smiled. “But thank you for thinking of me, Mrs. Kojima. It was very kind for you and Tadashi to come see me off.”

“How many times must I tell you to call me Ayano?” the elderly woman groused, tapping your shin with her cane again. “And of course we came. I wasn’t going to let you stand alone on a dark street and wait for that monster of a man.”

“Grandma!” Tadashi gasped as he looked up from salivating into the bag of food. “Dynamight is the number two hero! He’s not a monster, he’s the coolest!”

“I’ve seen him on TV,” his grandmother sniffed. “Always yelling and swearing. And Mr. Takeyoshi said he was very rude the other night. Not to mention all the damage he caused! Nothing but a foul-mouthed delinquent.”

“Grandmaaaaa,” Tadashi whined.

You sided more with Mrs. Kojima on this one, but the absolute adoration on the boy’s face made a small smile tug at your lips.

But your amusement quickly faded as you glanced down at your phone again.

6:58.

Said foul-mouthed delinquent should be here any minute.

As if your thoughts summoned him, the squeal of tires suddenly echoed through the otherwise quiet twilight, and you turned—with a pit in your stomach—to face the intersection down the road. Your street had been blocked off by barricades since the asphalt was still missing in patches, so the sleek, black car that had just pulled up was forced to park on the corner and put on its hazards.

Your heart was hammering beneath your sternum, beating out a frantic, hummingbird rhythm, and you watched the car door get flung open, a lithe figure ducking out a moment later. The last rays of fading sunlight glinted off his ash blond hair before he pulled up his hood, but then he was looking in your direction, and even if he was too far to see the details of his face, you felt the instant his eyes locked onto you.

“Holy shit, is that him?” Tadashi asked behind you, followed by a yelp as his grandmother smacked him with her cane.

“Language,” she hissed, but the rest of her sentence was drowned out by the blood roaring through your ears as Dynamight started to walk toward you.

No, not walk. Stalk. He looked like a predator slinking down the sidewalk, dressed in black and skimming through the shadows. There were a few people milling about the street, your neighbors who were still trying to clean up, but the pro hero paid them no mind. His gaze was still zeroed in on you, and your breath grew more shallow with each step he took.

Don’t pass out, don’t pass out, you chanted in your head. And smile! Try not to look like he’s your executioner.

You plastered on a smile, but it felt jagged like the broken street you stood on, your cheeks aching from the strain.

Finally, after what felt like a blink and an eternity simultaneously, Dynamight came to a stop about ten feet away from you on the sidewalk. His hands were shoved in the pocket of his hoodie, his face was a cold mask on the tipping point of a scowl, and his eyes felt like red-hot embers burning into your face.

“At least you know how to be punctual,” he said without preamble, his voice as sharp as his scarlet gaze.

You heard Mrs. Kojima gasp behind you, followed by Tadashi frantically trying to shush her under his breath, so you cut the old lady off before she could say what was on her mind.

“T-Thank you for taking the time to escort me to the agency, Dynamight,” you said, bowing at the waist so you could get a moment’s reprieve from those red eyes. “It’s… very kind of you, since I know you must be busy with your hero duties.”

Mrs. Kojima harumphed behind you, and you took a deep breath to steady yourself before you straightened up.

Dynamight’s crimson gaze had lost none of its intensity, but he finally seemed to notice Tadashi and his grandmother over your shoulder, and when he spoke, he’s tone was a fraction of a degree softer.

“Yeah, well… it’s the least the agency can do,” he said evenly, like he’d memorized a script.

You wondered if Kirishima had said something to him after they left. Or maybe the PR manager the red-haired hero had mentioned?

Suddenly, you heard someone clear their throat behind you, and you winced.

“Sorry, this is Mrs. Kojima and her grandson, Tadashi,” you said, motioning to them. “They’re some of my customers who just wanted to see me off.”

“Customers,” Dynamight echoed as his red eyes raked over the pair. “For your stitching shop?”

Something about his tone seemed off, but you couldn’t place it.

“Alterations shop,” you corrected with a frown. “But yes.”

“Is that all?” he asked as his eyes locked with yours, and you felt your insides liquify.

Fuck. There was no way he could know that Mrs. Kojima and Tadashi had been “patients” of yours before. Right? Even if he knew about your quirk, that was a leap to make.

Then again, it did sound kind of weird for two random customers to take an interest in their seamstress’ personal life. You’d set yourself up for that one.

You opened your mouth, ready to clumsily explain, but Mrs. Kojima beat you to it.

“I knew her grandparents long before you were a thought in your daddy’s brain boy,” the old lady huffed as she hobbled forward to stand beside you, Tadashi stumbling after her. “So I check on her from time to time, especially when she’s meeting and going off with some no-good delinquent at night. Is that alright with you?”

“Mrs. Kojima—” you started as your eyes widened.

“Grandma!” Tadashi hissed, his face flushing with mortification.

Dynamight, for his part, actually smirked at the old lady’s attitude, amusement dancing in his red eyes as he finally shifted them off you.

“Well, Stitches here is gonna be fine,” he said with a sharp smile. “She’ll be staying in our finest suite, being waited on hand and foot for the next few weeks.”

Stitches? What the hell was that? Did he forget your name?

“Is that so?” Mrs. Kojima narrowed her dark eyes on the blond, and her expression said she didn’t trust the pro hero as far as she could throw him.

“Lucky,” Tadashi muttered under his breath.

“If you don’t believe me, you can call her tomorrow and check for yourself,” Dynamight said before he turned to face you completely, effectively cutting off any rebuttal from the Kojimas. “Are you ready? It’s cold, and the car’s running.”

“Y-Yes,” you stammered, shifting the strap of your duffle bag higher up on your shoulder. “J-Just a second.”

You turned back to Mrs. Kojima, who was blatantly glaring daggers at Dynamight, but her expression softened as she shuffled in to hug you.

“Watch out for him,” she whispered in your ear. “And take care of yourself. If something’s wrong, call me, no matter what. You can stay with me, okay?”

“Thank you, but I’ll be fine,” you murmured as you pulled away. “I’ll call you when I know more about the shop’s repairs. Tadashi, take care of your grandma for me.”

“Bah!” Mrs. Kojima scoffed, shooing you back with her cane. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know.” You smiled as you grabbed the handle of your small rolling suitcase beside you. “Have a good night.”

You turned back to Dynamight to find him suddenly beside you, the scent of burnt sugar enveloping you a moment later. You inhaled so fast it whistled through your teeth, but the pro hero didn’t even look at you as he slipped his finger through your duffle bag’s strap and pulled it off your shoulder. He slung it on his back in one fluid movement, and then he was reaching for your suitcase, too.

“I-I got this one!” you said, a little too loudly, as you stumbled back a step and dragged the suitcase with you. “Thank you, but, um, I’ve got it.”

Dynamight pursed his lips at you, his eyes narrowing into crimson slits, but then his gaze jumped over your shoulder.

“Got something you want to say, kid?” he grunted, and he looked a little ridiculous with your pink and purple patterned duffle peeking out from over his shoulder.

“M-Me?” Tadashi gaped and glanced around quickly like there was anyone else within half a block, but when he realized Dynamight was still staring at him expectantly, the boy began to ramble. “I-I just, uh, I just wanted to say I think you’re the coolest hero there is. Even more than Deku! Man, I wish I could have seen the fight the other night. You probably wiped the floor with that villain! When I grow up, I hope I’m a hero half as cool as you.”

Dynamight actually seemed surprised by the boy’s adoring word vomit. The blond blinked as the suspicion and defensiveness drained from his face and posture, and then an easy smirk stretched across his lips.

“You got a quirk, kid?” he asked.

Mrs. Kojima made a face beside you like she was going to cut in, but you put a hand on her arm and gestured to Tadashi’s beaming face, and the old lady sighed and relented. She knew what this meant for her grandson.

“Yeah, I do!” Tadashi grinned and puffed out his chest before he shifted the bag of food in his grasp and held out his right hand. His brow buckled in concentration, but a moment later a flame exploded to life in his palm. The flame grew, flickering upwards as it twisted and twined, changing shape as it went. In the blink of an eye, the teenager held the hilt of a fiery dagger, which he twirled around his knuckles. “I can make different objects with flames, and they act solid when I concentrate hard enough.”

“That’s a pretty cool power,” Dynamight said as he eyed the flaming blade. “Bet you kick ass in your hero course.”

“I-I do alright,” Tadashi said as he extinguished the dagger, trying to go for a nonchalant shrug, but the effect was ruined by his mile-wide grin and heart eyes. “You really think it’s cool?”

“It’s only cool if you’re the best, so don’t slack off,” the blond scoffed. “Only losers half-ass their way through school.”

Mrs. Kojima’s face was silently scandalized, but Tadashi’s grew determined.

“Yes, sir!” the boy said as he bowed at the waist. “I’ll work hard to be the best of the best.”

“Good.” Dynamight smirked. “Then, when you graduate, you can come prove how strong you are by taking me on. Who knows? If you’re actually strong, we might hire a new side-kick.”

Tadashi looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head as he straightened up, but the pro hero only snickered as he spun on heel and began to stride away.

“You comin’, Stitches?” he called over his shoulder.

“C-Coming!” you called back before you flashed the Kojimas one last smile. “Have a good night and be safe going home!”

Then you took off down the sidewalk, your rolling suitcase clattering over the broken concrete behind you.

Dynamight’s legs were twice as long as yours and quickly ate up the distance to his car still parked on the corner, and you only caught up to him as he was tossing your duffle in the trunk.

You stood on the curb panting for a moment, just staring at him, and then the blond looked up and caught your eye.

“What?” he grunted.

“N-Nothing.” You cleared your throat and moved to pick up your suitcase, but he beat you to it, bending down and hefting the thing up in one fluid movement. The trunk slammed shut with a resounding thud, and the two of you were left staring at each other in silence.

“Get in,” Dynamight finally said, jerking his chin at the passenger door. Then he walked around to the driver’s side, yanked open the door, and slid inside without another word.

You could still feel the Kojimas’ eyes on your back, and you didn’t want to give them cause to worry, so you took a deep breath and got into the car.

Even though your heart was trying to break free of your ribcage.

The car itself was sleek and fancy, both inside and out. The seats were a supple red leather with ebony stitching, the dashboard shiny and inlaid with the newest gadgets, and you curled into the seat, afraid to even touch anything. This car was probably worth more money than you’d ever made in your entire life, and you had worked odd jobs since you were sixteen.

The engine rumbled to life as Dynamight cranked the ignition, warm air blasting out of the vents and thawing your red nose and cheeks. The dash said it was only eighteen degrees Celsius, but the wind had been brisk.

“Seatbelt,” the pro hero said as he yanked his own across his thick chest.

You swallowed tightly before you did as you were bidden, and the second you were secured, the blond was throwing the car in gear and peeling away from the curb. Your barricaded street disappeared in a blur, and suddenly you were on your way.

With Dynamight. Alone. In his car.

The luxurious interior of the vehicle began to close in on you, feeling more like the walls of a coffin, and you braced yourself for Dynamight’s interrogation.

Except… it never came.

Minutes passed by in silence, and all the while, the blond’s red eyes stayed focused on the road ahead. One of his hands casually gripped the steering wheel, the other wrapped around the gear shift, and every one of the hero’s movements was fluid, precise.

You tried not to, but you couldn’t help but study him out of the corner of your eye. His blank face gave nothing away, and neither did his slumped body language. He was covered in a dark hoodie and jeans again, so you couldn’t see much skin besides his hands and neck, but he looked… fine.

One would have never guessed that he nearly bled to death beneath your hands two days ago.

The memory of his blood, warm and tacky on your skin, made you clench your hands in your lap, and when you glanced over at the blond again, you nearly jumped out of your seat when you met red eyes.

“Now you got somethin’ you want to say, Stitches?” he asked as he shifted gears, smoothly pulling around another car.

“M-My name’s not Stitches,” you replied without thinking, but maybe this was a good thing. Thinking always got you in trouble.

“Yeah, no shit,” the blond snorted, darting a quick look at you again before turning back to the road. “But you keep starin’ at me, so spit it out.”

You fumbled for something to say, still thinking of his ashen face splattered with blood. “T-That was nice, what you said back there to Tadashi. He, um, really idolizes you, so you probably made his whole year.”

“Tch.” Dynamight clicked his tongue as he looked in the rearview mirror. “Chances are, kid probably won’t end up as much.”

You frowned. “But you said—”

“I know what I said,” he cut you off, eyes meeting yours again. “And I meant it. Slacking off is for losers. Still, the brat will probably end up as a B-lister at most, more likely just an extra. That’s just the damn odds.”

His words were harsh, but you knew they were true. There was no shortage of people signing up to be “heroes” in the world, but very few actually achieved the fame and notoriety of, say, All Might. Even years after his retirement, the Old Symbol of Peace was still talked about.

“Well… thank you for not saying that to Tadashi,” you murmured as you averted your eyes out the window.

“Someone will have to eventually,” Dynamight grunted. “But, if he proves me wrong, then he might actually have some potential.”

“Mmm,” you hummed noncommittally. You didn’t want to talk about Tadashi anymore. Hell, you didn’t want to talk about anything.

But you knew it was coming. You could feel the pro hero building up to it, the air in the car becoming more tense and charged by the second, like the calm before the storm.

Part of you wished Dynamight would just rip the bandaid off already.

The other part of you wondered if you would survive opening the car door and jumping from the moving vehicle, but at the speed the blond was driving, chances were slim.

You were just thinking to pull out your phone and subtly look at the agency on the map to see how far away you were, but then Dynamight cleared his throat, and you felt all the saliva dry up in your mouth.

This was it.

“So,” the pro hero started as he pulled up to a stoplight, and his eyes found yours again. The red light reflected off his face and made it hard to tell where his irises began, everything washed out in crimson.

But before he could get another word out, a loud growl split the interior of the car.

Dynamight blinked at you before his gaze fell to your stomach, and you felt your face flare with heat.

“Sorry,” you muttered as you clenched your abdomen, trying to shut it up, but it only growled louder in defiance. “I, um, forgot to eat dinner since I was busy packing.”

And because your stomach had been in knots all day, but you didn’t need to tell him that.

“Wasn’t that kid holding a whole bag of food back there?” Dynamight asked, frowning at you.

“Y-Yeah.” You blushed even harder. Nothing escaped the pro’s notice, did it? “Mrs. Kojima had brought some stuff, but I didn’t know if there would be a place to store it in, um, whatever room I’m staying in. Plus, Tadashi is always hungry because of his hero course training, so it’s not like any of it will go to waste.”

“You’ll starve yourself so some brat can stuff extras in his face?” the blond scoffed, and he looked at you like you were speaking another language.

“I won’t starve,” you argued, a nervous laugh huffing out of you. “I-It’s one meal, and I ate a big lunch.”

That was a lie, but maybe you could get away with a little one.

Dynamight studied you for a long, silent moment, his face unreadable. Then the light turned green, and he clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes.

“Tch.” He flicked on his blinker and turned left, weaving down a set of smaller streets leading away from the city’s center, where you knew his agency was located.

“Where… are we going?” you asked as you glanced out the window. “Is this a short cut to the agency?”

“We’re not goin’ to the agency,” he said.

Your heart skipped a beat, and some of your unease must have shown on your face, because the pro hero scoffed again.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist. We’re stopping to get food first.”

You blinked in surprise. Food? He was buying you dinner?

“Y-You don’t have to do that,” you stuttered, awkwardly waving your hands in front of you. “Really, I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m fuckin’ hungry, so I’m getting food. That alright with you, Stitches?” His red eyes flicked to the side and pinned you to your seat, and all you could do was nod.

The car descended into silence again as Dynamight navigated through the streets, and a few minutes later, he was pulling up to a curb. The street around you was definitely in a better part of town than you were used to, but it didn’t look too fancy. A number of small restaurants dotted the road, interspersed by a couple bars, and a few dozen people roamed the sidewalks, laughing and stumbling and obviously having a good time.

Dynamight stared out at the crowd through the windshield, a small sneer of disgust curling his upper lip, before he turned to you.

“Stay here,” he said. No, ordered. “I’ll be right back, so don’t go anywhere.”

“O-Okay,” you replied with a nod.

He narrowed his eyes at you, as if trying to discern whether or not you were lying, but he must have been satisfied with what he found because he reached for the sunglasses that were casually thrown atop the dash. He slid them on before opening the car door and slipping out, but he paused before he closed it, bending down and poking his head back inside.

“Any allergies?” he asked bluntly. “I don’t need you choking and dying on my leather seats.”

“No allergies.” You shook your head. “Anything is fine.”

A part of you still wanted to argue about him buying you food, but something told you that you would both lose the argument and succeed in pissing the blond off, which you were trying your best to avoid.

Dynamight grunted in acknowledgement before he straightened, pulled up his hood, and slammed the car door. He took several strides away before he gestured back to the vehicle, and it was only when the locks engaged that you realized he’d taken the keys out of the ignition at some point.

He really didn’t want you going anywhere.

You exhaled shakily as you unclenched and clenched your fingers in your lap, trying to get some feeling back into them. Your thoughts kept threatening to spiral off down dark avenues, so you focused on watching the people outside the car. The windows were pretty tinted, besides the windshield, so you didn’t think people noticed you watching them go about their night. Everyone was happy and smiling, flushed with laughter and drink, and a yawning loneliness suddenly opened up inside you. Even back in America, you’d never had a lot of friends, but you had drinks a few times in college with classmates, and you missed going out to somewhere besides the grocery or craft supply store. You had thought you would have time to make new friends here in Japan, friends that you could try restaurants and bars with, but it hadn’t happened yet.

And depending on what Dynamight had to say, it might not happen at all.

You stewed in anxious silence for several minutes, but then the locks disengaged with a chirp, and the blond was sliding back into the driver’s seat, shoving a bulging plastic bag into your lap.

“Here, don’t drop it,” he muttered as he jammed the keys back into the ignition.

“I’ll just, um, set it on the floor,” you said as you shifted the bag down to the floorboards, holding it in place with your feet. The aromatic steam wafted out of the bag as you leaned over it, and your stomach snarled at the delicious scent of greasy meat and roasted vegetables. “This smells really good.”

“Of course it does,” Dynamight sneered. “I’m not gonna eat shitty food.”

“Only the best for the best,” you joked awkwardly. You blamed your sudden lightheadedness. When was the last time you ate?

“Damn straight,” the blond huffed, yanking on his seatbelt before shifting the car into gear. “Can you make it five minutes without fainting?”

“Yes?” you questioned more than stated, your brow furrowing.

“Good, then hang on.” With that, the pro hero squealed away from the curb, merging into traffic seamlessly.

Dynamight drove for several more minutes, but you didn’t ask where the two of you were going this time. The blond probably wouldn’t answer, and if he did, it would just be some kind of sharp retort, so you settled for staring out the window while making sure the food between your feet didn’t tip over.

You hadn’t explored the city very much since you moved here, so most of what you passed by was foreign to you. But, just judging by the amount of lights and traffic around, you estimated that Dynamight was skirting the edge of the downtown area instead of going into it. You knew the general location of his agency, since you panic-Googled it earlier this afternoon, and while it was closer, the pro hero didn’t seem to be driving toward it.

Eventually, Dynamight pulled up to the curb on an empty street and parked in the shadow of a tall office building. There was no sign on the façade to indicate a company, and only the dim emergency lights shone through the darkened windows, so it was obvious everyone had gone home for the day. Next door to the building seemed to be a small park, concrete and steel giving way to green grass and shadowed trees, but there was no one walking on this particular street.

“Where are we?” you asked as you frowned out the tinted window.

“Dunno,” Dynamight said before he opened his door, sliding out of the car without any more explanation.

You blinked in confusion as he wrenched open your door a moment later, but he still didn’t say anything as he bent down to pick up the bag of food at your feet.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” you asked. “You drove us here.”

“By the time I answer all your questions, the food is gonna be cold,” the pro hero grunted, and he glared down at you still buckled into your seat. “Get out.”

“We’re not eating in the car?” You didn’t mean to ask this many questions, you could tell it was irritating the blond, but you were just so… confused as to how you got to this point in your life.

“I’m not about to let you ruin my damn leather seats,” Dynamight growled, stepping back to give you room. “Now get out of the damn car… please.”

The last word sounded like it was dragged out of the hero against his will, painfully, and you wondered again if he was trying to be nicer because of all the negative media coverage. You didn’t think the blond gave a shit what the media thought, but Red Riot and their agency did, so maybe Dynamight was being forced to make an effort.

“Are you seriously just going to gape at me like an idiot? Do your legs not work?”

Well, what was that saying? You could lead a horse to water, but you couldn’t force it to drink.

“S-Sorry,” you stuttered as you fumbled with your seatbelt, and you nearly twisted your ankle falling out of the car.

“Fuckin’ hell, you’re as clumsy as shitty Deku,” Dynamight grumbled as he easily caught your elbow and kept you from faceplanting.

This close, you could smell the caramelizing sugar scent that you finally realized emanated from the blond, and even through the sleeve of your sweater, you could feel the strength in the pro hero’s calloused fingers.

Your face flushed with heat, but you were pretty sure he was tired of your stammered apologies, so you just stepped up onto the curb as he slammed the passenger door and locked the car.

Then he turned to the tall office building and froze before a scowl twisted his features once again.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, and his red eyes snapped to you. “You’re not afraid of heights are you?”

“I… don’t think so,” you said with a frown. “I mean, I’ve been on roller coasters before, and I obviously flew here from America—”

“Perfect,” the blond cut you off, shoving the bag of food at you again. “Take this.”

“O-Okayyyy?” You tentatively wrapped your fingers around the plastic handles of the bag as you drew the food close to your chest.

“Now, hop on,” he said as he turned around and crouched, his fingers starting to crackle with light and flares of heat.

“Wh… what?!” Your whole body felt hot this time, not just your face. “Y-You want me… to get on your back?”

“Again with the damn questions,” he growled, glaring over his shoulder at you. “If it will get you to move your ass faster, we’re eating on that roof, and unless you have wings under that sweater, I’m the only one who can get us up there, and I need my damn hands to use my quirk. So. Hop. On.”

You gaped at the blond for a millisecond, a thousand more questions racing through your mind. Why the hell were you eating on a roof of a random building? Was this allowed? Why couldn’t you just go back to the agency?

But you knew by the look on the blond’s face that he’d reached his limit with questions, so you could do nothing but comply.

Just don’t think about it. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.

You kept up this mantra in your head as you hesitantly approached the hero’s back. He had turned to look forward again, so at least his crimson eyes weren’t burning a hole into you as you carefully slid one hand onto his shoulder while you used the other to cradle the food against your stomach.

You were just debating the best way to finish this embarrassing endeavor when you felt strong hands slide over the backs of your knees and pull you forward, startling a yelp out of you.

“Jump,” Dynamight grunted, and you only had time to mindlessly obey as he straightened to his full height in one fluid motion.

“Shit!” you couldn’t help but curse in English, hoping he couldn’t understand you. His hands helped to guide your legs around his waist, and you dug your left hand into his shoulder so you didn’t fall backward or crush the food that was nestled between the hero’s spine and your navel.

A beat passed in silence as the two of you found your balance again.

“I-I’m not too heavy, am I?” you murmured into the hero’s blond hair. Your throat felt tight with embarrassment, but when you went to swallow, your mouth was as dry as a desert.

“Tch.” Dynamight clicked his tongue as he shifted your weight a little, his hands burning the backs of your thighs even through the thick denim of your jeans. “I could carry two of you without breaking a sweat. Don’t call me weak.”

“I wasn’t!” you rushed to assure him. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant, shut up,” the blond cut you off, turning his head a fraction so his red eyes sliced into you. At this distance, his burnt sugar scent was almost overwhelming. “Do you have a good grip on me? And the food?”

“Y-Yes,” you said as your heart began to pound against your sternum. You hoped he couldn’t feel it.

“Make sure,” he growled, fingers digging into the backs of your thighs before he suddenly let go.

A small gasp was ripped from you as you clenched your legs around his waist, and your left arm went from clutching his shoulder to wrapping around his neck.

“Ack! Don’t choke me!” he huffed as he stretched his throat out of the way.

Your right hand scrambled down a few inches, and you fisted the front of his hoodie, anchoring yourself across his chest as you sucked in your gut, leaned more into his spine, and tried not to crush the bag of food that was steadily making you sweat.

“I-Is that okay?” you asked, your voice no more than a timid whisper.

“Fine,” Dynamight said as he dropped his hands down by his hips, his palms crackling with energy once again. “Don’t fucking let go.”

“I wo—OHHHH!” Your sentence trailed off into a startled scream as the hero suddenly exploded off the ground.

His quirk made your ears ring, but you didn’t even have time to process that before you were thirty feet in the air. Every muscle in your body locked up in terror, and you were sure Dynamight was going to have bruises on his ribs from your legs clamping down around him like a vise. The wind tore at your hair and clothes, stinging the exposed skin of your face and neck, and you ducked your head against the hero’s blond hair as you clenched your eyes shut.

Don’t let go, don’t let go, you chanted in your mind.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and you heard Dynamight extinguish his quirk an instant before his boots slammed into concrete.

The two of you stood there for a moment as you panted against the back of his neck, your hammering heart still lodged in your throat, before the blond patted the side of your thigh.

“You can get down now,” he said. “But don’t drop the damn food.”

You peeled open your eyes with a shaky exhale, and you could feel your entire body trembling as you slowly slid down from the hero’s back. The crinkling bag drew your attention, and you had a split-second worry that you had crushed the food in your terror, but a quick inspection showed that while the containers were a little crumpled, no food was leaking out.

“Come on, I’m hungry,” Dynamight muttered before his boots started to crunch away from you.

You snapped your head up and blindly followed after the blond, your eyes darting to the ground to make sure you didn’t trip over anything and then up to your surroundings to try and figure out where the hero was leading you.

The answer, apparently, was to the very edge of the roof, and you wondered if the hero was going to make you hop on the Dynamight Express again, but instead he came to a stop beside a large electrical box. To your shock, he opened a small door on the tall metal rectangle and produced a thick, dark colored blanket, which he then threw down on the roof’s gravel.

“Sit,” he grunted before he flopped to the ground, sighing as he stretched his legs out in front of him.

There was about four or five feet between the electrical box and the edge of the roof, but the soles of Dynamight’s boots nearly brushed against the roof’s wall.

Or they would have, if a three-foot section of the cement wall wasn’t missing right in front of him. The edges of the concrete partition looked suspiciously charred black, and you frowned at the sight.

“Did you… blast a chunk out of this wall?” you asked as you slowly sank to your knees beside the blond. You were painfully aware of the void of protection in front of you, and you knew you were at least ten to fifteen stories above the street. But at least it wasn’t so cold up here, tucked into this little nook with the six-foot tall hero’s body heat helping to warm the air.

“It was in the way,” Dynamight sneered, leaning over and snatching the plastic bag from where you had set it between the two of you. “And wipe that look off your face. I’m not gonna push you through the hole, and you’re not gonna fall with me here.”

He didn’t look at you as he said this, too busy pulling out several food containers and spreading them out on the blanket, but the absolute surety, the confidence, in his voice actually eased some of the tension from your shoulders, and you sighed as you shifted onto your butt and leaned back against the electrical box.

Now that you were seated in front of the hole, you realized this building gave you the perfect vantage point to the east. Most of the other structures were shorter than the one you currently sat on, so the streets stretched out before you like a map. The night sky was clear above you, devoid of clouds, nothing but a dark purple canvas sprinkled here and there with stars. But the moon was nearly full over your head, and its pale light was just enough to see by. You could see cars several blocks away cruising through the pools of lamplight, people waiting at bus stops or walking down the road to their next destination, and a realization came over you.

“Oh, I see,” you murmured, still staring out at the view. “You must use this building as a perch during your hero patrols, right? You can see a lot from here.”

“No shit.” Dynamight rolled his eyes as he opened one of the take-out containers. The smell of a well-made yakisoba hit your nostrils, and you watched as the blond ripped open a pair of chopsticks. He must have felt your gaze, though, because his red eyes snapped up and narrowed on you with a glare. “Quit starin’ at me and eat something. I didn’t go through all this damn trouble for nothing.”

“R-Right.” You cleared your throat as you glanced between the other take-out boxes. “Was there something for me in particular, or…”

“Just pick something!” he snapped before he shoved a bite of noodles into his scowling mouth.

You pursed your lips as you reached for the closest container, flipping up the lid to find nearly a dozen yakitori skewers. Your stomach snarled and cramped as the roasted scent of the chicken filled your nose, and you could feel saliva pooling in your mouth.

Grease immediately began to stain your fingers as you picked up one of the skewers, but you didn’t even care as you brought the kebab to your lips. You took a tentative bite to find the meat still pleasantly warm, but then a groan rumbled in the back of your throat as the flavor exploded across your tongue.

“Mmmm, that is so good!” you mumbled around a mouthful as you ravenously tore off another bite. “It’s seasoned perfectly, and I like the bit of spice it has.”

“Told you I don’t eat shitty food,” the blond scoffed before he reached over and snagged a piece of yakitori for himself.

You couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of your mouth, but you quickly covered it up by taking another bite of chicken.

“Thank you for the meal, Dynamight,” you said once you finished the skewer, reaching for one of the other containers. This one turned out to be another plate of yakisoba, and you eagerly pulled it into your lap.

Silence settled between the two of you for a minute, punctuated by the sounds of you both quietly chewing, before Dynamight broke it again.

“Katsuki.”

“Hmm?” you asked around a mouthful of noodles. When you lifted your head, your eyes clashed with glaring red ones barely two feet away, and you swallowed quickly so you wouldn’t choke. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“My name,” he grunted before ripping into another skewer, white teeth flashing in the pale moonlight. “It’s not Dynamight. It’s Katsuki Bakugo.”

Another hot flash broke out across your body as his scarlet eyes bored into you, and you dropped your gaze to your lap. The blond was too close, his burnt sugar scent still strong beneath the aroma of food, and your brain struggled to come up with a response.

“Katsuki Bakugo,” you murmured because you couldn’t help yourself, testing out the syllables on your tongue.

You thought you saw the hero twitch out of the corner of your eye, but he might have just been taking another bite.

“Yeah, and you better remember it,” the blond said after a moment, his tone adamant, commanding.

Like there was any way you could forget his name. Japan’s Number Two Hero wasn’t exactly forgettable.

You found it a little funny, though, that he was so weird about his own name after refusing to call you anything but “Stitches” so far.

“I will,” you murmured, darting a glance at Dynamight—Katsuki? No, that felt too familiar. Bakugo, then—to find him still staring at you.

The blond’s crimson gaze was piercing, pinning you to the spot, and you couldn’t look away. You thought he was going to say something, but his eyes only roamed over your face silently, like he was searching your features for an answer to a question he hadn’t voiced. His scrutiny unnerved you, made you fidget, and you played with your chopsticks to try and quell some of your nervous energy.

Still, he didn’t say a word, but his red eyes began to narrow bit by bit.

Finally, you couldn’t take it anymore, and you opened your mouth to say something, anything, before he beat you to it.

“You have a healing quirk.”

The words hit you like a sledgehammer.

Your heart slammed to a stop in your chest, and you inhaled so fast it was almost a scream. A million thoughts, excuses, and lies scrambled through your head, but the hero didn’t even give you time to grasp at any of them.

“Don’t deny it,” he said, face twisting into his usual scowl. “Fuckin’ hate liars. I know you have a healing quirk.”

The blunt confirmation, after so long worrying, felt almost like a relief, but it was quickly followed by a deluge of dread.

He knew, he knew, he knew. The truth blared through your head like a siren. There really was no running from it now.

“Well?” Dynamight—Bakugo—demanded as he glared at you. “Are you going to answer?”

“You didn’t ask me a question.” The words fell from your mouth without your permission, and you winced as the blond’s expression darkened.

“Fine,” he growled. “Do you have a healing quirk or not?”

“…yes.” There was nothing else for you to say, so you just stared at the pro hero as the noose tightened around your neck.

“I knew it.” A wild smirk stretched across Bakugo’s mouth, triumphant and proud.

“How?” you couldn’t help but ask as you clenched your hands in your lap, the food long since forgotten. Your stomach was churning itself into knots anyway, but a morbid part of you just had to know what was the final nail in the coffin that had sealed your fate.

“How what? Did I figure it out?” the blond asked as he lazily picked up another skewer and took a bite, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like he didn’t hold your whole world in the palm of his calloused hand. “Because I’m not a blind idiot.”

“I’m serious,” you said with a frown, digging your nails into your palms.

“So am I,” Bakugo scoffed, and his red eyes found yours again. “If you’re going to lie, at least do it right. That night in your apartment, you said I wasn’t really hurt, didn’t bleed that much, but your hands and my clothes were soaked with it. Way too much for the stupid paper cuts or whatever you blamed it on. The burns on my left arm were better off than they should have been, too, but I knew you were lying before I even noticed any of that shit. I knew the second you opened your mouth.”

You cringed with guilt, dropping your gaze to your fidgeting fingers. So, all your lies had been futile from the start. “Was it something in my tone or…?”

“Well, stuttering over your words with your guilty ass face didn’t do you any favors, but no,” the blond grunted. “It wasn’t your tone, it was…”

Here, the pro hero trailed off, and he was quiet for so long that you chanced a glance at him.

Bakugo was frowning off into the distance, staring out over the city without seeing. You could tell he was struggling with something, and since you were obviously a masochist, you pressed him about it.

“It was…?” you led and then had to stifle a gasp as the blond snapped his head around to glare at you.

“You can’t say shit about this,” he snarled and bared his teeth like a cornered animal, and you distantly noted that his canines were more pointed and pronounced than what was usual. Then his next words stabbed into you, sharp and serrated, and dragged you back to the conversation. “Do you hear me, Stitches? You don’t say shit to anyone. If you do, I’ll kill you.”

You blanched at the seriousness of his tone, the sharpness of his eyes, and a nervous laugh was startled out of you.

“I’m obviously not in a position to say anything against you, Dyna—er, Bakugo,” you said, adding the “-sama” honorific after his name as a show of deference. “You could have me arrested or even deported for using my quirk on you without permission or a license.”

“Damn right I could,” he huffed as he narrowed his eyes at you, but some of the tension and anger left the lines of his face. “But I’m not gonna do any of that shit because I need—you are going to help me.”

“Help you?” you echoed in an incredulous tone. “What could I possibly help you with?”

Bakugo glared at you as the muscle in his jaw worked, like he was chewing over his words, before he finally spat them out.

“My ears. The reason I knew you were lying immediately was because I could hear you.”

Your frown deepened as you processed his words. “You remember losing your hearing?”

“Remember it?” The blond scowled at you. “What the fuck are you talking about? Of course I remember being fuckin’ deaf!”

“I-I’m sorry,” you stammered, waving your hands in front of you. “I just—right after you crashed through my window, you woke up for a second, but you were disoriented. I was trying to tell you that you beat the villain before I saw the blood coming out of your ears and realized you must have blown your eardrums. Then you passed out, and when you woke up again, a-after I… healed you, you asked about the villain a second time, so I just assumed you didn’t remember waking up the first time.”

Bakugo frowned at you, pale eyebrows furrowing over crimson eyes. “I woke up more than once? Yeah, I don’t remember that shit.”

“Wait…” You blinked and pursed your lips as you tried to understand what he was saying. “If you don’t remember that, how do you remember losing your hearing?”

“Because my hearing was shot to shit before I even ran into that damn villain,” Bakugo growled, and his face tightened again as he turned away from you. “Couldn’t even hear my quirk activate anymore.”

He held up his hand to demonstrate, and flashes of light crackled to life in his palm like mini fireworks. The hero’s expression grew strange as he stared at the visual manifestation of his quirk, but then he clenched his fist and extinguished the sparks.

Meanwhile, you felt your jaw gape open as your eyes widened. “You… how long has your hearing been in decline?”

The blond ground his jaw so hard you could hear the scrape of his teeth, and he glared off into the middle distance for so long that you just assumed he wasn’t going to answer you.

Then…

“Fuckin’ years, I dunno,” he muttered as he pulled one of his long legs up, balancing his forearm against his knee and pressing his mouth into the back of his wrist. “Didn’t notice it at first, but it probably started at UA, once I was able to use my quirk more regularly.”

Ohhh, of course. Your eyes dropped to the clenched fist in his lap, and you remembered the boom that made your ears ring as the hero flew you both up here. It had been so loud, and to think of experiencing that multiple times a day, at close range, for years apparently since you knew UA was a famous high school here in Japan…

“Did you see a doctor?” You frowned, glancing up at the blond as his gaze snapped back to yours.

“Tch, doctors,” Bakugo sneered, disgust glinting in his crimson eyes. “Fuckin’ useless pieces of shit. I left a good-for-nothing white coat’s office the afternoon I ran into that asphalt villain. Idiot doctor said most of my hearing was just gone, I was going to lose the rest, and there was shit all he could do. Then, few hours later, you patched me up in fuckin’ seconds, so I know that bastard was full of shit.”

All you could do was blink rapidly at the pro hero as you tried to process all this information. Japan’s Number Two Hero had been going deaf for years, and no one had noticed? You knew that would have definitely made the news, let alone the gossip magazines. What’s more, a doctor said his hearing was a lost cause, and yet…

“How well can you hear now?” you asked, curiosity getting the best of you. You hadn’t even intended to heal his ears that night, it had just been a side effect of you dumping your energy into his body in order to keep him breathing.

“Dunno, haven’t exactly done a hearing test,” the blond scoffed and rolled his eyes. “But I can hear you just fine, my phone, too, and my quirk. I’d say that’s good enough.”

You pursed your lips in thought, studying the hero like he’d been studying you all night, and then you remembered what had started this whole conversation.

“Okay…” you said slowly. “Well, if you’re hearing is… fine now, what am I supposed to help you with?”

“Keeping it that way, obviously.” He glared at you. “You’re gonna be stuck at the agency for the next few weeks anyway, so you need to make sure my ears stay working.”

You gaped at the pro-hero, wondering if you were suddenly losing your hearing.

“M-Me?” you stammered as your heart crawled up your throat. “B-But I… I’m not a doctor.”

“No shit,” he said, apparently a favorite phrase of his, and he looked at you like you were a particularly dumb child. “I don’t need a doctor, I told you they’re fuckin’ useless. I just need your quirk.”

“But…” you trailed off in disbelief. Out of all the outcomes you’d envisioned for this night, this had never even crossed your mind as anything in the realm of possibility. “I’m… not a hero. I don’t have a license to use my quirk.”

Bakugo stared at you in silence for an endless moment before his upper lip curled into a snarl.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” he hissed. “I know all that!”

“W-Well, I don’t know what you want then!” you said, your voice rising in pitch and volume to match his.

The echoes of your words ricocheted around you before they faded off into the night, and the blond clenched his jaw as he glared at you.

“I want you to use your quirk anyway,” he said, the low growl of his tone vibrating through you. You opened your mouth to argue, but he cut you off mid inhale. “And don’t start bitching about rules. You’ve been using your quirk illegally already. That kid and his old hag of a grandma are patients of yours, aren’t they?”

Your jaw snapped closed with an audible click, and a smirk bloomed across the blond’s pale lips.

“Hah,” he snorted. “Knew it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” you gritted out, and your breathing grew shallow.

“You didn’t have to,” he said, his smirk taking on a taunting edge. “You really gotta work on your poker face, Stitches.”

Your vision started to tunnel, interspersed with flashes of Tadashi and Ayano’s faces. “The Kojimas have nothing to do—”

“Oh, calm the fuck down,” he cut you off as he rolled his eyes again. “I’m not gonna turn a grandma and a kid into the cops. Especially not for doing the same shit we’re going to do.”

A knot of tension unraveled beside your heart, but your insides still felt more tangled up than a yarn ball being batted around by a crazed kitten.

“Thank you,” you murmured with a sigh, dropping your eyes to where your fingers were picking at the frayed hem of your sweater.

“I don’t need your gratitude,” he scoffed. “I just need—”

“My quirk.” You were the one to cut him off this time, and you lifted your gaze to his again.

“Yeah,” he said as he narrowed those scarlet eyes at you like a predator zeroing in on its prey. “So, is that your way of saying you’ll do it?”

You bit your lip as you considered your options, but really, you didn’t have any. Dynamight was a famous, rich pro hero with all the leverage. He could ruin your life… but he wasn’t. He was instead providing a trade.

His silence for your quirk.

The Kojimas flashed through your mind again, as did your other “patients,” as the blond called them. You thought of your parents, too, and your grandparents. If you agreed to the hero’s proposition, you wouldn’t have to return to America as a failure, and after a few weeks, you could reopen your family’s legacy shop.

And, in the meantime, you still got to use your quirk. You could heal, actually be useful. Even more than that, Japan’s Number Two Hero was relying on you.

You didn’t know if you were up to the task, having never used your quirk beyond minor instances that were usually days or weeks in between each other.

But…

“Yes,” you finally said as you looked up into Katsuki Bakugo’s face. “I’ll help you.”

You just hoped you didn’t hang yourself in the process.

124 notes · View notes

sergeantsporks · 3 years

Text

Another Shot at Life

Rating: General Audiences, Gen

TW: Child abuse, emotional manipulation

Ao3

Hunter accidentally makes his way into the human realm and can't get back home. But he's discovering that might not be such a bad thing.

Ch 7/7: Home

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6

Vee trudged up towards the old abandoned house. She’d started checking it every single day since Hunter had been taken, hoping he’d be there.

He never was.

She pushed open the door, and stopped, dead in her tracks. “L-Luz? Red?!”

Red was shrieking like its little heart was being torn in two, fluttering around where the portal had always appeared.

Vee rushed forward, panic building in her chest. “Hey—are you okay?!”

Luz was turning a key over and over in her hands, poking at it. “I need to go back,” she said dazedly, “I need to rescue him.”

“How long have you been here?!”

“I—I don’t know. A couple of hours? I can’t… get the key to work. But I have to go back, I left Hunter behind, and Belos has him, and—” She struggled to her feet, then immediately fell.

Vee caught her, slinging one of her arms over her shoulder. “You need to go back home. You look awful.”

“But Hunter—”

Vee took the key from her. “I’ll go back for him,” she promised, and a sort of steely calm settled over her. Yes. She would figure this out, she would rescue Hunter.

“Mom will never let you—”

Vee bit her lip. Of all the things to take a leaf out of Hunter’s book for. “We won’t tell her.” She tucked the key into her hoodie pocket, half-carrying, half-dragging Luz back home. “Camila!” she called, “Come quick!”

Camila poked her head out of the kitchen, then shrieked, rushing forward and taking Luz from Vee. “Mi carina! Luz, baby, what happened?!”

“Mama,” Luz half-sobbed, “Mama, I left Hunter—he helped me get away from Belos, he—”

Vee slipped out, wandering back to the old house. Red was sitting on the floor, staring at the spot where the portal had been. Vee gently scooped up the bird. “We’ll get him back. I promise.”

Red chirped sadly, hopping back down out of her hands to sit on the ground again.

Vee tugged the training wand Hunter had given her out of her pocket. It glowed blue, and she sucked the magic out of it. She hadn’t needed it to hide from Belos. But she could use it to save Hunter.

Now there was just one more person she needed.

Xxx

Vee strode into the museum. “Hey!”

Jacob jumped. “What are you doing here?” He glanced behind her. “Your—your friend isn’t here, is he?”

Vee felt tears prick at her eyes, but she blinked them back. “He’s… not here right now. I need your help.”

“My help? Why would you need my help?”

Because you’re stupid, and loud, and prideful and the perfect distraction.

“Because you’re right. Because witches are planning an invasion of your world, and I’m a rebel against them, but I need someone to help me take down their leader, and you’re perfect.”

Jacob stared at her, his mouth hanging slightly open. “You’re… you’re a rebel?”

“Yes. Against the beings that want to conquer your planet.” Vee swung the key back and forth on its string. “I can get you inside the witch emperor’s castle. All you have to do is kill him. Protect your planet.”

Jacob made a grab for the key, and she swung it up, catching it and holding it tightly. “Uh-uh. I control the portal.”

“Why?”

“Because you need someone on this side to keep it open,” Vee lied, “Now, are you going to be a hero and defend your home, or do I have to find someone else?”

Jacob shook his head. “I’m coming! I’m coming.”

“Good. Meet me at the abandoned house you were watching, and I’ll open the portal. The fate of your world rests on your shoulders, Jacob.”

Vee strode purposefully out of the museum, making sure she was out of Jacob’s range of hearing before sighing. “Now I just have to figure out how to open the portal.”

She jogged back to the old house, where Red was still waiting, and held up the key. “Hey. Any chance you know how to use this?”

Red fluttered up and pecked at the eye.

“Hey! Don’t break it!” Vee examined the key. “Now how do I…” she pressed gently on the eye of the key, but nothing happened.

Vee stepped to the place where the door had been.

And was met with resistance.

“Huh?”

Vee clicked the key, and the resistance disappeared. She clicked it again. There was that strange wall again.

Or maybe not a wall. Maybe a door.

Vee put her hands on the solid area, feeling for a knob. “Come on,” she muttered, “You have to be around here somewhere!”

Red fluttered up onto her shoulder, chirping. Its eyes glowed, and suddenly, there it was.

The door.

It looked like the sketches Hunter had left behind, but instead of huge eye on the top, there was a keyhole.

Vee gasped. “Oh! You need a palisman to get in! So no one but a witch could get in from this side! That’s clever!”

She heard clanking, and turned around to see Jacob, in all of his armor. Wow, he really looked ridiculous.

“Where’s the portal?” he demanded.

Vee reached up and inserted the key into the lock, twisting it with a quiet click. A doorframe filled with a golden curtain of light appeared, the key at the top of the doorframe. She gestured to it. “The emperor wears a golden mask with deer horns. You’ll know him when you see him.”

Jacob gulped, then plunged through. Vee briefly considered that she should feel guilty about sending him in to face Belos with absolutely no idea what he was up against.

Eh.

Red tried to dive into the portal after Jacob, but Vee held a hand up, blocking the bird. “I know you want to see Hunter, but I need you to stay here and watch the portal, okay? Make sure no one comes for the key. I’ll bring him back. I promise.”

Red ruffled its feathers unhappily, but perched atop the doorframe.

Vee pulled on the magic she’d absorbed from the wand, shifting to match the look of a coven guard. Then she crept through. She could hear Jacob yelling and clanging his way down the hallway, and the sounds of other coven guards chasing after. Perfect.

Vee slipped unnoticed through the hallways, her nerves spiking. Everything about this place was just one bad memory after another. She spotted a singular guard outside of a door, and sidled up to him.

“Um—” she squeaked, “hello? I, uh. I’m a bit lost, I just transferred here. I’m… I’m supposed to go on guard duty for… the golden guard?”

The guard heaved a sigh. “Finally. I thought I would never go off-duty. It’s just so boring, you know? It’s not like he can escape.”

“Oh. Yes. T-totally.”

“Right. See ya, new guy!”

The guard waved and strode off. Vee shuddered. He seemed so… normal. Like his job wasn’t locking up and hurting innocent teens.

She waited for him to disappear down the hallway, then turned the knob of the door, pushing it open. The room was well lit, surprisingly.

Vee almost wished it weren’t.

Hunter was buried all the way up to the nose in a mountain of some kind of… slime that shifted and moved. His eyes were blank—no pupils, no irises, just eerily glowing white.

“Hunter?” she whispered.

He didn’t respond.

Vee crept forward, poking the slime with one finger.

It glowed blue, and Vee gasped. The whole thing was magic. “Hang on, Hunter, I’ll get you out of here.”

Vee wrinkled her nose and put her hands on the slime. It glowed, and she inhaled, sucking up the magic. She almost immediately gagged. There was something wrong with this magic. It tasted rotten.

But the mountain had gotten just a little bit smaller, so she braced herself, and started eating the magic again, suppressing her gag reflex.

The mountain shrank smaller and smaller, and the slime receded from Hunter’s face. He fell forward, and Vee lunged to catch him, her stomach writhing like she’d just eaten live snakes. “Hunter?”

The eerie glow faded from his eyes, replaced with his usual magenta eyes.

“Hunter!”

He just stared blankly up at her, shivering violently. Vee hefted him in her arms, glancing both ways out into the hallway before starting down the hallway. Maybe it was the huge size of the coven guard she’d shifted into, but he seemed smaller than he ever had back home.

And then there were his eyes. They were so… bleak. Hopeless. It was like he couldn’t even see her.

Vee made her way back to the room with the door, occasionally ducking into other rooms or behind statues to hide Hunter.

She heard a clank, clank, clank behind her, and Jacob came tearing back, screaming. Wow, he could run fast, even in all of that armor.

The meaning of why he would be running like that hit her, and she sprinted after him, bolting through the doors to the room.

Only for several guards to be standing in front of her way out. Jacob was nowhere in sight—they must have let him through the portal. Vee skidded to a stop. “Oh. Hey. Uhhhhhhhh…”

“We have a traitor!”

“That’s no traitor,” Belos’ voice hissed behind her, “That’s a dangerous creature, masquerading as one of our own.”

Vee’s veins turned to ice, and every bad memory from her time locked in the dungeon flashed through her mind at lightning speed.

She didn’t see him move, but suddenly Belos was right in her face. “I’ll be taking Hunter back, now. You don’t know what he needs.”

Xxx

“Mom—I’m okay. Really. It was just a fall off of a wall, and a little bit of light torture, and a blow to the head, and a fall from the sky—I’m fine, really.”

Camila finished applying band-aids to all of Luz’s scratches, her chest tight. “A blow to the head? I’m going to call a doctor.”

“I’m okay, Mom! Really! Hunter gave me these painkiller things, and they really worked, but I think they’ve worn off now, and I know I promised I’d stay here, I know, but we have to go back for him!”

Camila sat down next to her daughter. “Okay.”

Luz stopped, mid-rant. “Wh-what?”

“Okay. I’m going to get Hunter. You stay here and rest. How do I get there?”

“I…” Luz’s eyes teared up. “I don’t know! I couldn’t get the portal open from this side, and Mom, it would be too dangerous for you to go!”

“If it’s too dangerous for me, do you think I’d send my little girl in? I failed Hunter—I let Belos take him. So I’m going to get him back.” If we can get the portal working, if he’s even still alive. Camila shook her head, trying to chase away the niggling doubts in her head. No. She was going to rescue Hunter. No matter how far she had to go.

“He was so miserable, Mom,” Luz whispered, “But he’d just… given up.”

Camila’s heart seemed to tear itself in two. He’d gone back to protect them—and had given up on seeing them again. Camila glanced around the room. “Where’d Vee go?”

Luz clammed up.

“Luz? Do you know where she went?”

“I’m… not supposed to tell you?”

A bolt of panic shot through Camila, and she jumped to her feet. “She opened the portal, didn’t she?!”

“I don’t know—I know she was going to try.”

Camila raced for her purse, throwing a few things in. “I’m going to find her, and maybe Hunter if she’s managed to open the portal. Luz, you stay here. You’re not in any state for a rescue mission, kay? Just trust me to bring him back.”

Luz nodded. “I trust you.”

Camila ran out the door, racing up the path towards the old house.

Please be okay.

Xxx

Vee clutched Hunter tightly, his body quivering so hard she thought she might drop him. A surge of anger rushed through her. “What he needs?! He doesn’t need this!”

Belos shrugged. “He got to be too much of a hassle to keep awake. It was simpler for everyone if he just went to sleep until I needed him. Less painful for him as well—but apparently, you just want him to suffer needlessly. Now, little basilisk, give him to me and I might consider letting you go.”

Vee backed up. “No!”

“HEY!”

Vee jumped as she heard Camila’s voice. She whirled around to see her adoptive mother standing over two unconscious coven guards, holding Luz’s baseball bat. “Camila!”

Camila glared at Belos. “Get. Away. From my. Kids.”

Belos disappeared, reappearing next to Camila and plucking the baseball bat out of her hands. “Oh? How interesting. Are you going to make good on that threat to end me, little human?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Camila whipped out a can of hairspray and a lighter. “Adios, Belos.” She held the lighter up to the hairspray, and clicked them at the same time. A jet of flame shot out, lighting Belos’ robes on fire. The emperor stumbled back with a shriek, and Camila pushed past him, grabbing Vee’s arm. “Let’s go!”

Vee shot through the portal, Camila not far behind. Vee reached up and twisted the key back out of the portal. The curtain of light closed on Belos’ howl of rage.

Camila whistled. “I cannot believe I just did that!”

“That was—it was scary, but it was amazing, and…” Vee glanced down at Hunter, and the euphoria died away. He was still shaking, still blank-eyed. Red fluttered down to his shoulder, nudging his face and warbling softly. Hunter didn’t respond.

Camila put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get him home,” she said softly.

Vee trudged back up the path to her own home, struggling to squeeze through the door. She gently sat Hunter on the couch, shifting back to her usual form. Eating that cursed prison might have been disgusting, but it had given her a huge backup magic reserve—she’d be good on magic for a while yet.

“You’re back!” Luz limped down the stairs, freezing when she saw Hunter. “Oh—oh, no. Hunter?”

He didn’t respond, just kept staring ahead with those dull eyes. Camila wrapped a blanket around his shivering shoulders, taking his hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. “Oh, Hunter. What happened to you?”

“He—he looks kind of like Matholomew did when he got out of detention,” Luz said softly, “Vee, what—”

Vee twisted her hands. “I—there was this cursed mud, and it made his eyes go all creepy—maybe I shouldn’t have taken him out? Maybe it was supposed to run its course and I made it worse by taking him out early?”

Camila squeezed her shoulder. “You did what you thought was best,” she said softly, “We have him back, and that’s—that’s what matters. We can fix this. He’ll wake up.”

Vee blinked back tears. “But—what if he doesn’t?”

What if I was too late?

Xxx

“H-hey, I’m gonna… gonna put on some Stephen Universe? Hunter? Remember, you liked that?” Vee rubbed her arms. Rain had been gently pattering on the windowpane, but it was starting to pick up. “You did. We watched it together, and I liked Amethyst, and you couldn’t pick your favorite character, remember?”

Hunter still just stared forward, wrapped up in his blanket like a burrito, and Vee sat next to him with a sigh. Red hadn’t moved from his shoulder since they’d gotten him back two days ago—and Hunter himself hadn’t budged, either—he didn’t eat anything, he didn’t sleep, as far as Vee could tell, he just sat there, staring into space. Red chirped softly, nuzzling Hunter’s face, and then hopped over to Vee, giving her big, worried eyes.

Vee cupped the palisman in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, “I don’t know how to get him back. I don’t know if he’s just in shock, or if this is something that the curse does, or…”

The rain was picking up, wind howling against the window. Vee slid off the couch, setting Red on the floor and digging out birdseed for the palisman. She sat back down on the floor next to the cardinal. “You’ve got to eat something, right?”

Red warbled sadly, and fluttered back up to Hunter.

“I know. I miss him, too.”

Lightning flashed, followed by a crack of thunder, and Vee yelped, putting her hands over her ears.

She heard a rustle and a little whump, and then something warm settled over her. Hunter’s chin rested on her head, his arms flopped over her shoulders so that they were sharing the blanket. Red chirped happily, and Vee froze, her heart thumping hopefully in her chest.

“Hunter? Camila! Camila, Luz, I think he’s waking up!”

Another peal of thunder crashed, and Hunter hugged her just a little tighter. Camila came thumping down, Luz not far behind. Vee didn’t move, holding her breath, worried that if she moved and disturbed him, he’d go back to the way he’d been, barely daring to hope...

xxx

Camila rushed into the living room, where Hunter was flopped over Vee, wrapping her in his blanket. He was still blank-eyed, but his brow was furrowed, like he was trying to remember something. Camila gently cupped his face in her hands.

“Hunter?” She asked softly, “Mijo?”

He blinked, hard, like he’d just woken up. “C-Camila?” His eyes filled with tears, and he fell back, letting go of Vee. The basilisk tackled him in a hug.

“Hunter!”

Camila wrapped her arms around both of them, squeezing them both tight. “Oh!”

His shoulders started to shake. “It was s-so dark,” he whispered.

Camila squeezed just a little harder. “I’ve got you,” she promised. She let the two of them go, and Vee wriggled under the blanket, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with him as the thunder cracked. Luz sat down next to Camila.

“Hey,” she said softly to Hunter, “Thanks.”

He sat bolt upright, making Vee yelp. “The key! Belos!”

Vee held up the portal key. “Oh, you mean this? Don’t worry, Belos can’t get to us.”

“Vee managed to open the portal,” Luz supplied, “She went in after you!”

“And then Camila came for both of us,” Vee finished, “She lit Belos on fire, it was awesome!”

Hunter looked up at Camila, his lip quivering. “You… you fought for me?”

“Of course I did. I said I would, didn’t I?”

Tears rolled down his face, and Camila wrapped him up in a hug. “Hey. Heeey. You’re okay now.”

“I kept—I kept making him mad—and it—and I—”

Camila rocked him back and forth. “Okay. Ooookay. I’ve got you.”

“I couldn’t get out—it was all dark, and blank, and I just kept sinking, and I couldn’t do anything, and I was drowning, and—” Hunter buried his face in her shoulder.

Camila cradled his head in her hand. She could feel a lump on the back of his head, like he’d hit it, and she hadn’t failed to notice the bruises that hadn’t been there when he’d left. A tide of anger swept over her, and she started regretting leaving the Boiling Isles quite so soon. “You’re safe now, Hunter. I promise. Belos can’t hurt you anymore. And if he even thinks about it… well, I have no qualms lighting him on fire again.”

Hunter slumped against her, and she scooped him up, Red fluttering around the two of them. “Okay. You need some sleep.”

“He can take my bed,” Vee offered, “I’m too wired to go to sleep, anyway.”

Camila gave her a grateful nod and carried Hunter up the stairs. He was already asleep by the time they got to Luz’s room, his breath coming in soft little puffs. She nestled him in the bed, pulling the covers over him.

“Good night, Hunter.”

Xxx

Hunter was woken up by the sun.

The sun.

How had he slept this long?!

He bolted upright, nearly scraping his head on the ceiling. Wait. What?

Everything that had happened, came back to him in a rush, and he flopped backwards, running his hands through his hair. “Oh.”

Lying here, in the Noceda house, he could almost imagine that going back to Belos had been nothing but a bad dream.

But it hadn’t been. He had some very real bruises to prove it.

He shuddered, remembering the cold, acidic feel of Belos’ curse.

But then Red soared right into him, singing brightly, and he could almost forget it had ever happened.

Almost.

Hunter’s hand closed around the pin on his cloak. He ripped it off, tossing the cape to the floor, followed by his armor. He didn’t have to wear it anymore. Ever. Belos had no way to get back to him.

Belos had no way to get back to him.

The enormity of the statement caught up to him, and he ran his hand through his hair again. “He can’t come back for me,” he whispered, “I—I don’t ever have to see him again!”

Red chirped in agreement, and a bewildered laugh escaped Hunter’s mouth.

No more running errands for Belos.

No more worrying about what would happen to Red.

No more fear that an attack would hit, and he’d get hurt.

Just Camila and Vee and Luz.

Hunter shuffled down the stairs into the kitchen. “Good morning!”

“You’re cheerful.” Vee grinned. “Afternoon, actually.”

“Really?”

Luz nodded. “Mom said we should let you sleep. Speaking of my mom, she said something about how she shouldn’t have forced me to promise not to go back to the Isles—she doesn’t want me to keep trying to use that key, because it’s too dangerous to get into the keep, but she hasn’t outright said I can’t go back if I can find another way.” Luz glanced around. “I miiiiight ask to borrow Red at some point. If that’s okay with the two of you. I need to let Eda know I’m okay.”

“Luz, are you plotting something behind my back?” Camila came bumping down the stairs, holding a brightly wrapped parcel. “Oh, hey! You’re up!” She thrust the parcel at him. “That’s for you! I actually got it before… but that doesn’t matter, you’re here, I have it, everything’s great.”

Hunter gingerly took the package. “What… is it?”

“It’s a present,” Vee explained wisely, “It’s a surprise. You open it up.”

“Did it… come like this?”

“Nope, Camila wrapped it.”

Hunter squinted at the package. “But… now I’m just supposed to open it?”

Vee nodded. “Yep.”

“Then what was the point of wrapping it up?”

Luz nudged his shoulder. “It’s fun!” Her face dropped. “Oh my gosh, you’ve never gotten a present before, this is so sad. Okay. Just trust us, it’s fun.”

Hunter stuck his tongue out at her, and pulled gently at the paper, trying to unstick the tape.

“Rip it!” Luz demanded, “Tear it open!”

Hunter glanced back at Camila. “But you worked so hard to—”

She laughed. “You’re supposed to rip it, mijo. Go ahead.”

Hunter tore at the paper. It was… oddly exciting.

The wrapping had contained a set of clothing, jeans that actually looked his size, a t-shirt, and a hoodie that looked just a little too big—therefore, exactly the right size.

Hunter turned the fabric over in his hands, tears bubbling to his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Vee pushed him towards the stairs. “Go see if it fits!”

Hunter scooted up the stairs, closing the door behind him and switching clothes. The rest of his uniform joined the armor and cloak in a pile, and he tugged the hood of his new sweater up, retracting his hands into the sleeves. It was soft, and comfy, and he felt like he could just melt into a puddle right here.

He shuffled back downstairs, and Camila clapped her hands. “Ooo, good, it fits! Look at you!” She grabbed her keys. “Okay, Hunter, Luz, in the car, both of you are coming with me to the doctor’s office, I want both of you checked out for concussions.”

“Mooooooom,” Luz groaned, “I’m fiiiiiiine!”

Hunter let Camila shoo him into the car, stepping out into the bright sunlight (hadn’t it been raining last night?). Warmth spread all through him, banishing the last of the lingering coldness Belos had left behind.

Camila looked back at him as she turned the car on. “Everything good?”

Hunter took in a deep breath, burying his face in his new hoodie. He was back home—this time to stay. “Everything is perfect.”

#whoof almost didn't update today #anyway one happy ending as promised #now back to our previously scheduled angst #toh #the owl house #toh fanfiction #toh hunter #camila noceda #vee noceda #luz noceda #my writing

61 notes · View notes

bunny-xoxo · 3 years

Text

To Call You Mine

college!tsuki x reader series

Ch. 1 - study buddies

warning(s): swearing, early early mornings 😵‍💫, second hand embarrassment LOL

a/n: ahhhhh!! Here’s chapter one of my first series!! I have the masterlist and details linked above but for some quick info: this is a college!au multi chapter fic about tsuki and the reader :) if you’d like to be added to the taglist let me know!! And as always I really appreciate your thoughts and comments n all that :) my inbox is always open!!! Enjoy <3 psps - don’t forget to check out the playlist linked above hhehehe

You’re not sure what woke you first; your alarm, the pain shooting up your back from the stiff cot your university has the audacity to refer to as a “bed”, or your own sour attitude from having to be up so early.

Five am. Five am. It takes a certain kind of sick and twisted individual to suggest meeting up to study at five in the morning. Although, you have to admit, it does take a different kind of person to actually agree to those terms.

Why, why, why, why, why.

Is the mantra you chant to yourself while you mindlessly dress and pack your bag, not even bothering to snatch a power bar from your nightstand for breakfast. Water will have to do.

You make an effort to click the door shut behind you quietly, not wanting to wake up your more than sweet dorm mate who’d surely be focusing on being just as careful as you were right now.

“Oh my gosh, don’t you have that study date in the morning sweetie? You should be sleeping right now.” Bonnie, said dorm mate, leans over the back of your desk chair to peer down at the page of your calculus ll textbook you’ve been staring at for the past ten minutes. Concern is evident in her voice and her body language as she brings up a hand to gingerly rub your shoulder, hoping her small sideways smile will give you a sense of comfort. Or maybe even convince you to give it, and yourself, a rest.

“I know, I know. I just want to be prepared is all. I’m already dropping past a C at the speed of light and I’m sure my professor thinks I’m an idiot, hence him actually setting me up with a tutor, and I don’t need this guy to think I’m one too.” Your head falls in your hands at the end of your sentence, a dramatic groan feeling needed to really emphasize your point, too.

“Okay, just head to bed soon.” She placed a kiss on the top of your head before crawling into her own bed, using a storage container to prop herself onto it properly. She almost made you homesick with the way she doted on you like she was your mother.

You looked over and tapped the screen of your phone to see it read 9:14, not too late. You could reasonably cram in one more lesson.

You scoffed at yourself with the door fully shut and locked. You should’ve listened to Bonnie when you had the chance, it was just past midnight when you finally tore yourself away from last weeks review and decided to get ready for bed. Barely even four hours later and you’re up and getting ready to look at it all again.

You could at least appreciate how quiet the dorm hall was this ea-

“Mornin’, you!”

You internally banged your head against the wall at the bright voice that came towards you with such heavy and loud footsteps, how can someone’s footsteps manage to be so loud on carpet?

You substituted a hello with a gentle smile and wave as your R.A., who definitely didn’t remember your name - which is fine cause you didn’t remember theirs either, rushed past you.

Sighing deeply, you left the warm confines of the dorm building and stepped into the cold and brisk morning, starting your trek to the library.

He couldn’t have even chose a coffee place or something?

You had some, thoughts, about this guy. You didn’t know much about him, only two things.

One, his name: Tsukishima Kei.

Two, he was a good enough student to be assigned to you as a tutor.

You swallowed your slight embarrassment at the thought of your professor reaching out to someone on your behalf and instead chose to focus more on how weird this guy has to be.

Waking up before the sun rises on a Sunday was not something you looked forward to, you don’t think anybody would truly; especially to meet someone for the first time; yet this guy thinks it’s a great idea. So much so he didn’t even think to ask first, just tell you when and where to meet.

Thursday 4:14 pm

- ‘It’s Tsukishima. See you at 5 in the library this sunday.’

- ‘Oh hi!! Oh ok, am or pm?? lol’

Thursday 7:43 pm

- ‘am.’

- ‘Ok cool, see ya then!’

And that was it. Neither of you have texted since, which was three days ago on a Thursday afternoon. It kind of bothered you really, I mean, what kind of self righteous ass-

You took a deep breath and chose to think happy thoughts instead. You’d much rather be in a somewhat pleasant mood when you meet this guy than have some grudge against a stranger. And he probably talks different than he texts, right? You’re sure he didn’t mean to sound like a complete jerk.

You shook your head as if you were shaking away your thoughts as you started to walk along the path to the library. It was a fairly nice walk, about five minutes, and being alone was kind of peaceful on the way there this early.

Your feet shuffled only slightly on the cold concrete surprisingly enough considering the way your fatigue was starting to creep into your joints - but surely the cold wasn’t helping.

It was that kind of morning cold that stung your nostrils when you breathed in and tickled your cheeks and ears. It made your hands clench and unclench in your coat pockets, debating whether or not it’d be worth it to pull the cold metal of your jacket zipper just a centimeter higher in hopes of keeping your neck warmer. The morning fog leaving droplets on the synthetic material of your coat, making it squeak awfully when you moved your arms. And there was the dew on the grass that’d cling onto the tops of your shoe when you had to walk through it.

But the way the old fashioned light posts lit your walk and illuminated the fog kind of made your slight discomfort worth it. And by the time you reached the tall brick library, you could almost say you were in a pleasant mood, almost. And then you remembered why you were here.

You took one final deep breath as you reached the heavy doors of the university library. It was a grand sight really.

The building had its own separate spot on campus, towering at about four stories high, which although didn’t sound ginormous, it definitely felt that way when you had to climb those stairs to the top floor for a book you really didn’t even want. The brick with the foliage creeping up the sides to cover some of the lower windows even gave it an almost magic feeling when you took it in from the outside, it’s too bad that sense of wonder couldn’t be mirrored on the inside.

It was too quiet, especially this early, it smelt almost stale, and everything seemed to have a layer of dust no matter how new a book was. And the bathrooms? Old. Most stalls didn’t even have usable locks at this point. It’s arguably all apart of the charm of such an old building, but it’s not as charming when you have to reach out to keep the stall door closed with your fingertips just to use the restroom. And the water from the sink that never seems to get warm enough when you wash your hands doesn’t help either. Yet the water fountains are always too warm curiously enough.

You made little to no noise besides the occasional rustling of your jacket and squeaking of your shoes as they padded across the dingy off-colored carpet towards the back of the first floor.

There were various sizes of tables spread out throughout the space, few actually matching in color or style. The chairs varied less - but you could still find the oddball desk chair, or the chair with the wooden frame just a tad to wide to feel like a normal seat but just as evenly too small to be a bench.

Your heavy eyes surveyed the dimly lit space in hopes of finding any sign of human life when you finally noticed a backpack haphazardly tossed onto a table, still zipped open. Pens were splayed across the table with a single notebook, scribbles scrawled across the pages too far from you to be read. Not seeing anyone occupying the seat pulled away from the tables edge, you took out your phone to take a peek at the time.

4:58 am

Wow, I’m early?

Shoving your phone back into your pocket you began to make your way towards the (un)occupied table, debating whether a seat closer or farther would be more polite.

If I sit too close that’ll definitely be-

“Hey.”

You felt your shoulders hunch up to your ears and a small gasp leave your mouth at the way the voice behind you so suddenly interrupted your train of thought.

You turned around to come face to face with the voice.

“Are you (y/n)?”

Damn. He’s kinda tall.

Kind of was certainly an understatement. God he was definitely above 6 feet, 6’2” maybe? No, maybe even a little taller.

A single earbud was still in his ear as the other hung down and rested against his chest. He took the time to take the other out and wrap the cord gently around his middle and index finger before shoving it into his coat pocket, presumably the same one with his phone, in an effort to prevent them from getting tangled most likely. He took a deep breath and eyed you up and down before chuckling softly to himself.

“Okay.”

The tall man, who you’re now beginning to realize is Tsukishima, gives you a quizzical stare with a quirked eyebrow as he looks you up and down one last time, definitely judging you and your silence at this point, before turning around and making his way to a table.

Well it’s a good thing he stopped you before you sat at some other strangers table. You don’t think your heart could’ve taken that today.

You watched his back as he made his way towards a table farther into the back, closer to a window peering out onto the foggy and barely illuminated field.

Oh shit

“Oh, sorry!” You clear your throat and begin again, your own sudden volume startling yourself for a moment, as you double your pace to catch up and walk beside him towards a table,

“Um, yeah. Sorry, it’s a little early, brain hasn’t woke all the way up.”

Silence.

At the lack of a response, you decide to awkwardly laugh rather than wallow at the fact he didn’t even give a pity chuckle at your bad attempt at a polite joke to ease the seemingly tense vibe between the two of you.

Okay, well he definitely seems to talk the way he texts.

Clearing your throat again, you tried once more.

“I’m (y/n) by the way, it’s nice to m-“

“I know your name.” He stopped at the table and turned to glance down at you over his shoulder, the tiniest of smirks resting on his face with raised eyebrows, before pulling out a seat to sit in.

Yeah, maybe being quiet for a bit would do you some good. You’ll try again later.

Still trying to shake the embarrassment, no humiliation at this point, you busied yourself with taking out all the proper materials and waiting while he did the same. Sitting patiently opposite of Tsukishima, you decided to finally get a good look at him. Take in what you see and make some judgements.

He shook off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair, showing you his wide shoulders underneath the simple grey t-shirt he wore. You didn’t fail to notice how the sleeves were cuffed, either.

Hm. Nice look.

Points for Tsukishima.

His hands and ears were slightly pink from the weather outside, contrastingly sweet against the paleness of his skin.

Kinda cute, in like a Keebler elf kind of way.

More points, you guess, for Tsukishima.

He sighed as he opened up the calculus ll textbook, adjusting his glasses with long and slender fingers before flipping through the pages. You decided it’d be best to do the same.

It was quiet for a moment too long when you thought it might be a good idea to try and speak again, but apparently he must’ve had the same idea.

“So, why d-“

“Thanks for-“

Cutting each other off, you pursed your lips as he gave you some emotionless stare, one of you waiting for the other to start back up again.

Andddd, another awkward beat of silence.

Jesus, this was gonna be the longest hour of your life.

—————————

AHHHHH HERES CHAPTER ONE - I promise the next one will be full of tsuki and tsuki content ok, I just had to get the ball rolling and really wanted to post smth!! I hope you guys like and please please leave your thoughts or anything in my ask box or anywhere!! I’d love to talk :D MWAH I also have little footnotes in my tags too :) (more like commentary but yeah)

taglist for series: @plutowrites @c0rncheez @ruetaro @daniagabriela48 @toyas-wife @devilkou @anime-and-kpop-trash (if you’d like to be added or removed let me know! And if ur crossed off tagging didn’t work!)

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nikadoesanart · 3 years

Text

My predictions on BSD getting animated going forward

I’ll be taking a look at the novel page counts (Japanese and English) and comparing them to the screen time they’ve gotten so far and then using this to predict how long the remaining light novel adaptations will be (approximately). At the end will also be my rough prediction/hopes for the order of some of these being adapted. I say some because I have yet to read what there is so far of the gaiden novel translations, the main story manga has essentially still been on the DOA arc almost since where the anime left off, and I personally think that it’s currently too soon for Storm Bringer (aside from money purposes).

Note, most of this was written well before the anime 5th anniversary livestream but the announcements wound up not affecting it. I then of course made adjustments as needed account for the novel content we do have so far, both in Japanese and in English (officially).

Page to Episode Count

Not counting the afterward, ads, etc for the English/US copy, Japanese is including it

Also all eng page counts are using the Yen Press release and jp page counts are taken from the fandom wiki

*148 is purely counting the Untold Origins portion of the novel. If we also count the A Day at the Agency short story that’s included before it (56 pages), then we get the full 203

Also the English page count for BEAST was noted before the English release date but after page counts have been posted by affiliated retailers, so subtract a couple pages from the written count of 176 for the time being to account for the afterward and possible character sheets being included

Now that we have our page to episode counts (as of April 5th, 2021), let’s find the actual content run time of what we do have animated so far.

Seasons 1-3 and the OVA all have the same episode length/duration. Each episode is 23 minutes, and we can subtract 3 minutes on average from that to account for the OP and ED being played. This leaves us with an average of 20 minutes of BSD story content per episode. So on average, each of the first 3 seasons contain 240 minutes, or 4 hours, worth of story content.

Dead Apple’s total run time is 91 minutes, with the OP and ED making up 9 of those minutes. However, we do have a bit of the story content being played while the ED is playing (as sometimes happens in the anime as well). To keep the math simple, I’ll be approximating story content time at 82 minutes.

Apply these numbers to the novels that have been animated so far and this is (approximately) what we get:

Now let’s use these numbers to predict the screen time needed for the other novels

Note that we can’t really use Entrance Exam as a fair measure because of how much got cut out (just compare the run time of it to Dark Era and it speaks for itself). However, the numbers for Dark Era and Dead Apple are the best ones to use, as they both have minimal changes between anime and novel and both have official English translations currently available. Take out the approximate time taken up by OP/ED and and the numbers pretty much match up.

So with that being said, we can estimate Untold Origins (only) at approximately 3 eps/60 min and 55 Minutes at 1h 40-55min/100-115 min or 5-6 eps if it doesn’t get a movie. We can also estimate the A Day at the Detective Agency short story at the beginning of Untold Origins to take up about 1 ep, probably even a bit less.

1+ 3 + 5-6 = 9-10 episodes which isn’t enough for a full single cour season unless they all get put into one big OVA season, but also 10-11 eps (or less) seasons are a thing (ie. Fugou Keiji: Balance Unlimited, Blood Lad, Black Butler: Book of Circus, The Seven Deadly Sins: Signs of a Holy War, FLCL)

My personal predictions/hopes for the anime adaptation timeline going forward

This is considering the manga content, current “pausing/stopping points” what wouldn’t be too awkward, each of the novels relevancy/necessity to the main story manga, and assuming we continue with single cour (12-13 ep) seasons

Hopefully/ideally a 55 Minutes movie

S4: ch 54-70

Early S5 (preferably) or end of S4: Untold Origins or A Day at the Agency

S5: ch 71-88/around where we are now?

A Day at the Agency can, in my opinion at least, be chucked in at any point either as a single episode OVA or as the light novel content for s4 (maybe not even taking a full episode and then starting ch 54 in the last few minutes for example). Keep in mind that the current DOA arc is a long one and has plenty to it, so personally I think it may even be better to not include a novel adaptation in a future S4, as it would likely already be a right squeeze content wise. Remember, we also have a few XX.5 chapters that are continuations of the chapter directly before them.

I still need to read what’s currently available of the gaiden novel fan translations but it can probably be adapted at any point as well. I’m estimating approximately 5-6 eps as an OVA series. I don’t really think it would get a movie, partially because you can make it only so long, especially since it’s an anime movie and unlike Storm Bringer, it doesn’t have Chuuya to practically guarantee the profit.

BEAST also doesn’t directly impact the main story and can be adapted at virtually any point. However, seeing as we do have a live action confirmed for it and it’s page count lines up very closely with Dark Era, it can be either 4 eps or (more likely in my opinion) a movie, as it can be considered almost stand alone content.

Personally, I believe it is currently way too soon to animate Storm Bringer as it came out only a little over a month ago (as of writing this) and has minimal plot necessity as of ch 91, but I do believe it should be either split into 2 movies (a part 1 and part 2) or it would need 8 episodes, likely as an OVA season. If it were to get animated sooner than 55 Minutes or Untold Origins, which I believe to be very unlikely, I feel that it would almost certainly be driven by the financial gains of Chuuya being included, and his popularity alone. Reminder, SB is about Chuuya and not SKK. Dazai’s appearance in SB is proportionally a very small percentage and he’s not even mentioned in the official plot summary.

However, you can argue that SB is starting to have some relevance now, with the recent mention of the Order of the Clock Tower in ch 90 and the increased relevance of sealed ability weapons in ch 91. However, I really do believe that you can’t adapt Storm Bringer before 55 Minutes because of Standard Island and its treaty, it also talks about sealed ability weapons, knowing who Wells is, and 55 Minutes canonically takes place during the “downtime” portion of S3. In fact, here’s Asagiri’s words directly from the Afterward (translation by Yen Press):

“this volume didn’t take place in the past, but rather sometime after the tenth volume of the manga. In other words, it’s a tale about the ‘usual’ detective agency in novel format.” (55 minutes, p 237)

Untold Origins also should be adapted sooner rather than later (at least compared to SB in my opinion) because it’s about Ranpo and Fukuzawa’s shared past, which becomes increasingly relevant ch 70 onwards, as well as the need for the ADA being founded (which ties in with Yosano’s backstory in ch 65-66).

In regards to whether I think each of these would be better suited to a movie adaptation or as multiple regular length anime episodes, it’s mainly due to page count and partly due to the budget difference between the two, as well as how difficult I think it would be to animate each of these based on what needs to be drawn. The anime industry isn’t the fastest to switch to newer technology, hence why we see issues with 3D blending sometimes. I really do think that at the very least, 55 Minutes deserves the movie budget because of how detailed and complex the architecture of Standard Island is described as, as well all the mechanical parts needed for the final battle of the novel. Hate the lizard mouths introduced in Dead Apple all you want, but you can’t deny that the 3D cgi was blended very smoothly. For any of the other novels to be movies, it’s more so because gaiden and BEAST can be considered their own stand alone stories that don’t rely too heavily on the main story in terms of when they take place and get adapted. I feel that SB is more likely to get its own season or an OVA season more so due to its length, but multiple part anime movies have also been done before (ie. the Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel movies), so it’s not entirely impossible. Especially considering that merely having any Chuuya screen time means that you can expect the profit and popularity to really go up, especially with SKK being on screen together (regardless of whether you love or hate how the fandom tends to push a shipping POV on them).

These are all of course just my hopes and predictions and estimates based on information currently available, so take them with some salt. I’d love to hear opinions on how, when, and why each of the currently non animated novels should be adapted going forward. Also please stop begging the relevant BSD official Twitter pages for SB to be animated next and go read the other light novels you Chuuya simp

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd analysis #bsd theories #bsd dead apple #bungo stray dogs #bsd manga #bsd storm bringer #bsd light novel #bsd anime #bsd 55 minutes #bsd beast #bsd gaiden #bsd untold origins

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kuroopaisen · 3 years

Text

tiny love || vii

➵ as tooru’s younger sister, falling in love with iwaizumi hajime was easy. iwaizumi ultimately decided to rebuff you. through a few strange twists of fate, you’ve ended up living with the very boy who’d broken your heart. but, perhaps it’s not as bad as you thought it’d be. he is the perfect gentleman, after all.

warnings: f!reader, depictions of intoxication

wc: 5.2k

m.list | ch. 6 ↞ ch. 7 ↠ ch. 8

You peered at yourself in the mirror, doing your best to not crinkle your makeup.

It’d been a while since you’d bothered to dress up this nicely.

You were just wearing a simple yet flattering black dress, offset by your favourite shade of red lipstick. You weren’t sure if you actually looked good, or if it was just nicer than anything else you’d worn that week.

You’d sent a photo to Amaya, but upon receiving her affirmation you started to doubt the authenticity of it. Not that she’d given you reason to; no, you’d just decided that she was far too supportive to trust for an objective opinion.

You sighed, tilting your head to the side as you looked at the mirror.

Whatever, you thought. This’ll just have to do.

“I’m ready!” You called out, slipping into the front room after grabbing your handbag.

“Give me a moment,” Iwaizumi called out. The tinniness of his voice implied that he was still in the bathroom.

You sighed, taking a moment to check the contents of your bag. Phone, wallet, lipstick, mirror… That’s all you’d need, right?

“You got everything?” Iwaizumi asked, almost as if he’d appeared out of nowhere.

“Mhm!” You smiled, looking up at him.

You wondered, for a moment, if there was something on your face.

He was staring at you, his eyes a little wider and rounder than usual.

You tilted your head at him. “Everything okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” He blinked at you for a second, as if your words had shocked him back to the present moment. His eyes scanned your body slowly before lingering on your face again. “You look good.”

You hoped your foundation masked the heat rising in your cheeks.

It’s frustrating, how hot he looked without even trying. He was just in a black button up (the top few buttons undone, of course) and a pair of jeans, and yet he looked like that. He’d barely done anything to his hair, either; just a bit of gel, from the looks of things.

“Are you ready to go?” He asked, finally breaking the excruciating silence.

“Yeah,” you nodded. Stupid Iwaizumi Hajime with his stupid face and his stupid black button up and his stuck jeans and his stupid—

“I’ll drive,” he said, patting his jean pocket.

“Oh, are you sure?” You asked. “You don’t want to drink?”

“It’s fine. Someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” he grinned, throwing you a wink.

“Hey!” You whined. “You haven’t even seen me drunk!”

“Oh, so you do intend on getting drunk then?” He chuckled, heading for the apartment door.

You gaped for a moment, searching for a comeback. “Well, you’re the one who said that uni parties are for getting shit-faced.”

“That doesn’t mean you should get shit-faced, though.”

You rolled your eyes as you followed him. “Whatever you say, dad.”

✧ ✧ ✧

You hadn’t known what to expect from your first visit to a rooftop bar, but suffice to say you were impressed. When you’d asked Iwaizumi how the club had the budget to book somewhere this nice, he’d just shrugged.

“A lot of Japanese students, I guess,” was his only explanation.

Upon paying twenty-five dollars to officially ‘join’ at the door, you started to formulate a strong theory as to just where the club was getting its money.

There were far more people here than you’d anticipated. You knew it would be big, you hadn’t expected it to be this big. People were packed in like the clothes in your wardrobe, barely giving each other room to breathe. It was a sea of completely unrecognisable faces – and yet, seeing all these people who looked and sounded like you made you feel a little more at ease.

The music – which seems to be a mix of songs you don’t recognized – thumped loudly throughout the area. You wondered if there’d be any noise complaints.

Iwaizumi led you to the bar, managing to find two seats. You weren’t entirely sure how; you mostly chalked it up to the providence of God.

“I’m just going to go to the toilet, okay?” Iwaizumi said. “You’ll be alright on your own for a second, right?”

You nodded. “Don’t worry about me!”

Iwaizumi gave you a look as if to say ‘that’s impossible.’

You fought the urge to stick your tongue out at him. That would only elucidate his point.

After a few more moments of staring (under which you thought you were going to crumble to dust), Iwaizumi eventually disappeared into the crowd.

You sighed, placing your hands in your lap.

In all honesty, you didn’t know what to do. You felt it only right to stay where you were, mostly to avoid giving Iwaizumi a heart attack should he come back and see you weren’t there. But, you didn’t have the confidence to order a drink, either. Or get the bartender’s attention.

“Hey.”

A voice that somehow managed to make itself heard over the music startled you out of your thoughts.

You whipped your head round, only to see a guy you’d never met before sitting in Iwaizumi’s seat. He had soft features framed by a strong chin and wavy brown hair. If you had to guess, you’d say he was around your age.

“Hey,” you said automatically, relieved at the fact that he’d greeted you in Japanese.

“You speak Japanese?” He smiled.

“You’d assume so,” you smiled back. “Seeing as I’m here and all.” You gestured to the room around you. Underneath the music, you could make out a bubble of conversation – most of which was Japanese.

“Hey, a lot of second-gen immigrants don’t necessarily learn the language,” he shrugged. His entire demeanour was so… good-natured. So polite. Even if he had taken a seat without asking.

“Oh, really?” You hadn’t known that. Albeit, it wasn’t really something you’d thought about too much.

“Mhm,” he nodded. “I mean, that’s what my friend told me.”

“Ah,” you said.

“I’m Kohei, by the way,” he gave you a little nod.

You returned it as you introduced yourself.

“Nice to meet you,” he grinned. “What year are you in?”

“First,” you said. “I only got here a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh!” His face lit up. “Me too!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! I’m from Tokyo!”

“Ah, so you’re a city boy,” you smiled.

He blushed a little. “Well, uh…”

“I’m from Miyagi,” you cut in. “Although, I did go to Sendai every now and then.”

“Oh, I never got the chance to visit,” he smiled. “What made you come to America?”

“I wanted to study psychology,” you answered. “I thought the options would be better here.”

“Ah,” he nodded. He had the sort of eyes that made him look like he was deeply engaged in whatever you were talking about.

“What about you?” You asked.

“Oh, I just wanted to come here for the adventure,” he said sheepishly.

“The ‘adventure’?” You smiled, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yes,” he nodded. “I thought it would be cool. But… English is a bit tricky, isn’t it?”

You laughed. “Oh, yeah…”

A squeal of your name cut through the crowd.

You turned, bewildered and a little frightened.

“Hi!” Yuna beamed, throwing herself at you.

You instinctively wrapped your arms around her. From the flush in her cheeks, you could tell she’d already had a few.

“I’m so glad you came!” She whined. “And you look so pretty!”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “So do you!”

Yuna whined again, drawing back to pout at you. “Why didn’t you come and find me immediately?”

“I didn’t know you were here,” you laughed.

She narrowed her eyes at you. “Fair enough…” Her gaze snapped to Kohei, her glare getting more intense. “And who is this?”

“This is Kohei,” you said, leaving them to introduce themselves to each other.

You scanned the crowd, a frown forming. Where was Iwaizumi? He’d been gone a while… Or did it only feel like a while? If Yuna dragged you away, it may be hard to find him and assure him that you were okay, because you just knew he’d be developing an aneurism…

You caught sight of him. He gave you a tiny wave, an expression that looked something like relief on his face. That look alone was enough to soothe you.

Tonight was already shaping up to be a good time.

✧ ✧ ✧

“Can you stand?” Iwaizumi asked, watching you with an expression of disgruntled concern on his face.

“Yes,” you said with far too much emphasis. You pointed at him with one very obstinate finger.

Kohei had bought you a drink, and Yuna had challenged you to a line of shots. Mei had pointed out that perhaps you shouldn’t go overboard. You’d been adamant that you knew your limit. That’d been a big fat lie.

“Are you sure?” He asked again, taking a step towards you.

“Yes!”

As soon as you said it, you toppled left.

Iwaizumi grabbed you by your shoulders, stabilizing you.

“Whoops,” you pouted.

He sighed, releasing you. “You alright?”

You blinked at him for a second. “Iwa…”

“Mhm?”

“I don’t think I can stand.”

Iwaizumi bit the inside of his cheek. He was trapped somewhere between annoyance and burgeoning fondness.

“Alright,” he said, standing at your side. “Let me help.”

“Thank you,” you hummed, beaming at him as he leant down to drape one of your arms across his shoulders.

You leant your entire weight against him without warning.

He grunted, one arm grabbing your waist to keep you on your feet. “Careful now.”

“Sorry,” you whined. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know,” Iwaizumi smiled, shaking his head. “Let’s get you back to the car, alright?”

“That is an excellent plan, Iwa. You should be proud.”

Oh, fuck, he thought. He just couldn’t keep that smile off his face.

✧ ✧ ✧

By some miracle, he managed to get you to the car in one piece.

Even better, the drive home had been relatively uneventful. You’d just babbled on about why Riza Hawkeye from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was, in fact, the perfect woman. Iwaizumi had just smiled, nodding along whenever he was required to.

You still needed support getting up the stairs to your apartment; when you tried to take matters into your own hands, you always managed to trip.

But, finally, he’d gotten you both inside the house, your arm still draped over his shoulders and his arm still wrapped around your waist. It was, quite frankly, almost too much.

Iwaizumi sighed, opening your bedroom door with his free hand.

“But Iwa,” you whined, pouting up with him. “I need to have a shower.”

“You can’t stand up straight,” he chuckled. “You can have a shower in the morning.”

“But I’ve gotta wipe my makeup off,” you droned. “Or else I’ll get a breakout.”

“Hm…” He scanned your room, settling on the clutter of makeup on your desk. “Do you have anything you can wash your face with?”

The idea of you trying to stabilize yourself in the shower gave him more anxiety than he was comfortable with. You shouldn’t wake up with both a hangover and a concussion.

“Wipes?” You blinked, pointing at your desk.

Iwaizumi took a moment to find them. He assumed it was the little green packet that didn’t look familiar to him.

“Thanks,” you beamed up at him as he passed them to you.

He tried his best to ignore the squeezing in his heart as he noticed how your eyes sparkled as you looked at him.

You ignored him for a moment as you dealt with your makeup.

He looked away out of respect, eyes landing on the collage of photos stuck above your desk. He ambled towards them mindlessly, gazing at the myriad of images.

There were many faces he recognized. Tooru, Amaya, your mother, Kaori… He realised, not without a strange sharpness in his chest, that he only featured in a single photo. It was one from his graduation; one that you were both ‘obligated’ to be in.

But he knew his absence from these photos was his own doing. If he just hadn’t had been such an idiot, then…

“Is it gone?” You asked.

He turned back to you, biting back a laugh. “Uh… not quite.”

Your lipstick, which had already been in a poor state, was smeared all around your mouth, looking more like a rash. Your foundation was splotchy, some patches mostly removed and others untouched. And to top it all off, your mascara had been melted into a muddy puddle beneath your eyes.

Overall, you looked a bit like a raccoon he’d caught eating beetroots out of his garbage.

You whined, lying back on your bed.

“It’ll be fine,” he chuckled. “It’s just one night.”

“No, you don’t understand,” you emphasized, “makeup is bad for your skin.”

Iwaizumi grinned, grabbing what he assumed to be your pyjamas from the end of the bed and tossing them to you. “You’ll feel better if you change into something more comfortable.”

You glared at him from your horizontal position, the expression emphasised by a couple extra chins.

Iwaizumi left the room quickly and closed the door, making a beeline for the kitchen. He prepared you a glass of water, going through the checklist in his head of how to take care of someone well over their limit.

When he got back to your bedroom door, he was sure to knock.

He took the garbled ‘mhm!’ he got in response as affirmation.

He opened the door slowly, peeking round the door to see you sat cross-legged on the bed with a pout. From the looks of it, you’d put your top on backwards.

His heart thumped in that terrifyingly familiar way.

“Drink this,” he mumbled, handing you the glass.

You nodded, taking it with both hands and tipping it back with ferocity.

Iwaizumi gazed at his feet while he did so, trying to smother the burgeoning fondness in his chest.

He couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair.

“I’m done!” You called out in a sing-song voice, thrusting the empty cup towards him.

“Do you want some more?” He asked as he took the cup from you.

You beamed up at him. “Mhm!”

Iwaizumi sighed. He wasn’t going to say no to that face.

As he went to get you a second glass of water, he kept trying to push those sorts of thoughts out of his head.

He’d been doing so well. Of course, he’d wanted to be friends with you again. Being able to get along would be key to making this whole living situation work. But the closer he got, the more he was reminded of what had happened two years ago.

And like an idiot, he’d tried to position himself as someone you could rely on. He wanted to be someone you could rely on.

But was that because it was the right thing to do, or because of something else?

He shook his had and blinked rapidly. He’s just thinking these things because he’s had a bit to drink. That’s all. It’s nothing serious.

He kept repeating those thoughts as he dragged himself back to your room, determined not to succumb to them.

The last time he’d fallen into them, you’d completely excised each other from your lives. That wasn’t exactly an option here.

He took a deep breath as he stepped into your room, steeling himself for whatever was to come.

You were laid on your bed, limbs curled around one of your pillows. Were you asleep?

Well, he thought, that’s probably for the best.

Iwaizumi sighed, placing the water on your bedside table. Chances were, you were going to wake up with quite the headache. But, he supposed, it’s something of a learning experience. It’s good to know your limits.

He carefully picked up the corner of your blanket and tugged it over you. It was fall, after all. He didn’t want you catching a cold.

Once he was sure everything was in order, he flicked your light off and left, closing the door behind him.

A sudden wave of exhaustion hit him as he dragged himself back to his room. He didn’t dare check the time; he was sure it’d just upset him.

Better to just try and forget about this night and move on.

✧ ✧ ✧

After that party, you’d made a vow to never drink again.

The vow lasted for all about a week. Although, you were much more careful about just how much you were drinking at any given time.

You did, however, stick to your promise to never, ever sleep in your makeup ever again.

Though neither alcohol nor makeup had been an issue as of late.

You’d done your best to give yourself as much time as possible to work on your assignments, mainly so you could ensure that your language use was as proficient as possible. But, even that hadn’t been enough to stave off the beast that is procrastination.

The result, of course, was a flurry of three days wholly dedicated to one assignment about neurotransmitters. You were in total shutdown mode, nothing on your mind but getting this stupid thing done.

You’d even left your room and settled yourself at the dining table in an attempt to stop the ever-coaxing allure of your bed pulling you away from your work desk for yet another nap.

Oh, and texting Amaya at any given moment as a way of putting off your work.

Our time zones don’t line up that well, you kept telling yourself. It’s fine, I can justify this distraction.

“Hey.”

You looked up at Iwaizumi with a thoroughly worn-out expression on your face. “Hello.”

“You okay?” He chuckled.

“As much as I can be,” you whined, turning to glare your computer screen.

“Here,” he said, placing a glass of water and an apple on the desk next to you. You hadn’t even noticed that he had them.

Your heart thumped a funny little rhythm in your chest.

Sure, you were used to Iwazumi’s gentlemanly ways by now. But that didn’t mean your heart didn’t race a little faster at each little act of kindness.

“Keep your fluids up,” he said, nodding at the water. “If you get a headache, we have some Panadol in the cupboard.”

“Thank you,” you blushed.

“No problem,” he smiled, turning around to return to the kitchen.

A new chat lit up on the corner of your screen.

[Kohei] [7:03 PM] Hey! How’s your assignment going?

[You] [7:03 PM] It’s… going?

[Kohei] [7:04 PM] Ahaha oh dear… that doesn’t sound good

[You] [7:03 PM] I am, as the kids say, suffering

[Kohei] [7:03 PM] Oh, I’m so sorry :( is there anything I can do to help?

You sighed, rubbing your eyes. You just needed to get this stupid thing done. Then you’d finally be able to relax.

✧ ✧ ✧

You held your milk tea up to your face, peering at it closely.

“Something wrong?” Iwaizumi asked, raising an eyebrow at you. He was perfectly content with the grapefruit tea he’d ordered, as he usually was.

“I think they skimped on the pearls this time,” you mused.

Iwaizumi chuckled, shaking his head. “Need me to talk to them?”

“No!” You shook your head quickly, any sign of malice disappearing from your face. “No, please don’t!”

“I’m just teasing,” he grinned, flicking your forehead lightly.

“Ow!” You pouted, rubbing the besieged spot gingerly.

“No need to be dramatic.”

“Quite the contrary, actually,” you shook your head, “I’m in my youth. It’s the prime time to be dramatic.”

Iwaizumi gave you the kind of look that implied he had no idea what you were talking about. In truth, neither did you.

You were just in an uncommonly good mood.

The two of you were on your way to a club meeting, organised by the Japanese Students Association. In all honesty, you weren’t sure what the meeting was actually about. All you knew was that you’d been invited. Specifically. Even though you were still just a first year.

And apparently, your presence had been requested by Mei.

Meaning you were actually wanted there.

The thought made your chest bubble with joy. You were wanted somewhere. People wanted to see you. On your merits. Not because of the family you’d be born into.

Sure, knowing Iwaizumi had given you a leg up, but they weren’t obligated to spend time with you, right? Right?

“Hajime?”

You both stopped in your tracks, turning towards the source of this new voice.

It was a girl you didn’t recognise – although you had to admit that she was quite stunning. Her dark hair was tied up in an impressively neat high ponytail, and her red lipstick was impeccable. The look, if she was going for it, was definitely ‘I could kill a man with the mere snap of my fingers.’

“Oh,” Iwaizumi blinked.

Was he… caught of guard?

“Ah, it is you,” the girl smiled, tilting her head at him. “How are you?”

“Good,” he said quickly. You didn’t miss how his grip tightened around his cup.

The girl nodded, her eyes fixed intently on his face.

You felt a bit like you were intruding on something very personal.

“Who’s this?” The girl asked, her gaze shifting to you.

You froze, unsure of what to say.

“Uh, this is my friend,” Iwaizumi said, gesturing to you. “Who also happens to be my roommate.”

You nodded at this girl as Iwaizumi introduced you, trying to ignore the swell in your chest at the fact he’d introduced you as a ‘friend’ first and foremost.

“Ah,” the girl smiled, nodding. “I’m Misaki, by the way.”

The warmth that’d just been spreading through your chest turned cold.

“It’s nice to meet you,” you said automatically, trying to stave off whatever confusing mess of emotion was going on inside of you.

“You too,” Misaki smiled.

The three of you stood there for a moment, completely silent.

“We’re on our way to a meeting,” Iwaizumi said, clearing his throat.

“Oh, really?” Misaki blinked. “I’m sorry for taking up your time.”

“It’s no problem,” Iwaizumi shook his head, holding a hand up. “You didn’t know.”

“Right,” Misaki nodded slowly, looking between the both of you. “Well, see you around.”

“Yeah,” he murmured, turning to you. “We should get going,” He didn’t wait for your response, walking off at a slightly faster pace than usual.

“Right,” you nodded, falling into step alongside him.

His whole demeanour seemed… off. Like something had really bothered him. It didn’t take a genius to work out why. But, you thought it best to get the facts instead of relying on your own suspicions.

“So,” you began, once you were sure Misaki was safely out of earshot, “who is she?”

Iwaizumi cleared his throat, gaze stuck firmly to the ground. “Uh… she’s my ex.”

“Oh?” You replied. You didn’t want to seem too interested – even though, in fact, you were very interested.

“Yeah…” Iwaizumi nodded slowly. “We broke up a few months ago.”

“Oh…” You bit the inside of your cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Iwaizumi shrugged. “We didn’t suit each other.”

“I see…” Break ups were entirely new territory for you. None of your friends had really dated in high school – and if they did, the breakup usually came as some sort of relief. Your friends had never asked for comfort even if you’d offered it.

But, seeing how the two of them had just interacted with each other…

“How long were you together?” You asked. Was that too invasive? You weren’t sure.

“About six months.”

You tried to ignore the stabbing in your gut. Six months? Six months? Sure, that might not be that long in the grand scheme of things, but it sure sounded like a long time to you. You hadn’t even been living with Iwaizumi for six months.

“Ah…” You pressed your lips together, brow furrowing as you searched for what to say. “If you need to talk to someone about it…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Iwaizumi smiled. “Really, I’m over it. I just didn’t expect to run into her today.”

You nodded. “That’s fair.”

“Usually I’d get a heads up before seeing her,” he shrugged.

“Huh?”

“Well, uh…” He cleared his throat. “We see each other at events, sometimes. For the Japanese Association.”

“Oh?” Now that piqued your interest.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “We actually met through it.”

Something twisted in your stomach. They’d met through the Student Association? It shouldn’t have made the thought of going to events weird, and yet it did.

“Oh really?” You asked, trying to seem unbothered.

“Mhm,” Iwaizumi nodded. “A lot of people end up finding a partner there.”

You frowned. Were you expected to find a partner there? Would you find a partner there?

Maybe you would. Maybe you’d finally find someone to date.

Although, you weren’t sure how anyone was supposed to measure up to Iwaizumi. Especially when he was standing right there.

“Anyway,” he sighed, picking up his pace. “We’ll be late.”

“Right,” you nodded, scurrying after him.

All you could hope for was to be able to push the thought of Misaki out of your head.

It felt petty, childish. You shouldn’t’ve been so concerned with Iwaizumi’s love life; his dating history shouldn’t matter to you.

But the questions swirled in your head as the two of you rushed across campus.

Had he dated anyone other than Misaki? Had he loved her? How far had they gone together? Did he miss her? Did he ever think about her?

Or, worse yet, was he on the look-out for someone else?

✧ ✧ ✧

“It’s not that hard once you understand the basics,” Iwaizumi said.

“Right,” you nodded, watching his hands intently as he sliced up an onion.

“If you place your hand like this,” he said, fist placed on the onion so that his knuckles ghosted the knife, “you’re less likely to cut yourself.”

“Ah,” you marvelled. “That’s actually a really helpful tip.”

“I know,” he grinned. “That’s why I’m sharing it with you.”

You rolled your eyes.

Iwaizumi moved onto the carrots, which you’d peeled yourself. Maybe you were a bit too proud, given the size of the task, but he let you get away with it.

He chopped the carrots with his typical proficiency.

You rested your elbows on the countertop, propping your chin up on the palms of your hands.

“We should have a dinner party,” you suggested, the image of all your shared friends gathered round your table, laughing and smiling, filling your heart with a precious warmth.

“That’s not what uni students usually do,” Iwaizumi smiled. “Not in America, anyway.”

“So?” You turned to him with a defiant expression. “We can all pretend to be upper-middle class for the evening,” you opined, tilting your chin at him. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’ll think about it,” Iwaziumi smiled.

“Pft,” you scoffed, shaking your head. “Like it’s up to you. I can just hold one without you.”

You wouldn’t really do that. You’d met them through him, after all.

“Yeah?” Iwaizumi grinned, a certain glint in his eyes. “What’re you going to serve everyone? Burnt rice?”

“Hey!” You whined. “It was one time!”

“How do you even burn rice?” Iwaizumi teased.

You pouted, lifting your fist and lightly punching him in the chest.

“You’re going to have to do better than that, sweetheart,” he laughed, puffing his chest out proudly. “I barely even felt that.”

“Fine.” You went for another swing.

Iwaizumi caught your wrist, holding it above your head in a gentle grip.

You swung with your other hand, only for him to catch that one, too.

You glared at him – but you know he’s aware that you’re just having a bit of fun.

“You’re the worst and I hate you,” you huffed.

“Keep telling yourself that,” he smirked.

You tried to think of some retort, some witticism that’d catch him off guard.

Nothing came to mind. Not when you were so close to him, his hands wrapped around your wrists as he looked at you with that expression. Stupid Iwaizumi Hajime and his stupid face and his stupid voice and his stupid—

You brought your knee up to his stomach, making him flinch.

His stumbled backwards and you tried to tug your wrists away. But his grip was too strong, even when he wasn’t trying all that hard.

“Stop,” you whined. “Let me go.”

“Say sorry.”

“For what?”

“Punching me.”

“Oh, come on,” you pouted at him. “It didn’t even hurt.”

“And?” He raised an eyebrow at you. “It’s about the principle of it.”

“Of punching you?”

“Mhm. It’s not very polite.”

You tried to tug away again. Your mind was wandering much too far. Farther than it should.

“Brattiness is an inherited trait,” you said, “it’s just part of being an Oikawa.”

Iwaizumi chuckled, finally letting you go.

Maybe the implication of your brother was enough to do it.

“You might be right about that,” he teased.

You stuck your tongue out at him petulantly.

Don’t make it hard for yourself, you thought. Not again.

✧ ✧ ✧

The sound of some generic eighties rock band bounced through your apartment as you and Iwaizumi tended to the DVD rack stood next to the TV.

“You have the taste of an old man,” you teased, glancing at Iwaizumi out the corner of your eye.

“These are classics,” Iwaizumi tsked.

“Kohei described them as ‘dad bands,’” you hummed.

“And why should this Kohei’s opinion matter more than mine, hm?”

“I never said it did,” you grinned, moving the DVD for Ferris Buller’s Day Off to its designated genre category. Why Iwaizumi had spent so much money on DVDs, you didn’t know. You would’ve thought that they’d just provide more clutter, especially if he planned on moving back to Japan.

You’d just surmised that it had something to do with his natural ineptitude with technology.

“What does this ‘Kohei’ even listen to?” Iwaizumi asked.

You shrugged. “I don’t know, actually.”

“You know, you’ll look back at the music of this decade and realise most of it’s garbage,” Iwaizumi grunted.

“Okay, grandpa.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” you grinned, “you’ve got that look on your face.”

Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow at you. “What look?”

“You know,” you giggled, turning to face him. “This look.”

You drew your eyebrows together a little, narrowing your eyes just enough to make them a bit more intense. To finish it off, you turned the corners of your mouth down, performing your best impression of a certified ‘Serious Iwaizumi.’

He flicked your forehead gently, a fond smile on his face. “I don’t look like that.”

“Oh, but you do,” you stressed. “You’re going to get premature wrinkles if you’re not careful.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he shrugged. “At least I’ll have my arms.”

You couldn’t argue with that. The only thing left to do was return to your task, hoping that the very invasive thought of Iwaizumi’s well-built arms would get out of your head.

There was a tap on your shoulder.

“Hm?” You turned to look at him.

He held up two DVD cases. “Blade Runner, or Back to the Future?”

You glanced between the two of them intently. “Huh?”

“We should take a break,” he suggested.

“Ah,” you nodded. “Which one’s less depressing?”

“Uh…” Iwaizumi looked between the two of them. “Back to the Future. Definitely.”

“I wanna watch that one, then.”

Iwaizumi nodded, turning around and turning the TV on.

You bit the inside of your cheek. Watching a movie with Iwaizumi, huh? Now that was dangerous territory. This time, at least, you knew to put a pillow between the two of you.

#iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime x reader #iwaizumi x you #iwaizumi hajime x you #iwaizumi hajime #haikyuu x reader #tiny love #an hour and 20 minutes late but it's up #sorry about that lads

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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years

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Hex Life

Fandom: WandaVision Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Jimmy Woo Rating: E Chapters: 10/10 Word Count: 34k

Summary: Guest starring Agent James E. Woo as himself and introducing Dr. Darcy Lewis as Mrs. Darcy Woo!

Or: Darcy and Jimmy are sent into the Hex to retrieve Captain Monica Rambeau. Finding out Westview has cast them as a married couple is only the first of the surprises that await them.

read ch. 1 one / 2 two / 3 three / 4 four / 5 five 6 six / 7 seven / 8 eight / 9 nine / 10 ten

this fic is now complete!

Jimmy’s going to be a dad. He was going to be a dad in a black-and-white sitcom world and now he’s going to be a dad in a world on the regular spectrum, so the colours really aren’t as big a deal as his impending fatherhood. Possible fatherhood. As much as he’s always secretly wanted his own little Jimmy Woo Jr., he didn’t know if it would be in the cards for him—pun obviously intended—and the last thing he wants to do is influence Darcy either way, especially since he’s only known her a couple days and doesn’t have a clue if a baby was really part of her life plan.

It can’t just be rose-coloured glasses making him see his wife warming to the idea though; when she continues down the hall ahead of Jimmy and Monica, he spots her careful cradling of the baby bump. He can barely stand not touching her. The instinct to shelter others has always been one of his strongest and now he feels it intensely. He longs to protect Darcy, to hold Darcy, to love— Well. Jimmy clears his throat at the very thought and Monica gives him a suspicious side-eyed glance.

“Dry throat,” he lies, tapping his neck in a probably highly unconvincing gesture.

“Uh huh.”

Yeah, she doesn’t sound convinced.

He’s rescued by a burst of sound from the bedroom and dashes ahead of Monica in case Darcy’s in trouble. When he bangs the bedroom door fully open, she’s fine. She’s laughing. He sighs and looks where she points. The queen-sized mattress they shared has changed back to a pair of narrower beds.

“Seriously,” Jimmy says flatly.

“Well, the big bed worked its magic,” Darcy concedes. She pats her rounded stomach. “Mission accomplished.”

“Aw jeeze.”

Ignoring his distress, she sits on the end of the closest bed.

“What I like is that they’re magically made. I didn’t end up having to change the sheets. This is really the next step in home technology.”

“Honey, don’t encourage the magical forces that control our home décor,” he pleads, beckoning until Darcy rises and takes his outstretched hand.

“Better than getting on their bad side. In the AI uprising, you wanna make sure you’re friends with the robots.”

This is an outrageous statement coming from a credible scientist, so Jimmy squints down at her for a minute before saying, “Thanks, house,” aloud, just in case appeasing the Hex now saves him from being closed into a room with no door later, if the walls rearrange to form the ’70s model of their current home.

“You did the smart thing,” Darcy assures him.

As they leave the room, she keeps hold of his hand. He shoots adoring glances at her.

“Hey, Monica,” she says, calling to their guest, who seems to have gone to investigate the walk-in closet. “Accommodations aren’t going to be a problem. I can give you some pajamas too because I think I own at least a dozen pairs, as I’m sure you’ve already discovered…”

But when they look in the closet it’s… not a closet.

“Or maybe the Hex destroyed all my pajamas and I should take back my overtures of friendship,” Darcy corrects.

“Welcome to your nursery,” Monica says. “I’m guessing from the look on Jimmy’s face that this is new.”

It’s spartan, but there’s no doubt in Jimmy’s mind that the room is now intended to be exactly what Monica said. There’s a crib in pieces on the carpet and a rocking chair in the corner. Though he can’t remember this room having even one window, there are now two. The blinds are drawn against the night and curtains patterned with stars and streaking comets hang from a rod mounted above the window. Automatically, he pulls Darcy into his side. He feels her rest her head on his shoulder.

“Man, the Hex is really giving us the hard sell,” she comments.

Just like that, he’s guiding her around by her upper arms and propelling her from the room. He glances over his shoulder to see Monica following with an amused smile. At his nod, she pulls the door shut.

“Ignore it,” Jimmy tells Darcy. “Don’t let that room influence you.”

“Oh, like that’s easy.” She rolls her eyes.

“I know it’s hard not to picture reading Jimmy Junior to sleep in his crib, or watching him learn to roll himself over on the carpet, or cuddling him in your arms in the rocking chair as the morning light—”

“Jimmy Junior?” Darcy asks, interrupting Jimmy’s rapidly solidifying daydream.

“You know what? I’m starving,” Monica announces, putting a hand on each of their shoulders to head off the awkward pause. “How about you two show me some hospitality? I’ve had a long day of being mind-controlled.”

“How ’bout some comfort food?” he asks. “I make a mean bowl of chili.”

“Sounds great.”

So, Jimmy cooks for them. His attention is unequally divided between the simmering pot, Monica leaning against the counter next to him as she recounts the scene at the meeting when Wanda went to take his call, and Darcy sifting pickily through the contents of their fridge. He glances over after putting the lid on the pot to let the chili finish cooking and sees his wife contemplatively holding an egg like it’s Yorick’s skull. Ok, well, he’s just going to leave her to her thoughts.

He sets bowls of chili for himself and Monica on the dining room table. Darcy, justifiably finnicky, takes longer to decide what she’ll be able to stomach, reflexively rubbing the baby bump as she plunders their kitchen. Finally, she comes to sit down. She’s brought a spoon. That’s it. Jimmy’s going to ask, but Darcy just scoots her chair close to his and takes intermittent mouthfuls of his serving while the conversation continues on. He sighs in unannoyed exasperation and alternates dips of his spoon with hers.

It’s just another weird routine they’ve settled into, and like everything else, it didn’t take long.

“You two didn’t know each other before this assignment, right?” Monica checks, motioning between Darcy and Jimmy with a slice of buttered toast.

“No, why?” Darcy asks, dropping a chunk of tomato from her spoon onto his. (Apparently, she doesn’t like tomatoes.)

Monica smiles and says, “No reason.”

She seems ready to accept them as they are, whatever they are. She goes back over the events of this afternoon for Darcy’s benefit—who was zoned out staring at an egg at the time—then the three of them turn to talk of tomorrow. What does Monica feel she needs to try before she’s willing to concede and leave the Hex with them? What can she try? How can Jimmy and Darcy assist her? They talk themselves in a circle of possibilities, limitations, and Monica’s unswerving negative answer to suggestions of her leaving the Hex without getting through to Wanda. Eventually, they decide that the best plan may be no plan, since they’re up against Westview’s ever-shifting magical properties.

“We’ll get up in the morning and see what the world looks like,” Monica says.

Jimmy’s going to reply when the Captain’s expression alters.

“Are you remembering?” Darcy asks her astutely. Monica stares at her. “I don’t want to pry, I’ve just seen that look on a lot of people’s faces lately. People who came back.”

“This isn’t dissimilar,” Monica admits. “When I get anywhere near Wanda or the other characters with speaking parts and start to lose control to… Geraldine—” Jimmy thinks the look on her face is both disgusted and deeply hurt. “—I do get this feeling like the world is going on without me. Only I’m there. I’m right there. I haven’t made up my mind yet if it’s worse than being gone entirely then coming back to find nothing’s the same.”

“Yeah,” Darcy says, soft, sympathetic.

“I don’t know what else the members of this community have been through, but I know I don’t want them to have to keep going through this too. I can’t imagine how tight Wanda’s grip is on the people who were here when she started this. Not sure I’m qualified to be the one to tell her how to let go of her grief and move on.”

Monica blinks quickly and gives a forced smile.

“That was good chili, Jimmy.”

He nods in thanks because he can’t find the right words to say.

They’re all carrying something and Jimmy thinks about that as the three of them clean up, then splinter off to get ready for bed, tired for different and shared reasons. (He changes into his pajamas in the nursery—they found their clothing in a new, regular-sized closet in the bedroom—while Monica and Darcy take the bathrooms.) The Captain’s carrying her recent bereavement and the unignorable sense of responsibility she feels to help Wanda and the Westviewers, possibly precisely because she isn’t ready to confront her own loss. Darcy’s doing some literal carrying with the baby bump her pajama top is buttoned over when she steps out of the en suite bathroom to let Jimmy in to brush his teeth. She’s an astrophysicist who, while studying a television diversion from reality, was brought rudely back to earth by circumstances as real as they come.

What Jimmy’s carrying is actually carrying him: his hope. It’s a good thing to have in his line of work, but a tough thing to keep when the world’s been through what it has. A baby is the least likely and most longed-for thing he would’ve confessed to wanting if someone asked him what was missing from his life.

When it’s acknowledged through awkward glances that, yes, Monica’s taking one of the beds and Jimmy and Darcy will share the other, he climbs under the covers his wife holds open for him. She rolls away from him to lie on her side and he gets comfortable on his back. The Hex has definitely eased up on what it wants for their romantic development because this is the first time he’s been in bed with Darcy and not felt himself caving to the need to have sex with her. Oh, the desire to touch her is as powerful as ever, but the kind of touching he craves is as tender as the flesh of that peach he brought her earlier in the day.

But he doesn’t want to crowd her. Figuratively or literally. Between finding Monica and calling Wanda, making love to Darcy all afternoon and being presented with her pregnant belly in the evening, it’s been a dog’s breakfast of a day. The mission abruptly became just the second most daunting thing he needs to pull off. Now, he’s driven by the impulse to be near Darcy. She doesn’t know it, but she’s drawing him in like gravity and he can only cross his fingers for a soft landing.

Jimmy almost jumps when she reaches for him in the dark, hand feeling behind her until it finds his. She drags his arm over her and he flips onto his side to make it easier. Though Darcy lets him go when his arm’s around her, he doesn’t know where to rest his hand. Tentatively, he places it over her belly and she wriggles back into him. Heart bursting, he holds her more securely to his body, smooths his hand over the bump, and soon falls asleep.

—

The floor wakes him up. He’s just fallen out of bed.

Disoriented, Jimmy sits up in a tangle of comforter and squints at his bed companion in the morning light. They must’ve repositioned while they slept, but that alone wasn’t what forced him to and over the edge—he can see the shape of Darcy’s belly beneath the sheet. It’s noticeably larger than it was yesterday.

He’s still trying to come to terms with that when she sleepily grasps the comforter and yanks it back over her body. Jimmy chuckles and rises into a stretch. Monica’s bed is empty and neatly made, so she must be up already. Before entering the Hex, his internal clock was strict too. Since, he bends to the needs of his subconscious, which seems happiest when it’s allowed to sleep in, particularly if Darcy’s warming the sheets next to him. This is only their third day in Westview and the second time waking up here, but it feels wonderfully routine. As satisfying as completing his consistently-timed morning run or pouring exactly the right amount of milk into his cereal.

Although he’d like to let Darcy sleep, it’s weird now because he’s staring. Anyway, they need to tighten up their operations even further today if they’re going to get out of here soon. Monica requires either success or closure with Wanda, so Jimmy’s determined to help with that. And if Darcy’s pregnancy takes another leap forward, well… that’s another time crunch to consider.

She’s lying on her side, facing him, belly in the space where he fell asleep. Gently, he brushes hair out of her face and strokes lightly up and down her arm.

Darcy gives him a murmured “Hi” with her eyes still shut.

“You gonna get up?”

“Inaminute,” she promises, words running together.

“Alright.”

Jimmy hovers for a second, then darts down to kiss her forehead. She pats his shoulder clumsily in response.

He might as well have had his own eyes shut, blind to everything but Darcy, because it takes opening his wardrobe to realize Monica was correct—everything’s changed again. WandaVision has embraced the ’70s. The shirts and suits he was pretty comfortable with have been traded out. Those items still exist, but now they’re aggressively patterned. There are flared pant legs. There is so much corduroy. Out of the row of shoes tucked into the bottom on his side of the closet, half have platform heels.

“Oh god,” Jimmy groans softly, sifting through for something that won’t feel too much like a cheesy costume.

He ends up with jeans—his only pair of pants without a pattern—and a striped shirt with wide lapels. The Hex’s makeover of his closet has him so beaten down that he doesn’t even pick out a jacket. He doesn’t have the heart for business casual. At the sight of a long-sleeved jumpsuit, Jimmy closes the closet door securely. They have to get out of here. This will be the thing that breaks him.

Slouching into the bathroom, he drops his selections on the counter and takes a shower. As he washes his hair, his fingers slow their scrubbing. Is his hair… longer? He finishes quickly and steps out to find the mirror fogged with steam. He wipes it clean with his forearm, examining his reflection. This place isn’t through with him yet: the Hex has given him a mustache.

Jimmy screams.

“Fine!” Darcy shouts back to his wordless noise of dismay. “I’m up! God, you could’ve just set an alarm and OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIZE OF THIS BABY BUMP?!”

He sighs on behalf of himself and his wife, slicks his too-long wet hair back with a comb, then starts in on shaving off the mustache. It immediately grows back.

“Come on,” he complains, cursing the Hex. “Why’d you give me a razor then?!”

Luckily, his annoyance fades the minute he sees Darcy. She’s swearing up a storm about needing to pee and her head looking too small for her body because the Hex has straightened her hair, but he takes all of her restless irritation in with a dazed smile on his face. Adjusting her glasses—now almost circular, with rounded off corners—she catches sight of his new look and erupts into laughter. Whatever the Hex does to mess with their appearance, at least they’re each other’s best medicine to combat it.

“I don’t want to be insensitive,” Monica starts when they walk into the kitchen hand in hand, “but are you significantly more pregnant than you were yesterday?”

Jimmy watches Darcy nod and slips away from her to throw some more bread in the toaster from the bag Monica’s left out on the counter for them.

“You’d think it’s just this big, shapeless dress,” Darcy says, “but no.” She pulls the fabric taut over her stomach to show the size of her belly more accurately. “I don’t want to say it, but the size of this thing makes me think the Hex is leaving me room to grow.”

“And if that dress is only for today…” Monica says.

“Jeepers,” Jimmy concludes.

They eat together in their reconfigured living room. It’s not until Monica’s kicked back in one of their low chairs, ankle propped on her opposite knee, that Jimmy notices her patterned pants.

“Those aren’t from Darcy’s closet are they?”

“No. I’m assuming they’re my clothes from yesterday with the matter recycled for a new decade. Believe me, this outfit wouldn’t have been my choice if I had anything else to pick from.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. I had a whole closet and still ended up with this,” Jimmy says, motioning to himself.

“My retro Secret Agent Man,” Darcy states admiringly, leaning her head over to bump against his shoulder. Ok, he thinks, smiling at her, I can be alright with this for her.

When Monica rises to turn on the television, Jimmy realizes this is the first time they’ve had one in the house. He remembers seeing a set in the Vision residence when he and Darcy were watching an episode on the S.W.O.R.D. base, but he didn’t notice the lack once they got here. Probably because that first night was taken up with flirting, and then yesterday was split between scouring the downtown for Monica and holing up in the bedroom with Darcy. Watching the screen buzz to life now is like witnessing something truly futuristic and spectacular.

“Well, whaddaya know,” he says as the opening sequence of WandaVision begins.

“You think the TVs in here play anything else?” Darcy wonders aloud.

“Maybe not,” Monica says distractedly as they all turn their attention to Wanda and Vision’s adorable antics—the ice cream, the tandem bicycle. “It’s a pretty big coincidence that this show started right when I turned it on.”

“I can see an even bigger coincidence.”

There’s no need to guess what Darcy means. Wanda’s baby bump is obvious in nearly every shot of the introduction, particularly emphasized when she and Vision dance together, his hand on her belly. It’s all maternity clothes and Vision reading pregnancy books and while it’s wholesome, it’s also chilling.

“We’re doing the same plot,” Jimmy says.

“It’s like we’re… their understudies,” Darcy agrees, shrinking back into the cushions.

“Maybe Wanda figured, if you two wanted to be in the show so bad, she’d put you in the show,” Monica theorizes. “Her show. Exactly the way she’s living it.”

“So she’s teaching us a lesson? On what? Abstinence?”

“Could be a misguided attempt to gain your sympathy.”

“Or it really is all about control,” Jimmy suggests, cynical after the reveal that the pregnancy that’s upended his entire life isn’t really theirs. It’s not original. They’re following a Newlywed Couple template.

“Hey,” Darcy says, grabbing his arm, “this wasn’t all Wanda. She might’ve set the scene and, yeah, maybe we were more the goatherd puppets than we were Fraulein Maria and Captain von Trapp, but we did this.” She pulls his hand to her belly. “Wanda doesn’t decide what we do next.”

“What I suggest you not do next is consult Dr. Misogyny over here,” Monica says, gesturing at the television.

The doctor is condescending to Wanda and Vision about the facts of life during a checkup (in their living room?). He lowers himself even further in Jimmy’s regard when he refers to expectant mothers as “little ladies” and implies that the changes in their own bodies are beyond their understanding.

“What a quack,” he decides. “We’re not going to see that guy.” He’s startled to recall his promise to Darcy the previous evening, about options, his intention not to make up her own mind for her. Lowering his voice, he tilts his head close to hers. “I mean, we’ll do whatever you want. Including…”

Jimmy trails off and casts his eyes down. He still means it, wants Darcy on board with this 100% or not at all, but the whole thing’s been a roller coaster and he’s not great at pretending not to feel anything. With his wife so much further into her pregnancy today, it’s obvious that this baby will be born and they’ll need to decide who’s raising it. He thinks the two of them together could rear a pretty incredible kid, but if she wants out, is he prepared to be a single parent? The other option besides her, him, or both of them raising the baby is adoption. They’d need to leave the Hex before taking those steps (it’s not like he’s going to encourage Darcy to hand the baby over to a mind-controlled Westviewer), and just thinking about it, with everything he already feels for the baby, makes him certain that he’d rather rearrange his entire life than pass on this chance at a family. However unorthodox their beginnings.

“Don’t worry,” Darcy says calmly, pulling him from his spiral. “That guy will never get the chance to compare my uterus to a vegetable garden.”

“Fruit,” Monica corrects without looking away from the television.

“Right. Fruit. He’ll have no say about any of it. And he definitely won’t get the opportunity to be patronizing as fuck while he tries to give us the sex talk.” She looks Jimmy right in the eye and says, “I won’t let the asshole doctor-man say a word about your banana.”

Chuckling, he looks back to the screen. The doctor has departed and Vision’s currently baffled over Wanda’s newly expanded stomach. Uh oh. He jerks his head around to check and, yep, Darcy’s baby bump appears to be keeping up with the sitcom star’s.

“You two stay here,” Monica instructs, on her feet when Jimmy glances over.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To Wanda’s. If things continue at this rate, she could give birth in this episode. That’s going to make her even more protective of her family and her space and I’ll have an even harder time getting near her.”

“Are you sure you want to interrupt?”

They both glance at the television for a moment to observe Wanda and Vision debating baby names in the nursery. There’s nothing distressing about the scene—in fact, the couple looks as much at ease as Jimmy’s seen them on the show—but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t change, and quickly, if Monica inserted herself. He just isn’t sure how that would go and he doesn’t like any plan where he can’t foresee all the possible outcomes.

“Guess I just have a feeling,” Monica says, looking unsettled.

“Well,” Darcy pipes up, “in the world of science, having a feeling is forming a theory, and in this place… I think having a feeling you should do something might be Wanda giving you your cue.”

“You’re not beyond her control,” Jimmy tells Monica, “just farther away from it. What if Darcy’s right?”

“If Wanda wants me there, I’m not going to resist,” she replies firmly. “She’s the key and we need her cooperation.”

“Good luck,” Darcy bids her.

With a nod to them both, Monica strides across the living room and opens the front door.

“Speaking of keys,” Jimmy recalls, but the door shuts before he can offer to let her borrow their car to get to Wanda’s.

Maybe the Captain has a different plan. Maybe she’s just bending to Wanda’s influence. Whichever it is, he can’t go after her. Monica was right—he has to stay here with Darcy today, especially because her belly seems larger when he looks again. He glances at her face with a question on his and she nods.

“And I felt a kick,” she says.

“Really? Could I…? Do you think I could…?”

Darcy rolls her eyes at his reticence and guides both his hands to the bump. When he feels something nudge his palm, Jimmy tears up.

“That’s our baby,” Darcy confirms.

“Feels like they have my softball windup,” he murmurs.

“Or my pre-coffee restlessness.”

“Our baby,” Jimmy repeats, staring into her eyes—finally blue for the first time in days, give or take a decade.

They’re having a marvelous family moment until the power goes out. Lights, TV, the hum of the fridge in the kitchen, everything. Seconds later, it all comes back.

“That was strange.”

“I wondered what Wanda’s magic was doing to the power grid,” Darcy says. “I’m still curious about the finer points of what happens when electricity meets power generated by an Infinity Stone. Really, I’d expect Wanda to have this kinda thing under control, but I guess if she’s— Ugh!”

Her pained noise has Jimmy cupping her face, pushing back her hair, trying to figure out what happened.

“She’s distracted,” she says.

“By what?”

“Labour.”

“What? No.”

Sure enough, when Darcy stands (with Jimmy leaping to his feet to support her) and stretches her back, her bump looks big enough to contain a baby that’s almost ready to be born. Ready to be born?! Jimmy thinks. In our house? With no doctor? Just because the one on TV rubbed him the wrong way doesn’t mean he’s prepared to write off every doctor, nurse, and midwife in Westview. He would very much like to place responsibility for this delivery in the hands of a medical professional, not his own!

Even as the TV’s flickering back to life, he helps Darcy away from it. That just shows how serious things are. He knows how quickly she became invested in the sitcom when they reviewed the ’50s episode at the base.

After some frantic thought, he’s thinking the bathtub is going to have to do. People do that right? With home births? Although he attempts to guide Darcy in that direction, she doesn’t even want to sit down on the edge, let alone climb in. No, she wants to pace, and as she paces, she rubs at her lower back, wincing.

“We could look at the nursery,” he proposes. “Might take your mind off it.”

Jimmy knows it could be a weak suggestion, an insult to imply that anything could take Darcy’s mind off whatever discomfort she’s currently feeling, but the Hex, with its radioactive walls, smiles down on them for once. With his arm around her to take some of her weight, they hobble into the baby’s room and it’s… perfect.

The walls are dark blue near the ceiling, almost black, fading to periwinkle halfway down the wall. The lower portion transitions from blue to pale yellow, then a blazing orange right before the baseboard.

“It’s a sunrise,” he comprehends.

“Yeah,” Darcy says softly.

Though he feels like he got slightly ripped off by not being allowed a chance to do any of the decorating, he does admire the Hex’s choices. At last, his wife’s been represented in this space, in this house, and it’s beautiful. There’s a shelf full of space-themed board books, a plastic jumble of play versions of scientific tools like telescopes. A dangling mobile of the planets. After easing his wife into the rocking chair, Jimmy holds up a pack of glow-in-the-dark stars.

“Should I put these up?”

She smiles.

“I would be all over that shit if I could, but I trust you to do a good job.”

“Oh no. Do you want me to do real constellations?”

“The baby’s not gonna know the difference. Make it look however you want.”

She rocks, assuring him something about the motion is helping her manage the intensifying pain of her contractions, and Jimmy finds a small stepping stool to help him reach the ceiling. The sway of the chair in the corner of his eye, the morning light through the curtains, and the sound of Darcy breathing are things he already knows he’ll never forget.

Before he’s stuck all the stars in the pack to the ceiling’s white paint, she calls him down from the stool.

“I need to walk again.”

Darcy says it with grit and Jimmy doesn’t argue, even when walking appears to put her in even more distress; she groans and pushes her free hand against the wall as they stroll out of the nursery and down the hallway.

“Let’s check in with Wanda,” Jimmy says helplessly.

This is who he is now: a husband in over his head, desperate to gain tips about delivering a baby from a TV sitcom. An overwhelmed real estate agent. A man with a mustache.

They return to the living room and the TV playing WandaVision in time for Monica’s entrance. Based on her free use of ’70s slang and the general discord between the Captain Rambeau Jimmy’s been getting to know and the woman on the screen, he knows they’re looking at Geraldine. Wanda’s back in control of her character alright, and Jimmy wants to know who it’s helping. The scene’s centered around some joke about Wanda attempting to hide her pregnancy, which is no good for him. He needs a step-by-step guide, not a magic-resistant stork!

“There better not be a fucking bird in here,” Darcy gripes, alternately crouching and standing as every position fails to make her comfortable. “If I see a fucking, goddamn, sonofabitch, motherfucking—”

“I know, sweetie, I know,” Jimmy assures her, rubbing circles between her shoulder blades with the flat of his hand.

“The betrayal,” she mutters when Wanda elects to lie down behind a couch.

It completely blocks their view. If this were a regular show, Jimmy would understand that. Sitcom viewers would definitely appreciate a little TV magic over graphic, up-close-and-personal birth footage, but here at the Woo residence, one FBI agent and his astrophysicist wife really just want the truth! If Monica had agency, he’s sure she’d shove the couch aside to help them out, but with Geraldine at the helm, he’s confronting the fact that he and Darcy are on their own.

“Let’s go, Darcy,” he says, steering her towards the bathroom. “We don’t need her.”

“Are you sure?”

He’s never heard Darcy sound so uncertain and knows he’ll have to bluff his way through this. When the Avengers aren’t around, the regular people must step up. Reminding himself of that has gotten Jimmy through more than one tough day on the job and he tells himself it’ll get them both through this.

“Of course.”

In the bathroom, Darcy kicks out of her underwear and uses Jimmy as a crutch to climb into the tub. Her face is scrunched up severely and her hands are braced against the walls of the bathtub, so he tries to watch and understand what she needs. When all the tension in her face and body burst out in a shout, he grabs her hand. Her fingers curl around his palm in a death grip.

“How about some nice warm water? Water, Darcy?”

She nods rapidly, eyes clenched shut, and he turns on the facet, then quickly reaches behind her to plug the drain. The stream wets his sleeve and, when he withdraws his arm, hits her hair around the level of her shoulders and begins to soak the back of her dress. Between contractions, Darcy sighs in what sounds like relief.

“That feels good,” she acknowledges.

“Good,” is all Jimmy can say back. He kisses her face and squeezes her hand in his. “Good.”

He’s back to scrambling for a solution soon enough when the warm flow of water down her back stops being enough to soothe her. He helps her out of her sodden dress, tossing it behind him to splat on the tile floor.

“What do you need?” he asks wildly, leaning over the tub.

“Earplugs,” Darcy tells him before emitting a scream shrill enough to probably be heard by their neighbour’s dog, Dipper, down the street.

Jimmy doesn’t think, he just does. Snatching a towel off the rail, bracing his wife’s foot against his shoulder as her leg spasms, reaching into the water to collect their baby when the Hex (he assumes) does them the favour of letting one long push be sufficient to expel him. Him. Jimmy and Darcy’s son.

He’s beaming through the happy tears, delicately wiping at the wailing baby with the towel and passing him into Darcy’s outstretched arms as she shakes with astonished laughter, hair wet, head resting back against the jut of the faucet.

“That wasn’t so hard,” he jokes.

Darcy sits up, sending a splash of water over the side of the bathtub to slap the floor, and he knows the Hex is interfering again to make her capable of anything besides exhaustion after what she just accomplished. She twists sideways in the tub until she’s closer to Jimmy. He wraps an arm around her wet shoulders and peers down at the face of their boy, already drowsy after exercising his tiny lungs. Jimmy can feel Darcy studying his face.

“Jimmy Woo Junior?” she asks.

And he knows the rest is going to be gravy.

—

Inside the Hex, the magic of television is real. They didn’t need to fake Darcy’s pregnancy with a cushion to make her belly, round and taut as a beach ball, disappear entirely only minutes after giving birth. They didn’t need a set of twins or triplets playing Jimmy Woo Jr. to swap in a quiet baby for one that starts to cry. There’s no trick lighting or fudged angles, just Darcy sitting on the couch (in dry, non-maternity clothes) catching their amazingly calm, less than an hour-old son up on the details of his origin story—Darcy’s wording.

It’s shaping up to be a nice, if highly unusual, family day in, until the tension starts to mount on-screen. Probably something Jimmy could’ve caught sooner if he weren’t spending 50 seconds out of every minute stroking the baby’s teeny-weeny hands while he hopes Jimmy Jr. retains zero memory of his dad’s mustache. When he hears Monica mention Wanda’s brother by name, he’s fully alert to the episode and knows he has to act. That close to Wanda, Monica’s control should be fully suppressed beneath the character of Geraldine. If she’s breaking through to ask Wanda person questions, questions that are almost definitely going to provoke an emotional response, Monica must be fighting like crazy to surface. Jimmy decides that’s his signal to get over there and help bring this thing to a satisfying conclusion so they can all leave the Hex.

“You’re not going to Wanda’s without me,” Darcy informs him, planted in front of the door when Jimmy returns from grabbing his keys.

“Darcy, you can’t. The baby. I’d stay with him and let you go, but I’ve never heard you mention particular skill in hand-to-hand combat and I can’t guarantee things won’t turn violent.”

She snorts.

“Liar. I could be the world’s biggest hand-to-hand badass and you’d still be trying to protect me right now.”

He stares at her and Darcy stubbornly lifts her chin as she holds his eyes.

“Ok,” Jimmy concedes, “yes, I would.”

“Please don’t leave us here,” she says, cheek pressed to the baby’s. No, no, no, he can already feel himself wanting to surrender, to have them with him. Darcy kisses their son’s face, then holds his hand to gesture while she pitches her voice higher, pretending to speak for Jimmy Jr. “I want to meet Auntie Monica.”

He gives her a look and reaches past her to open the door. Instead of trying to exit around his family, he waves Darcy through ahead of him. (She looks down at the baby in her arms and goes “Yaaaay! Isn’t Daddy a soft touch?”)

“You didn’t persuade me,” he says, leading them to the car and holding the door for Darcy while she climbs into the back seat with the baby. “This is strategic.”

“Is the strategy common sense? I feel like you should’ve gone with that from the beginning. Bringing a scientist to a magic fight is good thinking, for, like, balance and shit.”

Jimmy backs down the driveway as gently as he can. Their car’s been modernized (well, for the latest decade) and while it now has seatbelts, it wasn’t equipped with a car seat for their son. He’s going to have to drive with the utmost care.

“Hopefully, there won’t be a fight,” he reminds Darcy, “but if there is, you won’t be anywhere near it. You and Jimmy Junior are staying in the car. Alright?”

When he darts his gaze to the rear-view mirror, he sees his wife looking out her window, making a show of not listening to him. Jimmy sighs.

Without thinking, he navigates back to the street where they dropped Monica off yesterday. Wanda’s house is just down from Dottie’s; he remembers the number from watching WandaVision. Jimmy draws up to the curb and parks. He glances back at Darcy, but she’s still ignoring him.

“I’ll try to be right back,” he tells her anyway, eyes dropping longingly to the serene face of his sleeping son. He’s heard that about babies and car rides.

Jogging up the driveway, he does a doubletake of a ragged slash in the wall between Wanda’s property and her neighbour’s. There’s not exactly anything wrong with a damaged cinderblock or an amateur handyman job, but the crevice in the stone stands out in a world so aggressively styled and manicured.

Wishing for the reassurance of his gun at his hip in case things go south (it’s the first time he’s even thought about the gun since the night he and Darcy arrived), Jimmy enters the Vision residence without knocking.

Orienting himself to what he was just watching on TV in a house less than a mile from here, he walks across the entryway, attracting the attention of both Wanda and Monica. They’re standing across from each other in the living room. Raising his hands to show he intends no harm, Jimmy sweeps his eyes over the scene in assessment, like he has a hundred times before. Monica’s expression is alarmed under superficial friendliness—the look of someone trying to placate an attacker. With her aggressive, forward-leaning posture and the way she’s positioned herself between Monica and the cribs (he’s surprised to see more than one, but he did miss some of the episode while he was delivering his son in their bathtub), Wanda fits that role.

“Wanda,” he says, taking a step towards the seating area, “you don’t want to hurt her.”

“Are you working with her?” Wanda demands. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.”

“James Woo. I’m not here to hurt you. Neither is Geraldine.”

“You don’t want to hurt me? Then why do you come asking questions? Saying things—” He can see her chin wobble from here as she teeters on the edge of tears. “—about Pietro. You didn’t know my brother.”

Her statement is directed at Monica, but Jimmy tries to bring her focus back to him. Of himself and the Captain, he’s the one with an exit at his back, whereas Monica’s hemmed in by a large bookcase.

“I didn’t know your brother,” Jimmy agrees. “I do know about him, but we don’t need to talk about that. I don’t want to upset you, Wanda, I just want you to let me leave with Geraldine.”

“Oh, I’ll let you leave,” Wanda says, cocking her head as she raises her hands. This motion conveys the opposite meaning to Jimmy’s—she does intend them harm.

He’s contemplating what’ll happen if he tries to rush her when Darcy charges through the front door he left open.

“Don’t!” Jimmy gasps, making a grab for her, but his body is tense with caution and Darcy has the momentum to dodge him, stepping down the level into the living room.

“Look,” Darcy demands of Wanda, whose expression is torn as she chooses between facing Monica and this new intruder.

Jimmy’s mentally composing and rejecting ideas of how to proceed when their unwelcoming host lowers her hands. She’s looking where Darcy directed her to, at the baby in Darcy’s arms.

“He was born less than an hour ago, and I only found out I was pregnant yesterday, but that doesn’t matter. I know it’s the same for you, the circumstances and the… yeah, whatever. You know about the Big Bang, right?” she continues, jumping to the next thought.

“Yes,” Wanda says carefully.

Jimmy’s terrified to move closer and set Wanda on the offensive again. He glances at Monica, who seems to be thinking the same thing, frozen in place.

“From nothing to so much, in an instant,” Darcy’s saying in her condensed history of the universe. “Science is supposed to be full of all these rules. Like, every scientist dude important enough to remember had some law or formula or method that we map everything on top of when we’re pretending we understand all this. Being in science isn’t a goal I’ve had for a long time—I mean, I probably wouldn’t be in it now if the world hadn’t more or less ended—and if all I ever heard about the workings of the universe was rules, I would’ve stayed away. Who likes rules, right? Who wants to be told that things are the way they are because something outside of your control says so? My point is…”

She takes a deep breath, then another one, shifting until she’s blocking Wanda’s expression from Jimmy’s view.

“Sorry, I just gave birth, you know how it is,” Darcy says when she goes on. Jimmy’s stricken with exasperation, adoration, fear, and pride. “My point is that I love science because, while science is laws and rules and equations, science is also standing outside at night and staring up at the dark. There are explanations for every light that’s up there and why, even when you’re away from big cities and the sky seems so black and close, you don’t fall up into it, although it kinda feels like you could. Science can tell me why, and it still feels like magic when I look at the stars. And we’ve all been traveling out here in space together, getting made and unmade and made again because the right ingredients needed to create something as precious as a planet, or a baby, or the clay that’ll make the bricks that’ll make the house never disappear. Suns explode, asteroids collide and get chipped away… things can separate down to their smallest part, life can…”

“End?” Wanda asks.

Jimmy’s stunned to hear the word come out choked. Cautiously, he leans to get a glimpse of Wanda’s face. It’s covered in tears. Darcy’s nodding.

“But everything’s valuable. All matter gets reused.” Jimmy wants to grab her and pull her to safety when she takes a step closer to Wanda. “I get it if you’re sad and you’re not ready to talk about it. I’m not gonna say it’s ok, because I’ve heard Monica’s testimonial on exactly how much it sucks to have you in her head, but I do think you should let us leave now so you have a few friends out there when you inevitably need people on your side.”

“You can go,” Wanda agrees, swiping at her nose. “I won’t hurt your baby.”

“You’re not going to hurt my friend either,” Darcy says, beckoning for Monica to cross the room behind her. “Or my husband.”

“No,” Wanda says.

Monica reaches Jimmy and they wait for Darcy in the entryway.

“I bet all that control feel really good,” Darcy theorizes. “Taking it into your own hands. But I think you know that focusing on the beautiful, magical stuff doesn’t mean the rules no longer exist. Maybe you can find a way to accept them both.”

“It’s time for you to leave,” Wanda says, firmer now.

“Not looking for a life coach, got it.”

She joins Jimmy and Monica, bouncing the baby lightly in her arms. Wanda ushers them out of the house ahead of her. Jimmy glances back to see her close the door after herself with a twist and red glow of her hands.

“What about waiting in the car?” he mutters to Darcy as they stride down the lawn.

His self-proclaimed wife stares at him.

“I’m not the kind of person who waits in the car. Would the kind of person who waits in the car give a speech like that?”

Jimmy’s at an honest-to-goodness loss for words.

She gets into the car willingly enough now, Jimmy in the passenger’s seat while Monica slides behind the wheel.

“Wanda’s told me how to stand, how to move, how to walk since I got in here,” Monica says, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m driving myself out.”

“It’ll part for you when you get there,” Wanda calls to them from the lawn. “The barrier. I suggest you do not attempt to enter again.”

“I think we’ve all had our fill,” Jimmy informs her cheerfully through his rolled-down window.

She doesn’t respond to this, so Monica executes a three-point turn and takes them back up the street the way they came. From there, they turn out of the subdivision, but Jimmy snags a last look at Wanda through the back window. There’s a light breeze blowing her dress and hair and she looks like she could be anyone. A suburban mom of twins? Why not. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again in person, but he has plans to catch her show.

“Wanda’s changed the roads,” Monica says as she drives. For his son’s sake, Jimmy’s grateful that she isn’t speeding, though he wouldn’t blame her for trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. “None of them lead out of town.”

“Literal tourist trap. Brilliant,” Darcy declares from the back seat. Jimmy reaches an arm back blindly and feels her close her hand around his.

“But,” Monica adds, “I remember Ellis Avenue being the closest cross street to the edge of town. We find that, then drive over the grass. Things may get a little bumpy.”

“We’ll survive.”

Jimmy twists around to look at Darcy. He nods. They will. They’ll survive.

They cross Ellis and take the car off-road. The barrier remains invisible, but…

“I can feel it,” Darcy says.

“Like we did the day we came in,” Jimmy recalls.

“It still wants us out,” Monica interprets. He sees her staring uneasily ahead. “Was I naïve to think I could change anything by coming in here?”

“No, Captain. It was brave.”

“Didn’t work though. We aren’t leaving with Wanda.”

“It could work,” Darcy says. “We left her with a few things to think about. We’ll watch WandaVision and see.”

“That’ll be strange after being a part of it.”

“You think so?” Jimmy wonders. He takes a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine, playing with Darcy’s fingers laced through his. “I think it’s returning to regular life that’s going to feel strange. Out there, it’s easy to see all this as a TV show, but everything in here is real.”

“We’ll make Hayward understand that.”

“I’m bringing back some compelling evidence,” Darcy says, followed by kissy sounds directed at Jimmy Jr.

The air just a couple of car lengths ahead of them abruptly glows red as Wanda reveals the wall of the Hex. Jimmy and Monica exchange a look, but she doesn’t slow down. They pass through without resistance. All of a sudden, it’s night. Monica lets out a relieved sigh.

The S.W.O.R.D. base is looming, exterior lights ablaze, but Jimmy looks backwards, checking that Darcy and the baby are alright.

“Same as you left us,” she says, pulling back the blanket to show him the face of his son.

He gives her a slightly melancholic smile.

“Not quite, Dr. Lewis.”

“I’ll have a lot of work to do,” Darcy notes thoughtfully, “but time for you and me to go on dates will be on my list of demands.”

“You have a list of demands?” Monica asks, laughter in her voice.

“After being forced into the Hex, where I could’ve lost my life? Fuck yes, I have a list.”

“What else are you asking for?”

“The coffee I requested on day one and a desk in a better spot so there’s room next to it for the crib that will also be on my list.”

Monica laughs aloud now.

“Is this a benefits negotiation or a baby shower registry?”

“Let’s get back to the part where we’re going on dates,” Jimmy says. “How’s that going to work?”

“Jimmy, darlin’,” Darcy begins, “will you go out with me?”

He leans to look around his seat at her.

“Darcy, we were married. We have a baby. Don’t you think we can—”

“Answer the question, Agent Woo.”

“Of course I’ll go out with you,” he says.

“And that’s how it works. Easy-peasy.”

She gives his hand a squeeze before releasing it to hold Jimmy Jr. more securely as Monica pulls up to a building and brakes. Already, S.W.O.R.D. agents are rushing out to meet them, but Jimmy drops back against his seat and smiles to himself.

“‘Easy-peasy.’”

#my writing #Hex Life #wandavision #wandavision spoilers #Darcy Lewis #Jimmy Woo #Darcy Lewis x Jimmy Woo #Darcy x Jimmy

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avaritia-apotheosis · 3 years

Text

Phantom Children Ch. 6

Hi guys! I'm back <3 (also, I'm currently looking for alpha/beta readers for Phantom Children, so if you're interested, feel free to shoot me a message!)

In Which: Danny Attempts to get Answers, Bruce Learns, and Dick Finally Learns What's Inside the Door that Doesn't Exist

AO3 | Prologue | 5 | [ 6 ] | 7

DANNY IS KNOCKED DOWN three, four, eight times on the ice. Each time made his back ache, his bones bruised and tired, and his mind burning with embarrassment and a drive to lash out. But each time he gets back up. Each time he lasts a little bit longer against Talia.

The ice still shifts, cracks and rumbles with every wrong move. Danny learned to roll with it. Move on light feet but attack with a firm stance, gauge which parts of the ice are stable and which should be avoided. Multi-tasking has never been Danny’s strong suit, but he’s good at learning and learning quickly.

Talia corrected his form as much as she beat him down. Exploited every one of his openings until he learned to defend them and praised him whenever he managed to pull one over her. The League’s martial arts was the holy amalgamation between almost every single fighting style there is, mashed and refined to perfection to become almost unpredictable to the untrained. A vast improvement to Danny’s previous ‘fuck around and see what works’ brawling and had the added benefit of meshing together with his spontaneity.

“You are doing well, Daniel,” Talia said as she sheathed her sword, hand resting just above her hip. “You have improved greatly in such a short time, as I have expected.”

It takes every ounce of Danny’s superhuman energy to not collapse to his knees, his every breath a ragged shudder as he tries to get his breathing under control. “Still can’t beat you, though.”

“Very few can boast that feat.”

“I’m not exactly sure if that’s supposed to make me feel any better or not. Do I get my prize at least?”

Tahlia tossed her braid over one shoulder with a laugh. “Come, then, let us rest in the caves. The sun is to set soon and we must make camp before we freeze to death.”

“Hypothermia is so last season. I’m way too cool for that.”

He didn’t know whether to be disappointed that Tahlia didn’t react to his pun. It was pretty clever, in his opinion.

('Puns are the lowest form of comedy,' said mind-Jazz.

Says the one who named the Box Ghost the ‘Crate Creep.’

'That’s alliteration, not a pun.')

It was kind of pathetic that even his mind-version of Jazz was smarter than him.

“What would you like to know first?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sarcasm dripped from Danny’s voice. He sheathed his sword and let it hang loose at his side. “Maybe how old this mysterious brother of mine is?” Ancients, his life was weird enough already, it wasn’t supposed to sound like the B-plot to a bad soap opera.

“Damian is younger than you by a little over four years. He will turn eleven this year.”

“Huh. Never been an older brother before.”

“Perhaps you might have been, if circumstances had been different.”

Cryptic. Great. Danny stepped over a particularly large crack in the ice and scampered over to solid ground. “You gotta give me more than that. What’s he like?”

“Prideful,” she said. “But skilled enough to warrant it. He was raised like a prince—as how you should have been.”

“And he lives with…our dad?”

“Yes. In America.” The cave was deep enough to shield them from the worst of the eventual mountain winds. Tahlia had already started building a campfire with equipment from her knapsack, embers eating away and growing into a steady flame. He sat down, legs crossed, beside the fire, hands tucked beneath his armpits.

He bit his lip, a question forming in his mind. “Do…do we have the same dad?”

Tahlia looked up at him. “Of course. Only your father has had the privilege of being called my beloved, and only he is worthy enough to have sired my children.”

Once night fell, it fell quickly. Blanketing as far as Danny could see from the mouth of the cave in a thick darkness. Snow fell from the skies in thick tufts and covered their footsteps.

“Does he—do they know about me?”

“No, they do not.”

“And you probably aren’t going to tell them anything about me, if you could help it.”

“That is very perceptive of you, habeebi.”

“You won’t tell me anything more about them, will you?”

“In due time, I will.”

Danny blew part of his fringe away from his face. Figures.

Despite the ever-present niggling at the back of his mind, Bruce had yet to see what was in the flash drive. The weeks since his strange meeting with Vlad Masters suddenly exploded with criminal activity with the recent breakout in Arkham and the brewings of another gang war in the shadows of Gotham’s paved streets. It was all hands-on deck. And Bruce, whether as Batman or Wayne, had always prioritized Gotham and its citizens over anything else.

The flash drive remained on his person despite the crisis, tucked away in one of the sturdier compartments of his utility belt to prevent the data inside from becoming damaged. Sometimes he found his hands gravitating towards it, fingers brushing against the button that would release the mystery from its confines before he realized what he was doing and steeled himself. Hands fisted to his side and attention forcibly directed elsewhere.

Eventually, the rogues were placed back into Arkham, and Gotham let out a shuddered breath of relief as it remained standing for another day.

Most of the family were out on a light patrol, cleaning up the remains of the breakout and helping where they can. Jason and Dick bickering over the comms whilst Barbara laughed in her clocktower.

(“It’s not that bad.”

"‘It’s not that bad’—shut the fuck up.” Jason spat. Bruce could hear him revving his bike. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? Certified Grade A idiot. B’s gonna kill you.”

He could hear Dick roll his eyes. “Sure, pile it all on, Jaybird. Blame the victim.”

"It was your fault.”

“It’s not my fault I didn’t see it there!”

"You tripped and got a concussion. From a stick. A. Stick.”

“Can we please just leave that out of the report?” Dick groaned. Barbara laughed. “Oh god.”

“Richard motherfucking John Grayson. I swear if you vomit on me then—”

“I’m not gonna vomit on you! You just turned the corner a little too fast. It’s nice to see you care though.”

"Fuck no, I just don’t wanna smell like regurgitated cereal.”)

Damian was benched from a patrol. Their last conflict with Poison Ivy ended with Damian sticking a bad landing and twisting his ankle. He dealt with it with as much grace as can be expected. Meaning that he spent the last few days sulking as he caught up on his missed schoolwork and shooting daggers at everyone else who came back from patrol.

Bruce flicked the flash drive open and plugged it into the computer. The flash drive contained only a single folder dated six months ago.

He clicked it, and a news headline popped up.

LOCAL TEEN DIES AFTER DRIVING OFF CLIFF

Beneath it, a picture. Blue eyes. Black hair. A familiar face.

Blood pounded in Bruce’s ears. He could hear nothing except a sharp gasp from Damian behind him.

When Dick and Jason arrived at the batcave, it was to an eerie silence. Not that it was usually loud, only that Bruce spent most of his free time down in the cave and Dick had come to expect hearing some signs of him around. Typing on keys, the clicking of a mouse, the heavy thuds of a fist meeting a punching bag or a training dummy, etcetera, etcetera. Or maybe even Alfred cleaning up around the cave, feeding the bats, or restocking their med bay.

(Dick, it turned out, didn’t have a concussion. Probably. Not a severe one anyway. What mattered most was that he managed to convince Jason to have dinner at the Manor. Alfred was making a tarte tatin for dessert tonight and those were absolutely to die for. )

One of Tim’s cases took him to the other side of Gotham. The only person in the cave was Damian, who was staring agape at the batcomputer.

“Why the hell is the demon spawn looking at old pictures of Bruce? We get it. They look alike.

“Uh, Dami? What’s up?”

Damian snapped his mouth shut. “I believe it might be best if you asked father that, Grayson.” Despite his clipped tone, there seemed to be little anger in his voice. His proud shoulders were hunched over on the chair, eyes trained on his lap.

He looked so small.

Damian clucked his tongue. “He’s upstairs, if you need him. So is Pennyworth.”

Dick shot a glance at Jason who raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re up golden boy. Whatever the fuck the old man’s problem is this time, I’m not dealing with it.”

Dick sighed. “Fine.”

There was a door in Wayne Manor that didn’t exist.

When Dick was a child and recently adopted by Bruce Wayne, one of the first things he did was explore the manor. It’s the prerogative of every child that somehow found themselves in a large mansion—even more so given the castle-like exteriors of Wayne Manor. All castles have secret passages, and if the Batcave lay in the subterranean depths below, then surely the manor proper must have its own secrets.

Dick would tumble and cartwheel along the hallways, opening any and every single door he came across. A lot of them were just empty bedrooms or unused parlors and sitting rooms; the furniture covered by white sheets to keep the dust away. Alfred was probably magic, but even he can’t keep the entirety of the manor dust free.

The majority of the unused rooms were unlocked.

Except for one.

It was a room in the west wing, on the second floor. A couple doors down from where Bruce’s and Dick’s were. Why it was locked, Dick never found out. But he was curious since it was the only room on that floor that remained shut.

When he asked Alfred about it, the old butler only said that it was an unused storage room they preferred to keep locked just in case. When he asked Bruce about it, he’d be quick to change the subject. Usually something Batman related. Which, well, always worked, because it was Batman related. And Dick, young and spry and itching to fly under Batman’s wings, would quickly forget about that curious little mystery in favor of punching bad guys in the face and flipping over rooftops.

At some point that locked door quietly disappeared, leaving a blank expanse of wallpaper and a decorative vase where it once stood. It was never brought up again. And Dick slowly forgot that it was ever there in the first place.

Until now.

The wooden table and vase were shoved off to the side. Wallpaper sliced away to reveal the lines of a doorway. The door, covered in its faint damask wallpaper, was kicked open, the wood around the bolt splintered and cracked. He could hear voices—Alfred’s and Bruce’s—speaking softly on the other side.

He pressed his back against the wall and kept his breathing quiet.

“Three times, Alfred.” Bruce’s voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. “Three times she’s done this to me.”

“Master Bruce…”

“I don’t—I don’t understand why—” Bruce choked, swallowing a shuddered breath. “Damian, I can understand. Jason, I can too. But…This? I—” Bruce suddenly quieted. Dick knew the jig was up.

He unlatched himself from the wall and slowly slid through the once-hidden-door, a hand kept on the frame. “Um. Hi, Bruce? Alfred?” The words fell flat, stilted. Dick winced as he said them. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but, uh…” He trailed off the second he registered what was in the room.

It was large, as so many rooms in the manor were. The room was covered in peeling green wallpaper with faded pictures of baby deer and owls and other woodland creatures prancing about. There was a dresser on one wall. A shelf filled with little picture books and stuffed animals on the other. A brown teddy bear had fallen on its face on one of the shelves.

In the middle—where Bruce was hunched over—was a crib. The wood streaked and aged with time, the beddings within pristine and untouched, if not dusty. Hanging overhead was a mobile with little animals dangling on a string.

“Worry not Master Dick. It is good that you are here since it will inevitably involve the rest of the family at some point.”

Dick nodded absentmindedly, trying to lock eyes with his guardian. “B? What’s—what’s going on?” Dick took one step deeper into the room. “The pictures in the cave. I thought they were you since they were too old to be Damian—” Bruce’s hands on the crib’s railing flinched.

Dick’s breath hitched.

“They’re…not your photos, are they.”

Bruce took a deep breath in, the lines of his shoulders tense. “No. They’re not.”

In their line of work, the answer could have been anything. Clones, magical doppelgangers, alternate universe counterparts, hell, even just someone’s genetic code being coincidentally similar to another person. But…this room, this nursery, pointed towards only one conclusion.

“Who is he, Bruce?”

Bruce angled his head towards Dick, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes. “He’s my son, Dick.

“He’s my son.”

#danny phantom #batman #danny phantom x batman crossover #dp fic #phantom children.txt

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