#so like you know how there have been times to clap for doctors and nurses and stuff and that's amazing?

[fingertipsmp3]

No one really talks about how the first period you have after fully coming off birth control will absolutely fuck you up

[gghostwriter]

Hi. I am the anon that asked for the Spencer x Reader, where he hallucinate that reader as his wife, and I love it so much. Thank you 😊 ❤️

Also, if it is not too much to ask... what if it was on the contrary. Fem!Reader gets hurt and belives Spencer is her husband, but they are friends. So cute, you know? (Happy ending again, pretty, please 🙏🏻 🥺)

Spencer Reid x BAU!Fem!Reader Trope: Friends to Lovers; Fluff! Just fluff Warning: Medical inaccuracies A/N: Anon, i’m glad you loved it enough to request another!! It’s a bit shorter than your first request, really tried to not have the same plot line as the other but I hope you enjoy! Main masterlist

Phantasmagoria. // Spencer Reid

The team was split into two after the takedown of the unsub—Hotch, Rossi, and JJ were back at the station, wrapping up the case while Spencer, Emily, and Derek were stationed outside of the hospital room, waiting for permission to be let in. You and Spencer were partnered up, as always, going around town and asking the locals for any additional information regarding the last sighting of the unsub at a gas station. Completely unaware that the unsub, riding a motorcycle, was steps away from the duo. He opened fire, causing the agents to take cover but not before you were hit by near shoulder. As you were rushed to the hospital, the remaining members quickly convened, located, and captured the serial killer. 

The nurse in charge stepped out of the room to face a set of three federal agents, eagerly asking for an update. 

“Surgery went fine. The doctor was able to remove the bullet fragment, intact,” she droned on. “We need one of you agents to collect and sign a form for the release of the bullet as evidence—”

“I’ll do it,” Emily volunteered. 

“Great. The patient is awake but she’s still a little loopy from the local anesthesia. We suggest not crowding her so we will only allow one visitor at a time—” she clapped her hands together. “Now which one of you two fine gentlemen—” she gestured at Spencer and Derek. “—is Dr. Spencer Reid, her husband?” 

Emily and Derek both swiveled to Spencer, eyes dancing with glee as they tucked that information for teasing ammo in the future. 

“I—I am,” he stuttered out. Unsure if he should correct the nurse but if it gave him special privileges to see you first, he’d let it pass. After all, he was there when you got shot. He wants to see you alive and well. 

The nurse smiled at him and nodded her head. “Your wife’s been looking for you.”

Face going crimson red, he thanked her and entered the room, avoiding all eye contact from the remaining two agents outside. 

Your relaxed smile was the first thing he registered—that and how tiny you looked tucked in your bed.

“Spence! Love—where were you?” 

He approached your bedside, noting your glassy eyes ad slurred speech, effects of the anesthesia. 

“I-Y/N, you’re body is still processing out the anesthesia. You’re exhibiting disinhibition—a temporary loss of inhibitions caused by outside stimuli and I-I’m not your husband.” Not that he didn’t want to, he added to himself.

You giggled. “You silly nerdy agent, of course you are. We got married recently and my beautiful—” you gasped as you inspected your hands. “—my ring. Where’s my ring?” 

The monitor picked up your distress. Your eyes going watery and a pout was beginning to form, breaking Spencer’s heart. you looked at him like he had all the answers in the universe and that caused him to fumble out an answer, anything to stop those pretty eyes from crying.

“I’ll ask the nurse okay, no need to worry,” he stroked soothing circles at the back of your hand.

You smiled at him adoringly. “I—can’t believe you said yes.”

He furrowed his brows. “Say yes to what?”

“To our first date.”

He smiled, wanting to see how your imagination got you and him together. “And—and what was our first date?”

“Uh—phanta—during Halloween,” the medicine was starting to pull you under. “I got us tickets and Penelope—” your voice trailing off as you fell back to sleep.

Halloween was this weekend, his neurons actively fired up at that information. Could it be—is it? He grabbed his phone out of the pocket and dialed BAU’s very own tech analyst.

“Go, from Penelope Garcia,” she greeted out.

Spencer cleared his throat. “Uh-hey Garcia. I-I need to ask you something.”

“Ah yes boy genius, tell me your wish and I shall grant it—wait, how’s my baby girl over there?”

“A-actually that’s why I’m calling,” his voice going up an octave. He wanted to ask as normal as possible but the words normal and Dr. Spencer Reid are never linked. “Did she by any chance—have Phantasmagoria tickets this weekend?”

Silence. That was a first from Penelope Garcia.

“Why’d you ask?” she tried to nonchalantly ask.

Spencer bit his lip, unsure on how to explain this whole situation. “I-well-I actually got two tickets and was planning on—” he paused. “—asking her out?”

He quickly moved the phone away from his ear to save his hearing from the high pitched squeals coming from the analyst. 

“Ohemgee, yes!! Finally, my couple!! Please ask her out, please!!”

He awkwardly laughed. “She’ll say yes?”

“I can’t spill any details ‘cause of girl code but yes!! Yes she will!” Penelope gushed out.

“Thanks, Garcia. I’ll—i’ll ask her out,” he hurriedly ended the call as a knock on the door echoed inside the room. It was Morgan and Emily.

With an eyebrow raised, Morgan appraised the giddy smile on Spencer’s face. “What’s got you so happy, pretty boy or should I say Mr. husband?”

Emily laughed. “Yeah, Reid. How is Mrs. Reid?”

He dropped his face to his hands but not before squeaking out a ‘shut up’ to both agents. If the jokes was a by-product of getting to ask you for a date, he’d take it. He just hoped he’d get to ask you first before the duo corners you with their teasing.

My inbox is currently open for any more fluff requests! Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

[aurumacadicus]

Listen, Steve is grateful he gets to work at a Stark-funded hospital. He is. Not only is the prestige of working there even for a year going to carry him through his entire career, but if he stays for five years, the Maria Stark Foundation will pay off all of his student loans. Their clientele are people typically in poverty and he loves that he can help the less fortunate. It's all he ever wanted to do after watching his single mother scrimp and save as a nurse just to make sure they had a roof over their heads. He would never do anything to jeopardize his position or the reputation of the hospital.

"That custodian is going to be the reason you're fired," Natasha declares, and both Clint and Bucky spin from their nursing charts just in time to watch Steve almost fall over as he attempts to get one more glimpse of Tony's ass as he pushes his cart, whistling, toward the elevator. "Is this your way of getting out of the gala? Getting shit-canned the day before?"

"Are you going to tattle on me to Dr. Potts?" Steve asks her bluntly.

Natasha says nothing for several minutes, mulling the idea over in her head. Finally, though, she mutters, "I guess you're better than Hammer. He actually put his hands on Tony."

Steve doesn't know how to respond, because he'd only gotten his position after Dr. Hammer had groped Tony one too many times (apparently Tony had never reported it? It had actually been one of the nurses) and got fired for it. Again, he's grateful for the position, but he knows other doctors would shank him for the opportunity. He's just looking, but maybe he shouldn't look? Tony isn't a piece of meat. He's a respected member of the hospital staff.

Tony stops and bends over to pick up a piece of garbage on the floor, and even Natasha whimpers as his pants lovingly cup each of his cheeks.

Luckily, they're saved by one of the PR interns coming out of a hospital room and chirping, "Are you going to the gala tomorrow, Mr. Tony?"

"Peter how many times do I have to tell you," Tony begins, sighing, then shakes his head. "Yes, my mother is finally forcing me to show up for the gala."

Steve does a minute fist pump, and Bucky immediately drags him into a noogie that makes him squawk about his hair in probably the most unattractive manner possible.

--

"Gala" is probably too fancy a term for it. Unlike the Foundation galas, where the Stark family squeezes donations from the other wealthy elite for all they muster, this is more of a get-together between other hospitals to compare notes. Women are in cocktail dresses and the men are a healthy mix of suits and slacks-and-polos. The only people really decked out in formal wear are those with the foundation.

Steve is trying to be very casual as he keeps an eye out for Tony. He hasn't seen him yet, but he's hoping to ask Tony for at least one dance. Dr. Potts had said Tony liked to dance when he'd been talking with her and Natasha at the start of the gala. (She'd made really deliberate eye contact with him when she'd said so, too, so Steve figures she at least approves of him??? Even if she also kind of scares him.)

"Oh my God," Bruce whispers, wine dripping down his chin. He's gone ashen.

Steve and Thor turn to see what he's looking at, and Steve immediately understands. He feels as if he's just been simultaneously punched in the gut and head.

Because Mrs. Stark has finally arrived at her gala, dressed to the nines and yet somehow making everyone feel at ease in their own clothes. She's being escorted by a handsome man in a tuxedo.

The man looks a lot like Tony from the custodial department. But Mrs. Stark keeps loudly and proudly announcing that he's her son.

"I'm so fired," Steve whispers, voice cracking, as Bucky finally steps up beside him and claps him on the shoulder.

[mrsbuckybarnes1917]

12: MENDING FENCES

Previous chapter < MASTERLIST > Next chapter

Bucky is finally trying to be more communicative about his feelings but you keep giving him things to worry about.

Word count 3.4k

Warnings: better communication between two idiots in love, insecurities, anxiety, panic attack, medical issues: surgery, allergies, anaphylaxis, tracheostomies, Tony Stark and is generosity is basically legend, Big Brother Steve is worried

"She’s stable." Steve told Bucky, the moment he sat down. 

Bucky heaved a sigh of relief. "Is she awake? Can we see her?"

"They’re taking her to surgery," Nat interjected, having appeared suddenly.

"How long will that take?" Bucky demanded. Surgery was never something to celebrate.

Nat shrugged, sitting down beside Bucky, the only empty seat in the waiting room that was filled by several other Avengers and Melinda May. Everyone was concerned about your wellbeing.

Steve glanced at Nat before turning back to Bucky. "They didn't give a specific time frame, but they said she's stable for now. That's a good sign, right?"

Bucky nodded, trying to hold onto that small glimmer of hope. He couldn't bear the thought of losing you, not after everything you had been through together. The memories of your laughter, your smile, and the way you always had his back flooded his mind, making his heart ache with worry.

Nat placed a comforting hand on Bucky's shoulder. "She's a fighter, Buck. She'll pull through this, I know it."

Bucky managed a weak smile, grateful for the support of his friends. He knew they were all rooting for you, praying for your recovery. The waiting was agonizing, each passing minute feeling like an eternity.

As the hours ticked by, the tension in the waiting room grew thicker. Bucky couldn't sit still, his leg bouncing up and down with nervous energy.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, a doctor emerged from the operating room. Bucky's heart leaped into his throat as he stood up, his eyes locked on the doctor's face.

"She made it through surgery," the doctor announced, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "She's still unconscious, but the procedure was successful. She's a strong one, that's for sure."

Relief washed over Bucky like a tidal wave, his legs suddenly feeling weak with gratitude. He sank back into his seat, tears of relief pricking at his eyes. You were going to be okay.

Steve clapped Bucky on the back, a proud smile on his face. "See, I told you she's a fighter."

"Rogers!" Nat punched Steve's shoulder as he chuckled.

Bucky nodded, his heart overflowing with love and gratitude. He couldn't wait to see you, to hold you in his arms and never let go. You were his rock, his anchor, and he would do anything to keep you safe.

"She's stable," he whispered to himself, a mantra of hope and faith. And with that, Bucky knew that together, you would overcome anything that came your way.

"Can we see her?" Nat asked.

The surgeon looked around the room at the crowd of people in the room before answering hesitantly. "Maybe just one person." He held up his forefinger.

Bucky stood up and was about to stride into the recovery room, when May grabbed his metal arm. The glare she gave him terrified even him, stopping him in his tracks while she walked into the room to see you. But he knew that she had known you longer than anyone else, you considered her your closest family. So he conceded, grateful that she left the doors open so that he could peer into the room to where you lay sleeping peacefully. His heart started beating faster as you opened your eyes and took May’s hand.

He craned his neck as a nurse blocked his view of your face. Edging forwards slightly, creeping closer to you. Would you want to see him?

*

You woke up in a daze, the beeping of machines and the sterile smell of the hospital room filling your senses. You blinked a few times, trying to clear your head and make sense of what had happened. Memories flooded back to you in bits and pieces - Priya, the Vrellnexian, Steve… and Bucky. Had he really been there?

As you tried to sit up, you winced at the sharp pain in your side. May was by your side in an instant, her face etched with worry. "Take it easy," she said softly, helping you adjust the pillows behind your back. She had never been a fan of physical touch, but it was much worse since she got her empath powers.

As you let the air out of your lungs gently, you felt the tension melting away slowly and the pain subsided. "Thanks," you croaked, voice hoarse from the tube that had been inserted in your throat for surgery. "What happened?"

"Same thing that always happens." 

You rolled your eyes, focusing back on May just in time to see her gaze flick back from the other side of the room. You frowned at her, questioningly.

May shook her head, contemplating how much information to give you. You turned your head to follow her gaze but it was blocked by a cheery nurse who greeted you. 

"Right dear, my name is Gertrude. I'm here to give you your first dose of antibiotics. Is that alright?" Her tone was so chipper that you could feel May tense with irritation. 

You nodded, still drowsy from the effects of the anesthetic. May took a step back to allow Gertrude to do her job. The antibiotic felt like cold, seeping through your arm, spreading to your shoulder and straight into your heart. This was followed by a strange sense of euphoria, your heart was racing and there was a strange tightness in your throat and chest. A sudden craving for air filled your lungs and your skin felt like it was on fire, burning as though someone was prodding you with a thousand red hot pokers. 

From a distance, you heard May’s voice calling your name and someone else, someone so familiar. You strained your ears, but it felt like you were under water and your friends were so far away. You did everything you could to swim through the murky waters, but something was dragging you under and you didn’t have the energy to resist. But the voice, you knew it well, you missed that voice. You clawed your way up towards it but the forces acting against you were too strong and the darkness surrounded you, until you sank into oblivion.

*

You woke dazed and confused, your eyes fluttering open to the dimly lit hospital room. The first thing you noticed was the tightness in your neck, the feeling of something foreign lodged in your throat. Panic set in as you tried to sit up, only to be met with the sharp pain of the tubes and wires attached to you.

You reached up to touch your neck, feeling the hard plastic of a tracheostomy tube. What had happened? Everything felt hazy, memories out of reach and it was terrifying. As you tried to make sense of it all, you heard a soft snoring beside you. You turned your head to see Bucky, sitting in a chair by your bedside, his head lolling to one side as he slept in what looked like a terribly uncomfortable position.

"Bucky," you tried to speak but there was no sound. Instead you reached over with your hand, the one free from tubes. He was just about close enough for you to graze the skin on his arm.

He looked up with a start, his expression softening as your eyes met his. They were red-rimmed and weary, his usual stoic demeanor replaced by a look of sorrow. "I'm here," he said quietly, reaching out to grasp your hand.

You pointed at the trach in your neck and mouthed, "what happened?"

"Cricket, you had an allergic reaction. I didn’t know you were allergic to antibiotics."

You frowned in confusion, neither did you. You couldn’t even remember the last time you’d taken antibiotics and you wondered what they had given you. It was as though Bucky could read your thoughts, he grabbed your chart from the end of the bed and held it out in front of you so you could read the name of the drug you had been injected with: ceftriaxone. You’d have to make a note of that for future reference. Bucky put the chart away, but not before glancing at it himself, making a mental note for himself.

"How’s the pain?" Bucky asked, softly.

You lifted your hand holding it parallel to the mattress and rocking it slightly. Bucky nodded, sorrowfully. "I'm sorry, I should have been there for you. I'm so sorry." His words held a multitude of meanings.

In a flash, it felt like nothing had happened between you, his presence was the comfort you sorely sought and all was forgiven. You tried to speak, to tell him that it wasn't his fault, that you didn't blame him for the past. But the words caught in your throat, the tracheostomy tube making it impossible to form coherent sounds. Instead, you squeezed his hand, trying to convey your gratitude through a simple gesture. But Bucky understood your unspoken message.

"I made a mistake," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I thought you didn’t care about me. But I know now that I was wrong. You’ve always been there for me. I miss our… us and I want to make things right."

Tears welled up in your eyes as you looked at Bucky, the weight of his words sinking in. You had never stopped caring for him, never stopped loving him. And in that moment, you knew that forgiveness was possible, that your bond could, not only be repaired, but had the potential to grow stronger. You reached out and pulled Bucky into a tight embrace, feeling the warmth of his body against yours. In that moment, you knew that no matter what challenges lay ahead, at the very least, your friendship would endure. 

As your whole body trembled with emotion, you felt a hand on your shoulder. You turned to see Nat standing there, her eyes filled with concern and anger. "Stop, Bucky. Leave," she said firmly, her voice cutting through the air.

But you couldn’t let Bucky go. Not now, not when you finally had the chance to mend things between you. You reached out and held Nat’s hand, squeezing it gently. Your eyes telling her what your voice couldn’t. "I need him here, Nat. Please understand."

Nat’s expression softened as she looked at you with an air of disappointment. "So after all the pain he put you through, all the crap, you're just gonna forgive him? Because he comes in here and bats those blue eyes at you and you just pretend these last 6 months of agony didn't happen?"

Your face flushed at her words, not wanting to look over at Bucky to see his reaction. But you knew he hadn’t let go of your hand, he wasn’t shying away from Nat’s allegations. You took a deep breath, trying to find a way to explain your feelings. But with the tracheostomy in place, all you could do was look at Nat with pleading eyes. You wanted her to understand that forgiveness wasn’t about forgetting the pain, but about moving forward and healing.

"You’re right, Nat. I know I have a lot of work to do to prove I deserve Cricket’s forgiveness." Bucky was talking to Nat, but looking directly at you. "But I need you to know that you can trust me."

Nat sighed, her shoulders slumping in defeat. "Fine," she said, her voice tinged with resignation. "But if he hurts you again, I won’t be so forgiving."

You nodded, grateful for her acceptance. And as Nat left the room, you turned back to Bucky, who was still holding your hand. His eyes were filled with a mixture of regret and hope, as if he couldn’t quite believe that you were giving him another chance.

"I’m sorry," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "I never meant to hurt you. I was just..."

You squeezed his hand, letting him know that you understood. And as you sat there in silence, the weight of the past six months slowly lifted off your shoulders.

*

Over the next few days, Bucky was at your side. Natasha and May took it in turns to glare at him so that he would leave to shower and get a few hours of sleep. He would sit with you all night and even though you urged him to go home and take care of himself, you were grateful for and comforted by this presence. 

The days were filled with hard work and rehabilitation. You were determined to be weaned off your tracheostomy in record time, especially since you missed the taste of real food. And the catheter they'd put in your bladder was far from dignified.

On your fourth day, they put in a speaking valve and it felt good to be able to communicate again, even if it was just with short raspy sentences. Bucky was dizzy with delight when you greeted him by name. He missed hearing your voice, he would take anything you had to give him. Bucky wasn't the biggest talker at the best of times, he needed encouragement, coaxing into a conversation. It made you wonder how well he and Priya communicated. In the first few days of your recovery, he hadn't spoken much, preferring to sit beside you while you watched your favorite shows on the huge television that Tony had wheeled into your room before dragging a rueful Steve off to Thailand to neutralize a strange artifact giving off cosmic radiation.

Your powers helped you excel with speaking using the valve and you were allowed to use it for longer periods. But sometimes success didn't always work in your favor. 

The following evening, after a grueling session of physical therapy, you fell asleep, only to jolt awake in the middle of the night in a state of panic, heart racing and your chest tight. You couldn't breathe. Panic gripped you as you struggled to catch your breath.

You sat up, gasping for air, feeling like you were suffocating. The room felt like it was closing in on you, the darkness pressing down on you. You tried to calm yourself down, to slow your breathing, but the panic only grew stronger.

Just when you thought you couldn't take it anymore, you felt a warm hand on your shoulder, pushing you backwards. Bucky grabbed the suction tube and skillfully removed the mucus blocking your air passage, a task he had observed the nurses do countless times.

As your oxygen levels rose, Bucky shoved the tube back on the bedside unit and gripped your shoulders. "It's okay, it's clear now, you're okay," he reassured you.

But the panic still gripped you tightly, refusing to let go. Bucky looked at you with concern in his eyes as you took shuddering breaths between sobs. Without a word, he climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arms around you, holding you close to his chest.

"I got you, Cricket. I promise I'm never letting you go again. I got you," he whispered softly, his voice a soothing balm to your frayed nerves.

As you lay there, enveloped in Bucky's comforting embrace, the panic slowly began to subside. Your breathing steadied, your heart rate slowed, and the darkness that had threatened to consume you began to fade away. Bucky's presence was a lifeline, a reminder that you were not alone in your struggle.

With his arms around you, you felt safe and protected, allowing yourself to relax and drift back to sleep, knowing that Bucky would be there to watch over you throughout the night. And as you finally succumbed to sleep, you felt a sense of peace wash over you, grateful for the unwavering support of your friend in your time of need.

*

The next morning, you woke up with your face plastered against Bucky's chest, a ridiculous amount of saliva coating your mouth and to your horror, Bucky's t-shirt. You couldn't help but feel mortified at the situation. Waking up with your face pressed against Bucky's chest, drooling all over his t-shirt was not how you had envisioned your morning going. But despite the embarrassment, you couldn't deny the warmth and comfort you felt being so close to him.

Bucky chuckled, running a hand through his messy hair. "No worries, Cricket. It happens to the best of us."

As you sat up and tried to compose yourself, Bucky reached over to grab a tissue and handed it to you. "Here, clean yourself up."

You took the tissue gratefully, wiping away the excess saliva from your mouth and the stain on Bucky's shirt. "S’rry, B’cky. Didn't mean to drool all o’er you."

Bucky just shrugged, a small smile playing on his lips. "It's no big deal, really. Just a shirt. Besides, it's not like I haven't drooled on myself before."

You couldn't help but laugh at his comment, feeling a bit more at ease. Bucky always had a way of making you feel comfortable, even in the most embarrassing of situations. You missed the camaraderie that you’d had before Priya had entered your lives.

“How's the breathing?”

“S’rry fo’ ‘reakin’ ou’.”

Bucky just waved off your apology, his eyes filled with understanding. "Don't worry about it, Cricket. We all have our moments. I’ve lost count of the number I’ve had, this is the least I could do. I'm just glad you're feeling better now."

You couldn't help but smile at his kindness. Despite the awkward start to the morning, you were grateful that Bucky was still by your side. When it was just the two of you together, it was so easy to get lost in a world where he was yours.

“Di’ you sleep?” you asked him.

“A little… enough.” He added as your face fell. “Don’t worry about me.”

You were taken aback as the door to your room flew open, revealing Steve and Tony standing in the doorway with surprised expressions on their faces. You quickly sat up, feeling a rush of embarrassment at being caught in such an intimate position with Bucky.

Tony raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on his lips. “Well, well, well, what do we have here? Looks like we interrupted something.”

Bucky clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes, but said nothing. He never answered back to Tony. Bucky had confessed to you that he remembered every detail of how he had murdered the Starks. He had never mentioned any specifics to you but you knew his subconscious would never let him forget. He told you that his dreams were like vivid flashbacks, they played behind his eyelids too often.

“T’ny!” You couldn't help but roll your eyes at Tony's teasing. “Miss’on ‘kay?”

“Total success, Cricket. Thailand was pretty scenic, from what we saw on the flyby. I’ll be sure to take you one day, I think it’s right up your alley.”

You smiled gratefully. Tony had a way of showing his affection by showering you with gifts.

“Hey, why is this thing not on?” He tapped at the wide screen at the end of your bed. “I brought this to help aid your recovery.”

“An’ it’s workin’ marv’ls.”

“That’s fantastic! Well, we'll leave you two lovebirds to it then. Just try to keep the drooling to a minimum, okay?” 

Steve and Tony exchanged a knowing look while both you and Bucky groaned in unison.

“Err, actually, I’m going to stay for a moment,” Steve said, hesitantly before turning to you. “If that’s alright with you?”

“Co’rse.” Now that he was closer, Steve looked tired and worried.

You watched as Bucky got up and left the room to use the bathroom, leaving you alone with Steve. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his expression serious.

“I was worried about you, Cricket,” Steve began, his voice filled with concern. “You and Bucky are like family to me. I can’t bear the thought of losing either of you.”

You felt a pang of guilt at causing Steve to worry. “S’rry, St’ve. Didn’t mean to put you thr’ugh that. Promis’ I’ll be more ‘areful in the future.”

Steve reached out and placed a hand on your shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I know you didn’t mean to, Cricket. But please, promise me that you won’t do anything reckless like getting stabbed again.”

You nodded, feeling grateful for Steve’s concern and support. “Pr’mise.” You held up three fingers in a scout’s salute.

Steve smiled, his blue eyes filled with warmth. “Good. And remember, I’m always here for you. You can talk to me about anything, okay?” He looked at the door, the one that Bucky had just used to vacate the room.

You nodded, feeling a sense of comfort and reassurance wash over you. Steve had always been there for you and Bucky, like a protective older brother. You were grateful to have him in your life.

Tag list: @samodivaa @scoonsalicious @noonespecial90 @browneyedgrli @vicmc624 @cjand10 @capswife @julvrs @ordelixx @sashaisready @sebastians-love @belleofthebooks @missvelvetsstuff @angelbabyyy99 @rabbitrabbit12321 @love-isnt-greed @hhiggs @winters1917 @blackhawkfanatic @calwitch @learisa @daybleedsintonightfa11 @lillianacristina @mostlymarvelgirl @wintercrow @buckitostan @crist1216 @bisexualnikkisixx @robynjasp @brairslair

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[minhosimthings]

Fault

Prompt by @banghyunchanji : Imagine when Chan finds out that your manager is making you perform the day after you have a miscarriage.

Pairings - Idol!Husband!Chan × Soloist!Fem!Wife!reader

Warnings: Mentions of pregnancy, reader has a miscarriage, angst with a shit ton of comfort, mentions of food, chan has a nightmare

A/N: saw this one gif and I just had to write it! I don't like the way I wrote the ending much but I think this was my favorite descriptions to write. Thank you to @banghyunchanji for the prompt! I hope all of you like it.

"Channie-" you gasped for air. The lilac painted room, your favourite colour, seemed to be whirling around and you swore you could see the moon dancing up in the sky through the magnificent windows. Why was the moon shining tonight? Why were the city lights still turned on? Why were the buildings still stinking of coffee? Why wouldn't the world stop for you?

More under the cut

"Channie- I-Im-" Chan immediately pulled you into his chest, engulfing you in a warm comforting fire, as all the crystals you've held in your eyes started coming out. Chan felt the fabric of his shirt getting wetter and wetter, but he couldn't care less. His eyes were bloodshot, illuminating his dark circles, from all the days you got him back home at midnight from the studio.

"Shh princess. Shh, it's alright it's alright." Chan rubbed circles on your wrist, always a way of calming you down, "I'm here. I'm here." He tried to keep his voice from cracking.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Your voice tried to be stable, and your soul tried to stop itself from bleeding. Chan's heart broke into a more than a million pieces, probably enough to scatter the entire world. "Baby no~" he shushed you, his voice as warm as a freshly baked pecan pie, your favourite wasn't it? "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's. No shhh don't cry baby, you're still very weak." He held you tighter, as your tears dried up, "you'll only get weaker. Have some water, come on."

Chan got you up slowly, hands resting on your waist, trying not to float over to your stomach, where stitches lie, tightly packed, but still bleeding gold. He pressed a glass of water to your lips, gently lifting it, so that your throat could get a drop of hydration.

"thank you." You whispered, laying back down on the bed. Chan smiled gently at you, a weak attempt at calming you down. You could see the rotten pain in his smile, his dimple shining less than it usually did. "It's alright." He mumbled into your ear, as you wrapped your arms around him, as he spoke a lie which would perhaps become a disguised truth, "Everything's gonna be alright."

The next day

"Alright Mrs Bang," the doctor clapped her hands together, rearranging her stethoscope around her bruised neck, "Your tests are looking good. I think you're free to go home today! But please-" she turned to Chan, who had his hand wrapped around your shoulder, "-make sure she doesn't do any physical activity. I know, her being a top class soloist is hard, but she absolutely cannot do any physical activity until her next checkup." Chan smiled gently at the doctor and shook her hand bracingly. "Thank you Dr Yang. And I'll make sure she doesn't even move a limb until you say so." Dr Yang laughed heartily and moved out the door, chan following behind her, while a nurse removed all the saline bottles hooked up to your veins. "Thank you." You said, as she threw all the bottles into the bin. She looked like a warm presence, with her hair tied into a bun, exactly how your mother used to do it. "It's alright." She fidgeted with her fingers. She mus'nt have been older than you, probably three or two years younger. "Uh Ma'am?" She approached, "I know it's insensitive to ask you in such times like this. B-but-" she looked down at the floor, "my little girl, she's 15 and she really loves your songs a-and her birthday is coming up and I saved up enough to buy her one of your albums." Your heart warmed at her words, distracting you from what happened the night before. "It really would mean the world to me if you could sign the pc. I would love to see her this weekend, since we haven't been talking much." You smiled at her and took the pc she offered you. You traced the frame of the pc and laughed at your younger self posing for the photo, dressed in a tube top that would barely fit you now. "Here you go." You handed the pen and the pc back to the nurse. "May I ask, you seem so young to have a child? Were you-" you lingered in the last words as the nurse smiled again. "Got pregnant when I was 16." She let out a chuckle. "Couldn't let my baby go, so I endured it for nine months, and now she lives with another family. I visit her from time to time to give her gifts and remind her I still exist. She's started calling me mom now!" Your heart engulfed in flames hearing the nurse's words. The excitement with which she talked about her daughter was so melodious to you, like hearing one of Chan's songs before the rest of the kids did. It was like that word you read once what was it what was it? Ukiyo! The Japanese word. To be unbothered by the duties of life, when your heart tells you to. A beautiful word, you thought. Languages really are pretty, more prettier when you notice for the first time, that you weren't alone.

"Baby can I lie down on the bed for a minute?" You had finally reached home after what seemed like the longest drive of your life. It felt lonely, to have nothing in your arms instead of having a crying baby. You didn't mention a word of it to Chan. True, letting go is easier than keeping it in, but as you looked at his bloodshot eyes and remembered Minho telling you in secret about how much your husband wept, you decided to keep it in just a little bit.

"Sure darling." Chan guided you slowly to the bedroom, his arms holding you so tight yet so fragile, "I'll wake you up when you need to eat alright?" He kissed your forehead as you hummed in response, drifting off into peacefully troubled sleep.

"Ahh fuck." You groaned as you woke up. You checked the time on your phone. It hadn't even been fifteen minutes since you slept. You decided that it was best to wake up and go outside to your husband, instead of laying in bed with your pillow giving you the worst ideas.

"Ch-channie?" You voiced out, nervously stepping into the kitchen. You couldn't see a broad shouldered figure clad in black anywhere in the kitchen, so you gave up your search there and instead strolled over to the living room.

There he was. Dozing off on the sofa, without a blanket. You smiled at him gently shivering every now and then. You could hear him muttering something in his sleep.

"No- not- fault", he kept muttering, "ocean-give the". He started shivering a little more violently, and you could see his fingers start to fidget. You sighed and went over to his sleeping figure, and upon closer inspection you saw that his eyes were twitching uncontrollably.

"Baby?" You shook him gently, to which he groaned but still didn't open his eyes. "Channie wake up." You shook him more harshly this time. "Wh-what?" He mumbled, slowly opening his eyes and blinking up at you, as he usually did on the rare times that he fell asleep. "Baby were you having a nightmare?" You plopped down next to him on the couch and wrapped a blanket around both of you. As if it was a natural response, Chan wrapped his arms around you and buried his head into your neck. "Just had a dream about the ocean." He mumbled into your neck. "Alright Mr Huggabear." You chuckled, feeling his breath on your neck, "How about we order something hmm?" Chan nodded, still not removing himself from the crook of your neck.

You picked up your phone and quietly tapped your fingers on it, ordering all of Chan's favourites, without him knowing, as he was still deep in your neck. "I'll pay." You heard him mumble, trying to stifle a yawn. "It's alright baby." You stroked his curly hair, "I already paid so you don't hav-"

The sound of the bell echoing through your house slightly startled you. Was the delivery man already here? That was certainly quick, you thought as you decided to give the delivery man a tip for his speed.

"I'll go darling. You sit." Chan finally got up, rubbing his eyes. You smiled up at Chan and got up anyways to turn the tv on, switching to the last episode of Hannibal.

"Uh baby?" You heard Chan call your name from across the house, "Paul's here!"

Paul was one of your many managers, the main one you could say. And yes, only ONE of your many managers, because a world class soloist has got to have atleast a hundred of them right?

"Hey Y/N!" Paul walked in casually, followed by some members of staff. You felt slightly uncomfortable having so many people in your house, but like a good Samaritan, you kept it in. Chan followed behind.

"Nice of you to drop in Paul." Chan smiled, "Please do sit down." Paul plopped down on the sofa opposite you as Chan sat down next to you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder. "What can we do for you Paul?" You smiled gently. Paul brushed a hair out of his face and pulled out a paper, giving it to you. "So I got the schedule for your shows." Paul smiled brightly, "Tomorrow you'll be performing in Busan and for the next month-" "I'm sorry can we pause for a moment?" Chan's stern voice shut Paul up. "She can't perform." He took the paper from your hands, and gave it back to Paul, "She's on maternal leave you know that right?" Chan eyebrows were furrowed and anger was starting to creep up to his face. You put your hand on his, a weak attempt to calm him down.

"Now now-" Paul laughed awkwardly, "no need to get angry Mr Banhg. But this is entirely Y/N's buisness not yours." "Excuse me?"

You felt Chan visibly shake beside you. "Channie-" you whispered, in a vain attempt to calm him down. "This is my buisness, she's my wife incase you didn't know. And she just had a miscarriage, so could you atleast pretend to be sympathetic, you fucking Asshole?" Flames seemed to erupting from Chan, as Paul scoffed, looking offended. "Mr Bangh I really suggest you not use such language." "And I suggest you leave right now." Chan fired back, as you watched the scene unfold, not being able to do anything, "Tell PD Nim that she cannot perform and whe most certainly will not."

"Mr Bangh." Paul started, but Chan was quicker in his words. "Nothing you say will convince me to let her go so please I suggest you leave."

"Whatever." Paul scoffed, getting up along with the rest of the staff and swinging his bad over his shoulder. "When she loses her fans because of her laziness, don't tell me I didn't tell you so." You could have punched Paul right then and there and you were going to if Chan hadn't gotten to him quicker. The glass vase on the round table fell off and shattered noisily as Chan slammed Paul into a wall. You heard gasps from the rest of the staff members and you rushed over to Chan, holding him by his arm and whispering "let him go Channie he's not worth our time" into his ear. Chan begrudgingly let go of Paul who adjusted his collar quickly and scampered out the door, along with the staff. "Hey!" Chan called out to the last staff member who was about to leave. She turned around quickly and bowed to Chan. "Tell JYP that Y/N will be on a hiatus for the next three months and Bang Chan from Stray Kids will also be on hiatus for very related reasons. Put emphasis on the related. Got it?" The girl nodded frantically and rushed out the door.

"Chan" you sighed heavily, "Alright that slamming into the wall was hot, but what was the hiatus about?" Chan meekly smiled up at you, a total contrast to how he was five minutes ago. "You're not going anywhere nor are you doing anything related to performing in three months. You're staying at home and I'm feeding you chocolate and hugs and kisses until you die." You laughed heartily and plopped down onto the couch, getting the food that had magically appeared at the doorstep.

"I love you Channie." You rested your head on his shoulder, leaning into his warmth. "I love you too babygirl." Chan kissed your forehead, "More than you could ever know."

[halsteadlover]

Eye For An Eye

*Gif not mine credits to the owner*

• Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader.

• Requested by anon: Hi. I dont know if you have seen Greys Anatomy, but my request is if you could write Jay and the reader in the season 6 finale of Greys. With the reader being in Dereks place(she can be a surgeon) and Jay in Merediths. He doesnt have a gun on him when it happens, so he cant protect them. And instead of Christina, Its Will who does the surgery on Y/N. So I dont know if you have seen it, or if you are completly confused, but if you have, it would mean alot😊

• Warnings: blood, curse words, gunshots

• Word count: 7138.

• A/N: I think this is the longest piece I've ever written and as always it's shitty 💀 I'm sorry for how this turned out but I hope you'll like it. Let me know what do you think, like, comment and reblog if you want 💞 Love you all and thank you for your support.

Each person has a different way of doing, of thinking, of acting. Each situation is different from another and for each one there is a different way of reacting. When you’re happy there are those people who jump of joy, there are those who cry, those who cannot stop laughing or clapping their hands. When you are sad there are people who withdraw into themselves, those who prefer the company of some friends or their partner, those who don’t let themselves be discouraged.

But when you lose a loved one, this is a very broad discourse, difficult to enclose in just few lines, but even in this case each person has their own reaction, their own way of dealing with pain. There are those who cry desperately, those who scream since the pain of the loss is so strong because this is a kind of pain that tears inside you, tears your heart out; there are those who seem impassive, just because they need to metabolize, they don’t cry, they don’t scream, don’t despair, they remain there sitting in a corner to mull over what happened, what was going on.

During your career as a surgeon you had – unfortunately you'd dare to say – the opportunity to witness all kinds of reactions from a family member to the loss of their loved one. You were always understanding, ready to do anything to try and ease the pain those people were feeling even though you knew they hated you at the time since you were the person who gave them the worst news of their life. You thought you had seen everything but, damn it, how wrong you were, how wrong you were in having taken the arrogance of being able to think you knew the human being in its complicated and absurd interest. As already mentioned, every person has his own type of reaction in relation to a certain situation but never in your life, not even for a second, you would’ve thought the death of a patient could also have been the cause of yours.

“Doctor Y/LN, the patient is in atrial fibrillation,” a nurse had warned. You were in the midst of a brain operation on a woman, Ellen Hopkins, a 50-year-old lady who had a meningioma, a benign brain tumor but which, given its location and size, was quite dangerous to remove and carried high risks.

“The patient has her skull open, a wrong movement and I could make her paralyzed for life” you replied, the forceps and the electric scalpel in your hands while you were concentrating on the patient’s brain. “Two milligrams of Amiodarone, fast!”.

“The fibrillation persists,” you commented, lifting your eyes for a moment and placing them on the monitor the patient was connected to. “Damn it!” you exclaimed, putting down the surgical instruments and approaching the patient’s chest “Let’s carry out a cardioversion!”

“Charge at 200!”

Nothing.

“250!”

Still nothing, the fibrillation persisted as the patient’s values plummeted dramatically.

“350! And call cardiology!”

Not being able to use defibrillation again, you continued with the cardiac massage while waiting for a cardiothoracic surgeon to arrive in the operating room.

But Mrs. Ellen died on that operating table before someone even arrived.

“Damn it,” you cursed, taking a deep sigh and looking at the clock “Time of death, 16:33.”

Informing relatives was never an easy thing to do, you never got used to it, and that didn’t change even when you had to inform Mrs. Ellen Hopkins’ husband, Bill. You explained to him how the surgery had gone, you answered his questions, you told him you did everything possible to save his wife but that, unfortunately, she hadn’t made it.

Bill was petrified, speechless. Not a single sound came out of his mouth, not a single word, not a single tear came out of his eyes. He remained impassive, unable to process the information he had just been given. He just looked at you, straight in the eye, for a few moments before turning his gaze and walking away.

You watched him go and it was in vain to try to call his name and speak to him. You sighed deeply, running your hands over your face in frustration, blaming yourself for just ruining that man’s life. You couldn’t even imagine how he must feel at that moment, so you didn’t blame his reaction, as already mentioned, everyone had their own way of reacting to such devastating news.

As you used to do after surgery, you holed up in the doctors’ ward, ignoring everything and everyone and continuing to reflect on that surgery and what you could’ve done differently to save that woman.

And you stayed there all afternoon, until the evening, until your shift was over. They all tried to cheer you up, Connor, Will, April, to tell you it wasn’t your fault but right now you didn’t even want to hear those words, at least not from them. You just wanted Jay and one of his hugs.

Jay had been your boyfriend for almost four and a half years now and given your hectic lifestyles, being you a surgeon and him a cop, it was sometimes difficult for you to even see each other even if you were living together.

That evening it was enough for him to see you come out of the hospital doors to understand there was something wrong with you. He understood it from the way you walked at a slow pace, from the way you had your head down and your eyes on the ground.

“My love,” he began, getting up from his car on which he was leaning and walking towards you. When he finished his shift early, he always used to pick you up at the hospital or wait there until your shift ended too.

A small smile rose on your lips when you saw him, beautiful as the sun. The instant relief you felt when you saw him was something magnificent, it was amazing how even just that was enough to make you feel better.

“Hi baby,” you greeted him, immediately wrapping your arms around his chest and hugging him tightly. His arms encircled your shoulders and he too squeezed you tightly, knowing right away that you needed it right now.

“Baby are you okay? What happened?” he immediately asked in a worried tone as his hand gently stroked your head.

“Can we talk about this later? I just want to go home and forget about this day.”

Jay understood but didn't insist any further, leaving your space and knowing that when you were ready you’d tell him everything.

He slightly broke away from that embrace and with his hands he cupped your face, stroking your cheeks with his thumbs. Without saying anything he kissed you, a chaste, sweet and delicate kiss you didn't even realize you needed until then.

“Has anyone dared to bother my princess? Do I have to beat the shit out of someone?” Jay asked in a menacing tone and expression, in an attempt to cheer you up. He smiled when you giggled, knowing he had succeeded and that, in reality, he was serious about this, as he wouldn’t hesitate even for a second to punch anyone who really dared to hurt you.

“No baby, no one has dares to do this wickedness,” you replied with a joking tone.

“It'll be better for them,” Jay joked, stamping a sweet kiss on your forehead that made your stomach lightly explode like fireworks. God, how much you loved that little gesture. “What do you say to go home and forget about this bad day? We can order something and watch a movie if you like.”

You nodded enthusiastically, looking forward to taking a shower and throwing yourself on the bed.

You and Jay were lying on the sofa, having dinner and watching a movie in the background that neither of you was really following. Your head was resting on his chest, your arm instead encircling his chest as he hugged you tightly, stroking your hair and kissing your forehead from time to time.

“I missed you so much today,” Jay said, making you smile even though he couldn't even see you right now.

“I missed you so much too baby, I really needed this.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, almost in a whisper. You let out a sigh, almost involuntarily, “You don't have to tough if you don't want to, I don't want to put pressure on you.”

“No sorry it’s just…” you started talking, putting yourself in a sitting position so that you could look at Jay “It's just... Surgery gone wrong, a woman died on the operating table.”

“Oh. I'm so sorry my love,” Jay replied, taking your hand and squeezing it tightly. “You don't think it's your fault, do you?”

“And who else could it be? I was the surgeon,” you blurted out “It was an operation that presented complications but it had 95% of possibilities to be a success, I promised her, her husband...”

“Baby, baby, stop,” Jay stopped you, letting go of your hand and grabbing your face with his hands and making you stop talking. “It’s. Not. Your. Fault. I wasn't there and I don't know how things went but I'm 100% sure you did everything in your power to save her and if there was a chance to do anything to keep her alive you’d do it. Complications happen, they happen, the surgery had a 95% chance of success but unfortunately that 5% is always there, it's hard, but it's always there and it's nobody's fault, much less yours. Don’t blame yourself for this baby, you are one of the most talented surgeons in the entire hospital…”

“Why can't I help but feel like shit then? Maybe I didn't consider some variables, I was too sure and a patient died,” you said, your voice almost broken by trying to hold back the tears. But from the way Jay wiped one, you could tell the attempt was completely in vain.

“Because we are human, it's in our nature to blame ourselves when something doesn’t go as planned and we always need to have an answer to the things that happen but the truth is that not everything has an answer, the universe operates in a mysterious way and I know for sure, I’d bet on it, there was nothing you could’ve done that you haven't already done.”

You sighed, then resting your head on his chest as he hugged you in an attempt to console you.

“I'm here for you baby, cry and let it go as long as you want, I won't let you go,” he continued to whisper, occasionally leaving sweet and delicate kisses on your forehead. He continued to hug you indefinitely, whispering words of comfort to you until you calmed down and stopped crying. You didn't know how to express your gratitude for having such a fantastic man like Jay by your side, you’d never have known how to do it without him. He was your rock, your backbone, what put you back together when your world fell apart.

-

In the next two days nothing special happened, you and Jay went on normally with your jobs, you operated, he arrested criminals.

It was Friday and it was now late morning while you were in the operating room after finishing an operation on a man with spinal problems. As usual, you washed your hands and left the operating room before going to write everything down on the patient's medical record.

Everything seemed to go on normally, lunchtime came quickly and as usual, Jay came to the hospital to pick you up and go eat something together. You were still busy in the last morning visits and Jay took the opportunity to exchange a few words with his brother Will, who was at the reception.

“Look who’s bere, I thought you died,” Will commented, jokingly.

“Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't show up but work has been killing me lately, it's like the criminals have all woken up at the same time,”Jay explained “How is everything going?”.

“It's okay. I’m fine, Maya is back in town tomorrow and I can't wait to see her again, work is going pretty well, in short, I have nothing to complain about and I can finally exchange few words with my little brother.”

Jay chuckled and was about to answer when a man's voice interrupted him.

“Excuse me,” the man said, getting attention “I'm looking for doctor Y/N Y/LN, where can I find her?”.

Jay immediately turned to the man after hearing your name being mentioned and looked him up and down, studying his appearance and making sure he wasn't some ex or, worse, a shady guy. He was a man who couldn’t exceed fifty-five, tall, slender physique, balding. He had his hands tucked into the pocket of his visibly ruined pants and his gaze totally absent.

“She’s finishing her last visits, you can wait in the waiting room and I will call you,” Will replied cordially.

“No, it's pretty urgent. I'm here for my wife and the doctor made an appointment for me today and at this time,” said the man, so calmly, a behavior that was not expected of someone who had a loved one hospitalized.

“I’m sure you can wait here too, the doctor will come down immediately and see you,” Jay continued, but the man insisted that the matter was urgent and he needed to see her right away.

“If the doctor told you that, you can go now,” Will said, going on to explain where to find you.

The man thanked him and started walking towards the elevator. By now he had memorized the way to your ward, which was only on the first floor.

Slowly, the man approached the ward where, however, a nurse stopped him.

“Sir, visiting hours are over, you can't stay here.”

“I'm looking for Doctor Y/LN,” he replied, completely ignoring the nurse's words.

“You can come back here at three in the afternoon, when visiting hours start again.”

Soon the situation plunged completely into the abyss, in a whirlwind of chaos and despair.

The man pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket and without any sign of remorse or hesitation, shot that nurse, making his body fall to the ground, lifeless.

The sound of the shot echoed throughout the entire floor and the terrified screams of doctors, nurses and the patients themselves began to spread. They all started running away at the speed of light fearing for their lives. There were, however, those who couldn’t even get out of bed, asleep patients who were unable to save themselves.

When suddenly Jay saw a wave of people running from the elevator, terrified, he knew immediately that something was wrong. He and Will quickly exchanged a worried look and Jay immediately tried to stop someone to ask for an explanation.

“Hey! Hey! What the hell is going on?!” he exclaimed aloud, but everyone ignored him, continuing to run away. He stopped a man, who in terror stammered a few words.

“A… A man… He has a… He shot… He has a gun.”

Jay’s heart stopped beating for a moment as he heard those words. His mind immediately understood what was happening, who was the aggressor and his first thought was you. That man had targeted you, he wanted you.

A feeling of panic took over him and his brain went completely blackout. His first instinct was to run to the elevator and try to find you before that man found you but Will stopped him.

“Where the hell are you going?!”

“What do you mean where the hell am I going? That man is looking for Y/N I have to find her!”

“Jay you need backup!”

“You get as many people out as possible, I call the rest of the team and look for Y/N,” Jay had replied and before Will could even answer, he run for the elevators. After quickly making the call and making sure the team and SWAT were coming soon, he put his cell phone in his pocket and reached for his gun.

At that precise moment a shiver went through his body as he realized he didn’t have his gun with him and that he had left it in the dashboard of his car.

“Fuck!” he whispered angrily to himself. That didn’t stop Jay, however, determined to find you before the madman did. He began to wander the corridors of that floor, constantly looking around. He felt the sweat tinge his forehead and his heartbeat greatly accelerated, not so much because of the situation but because he knew your life was in danger. He kept praying with every fiber of his being you were okay, that you were able to hide somewhere.

The anxiety and worry he was feeling at that moment were feelings he had felt a few times in his life and knowing that you, the love of his life, were in danger and, above all, he couldn’t do anything to help you, it destroyed him. Deep down he couldn’t even formulate a single coherent and rational thought.

The last thing you expected that day – and to be honest, you didn’t expect at all – was to find yourself face to face with an armed man pointing his gun at you.

“Mr. Hopkins…” you whispered, short of breath and heart pounding. Mrs. Ellen Hopkins’s husband, the lady who had passed away on your operating table a few days earlier, stood in front of you, with an absent look, and with the gun pointing straight at you.

“You killed my wife,” he said, his voice cold, aloof, as if a robot had taken possession of him.

“I… Mr. Hopkins I don’t…” you stammered, having no idea how to get out of that situation.

“You killed my wife!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, showing some emotion for the first time. His sudden change of tone made you jump with fear, and in pure instinct you raised your hands up, visibly trembling.

“Mr. Hopkins, please… Lower that gun, there is no need, I promise you I will answer any of your question.”

“Shut up!” he yelled again “There is no question you can answer! You killed my wife! The love of my life! You took her away from me and today you will die like her!”.

Your eyes filled with tears, but you tried in vain not to cry.

Fuck no, you didn’t want to die, not that day, not like that.

“Mr. Hopkins… I ask you please, let me explain how things went, I’m sure you will want to know why. I know this won’t bring your wife back and I’m terribly sorry about that, I know how much you loved her and how much she loved you, but I can help you find answers if you wants.”

“And what could fix this? She died!” he exclaimed, waving his gun at you and making you jump again.

Oh God please.

“Nothing, I know it won’t bring her back to life, but it might help you find some peace, I’m sure, in fact, I’m 100% sure Ellen would like you to be at peace, she doesn’t want you pining for her death.”

“I don’t want to hear you talk!” Bill continued, now taken by anger and resentment “I hate you! I hate you so much! You were the one who had to heal my wife, make her feel better and not kill her! ”.

Your heart tightened in a vise and you couldn’t not feel guilty. You rationally knew it wasn’t your fault but, subconsciously, you couldn’t help but think so.

“Okay, okay, but please Mr. Hopkins, this thing is just between me and you alright? No one else has to suffer from this tragedy, no family has to mourn their loved one, if you want to blame me that’s fine but leave the other innocent people alone.”

“I don’t care a damn about the others, they were just accidents along the way. I wanted you Dr. Y/LN, you ended my wife’s life and I will end yours.”

Your blood froze in your veins, your brain working hard to try to invent a way to escape from that situation.

At that moment your thought was only one, only Jay, and how much you wished him to appear through that door and take you away from there. You couldn’t stop thinking how that morning could’ve been the last time you saw him, how you wanted nothing more than to take refuge in his arms.

Bill clicked the safety of his gun and a feeling of panic took hold of you completely, fearing that these would be your last moments in life.

“Bill… Please listen to me,” you begged him “I know you aren’t a bad person, I know you are grieving terribly for the loss of your wife and I am so sorry, there has not been a moment when I have not thought of her and I don’t even dare imagine your suffering, damn it, I don’t even know how I would’ve reacted in such a situation. I know it’s just the sadness and anger that are talking now, and you are right to be angry with me, with the world, with whoever is up there who took Ellen away from you and I don’t blame you for that. I know I was the person you trusted most to save her life and I betrayed this trust and I will forever apologize for that, because I wanted Ellen to recover as much as you did. I am not a perfect being, I am human too and as such I can make mistakes but I am ready to pay the consequences,” you spoke, and noticing that he was listening to you you continued “I did my best and believe me when I tell you that if there was a single minimal thing I could’ve done to save her, I would’ve done it but I know you don’t see it that way now. Bill... I… I have a family too, I’m somebody’s daughter, sister, niece, girlfriend and like I said I know you’re not a bad person, I know you never want any family to go through what you are going through right now.”

“You’re wrong Dr. Y/LN,” he replied, suddenly calm, as if all the anger he felt until recently had magically vanished. “I want everyone to feel exactly what I’m feeling.”

The sound of a gunshot boomed throughout your office room as it kept repeating in your mind. Suddenly the whole world around you fell into total silence, there was only a subspecies of hum that you could clearly hear with your ears.

You didn’t realize it right away. It took you a few moments to do it.

You didn’t realize right away he actually shot you. It was only when you looked down and watched the blood splatter spread across your uniform that you really realized he had shot you.

Your body fell into a trance state and you didn’t immediately feel pain, due to the adrenaline flowing through your veins.

You fell to the ground, without strength, the blood expanding rapidly under your body and soiling all your clothes. You had no idea what was going on, you didn’t know if you were dead, if you were still alive, if your attacker was still there, if it was all a terrible nightmare.

Your mouth was completely dry, your jaws so dehydrated as if you had just run a marathon. Your heart was beating madly as your chest rose and fell quickly even though each breath was like receiving a stab, one was more painful than the other.

At that point the pain slowly began to be excruciating, so persistent as to be almost paralyzing. It felt as if millions of needles were penetrating your skin with extreme and devastating agony.

Jay was right there, he had witnessed that frightening and horrible scene from afar, given the open door of your office. He had seen how that man shot you in cold blood and without the slightest doubt or hesitation.

It was Will who literally held him back by force, or he would’ve come to you, or he would’ve tried to save you. He would’ve even taken that bullet for you, he would’ve fought to try to save you, but he couldn’t have done it and now you were probably even dead.

It didn’t do any good to wriggle with all the strength he had in his body, try to escape Will’s grip, yell at him to let him go.

“Fuck Will, let me go!” Jay kept screaming, trying to run away, in despair he had never been in his life. His stomach was in a vise and a lump in his throat had formed.

But when that shot rang out within the walls of that hospital, Jay was completely paralyzed for a few seconds, as if for a moment he had feared he had an auditory hallucination.

He stood still as his mind processed what was really going on.

“No!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, freeing himself from Will and running at lightning speed to your office. He didn't have anything else in mind but you at that moment and he didn't even care that bastard had vanished, he just wanted to see you.

Seeing you poured into a pool of your own blood was an image that would never leave his mind again.

“Baby! Baby! Please wake up, don't leave me!” Jay exclaimed, immediately leaning over your body, not caring in the least he was soiled with blood. He took your face in his hands, breathing a sigh of relief when he noticed you were still alive, trying to mumble something.

“Shhh my love, don't talk, keep your strength okay? I'm here now, I won't let you go, please hold on tight” Jay begged, “Will!” his eyes blurred with tears and only then he realized he was crying “Please don't play tricks on me, you have to stay with your eyes open okay?”.

“J-Jay…” you muttered, struggling to keep your eyes open “It hurts so much...”

Jay cried even more to hear those words, knowing you were in terribly much pain and there was nothing he could do to end that pain. He continued to caress your face, your hair, noticing the paleness of your skin. He knew very well how you felt, he knew how a shot could be terribly painful.

“I'm so sorry I didn't come earlier baby, please don't leave me okay? I love you so much, I can't live without you…” he cried “Try to hold on for me, you'll be fine I promise...”

“I... I want to sleep Jay...”

“No, no, no, no,” he replied, panic in his voice. “Don't fall asleep, okay? You have to keep these beautiful eyes of yours open, can you do this for me my love? I know it's difficult but you are so strong, you are the strongest person I know... Don't do this to me, don't leave me baby…”

But at that moment you weren't strong at all, you weren't a fighter and you didn't have the energy and strength to fight. You just wanted to let yourself go and get some sleep, just for a little while.

The room slowly began to fade as black splotches appeared before your eyes and at that point you could no longer fight to keep your eyes open and found yourself sucked into a whirlwind of darkness.

“Will!” Jay yelled in utter despair again.

Will immediately walked into your office after rushing to get a stretcher and an emergency kit, and seeing the blood and you unconscious in Jay's arms he knew immediately that the situation was dire.

“I’m sorry I was finding these. We need to get her to the OR immediately. Jay help me put her on the stretcher,” Will ordered, trying to stay as cool and lucid as possible even though it was hard for him to see you like that too. You weren't just his brother's girlfriend, you were also his colleague and a very dear friend.

“Take her by the shoulders, I’ll take her by the legs. At three we raise her, okay?”.

Jay nodded, trying to wipe away his tears quickly and did what Will said.

“One. Two. Three.”

They placed you on the stretcher and all three of you immediately left the office, trying to go as quickly as possible to the operating room. It was a race against time, and both Will and Jay knew it, there was no room for mistakes, there was no room for hesitation.

“Will,” Jay called his brother, before seeing him enter the OR.

Will turned and immediately understood the words Jay was about to say.

“I can't be without her, save her please.”

Will's heart squeezed in a vise and never as in that moment he felt a huge weight on his shoulders because he knew if things went wrong he wouldn’t only lose you, a friend, a colleague, an exceptional doctor, but he would also lose his little brother.

He nodded before turning and walking into the operating room.

Jay didn't know what to do with himself. He never felt so helpless and at the same time cutting out from the world.

He didn't know the rest of his team had arrived there in the hospital, that the man was immediately found and arrested after killing that nurse and seriously injuring you and two other people but Jay didn't even care.

He didn't care where he was, he didn't care if he suddenly appeared behind him or even if he went around the hospital. He knew this wasn’t correct, his motto was to protect and serve but he didn’t give a fuck, he wanted nothing more than to know you were alive, safe and sound, that you were okay.

When it came to you, there was no criminal, job or any other matter that had a priority over you, there was nothing he wouldn’t have abandoned just to know that you were happy, that you were well and healthy. You had always been the center of his world since he met you and he didn’t even care how absurd it seemed, but it was the truth, you were his everything, all that was most important to him and knowing he had done nothing to avoid hurting you was killing him, devouring him inside.

The thought there was only a wall to divide you physically but an abyss mentally, was something that Jay just couldn’t understand and in the hours when Will operated on you, he thought he literally died a thousand times.

For the first time in his life he had understood the real meaning of fear and it was a feeling he never wanted to try again. It was horrible, devastating, debilitating, feeling that damned fear, that paralyzing and visceral feeling of anxiety that twisted his stomach in a tight grip. He was afraid of losing you, of never seeing you again.

How could he live without you?

How could he only think of living in a world where you were not there?

He wasn’t ready. He would never be.

This option had never even touched his head since you became a part of his world. He wanted to be with you forever, until his last breath and that was not even enough, because he knew that even in the afterlife your souls would be reunited and you would be together again.

What would he do if he never saw you again? What if he could no longer talk to you, hear you laugh at his sleazy jokes, hear you romp when you were happy, see you smile, hug you when you were sad and wipe your tears when you lost some patient on the operating table? What would he have done without your immense clumsiness, so much that he didn’t even know how you were a surgeon sometimes, without your disastrous cooking, without your hair ties thrown all over the place, without your obsessive way of disinfecting everything? What would he have done without your kisses, your hugs, your way of making him feel so pampered and loved, always, every day and every second?

“Fuck no, no, no, no,” Jay muttered to himself, as if to banish those horrible thoughts from his mind, “God please, please, save her, let her come back to me…”

After about an hour in which you were in the operating room, the rest of the intelligence reached Jay and in vain his friends tried to calm him down.

It was only when he saw Will come out the door of that damned operating room that he came back to breathe a bit and at the same time die of heartbreak and anxiety.

“So? How did it go? Is she fine? Please tell me she’s okay,” Jay spat out, immediately approaching his brother. He studied the expression on his face in the smallest details and a modicum of hope lit up when he didn’t see that typical expression you had when you had to communicate the death of a loved one, he didn’t seem sad, on the contrary.

“The surgery was a succes, I am 99% sure she will recover completely. The bullet had pierced the stomach but fortunately there was no major damage. Now I’m taking her to ICU and we’ll have to wait for her to wake up,” Will explained and couldn’t even explain the transformation Jay underwent. He noticed the precise moment when that veil of anxiety and worry finally disappeared, replaced instead by joy and happiness.

In a rush of happiness Jay hugged his brother, squeezing him like he had never done before. “Thank you Will, thank you so much.”

Will returned that hug, smiling. “You don’t have to thank me, she is very strong.”

“Yeah, she really is,” Jay replied through tears, only then realizing he was crying. “When can I see her?”.

“In a while don’t worry.”

Seeing you lying on that hospital bed was an image Jay would never have thought of seeing in his life, it was literally a blow to his heart. You had oxygen goggles inserted in your nostrils, your face was terribly pale but despite that you were still the most beautiful creature Jay had ever seen.

He stood next to you and he never took his eyes off you for not even for a second. His hand gently stroked your hair, as he used to do when you slept. It had now become a habit, stroking your hair and watching you sleep. Sometimes it happened that you smiled even in your sleep, snuggling closer to him, but this time it didn’t happen.

Your skin was cold under his fingers, as he stroked your cheeks and, God, he would’ve given anything to be in your place, so as not to see you hurt even for a minute.

Jay leaned over and gave a kiss on your forehead, as he kept caressing your face and hair.

“Do you have any idea how much I fucking love you? How do you make me feel? How important you are to me?” Jay began to speak, remembering the words you said to him once and that talking to patients asleep can have a positive effect on their awakening. He left another kiss on your forehead. “Do you have any idea how much you scared me today my baby? God, I've never felt so scared as I did today, not even while I was overseas. Seeing that son of a bitch...” Jay stopped, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat as he remembered the moment you were shot “I'm so sorry I couldn't stop him, I don't want to imagine how scared you were, I’ll never be able to forgive myself, I was there, a few meters from you, I have always sworn to protect you and keep you safe but I have failed and I am so sorry.”

“Please wake up baby, don't you dare leave me here alone okay? I can't be in this fucking world without you. I swear to you, I'll never leave you alone again, but now you just have to open your beautiful eyes alright? Can you do it for me? Show me those beautiful eyes that made me madly fall in love with you?”.

Jay stood there at your bedside indefinitely, watching you sleep and hoping that sooner or later you would finally open your eyes. Will spent nearly every twenty minutes visiting you and it was in vain for him to try to get Jay to go and rest.

It was when he felt your fingers move slightly, after almost twelve years, that he feared he was truly hallucinating.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” he literally jumped up from his chair, holding your hands as he looked at you “Baby, can you hear me? Please answer me, give me a sign. Please, please, please.”

He felt your fingers move slowly again and at that point he made sure it really happened, it wasn't a joke his mind was playing on him.

It took you some time to understand what was happening, where you were.

Your head was pounding terribly as if you were being hammered, your vision was blurred and you had to blink several times to focus.

The first thing you saw were the artificial lights coming from the ceiling, which at the time were terribly annoying.

“Where am I?” you grumbled with difficulty, feeling weak and completely without strength.

“You're in the hospital, love,” replied a voice you recognized immediately. It was Jay, your Jay. “No, no, stay still, don't get up.”

Your eyes met Jay's and the joy he felt at seeing you awake was something that was minimally comparable.

“You finally woke up,” he said, almost in a whisper, as if he hardly believed it. He stroked your hair, leaving a kiss on your forehead.

Suddenly images of what had happened flooded your mind, the exact scene in which you were shot seemed to repeat itself in a loop in your head.

“Has... Has any other person been hurt?" you asked.

Jay nodded his head, sadly. “But they’re all fine. He was caught soon after, he surrendered without opposition.”

“And you? How are you?”.

He chuckled, taking your hand with his and letting a kiss on it. “You're the one on a hospital bed.”

You let out a faint laugh but it results in a painful twinge. “I guess I deserved it.”

Jay's face immediately turned serious and his heart tightened in his chest as he heard these words. “You can't really believe such thing. You don't deserve to be here baby, it's not your fault what happened, please, get it out of your pretty little head.”

“His wife is dead and I had to save her,” you whispered, your gaze fixed on the ceiling as you tried in vain to hold back the tears.

“His wife died of a complication, every surgery has it, you always tell me, and you did everything possible to save her. You don't have to pay for something you are not to blame for, please stop thinking this okay?”.

You were silent for a moment and you then returned your eyes to Jay.

“Baby... Are you crying?” you asked, alarmed. He shook his head slightly, wiping away his tears quickly and avoiding looking at you.

“No, I'm not,” he muttered but let go when you started stroking his face. He lowered his head and let himself go in a liberating cry, venting the frustration, the anger, the sadness but above all, the relief.

“Oh baby, it's okay, it's okay,” you tried to console him as best you could given your position.

“I was so fucking scared to lose you Y/N…” he whispered.

“I know, love, I know, I'm sorry.”

“You don't have to apologize, on the contrary, I’m sorry, I should be the one to console you,” he said, wiping his tears and then looking at you. Your heart skipped a beat to see his beautiful green eyes shine so bright, still shiny from crying.

“You don't have to apologize Jay, there was nothing you could’ve done to stop it and you don’t have to blame yourself for not being able to stop this from happening,” you spoke up, realizing you were crying too.

“What about we both stop to blame ourselves?”.

“We have a deal,” you faintly smiled “Do you have any idea how much I fucking love you too?”.

Jay let out a laugh, knowing you had actually heard his words as he spoke to you. He stood up again and leaned towards you before grabbing your face and pressing his lips against yours. There were no words to describe what he felt, what that contact caused within him, the relief to know he still had another chance to be with you, he still had he chance to kiss and hug you forever.

“Can you get close to me?” you asked.

“But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me, please baby, I need you now.”

“God, how can I say no to this beautiful face?” he said and you giggled, trying to ignore the pain that this entailed. Slowly and carefully, you tried to move in the bed, so you could make room for Jay and not make the stitches fit.

“Be careful baby,” Jay warned, helping you.

Jay positioned himself beside you, trying to be careful not to make any sudden movements, and he put his arm under your head. He printed so many kisses on your face and forehead, still unable to believe the luck of still having you there with him.

“I swear to god I’ll never let you leave the house again, I can’t risk someone taking you away from me.”

You giggled again. “Don’t make me laugh please, it hurts.”

“It’s not my fault you have such a funny boyfriend, it’s something you’ll have to live with.”

You hit him with that bit of strength you had, aching from the wound. “Can you stop it?”.

“Sure my love,” he kissed you on the forehead again. “Now try to rest, okay? You need to regain strength so I’ll get you home as soon as possible. I will always be here beside you, I won’t let you go.”

And with those words of comfort, you slowly slipped into a deep sleep, into the arms of the man you loved and with the hope, sooner or later, everything would be fine, everything would return back to normality.

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Masterlist

Buy me a coffee? ☕

[clatterbane]

And, speak of the devil!

Hadn't heard anything other than from primary care since that appointment, so now I get three notifications in a row from the healthcare portal.

(With the aid of autotranslate.)

So yeah, no wonder primary care had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about maybe getting the first sample drawn while I was there, and they were already taking my blood over the anemia. (Your local vårdcentral is usually where to get any samples drawn, unless you want to go to the university phlebotomy clinic for that.)

The endo clinic is apparently planning to handle that themselves. I had no idea how to even get that taken care of, and was planning to ask my nurse there how to do the thing once Mr. C got back and could accompany me.

But yeah, they evidently want me there three (3) freaking mornings in a row, for short appointments at the equivalent of 2 or 3 A.M. for my nocturnal ass. At least it is the endo clinic here in town, but it takes longer to get there from the parking building than they are likely to keep me.

The plan is apparently to do a dexamethasone suppression test.

Because of the difficulty in obtaining 24-hour urine collections in many outpatients, some physicians use a l-mg overnight dexamethasone suppression test. For this test, the patient takes l mg of dexamethasone orally at 11 p.m., and the plasma cortisol level is measured at 8 a.m. the following day (normal value: 5 μg per dL or less [140 nmol per L]). The reported sensitivity of this test is 98 percent; the reported specificity is 80 percent.

So they want me to get a baseline sample drawn, take thev dexamethasone, then come back the next morning for another blood sample. The third day?

I also have some nasty suspicions about what a hefty dose of dexamethasone might do to my blood sugar, but hey. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ It is the specialist diabetes clinic proposing to give me the stuff.

Glancing through that web link, I am getting even more honked off at that new endo and her eyeballing judgments.

The most common symptom is sudden weight gain.3,6 Obesity, usually with a central distribution, is the most frequent sign. Any sign or symptom of cortisol excess can develop initially, but muscle weakness, bruising, hypertension, facial rounding and plethora eventually occur. Hypertension is likely to develop in patients who are more than 40 years of age.

Yeah, I know. I have quite coincidentally been there in the distant past, and it ain't much fun. (Not gonna lie, especially when this starts happening to you at 15-16.) I am currently showing zero of those symptoms other than the high blood pressure--which is not at all unusual, and only really went screwy after one particular round with COVID. I am only barely out of the Officially Underweight range again right now, on someone with this size frame to boot. I have pretty much the opposite of the insulin resistance too much cortisol will cause, and they bloody well know that.

It's not a very nice feeling when this is still evidently what immediately pops into your new doctor's mind the first time they clap eyes on you, and then they get all weird about it. When you're even there for a routine check-in over something completely different. Good thing I'll probably only have to deal with the woman once a year.

[stardustndreamsofsilver]

Brown Eyed Girl

Sammy x Reader(f)

Warnings: Birth, planned c-section

"Sammy... Baby... It's time." You say quietly, gently nudging him.

Sleepily, Sam rubs his eyes and stretches. "Wait, what's today?" He asks, shooting up.

"It's baby day." You smile.

"It's baby day!! It's baby day Rosie!" He says excitedly giving her lots of pets and kisses.

The two of you get up and start getting ready to head to the hospital. Taking a shower, and putting on comfy clothes, you head to the kitchen to find Sam.

"Are you ready?" You ask.

"Yep, just called Jake, he's on his way to sit with Rosie. Got your bag already in the car and the baby carrier is installed and ready to go." He says, grabbing your hand. "Let's go meet our girl."

Arriving at the hospital, you get placed in your room. After both of you were prepped for surgery, all you had to do was sit and wait for your doctor.

At 7:30, your doctor walks in and claps his hands together. "Alright Mom and Dad let's go have this baby." He says.

In the OR, Sammy sits up by your head and holds your hand.

"She'll be here any minute. You're doing so well, I'm so proud of you. I know you're a little scared, but they're taking good care of you." He says, reaching over to wipe a tear from your face.

All of the sudden you hear a cry. "Is that her?" You ask.

"Well it's not your husband." Jokes the doctor.

Getting up, Sam goes and watches as baby is weighted and measured. Taking tons of pictures to show you later.

"She's beautiful! She looks just like you!" Sam says from across the room.

"Would you like to hold her?" The nurse asks.

"Absolutely! Can I take her to her mama?" He asks.

With the go ahead, he carries your baby girl over to show her to you. Crouching down, he holds her so you can see her face. She's beautiful. She's perfect.

A few moments later, the nurse says it's time for them to go so the doctor can finish. Giving you a quick kiss, "We'll be waiting for you. Don't be too long." He says with a wink and they leave the OR.

You're not sure how long it's been, but you wake in the recovery room to the sound of humming. As you open your eyes, you see Sam leaning over the bassinet, rubbing your daughters tiny face, singing the words, "And you're my, my brown eyed girl."

[zemkzone]

🗑

Oh, this is a fun one. Have a long-lost Cisco-Kendra talk, coz it couldn't fit anywhere properly.

As though she’d caught the direction his thoughts had gone in, Kendra asked about the late scientist-cum-speedster. “What was he like? The guy who was pretending to be Harrison Wells?” She sat down at the edge of the longest couch, sipping at her coffee curiously. “He wasn’t a bad guy,” Cisco said slowly, sliding the cardboard tray onto the coffee table. “Not when I first met him. Most of the staff he’d already hired were the best of the best or up-and-coming stars. They were all like Caitlin or Hartley. Ronnie was an exception.” “And you,” Kendra pointed out. “I never figured out exactly what I wanted to do with myself, but you, you’re a smart guy. I only got to see you fixing that security system, but you really know your stuff.” “Hey, everyone discovers their thing at different times.” Cisco sat down, examining the drinks and pulling over what was indeed his usual triple caramel cappuccino. He’d tried the Flash—the super-caffeinated drink—once, but he hadn’t been able to sleep the whole night after. He was a little too intimidated by the Captain Cold. He tried not to snigger, seeing one of those in the container and wondering just who it was for. “That’s a good way to look at things.” A far-off look passed over Kendra’s face. “I know I keep asking you this, but how are you doing?” Cisco asked, scooting closer and taking her hand. He sighed mentally with relief when no new vibes hit him. “It’s sweet that you keep asking, but I’m fine, really.” She was smiling again, if a little wearily. “I was out of town when the particle accelerator exploded, so I really don’t see wings in my future. My life’s the same as it’s always been—aside from being hyperaware every time I see news reports about Captain Cold and the Flash now.” “I really wish you’d gotten to meet them under different circumstances.” Cisco looked around the room. “Well, maybe not the same way I did—nine months giving them sponge baths and changing their catheter tubes.” He’d never be able to forget that. “No way!” Kendra clapped a hand over her mouth, laughing with disbelief. “When they were in those comas? Why didn’t you guys hire a nurse or something?” “I thought Doctor Wells—well, fake Wells—was cost-cutting. But now…” He shrugged heavily. “I guess he didn’t want anyone else to know what was happening here.” He cleared his throat and changed subjects. “You know, this is the couch Barry and Len crashed on the night after they woke from their comas. When I got here the next morning, the table was covered in takeout containers and pizza boxes.”

[tigereyes45]

AOS mckirk + 43? ❤️

Prompt 43 was, "Why aren't you eating?" You can find the list of prompts here. I originally wrote a version of this request where it's Jim not eating, but then my mind kept saying, but what if it was McCoy. So I did that. XD There's going to be a second part to this where Jim is the one not eating. You can also read the story on AO3 here:

Summary:

It's easy to push aside eating in favor of finishing a task at hand. Everyone needs reminders sometimes.

Start:

When Jim Kirk steps into McCoy's private office space, there's a swagger that's ever-present in his moves. A self-confidence that's more act than reality. Leonard has enough kindness to keep from announcing the fact. The doctor lowers a PADD that had been claiming his ever-dissipating attention, for the last hour and a half.

"Nurse Chapel tells me you haven't been eating." The doctor drops his PADD onto his desk as if he couldn't be bothered to read it for another moment.

“She told you.” McCoy corrects before rolling his eyes. It’s official. No more late-night lab tests with Spock. The vulcan’s beginning to rub off on him. Leonard shakes his head. His fingers impatiently tap against the PADD’s screen. "Christine needs to learn how to keep information to herself." Jim’s foot began to subconsciously tap along with Bones’ fingers. McCoy huffs and crosses his arms. "It's unprofessional."

"She worries about you Bones." Kirk leans against the doctor's desk. A knowing smile on his face. "I worry about you."

That’s obvious. Despite his role as captain, Jim has never been able to hide his favoritism. He’s kept those who he first encountered on the ship closer than most others. Their history throughout the academy resulted in McCoy being allowed closer than most. Even more so than the bridge crew.

"I don't need you worrying over me." Bones insists. How many times have they had a conversation like this? With another huff, he stands up. "And leave Christine alone. She's a rather skilled nurse. I'd hate to lose her. Again." That last word came out with a little more bite than he intended.

"I'll keep that in mind."

There's so much work to do. Wounds to heal, chests waiting to be sewn up, check-ups, vaccinations, physical therapies to watch, paperwork to sign off on, newly released research to catch up on, and then review. All before they head off to start this new five-year mission. The work never ends, and damn it! He's a doctor. If anyone knows how far and long their body can go, it's him. No puffed-up captain is going to tell him otherwise.

"Bones," Jim's soft call is followed by a hand clapping around McCoy's shoulder. Leonard shrugs the handoff. Concern fills Jim's face. His usual smirk now hangs awkwardly open. No doubt the gears are turning in that quick mind. Nimble as a fox. That's what his father would’ve called Jim.

If they ever had the chance to meet.

"I just want to make sure you keep some meat on you." Jim jokes, rounding on McCoy. He folds his arms over his chest and offers a light smile. Even that small smile would be enough to brighten up most of McCoy's days. Not now though. There’s no time. He’s due for a surgery in about eight hours. Eight hours that’ll pass in a blink of an eye if he’s not careful.

"I've got work to do Jim." Leonard tries to step around. 

Jim swiftly sways and weaves to keep in his way. "Come on Bones. Join me for lunch."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can.” Jim’s the one rolling his eyes now. “Take a break.” He throws a hand out, leaning in the doorway. Thoroughly blocking McCoy’s only way out. “Captain's orders." He adds with a wink.

"I said I can't." It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but there’s too much on the scales. He has to keep going just to keep them balanced. Otherwise, Jim will be short on crew, and missing talented people. Individuals that may keep him alive. Out there in the vast emptiness, they’ll only have each other to count on. Starfleet won’t be able to help if they get into trouble. They can’t have come so far for McCoy to make a mistake. Not now. Not again.

McCoy furrows his brows and fights back the memories threatening to take his attention. Deep down Leonard knows why he’s doing this. Why it has become so easy to push his own needs aside and focus on all the lives on board. 

Part of it is his training. Doctors of all kinds learn early on in school how to push down the biological signs of hunger and stress. When you have lab results due in the morning, but the tests haven’t run their full course yet, and midterms are around the corner, while professor after professor is encouraging you to start thinking about your thesis work now before you even manage to get out of undergrad, well stress becomes seconded nature. Exhaustion, hunger pangs, and increased anxiety that verges on panic attacks, all get swept under the rug, and suppressed until a body can’t go on anymore. By the time they get to medical school most students have bodies that are simultaneously, in a horrendous state, yet conditioned to work through it. They keep to themselves. Reminding himself with post-its, handwritten notes scrawled in the empty spaces of his books, and phone alerts to drink water, eat food, and take five minutes to close his eyes before pushing on. Always aware of the fact of the hypocrisy between the instructions he gives to patients on how to care for themselves as he works himself to the bone.

Leonard’s trained not to share his own problems. To ignore his own needs, but even that can only go so far. Deep down there’s more to it. A fear deeper than the grief that washes over him as he loses a patient. Something that motivates him more than any fear he experienced when in school or out in space.

He can’t lose Jim again.

"And I said you can." Jim opens up his arms, talking with his hands. "You're not much help to anyone if you're all skin and bones."

The timing had been more. Leonard knows that’s not what James was saying. He wasn’t invalidating the fear, but rationality wasn’t home today. "Damn it Jim, I said no!" McCoy’s hand goes flying past Jim, towards the door’s control. Fingers catch on the bottom of Jim’s long sleeve as his palm smacks the buttons.

It’s painful how ingrained that loss had become in his life. Terrifying how the mere thought of it sends his mind spiraling as if lost to a deep, powerful vortex that sucks everything else away.

"Hey!" Jim pushes a hand against Leonard's chest. "Watch the hand, McCoy."

McCoy pulls his hand back. His fingers were shaking. With a deep sigh Leonard folds them in. Doing his best to calm his racing nerves the doctor closes his eyes. Doing his best stern, yet calm voice Leonard says, "Just get out of here Jim. I've got lives to save, and people who need fixing." People you need.

Leonard opens his eyes slowly. The look on Jim’s face was one of determination. Better than heartbroken. McCoy can only imagine his own expression. He needs to get back to work.

“Nurse Chapel.” Christine appears right behind him, as if waiting for Jim’s call. “When is Doctor McCoy’s next scheduled appointment?”

“In eight hours sir. It’s Lieutenant Alfonse’s surgery.” An engineer skilled enough, that Scotty himself has been asking after his health since they first discovered the kidney issue.

“Does he have any pressing matters in the meantime?”

Christine doesn’t even bother pretending to look at the datapadd in her hands. “No sir?” Her eyes stare McCoy down.

“He’s officially off shift. Call me directly if there’s an emergency.” Leonard fights back the urge to swear. Jim really isn’t going to let this drop.

“You sir?” Chapel asks, trying to get a look at the captain’s face. The man keeps his back to her, and his eyes trained on McCoy.

Jim crosses his arms. “He’ll be eating with me in my room.” A new smirk adorns his face. “Won’t you Bones?”

Sensing no room for argument McCoy agrees through gritted teeth, “I guess I will, sir.” He added that last word to make it clear that while he’s bending he’ll remember this. If Jim’s bothered by that idea, he doesn’t act like it.

Jim steps aside, finally letting Leonard pass by. Chapel steps back out of the way, heading over to the bio beds, with a polite nod of her head. Leonard steals a glance at her datapadd. It wasn’t even turned on. They planned this! Jim comes bounding after. He lightly pats Leonard’s arm, as he falls into step beside the doctor. “No be angry Bones. You’re gonna like this.”

“I like working.”

Jim playfully smacks McCoy’s chest. “No you don’t. You like fried potatoes, dumplings, and steak bites.”

That stops Leonard dead in his tracks. “What?” He turns to face Jim whose got the biggest shit-eating grin. Sickbay’s front door slides shut behind them.

Jim grabs both of McCoy’s arms, and fix the end of his short sleeves. “Like I said,” Jim leans closer practically bubbling with energy. “You’ll like it. I even used basil.”

This time Leonard couldn’t keep his face from forming a wide, disblieving smile. “You what?” Did that mean Jim actually cooked? Yeah they were still on Earth but it must’ve been out of his way to go and grab actual food from a market. McCoy’s stomach growls, voicing it’s lack of care over where the food came from, or how it was prepared. Either way he has to try it now. As if it wasn’t already being required by Jim.

A home cook meal. Literally. It shouldn’t be such an odd thought considering that the Enterprise was going to be his only home for the next five years. Leonard had expected to only eat synthesized food for it all. An actual cooked meal, made with fresh ingredients, his mouth starts to water.

The captain was already a few steps down the hall, as McCoy’s feet finally lift and start to follow. With each step bringing him a little bit closer to the promise of food, his body grows lighter. There’s still a lot of work to do. Guilt threatens to rear it’s ugly head back up, but Jim’s smile banishes the thoughts to the deepest recesses of Bones’ mind.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget to actually enjoy his time with the people he wants to save.

Another lesson trained into the practice, unfortunately.

[kickingitwithkirk]

When the past won't let go

Summary: Sometimes there’s more to the story

Pairing: Cordell Walker x Reader

Word Count: 2511

Warnings: cursing, past memories, angst, personal conflict, mentions of death, revealing secrets

Square Filled: Forbidden Relationship @walker-bingo

A/N: This segment is told from Walker's POV

A/N II: part six of Duke x Reader/Cordell x Reader series of drabbles and stories for this bingo.

*Set between 2.05 Partners and Third Wheels & 2.06 Douglass Fir

*divider by @firefly-graphics

*no beta-all mistakes are mine

Walker

“Agent Graves knew Stan Morrison killed your wife...”

Those eight words turned my heart inside out again.

It was a good thing Micki showed up at that moment, she took one look and ordered me to take a walk before I lost my shit and hospital security got called. 

I ended up in one of the city's parks heading down a hiking trail that thankfully wasn’t busy this time of day came to an outcropping near the river, sat down, and took off my hat, letting it dangle between my legs, going back over that year.

The pain was followed by excessive drinking and extended workload, using both to numb me, barely going through the motions of life without actually being in it till the accident at home and decided it was best for all to leave, going undercover on Operation: Watch The Throne. 

After months of trying to make inroads, those two women came; Twyla Jean, who got me into the Kings through a fake relationship, and Y/N, the mystery piece who made me put in the work to crack open the door she used to keep everyone at bay.  

The one my memories, or is it my heart, refuses to release me from. 

Later Stan’s betrayal was exposed after years of friendship..hell, the man was family, sent us all into a tailspin cumulated with us standing upon that spot forced him to confess after Emily stumbled upon a drug haul he pulled the trigger on the kill shot to save his own skin from Northside Nation. 

All this time, now I’m wondering how many other things I’ve missed.

I peered through the view window to see Micki texting on her phone spotting me taps a finger to her lips, and came out quietly shutting the door.

“You cooled off?”

“Yeah, hey, thank you for giving me some time to sort stuff out.”

“Is it sorted?”

“For now. So did Y/N write anything else about Mannon?”

“She wrote down a few places he might be hiding but so far, no sign he’s been to any of them. The doctor came by and said she’ll be out tomorrow. I let Cap know and he’s arranging a safe house.”

“Okay, good.”

“So, you wanna tell me about it?”

“No.”

Micki’s eyebrow arched, “since when?”

I spy James coming down the hall, “how about not right now.” 

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Hold him to what?” James asked, “Cap, we all set?” Micki deflected.

“Everything’s set but I’d rather finish this discussion a little more privately,” he opens the door for her to enter first, “I called in a couple of favors and got the safe house in Buffalo.”

“That’s not in our jurisdiction,” Micki says and James lowers his voice, “I did some digging. It’s not been substantiated but it’s looking like Mannon may not only have informants in Austin but other law enforcement agencies, so we need to fly under the radar on this.”

“You’re thinking Graves is on the leaks?” 

“I could’ve told you that,” a scratchy voice answered.

“You’re supposed to be writing, not talking.” I sternly say and you give me that particular look hear James stifle a laugh before clapping my shoulder, “good luck with that.”

Next morning 

The nurse had finished going over discharge instructions when James dropped by with the safehouse details and informed us that the landlord had taken what Y/N had of value as payment for damages and tossed everything else. 

“My bag, y’all happen to confiscate it?” James shook his head, “I’m sorry, we didn’t find it.”

“What happened to the clothes I had on?”

“They had to cut your uniform off and you were barefoot.”

“Leave it to that sonuvabitch to take my last sixty-five bucks.” Y/N croaked out.

“I’ve already signed off on a purchase voucher for what you’ll need,” James said, “I’ll reach out to some contacts who can help with getting you back on your feet once we have Mannon in custody.”

Tugging at the robe-covered hospital gown, “wonder if they’ll let me keep this lovely ensemble, maybe get some of those awesome slippers to match since I don’t have a-pot to piss in.”

She broke off coughing and I grabbed the water cup, “that’s what you get for talking too much,” sticking the straw between her lips. “You can borrow my stuff till we get you some.”

“I’m no charity case, Ranger Walker,”  Y/N mumbled around the straw.

“Never thought you were.” 

Buffalo, TX

“Well, this is quaint.” 

Micki’s sarcasm wasn’t far off. 

The safe house turned out to be an older one-bedroom, one-bath ranch in the middle of nowhere with a pull-out and doorways I have to duck through.

“At least we got a clear view of the perimeter.”

“For once I’m happy it’s winter, makes it harder for anyone to hide, even in camo,” Micki commented. “We’ll still need to periodically check around that corpse of trees, looked pretty thick when we pulled in.”

“Let’s hope Mannon hasn’t caught on to our ruse and is following the decoy to Fredericksburg.” 

Micki opened the fridge, “whoever set this up didn’t leave much, I better do a supply run.”

“Why you?”

“Cause an almost 6’5” Sasquatch in Ranger clothes isn’t gonna stand out?”

“Good point. Head out-of-town so locals stay in the dark.”

“I’ll change and go to Palestine or Mexia,”  Micki grabs her bag and goes into the bedroom leaving the door cracked, “gotta feeling we'll be stuck here for a while, so I’ll double up on the groceries, especially with how much you pack away.” 

“Funny, where’s Y/N?”

Micki walked out slipping on her jacket and crossing her arms, “locked herself in the bath muttering something about preferring the hoosgow then stuck in an ace in the hole with a tenderfoot and blatherskite. She’s got quite the mouth on her.”

“Y/N tends to be colorful when stressed.”

 “What’s she like normally?”

“Sarcasm on a shingle.” Y/N sarcastically quips.

My breath hitched seeing you in my flannel and faded jeans, the type so worn in they’re almost too comfortable to take off, accentuating your curves that’ve haunted my dreams spot toes peeking out under the rolled cuffs.

“What’re you grinning at?”

“You ahh, you still wear that purple polish.”

“Right. I’m gonna get going,” I felt Micki’s scrutiny, mouthing behave, making mine downturn in response.

“I see Ramirez doesn’t tolerate any of your bullshine either.” 

Not giving me a chance to respond, you walk off to the cupboard finding the extra set of bedding and pillows come back, cocking your head for me to move.

“What’re you doing?”

“Making up the pullout.”

“Okay, but you’re not sleeping out here.”

“Why?”

“What’d ya mean why? You’re doubling up with Micki..”

“You two can double up in this dice house, I’m parking it out here!”

“The hell you are! Look, your ex has proven he can slip in and out of places undetected so until he’s in custody, we’re going to need to keep you within eyesight 24/7.”

“Ranger Walker, does that mean you’re personally gonna join me in the bath and scrub my back?”

“I..you..you know that’s not what I meant!”

“I’m not going to argue this one,” your voice is wearing out from overuse, “Y/N you probably aren't gonna believe me but I understand what a traumatic..”

“How am I supposed to believe anything coming from that mouth of yours?” Shit, the sheer vitriol in your voice.

 “I know this is my only chance at earning any trust from you again, and I‘m gonna be one hundred percent open and honest.” Sitting down I looked up at her with no filters, “remember me telling you about my wife?”

“You said she died in an accident.”

“Her name was Emily. The last time I saw her, she and a friend headed for the border, restocking supply stations. She called..she was so scared then I heard gunshots..I tried calling her back but I knew.”  

Fuck, feel like I’m gonna choke on my tongue.

“After the funeral, I buried myself in the job and the bottle. Finally, my family, James, and Stan Morrison did an intervention. I couldn’t be there anymore so I told them I was taking the undercover job outta town..and lost myself in those months. ”

I wasn’t expecting you to sit down next to me, let alone place your hand on my leg, and took the risk of placing my hand on top of yours.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes and have no right but I am asking you to give me, Cordell Walker, a chance to prove you can trust me.”

Days later

“How much more time does she need?” Micki snapped.

Y/N’s indecisiveness was wearing on all our nerves, seriously thinking of hitting that bottle I’d snuck in. 

Of course, it didn’t help this morning Micki decided to try talking, okay, she tried some psychoanalysis learned from Adrianna, leading to one helluva blowout that had me physically hauling Y/N outside like a sack of taters. 

Glancing away from you angrily pacing outside to an equally angry Micki, “as long as she needs. Look, we’re all tired and cranky..”

 “You think?” 

“We can’t push..”

“.. then implement those charms of yours Beau so we can..”

“Wrap this up and move on to the next case?” 

We both startled not hearing you come in, “gee, wish it was that easy for me, I’d love to be able to move on from this.”

“You’ve had ample opportunity to tell anyone in law enforcement..”

“If I had, I'd been dead a long time ago.”

“What?” 

“There’s a shitload more to this than you’ve been told.” 

“Walker, grab that bottle I know you’ve got, and let’s all get real comfortable,” Micki retrieved three cups and sat down.

“I don’t wanna discuss my personal goings-on so let’s start with what brought him here.” Y/N threw back her drink, “ya know why I ditched my real name?” 

“Your file wasn’t clear.”

“Because I wouldn’t play their reindeer games.” Not entirely sure where she was going and Micki appeared as puzzled as me. “Wait, you two really don’t know who my family are?”

“No.”

“Daddy got his start by helping certain elected individuals with their less-than-legal activities. In appreciation, they made him Senator Y/D/L/N.”

“One of the Senators who confirms PSC appointments,” Micki states, and I add, “PSC oversees DPS,” some more pieces click, “he found out about Stan’s illegal activities.”

Y/N tapped the side of her nose.

 “The mysterious appearance of pension funds also blipped on the Secret Services financial investigations radar but they didn’t have enough tangible evidence against Morrison.  It was sheer coincidence Eric was sent at the same time the Kings started robbing banks.” 

“The Kings started a few months before Walker went undercover.”

“No, they’d started small a few years ago, Clint wanted it down to a T before moving on to bigger game, that was Eric’s in. He came up with partnering with Northside; in exchange for laundering the money, they’d make a delivery or pickup while on the circuit, that’s how Clint, Crystal, and Jaxon got misdemeanor drug charges. When Twerp came in, Clint persuaded her into giving Northside banking information on the businesses they were interested in, like The Side Step and Carlos Mendoza's family businesses.”  

“Wow, gotta give it to Graves,” Micki interjects, “she’s better at burying shit than I’d given her credit for.” 

Y/N gave me a curious look, “you didn’t know any of this?”

“No, but it makes sense, what Stan said, this can’t go on. I thought it was my screwing up at home but I was already getting too close before going under, why he hoped that the Rodeo Kings would end me.”

“Just like Clint, might’ve called you family but didn’t stop him from turning if he thought you were a threat.”

Micki pointedly glares at Y/N, “and you blithely went along with them, not caring who got hurt..” 

Y/N shot outta her seat and disappeared outside.

Shit! 

I sat down next to Y/N and leaned back against the same corps trees that half circled a small pond hand her one of the mugs I’d brought. 

“Been out here awhile, thought you might need a warm-up.” She took a sip and smiled, “you’ve never forgotten what I like since that first time you offered me coffee.”

“My daddy told me before I got married, ‘son, the key to a happy marriage is never forget what a woman likes to drink’.”

Y/N sighed, “Clint always was crazier than a Kiowa Paint Mare, somewhere along the way, he got twisted. I never believed he’d take things that far, or hurt your family as he did.”

 “How’d you..”

“Trevor. He told me everything but your real name.”

“Clint blamed me for Crystal, for what happened that day, wanted me to understand what it was to suffer. If Trevor hadn’t interfered, I’da killed him with my bare hands.” 

“Then you’d have become him.”

“Hmph, I’ve been on the edge of that precipice more than once.” “But you didn’t jump,” she said, “your Jimmy Cricket didn’t let you.”

“Let your conscience be your guide Jimmy Cricket?”

“No, don’t know what else to call it. That something that stops you from stepping off the ledge of not coming back,” she shrugged.

“For me, it’s my family. No matter how hard it gets, they never gave up on me.”

Y/N starts playing with the chain for my dog tags, making the rational part of my brain holler at me this is wrong, she’s under my protection and off limits.

Irrational desire flames in me as her feathery touch makes my skin tingles, accept the invitation of tasting her sweet lips.

A hand covering my mouth instinctively made me grab their arm.

“Walker, it’s me,” Y/N whispered before removing her hand, “stay quiet, there are people moving around outside.”

“How many?”

“Not sure but I saw three night-sights.”

Shit, not good hear Micki stirring, “hey, we’ve got company.”

***

“Slow down but don’t stop,” I reach for my duffel from the floorboard.

“Walker, whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”

“Stick to the plan..”

“..you bailing out of a moving vehicle wasn’t..”

“He’s right,” Y/N grabs hers, “sticking together gonna get you killed. I’ll split, you two can say it was during the firefight and..”

“..I’m coming with you..”

 “..the hell you are..”

“..you are in my custody and my responsibility. Micki, got any extra cash on you?” 

I rifled through the wallet she tossed me, “get Liam to discretely look into Graves’s recent activities, got a feeling Mannon’s sudden appearance wasn’t random, and tell James I’ll be in contact in a few days.”

“Walker..”

“I know. Be careful Flor, we don’t know who to trust inside the circle anymore.” 

Glancing in the rearview mirror, “on three.”

SPN TAGS: @donnaintx @lyarr24 @flamencodiva @b3autyfuldisast3r @lassie-bird @nancyml @spnbaby-67 @leigh70

Sam/Jared: @idreamofplaid

[anthrofreshtodeath]

Ooh 4 and 10, a forced return and kisses??? Angst central 🥳🥳

I enjoy some angst, especially in bite-sized chunks. @kerfuffle-puffin also asked for 4, so we'll start with that one.

___

4 Kisses where it hurts

Maura’s thoughts are so disorganized that it chokes her. She is used to order, used to the gestalt cognition her autism had previously blessed her with, that her brain injury has taken away. She’s never gotten a diagnosis for the former, no need with her expertise, and the latter had been obvious as soon as her head hit the bar of The Dirty Robber those weeks prior. 

Her brain had been so… so good before. So beautiful.

Now, she pulls up BCU’s medical dictionary of health terms just so, you know, she can double check that her pathology reports say what she wants them to. She consults the lowly thesaurus.com so that she can confirm her previously plentiful bank of synonyms without sounding repetitive. 

She never sounded repetitive. Oversharing? Sure. Unnecessary reiteration? A lot. But sounding repetitive? Never. Not since she used to repeat things as a little girl just because she liked the way they sounded, how the cadence and the prosody lilted out of her tiny mouth and changed the airwaves around her. Constance had rid her of that, and quickly.

What… what would Mother say now? Now that Maura stares at a computer screen unable to remember the thought she’d started just a few seconds ago. Her fingers had been sure, they’d begun the sentence so quickly, and now she can’t decide if she wanted to talk about the bullet deep to the victim’s left lung or the deep vein thrombosis that would have killed him hours after the bullet entered his chest anyway.

Either way, her head wants to hang and she wants to cry. 

“Hey,” a voice she’d never forget even with the most devastating of traumatic brain injuries, all but whispers, dragging her out of her head.

When had Jane stopped in the doorway? Before the concussion and the inflammation and the chiari malformation diagnosis, Maura would have spotted Jane’s march from the elevator to the threshold.

Jane doesn’t give her much time to contemplate though, because as soon as Maura looks up and as soon as Jane sees that Maura’s been weepy, she goes over to Maura’s desk.

She takes Maura’s head in her hands, cradling the thing that has given Maura’s life so much meaning and, recently, so much consternation. Jane looks down, Maura looks up, and then Jane places her lips right in the center of Maura’s forehead. Three kisses. “Looked a little sad,” Jane reasons when she pulls away and Maura’s confusion registers across her face. “Thought I might know what was botherin’ ya. Wanna run through this thing together? I’m a good spell check.”

10 forced reunion

Maura’s heels clap through Boston Regional’s polished halls, and even though it’s not the ICU, her heart hammers just the same. She weaves through residents, nurses, and doctors as rooms blur by her. Gómez, O’Rourke, Mwangi, Jackson… Rizzoli.

She’s made it. From Korsak’s breathless call to her desk phone, to the hurried change out of scrubs and into the outfit she wears now, from the agonizing ascent of the elevator to the driver’s side of her car, she’s thundered across the city to Room 308. 

Jane is not supposed to be here.

Jane glowers at the edge of the hospital bed, arm in a sling and face scraped, because she is not supposed to be here. 

She is supposed to be deep in the webbing of an extortionist group that had already killed three people. She is supposed to be undercover, with no contact, for the remainder of the week at least. But, on this Monday, she is attempting to leave against medical advice. She was made and she was hustled out of the job gone wrong and she is mad.

Maura pauses in the doorway. Jane’s hair is more wild than usual and someone had been holding ice up to her eye because the gash over it is angry burgundy, but not swollen. It’s still weeping. Its first opening, probably at the hands of a large knife, had stained the front of her shirt. There’s still blood on her neck. It’ll scar, even if someone had bothered to suture it. Maura looks over to the side of the bed, the suture tray still there, with instruments dropped in a hurried mess on it, and realizes someone probably had bothered and been chased away for their trouble. 

“I’m glad you’re ok,” Maura chances, dropping her purse on the chair just to the right of the door. For all her bluster outside, she radiates calm now, like she knows no other way to be. 

“Oh fuck off,” Jane groans. Maura had expected as much. She doesn’t even flinch. In all their years in each other’s orbit, she’s finally learned that this means to come closer.

Most of the time.

“Is that what you told the physician?” Maura purrs with a little bit of teasing. She purses her lips, but one corner goes up and her eyes dance. 

Jane scoffs and turns away. “I’m goin’ home,” she says.

Presumably to lick the proverbial wounds, Maura surmises. She can’t reach that large one with her tongue. “Not before you let me close that. Here. In a hospital. With antiseptic.”

The doctor had even been kind enough to leave his stool, the padded one with the wheels so common to hospitals, and Maura brings it over, along with the tray. She goes to the wall, pulls a few nitrile gloves from the station next to the charting board, and then takes her seat. 

“I’d rather not,” Jane finally grumbles.

“I don’t care,” Maura tells her. “I care that you’re safe, and mostly intact. I care that your job spared your life - again. Though I know at any moment it could tear it away,” The frenetic heartbeat of the hallway returns, and this time her voice shakes. She won’t cry, though.

“This isn’t how I wanted to see you again. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to come back a winner,” Jane argues. Maura hears her voice shake, too, but not with tears. She holds the collection tray up, looks Jane in the eye, then nods to it.

Jane knows what to do. She spits the amalgam of phlegm and blood into it. Maura doesn’t flinch, doesn’t grimace, doesn’t gag. She just puts it down and hands Jane some gauze. “That is irrational of you,” she says to Jane. When Jane glares, she smiles. “It is. You have the best closing rate in the state. You are always a winner and one case isn’t going to alter that. You are mad because you are obsessive and you are filled with such… oh. Such vengeance. Try to stay still. I’m going to flush the wound,” Maura pauses her speech to squeeze the cold saline solution into Jane’s wound. 

“Agh fuck,” Jane snarls, but to her credit, she stays put. 

“You’re mad because you haven’t released the valve in awhile,” Maura continues. She rubs antiseptic around the cut before she pulls out the needle and thread. Jane won’t want the anesthetic because Jane needs to feel something. “And I keep telling you that there are safer, healthier, more enjoyable ways to do that, but you don’t listen.”

Jane says nothing. She lets Maura sew her up.

“Jane?” Maura calls with a small smile, because it’s been a few seconds and Jane is blushing.

“Not ready yet,” Jane rushes out in one quick breath.

“Well, I am,” Maura says. Her next tug is particularly forceful and it jerks Jane’s head closer to Maura’s chest. “And so I don’t mind waiting for you to be. But what I have planned is a lot better than a through-and-through and a forced reunion, so you may want to hurry up.”

Jane responds with a chuckle and white knuckles against her own knees. “Oh, fuck off.”

[lovelytsunoda]

cuts like a knife // daniel ricciardo (country singer!au)

summary: he's a local legend in perth, and she's just the girl that works at the dive bar. ( for all intents and purposes, every song that he sings is by bryan adams. )

the bar has been in her family for generations, started up by her great grandfather on her mothers side

neon signs covering every inch of the walls, wedding pictures hanging above the bar

the oldest is great grandpa jack and his wife nichola and the newest is y/n and daniel, cowboy hats on their heads adorned in cheap lettering that read bride and groom

the bar is packed, a buzz in the air about the hometown show, for that bar was where daniel ricciardo, now known professionally as big ricc, got discovered

it was where he played his first show at fifteen years old, where he me y/n for the first time. where they fell in love, where he got his first record deal

he’s been on tour continuously for two months now, in support of his new album and she’s just glad that he’s coming home

the back door to the bar swings open, and daniel comes in, followed by his touring band: lando on guitar, max on the drums and nico on bass

“hey mama ricc!” lando shouts, parking himself at the bar as the crowd cheers for the band

“hey!” y/n shouts, making her way back over to where the band has settled themselves “you can’t call me that until the baby gets here!”

she's standing behind the group, playfully smacking lando in the back of the head before turning to her husband

"welcome back, handsome." she says, kissing him slowly. "i've missed you."

"you could come with me if you sold the bar."

he said it every time but he knew y/n would never seel the bar. the bar was her entire livelihood. she could never do that to her family, she had too many memories associated with it and she loved working there too much

"you know i can't. so much of my childhood was spent here. i used to do math homework at this very bar, and one day, our little girl will as well."

she casually slipped it in there. when danny left for tour, the baby was too small for the doctors to determine a gender. she went for the scan while he was touring, and hadn't told him yet

"a little girl?" the singer's eyes go wide. "we're having a baby girl?"

while the members of the touring band congratulated him and clapped him on the back, y/n circled around to the other side of the bar, extracting the ultrasound picture from a drawer underneath the cash register, passing it over to daniel with a bright smile on her face

she was wearing a tight denim skirt and a white cropped tank top, an oversized flannel over the entire ensemble, but the days of tight skirts and cowboy boots would be over soon, once her baby bump started to show

"that's our daughter. our little girl." daniel said softly, reaching over the bar for his wife's hand, bringing it up to his lips to press a kiss on her knuckles.

"why don't you boys go and get ready to play, i'll run back into the kitchen and get chuck to whip you up some steaks?"

"sounds as good an idea as any!" nico clapped rubbing his hands together

"go get 'em, boys." she turned to danny. "love you, handsome."

"love you more, mamas." danny grins before jogging over to the stage

he opens the show with ‘cuts like a knife’, a local favourite as the entire bar begins to sing a long, clapping in time and waving their lights in the air

y/n is behind the bar, nursing a club soda and singing quietly under her breath

‘who is he baby? who is he and tell me what he means to you’

one hand on her stomach, eyes on the stage

"look, baby. that's your dad. and he loves you so much. we can't wait to meet you.”

danny looks over at her from the stage with pure adoration in his eyes

“this next song is one that I wrote with my wife when we were twenty years old, in this very dive bar. we weren’t together at the time, and she was scared she’d never fall in love. oh how wrong she was. and I’d like her to come over here and sing it with me.”

“dan..” she says with a smile, reluctant to take to the stage

“this one is called it’s only love.”

Lando starts the guitar work, and y/n gives in, bounding over to the stage and taking the extra microphone from nico

“when your heart has been broken, hard words have been spoken. it ain’t easy, cuz it’s only love .”

she has a beautiful voice, one that daniel fell in love with instantly

but this is the first time she’s sung in front of a crowd

and when the song is over?

he kisses her on the stage in front of the entire town, the bar erupting into cheers.

“I love you, daniel ricciardo.”

[eiirisworkshop]

Chiaroscuro

A Star Trek TOS fanfiction Complete fic available to read on Ao3 here.

~

Chapter 1

“Considering how well things went last time 'round,” McCoy griped, “I can't say I'm looking forward to this.”

Kirk clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I don't think Starfleet much cares whether any of us are looking forward to it, Bones. The Summit meeting is on our way and at least this time we only have one ambassador to worry about.”

“Yeah, yeah.” McCoy tugged at the cuff of his dress uniform tunic. “But the one we've got is the one I'd most like to avoid. If he's not dyin' on us, him and Spock'll be glaring at each other the whole damn trip and swearing they're doing no such thing. I dunno that I've got the mettle for either.”

Kirk stifled a grin. “Well, you have about five minutes to prepare yourself.”

McCoy huffed and grumbled something to do with a Southern summer not being enough time.

Right on schedule, five minutes later, they were docking at Hestia-1, an independent space station variously described as a floating city, a grand bazaar, and an island of lost toys. It also happened to have been the site of a recent trade agreement signing, which had brought Ambassador Sarek and his wife to the station. Now Kirk went to meet them—as was his duty, even if it was merely a formality—and escort them to the ship, McCoy and Spock in tow along with a couple security officers.

Sarek and Amanda were waiting for them in the station's gardens. Kirk plastered a standard, diplomatic smile across his face. “Ambassador, I hope you're in better health.”

Sarek contemplated him a short moment. “I am.”

“Glad to hear it.” He turned to the ambassador's wife. “And Lady Amanda, always a pleasure.”

“So nice to see you again, Captain,” Amanda said pleasantly before turning to greet her son. “Spock, how are you?”

“I'm fine, Mother,” Spock said diplomatically.

“Of course you are.” Amanda gave a faint smile, almost a smirk, Kirk wasn't entirely sure he hadn't imagined—at least until Spock's eyebrow twitched up in turn. Amanda's smile widened as she turned again. “Doctor, I trust you're well.”

“Doing quite alright, thank you, ma'am.” McCoy gave a half bow.

For his part, Sarek just nodded his way through the niceties.

Once the ambassador and his wife had been shown to their quarters, the ship had been resupplied, and all the necessary bureaucracy with the station had been seen to, the Enterprise continued on her way.

The end of Alpha shift found Lady Amanda sitting in the Officer's Mess with Lt. Uhura and Nurse Chapel, sharing an angular pot of aromatic bright pink tea between them.

“He does have to be mindful not to overexert himself, still,” Amanda said to Nurse Chapel. “Even so, I can tell he is much more comfortable thanks to you and Dr. McCoy, and Spock, of course. I wish he'd tell you himself how grateful he is, but….” She trailed off, shook her head, and sipped her tea. “In any case, I know he'd rather be alive than dead, and I must admit I prefer him that way, too. At least since the council meeting on Babel I've managed to convince him that as his wife I deserve to be kept abreast of his health.”

“You have the patience of a saint,” Nurse Chapel said dryly.

“I genuinely don't know how you stay sane,” Lt. Uhura breathed, pouring herself another cup of tea.

Amanda shrugged. “I love him. It's amazing what love will teach us to tolerate, even to find endearing. Even so,” she grinned at them, “it is quite nice to have the opportunity to relax and spend time with other human women once in a while.”

“We have to stand together,” Lt. Uhura said, holding her cup out for Amanda to clink her own against. “Otherwise these men are going to drive us all crazy.”

“No matter their species,” Nurse Chapel added, clinking her cup with Uhura's, too.

Amanda laughed.

“Anyway,” Nurse Chapel began, “is that why Ambassador Sarek's been in your quarters more or less ever since the two of you joined us? He's having to rest?”

“So he says.” Amanda sighed. “I suspect, though, that the greater part of the truth is he's taking it as an excuse to avoid most of the crew. I do believe he's still rather embarrassed over causing such a fuss last time.”

“Sarek? Embarrassed?” Uhura teased. “That sounds unlikely.”

Amanda laughed softly. “The thing about Vulcans is they're not unfeeling, as much as they claim to be—I think you've both worked with my son long enough to know that. If anything, they feel more deeply than we do, it's just that it does take more to rouse their emotions than it does for us, and of course, no matter what they're feeling, they won't admit it. That part's mostly cultural and it's the most frustrating.”

“I can imagine,” Uhura said sympathetically.

“I can't.” Nurse Chapel snorted faintly. “I have almost the opposite problem, working with McCoy. His mood changes on hardly anything and I have to keep up.”

“Somehow, that's why he and Spock are friends,” Uhura said conspiratorially.

“Are they really?” Amanda asked. Uhura and Chapel nodded. Amanda smiled. “I'm glad to hear that. I knew he and the Captain were friends, but I'm heartened that he has more than the one.”

“The three of them are like this,” Uhura said, twining her index, middle, and ring fingers together. “The three Musketeers. There are jokes among the crew that one of these days we're going to find a planet where triple marriage is the norm and the whole world will assume the three of them are hitched, and they probably won't even notice until someone starts asking about their honeymoon.”

Amanda had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing too loudly. Nurse Chapel almost choked on her tea with mirth.“I hadn't heard that one!”

“I heard it from Sulu,” Uhura giggled. “He says it's been going around Engineering.”

With a soft fwshh, the door to the Mess opened and Spock walked in, hands clasped behind his back. The three women looked at each other and burst out in redoubled laughter.

One of Spock's eyebrows twitched up. “Am I...interrupting?”

“Of course not.” Uhura smiled angelically.

Spock fixed her with a stony stare for a moment then turned his gaze to Amanda. “You wanted to see me, Mother.”

“I did.” Amanda got smoothly to her feet and stepped around the table. “Are you free now?”

“If I weren't, I would not be here,” Spock pointed out.

“Naturally.” Amanda folded her hands into her flowing sleeves.“I was hoping you'd show me around the ship.”

“You've been given a tour of the ship previously,” Spock said, with a vague hint of puzzlement.

“I have,” Amanda agreed, “but never by you, and it's been some time. Indulge me, won't you?”

Spock took a breath and ever so slightly dipped his head. With a warm smile, Amanda followed her son out of the Mess.

“I sense,” Spock said softly as he and his mother walked down the corridor, “that you have ulterior motives for this.”

“Yes, but I'm hardly hiding them, Spock.” The cowl neck of Amanda's dress slipped off her shoulder and she fixed it. “I so rarely have the opportunity to see you, and even when I do we barely get to talk. Show me around, I'd love to see your favorite places on the ship, and I'm sure you've seen all sorts of incredible things during your duties that you could tell me about.”

“Well,” Spock began thoughtfully, turning his steps toward the ship's botanical garden, “have you ever heard of tribbles?”

“I haven't.”

~

End of chapter! Read the rest on Ao3 here.

[jomiddlemarch]

y'all know it tastes like garbage?

It was a pumpkin tart with a sour cherry compote, a savory hint of thyme unexpected and exquisite.

“Fuck,” Joel said, laying his fork down on the plate where there was only the faintest rust smear left of the dessert. “I don’t even like pumpkin and that was probably the best thing I ever ate. Fuck. We have to let him coach soccer now.”

“Maria already decided to do that,” Grace said. “Even before he made her the shortbread. But I hear you on the pumpkin and the tart. I totally considered pumpkin garbage squash before Ted started using up the harvest.”

“Garbage squash?” Joel said, smiling, leaning back from the table in a universal gesture of repleteness. “What’re you, like twelve?”

“I’m keeping my inner child alive and kicking, which has served me well with Ellie and every other kid here I have to take care of, even though I was shit at peds,” Grace replied. She’d told Joel Ted was nice and she’d meant it, but she hadn’t thought to say how Ted was making living in Jackson nice, serving up dessert in the dining hall most nights, organizing soccer teams with names that were just this side of too goofy and rustling up enough jerseys to give the audience a chance to follow the plays. Something about him made them all a little nicer to each other, a little more likely to tease or clap a hand on a shoulder. To remark on a task done well or the sight of a prairie falcon arcing across a pale blue sky. It was a sign of how good a leader Maria was that she welcomed Ted instead of trying to find a way to push him out and Grace didn’t think the sweets had been the deciding factor. Had they helped? Of course, Grace wasn’t saying Maria was a saint.

“To hear you talk, anyone’d think you’d been on the verge of getting kicked out of the hospital,” Joel said, avoiding saying before it all went down or back in the day, any of the ways people would refer to the time when clicker only meant remote control and mushrooms were mostly a pizza topping less controversial than pineapple.

“I was fine,” Grace shrugged. If she’d ever loved medicine, if she’d ever been able to, the apocalypse had taken that from her and left her with a set of skills that retained a certain value, a lot of knowledge that was now useless, and absolutely no sense of status or prestige which her parents had deemed a basic necessity to justify any smidgen of self-respect. She’d been a competent doctor, good with her hands, able to get by on terrible coffee and two, non-consecutive hours of sleep, and the nurses had liked her okay. She'd survived those first few horrendous weeks, which couldn’t be said of the vast majority of her colleagues, supervisors, and trainees and now she wished regularly she’d spent more time in the free clinic and less trying to master robotic surgery.

“You wouldn’t let me talk that way about myself,” Joel said. Had Ted laced the pumpkin filling with some sort of magic beans that made Joel both incredibly insightful and willing to express his feelings?

“You’re right,” she said. “Happy? That’s the best I can do, telling you you’re right with no argument.”

“Like I said, I just ate the best fucking piece of pie in my life, and you just told me I’m right, so yeah, I’m good,” he replied. Good and not happy. Close but no cigar, Grace heard dead-Lauren quip, waggling her eyebrows in her generic Marx brother impression.

“Looks like you enjoyed that slice of pie,” Ted remarked, having walked over to the table where Joel and Grace were sitting. Ted had a dishtowel slung over his shoulder and another tucked at his waist as an apron, a general sense of easiness around him unless you looked closely at his eyes or noticed the scars peeping out from the cuff of his sleeve. There wasn’t anyone over twenty-five who wasn’t scarred these days, but not everyone considered the full catalog of etiologies the way Grace did. Or noticed how Beard watched Ted, with something beyond protectiveness.

“More than I should’ve,” she said.

“Aw, shucks, Dr. Y, you’ll make me blush and that ain’t anything anyone wants to see, me lookin’ like a tomato with a mustache,” Ted said.

“I dunno,” Joel said. “I think Jackson could use a little local color.”

Ted laughed and slapped his leg. It should have sounded fake but it didn’t. The tart should have been a gloopy, vegetal mess, the cornmeal crust weak and soggy, but it hadn’t been. The world should have ended, but it hadn’t. Wouldn’t, Joel reaching over to rest his hand on Grace’s thigh in broad daylight or what passed for it in the dining hall, claiming her in front of Ted in a manner Grace should have found boorish as well as frankly astonishing and somehow found neither. Ted nodded.

“Can’t argue there, though I don’t aim to tell Miz Maria. Gotta stay on the boss’s good side and she’s mighty proud of Jackson as is,” Ted said. “She’s got a real powerful mama-bear vibe going that I fully respect, though it’s not that a woman’s only source of power is related to childbearing, it’s just that I can relate to being real careful of something you’ve made and nurtured. Especially nowadays.”

“Yeah,” Joel said, laconic again but leaving his hand on Grace’s thigh as if it were a regular occurrence.

“Your Ellie’s got the makings of a fine second striker,” Ted offered.

“She’s not—” Joel said, broke off. Grace wondered what he’d begun to say. That Ellie wasn’t his, not his daughter. That she wasn’t suited to games, given what she’d already lived through? That she ought to play goalie? The last was the vaguest supposition as Grace admitted to herself she could not have named another position in soccer. Was he thinking about Sarah or possibly Henry, Ted’s lost child. Ted waited for Joel to continue speaking.

“She’s gotta keep up with her schoolwork if she’s going to play,” Joel finally said.

“I totally agree, Sandra Dee,” Ted said. It was one of his oddball remarks (Grace had stopped called it a weird affectation to herself after Ted had been in Jackson three days because he was the least affected person she’d ever met and he was so damn nice) and Joel might have blinked or grimaced at it, but no, that he took in stride.

“She doesn’t see the point in school,” Joel said. “She gave me an earful about being an autodidact and I was supposed to just give in because she used a word I wasn’t supposed to know and wasn’t supposed to admit I didn’t know.”

“Sounds like Ellie,” Ted replied. “She’s not the only one. Lot of these kiddos can’t see why they ought to go to school, learn math and Shakespeare and all that jazz.”

Grace marveled, for a moment, at Ted’s ability to get players to respect him as a coach given his use of all that jazz as a substitute for stuff or shit.

“Hell, I felt that way a lot and I didn’t live through what they did. FEDRA school’s all she knows,” Joel said.

“That’s why I made my proposition to Miz Maria, a football—soccer league for the kids. Something from before that still makes sense in this crazy world. Something to make sense of the world,” Ted said.

“That why you bake?” Joel asked.

“Hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe you’re onto something,” Ted said. “I ain’t gonna tell you it don’t give me the jimmy fantods to hear you say it.”

“The jimmy fantods is not an actual expression,” Grace interrupted. Joel squeezed her thigh—in agreement? Remonstrance? It felt amazing, either way, and she was going to have to examine it later, how much she liked him touching her in front of someone, someone being Ted, who didn’t miss a trick, even if his command of the English language left something to be desired.

“Maybe it is now, Dr. Y,” Ted replied. “Seems to me we’ve got to remake the world every day. You sew it up, Joel finds the necessities. Ellie’s started inventing some truly groan-worthy puns and they do brighten my day considerably. Sometimes I bake and sometimes I coin a brand-new expression that just for a moment puts the earth back on some axis I can recognize. What’s true, what’s real, those are some philosophical doozies I can’t always take on and come through without a wobble.”

“Shakespeare invented ‘in a pickle,’” Joel said, shrugging at Grace’s gob smacked expression. “What, I went to college, even if it wasn’t some million-dollar fancy ivory tower place. I read.”

“You’re givin’ me all sorts of ideas about a book club and a trivia night, not gonna lie,” Ted said into the lengthy pause that Grace was going to have to bring up later because Joel surely wouldn’t. “But I got a more pressin’ question to ask—I know not everyone’s a fan of good old Charlie Brown’s great pumpkin as a dessert staple. What do you folks like? I can’t make promises, but sometimes, seems there’s still a little magic left in the world.”

“I’m not picky,” Grace said. He couldn’t make any of the sweets she remembered best from her childhood and anyway, tasting one of them might be too painful. Ted nodded, then turned to face Joel. He’d probably say something similar or that he didn’t care, didn’t have a sweet tooth, some proxy for not deserving the gift of Ted’s thoughtfulness.

“Strawberries,” Joel said.

“Well, I might not be able to deliver a shortcake with whipped cream, but I feel a galette’s within the realm of possibility,” Ted said.

“A galette’s fine,” Joel said. Until roughly twelve milliseconds before he’d uttered the words, Grace would have been certain Joel had never said the word galette before and had no idea what it meant. Ted had a way of revealing aspects of people you’d never considered, but so kindly you didn’t feel wrong-footed, only bemused and delighted to make the discovery.

“I’d best be heading out,” Ted said. “Otherwise, Beard’ll come looking for me.”

“That’s bad?” Grace said.

“Sometimes the people that trust you the most, well, they worry about you the most too,” Ted said. “It ain’t easy anymore, to say see you later, alligator.”

“Yeah,” Joel said. It was the simplest agreement but clearly held the weight of a deal being struck. Grace wished she had someone to talk about it with but even dead-Lauren rolled her eyes. Ted clearly didn’t need to say anything else and walked out, leaving Grace and Joel at the table, his hand still warm on her thigh, which they were going to have to acknowledge at some point.

“Strawberries?” Grace said, stalling.

“There were wild ones, in the woods behind where my Grandma Betty lived when I was growing up. I spent the summers there,” Joel said. “They were sweeter than the ones at the store. Sweeter than the ones at a farmstand even. You picked them and ate them after running around all day. Me and Tommy and our cousin Pete.”

“You don’t usually talk about stuff like that,” Grace said.

“Don’t usually think about it,” Joel said. He didn’t sound unhappy though, more thoughtful. “Doesn’t hurt so much. Grandma Betty died a long time ago, none of this shit ever touched her.”

“They’re safe, aren’t they, the ones who never had to live through any of this,” Grace said. “It’s weird, but if feels like some kind of consolation.”

“There’s goddamn little enough of that,” Joel replied.

“So, we should take what we can get,” Grace said. Joel looked at her like he might answer, leaned over instead and kissed her cheek, then her corner of her mouth, his lips parted and soft, lingering, the caress as possessive as his hand had been on her thigh.

“You taste like wild strawberries,” he said. His voice was low, his tone serious, and his eyes... It was very likely the most romantic moment of her entire life, never to be surpassed, not even in her most inventive, scavenged-whiskey-and-paperback-bodice-ripper-fueled fantasies.

She couldn’t stop herself.

“No, I don’t.”

He gave her a look, so fond, with a wry light in his dark eyes and ducked back to kiss her again, sucking on her lower lip, some real demand in it this time, his hand at her jaw, holding her steady. He made it clear he’d let her go when he was ready, not when she was, which would have been never, so it canceled out. He kissed her for a long time, deliberate and thorough and maddening, then rested his forehead against hers for a minute before he pulled back and spoke.

“Yeah, I was right,” he said. “Again.

“You happy now?” Grace said, echoing her earlier question, trying to sound careless and sarcastic in the degree that conveyed maximum coolness, but she’d waited too long to ask and cool had never been her strong suit; the best she’d ever managed was the indifference of someone focusing on something more important, like keeping an esophageal hemorrhage from turning into a bleed-out. Yeah, scoffed dead-Lauren, you never loved medicine, it’s not like it’s your whole identity, what you mine for every analogy or reference. Grace couldn’t muster the gumption to argue with her, not with Joel’s hand on her shoulder and the taste of him in her mouth, and she was hoist on her own petard, to quote the bit of Shakespeare she recalled from high school, waiting for Joel to say something that she wouldn’t be able to forget, but might not want to remember.

“Yeah, Gracie, I’m happy now,” he said. “We good?”

If she hadn’t already fallen in love with him, the unsquashable hint of apprehension in his voice and his eyes as he asked would have been all it took to topple her. As it was, she smiled.

“Yeah. Let’s go walk off that pie though. And you can teach me something more about soccer than just having a goalie,” Grace said.

“I’ll let Coach Lasso do that,” Joel said. “He’ll do a better job explaining the offside rule than I could.”

[thatseventiesbitch]

Fictober 28th - “We all have our reasons”

This is part of #Fictober22, original post HERE if you want to follow or write along. ✌🏼

“She hates me,” Eric moaned. He bounced up and down with the crying newborn, but it was in vain. She continued to wail.

“Eric, she doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t even know you. She’s four days old,” Donna joked. She stepped closer and rubbed the baby’s back, too, trying to coax a better reaction, but it didn’t help either.

“No, here,” he sighed, handing Donna the baby. “You take her.”

“Eric, wait - ”

Donna glanced at Kitty as Eric left the room. “He keeps doing that,” she mouthed, over top of Leia’s head. She’d continued to fuss and cry, and Donna started to rock her.

“It’s his confidence,” Kitty said when the door slammed shut behind him, and she and Donna shared a knowing look. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Donna frowned. “Hey, neither do I!”

Kitty waved her hand. “No, no. But it’s different for women. For mothers. You already see it, don’t you?”

Donna shrugged. Leia had settled and stopped crying - finally - and was peaceful against her chest. She was making soft rooting movements, like she wanted to nurse. Donna touched the crown of her head, gently gathered a delicate wisp of her hair. “Yeah, I guess,” she murmured.

“I’ll send Red to talk to him,” Kitty patted Donna’s arm.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Donna asked wearily. She started to look around the room for a place to sit down and feed Leia.

“Eric’s a father now,” Kitty said sweetly. “And what he needs is to talk to another father. Trust me.”

***

Eric grunted and pushed over a trash can in he and Donna’s garage, clearly in frustration. Trash scattered all over the garage floor.

Red watched, amused, from the doorway. 

When Eric turned around and noticed his father standing there, he ran a hand through his hair, suddenly bashful. “I - uh - ”

But Red held up his hand, stopping him. “No need to explain. We all have our reasons. Let’s just clean it up.”

This clearly surprised Eric. Even further when Red knelt down and began to gather some of the trash that had been dumped to the ground, and put it back in the bin. After watching for a few astonished moments, Eric dropped to his knees and helped do the same.

He didn’t say anything until the room was almost clean again. Eyes glassy, Eric whispered, “I’m already not good at this. Just...how can I already be bad at this?”

Red cleared his throat. “No one’s saying that but you, son.”

“The b-” a sob lodged in Eric’s throat. “Baby’s saying it! She won’t let me hold her.” Softer, he added, “Every time I hold her, she cries. Every time.”

“You didn’t take to me right away when you were a baby.”

Despite himself, Eric smirked. He sniffed, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah, well...”

“It was my cologne.”

Eric balked at him. “Um - ”

Red shrugged. “Stopped wearing it while you and Laurie were little. Or I switched to something different. Hell, I don’t remember.” He rearranged his features back into a frown. “I don’t care.”

Eric still stared blankly. “Your cologne?”

“Yep,” Red shrugged. “You didn’t like the smell of it. Doctor thinks you might’ve been allergic, your mom said.” He paused. “That’s the reason you always cried around me when you were a baby.”

“Uh. That’s the reason?” Eric began drily.

Red leveled his chin, his expression also even. “Yep.”

“It didn’t have anything to do - ”

“You can ask your mother.” Irritation laced Red’s tone now.

“I will.” Suspicion was in Eric’s.

“And maybe just stop being so damn hard on yourself all the time. Where the hell did you pick that up anyway?” 

Eric grinned at the floor. 

“Fatherhood is hard, son,” Red continued.  “It, ah, it only gets harder from here.” He laughed, and gently clapped Eric’s arm. “And none of us does it perfectly.” He lowered his voice, and Eric lifted his gaze to meet his father’s. “Least of all me.”

Red cleared his throat. “So you just go in there, and you do your best. Which ends up being good enough.”

“But what if it’s not?” Eric whispered, his eyes glassy again.

Red smirked. “That’s when you trust the woman you married. Because she’ll damn sure pick up your slack.”

Eric nodded. He seemed comforted by this.

“Okay son?”

Eric nodded more.

“Okay.” Red clapped his arm again. “Let’s go back inside.”

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“I remember when you used to take me out for breakfast every Saturday. When I was a kid.”

“Ah, yeah.” Red smiled and brought a hand up to his chin, reminiscing. He hadn't thought of this memory in years and years. “The diner on 42nd. Mom and Laurie didn’t like it. They said the eggs - ”

“ - were too runny! Yeah. They were wrong.”

“So wrong,” Red agreed. “Best diner food in town. Plus there was that waitress with the - ”

“- the huge boobs. I remember. I-I remember it all,” he clarified.

Red smiled. “Thanks for telling me that, son.”

***

“Look at that,” Kitty cooed, softly from the doorway. She and Red stood in the hallway, looking into Leia’s nursery where Eric sat in the rocking chair with his daughter, who had fallen asleep on his chest.

He’d taken a shower and rinsed off any trace of the cologne he was wearing after hearing Red’s story (okay - after Kitty confirmed it was true) and held Leia against his bare skin like all the baby books Donna had said to do. 

Leia fussed, and for a few moments Eric felt like panicking, but just like Red said, Donna was there.

“It’s okay,” Donna murmured, soothing them both. “Shhh. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

But now, just a few minutes later, Leia slept peacefully. Eric glided back and forth gently in the rocker, cuddling her under a soft pink blanket that Midge had sent them. The look on his face was like he’d won a million dollars.

“Thank you,” Donna whispered to Red and Kitty. She’d joined them in the hallway, to look in at the little scene in the nursery.

“Oh, honey. You don’t have to thank us,” Kitty said.

“Oh, no, I do. He’s going to throw out that cologne,” Donna smirked.