#something nice before everyone gets buried in the agonies i guess

[yloiseconeillants]

house warming party @ the crystal tower (antonio my friend antonio belongs to @hermits-hovel)

[serenanight87]

The Bells of Christmas (Interrogator and Reader)

A/N: Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying this holiday season and have enjoyed all the Rickmas fun. I was going to wait till next year to put anything in but there was a prompt that just stuck with me and made me have to write something. I love Closetland and this prompt just screamed him. This is my first published writing that wasn’t just flying around in my head so please be gentle. I have been so nervous to write but, y’all are making me braver. Hopefully you enjoy.

Warnings: Swearing, suggested smut, con/non con of you squint

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

I hate having to work during the fucking holidays.

These were the times of “supposed” good heart and good cheer. The time to bring joy and love to every man. However, someone had to do the dirty work. Someone had to get their hands messy (and sometimes bloody) to get the truth out of the world. Because in the end, people were inherently evil and full of sinful lies.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my job most days. I get to let my little sadistic fun side come out and play. It also allows me some freedom when it is truly someone that is truly evil. Makes me feel like my job has purpose when they try to pull one over on me.

Gotta love when they think they can lie.

You see when they lie, I get to deliver a justice that I am so good at. I get to hear the anguished screams of agony as they try to make me believe the bullshit they deliver from their supposed “silver tongues”. How they cry and plead for me to just let them go, to release them from their torment. Sometimes, I let them think I will only for me to dash away all hope and bring them deeper in.

The best moment comes when I bring about that sweet release of the confession from their lips. It makes all the hard work worth while, knowing justice has been completed. Now what they do with that information after I give it to them, not my business. I had my time to release the sadistic beast within to play with the unjust of this world.

The part of my job that I hate though is when they make me work on the ones that we know have done nothing and we are just looking for who to blame. Someone to just be the dummy to when someone higher in the food chain fucked up.

Damn government! ‘We fucked up so now someone has to pay. Guess it will be this poor fuck. We can bury them deep. No one knows them and they take the hit while we sit back in our nice houses, drinking our spiked eggnog, and fucking that cute new secretary that we think the wife doesn’t know about. Just as long as it doesn’t fuck with our checks, who cares! No one’s souls are on the line for damning the innocent.’ Just mine gets damned every time I have to do it.

These are the thoughts I have as I look at the new case in front of me.

Y/L/N, Y/F/N…just someone cursed to have no one, no family, and a little small business that is going under.

And now she has to be in charge of some mass terrorist group through website hacking.

Yeah okay. Let’s hope she breaks fast so this can be over and done with. Rip off the band-aid!

She has been through multiple interrogations before coming to my desk.

Impressive…maybe a challenge? Shame she is innocent. I would have so much fun with breaking her if she was actually guilty.

I get my suit ready, glasses on, setting body posture and face to be the most receptive. I will try the nice approach first. Maybe that will be enough. Just make her sign the papers and get out to maybe have a drink and a good movie.

I hear her being walked in, I walk around bare footed to not be heard, and I begin to set the scene. I darken the room where she sees no light through that blindfold. I make sure that she will be in a vulnerable position to accept my help quickly. I see her while she is being brought in. I motion for the guard to be quiet. I change into my boots and stomp where she can hear me.

“What piece of juicy ass have you brought me today?” I asked in my changed deep voice.

I do this for pure intimidation. She shudders so it must have worked. Moving behind her quietly and changing my voice again to sound pathetic and weak. The guards are used to this when I play with my food.

“Look y-you! I was t-told to bring her to h-him. We just n-need to g-g-get this done s-s-so we can go home for Christmas! S-s-so go somewhere else and f-f-find your fun elsewhere!” I stuttered.

“Damn, I would have loved biting into that sweet ass like a juicy peach.” I said in my deeper voice change in front of her again. “I bet it tastes as good as it looks and I bet it would be so juicy when I had it. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” As I slapped her ass and have it a squeeze.

She shivered again but, it didn’t look like from fear. Pleasure…arousal maybe? Interesting indeed.

I motioned for the guard to bring her in and to do the usual routine to bring them in.

“I hope I get to get you next, sweetheart.” I said in my deep tone as she was taken away. “We could have so much fun together. No reason to not mix business and pleasure.”

I take off my boots off and change back into my dress shoes. I get to the interrogation room door and wait for the guard to leave. Once he leaves, I wait a few moments to build suspense. Alright, showtime!

I walk in, with my swagger stride, I see she is jumping at every sound like a scared rabbit. This will be too easy. I put down my briefcase and walk in her direction.

“It is much too dark in here for me to work. I need to get some light in here.” I turn on the light and watch her take a deep breath.

“Oh, I told them to stop bringing people in so scared like I am going to hurt them. It really brings a reputation on me up here,” I said. “Here let me take off this blindfold so you can see. If that is alright with you?”

She nodded slowly like she was in a trance. It was like the moment I spoke, she became calm. Very interesting indeed. We may have some fun yet.

I went and untied her blindfold. She squinted when she blinked her eyes open in the bright light. Her eyes were so beautiful. Such a unique shade and seem so open to the world. Why are you still here when I can read you so clear?

“I am sorry if you have been under any distress. I want to make this as quick and easy as possible. I’m sure you have your family to go home to for the holidays.”

“No…I have no one. I’m all alone…again,” she said slowly.

I watched her to see if she was telling me anything with her body. She looked very calm but lonely and tired. Maybe she will break quick. Then she can go rest. Wait…why do I care that she looks tired? I think that is a sign that I need to ask for time off after this.

“Well I am sorry you are alone for the holidays but, I am sure you don’t want to be here so let’s see what we can do to get that for you. Would you like some tea?” I asked.

“Yes please. That is so kind of you,” she said.

I grabbed my thermos from my briefcase and poured her a cup. She said thank you and I continued with my role in this scene.

“Okay, I see that you have been interviewed before-“

“You mean interrogated. I have been interrogated and put under some very stressful conditions while I have been here. I don’t even know what day it is anymore. Has Christmas come and gone or is there still time to see if someone would kiss me under the mistletoe?”, she interrupted.

“I am sorry if the treatment of your person has been less than satisfactory but, I will endeavor to make this experience a little more positive so long as you work with me,” I stated. “Now, we have evidence that you have been working with a terrorist organization through your small business website. We are willing to work with you if you just give us some names of the individuals you worked with. To guarantee that and that no harm will come to you, if the names you give are correct, we will have you sign this document that we will let you go and all will be well.”

“What else is in that document? Sounds too easy for all of the dramatics I have been through so far,” she said.

“It is just a statement that you have been working with them but you are willing to collaborate with us in exchange for your freedom. Nothing nefarious, I assure you. Just an easy signing of your name and some names that we need and you are free to go.”

“And if I don’t have what you want? What if I have no part in what you said I did? Do I have rights to legal representation during this ‘interview’ as you call it. And don’t think I didn’t notice how you didn’t deny that I have been interrogated.”

“I do not know of the treatment you have received prior to coming to me,” I stated calmly. “However, you are more that free to put in a complaint when you leave here. That can be done much faster if you cooperate with me,” I stated. She is fiery! And doesn’t let anything get past her. Maybe a little harder than I thought. “So what do you say that we move this right along or do just enjoy my company that much?” I put on the charm with a sexy grin.

“As much as I would love to say that really enjoy your handsome face, and yes you are very handsome, I just can’t agree to something that I didn’t do. I have heard from the others the charges, they have made their threats, and then they move me on. I have nothing else to do so I might as well ruin everyone’s holiday plans since I am being detained here for my ‘interview’. So, what will be your next tactic, Mr. Nice Guy?”, she stated matter of factly.

Well this is going differently than expected. Alright maybe I’ll add a little heat.

“You really think you are moving on from here?”, I said. “There is only one other that you would go to after me and I heard you met him in the hall. And I don’t think you would like his methods…”

“What if I would like what he has? He sounded more fun than you.”

So that was a shiver of pleasure. Now we can make this fun.

“Oh, so that is what you are into. Well let us see if I can make you an additional offer that you maybe interested in.”

She chuckled. “Like you have anything I could want. But, you have my attention, pretty boy,” she said with a seductive smile.

I’m going to make you regret that comment, little girl.

“How about for every name you give, I reward you for your good work. But if you disobey, I get to punish you how I see fit.” I move my brief case under my chair and clear off the desk. I may want to have that all ready. I can see this one will be a handful.

“And you think you could punish me, pretty boy? You don’t even look like you know how to get down and dirty in that suit. I could probably do more damage to you than you could because you wouldn’t want to mess up your good suit.”

“So a demonstration is in order,” I stated. I took off my glasses and put them in my blazer pocket. Then, I took off my blazer and put it on the back of my chair. I lightly touched her collarbone then traced my fingers up her neck and grabbed her hair at the nap of her neck as I walked around her. “Let’s see what I can do to change your mind,” I whispered softly on she ear. I heard her take a shuddering breath as I knocked her out with the pressure point in her neck.

“I have some prep work to take care of,” I stated to myself. “We will have fun and you will give me all the information that I need. If I have to be here to ring in the bells of Christmas with you, I will, my sweet. You will succumb to my wishes one way or another and I will have such a delicious time exploring every way I can make you scream in pleasure or in pain.”

I bent down to whisper in her ear even if she can hear me or not, “Let’s see if you taste as juicy as a peach, sweetheart.”

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

A/N: I hope y’all enjoyed this. I love Closetland and I always felt the interrogation room would be a BDSM dreamland. Be honest with me if I did okay but please be kind. Love y’all!

@deepperplexity @vulnus-sanare

[girlwholovesturtles]

Family Business

I can't even remember where I left off last time, my brain has gone full scrambled egg.

Okay, they do in fact have a book that lets you speak with the dead, apparently?

Oh, hello Gerard nice to meet you... can a ghost even smoke? ... Apparently not.

"Good." Did he not- oh, no, she was just fighter I guess?

"I'm a book." Dude... fair I guess... oh, my man just wants to really die, fair enough. Actually, the way he's talking about it, it reminds me of the computer episode. Where the guy stored his brain in a digital format and basically exists in agony, which I imagine is probably what it might be like for Gerard.

I wonder if it actually hurt to be removed from the book like that... goddammit Gerard! Oh, okay, that's actually kinda useful.

"Gertrude didn't make jokes." Yeah, that tracks.

Jon likes using his power. That actually is kind of interesting. I can't help but wonder if it's just getting the information out of people or if there's some sort of satisfaction that comes with being able to force people to do what he wants them to do.

Hmm, this is more devolving into small talk then getting any actual info but I imagine it must be cathartic to talk to someone about all this baggage he's got going on... Jon, shush...

Wait, the Lukas family worship the power of loneliness. That actually tracks so well. The first story we heard about the Lukas family was the woman was going to marry into the family before her fiance died. They weren't really somber, just closed off and uninterested in this new woman being part of their lives. And then in the Boatswain's Call, everyone on the boat was isolated and quiet. Or the actor who chose to be alone, the spider guy who was spiraling and clearly felt like no one cared, and it's not hard to connect the dots with the fact that Peter Lukas appeared before Martin the same way he did the spider dude. I see you story, I know where this is going.

Wait, how did his dad quit the Archive?

This poor guy... why are all the maternal figures in this story so sucky?

Oh... I remember this part of the story. Oh, it worked? That sounds absurd! Good lord, this man had a very bad time. He didn't just burn the book out right?

Yeah, I can't believe Gertrude brought him back and then just left the book behind. That's messed up lady.

Okay, so I actually was thinking about this! Before when I listened to Michael's statement about how Michael Shelley became one with the Spiral, I assumed that the Becoming was specifically the ritual they were enacting but I completely missed that it had called it the "Great Twisting" or something to that effect. So it stands to reason that all the different entities share one goal in mind, to Become and to force the rest of the world to mirror their image. Which makes a lot more sense why Gertrude was trying so hard to stop these things from happening.

That said, it stands to reason that the Eye may also very well have it own ritual in mind and that's why Elias wants Jon to stop the Unknowing.

I'm sorry? These entities are just fear?! Actually, that kinda makes sense?

The thing about fears changing and being cultural does make sense but a lot of these are pretty base like. Fire/destruction, being buried or tight spaces, the dark, loneliness, being watched, death, insects in general, lose of sanity, the unknown. Those all are pretty standard and it's not surprising that these things still thrive.

There are 14 of them? Like, only 14? Okay then. What are they?

"Like your colors but if colors hated me." This line is so funny to me.

No gods of hope, tragic but predictable.

Oh, are we getting list?! You're saying a lot, I just want to make a list!

The list, hopefully, simplified. (For literally no one else but me!)

Eye, being watched. Spiral, madness. The End, death. Stranger, the unknown. The Lonely, isolation. Desolation, destruction. The Slaughter, violence, particularly senseless violence. The Vast, too much space. The Buried, not enough space. The Dark, obviously. Corruption, rot or sickness. Web, spiders and control. The Flesh, being eaten, oh may god, animals count in this too? The Hunt, being hunted, also an animal fear.

This is weird...

I knew it! I knew the Eye would have one!

Fair well Gerry, you were short lived but I quite liked you. And now I can look at you're fanart and have proper context, hopefully.

I... wouldn't accept any drink from these two... okay, I guess it's fine... at least your going home next episode?

Good lord, that was so much lore. Normally a lore dump like this would bore me but I'm into it. It helps that the characters and the concepts are actually interesting to listen to.

[feralthoughtdump]

Till Forever Falls Apart

CW: angst, death, squid game spoilers, a little bit of fluff, hurt/comfort I guess?, wrote this while concussed

Word Count: 1.5k

The blinding white room did little to help her headache. Her stomach grumbles from the little food she was given and the fight that broken out the night before kept her up. 

She pulls her jacket around herself, basking in the little comfort it provides her as the other players shuffle around her, collecting into teams of ten. 

It was hopeless, trying to find anyone that was willing to take her in. She barely made it past the finish line during Red-Light, Green-Light, hiding behind the other players and hoping to god that even the smallest amount of movement would go undetected. 

She wanders around a little more before taking refuge in the corner. 

She’s broken from her train of thought when someone crouches down in front of her. Despite the grim conditions they were stuck in, his handsome smile still managed to meet his eyes. 

“Hey,” He offers her his hand and she notices the 325 on his jacket. “I’m Bucky. I see that you don’t have a team.” 

“Yeah. I um, I don’t.” She whispers. 

“Join ours then. We’re short of one and you seem like a smart girl.” 

She takes his hand and he gently pulls her onto her feet, escorting her to a group of men and women sitting on the ground. 

“Looks like you’ve found our tenth.” A redheaded woman smiles. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

She’s quickly introduced to the rest of the team, recognizing Steve and Pietro as the first to cross the finish line, Wanda and Peter who had expertly carved out the umbrellas in the honeycomb, and Bruce, the doctor who had kindly tended to the cut on her forehead. Natasha, Clint, and Tony quickly introduced themselves to her before they were ordered to proceed. 

As they all shuffled into the room, she looks up in awe at the two platforms standing before them. From her peripheral, she sees two guards carry a large rope. 

The teams.

The platforms. 

The rope. 

Tug of War.

They were going to play tug of war. 

The guards hold up the numbers. Seven and Four. 

Everyone watches in silence as they ascend up the towers and have their hands shackled to the rope. 

At the gunshots, the teams start pulling at the rope, groans, and cries echoing through the arena. 

She watches wide-eyed, mouth agape, knowing what’s to come, but she uselessly hopes that no one has to die.

And though she knew it was coming, she still can’t get over the screams of agony as the players slip from the platform, dangling from the rope. 

She claps her hand over her mouth, watching the blade fall. A whimper slips past her lips as she watched the players on team seven falls, still attached to the rope. 

As they replace the rope, the next numbers are drawn. 

Team Two and Team Five. 

“Don’t worry,” Natasha says. “Steve and Bucky are pretty strong. They served together.” 

She doesn’t respond, only quietly standing and walking with the others to the yellow elevators. 

As Tony discusses strategy, she fidgets with her fingers. Her heart pounds and her hands tremble. 

Tony’s plan was simple. They were to stand in alternating positions, grip the rope with their armpits, and for the first ten seconds, bend backward.

Steve was placed in the front, and then Bucky, while she stood in between Natasha and Wanda and the end of the rope. 

They immediately bend back at the sound of the gunshot, keeping their feet planted on the platform. 

The strategy was working fairly well, they held their position and kept a strong grip on the rope until the other team started tugging harder. 

Panic fills her chest as her feet start sliding forward. 

She starts screaming, almost losing her grip. 

She thinks of all the times she’s played tug of war on the school playground, wracking her brain through all of the tricks that would be the most useful in this deadly situation.

The only one that comes to mind is a risky one. But given their desperation, it was a risk she’s willing to take. 

“We need to take three steps forward!” She screams. 

“Are you insane?” Peter retorts. “That’ll kill us!”

“If we do it, they’ll trip. It’ll give us an upper hand.” 

Everyone exchanges quick glances of hesitation before Steve nods.

“Alright.” He tightens his grip on the rope. “We’ll give it a shot.”

“On the count of three!” She yells. “One! Two! Three!”

They all step forward, nearly toppling over the edge, but thankfully Steve and Bucky help them hold strong. 

Their opponents falter and trip, just like she said. 

“Pull!” She screams. “We have to keep pulling.”

It’s as if her adrenaline has hit an all-time high. Her only focus was survival. Her own, and her teammates. 

The muscles of her arms burn but they continue pulling and pulling. Everyone screams in frustration, but she can only hear her heartbeat. 

With one final ragged yell, they pull the rope back and their opponents slide off the edge. 

She falls onto her back, guilt already creeping into her as she listens to the screams of their opponents and wincing at the sound of the rope being cut. 

Everything around her dulls, Natasha’s words never reaching her ears. Wanda reaches out a shackled hand to rub her shoulder, trying to soothe the distress growing stronger inside of her, but it does nothing. Sobbing, she curls into her body and lets her exhaustion take control. 

… 

“Are you okay?” 

She looks up to see Bucky standing in front of her, holding a plum in his hand. Her eyes cast downward as tears start to prickle at her eyes. 

“No.” She whispers, voice cracking. “I-” A sob breaks through her chest. “All those people… They’re all dead.” 

He sits down next to her, placing the plum in her hands. 

“You did what you had to do to survive. And you saved us all.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that they died for us to live.”

She buries her face in her hands, sobs wracking through her body. 

Bucky stays by her side, gently rubbing her back.

“Why?” She whispers. “Why did you want me to join your team?” 

“Because you’re smart.” He hesitates, but places his fingers under her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. “I saw your little trick with the honeycomb. ” 

She scoffs. 

“What does that have to do with any of this? Hmm?” Her brows furrow and her voice filled with anger. “The game started off with over four hundred people. And look at us now. There are only forty of us left.”

She’s tired. So tired. Tired of all the debt she owed, tired of watching the people around her die, tired of all of the spilled blood. At this very moment, she could care less about staying alive. She had been stripped of a name, simply reduced to Player 28, starved, and had to face death far too many times for someone her age. Paying off her debt wasn’t worth this. Neither was living. 

“Tell me something, Bucky. Is paying off our debts worth all of this? Each game is just going to get worse. When the final game rolls around, we’re going to have to kill each other. Hell, we’re already killing each other!” 

Despite her anger, she keeps her voice low. Not wanting to attract anyone else to her hidden spot behind all of the beds. 

“Hey,” His thumb brushes away her tears. “Listen to me. We don’t know what the next games are going to be. But I’m telling you, I know you’re going to make it through. We’re going to make it through. You’re a strong girl, I believe in you.” 

She looks into his blue eyes, searching for any deception, but she’s only met with sincerity. 

Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was the knowledge that any one of them could die tomorrow, or maybe it was Bucky’s words, but she leans forward and presses her lips against his. 

“Oh my god.” She pulls back quickly. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t”

“Doll,” Bucky cups her face in his hands. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” His thumb brushed over her lips. “I liked it.” 

He pulls her towards him, passionately kissing her. For the first time, ever since getting into this hell hole, she feels safe. Safe with him, in his arms. 

“I promise you,” Bucky presses his forehead against hers. “We’re going to make it out alive. Together.”

And for once, there’s a little spark of optimism inside of her. 

“Together.” She whispers.

[fangirlshrieks]

Spring Break part 1

a/n: This is my first official post on here and I don't know how it will turn out. Tik Tok really made me obsessed with Harry Potter 😭.  Now I am a simp for Neville. I got a soft spot for quiet, nerdy, shy, and subby boys. I don't usually write fanfiction because my ideas are usually super long and I have no time to write them out but I decided to write this one. I will also be posting this on my wattpad account. I read @omg-imatotalmess sub!Neville fic back in December and I've been obsessed with the idea of Neville being a sub. *internally screaming* 

Part 1, Part 2, part 3

Word count: 2,519

Pairings: Neville Longbottom x female reader

Warnings: Mensions of sex, Innuendoes, mentions of plant boy's insecurities

The sunlight intruded through your dorm room windows. It shined at just the right angle so the light hit your eyes, abruptly waking you up. In annoyance your turn onto your stomach and bury your head under your pillow desperate for just a few more minutes of sleep but the memory of it being the last day of school before spring break entered your mind. You peaked from under your pillow to check the time. It was around 7:05. You huffed. It was too early to get up. Unable to go back to sleep with the light in your eyes you reluctantly got up out of bed and got ready for the day. You could hear the deep snores of your dorm mates sleeping quietly as you got ready. It was times like these where you enjoyed getting up earlier than everyone else. There was always a sort of peace before the hustle and bustle of everyone rushing to the bathrooms to find a mirror or use the sinks. You made sure to be as quiet as possible. Having gotten ready you decide to head to the great hall for breakfast. 

Sitting down at the Y/H table you grabbed a toast and some butter and jam. There were a few students around but not enough to fill the hall with loud noise. None of your friends were up yet, that's for sure, so you scanned the room to see if your boyfriend, Neville Longbottom, was there.

'Who am I kidding he's probably still asleep too' you thought.

But just as you turned to eat your food, Neville had entered the great hall. He spotted you and quickly walked over to where you were sitting. 

"Hello love" he gave you a quick peck on the top of your head before sitting down next to you. 

"What are you doing here so early?" His tone is full of amusement, knowing you aren't normally one of the first students to enter the great hall in the morning. 

"I could ask you the same thing" you said, giving him a teasing look. 

"Well I couldn't really sleep last night. Too excited for holiday, I guess." He responded with a bit of nervousness in his voice. You didn't seem to notice however.

"Well I was rudely interrupted from a wonderful sleep by a disgusting thing called sunrise." The sarcasm in your voice made the two of you laugh slightly.

"I'm sorry you didn't get to sleep in."

"It's fine. That just means I get to spend more time with you today." You said nudging him with your shoulder. "By the way did you ever tell your gran that I would be visiting the two of you at the lake house."

Neville's grandmother was invited by an old friend to stay with her at her lake house. The lake house was relatively close to where you lived in London but it was obviously in the wizarding world. You had asked Neville about two weeks ago if you could visit him and his grandmother while they were there. You had never been to a lake house before and you wanted to spend your first Holiday with him as his girlfriend since you two had got together.

You had only been going out since December but you had been friends since 1st year. When his grandmother heard the news about the two of you finally becoming an official couple she was ecstatic. She always believed there was something more between the two of you. Even when you were in your previous relationship with a boy from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic your fourth year, there was always something there but neither of you believed that other could ever like you in that way. But after you broke up with your ex at the end of your fourth year, the tension between you and Neville was undeniable. It was not until the start of 6th year after Neville had an encounter with Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic and it was revealed that Voldemort had returned that you and Neville had actually acted on your feelings. Now here you are actually together.

You had visited him and his grandmother before during other school breaks but only every as a friend. This time would be different. Your mind sometimes wondered about taking your relationship to the next level but you only ever mention that once before and Neville seemed nervous the entire time so you dropped the subject. You assumed it was because he was a virgin and unfortunately to your dismay it was a well known fact that you had lost your virginity to your ex who had bragged about it when you were a couple (but that is a story for a later time).

"Oh yeah." He seemed anxious and grabbed a toast to shove in his mouth to try and drown the worry in his voice, but it didn't help. "Gran said you are welcome anytime."

"Perfect." 

More students started filling the hall as you finished your breakfast. Dean and Seamus had also entered the hall and made their way towards the two of you. 

"Hey guys." Neville greeted them.

"What are you two love birds talking about?" Dean said while leaning over your shoulder.

"Just making plans." You said nonchalantly as you turned your head towards him.

"Plans for Holiday I assume?" Seamus piped in with a raised eyebrow. From behind your back, Neville gave him a look almost as if he was pleading with him not to make any inappropriate jokes. 

"Yes, actually" you answered.

Seamus pushed on, "Care to elaborate?" 

"I'm sorry, but I actually have to pack, which I would advise you three to do the same." You turned back to Neville. "I'll meet you at the Entrance Hall so we can head towards the Express together, yeah?"

"Sounds like a plan." And with that Neville watched you headed towards your dorm to pack.

He was thankful you left before Deam or Seamus could mention anything about what had happened last night. The three of them all walked over to the Gryffindor table to eat.

"So you and y/n are you and going to be sharing the same room?" Seamus asked.

Neville choked on his juice he was drinking and coughed a few times before finally recovering.

"Relax mate, it's natural to be nervous your first time." Dean added.

"I already told you too, me and y/n are not doing anything during break. She's just visiting me and gran for a day." Neville had a slight red hue over his cheeks.

"Alright, alright " Dean said amusingly.

"But just so you know spring break is when couples usually…" Seamus didn't get to finish.

"I get it, Seamus! Do you have to be so loud?" Neville cut him off. "I think I'm going to go pack now, see you guys later."

"Just remember to pack the rubbers Seamus gave you." Dean laughed under his breath.

Of course how could Neville forget the rubbers.

------ The night before in the boys dormitories ------

"Yeah, it's going to be great. Y/N is joining me and gran for a day at the lake house. It will be nice to not be the only person my age there. Plus I can show Y/N all the cool plants around the lake." Neville was beaming talking about his plans for Holiday with you and his grandmother. His smile was radiant and by the expression on his face you could totally tell he was smitten by you.

"Wait let me get this straight. Y/N is going to be staying at your grandmother's lake house with you." Dean was trying to make sense of the situation.

"Technically it's my gran's friend's lake house."

"That doesn't matter." Seamus said bluntly. "The fact is you and Y/N are going to be at a lake house together during spring break."

"What are you going on about?" Neville was completely dumbfounded about what was wrong with the situation.

"Seamus, will you just tell him." 

"I got a better idea." Seamus walked over to his dresser and opened a drawer. He searched inside for a small box. Once he found it, he grabbed it, and threw it towards Neville. When it landed on his bed, Neville grabbed the box and read what it was. He saw the figure on the box was a warrior and the name 'Trojan' written at the very top. His eyes widened and he immediately fumbled the box before he dropped it. He could feel his cheeks warm up as Dean and Seamus laughed at his reaction.

"Wh.. Where did you get those?" Neville distanced himself from the condoms.

"It doesn't matter." Seamus said, still laughing.

"Are you serious? I can't take those with me." Neville was embarrassed for having never even thought that something like that would happen while on Holiday with you. "Wait, this trip isn't even about that. Me and Y/N haven't even done anything yet. I haven't even done anything yet!" Seamus insinuation had clearly caused Neville to freak out and rethink his entire plan of having you visit him during break.

"Chill out mate." Dean was trying not to laugh but it wasn't really helping.

"Mate we know it’s your first time, we just thought you could use some pointers." Seamus suggested.

"I really don't think that's necessary. We're not going to…" this time Neville was cut off by Seamus.

"Listen, when you put the condom on make sure you pinch the top so there is a bit of room there and then roll it down. If you don't it just might break and we don't want that happening do we."

"Also don't forget to use a new one every time. Apparently they are not reusable." Dean chimed in. 

Neville was in shock and the color of his face matched the color of his house's signature color. 

"Please stop." He was pulling at his hair in agony.

"We're just trying to help a friend out." Seamus said smugly.

"This isn't helping. This is making it worse." Neville shoved his head in his pillow from embarrassment. 

The other boys continue to laugh. Neville, extremely embarrassed by his friend's insinuation, tried to come up with a reason to leave his dorm and got up and grabbed the closet textbook near him.

"Uhh... I forgot I need to catch up on my studies" and with that he rushed to the Gryffindor common room. 

At this time at night the common room was empty. Only the fireplace lit the room with a warm glow. He sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace and ran his fingers through his hair to ease his nerves.

"How could I be so stupid?" He asked himself aloud. 

The signs had been there all along. He just hadn't put all the pieces together until now. You had originally asked him if you could spend the night at the lake house but he didn't understand why at the time because you lived close by. Then there was the conversation the two of you had a couple of weeks ago. You had asked Neville how he had felt about moving your relationship on a more intimate level and he had completely freaked out by the sudden suggestion. He had certainly thought about you in that way occasionally (even before the two of you were officially together) but he never imagined it to ever come to fruition. Then when the two of you had finally gotten together, he felt inadequate in that particular area because he had never been with anyone romantically. He was relieved when you dropped the subject but knew it would be a topic to come back again. 

He also noticed how touchy you had become lately in private. You two were definitely not a pda couple but preferred to show your love to one another in private. Neville thought back to the time last week when it was just the two of you sitting by the lake while he read you a chapter in his herbology book. The two of you had sat right under a tree and you had sat next to him leaning your head on his shoulder and placed your hand on his thigh. 

As he read to you, your hand slowly made its way higher and higher towards the area between his legs. At first he was completely oblivious to your actions until he had set his book aside from in front of him and noticed how close your hand was to his crotch. It had made him freeze and he felt his face heat up. You had looked up at him and leaned in to give him a kiss which eventually turned into a heated make out session. Neville couldn't recall how you ended up on top of him or how your hands had slipped under his shirt but they did. He untimely stopped the moment when his crotch was becoming increasingly annoying as you rested your weight on him. He sensed that you had felt a little disappointed despite your reassuring words. 

Neville rubbed the back of his head in frustration as he recalled the memory. He didn't want to stop but his insecurities got the best of him. He remembered how self conscious he felt when you started to rub up and down on his chest and stomach. Neville knew he did not have the most muscular built nor was he very slim. He often wondered what you even saw in him. 

He hated when he started to overthink. He quickly shut out those thoughts and ended up thinking about you and your smile. How he loved your smile and how bright you beamed every time you looked at him like he was the greatest person in the world. 

"That has to count for something right?" He whispered to himself. 

'Wait what if she does want to have sex this week?' He pondered on the possibility. 

His mind wondered about the idea of losing his virginity to you and smiled to himself as another thought entered his mind. 

You were riding him like your life depended on it. It was really a sight for sore eyes and he found himself more open to the idea. Then his eyes went wide with the sudden realization that he doesn't really know anything about the female anatomy. He didn't really know where his penis was supposed to enter or where the clit was. At this point he had wished there was some sort of sex education at Hogwarts.

His nerves seemed to oscillate from high to low with his constant thinking.

"This is going to be a long break." He said to himself rubbing his temples.

That night he kept twisting and turning in bed and couldn't get much sleep. He ended up sleeping for only 4 hours and was woken up by the sunshine entering the windows. He reluctantly got out of bed and got ready for the day. 

Heading out of Gryffindor tower he left towards the great hall for breakfast. 

a/n: Hoped you like it. 😊

[fascination-street-writing]

Somewhere to Begin | Pannacotta Fugo x Ghirga!Reader

He has always adored you, like the sun and the moon and more - but he had a brilliant way of convincing you otherwise.

- 200 Follower Giveaway Piece iii for @idontlikerisottounlessitsnero​ -

Content Warnings: Not SFW Content, Post Break-Up, Emotional Hurt & Comfort, Regret, & Explicit Sexual Content (Aged-Up Characters)

You had promised your brother Narancia to never involve yourself directly with Passione; even the occasional stay for a meal at Il Libeccio made him antsy, yet you failed to see the harm in sharing a plate of bruschetta with Fugo, or a pot of hot tea with Abbacchio – two of his closest companions. It was only fair that you ought to spend time with the men who gave you unbridled protection at the behest of nothing more than goodwill and magnanimity. Not that you needed such security, but it kept street thieves from picking your pockets, at least.

You had promised him indeed, and now that he lies in the casket before you – clad in the suit from your mother’s funeral that you never thought to see him wear again – you intend to keep it. Giorno had offered to have an outfit tailored for your brother, but you refused him with consternation that your he would not be buried in something from the boy responsible for his death.

“No,” you had told him, cold as the wall of ice that has crept around your heart, while clutching the woolly material to your chest. “This one will do nicely.”

And so, the mortician severed the seam along the back of the jacket and draped a silk sheet over Narancia’s legs so that no one would be wiser to fact that his ankles stick out past the bottom hem of his trousers. It was bad enough that you could not afford the casket on your own. You knew better than to believe it when Mista told you that it and the headstone were paid for with the money yielded from the liquidation of Bucciarati’s assets. If that were true, then why not pay for a new suit, too?

Trish snatches a single white lily from the memorial wreath and tucks it between your brother’s still, clasped fingers. She hides her grief behind a pair of sunglasses that do not match the overcast weather that looms above your heads. You had not wanted to wait so long for the funeral – for two months, Narancia’s body had been left in the morgue to chill on ice, par Giorno’s insistence that the service must wait until his transfer of power over Passione has finished.

Thus, for two months, you had lain awake at night, shuddering at the melancholy and its melody that reminds you how you your brother died without saying farewell – his platonic little soulmate. Giorno may have his victories and suffer for them, but you would not let him entomb Narancia in the mausoleum with Bucciarati and Abbacchio.

“He’ll be buried next to our mother,” you said to the new Don with indignancy. “After everything you’ve taken from me, let me have this. Lascia che mio fratello torni a casa – let my brother come home.”

Your wish was granted, though you suspect it only so because he was growing tired of fighting with you over burial rights and passages. The congregation is kept small, consisting only of yourself, Mista, Trish, a tortoise named Jean-Pierre Polnareff, regrettably Giorno, and a handful of bodyguards, though the latter kept their distance from the immediate service; it would not come as a surprise to you, should you learn that the men in black suits were employed to protect their Don from the mournful sister of the deceased.

The handkerchief clutched in your grasp is damp with past tears. Not even your father had come, despite your pleading that he ought to pay his respects to his only son. Too preoccupied with his floozy of a new wife and her children from two previous marriages than to love his own – you never needed him in your life anyways, because you had Bucciarati. Now, you suppose that you must be a proper orphan.

You do not weep when the casket seals and cleaves the line of sight betwixt you and your brother forever. You do not weep when the mechanical apparatus lowers the coffer made of Osage orange wood into the steel vault that already holds your mother in oak. You do not weep when the gravediggers shovel the dirt mound back over the crest of opened earth.

You do not weep until Mista clasps your trembling hand, pulls you to his chest, and embraces you amidst the anguish that burns you alive. His is the consolation that you needed, but never thought to ask for, though it is not his touch that you long for. One by one, the attendees disperse for the train of luxury cars and you remain alone with the gunslinger who had been courteous enough to come without his oddly patterned beanie hat.

“Why don’t we get going?” Mista urges to coax you away from the gravesite – away from yourself and the suffocating agony. “Giorno’s having dinner for us all, back at the estate.”

You pull away. Rivets of mascara stain his white dress-shirt. “You can go on ahead,” you tell him, not quite liking the way your voice strains in your throat. “I’m not hungry.”

“Then, let’s go grab some coffee or something –”

“I’m fine, Mista.” He frowns and averts his gaze. “I have some things I need to take care of.”

“Oh?”

You tug your cardigan closer to your chest. “I’m going to collect Narancia’s belongings from our dad’s house. Not sure what I’ll do with it all, but I know it can’t stay there.”

Mementos of life, from when things were far simpler and your brother far more alive. Family photographs with tattered edges and holes of where your father should have been, wedged between unread and abused schoolbooks. Worn out blue jeans with patches of fabric scraps from your mother’s old dresses that you had sewn on for him. A collection of empty glass soda bottles. CDs and cassette tapes of Snoop Dog, Tupac, and whatever other American rappers had appealed to his tastes.

“Alright, I guess. Promise me you’ll call when you get there.”

Soon to be packed away in cardboard boxes and to be stacked precariously in the living room of your studio apartment – another gift from Bucciarati – with nowhere else to go. You simply cannot afford to rent a storage unit downtown.

“I will.”

Mista does not offer to help, because he knows you will refuse it. With that, he takes his leave of you in the cemetery. Left to your solitary devices, you clench your fists and stew on hatred and loathing for none other than Giorno Giovanna. You do not blame Narancia for his eagerness to trust the boy so quickly; his charisma, as appealing as it entreats to the willing, is an infectious disease.

If not for Giorno, your brother would have been buried two months ago. If not for Giorno, your brother might still be alive. And perhaps you must resent Fugo too, for what he has done – or rather, the lack thereof of doing; yet for everything, you are incapable of such feelings, as you have always been fond of each other. The optimistic heart within you stands that he has saved you from suffering more – that in his choice to stay behind in Venezia, it only meant you would not have to bury him, too.

Because surely, his unrestrained anger would have gotten him killed – if not before, then certainly after Narancia’s death.

With a quivering sigh, you turn from this dreary place and meet his illegible violet stare. A row of crackling headstones separates you from the boy whom you love more than life itself. Fugo clutches a pretty bouquet of daffodils wrapped with parchment paper and a white-string bow – your favorite flowers, though you wonder whether they are meant for you or your brother’s fresh grave.

You do not know, nor will you ever, as he sets the flowers atop the nearest monument and makes off, as if on sabbatical to you.

And it fills you with nothing more than bitterness.

“Everyone misses you,” Mista confesses between a sip of tea and a bite of strawberry cake. “You should come around sometime soon.”

Nearly a year has passed since the funeral, and you have yet grace anyone from Passione with your presence, with the exception of Mista for weekly sojourns to Il Libeccio to catch up on life – because, as you have learned, much can happen in seven days’ time. With each occasion of crossing the archway’s threshold into the private dining room at the back of the restaurant, you find yourself preening for two heads of black hair – one neatly combed and clipped, the other a sprawl held in place with an orange headband –, taut lips painted in black, and Fugo. And every time, you are left with the kind of disappointment that curdles your soul like sour milk.

“Who misses me, Mista?” you reprimand, pointing your icing-lacquered fork in his direction. “I barely even know Trish, and I have no interest in ever speaking with Don Giovanna again.”

You wish Giorno would call off the bodyguard who trails you every waking hour of the day; it makes you feel like a child who has proven herself untrustworthy to her parent. But you have done nothing deserving of such punishment. You suspect that his intent is an extension of the olive branch treaty that does not exist between you two – a reiteration of Bucciarati’s protection that should not have to be reiterated, because he should not be dead, either.

Or, alternatively, he wants to irk you so far that you might barge into his office one day – fuming with unspent determination to admonish him regarding his dominion over your life – just to trap you in a conversation wherein he might attempt to suspend your animosity towards him. Alas, you are simply not interested; you will scorn him, because it is all you can do.

“Forget I asked . . .” Mista trails off, swirling a dollop of whipped cream with his knife. “So uh, by the way, have you seen Fugo lately?”

Just the utterance of his name has you perking in your seat.

“No.”

“Hm, well, rumor has it, he’s working at the public library. Shaking people down for late fees or something like that.” It is not implausible to imagine Fugo in the position of extorting old ladies and young children for overdue fines – but, you know that it is only a jest. Regardless, he has always been the type of boy to surround himself with books instead of people. “Why not visit him sometime? He’s not affiliated with Passione anymore. Or, not now, at least.”

You stab at a strawberry. It bleeds beneath the weight of your fork.

“I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?”

Mista’s question is one that you ought to be asking yourself, as you sit here at the scratched pine desk of the library – pretending to study for an upcoming exam on the history of art in Pompeii – though you look up from your scrawl of notes every few minutes to see if Fugo should pass you by; perhaps pushing a cart of books to be put away, or branding return cards with a plush red stamp to mark the date in two weeks’ time.

You have seen him only once more since his implied attempt of reconciliation at your brother’s funeral. It was by chance that you should wander into the same café as him that day; and by extended odds that – while you stood over his table with a sad smile and a cup of coffee – he stood abruptly and left without finishing his own drink. He had not even bothered to wish you well.

Today, you catch him on your way to the reference section. The look of hurt in his eyes – like salt instead of sugar on the tongue – brings a scowl to your face. “Please, Panni,” you plead, and though your fingers ache to catch his hand with your own, you refrain for you know the gesture is a crossing of the line between you two. “Can’t we just talk?”

“No,” he says, so dry and unrecognizable. “I’m not getting paid to do that. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Panni, I – Please, don’t do this. I already lost my brother: don’t make me lose you, too.”

A fuse switches in his head, and you have been the one to flip it. He clutches the encyclopedia in his hands with such fervor that his knuckles pale, and for a moment, you wonder if he means to hit you with it. And maybe he thinks it too, but he drops it atop the ground as soon as the thought crosses his mind. He takes a step back, as if you have scorned him – maybe, after all, you have.

The cover spills open, and the pages bend against the hardwood floor. You wish he would do the same to you – to disclose his grievances and let you in. Instead, it is the toxicity of acrimony “Don’t ever come near me again,” Fugo warns. “Haven’t you realized by now that I never want to see you again? Get out of my life – get out of my dreams – and leave me alone.”

You will save the tears for when you stand in front of the bathroom mirror tonight before bed to wash away your makeup from the day, amongst other regrets. But you will never understand the guilt that suffocates him – a noose that is just taut enough to keep him breathing – each time he looks at you, and even when he does not. You are everything he has ever wanted and more.

And you are the emblem of everything he has ever done wrong.

“I still care about you,” you tell him with an affirmation that will not fix the desolation. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

He bites his lip and looks away.

“I know you’re hurting. I am too. So, can’t we heal together?”

“Are you stupid?” You grimace at his words. “I told you to go.”

There is no chance to dispute it, nor to bid him an aggrieved adieu, because he is gone again. Burying him might have been easier, after all; a corpse cannot remind you of what a fool you have become.

And so it seems to you that dying dreams are the best ones.

Adulthood is – as you have found in your years of treading its waters – a dreadful inevitability. You and your brother’s boxes have outgrown that compact studio apartment, though for years, you had made it work perfectly fine. When Giorno pulled the strings to terminate your lease and forcefully relocate you into a sizeable townhouse in the Chiaia district, you wanted to hate him for it – for his reminder that you cannot sever your connection to Passione. Yet, boggled down with university loans, you were in no position to turn down his assistance.

And he knew it, well.

A pretty townhouse located in one of the nicest regions of Napoli cannot bring Narancia back, nor can it attune for every bit of suffering incurred since his death; but if it is a strain upon the aging Don’s wallet, then it is all the better.

On the day of your fourth birthday spent in solitude, you treat yourself to a tub of gelato and a dress from the costly boutique across the street that you will never wear because you have no need to. It will hang in your closest amongst other unworn gowns, still pinched with price tags, that you have impulsively accumulated over the years – a hereditary habit of your mother’s that had caused more than a few spats between she and your father. You know your vice, but there is something so gratifying about it.

You sink into the tweed couch that does not quite match the architect’s vision for the living room – with its crown-mould white walls and hardwood floors the color of wenge; too clean and proper for what furniture you have kept from your former residence. Silver spoon clenched between your teeth as you page through television channel after channel, you balance that melting gelato on your lap. Perhaps you should have grabbed a straw from the kitchen as well.

The evening passes by, uneventfully so. You have spent it spoiling yourself and replying with fabricated enthusiasm to incoming text messages from study mates, who wish you well on this happy day – as if you have a reason to remember your twenty-first beyond the accomplishment of finishing the entire tub of would-be-frozen lemon curd without incurring a single regret or twinge a of brain-freeze. You have gotten rather good at knocking back shots without needing to stop for breaths, too.

At the ringing of the doorbell, you are torn from the real estate program that you have invested so much time these past few hours. Mista, no doubt – come to deliver a gift and takeout because he knows you have not eaten properly tonight. You have no room left in your belly, but whatever he brings will make for a decent meal tomorrow.

You do not bother to tidy up, and when you open the door, you wish you had. Illuminated only by the balcony light stands Fugo with a bouquet of daffodils, a bottle of sauvignon blanc, and a remorseful, sheepish smile upon his handsome face.

Get out of my life – get out of my dreams – and leave me alone.

“Uh . . . “ He trails off before he has even begun, perhaps taken aback by the widening of your eyes and the disheveled appearance that, despite your own judgement, he thinks to be the most beautiful vulnerability in life. He speaks your name with the kind of tenderness that you have not felt since you were teenagers. “Buon compleanno.”

You need not ask how he found you, because you know without question that either Mista or Giorno had told him. “Why are you here?” you ask.

He clutches the flowers a bit tighter. You do not move to take them; however, you have already decided on which vase you will place them in. “I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. And give you these.”

The bottle of wine feels far too heavy in your arms – and the daffodils, as if they might float off in an unforeseen gust of wind. “And, to apologize. For too many things that I can’t ever make right; although, if you’ll let me, I’d like to try.”

“Fugo, I . . . I don’t know.”

“Please, [Y/N]. That day in the library, all those years ago . . . I never stop thinking about the horrible things I said to you. It killed me – it ate me alive; I thought for all this time and before that you hated me, because of what happened to Narancia. Because I wasn’t there to save him.”

“It hurt when you told me to get out of your life, but I listened, and I did it.”

He brings the heel of his hand to swipe at the tears in his eyes. The curling of his other fist is a gesture that terrifies you – although, not for your own sake. “I couldn’t face you. I was scared to look you in the eye, because I thought you hated me,” he mutters like a broken record as his voice cracks with agony. “I thought you hated me, because of him.”

He stops, throwing his head back with a groan. The apple of his throat bobs up and down as he chokes down a sob. He refuses to look at you when he speaks again – too afraid to come undone before he has made his peace with you, his greatest loss. “We were young. Probably too young to even understand what love really meant. But, dio dannazione, you were the most important thing to me, and I understood that more than love.”

His words have always held the capacity for swaying you, as if they replenish the empty spaces within. It is why, as you open the door wider, you let him fill you once again. Fugo contemplates the crannies of your living room, hovering above the couch that you insisted he take a seat upon – he remembers when you bought it, because you had dragged him to the furniture outlet that day. He pretended to be annoyed, though in truth, he was beyond elated that you had chosen him over Mista, or even your brother.

“I guess I should put these in a vase,” you say about the bouquet of flowers. “They’re beautiful, Fugo. Thank you.”

He nods, suddenly entranced by a photograph of Narancia that sits atop the fireplace mantel. You do not notice his unease.

“I’ll grab us some glasses, too.”

You find your vase in the kitchen cabinet niched into the alcove above the refrigerator. Its emerald swirls glisten under the twine of the recessed lights that add no character to the room. So much for a birthday spent in reclusion, you chide alone. Deep within you sits a fire that longs to ignite – to send Fugo away in some thwarted act of retribution for the very loneliness he inflicted upon you years ago; as if to say that the rejection suits you well.

Of course, you cannot deny that your heart leapt into your throat when you saw him standing before the front door, a vision of a man who still held those inklings of boyish charm that you fell for in your adolescence. They say you should not dote over the first person beyond your mother and father to call you pretty; it is weakness to complacency. Your life has never been one of convention – and so by that right, who there is to insist that you must abide?

Bearing a content grin, you trim the stems one-by-one to better fit the vase. In synchronous rhythm to the next, the green stalks bounce from the cluttered countertop to the floor. You have only just stuffed the flowers back into the vase when the shattering of glass resonates its way into the kitchen.

The photograph of Narancia lies amongst bits of broken frame and wreckage. Face buried in his palms, Fugo crumples until his knees meet the ground; he shakes, as if smothered by a chill. When his hands fall to smack the coffee table – baring his grief, in all its pandemonium – you catch them and force his arms around your waist instead; his fingers lock together, holding you in place. He whimpers against your stomach. Already, you can feel the wetness of tears through the fabric of your overstretched shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry, [Y/N]. I’m sorry.”

Your own fingers curl through his strawberry blonde hair – a means of stability as you too have begun to cry. “It’s just a picture frame,” you promise, and it is the grandest thing he has ever heard. But it is more than a box made of wood and glass – it is an impossible longing. “I’m not upset at you.”

“I . . . Okay.”

Mindful of the mess, you rock him backwards until he is lying down. You join at his side, take his hand into your own, and wait in silence for the moment when his misery will dissipate for clarity. Regardless of the circumstances that have brought him here tonight, you are grateful for it – even if your birthday is spent wallowing in irrevocable regret.

Above all else, you know that he has always adored you, like the sun and moon and more – but he had a brilliant way of convincing you otherwise.

Your thumb coaxes over the back of his knuckles. “There’s a crack in your ceiling,” Fugo announces, nonchalant and monotone.

“Where? I don’t see one.”

He raises an unoccupied finger, and you follow its gesture to the corner of the ceiling, just above where the moulding meets. It is no longer than the length of hair from his head, and quite honestly, not an underlying issue of foundational complications. Still, you indulge him. “Oh, wow. I never noticed.”

In this hasty repertoire of patterns, you fall into stillness again. “Panni,” you whisper with the utterance of his endearing name. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He squeezes your hand.

“But it’s getting late. Why don’t you stay the night?”

Truthfully so, you cannot send him on his way in such a state of disarray.

“I can make up the couch for you, if you’d like.”

“Yes, please,” he murmurs.

However, you do not make it far because he has – inspired by a need to express his devotion and apologia – pulled you atop himself, hands braced on your hips as you balance on bent knees and grasp his shoulders. Tenderness is becoming of the boy – no, the man – who looks up at you as if you are the embodiment of everything good that exists in one life to the next. It is a side that he has never shown to anyone other than you.

You covet it like a piece of cherry-flavored candy, even when you lean down to capture his lips and nip at his tongue that likewise explores the long-forgotten caverns of your mouth. It is a distraction of meaning and not; from the broken frame, loss, and perhaps everything in between. Every attempt to catch a breath of air is met with resilient protests of needier touches and not before long, you lie on the couch – shedding your clothing like the skin of the woman you no longer wish to be – and let him in.

Bare chest to bare chest, you cup his hardness as he places his fingers to your untouched folds. You mean to tell him that you love him, but the penetration of unpracticed digits to your core stifles the very thought from your scattering mind. In dark closets and empty rooms, you two have had your share of imprudent experimentation with one another’s bodies in the past – and nothing more than warm, tentative touches that lead to girlish giggles and boyish huffs.

Fugo pinches your nipple, drawing a plush gasp from you; it urges him to do it again until at last you are throbbing with need from your lower half, your pelvis jerking upwards to meet his for the stimulation of wanting. His breath ghosts your face, and you think you smell wine – a drink for good luck, you think, because despite the distress manifesting in his soul, his mannerisms are otherwise as habitual as you might recall from moments of normalcy.

It feels wrong – to be filled with such wanton, salacious desire within the very hour that you have both spent in mourning of your brother and everything else that has been discarded to the wind, to be picked up by someone else. Yet tonight, you will not sleep with Fugo to forget your blue heart, nor for celebration’s sake as you embark upon another year of being – you will sleep with him, because you have grown tired of learning how to end your days without him.

“I haven’t . . .” You trail off, mesmerized by the way his violet eyes look at you; though puffy and stained red from crying, you take them in as he cocks a brow, imploring you to finish your thought. “I haven’t been with anyone else since you.”

“Good,” he sighs, and you think he is trying to hide a smile. “Me neither.”

Braced by his arms, you are flipped onto your stomach. The tweed upholstery bites into the soft flesh of your breasts with each jostle elicited by the curling of a finger within you. You push backwards until you swear you can feel his fingers against your cervix.

“Oh my god,” he groans, flexing out as if to move deeper. “Ti senti così bene.”

“If it feels good, then do something,” you whine, hands dug between the cushions for support.

But, to your chagrin, he takes his time to admire the way your folds pulsate around just two fingers. You glisten like a gem – his gem. Indignant with petty annoyance, you pull away and straddle the lithe, albeit toned, legs that dangle off the edge of the couch. Arms thrown around his neck, you sink down until you have reached your fill of his manhood.

“I did tell you to do something,” you sigh at Fugo’s displeasure, biting your lip as you adjust to the size of his shaft. “Didn’t I?”

He kisses you once and moves grasp your backend. You savor the feeling of him ingulfing you. “I was distracted.”

You would laugh if not for the anticipated bulging inside you as Fugo buckles into your heat. The sight of your jostling breasts with each bounce of you on his cock is a page of some heavenly doctrine – one that he should study and commit to forever. He moves with strength that he reserves for moments of rage, and even his fingers dig into your skin hard enough to leave bruises for the days to come. You do not mind; they will help you to remember the best night you have had in years.

With a cry that blossoms into a moan that tells him that he has treated you well, you ride out your orgasm and slump against his chest in your own exhaustion. When he reaches his peak, he slides out; you reach for him – dampened with your slick – and finish him until white pearls bead at the tip and trickle over your working fingers.

Foreheads pressed together, you flash tired grins before settling against the cushions, your head pressed to his chest and his arm braced around the small of your back while his fingers trace shapes against your perspired skin.

Panting, his heart skips every few beats – like a song, sung only for you. Content with that which has returned itself to you, you fall asleep to the sound of this lovely little love affair.

| 4966 Words |

[buckyownsmylife]

between us - chapter iv

The one where Aaron hurts you, but he knows just how to heal you.

When Hotch comes home one day and takes out his frustrations on you, you’re sent spiraling into a depressive state that you were all too familiarized with. But as your boss and closest friend, he’s the only one who knows how to take care of you during a relapse. His efforts to fix the situation end up awakening a different side of him, a side that might just be precisely what you’ve been missing in a time like that.

for general warnings and author’s notes, please go to the fic’s masterlist. PLEASE CHECK THEM.

Y/N’s P.O.V.

In the days that passed, I started to become more and more like myself again. I laughed more frequently, I felt more energetic, and it wasn’t long before Aaron decided I could go back to work. 

Seeing Spencer again was nice, but it was undoubtedly weird to try to pretend nothing different was going on between Hotch and I. I mean, I felt like the team had a solid idea of what was happening between us, especially from how firm he was about taking me to his house when I broke down on the jet, but nothing was confirmed yet and I didn’t want it to. It was nice to have something special blossoming and it felt like it was still so intimate and pure, I didn’t want to learn other people’s views about it.

And yet, as I felt myself climb higher and higher from the well I was buried before, I knew it was only a matter of time until I faltered and fell down a few steps. Recovery was something I was used to by now, so relapse was a fact and I was prepared for it. It just didn’t mean that I wasn’t scared or devastated when the itch to hurt myself resurfaced again. 

It happened while we were away on my first case since returning to the BAU. I was being aloof and I knew it, but I insisted that I was okay enough to go out on the field. I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that I could do this.

Boy, was I wrong.

Despite the fact that my distracted manner ended up putting Spencer’s life in danger, everything turned out okay and the unsub was caught. However, as we got stuck in our hotel for the night, since the jet wouldn’t be able to fly us back until the morning, all I could think about was how badly I had screwed up.

And the worst part was that no one shouted or even appeared to be angry at me. They were making sure to keep their true feelings hidden behind a barrier of fake understanding, so I wouldn’t go back to how I used to be, but the absence of an outlet only made it worse.

I could feel the voices rising again. Mocking me. Reminding me of how I couldn’t do anything right. How everyone probably hated me right now. I was spiraling, and quickly. The itch to scratch myself had already appeared and it was only a matter of time until my nails were bloodied.

But then, a knock resonated through the empty bedroom.

“Are you ok?” The sight of Aaron with those impenetrable eyes was enough to start to calm the waves of self-loathing, but I was still on edge. In all truth, I could barely speak, the embarrassment I felt for my own actions today still coursing through me.

“I’m still waiting for you to start screaming at me,” I admitted in a tiny voice, my arms wrapped tightly around myself. A good part of me was hoping for it, so I was prepared for any demonstration of anger that he could throw my way. “I feel like I should be in trouble.”

“That’s never going to happen.” He stepped into the room, hugging me to him as he closed the door behind us. We stayed like that for a while, him tightly holding me to his body as we slowly swayed in the same place. At least it forced my own hands to stay far away from my body.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing.” It escaped before I could realise I was even thinking about it. Aaron froze in his spot before carefully pulling away from me, his hands holding my head to look deep into my eyes. I felt myself melting despite my current state. He really did have beautiful eyes.

“What do you mean?” Sighing, I pushed him away gently before sitting down on the mattress, running a hand through my face. My mind was all over the place, making it difficult to focus on finding the right words to describe what I was going through at that moment.

“I’m sorry, Aaron.” The tears started rolling then. It all became too much. My failure at work, the fact that I was letting him down, I didn’t know what to do anymore. I felt lost, and soon enough, that asphyxiating weight settled over my chest, making it difficult for me to breathe.

“Sweetheart, talk to me.” Through the gaps between my fingers, I could see that he had knelt in front of me even before he reached for my hands, holding them so I couldn’t use them to hide anymore.

“I hate myself for what I did today, Aaron. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve to be in the BAU. God, what if something had happened to Spencer today? I… I have to cut myself, please let me get it out.” I tried to pull my hands from him, my need to scratch myself resurfacing even stronger again, but he held them tightly in his grip, stopping me from doing so.

Aaron’s P.O.V.

As I held onto her hands, I pulled her so she’d look at me again. “Sweetheart, please… Is there anything I could do?” It was so difficult to see the woman I loved like this, reduced to a crying mess, and not being able to help her. My heart physically ached as I held her against my chest, caressing her head in a feeble attempt to calm her down.

“Punish me, Aaron. Yell at me, say you hate me and that I don’t deserve you. Tell me you’re going to kick me out of the team.” Her broken sobs were taking away pieces of my heart little by little. 

“I can’t do that, darling. I’m sorry, it wouldn’t be the truth. You don’t deserve to be punished, sweetheart, you made an honest mistake and everyone is entitled to that. I *love you. I could never hate you for something so silly and if anything, I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you. And our team needs you, Y/N. We weren’t complete until you arrived.” 

Somehow, those didn’t seem like the right words to say. She literally started to tremble in my arms, a scream of agony leaving her lips. “Darling, tell me what I can do to help you, please. I want to help you.” She tried to free her arms to scratch her skin again, but I managed to hold her hands just in time. Suddenly, an idea struck me. An out-of-place reminder of a conversation held in different times, over a bottle of wine. “Alright, you want to be punished, get up.”

My voice hit the same tone it usually did when we were in the bullpen and I needed the team’s attention, so I quickly got hers. She immediately obeyed me, standing up to stare down at me as I remained seated at the edge of her bed. “I want you over my lap, right now.”

If there was any hesitation on my part about what I was doing, it went out of the window the second she threw herself over my legs. I stopped for a second, pondering over what I was about to do. I had never been one for physical punishment on Jack, since I had personal experience on how scarring that experience could be, but I could recognize this was of an entirely different nature. And despite my inexperience with this sort of sexual relationship before, the tightness in my pants warned me that at least a part of me was satisfied with it.

I ran my fingers through Y/N’s hair, appreciating her tiny shiver, a show of desire instead of pain, until I decided it was time to get on with it. Raising my hand in the air, I allowed it to fall over her backside, only strong enough so she could feel it. Y/N’s hands flew to my thigh, holding herself there so she’d be able to take it and I did it again, with more or less the same impact.

“Harder,” came her plea, and I hesitated only for a bit before obeying her request. Her voice hadn’t trembled for the first time in the evening and hearing it resemble her everyday assertiveness didn’t allow me any space to second guess our activities.

My next spank was undoubtedly harder than the last one, and I expected any sort of reaction from my girlfriend, except the broken moan she released after my hand fell over the right cheek of her ass.

Y/N’s P.O.V.

I didn’t have it in me to even feel embarrassed about my instinctive reactions, especially since Aaron was giving me exactly what I needed. I didn’t know how he knew, I couldn’t think in the state I was in, but it had been too long since I had found myself in this type of relationship and I had forgotten how it provided me with exactly what I needed.

“Y-yes!” I couldn’t stop the shout that escaped my throat as he continued to slowly give me harder slaps. Although it was precisely what I had asked for, it still didn’t manage to give me the same effect I would have gotten from feeling it against my skin. That’s what made me suddenly scramble up to look him in the eye again.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” He looked so concerned, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared up at me. I felt myself smiling despite the mess in my mind, just suddenly overcome with gratitude for having such an amazing creature worrying about me.

“Not at all. This is exactly what I need, I don’t know how you knew it.” I held his face between my hands, softly running my thumbs over his cheekbones. “Would you… Would you do something else for me?”

His eyes searched mine quickly before nodding. “Anything.” I had to smile at his devoted tone, so I leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead before straightening up again and pulling my dress off my body.

His eyes devoured me whole, but he didn’t open his mouth to protest at seeing me only in my underwear again. I think he knew I respected his desire to wait until I was in better condition to have sex, so he must have had a pretty good idea of what I wanted.

With that in mind, I assumed my position over his lap again, enjoying the feeling of his pants against my practically naked body before calling out to him, “More, please.” He hesitated for a bit. I was about to get up and ask him to forget about this, the last thing I wanted was to make him uncomfortable, when suddenly, his hand collided with my backside.

“Is this what you wanted?” His voice sounded dark, and I felt a shiver run through my body as I nodded to his words. “Not good enough, little girl.” His hands pulled on my hair and I whimpered from the surprise and the pleasurable pain. “I’m going to need to hear you say it.”

A wave of hotness flushed down my body and I could feel my panties getting wet from his words. Never, in a million years, did I expect to be in this position, over my boss’s lap, with Aaron practically talking dirty with such an erotic voice. 

“I-I need this,” I finally whimpered, before shifting over his body to adjust my weight, in the hopes of getting some friction between my legs. I hoped I had been discreet, but when I felt my boyfriend’s fingers lightly grazing over my panties on the precise spot I knew would be soaked in a few seconds, I knew I had been caught.

“I can see that.” It was almost funny to hear the smugness in Aaron’s tone, but I couldn’t laugh at that moment. Not when he was pressing the lace of my panties against the emptiness that was throbbing with need, effectively ruining the tissue as it became attached to my pussy lips. “You’re really enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I wholeheartedly admitted, trying to force myself not to thrust back into his fingers.

“Hmm…” I could practically *hear his desire, and I thought back on how he had stopped himself from going further with me because he didn’t want to take advantage of me in this state. But it couldn’t really be considered taking advantage if it would help the person in need, right?

“Do you know what would help me even better?” I managed to ask, knowing I had picked up his interest by the way he softly caressed my backside.

“What would that be, little girl?” The nickname ignited every single nerve end on my body, and I had to bite back a moan as he unexpectedly slapped my ass again.

“Y-you, daddy.” I *felt his cock jump up at my own nickname for him and that awarded me another slap, harder than the last one.

“And how do you want your daddy, sweetheart?” My attention had completely abandoned his words as I felt his fingers brush up against me again, slowly pushing the fabric of my underwear aside and caressing my wetness in direct contact for the first time. But then another slap echoed around the room and I gasped, bucking into the fingers that were only barely penetrating me. “Answer me, Y/N.”

“Inside of me, daddy.” A sharp intake of breath was all the warning I got before my panties were being forcibly pushed down to my ankles.

“What won’t daddy do for you, little girl?” He asked just before pushing a single long finger inside of me. I almost cried from how amazing it felt after not being touched for so long, but then a thumb was playing with my tiny pearl and a full-on sob escaped me.

“Please, don’t stop, please!” I begged, pulling on the arm that wasn’t otherwise occupied with me, worried that he’d think he had hurt me. However, the response I got was a soft caress on my head in an attempt to calm me down when he managed to release his arm from my grasp.

“I won’t stop, sweet girl. Relax against your daddy and let him take care of you.” The words were like a balm to the mental cuts I had performed on myself, and my body instantly fell slack against his lap. 

“There you go. *Such a good, little girl.” Each word from his last sentence was punctuated with a sharp thrust of his finger that led me to start moaning - rather loudly, I supposed - like the trembling mess that I was. Suddenly, my underwear was being taken away from me and pressed against my lips. “Open up, princess.” I eagerly obeyed, desperate to continue receiving his touches, which he immediately resumed with a particular tug on my hair.

Aaron’s P.O.V.

“There you go. Can’t have anyone interrupting us now, can we, sweetheart?” It should feel weird how her broken sobs and moans made me grin from ear to ear, but I was too intoxicated by the power I felt to analyze the situation right now. I had wished for a way to help her. Now I had it. It was clear that this was what she needed, and I was more than happy to give it to her.

“You know, I’ve never done this before…” I started, carefully massaging her head with the hand that wasn’t otherwise occupied with her pussy. “I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying this.” I pulled on Y/N’s hair again, just in time to watch as her eyes rolled back, her orgasm finally catching up to her after I quickened the motions from my fingers. 

“So beautiful,” I absentmindedly whispered as I waited for her to come back to me, not stopping any of my movements, but simply slowing them down. At last, with one final shiver, her body fell limp on my lap and I took my fingers from her with a chuckle at the displeased whine she let out at the emptiness. 

I pulled her up so she would be seated on my lap now, her face carefully enveloped by my hands as I searched her eyes after pulling out her panties from her mouth. “How are you feeling, my love?” It was impossible not to be affected by the way she simply melted against me.

“Better. I’m so much better, Aaron, thank you so much.” She hid her face on the crook of my neck and I felt warm and intoxicated at the same time. I wanted to cuddle her and protect her for the rest of her life, but I also wanted to be tightly snuggled inside of her like nothing else on the planet. The dichotomy of this woman was simply too much.

“You’re welcome, my love.” I continued caressing her hair while hugging her close to me, paying no attention to the fact that she was most likely ruining my pants. After a while, she pushed away from my chest to look me in the eyes again.

“What about you, honey?” I knew what she meant. But despite how aroused I felt, I knew it still wasn’t the right moment, so that’s why I leaned down to give her a sweet kiss, before picking her up and softly laying her on the bed. 

“I’m already okay, darling. Don’t you worry about me.” Despite knowing she understood where I was coming from, she couldn’t help but pout at me, which made me chuckle. “Soon, alright?” I lightly traced her bottom lip with my thumb as she nodded solemnly at me. “Thank you, sweetheart. Do you want me to stay here with you?”

The way her eyes lit up made me feel like the most special man in the world. ���Would you do that?” It hurt me that she’d even doubt, for a second, what I would do for her, especially since it was something that I would also benefit from.

“Of course, darling. I’ll stay with you. I won’t be here when you wake up, because we don’t want the team to notice anything, but I’ll stay until you fall asleep.” She watched me with sleepy eyes as I carefully took off my clothes, putting them over the chair so they wouldn’t wrinkle, and then climbed up on the bed next to her, pulling her to me so she’d fall asleep listening to my heartbeat dance for her.

She’d be alright. I’d make sure of it.

[beclynn-herondale]

hi! ❤ hope you are well, i'm so happy to know you liked my last robert analysis. it feels very safe and nice to write about him to you, so it makes me really glad that you're enjoying too. forgive me, it took me a while to write this one!

between the points you mentioned, what you said you think about his trauma got my attention first. what you think is right, and i thought it would be a good idea to help you with your conclusions if i explained robert's trauma in details.

to examine it closely, i separate robert's childhood trauma into three parts. i guess we could say he had three different childhood traumas. you probably remember it generally: rune experience, parents, and discrimination. each one was deeply connected to the others but had a different effect in some ways.

1- rune experience: it's kinda hard to people to understand what happened because its horribleness was complex. i'll try to summarize. it was robert's 12th birthday. first of all, robert was being burned alive non-stop. he wasn't having his flesh burned, he was something like "burning inside." how intense the pain was: it consumed his entire being, he lost the ability to think, the pain blocked any thought or memory he could have, so robert didn't know who he was, where he was or what was happening, because all his body/mind/soul were processing was the extreme pain. it was mortal pain, it was supposed to kill robert, he was supposed to die consumed but the burning pain. but it didn't. somehow, while he hadn't the ability to think or feel anything but pain, he had strenght to stay alive in pain instead of die. he was enduring something people shouldn't be able to survive to. in his state where his sould/mind was enduring differently of his body, there were demons, and they tortured robert physically and verbally. then, his family members appeared to him, basically saying he was worthless and should die. he really was supposed to be dead by then, and he could see it, he literally could see hell right waiting for him to finally expire. but it didn't happen. somehow he endured it. now, all of this, lasted one entire month. it's actually hard to imagine someone somehow enduring this for one entire month. i don't think any other character had to endure something like this, except maybe annabel. it's the worse i ever saw happen to a tsc character, it was an entire month. (it's very depressing how nobody could ever understand robert cuz no one else around survived something like this. annabel was tortured, buried alive and then painfully ressurrected, and went literally insane because of it.)

this had multiple consequences to robert. physically, he took a while to recover, but then it was stated his body was fine. the effects were mostly mental. after receiving his first rune, robert was supposed to continue his training, but he couldn't. other kids of his age were evolving their training, while he was doing nothing about it. he both hadn't the energy and couldn't do it, cuz he was afraid of steeles. something perfectly logical since a steele caused that month of agony. you know he eventually managed to learn to use steeles to be an actual shadowhunter. but it wasn't all.

the first rune is something normal that happens to all shadowhunters, and it's mostly something good. the way it was horrible to robert in a way no one could have expected, made robert develop extreme anxiety; because the worst happened to him triggered by something common. so while doing common things, robert would be always scared and anxious, thinking about the worst of the worst that could happen. while it wasn't much notable to other people, it harmed his development and behavior a lot, consequently harming his self-steem, cuz he couldn't do things right, he was always worried and overthinking everything.

to compensate it, robert became somebody who worked on two extremes: he was always overthinking everything, except in battle. in battle he wasn't what we define as brave i guess. he was fearless. valentine is the one who helped robert to achieve that. (we know his actual motivations, this isn't important now) the mental process valentine taught him was: robert's inherent fear and anxiety made him fail, and that made him despise himself (that's something robert does a lot for countless reasons). robert should not only embrace the fury he felt against himself, but it should dominate him, and he use its intensity to block his fear. then basically, robert should do a mental form of self harm, letting the strenght of his hate for himself take his mind and use this strenght to control his actions. robert's fury leading his actions, not his fear and anxiety. as expected with this process, robert then was able to engage in normal shadowhunter activities, but fearless when it came to physical risk. logically this would be very dangerous, but we can imagine how useful it was for valentine to have on his team a warrior like this who was such a big and strong man and centainly could take a lot of physical damage and pain (and i guess it shouldn't be any doubt that being so tough helped robert a lot to survive through the years). we know it was because of this robert felt he owed loyalty to valentine.

2- parents: first, something kinda interesting is that robert had other relatives and they were there when robert's first rune was made. we are informed that his state during that month of agony was a scandal and robert's parents were the ones being absurd. so we can assume his other relatives had nothing to do with it. another strong evidence is robert naming two of his children with names from his family, what indicates he didn't saw his entire family negatively. now his parents... let's never forget what happened to robert was supposed to kill him on incredible intense pain. andrew and phoebe deliberately let their child to die in pain so he wouldn't be a mundane. i personally classify them between the worst shadowhunters parents along with céline's, annabel's, valentine and tatiana.

after robert woke up, they (or anyone else) never cared to ask robert how he felt. all they wanted was to make everything seem normal, without caring about how robert was taking it. they never showed any regret about what they've done: they did the opposite of that, telling robert right on his face what they did and how they were sure that it was totally worth it to make him go through that to not be a mundane. it hurt (and traumatized) robert a lot.

love from parents and relatives is supposed to be the first love someone gets. and robert didn't have that. if his parents showed love to him on his first years alive, it never mattered because these two traumas mentioned made robert forget anything about his parents from before his first rune. he couldn't ever remember them as actual parental figures of love. the only parents he remembered and recognized were the ones who left him to endure that, looked proud of it and never cared about its effects on him afterwards. as far as it counted, robert lived a loveless childhood. as i mentioned, andrew and phoebe wanted everything to be as normal possible, so they just acted as robert's parents as if anything happened, but it was pointless and felt cold. after knowing what they did to him (what they let happen to him), knowing that they didn't actually love him as their child, robert couldn't have a bond with them, he couldn't even be comfortable around them. it's described that their presence was what intensified robert's loneliness the most. so he didn't spend much time around them, he stayed in his room.

without his parents' love, robert's first experience with love was when he was 13 years old, with michael. it was setting a standard of love to him, with the long-term consequences afterwards being devastating. (i guess someone could even connect robert not recognizing his parents affection with his future performance of fatherhood, but that would be mostly guessing and i rather work with things i can prove. another good guess i think would be connecting his loveless childhood to how robert during his teenagehood had messy limits between his love for michael and his affection for maryse and didn't know how to handle or recognize it. i mean mostly things like, if michael was robert's best friend/parabatai and maryse his romantic partner and probably future wife, why did robert see maryse and women in general as a threat to michael's place in his life and their parabatai and best friend relationship? he saw valentine having a parabatai he loved and a girlfriend he wanted to get married to, and still freaked out about a woman as his wife replacing michael who was his parabatai, what didn't make any sense. i know people joke about robert being "clueless" about michael but it isn't much funny with this context. finally, another guess would be connecting robert's discovery that his parents' love for him was faulty through they letting him hurt to his beliefs that what he did to michael proved his love for michael was faulty. you can deliberate about all of these conjectures if you want).

3- discrimination: before his first rune, robert had other kids to play with, but he wouldn't remember much of it. yeah, we can say robert doesn't remember anything about how he was treated by people before his first rune. robert doesn't know a life without trauma.

since what happened to robert was a political scandal, with everyone trying to save robert and his parents wanting him to keep his painful and mortal rune, what happened to him was kind of general knowledge. then, no kid wanted to play or train with him. at first he was still recovering, but then he couldn't move foward because he didn't have anyone. he didn't want to be around his parents' coldness and no one else wanted to be around him, quite literally. other people would be around him only when being forced, and then would stay the most distant of him possible, to never get physically close of him, as if to not catch a disease. this is absolutely dreadful to a child.

being treated like this hurt and traumatized robert terribly. being around any one was horrible, so he spent most of the time hidden in his room. not being able to improve on anything because of his fears and anxiety and not having anyone to train with or even to socialize with, and basically never being able to move on about what happened, robert hated to be alive and wished to be dead, wished the rune had killed him as it should have, because he thought no death could be worse than his life, so be dead would be better. this state of mind dured an entire year before michael came around. a lot of damage had been done by then.

being treated like he was "sick" and ostracized left a huge psychological wound on him. to him, discrimination was one of the worst things ever, for something that was never his fault and he never choose to.

(one may think that if robert hates discrimination, it doesn't make sense to him to dislike downworlders, but it actually does. all robert wanted was to be a normal shadowhunter, and he had deeper reasons than most to be passionate about being one. disliking downworlders would be an ideal average shadowhunter thing to do. but robert was far from ignorant. he didn't think downworlders were animals or demons and was far more inclined to defend downworlder segregation than downworlder extermination. of course segregation is something horrible in general and should never be defended, but with downworlders being different sub-species, it wasn't as absurd as the extermination valentine defended, and robert being actually smart and open minded, we know he actually changed his beliefs).

now, to him, one being discriminated by their peers was one of the worst things that could happen, and the perspective of being discriminated terrified and triggered robert deeply. we know the perspective of homosexuality freaks robert out because of the discrimination, marginalization and "anormality" experience that comes with it (and robert is a 60s kid and shadowhunter society is a conservative mess, so it would naturally seem so much more taboo to him), what scared him deeply. we see him getting extremely anxious over himself, michael and alec about the perspective of homophobic discrimination.

robert only started training with runes after his 14th birthday. his training was late, and between his 12th and 14th birthdays, half of the time was extremely traumatizing, the other half he spent most with michael (who helped him a lot about everything). but still, it was a very big share of his childhood-teenagehood and he didn't have the feeling or normality. everything i said about his anxiety over shadowhunting, specially over runes, applied intensely during his entire teenagehood, but robert went to the academy with michael where he was having normal training and final got to socialize a little. he loved so much to feel a little normal. he still felt like a weak and useless trash, but at least he was doing normal shadowhunting things and living like a teenager. the problem was: he wanted to live his entire teenagehood, and he just couldn't do that. training is supposed to end when shadowhunters are 18 years old. robert would stay at the academy until he was 19, and still didn't seem enough. while he was older than his fellows, he felt far less mature. much of his development time had been lost, and he would never get it back. in this context, it made very sense to robert's girlfriend be a younger girl and his admiration for a younger boy (valentine), and there were jokes about him being old, but what bothered robert the most was that he should soon live an adult man average life with wife and kids, when his perspective of life was being with michael in the academy. we also know how that went... and he married maryse when he was about 21/22 years old and maryse about 19.

forgive me for any grammar mistakes. i think this summary can help a lot! at least i hope it's useful to you or anyone else who read it! writing it was very thoughtful (and it's really a huge joy for me to explain things about robert, if you haven't guessed) and i hope to start working on my next ask soon

xoxo, take care of yourself, kind fellow ☺ thank you for your attention

First of all,. I'm sorry for getting to this late.

Second, I don't think I need to add anything. This is written very well, and gave me a deeper understanding.

And I am once again saying: let Shadowhunters get help with their trauma 😭

Also, TSC has a lot of bad parents. But it sadly represents real life 😔

Thank you for taking the time to write this out. I enjoyed reading it. And I agree with a lot that was said.

[wlntrsldler]

unrequited (draco malfoy/ cedric diggory series)

PROMPT: You and Cedric grew up together. After the tragedy of the Triwizard Tournament, you’re left feeling empty without your best friend. Draco Malfoy steps into the picture. Will the feelings be reciprocated? Or will it be unrequited?

WARNINGS: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, angst, fluff, sadness???

PAIRING: draco malfoy x reader and cedric diggory x reader; hufflepuff reader

WC: 2.6K+

UNREQUITED MASTERLIST

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PART 9

By the time you got to the Burrow, you were freezing cold and shivering, even under your coat. You used your last ounce of strength to knock on the door, waiting for it to open. You heard what must’ve been a dozen feet shuffling from behind the door, all fighting to get to it first. The twins, Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny, maybe, you guessed.

After a while, the door opened to reveal Fred, smile reaching both of his ears. He saw you and quickly engulfed you in a hug, his warmth radiating off you. He kissed the crown of your head, blowing off the snowflakes that got stuck in your hair. 

“Bugger off, Fred,” George groaned, ripping his brother from you. “Some of us want hugs too.”

You chuckled as George wrapped his arms around you, murmuring about how things will be okay. They knew it was going to be a hard time for you so before you arrived, they vowed they’d make it as bearable as they possibly could. The trio and Ginny jumped into the hug, all of them piling on top of you as you laughed through your tears. You felt so loved.

“Y/N, are you here, sweetie?” 

Everyone pulled away and you saw Mrs. Weasley, smiling, with freshly baked cookies on a tray. She shoved the tray towards Ron, the boy groaning as it hit his ribs. 

“Hi, Mrs. Weasley!”

“Oh dear,” She hugged you, tightly, giving you a kiss on the cheek. “I told you to call me Molly.”

“My mother would roll over in her grave if she ever heard me call you by your first name.” You replied, adjusting your backpack. 

“Well, I suppose so.” She said. She saw you fidgeting with your backpack and hit Fred’s arm. “Help her, Fred. Take her things to the room for her like a gentleman.”

Fred rolled his eyes but helped you bring your things upstairs. He motioned for you to follow him up the stairs and you obeyed, saying a quick goodbye to everyone. He led you to a room with two beds. 

“You’ll be staying with Georgie and I,” He informed you, dropping the bag by his bed. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all.” You sat beside him, leaning your head on his shoulder. You let out a sigh as he wrapped an arm around you, rubbing up and down your arm in comfort. 

“What’s wrong, love?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been off the last week or so.”

“It’s nothing.”

Fred removed his arm around you and moved his body to face you. He looked at you sternly, eyes not giving a sign of backing down. “I know you’re lying.”

You paused before answering. Then, in a shaky breath, you replied, “I miss Cedric.” 

Fred immediately wrapped you up in a bone-crushing hug when he heard your voice crack. Your face was buried in his chest, smelling the scent of eggnog and freshly baked cookies from the kitchen. He was wearing a white t-shirt, that was ruined by your tears, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just held you tightly, in a way that you haven’t been held in a long time. It wasn’t the same. Nothing would ever be the same. But it was more than enough.

He held you for what seemed like hours, rubbing your back as you sobbed in agony and despair. Fred could feel his heart breaking into a million pieces, remembering Cedric’s last words to him and George. Fred loved you like a sister. He knew Cedric was the other half of you. He couldn’t even imagine a life without George. It was a reality that hurt too much to think about. 

“I know,” Fred whispered, finally replying after he felt you calming down. “I know it’s hard, Y/N. I won’t even sit here and act like I get it because I don’t. All I know is that we’re here for you. Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Ron, Georgie, Mum, Dad, Me. I’ll be here for you, always, Y/N. Don’t ever forget that.” 

You wiped your tears with the back of your hand, “I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you, too, Freddie. You and Georgie.” 

“Now, I can’t speak for George, but I’ll be here.” He chuckled, kissing your temple. “And while I’m here, he isn’t going anywhere either. I’ll make sure of it.” 

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, Y/N.” He let you go off his embrace, smiling at you. “Anything else on your mind, little one?”

You debated on telling him about Draco. Was there even anything to tell? Sure, you two have had some moments that you couldn’t describe. Sure, sometimes you dreamt of the blond boy, smiling and laughing happily beside you because his happiness was so addictive and you wanted nothing else but to make sure he was happy for the rest of his days. Sure, sometimes you wished he would open up to you and show you all his scars and his problems and his insecurities and tell you that he trusts you with his entire heart. Sure, you missed him too, and sometimes you wished you could tell him that. 

But was that something worth telling? 

No, you decided, not for now. 

“No, that’s it.” You smiled, unconvincingly. 

Fred nodded, skeptically, but he let it go. He got up and motioned for you to join the rest of the family downstairs. You informed him that you needed to rest for a while, the journey to the Burrow tiring you more than you expected. After seeing you curled up in his bed, he smiled and let you rest. 

You heard the door click behind you and heard his bellowing laugh descending down the steps. The house was so lively and you loved it, but for now, you just needed to be alone for a minute. You pulled out the familiar journal again, mentally scolding yourself for always missing Cedric. It was getting repetitive, you knew that. It’s not like you meant to dwell on things but it just… happens. You��re so used to him being here that you hold onto every shred of him. 

You landed on the page where he found out he was chosen to be the Triwizard champion. You remembered it like it was yesterday. You celebrated with everyone else when his name was called. You stood up, applauding loudly, and cheering for him, voice booming over everyone else’s. When he took his place at the front of the room, his eyes locked on yours, crinkles showing off his happiness. He looked so happy. 

The common room that night was loud. Nobody wanted to leave and retire for the night. Everyone just wanted to stay and congratulate Cedric. People passed by him, wishing him good luck, and telling him to do well as they’ve placed bets on him. After every comment, Cedric would laugh and tell them they had nothing to worry about. It was like he got even more popular and you didn’t know that was even possible. 

You thought of the memory, fondly. You never made it up to your dormitory, falling asleep in his arms on one of the couches. He wouldn’t let you get up to leave so you gave up, sinking into the couch cushions with him as he kept rambling on and on about bringing glory to your house. You could still feel his chest rising up and down, breath fanning over your skin, and his chin propped on top of your head. You could still feel his fingers absentmindedly tracing patterns on your skin, touch warm and comforting. You could still feel his lips ghosting over your cheek, then the shell of your ear, mumbling a soft, “I love you.” 

You read the page, taking in all his words. This page was all about you, it seemed. His other entries were a mixture of things throughout his day. This one, however, was written in one sitting, with one thing in mind: You. 

“Today I got chosen as the Triwizard champion. 

To say I’m ecstatic would be an understatement. I’ve never felt more energized in my life, like my entire life was meant to lead up to this moment. Eternal glory sounds nice. 

But to say that I’m not scared and terrified and afraid of what might happen is a lie. I’ve never been more scared in my life. I haven’t admitted that to myself ever since I’ve been chosen. There was no time for fear. Everyone is counting on me. And in a way that’s even scarier than the challenges.

With Y/N sleeping soundly on my chest, I can’t help but worry. I’m thinking of everything that could go wrong. People die in these tournaments. What if that’s my fate? I don’t want to leave yet… not without telling her how much I love her. 

Whenever I close my eyes, I see us behind my eyelids, dancing, singing, laughing, living. She’s my best friend in the entire world. A life without her, whether that be this life or the afterlife, would be dull, purposeless. I’m convinced that I was meant to find her, fall in love with her, and be with her for as long as I exist. 

The day before I left for Hogwarts, I spent it with Y/N. We laid there that night, silent besides the soft snores of my father. I told her that I was going to marry her once we both graduated from Hogwarts. This was when I was young, naive, and I didn’t realize that I was in love with her then. How could I? We were kids. 

But the words of my mother rung in my head. She reminded me that I should marry my best friend and only my best friend. Back then, I didn’t understand that she meant your lover should be your best friend as well, I just thought she meant I should marry my actual best friend. So I proposed to Y/N at 11. Luckily for me, she said yes.

Y/N may not be my lover but she’s my best friend. And if it takes me the rest of my life to get her to love me back in the same way, I’d do it. I haven’t spent enough time to show her how much I love her. I don’t think I’ve proven to her that I’m hopelessly in love with her. I can’t go away without her knowing that. That’s why I can’t die yet.

But I’ll be fine, right? I’ll win and I’ll confess to her when I finish the last challenge. We’ll celebrate together and bask in eternal glory. I’ll tell her I love her and if by some miracle she loves me back, then I’ll propose to her again, this time with the feeling of love motivating me to do so. And I’ll spend the rest of my life making her fall in love with me over and over again. 

I can’t wait.”

You closed the journal, clutching it close to your heart. 

Cedric loves you back. 

Cedric loved you back. 

-

It was Christmas Eve. The smell of gingerbread was overpowering. You walked down to the kitchen where most of the Weasley clan sat. Ron and Hermione were sitting beside each other, shy smiles etched on their faces, unable to be any more obvious than they were at the moment. Fred and George sat across from them, snickering at the two’s oblivion. Harry and Ginny were sneaking bits of gingerbread from the pan, Mrs. Weasley having to swat their hands away when they’ve been caught. Bill and Fleur were outside, taking time for themselves, away from the chaos, you assumed. Mr. Weasley and Charlie were sitting on the couch, drinking some tea. 

You plopped down beside Fred, stealing a piece of bacon from his plate. He playfully glared at you, muttering how you should’ve woken up earlier if you really wanted food. “It’s Christmas for Merlin’s sake, Y/N!” 

You ignored him and continued to munch on the food on his plate. He eventually gave up and shoved the plate in your direction, which you happily took. Ron and Hermione finally stopped blushing at each other’s words and excused themselves separately. Hermione dragged Ginny up the stairs with her, ignoring Harry’s protests. You chuckled, watching the scenes unfold in front of you. 

“Oh, Y/N,” Mrs. Weasley beamed, placing more eggs on your plate. “You’re awake. Did the boys keep you up late?”

“Georgie’s snoring is a bit difficult to fall asleep to but I managed to sleep.”

“Oi!” George yelled. “That’s not a good way to treat the people who are letting you stay in their room.”

“Especially since we two grown men have to share a bed now that you’ve taken over mine.” 

You scoffed, rolling your eyes, “Don’t be so dramatic. You two barely count as men.”

Harry led out a loud laugh, causing Mrs. Weasley to do the same. The twins feigned a look of hurt but quickly got back at you by tickling your sides. You gasped for air as the two boys dug their fingers into your skin, laughing maniacally as you struggled to breathe. 

“Boys, let her eat.” Mrs. Weasley scolded, feeling pity towards you. 

“Sorry, mum.” Their voices chorused. They sent you a mischievous smirk before leaving the kitchen, Harry trailing behind them closely. 

“Some things came for you today, love.” Mrs. Weasley slid over a pile of items towards your side of the table. “Had to hide these from the nosy boys in this house.”

“Thank you.” You smiled, genuinely, dropping your fork to sort through the pile of items. 

There were two letters, one from Mr. Diggory and another from your aunt. You read them first, a few tears slipping out of your eyes as you read their words. They wished you a simple, “Merry Christmas,” and offered some sweet anecdotes to get you through the harsh reality of what the holiday season brings you this year. You folded the parchments neatly, as you received them, before moving them aside. 

The last one was a box, wrapped in beige parchment with some twine. A familiar wax seal was placed on it, your name inked on the parchment with an even more familiar handwriting. There was no name indicating who it came from but you didn’t need to read a name to know who it was from. 

You opened it gently, trying to preserve the parchment, especially the parts that contained your name. You removed the top of the box, greeted by a note placed right on top. Same handwriting. It read:

“Merry Christmas. Enjoy your holidays. Thinking of you.” 

Your stomach erupted with butterflies and your heart began to beat quicker. You were thankful that Mrs. Weasley had her back turned or else she would see the obvious blush on your cheeks. You bit the corner of your lip, re-reading the note over and over before even looking at what’s inside the box. Once you’ve memorized his words and the movement of his quill on the note, you put it aside and unraveled the gift he got you. 

Inside the box laid two bottles of cologne: a golden one- chamomile and honey- and an evergreen green one- mint and green apple, it read. You immediately thought of your last encounter with Draco, how he was so apologetic for causing you to drop your bottle of cologne. You sprayed some of the golden cologne on your left wrist, sighing in content at the familiar scent. Just like you remembered.

Curious, you did the same thing with the evergreen cologne, this time on your right wrist. You closed your eyes, wanting to heighten your senses to smell this cologne for the first time. It did smell exactly like it promised mint and green apple. But it also smelled of something you vaguely remembered you’ve encountered in the past. It smelled exactly like the faint scent in your Amortentia. 

-

A/N: the foreshadowing on this chapter is strong oops

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[fluffymcu]

Letting Loose

Part SEVENTEEN

This series is TICKLE related.

Series Summary:  You’re the little sister of the one and only Captain America. You’re also the youngest girl on the team, so that automatically makes you the avengers’ little princess. And they spoil you as such. They have become your amazing family and you don’t know where you’d be without them. This series will show random adventures and fluffy events in the daily life of the reader and her family, along with an unexpected turn later on as you read.

A/N: I’m so excited to be writing this series! This is my first time writing one and I’m a bit nervous but I hope it all goes well. :)  Hope you enjoy!

Word count: 2,986

This morning you, Peter and Ruby Anne had gotten dressed and ready to go out into the city for some good pizza. The three of you made your way down to the kitchen where a few members of the team were. Bucky, Steve, Bruce, and Tony were there, having breakfast and coffee.

“Hey good morning. Me and the girls are gonna go to the city to get some pizza!” Peter said, you and ruby following behind him. Tony made a weird face and Steve raised an eyebrow at you.

“Pizza for breakfast?” Tony asks. You and Peter shrug before you speak.

“Why not?” Tony just shrugs with both brows raised and waves you off.

“Alright. Go have fun I guess.”

-------

You were at a booth, playing a game on your phone while you waited for Peter and Ruby. They were at the line ordering their mini pizzas and you were securing your seats. Peter ordered what you wanted and now the three of you were sitting at the booth waiting for your pizzas to come out of the pizza oven.

You all made small talk while your drinks came, and made plans to once again stop by the pet shop down the street. It was tradition that every time you went to get pizza, you'd have to stop by the pet shop and look at all the puppies.

“Have you ever been to a pet shop?” You asked Ruby, who was taking a bite out of her pizza. She shook her head as she swallowed her food.

“No, I've never been. I'm not really a dog person.” You gasped at that. You had assumed everyone on earth was a dog person. Who doesn’t love puppies?!

“Really?!”

“Yeah, I guess it’s cause I never had a dog, or met one up close, but I don’t know, they just never caught my attention.” She shrugged. You nodded side to side and hummed.

“Well, now’s your chance to change your mind. Me and Peter have this tradition to stop by the pet shop down the street and look at all the puppies. Peter never lets me go in though, because he thinks that if I go in, I'm walking out with a puppy in my hands.” You say, rolling your eyes. Peter scoffs and rolls his eyes as well.

“I don’t think. I know you will. And then Tony’s gonna blame me for letting you.” He said.

“Whatever. Anyway yeah, so we just look at the animals from the window. But… maybe todayyy can be different!” You say, hope dripping from your voice and you turn to look at Peter with a sly grin. “Since we have Ruby Anne, we have to show her inside! So she can meet a puppy up close and maybe change her mind! Come on, pleaseee? Can we go in, I promise not to adopt anything, I promise!” you plead, pulling out your puppy eyes, knowing he almost always falls for that.

Peter lets out a heavy sigh and rolls his eyes, making your cheer. “Fineee, just because of Ruby Anne.” He says, getting up and waiting for you all to go to the shop.

------

“They’re really cute! And so soft!” Ruby chuckled, walking out of the pet shop with you and Peter on either side of her. She had a really good time looking at all the little puppies and going into the small booths to pet them and snuggle them.

“Right? They’re amazing! Hey, I'm pretty sure now, that if you asked tony for a puppy, he wouldn’t hesitate.” You say with a smug smile of your face as you wiggle your eyebrows at her. She lets out a short laugh. Peter knows exactly why you said that and looks at you while he giggles.

“Dohohon’t even start.”

-----------

You had come home about an hour ago and practiced some ballet as well as training a bit with your brother in the gym. You were now walking in the yard with Ruby Anne, having a nice little girl talk. You were talking to her about Jeremy as you both took a seat on one of the benches in the garden.

“Hmm. Maybe Steve is right.” Ruby chuckled. You shook your head with a smile.

“I used to doubt it but, now I don’t know what to think. But I do know that “we” would never happen.” You scoff. Ruby hums and stares off at the flowers. “What about you? Any crushes you got?” You smirked, nudging her with your elbow. Ruby scoffed and paused for a moment.

She shook her head almost sadly. “Not anymore. It didn’t work out.” She shrugged. You hummed and gave her an apologetic look.

“Well… he's an idiot for not seeing your worth.” You say. Ruby laughs at that and raises her eyebrows as she nods sarcastically.

“Yeah well, its fine. He likes some other girl. She’s so much better for him. They compliment each other very nicely.” She smiles.

“Don’t say that, you are enough. There's no “girl that’s better”. Everyone has something that makes them valuable. You’ll find someone that sees that in you.” You grin, giving her shoulder a comforting pat. She nods and gives you a shy smile.

“Thanks.” She sighs. “So, your turn. You got a crush?” she asks. You take a deep breath and stretch your arms a bit.

“…. I don’t know actually. I mean, I see guys and find them attractive but, I'm not really at the point where I wanna date yet. And I guess that’s what's stopping me. I wanna appreciate and take advantage of my youth. Maybe- I don’t know. I just feel sometimes that when you date at a young age, especially when you both are still growing and immature, you're basically dating for heartbreak.” You shrug. “So I figured I’d just wait, and save myself the pain. I’ll find the right one eventually. But of course, that’s just my take on it.” You chuckle. Ruby nods and smiles.

“Yeah… that’s kinda true I guess.”

-----------

Pietro had brought some Chinese home so everyone gathered to have lunch today. You were having some orange chicken and rice and you couldn’t be happier. After everyone was almost done, Tony spoke.

“So guys I was thinking we should have our movie night outside, what do you think? We set up the yard real nice, weather’s good, we could set up the projector and have our snacks.” He said, smiling when everyone started to agree. You were really excited at the idea and couldn’t wait to set everything up.

That was until now.

After lunch you had taken a shower and a nap. You hadn’t realized its been hours that you were asleep but you were just so tired, you didn’t know why. So when Tony came waltzing into your room to wake you up, your motivation to go help outside was very low.

“Y/nn, wake up…” he sang lightly shaking your shoulder a bit. You groaned loudly, hugging your pillow tighter. “You said you wanted to help with the yard, you’ve been sleeping for a while, its 7:30 and its getting dark. Peter and Ruby are already outside.”

You groaned again, burying your face into the pillow. “mmm. Don’t care.” You mumbled sleepily. Tony smiled softly.

“Aww come on, you don’t wanna get up?” he asked in a very sweet voice. You shook your head no. “You sure? You promised you'd help…” He said, smirking as he lightly started scratching your sides. You began you giggle and kick your feet tiredly, tightening your grip on the pillow.

“Noooohoho. Stohohop.” Your giggles were muffled as you kept your face planted in the pillow. Tony added more pressure, waking you up a bit more and causing you to squirm around. Your laughter became louder and you began to push his hands away as much as you could. “Tohohonyyy!” You yelled, cacklling when his fingers drilled mercilessly into your ribs and you shook him off, giving you enough time to grab the sheets and engulf yourself in them, using the comforter as a shield.

“Come on, get up!” He sang, before smirking. “If you don’t get up, I’ll eat your belly!” He said, poking his head under the covers and hugging your waist to his face, playfully biting and nibbling your stomach. You scream in ticklish agony and flop around as much as possible. His beard was driving you crazy and the noms and noises he was making were not helping at all. “TOHOHOHONY STOHOHOP!” You cry, unable to defend yourself since you were getting tangled up in the covers.

Tony ignored your protests, playfully growling and rubbing his beard all around your torso, occasionally biting your ribs. “I don’t hear a surrender!”

You erupted into loud belly laughter when he began to continuously blow raspberries into your belly. That was the breaking point for you, and you finally decided to give in to make it stop. ”OKAHAHAY ILL GET UHUHUP PLEHEHEHASE!!” You begged, pushing at his head desperately. Tony blew one last raspberry before poking his head out of the covers. He chuckled loosely and helped you untangle yourself from the blankets, giving you a hand to get you out of the bed.

“Glad I was able to convince you. Now come on.” He smiled, leading you out of your room. You whined slightly and lazily walked wherever he led you.

Everyone was out in the backyard, blankets and pillows everywhere, ready to be set up. Steve and Clint were pinning the big white sheet in between 2 close trees and setting the projector up.

When you had gotten to the yard, you went towards Peter, who was helping Thor and Bruce set up the snack and drink table. “Look who finally came out of her coma!” Peter teased, smirking as you rolled your eyes. “Wanna roll down the hill?” he asked, pointing behind him. The backyard had a small hill that the 2 of you liked to roll down off. It wasn’t steep, but it was high enough for it to be fun to roll down. You nodded with a grin.

“Where’s Ruby?” you ask, looking around for her.

“She’s helping Wanda put up the lights. We were practicing cartwheels a bit ago. She’s pretty good!” he said, walking up the hill with you. You smiled at the thought of them playing around.

“Cool! I'm glad she had fun.” You both had your blankets and wrapped yourselves up in them before laying down. “Ready? First one down gets the last pop tart.” You giggle, ready to roll. Peter’s smile faltered as he craned his neck to look at you.

“Wait, what? There's only one left?!” he asked.

“321GO!” You yelled, immediately rolling down, leaving Peter to scramble around and roll down, already too late to win. You were giggling and closing your eyes as you spun and spun until you slowed to a stop. You unraveled yourself and looked up just in time to see Peter roll to a stop. You laughed along with him and both got up, him helping you.

“That was so not fair.” He chuckled.

“I was just kidding about the pop tarts.” You started. Peter sighed in relief. “There’re none left. Thor finished them all.” You tittered, shrugging a shoulder. Peter deflated and groaned, making you laugh.

-------

WHACK!

You and Peter were in the middle of one of your many pillow fights while the rest of the team were finishing up. All that was left was putting the blankets and pillows down. 

You were aiming at Peter and were about to smack him, your arm bent over your head when your pillow was suddenly snatched from behind. You gasped and turned around to see Nat tucking it under her arm.

“Nat!’‘ You cried. She gave you a shrug and half a smirk. 

“What? This is my pillow, I need it.” She said, walking away and leaving you to get quickly knocked to the ground by Peter with the pillow. You could tell he wasn’t done so you quickly got up and and ran, giggling loudly as he chased you. 

You circle around the food table to where Steve is and you run behind him, hugging him for protection. He’s taken aback at first; giving you a weirded out smile, unaware of Peter standing a few feet away, and returning the hug. You beam at him, giving him your brightest smile and looking back over at Peter, who’s glaring at you playfully. You grin and stick your tongue out, watching as he leaves but not before quietly telling you that he’ll be back for you. 

You finally leave your brother’s side once you deem the coast is clear and go help Nat who’s laying the blankets down. 

After helping out a bit, you spot Ruby Anne talking to Peter a little far away. They’re both laughing and you smile to yourself, happy that you’ve been seeing her smile a lot more. You were glad that she actually did what she said she was gonna do and give the team a chance. There was still a lot of progress that she and Tony would have to make, but the more you saw her interact with the other members, you knew things would only get easier from here.

As you’re laying a blanket down, you smirk widely at an unexpecting Bucky, who’s sitting on the ground with his back to you, changing the batteries on some of the battery powered candles. An idea to surprise him slipped in your head and you couldn’t stop yourself. When it came to Bucky, messing with him was your favorite hobby. You didn’t know what made him so fun to prank but he was. 

You grabbed the blanket back and snuck up behind him, careful not to make any noise before throwing the blanket over his head and pulling down/back so that he falls on his back. With a laugh you try to get away but somehow he manages to quickly grab a hold of your ankle before you can run. You scream and protest as he begins to slowly drag you over to him with the blanket still over his head. “Nononononoooohohooo!” You giggle nervously, kicking and rolling around with no avail.

“I wonder who this could be?” He hums, blindly tickling all over you, starting with your thighs, mercilessly tasing them, knowing how that drives you crazy. You’re letting out loud uncontrollable giggles as you pointlessly try to kick your legs out. “Hmm. Feels like... female, mid-teens,” He starts, digging his thumbs into your hips making you convulse with laughter. “About __ lbs., Extremely ticklish, hmm... seems familiar...” He moves his hands to your sides, rapidly squeezing them, smiling at the sound of your laughter. “Apparent poor defense skills,,, very sneaky though; always out to get me...” 

Your stomach was beginning to cramp from all the laughter and teasing. You were begging for him to stop but he only ignored your pleas. 

“God- I know this! I’ve heard that laugh before! It can’t be Peter, it’s gotta be...” Bucky sighed feigning defeat, playing dumb and prolonging the torture for you.  “I feel like this could be y/n but I’m not sure.” He shrugged, shaking his fingers into your ribs. 

“IT’S MEHEHEHEHE!” You cry, throwing your head back as you laughed. Bucky gasped before ripping the blanket off of him and blowing raspberries on your belly. You shriek and arch your back violently, bursting out into hysterics. Your body falls limp as you laugh and accept your fate. 

“I knew it! There’s only one person who’s brave enough to constantly mess with me and think she can get away with it!” He teases, blowing another raspberry and shaking his head into it, chuckling against your skin when you let out a small snort. He sits back briefly only to start leaning down towards your neck. You immediately know what he wants to do and you shrug your shoulder up with a squeal. “Nooohohoho! It’s gonna tihihickle so bahahad!” You cackle. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He said. He chuckled loosely and blew the raspberry in the crook of your neck. Your body instantly paralyzed when you screamed, falling into silent laughter . He finally sat back and watched as you we’re just a giggly puddle on the ground. “I wonder when you’re going to learn that pranking me almost never works out for you.” He thought out loud, smiling as you let out residual giggles sprawled out on the floor. 

“Neveheher.” You say, shaking your head tiredly. Bucky snorts at that and shakes his head at you fondly before scooping you up and laying you on his lap. “You gonna sit with me while the movie plays?” He asks, wrapping his arms around you, cuddling you to his chest. You nod firmly with a hum and cover yourself with a blanket since it’s getting chilly out. The yard is all set up and everyone finds their seats and watch the movie as a family. 

It’s about 2am when the movie ends and everyone is having another snack at the food table. Tony had said that it would be better to clean up tomorrow, since it was late, so all they had to do was clean the food table and bring the leftovers in. Since Bucky had gone to help, you were clingily holding onto Steve’s arm since you were so sleepy you couldn’t even stand on your own. 

When everything wrapped up and you all said your goodnights, you raised your arms at Steve, hinting at the fact that you wanted him to carry you inside. He huffed out a laugh and rolled his eyes, but obliged anyway; picking you up. You wrapped your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck as he carried you inside and up to your room where you quickly fell asleep. 

[rivenchu]

A Curious Fish

AN: Credit for this AU goes to @mintyfrosty​ ~ 

Read the Copperight Merfolk AU post and this whole fic popped into my head as is. I may have changed a couple things to make fic-flow sense, but I hope you like it Minty! Thanks for letting me write it~  Lemme know if something is too far from your AU and not okay. :3  I’ll wider tag this / AO3 if source approved!

Summary: They say curiosity is bad for a cat and it’s true for Merfolk too.  Reginald was just curious about flotsam he saw during a storm. It was only natural to get a closer look. He didn’t mean to get stuck and he certainly didn’t mean to end up on dry land where none of his kind were allowed to go. 

A curious fish.

That's what everyone always called him. The elders always warned him to not be too curious, to not wander close to dry land, and more importantly never get near the the floating crafts that skimmed over the ocean. Remaining unseen from 'dry landers' was the safest choice for their colony.

He'd listened and never done any of those things, but.

But.

They never said anything about parts of the sailing ships.

Reginald watched the long stick and strange white flaps with it's many tentacles. The storm had ripped it off the adrift vessel and he followed it. It was alone, none of the beings on it (he never could see them well, they were a mystery) were nearby... long as he watched out for the tentacles he'd be fine.

Making up his mind he swam up to the far side and broke the surface. The rain didn't bother him, though he always wondered why it tasted different than regular water.

Reaching out he marveled at the texture. Slippery with strange bumps, but not slimy at all. Drifting closer he blinked at a hole and poked at it, had it been carved in? There were more leading up. Wandering further Reginald craned his neck to see how far they went. He couldn't see the end of the giant stick, but he almost could.

Just a little further.

Something curled around his tail.

Fear coiled like an eel as he ducked back underwater. He'd strayed too far up.

Just one tentacle, he could handle that. Everything would be fine.

Diving  deeper so the stick wouldn't hit him (storms made the ocean surface move so much), he unwound the coarse limb and sighed. That had been close. He should go.

Turning to look up at the strange object one last time, he could barely see it against the surface. He had wanted to look at it more, maybe if he had climbed on it he could have spent longer.

Something brushed his shoulder. Jerking back Reginald's eyes widened.  It was the connected multi-tentacle net. He hadn't gone that far had he? Was it the storm pushing it faster than he thought?

Twisting around he began to swim fast as possible back to the safety of the depths.

For a moment Reginald thought he made it.

He screamed as agony shot up his tail, swimming stalled. He floated dazed for a few seconds before the adrenaline kicked back in.

Wincing he glanced up at his tail, tangled again. Reaching over to yank at it he wished he didn't leave his cutter tool at home. This one was tighter, it wanted to hold. Sticking out his tongue to loosen the cord and ignore the pain he tried to work fast.

It wasn't fast enough.

He froze when he felt his back brush up against something. Looking up he realized he was drifting towards more tentacles. His tail seized up and refused to move with anything less than blinding agony.

Reginald was many things, witty and clever, curious and mischievous, but he was not known for his bravery.

Terror dulled the pain as he thrashed against the cursed coils drawing him in. He knew they weren't alive, but he could still die to them.

No one came when he called for help as the storm blew him further away from home.

Dread settled in as he grew tired. There was no way he could escape now. He was entanged and his tail hurt worse than before. He was drifting to the dry lands. Memories of the horror stories the elders told drifted across his mind.

They'll take you from the ocean to never return. They'll keep you in a water bubble to stare at you. They will never listen to you, we're just fish to them. They ate all kinds of fish up on the dry lands.

Reginald shivered and closed his eyes. He shouldn't have wandered.

~*~*~*~ That was a storm to remember. Lots of trees were down, roads were a mess, and he'd have a few days of solitude. There was much more in damages, but he didn't care enough to look into it unless he was getting paid.

Right didn't mind he liked being alone. It's why he lived out of the city and did whatever odds and ends he could to keep food on the table.

Like combing the beach for anything interesting washing up after a storm. He'd find some nice lost cargo to sell a few times and made a habit of checking.

He walked around a boulder and raised his eyebrows at a partially beached broken mast. Bad news for whatever ship it was formerly attached too. There were no boxes nearby, but he could get some use out of it surely.

Walking over he rested one foot on the mast so he could rest his elbow on his knee as he surveyed the debris. Sails seemed intact, he could sell those. Wood and rope he could keep for himself, the rope ladder could be repurposed into a net.

Not a bad find.

Nodding to himself he set to work wading into the surf at cutting a sail free. Yanking it it up to dry land he folded it up and put it in his sack. Halfway done he walked the the next and cut the top connection off.

...was that hair?

Oh, he sometimes found dead bodies too. Or bits of them. He buried any... partials and brought intact ones to the city. If it helped someone find peace, it was worth it even if he didn't get paid.

Grimacing he knelt down and lifted the sail higher.

A wave washed up to his shins and Right sighed. No reaction to the wave, no cough or sputter to show they were alive. As the water pulled back he reached down and rested a hand against the corpse's forehead. Wasn't warm, definitely dead.

New plan, use sail as temporary corpse barrier.

Cutting the last sail connection and some additional rigging he hefted the body in front of him and walked back to the beach. He was going to stop by his house first for a bite to eat. Hopefully the mast would still be around when he got back, but the less bodies were left around the better for everyone's sense of smell.

Strange he wasn't getting a whiff of decay, must have been recent.

Trekking through the woods he was familiar with he tilted his head. There was strange sound following him. If he didn't know better he would say it was someone struggling to breathe. Wildlife wouldn't get close enough to him to make that noise, there were no injured animals nearby and he was keeping company with a dead person.

It moved.

Right paused. He'd been sure the poor soul was dead but dead things don't usually move.

Swearing he broke into a jog glad he lived nearby. There was a first aid kit he could use if there was  a chance of saving a survivor.

Throwing open the door he lowered the person to the floor and threw the sail off.

...

...what?

...

It had brown hair, frills on it's arms, moving gashes on it's neck, and a full blown fish tail from the waist down. The bright purple caught his attention as he stared down the length ending in the wash of warm colors fins.

It'd gotten caught in the ropes, some digging in painfully from the missing scales and red skin. No wonder it had been fine in the surf, any higher and it would have been dead already.

Movement caught his eye as it reached up to it's throat fluttered it's brown eyes.

Fish, water. Fish die out of water. Oh he made a mistake. Oh he didn't want to kill it. Oh no he wasn't near any ponds or rivers.

Scooping up the not-corpse he kicked open his bathroom and dumped it into his bathtub. In preparation of the storm he had filled it just as a precaution.

Stepping back to lean against the doorway he ran a hand up the side of his face and knocked his hat off. He'd heard stories of merpeople, never believed them of course. It seemed silly that fish people would exist but there was one right in his bathtub.

~*~*~*~

Gulping down water Reginald wanted nothing more than the curl up. His tail hurt so much, why did it feel like it was out of water? And the... water tasted funny, like rain does? He surrounded by white?

Pushing himself up with his one free elbow he looked up. The water wasn't deep, he didn't have much room to either side of him. He still had the coils trapping him. Slowly he turned over and pulled his tail into the different tasting water.

This wasn't the ocean, but maybe it was close by?

Reaching up the smooth wall he felt air and curled his hand around the edge and pulled himself up to look around.

It was mostly brown, bit of red on a normal looking face, but it was just there on dry land. It was on dry land. It was a dry lander. Pushing back as far he could in the tub Reginald screamed.

Dry lander made a noise and fell out of the room.

Reginald screamed again.

He was tired, hungry, in pain, and trapped. No matter what angle you looked at it from, this was bad. He was never going to get away now. Looking around the room he swallowed, was this where they kept fish for awhile?

Actually... he didn't want to look right now.

Sinking back into the water he curled in the corner and trembled. He... wasn't going to get out of this was he?

~*~*~*~

Clutching his chest, Right wheezed. That was far louder than he expected, not that he had an idea of what to expect from a mythical creature in his bathroom. He jerked away from the bathroom door at the second screech.

Well, he wasn't going to town now. Not sure what to do.

Guess he could fold up the sail, that was something he could do while his brain was reeling from his new discovery.

Merpeople existed. Science types would love to study it, nobles would want to showcase it, and who knows what criminals would do to it.

Right sat down on the floor staring at the folded sail.

It didn't seem right. There had been fear on it's face, and if he thought about it that was fair. Waking up in a strange place with someone staring at you would spook anyone. Plus it was still tangled up.

That he could help with.

Grabbing a knife he stared at it, on the other hand he'll look pretty scary. Nothing new there, people found him intimidating even if he was minding his own business.

Intentions would get across when it realized it wasn't getting stabbed. Better be quick.

Stalking into the room he winced at expected scream but didn't stop. "Not gonna hurt ya."

It didn't believe him, eyes widening more as it turned to flee out the tub. What it hoped to accomplish beyond that was questionable considering the lack of water.

"No you don't." Reaching over he caught a rope and pulled it back over the tub. He took a deep breath as he heard distressed whimpers. It couldn't reach him with it's free arm.

He felt guilty for trying to help now. Maybe he should have waited, but he was committed now.

" 'm just gonna cut the ropes." he sighed and started to saw carefully. He didn't want to injure it if it made any sudden movements. Instead it hung there defeated, which he decided was worse. When the rope snapped it fell back into the tub and he stepped back just in case it attacked. Cornered beings tended to be unpredictable and fierce.

Instead the brown eyes broke surface and stared at him. Scanning.

Yeah, bit smarter than an animal, they would have gone back to panic. This was questioning and uncertain.

" 'm gonna cut some in front. Yah should be able t' get most of it off unless it's on there good." Right stood there and watched for a reaction. Maybe it didn't speak, that would make sense. Different culture and.. talking mediums? How would someone talk underwater?

Walking back up to the tub Right paused to see if it would try to flop out in fear again.

It was just warily watching.

Reaching down slowly Right watched for any sudden movement - he didn't want to get bit or hit with that tail.

Grabbing a knot he lifted it out of the water so he could better look at the mess. It was actually impressive how it managed to tie itself.  A cool grip on his hand caused him to look up as it lightly held his wrist and it bit it's lip. Understandably nervous, but he had ropes to cut.

This time when he cut through and it dropped back into the water he walked to the far side of the room to put the knife down. Space while it worked itself free.

Water sloshed over the edge in the next five minutes as it worked to freedom. Finally a mass of ropes was thrown over the edge, with a single line running back to the tub.

Before he could say anything  the vibrant tail shakily waved out of the water, the last rope tangled near the base of fins. Grimacing Right walked forward to look at it. That would leave a scar, maybe the back fin would heal.

Fetching his knife he reached out almost touching the tail before looking down. It was watching him again. Taking this as an affirmative he lightly grasped the tail and started making small cuts. The rope was wound tight and the wound already painful, he didn’t want to make it worse.

After a few minutes the rope fell away and he let go of the tail. It sunk out of sight and the merperson stayed submerged. Fair, poor thing had a rough time of it lately.

Gathering the rope he walked out and left the knife in his sink. Sitting down he ate an apple as he pondered his new situation. He had an injured merperson in his house. He had helped it after almost killing it by dragging it away from water.

Merpeople were real and he had one in his bathtub still.

~*~*~*~

Laying at the bottom of the white shell Reginald rubbed his right arm. He was glad to be free of the deadly coils, but his tail was still painful. He was still stuck, but the dry lander hadn't hurt him. It could have done so easily.

He was still alive. Plus he felt pain down to his fins, so it wasn't as bad as one of the elders who couldn't move their tail anymore nor feel it. It would heal in time.

Wrapping fingers around the edge of container he pulled himself up and looked around. There were so many things he knew nothing about. What were they used for? Did all dry landers live in places like this?

Crossing his arms on the edge Reginald rested his head as he let his mind wander with questions.

The dry lander stopped at the door and was staring at him. There was something he was dragging behind him.

Pulling his arms back into the water he blinked up at the other. The brown layers were strange and moved funny, like a covering? Why would they need a covering?

"Not sure if you'll like smoked fish, but thought yo might be 'ungry." Walking in the dry lander held out a fish within easy grabbing distance.

He was starving. Taking the fish he sighed, he... was being rude. The other had done nothing but help him and deserved a proper response.

"Thank you." He missed the stunned expression on the dry lander's face as he tore into the funny smelling fish. The flavour was concentrated, with something he had never tasted before!

"Y-you're welcome." Taking a seat the dry lander still looked dazed at the new discovery. Merpeople could talk.

"Uh... want another?" A second fish was offered.

"Please." Accepting the fish it disappeared as quickly as the first.

"My name is Right." He held out a hand to his formerly-mythic-but-totally-real guest

Glancing down at the extended hand then back up Reginald held out his hand with a tentative smile, "Reginald, it's nice to meet you Right."

Of course a merperson wouldn't know about shaking hands. A smile crept up on Right's face, "It's good to meet you too Reginald."

[fluffy-lee]

Don’t Push Captain America in the Pool

Part 2 of the series "Vacation."

This is a TICKLE fic. If you're not into that, you don't have to read.

PLATONIC Avengers x reader

Warnings: none

Summary: After arriving at the cabin, the Avengers settle in and begin the fun. An unexpected guest arrives and Y/n pushes Steve in the pool!

Everyone got out of the van and took their bags to their rooms. You were sharing a room with Nat. It was a nice room with two beds with beautiful white comforters and lace pillows, and a bathroom. The cabin had a vintage vibe with classy furniture, and a cozy, homey feel. You were beyond excited to be spending some extra time with Nat. She was your mentor and your relationship with her was similar to the relationship between Tony and Peter. 

  “Nat! This place is beautiful! Look!” You said, standing with your hands on the rims on the window sill, pointing at the gorgeous view of mountains in the distance, giant pine trees scattered around the property, and the sun shining on the blue pool below. It was perfect. 

 Nat chuckled. “It is so pretty.” She smiled, putting her arm around your small shoulders. 

    You both ran down the stairs, and when you turned the corner, you nearly knocked into Peter. Thankfully, his spidey sense warned him and he scooped you up. 

  “Woooah there! Haha someone’s excited!” Peter giggled. 

  “Sorry Pete! I didn’t mean to!” You said smiling up at him. 

  “It’s alright! Guess what! I have my own room and bathroom and it is awesome!” Peter said proudly. He was pretty excited about having his own room and had been telling Mr. Stark how excited he was. 

 “Sorry kid, I uh, just didn’t have the heart to tell you…” Tony sighed. 

 “Tell me what?” Peter asked, with a bit of concern. He set you down at his side.

Suddenly there was a loud thundering noise and a crash outside. Peter’s eyes widened. You knew that sound. You and Peter raced out to the white front porch. 

  “Hello roommate! I am here to keep you company and join you all on your… What do you call it? Vacation! Yes! Hahaha!” Thor laughed, referring to Peter as his roommate. 

  “THOOOOR!” You screamed, running to his arms.

He smiled brightly at you, lifting you up in the air before engulfing you in a big hug. You laughed with glee. You hadn’t seen him in what felt like forever. 

  “My sweet Y/n. I’ve missed you.” He said, kissing your cheek. 

  “I missed you so much.”

  “So uuuh… You’re going to be sharing the room with me?” Peter asked, shifting in his place, his hands resting awkwardly on his hips.

  “Yes! Haha it’s going to be great!” Thor said, tossing his hammer under a tree.

Peter thought “Wow. Sharing a room with a god is pretty freaking awesome. But this might be a disaster.”

  Thor rested you on his hip and carried you inside, following Peter. Thor was greeted by everyone and it was soon decided that it was time to try out the pool. You were helping Tony get dinner started before he tried to kick you out to go have fun and swim. 

  “Tony, I’m having fun with you cooking!” You exclaimed, hugging his waist from behind. 

Tony stopped what he was doing and giggled, turning around in your arms. 

  “I have plenty of help here with Pep, Wanda, and Vision. What is it that you want?” He smiled.

  “Nooothing. Maybe your attention.” You said bashfully. 

  “Really? Are you sure you want my attention?” He challenged, trapping you to his chest and latching his hand on your side. 

You shrieked as he tickled your side harshly in a particularly ticklish spot of yours. 

  “No no no!” You squealed. “I give! I give!” 

Tony let up and pointed out the window. “Go swim! Or I’ll get your belly!” 

  “Okay! Goooosh!” 

You made your way upstairs and changed into your swimsuit and slipped on your flip flops.

  You slid open the screen back door and made your way out to the deck where the pool was. You walked through the tall green grass and up the wooden stairs with your towel tossed over your shoulder. You saw Nat, Bucky, Sam, Steve, and Thor in the pool. No Peter, oddly enough. Bucky climbed out and started approaching you, dripping water all over the deck. 

 “What took you so long? I’ve been dying to throw you in the pool since we got here.” Bucky smirked. 

 “I was avoiding Captain America and the Winter Soldier throwing me in the pool.” You sassed.  Bucky scooped you up and threw you in the pool, but before you hit the water, someone caught you. It was Peter! He was hanging from a web in the tall pine that towered over the pool deck. 

  “Gotcha!” Peter shouted happily. 

You cheered and hugged his neck, while he swung onto the deck with you in his arms. 

  “Nice try, Daddy! But I’ve got Spider-Man on my side!” You bragged. 

Bucky laughed before launching toward a screaming Peter as he chased him all over the deck. 

 Steve stepped out of the pool and towered over you. 

  “Can you run from me, Y/n?” Steve challenged.

 “You? No! But… I can do this!” You pushed him into the pool. 

He made a huge splash and you followed after him. The cold water shocked you, rushing around you and through your hair. The water was chilly at first, but you quickly got used to it and it felt amazing. You came up from under the water and caught your breath, before joining Steve in a fit of giggles. 

  You, Steve, Bucky, Peter, Sam, Nat, and Thor had been swimming for a while and it was currently sunset. 

  “Hey Thor!” You called from where you were sitting on the stairs. 

  “Yes?” He asked, swimming over to you. 

  “Do you want to play mermaids?” 

Steve began howling with laughter at your question. 

  “Why yes of course, Princess! You do need to teach me how to, though.” Thor said, before going on about the many different mermaids he had encountered in his lifetime while your mind, as well as Peter’s, exploded over the fact that they were REAL. 

  “Dinner!” Wanda called from the back porch. 

“I’ll teach you how to play when we swim tomorrow, Thor!” You said happily as you climbed out of the pool to dry off. 

  “Aren’t you a little old to play mermaids?” Steve teased.

  “Uh… aren’t you a little old to be alive?” You sassed. Before running towards the house, wrapped in your towel. 

Steve just giggled to himself, and walked back to the house, passing Peter bombarding Thor with questions about mermaids. 

  After dinner you were showered and in your pajamas, sitting on the living room carpet, playing chess with Peter. Peter was focusing on his next move when you saw Steve enter the room with a rather intimidating look on his face, staring you down. 

   “Y/n.” He said towering over you and Peter. 

You smiled up at him nervously. You had an idea of what this could be about. 

  “Yes?”

  “Remember when you pushed me in the pool earlier? Oh and when you insulted my age?” Steve asked. 

  “Nuh-uh.” You gave him a sheepish smile. 

Peter gave you an “I’m scared for you” look. 

 “I think you remember.” Steve said, raising an eyebrow. 

 “Alright. Let me know when this is over.” Peter told you, rolling onto his back and whipping out his phone to scroll through it. 

You scooted back into the corner behind you, having nowhere else to go. 

 “Ohohoho I’m gonna get you.” Steve chuckled teasingly, slowly approaching you. As he got closer he wiggled his fingers at you. 

Butterflies swarmed in your stomach and you giggled nervously. It had actually been a while since Steve tickled you. You and Steve had a special relationship. Everyone knew it. He’d saved your life and the moment he saw you, he knew you were special, even though he didn’t know you were the daughter of his best friend. Everything he’d done to protect you and bring your father back was something you’d never forget. He’d always worry about you and he’d do anything to make you happy. You loved Steve. You also loved his sweet, playful side, which would come out every so often where he’d toss you in the air and catch you, chase you through the halls of the compound to snatch you up and tickle you into oblivion. It was your favorite even though you could never admit it, but Steve knew.

  “Nooohohohooo!” You giggled nervously.

  “Yes!” Steve said, grabbing your ankle and gently spidering on the bottom of your foot, making you shriek with laughter. 

Steve chuckled and dragged you out into the open, before crawling over you. You tried to scoot away but he just dragged you back and straddled your waist. He grabbed your flailing wrists and pinned them over your head with one hand. He started to crack up because you were already laughing and freaking out even though he hadn’t started tickling you yet. 

  “Relax Ms. Y/n! You act like I’m gonna tickle-” Steve paused when he said the word. He noticed your cheeks flush at it. “Tickle.” Steve had a teasing grin spread across his face when he noticed your reactions to the word. 

You couldn't even look at him so you tried to bury your face in your shoulder. 

  “Y/n gets all blushy when I say TIC-KLE!” Steve grinned and laughed at you.

  “Staaahhhaaaap! I hate you!” You said through flustered giggles. 

Steve pretended to be hurt. “No! I thought you loved me!” He sang as he used his free hand to attack all over your collarbones and neck. 

You immediately fell into such hard belly laughter that you could rarely catch your breath. He dug all over into the spaces between bones and your nervous system went wild and you were in ticklish agony. 

  “I thought you loved it when I train with you and make you breakfast and you always give me hugs and want to cuddle and oh what else? You want me to TICKLE you to pieces!” Steve rambled teasingly while your laughter fell silent and you tried to squirm away. 

The teasy rambling should’ve killed you. He let you catch your breath while he shifted and released your wrists, only to shoot both hands under your arms, sending you straight into high pitched, squeaky laughter. He cackled at your reaction. You felt your face burn and tears forming in your eyes, as his fingers curled and uncurled over and over again, his blunt nails scritching at your skin. 

  “You better say you love meeee!” He sang, now traveling his hands down to your ribs, vibrating his fingertips on the surface of your bones. 

You tried to reply, but you were thrown into hysterics, just like he knew you would be.

  “I LOOOOOVE YOU!” You managed to scream through your laughter, hoping he’d let you breathe for one second. He let you breathe for a bit.

  “So.. you lied to me? A few minutes ago you said you hated me! I don’t know what to believe anymore Y/n!” Steve teased as he scribbled feather light tickles on your ribs. 

  “What’s going on here?” You heard Sam ask from behind you. 

  “Oh you know I’m just tickling Y/n’s ribs.” Steve said casually, as he started to tickle your ribs harder, causing your laughter to increase. “Y/n has veeery ticklish ribs!” Steve said through gritted teeth and raised his eyebrows at you, before shaking your entire rib cage in the most unbearably ticklish way. Your laughter fell silent again and Steve slowed his tickling down, knowing you needed to breathe. You heard Sam walk away laughing.

  “Steeeheheheve!” You whined as he began squeezing your sides. You were a flustered mess and absolutely loving this. He knew you were, otherwise he wouldn’t be so ruthless. 

  “What?” He giggled as he became scribbling circles all around your belly button. 

You, of course, were lost in your laughter again. 

  “What? What were you trying to tell me, Y/n?” He asked teasingly. He scooted your shirt up a little to flutter his fingertips on the bare skin of your tummy and you squealed and arched your back. Next thing you knew he was blowing raspberry after raspberry. His beard tickled your skin even more. He then sat up and smiled down at you and you covered your face with your hands, only to have him pull them away and nuzzle your neck. You giggled and tried to slip your hands under his arms to tickle him back. Bad idea. 

  “YOU DARE TRY TO TICKLE ME?” He boomed. You cackled at both his reaction and the feeling of rapid squeezing on your hips. 

  “SOORRY! Sorrryehehe!” You laughed. 

He tickled your knees, which were super sensitive. So sensitive, that you let out a scream catching everyone, especially Steve, by surprise. You couldn’t help it. Steve stopped and laughed at you. 

  “Ohhookay! Okay! Too much I’m sorry!” He grinned. “I’m beginning to think your tummy isn’t your most ticklish spot after all!”

 Your face was red and you were breathing heavily, but you were smiling really big. Steve knew you had enough and let up. Steve gave you a kiss on the cheek and you rolled over, exhausted from the long day, and Steve’s tickle attack. 

  Everyone headed up to bed one by one, Steve going a while ago. You found yourself lost in the TV, barely able to keep your eyes open, when you felt someone scoop you up. They began carrying you up the stairs. You looked up and it was Tony. He gave you a soft smile. 

  “Cap nearly killed you!” He whispered with a hint of sarcasm. You grinned and he chuckled. 

  “Thanks for bringing us here, Tony.” You said as he laid you on your bed. 

  “Of course, Y/n/n.” He kissed your forehead and left the room. You drifted off to sleep to the sound of the shower running in you and Natasha’s bathroom. 

...

Part 3:

[deepperplexity]

Title: Train Ticket Madness [pt.1]

Imagine request by avisfortunae @ Wattpad: "I wonder if Snape has ever been on the internet?"

Summary: "Snape is trying to travel by train but in muggletowns all over the country technology is taking over! So now you need a smartphone or a computer to buy a ticket or refill your travel card - Snape, of course, has neither. So he is forced to visit the nearby library to ask for help, with a disgruntled sneer. But there he is met by you - a muggleborn witch/wizard and former student - who gladly but nervously assists the impatient professor." (Summary accepted by the requester.)

Pairing: Snape x Muggleborn Reader

Setting: Public muggle library in a small town

ABBR.: │ (y/n) - Your Name │ (y/l/n) - Your Last Name │ (e/c) - Eye Colour │

Word Count: 4243

Warnings: Some sexual hints, some sensual thoughts, PG13, Swear words

Masterlist page // Masterlist post

The library was calm, just the ordinary seniors who were reading the morning newspapers and a few commuters who were waiting for time to pass until they could catch their trains; most likely headed for work or school. You, however, already were at work.

It was a temporary station as a librarian in a Muggle library situated in a sleepy little town where nothing ever happened - but you loved it. The friendly people, the routines, the quiet and the calm. It all suited you rather well actually. Lulling around the little library placing books, helping users and keeping everything organized.

It was quite nice most of the time. When the library users behaved as they should and there were no significant malfunctions in the computer systems - as long as those two things worked then your day usually worked out perfectly fine.

As part of the morning routine; you were just turning on the four computers in the library for users when your usual morning was about to become highly unusual. As you rose from having pushed the little start button on the forth computer you brushed the hair out of your eyes and what you saw stunned you. You were literally shocked into a fixed state.

In the doorway, leading out of the library, stood none other than your previous potions professor. Professor Snape, in all his black glory, stood with a sneer and a disgruntled look that covered his pale face in the doorway of your library. What the devil is he doing here?! The thought crossed your mind so rapidly that you barely had time to register it.

You shook your head, your heart was beating a little harder and you closed your mouth as you had apparently been gawking with open mouth and wide eyes. He's not my professor any longer, he's an ordinary user and he looks to be in need of assistance. That's all, okay (y/n), you can do this.

You put on a professional smile, straightened your back a bit and walked over with as much confidence as you could muster up in your rattled state. But, for every step your feet took your heart beat a little harder, your breaths were drawn a little quicker and you could feel a stupid blush spreading over your chest, throat and face. Despite trying to calm yourself down you were a nervous wreck. Chill, stop, just calm down. There is no way in hell that he knows. Just treat him like any other user.

As you got closer your old professor spotted you and started to move towards you, it only took him three strides and then you were just inches apart. "Professor Snape," you said and he gave a curt nod, "I'm surprised to see you here of all places, how can I help you today?" Your voice was calm and friendly, professional. You, however, felt anything but calm.

Professor Snape gave you a weird expression with a raised eyebrow, "You work here Ms/Mr (y/l/n)?" You nodded and locked your hands in front of yourself. A self-defence thing to physically block out others; that you had been working on getting rid of. Yet the professor intimidated you instantly triggering the habit.   "Well," he said with that gruff voice, "I'm in need of a ticket and the infernal machine at the station is turned off or malfunctioning in some way." His voice was low and yet it made you and the air around the professor vibrate with force. His force. The power that you sensed crawled beneath that pale skin of his.

You gave him a wider smile, an attempt to calm yourself a bit in all honesty. "Well just download the app to your phone, connect your email and bank card and then you're good to go, professor," you said with a cheerful voice that barely managed to hide the unstableness you felt. Your pulse quickened still and it felt as though everyone in the damn library could hear your pounding heart.

He gave you another raised eyebrow and you mentally smacked yourself - he probably doesn't have a smartphone; or even a phone... Damnit (y/n), use your head and stop embarrassing him - and yourself for that matter!

You cleared your throat and loosened your hands that had been clenched for a while at that time. "Umh, or you can just use one of our computers to order your ticket. I just started them, please follow me, professor." You turned around and exhaled shakily. You started to walk and the black mass of glorious male fell in behind you. You squared your shoulders slightly, another attempt to calm yourself - you were still failing miserably at that task of course. He did that to you, he had done that to you for many years. Not that he's aware of it. And that's my own fault I guess. But come on, he's unobtainable and closed off. It's not like he'd even ever look at someone like-

"I believe it should be Mr Snape, Ms/Mr (y/l/n). Since I'm no longer your professor there is no need for you to use that term." He said as both of you walked towards the computer you had started only moments earlier; that effectively interrupted your wayward thoughts. Well, I enjoy calling you professor... Mr just sounds, not like you or adequate tot hat power sensation you give of... "Umh, I'd like to keep calling you professor, if you don't mind." You breathed out with caution.

The blush grew ever redder, it made you feel hot and bothered and so damn silly. "Very well, Ms/Mr (y/l/n)." What this man does to me... It's been two years already! I need to just get over these stupid, silly emotions! Pffth, who am I kidding... You can't just get over love, no matter who it is you love or how unreasonable that fucking love is... When the other is exceptionally, annoyingly gorgeous in every damn way it's impossible to get over it. 'innit?

You pulled out the chair for professor Snape as you also moved the mouse and the screen flicked to life. You tried hard to ban your thoughts but they remained persistent as professor dark and dangerous was so damn close to you. You could literally smell him; sage, peppermint and a distinct smell that was all his own. If you could have bottled it you would have. For fuck's sake, this is stupid! But fuck he smells like heaven. Or hell perhaps? I have no idea but I want to bury my face in that chest and just inhale that- wooh tiger, calm down! Your face was getting hotter by the second. You knew nothing good could come from your silly thoughts, only pain and agony. Possibly a muffled orgasm - half-enjoyed in a weird position - in the staff bathroom later...

"Here you go," you said with as much ease as you could force and straightened up as the professor sat down, "the printer is over there and it's free of charge for the first 3 papers." You forced another professional smile for a second before spinning on your heel and heading away from the man clad in black that made your knees weak, your skin burn and your heart pound. Not to mention your mind apparently gorging in heady thoughts not fit for work.

But the retreat was short and you had no time to gather or calm yourself down before the intimidatingly perfect man was stood right behind your back once more. You felt him before you saw him. "Professor?" You said questioningly as you turned around to face him once more. He seemed highly uncomfortable - and that made you curious as hell. What was going on with the otherwise stone-faced man? He almost seemed embarrassed, but that wasn't possible, was it? No, not professor Snape. He'd never be embarrassed, would he?

His gaze shifted slightly from side to side as if he was checking if anybody was within earshot - but you were alone in the furthest end of the library. Hidden among bookcases and displays. "Will you help? I..." He cleared his throat, "I have never- I have never used the computer or the internet's thing..." His gruff voice vibrated through you and for a second you were dumbfounded. You just stood there for a moment until your brain kick-started.

For fuck's sake don't embarrass the man! Speak (y/n)! "You-? Umh, sorry but, what?" Snape narrowed his gaze and you wanted to shrink, fall through the floor or maybe do a little dance? After all, you could help the all-knowing professor Snape with something he was not knowledgeable in. This is just not happening...

"Do you intend to gawk forever or will you be a professional and do your job?" His snarky remark made you giggle and shrink at the same time. It made you weak at the knees and strong pounding erupted, well, somewhere else. "I'll- I'll help professor, excuse me, I'm sorry it's just... Never mind." You walked back to the computer and grabbed a second chair on the way.

"Please, sit." Snape took the seat next to you and the heavenly smell hit you once more, it distracted you on most levels, to be frank.   "Umh, well first we need to go out on the internet and type the address for the ticket company," you said as you followed up your words with actions on the computer. "And then we need from and to where your heading, and at what time." The professor looked on the screen, he's leaning closer, isn't he? Fuck that smell again... You inhaled without thinking about it.

"I need to go from this station to, to Cokeworth." You nodded and typed in the destinations - but you could not quite help but wonder as to what was in Cokeworth and why the professor was taking the train? Surely he could just apparate? "Strange apparatus," the professor mumbled beside you as he leaned even closer as he inspected the screen as you typed.

The page loaded, the screen flickered slightly and the alternatives arrived. "Here's your options professor," you said while your eyes were fixed on the screen. The professor's thick, pale hand appeared and he pointed at one option. You would not have chosen that option but okay. You clicked it and the trip appeared. It showed two train changes and then a bus trip.

"Now you just need to pay and print and your good to go." Your voice was cheerful - a giddy feeling filled you since you could actually help the man you adored and held so high - and you turned your head rapidly. Your face very nearly got pressed against the professor's face. He was so damn close you could see the details of his skin and the exact colour variations in his onyx eyes.

Your breath caught and the professor stared into your eyes for a mere millisecond but it was enough. You leaned back so hastily the chair seemed to disappear and you had definitely landed with a hard knock against your back had it not been for professor Snapes eerily fast reaction. He had grabbed your hand and held you up as you laid parallel with the floor yet had not completely fallen thanks to his ice-cold grip around your warm wrist. Where your pulse was pounding as if you had just run a marathon or two - revealing how flustered you were by him.  

You looked at his hand, the strong grip the only thing that kept you from falling, and then your eyes wandered up the length of his arm clad in black and all the way up to the professors face. The perfectly glorious face clad in pale skin framed by long black hair with two deep eyes, hooked nose and thin lips as the centrepieces of its composition. So fucking beautiful. His eyebrow arched as you looked a little too long perhaps. Surely the rumours aren't true? About his, his mindreading - are they?

"Your pulse is racing, Ms/Mr (y/l/n). Are you, are you alright?" You shook your head and pulled yourself up with a shaky movement. From almost falling or from his touch? You couldn't quite tell at that moment. "I'm, I'm so sorry professor Snape," your voice was shaking a bit and you felt a bit woozy. Having been so close to his face was apparently a bit of a shock for your whole damn body and mind. Everything was tingling and your mind was actually blank for a moment. That never happened.

Professor Snape let go of your wrist and you instantly felt bereft. But you also became painfully aware of how close you were sitting. His knee was touching yours and if you leaned in just a tad your chin would touch his shoulder. His smell made you woozier and his proximity was just too much to handle when the thought of never getting what you had longed for for so many years hit you as hard as a goblin would pound REJECTED on a pour mans loan application at Gringotts.    

You rose from the chair in a panicked movement. It toppled but didn't fall. "I, you, I have, you just need to pay and press print," you stuttered out. Your pulse was truly racing, your heart pounded, the world felt fuzzy while you felt torn apart. In a desperate need to get as far away from the man as you were to get closer to him than his own clothes were. Your head was spinning with thoughts, his smell pressed its way into your nose and you felt helplessly broken for a moment. Memories of longing for him during classes crept up and it made you feel small and unimportant all over again.

"Ms/Mr (y/l/n)? Are you alrig-" "I'm fine!" You held your hands up and backed away as the professor rose from his own chair in sublime composure and grace. "Are you su-" "I'll send Melinda over and she'll help you with your train ticket." The words were rushed out of your mouth and you couldn't look at the man any longer. The perfect man you had before you. I love you insanely, intensely, irrevocably. Forever. I...  

You felt hopelessly entangled with your emotions and thoughts, all things were screaming at you to kiss the man or to run away screaming - neither option felt like an actual option. So the thought reappeared as tears were hardly kept at bay by your weak will. I love you insanely, intensely, irrevocably. Forever. But you...

A cold hand lifted your slimmed chin with power. Forced your head to tilt and your eyes to leave the floor. His touch felt different. His face looked different. Stained with horror and something that looked like regret. Or perhaps disgust? You couldn't quite tell. But why was it even there? "(y/l/n)... I, had no idea you felt that way." Your eyes widened, it can't be? Can he read my-? "I can and I apologies for doing so but-" OH MY GOD NO!  What have I done?!

Your face turned pale, you felt the red colour leave and a cold sensation took its place. He had just read your mind, but how much had he read? Surely he hadn't, before, had he? You were certain he had not read your mind earlier - those thoughts would have warranted some sort of reaction from the man - had they not? Perhaps you were of so little interest that they meant nothing to him?

You shook your head, it didn't matter. What mattered was that the man you loved above all else had just read your mind as you were silently confessing to those feelings of passion and affection. "(Y/n)," his voice was dark and ruff as he spoke your name, "I apologies, I usually do not pillage or invade others thoughts but you-" You janked your head away to avoid eye contact with the man you were certain felt disdain for your feelings, or perhaps for you. Judging by the look of horror he wore.

"Don't, just, don't. I'll leave." The words left your mouth as the tears dried up without ever having been spilt. You felt disgusted by yourself; simply because of what you read in his eyes a moment earlier when your world had crashed around you. Your fantasy world that is - the world where you were free to be with him and he had wanted you. Now that was all smashed and crumbled. Shot to hell so to speak. Not even your thoughts were you allowed to have of him any longer.  

He said something but you didn't have the strength to bear his words and they were muffled out unconsciously as your legs took you away from the computers, through the library and into the staff section where Melinda was sat by her desk - tapping away at the keyboard that you couldn't hear.

You said something to her, she stood up with a strong nod and the next moment you were getting dressed in your own office section. You changed your shoes, put your jacket on and closed the office door. You felt weirdly numb; detached. The world fell away from around you; turned in to a foggy mushy mess of grey. It felt hollow.

You left the building through the back door for staff only and embarked on your walk home - not even remembering your bicycle. Your thoughts didn't even come, it was eerily quiet in your head and your body felt bizarrely disconnected from it.  You were just walking apathy without awareness of your surroundings.

Did he really mean that much to you? Were those silly fantasies really that important? Was he truly that essential to your daily life? Yes, yes he is evidently that painfully and alarmingly fucking important to me. Apparently. All this for a stupid ticket. Because of the muggle world using so much technology... Fucking train ticket madness!  

You sighed a helpless breath out. Your head sank even lower as your shoulders hunched and it felt for a moment as if nothing could fill the void that took up more and more space in your chest for every step you took away from the library. "(y/n)!" You halted mid-step as your name was called with a deep, gruff voice that echoed around you in the short tunnel you apparently were in. You knew the tunnel but that voice felt otherworldly.

You shook your head and took another step - sure that your broken heart filled your head with hallucinations of the man you loved so deeply. "(y/n)! Stop!" The command stopped you right in your tracks. The voice was stern and brusque, almost harshly bitten out - yet it was not. It sent shivers of pleasure and sorrow down your spine as the wind picked up slightly. Howling and whistling through the tunnel.

"Don't run from me young lady/man," Snape said from right behind you, "not after a confession like that." Your face contorted into a sneer for a second and then you turned; a sharp spin on your heels and you were face to face with him. "I made no confession!"  you yelled with a shaking voice, "you read my mind and-" "And I did apologies for that but you-" "You had no right!" Your voice wavered and lowered, "you had no right..."

Your hands were balled into fists and your lip quivered slightly. "I had no right but you gave me no choice." You huffed and turned your face away from the glorious man casting pain and sadness into your life with his internet ignorance and train ticket need. It had been a normal day, you had had a good morning - especially the shower you had indulged in before work that had given you time to fantasies about the man standing before you. Before that whole world crashed. Perhaps that was the last time you came with him on your mind? Probably not, he'd always be there but differently now perhaps?

"(y/n)? You gave me no choice, what did you expect when you acted the way you did?" Your head whipped back so your eyes met. His onyx to your (e/c) ones. "Well, I'm so damn sorry for trying to help you with your train ticket and internet ignorance!" you yelled with a snarly voice, "I'm so damn sorry that this stupid little girl/boy has trivial feelings and stupid little thoughts and ridiculous hopes and absolutely senseless dreams about someone like you! How dare I even think of such an amazing man as you with my tiny brain and feel passion with my worthless little heart?!" His eyes grew darker - how was that even possible?

Your words were harsh, but not towards him. Your words were nastily cruel, but not towards him. Your anger was directed toward him but the callous meaning behind the words was how little you thought of yourself in comparison to the man standing before you who had for years occupied your heart.

"Do. Not. Belittle yourself in that way (y/n). Do. Not. Diminish your feelings in such a manner. I will not stand for such actions by you. Understood?" Snape's voice was a low, vibrating growl. It was amazing you could hear him, yet you heard his voice as clear as your own thoughts. Your own thoughts that were spewing all kinds of horrible scenarios at you as the man you loved seemed to drift further and further away from where you wanted him. With you.

"Well I'm sorry for being a silly little girl/boy with such feelings and thoughts about the perfect professor Snape. I'm sorry I made you take such an important position in such a useless persons life as mine. This little, silly person had obviously no right to fall for such a man... How sickening for you to hear those disgusting thought about love from such a person as me." You could not help but shrink and shake.

You had known your feelings would be not just unrequited but hated by the man whom they were for. So you had never said anything. In the hopes of at least keeping your fantasy world with him as the centrepiece for all things good and lovely.

"I hold no such aversion towards your feelings. Quite the opposite, (y/n)." His hands landed on your shoulders, they were large and heavy yet felt too light. Wait, hold up, what did he just say? "You- you, what?" In that instant, the world seemed to go silent. "I do not dislike, oppose or disapprove of your feelings and thoughts." The words were said slowly and with clarity. But you found them anything but clear. "I- I don't-" "(y/n), stop. I am telling you that I too house those feelings towards you. For a long time now. But you were my student and I never thought such a magnificent person such as you would feel any appeal to a man such as myself."

To you, it sounded as though he managed to squeeze more self-loathing into that second half of a single sentence then you could if you filled a book with it. It shook you to your core. You had never heard his voice as harsh as when he spoke of himself in that short moment of time. "But, you're amazing..." Those were the only words you could extract from yourself as the whole world started to spin with force and full colours once more knowing he was in fact answering your feelings of affection with likewise emotions.

As you looked into his eyes he smiled. It was the first time you had ever seen him smile - in more than a tight tug of the left corner of his mouth - and it kickstarted you. Your eyes watered, your heart pounded and colour flooded your skin once more. Your little words of adoration had made the stern, hard, closed-off man smile. Just the thought of that made your knees weak. No, wait, your knees were shaking and buckling. You were going to fall to the ground at any moment, shit.

But you remained upright. As if by magic. But it was not. "I got you." Those little words of reassurance flooded you with warmth. "Am I dreaming?" 'cus it feels like it... "No. You are not." Without thinking you threw your arms around him and buried your face in the crook of his neck. His smell was inhaled through your nose and you felt another surge of warmth flood you in every way. One arm was laid around your waist - holding you up - and his other hand was placed at the back of your head. He was pressing you even tighter to his body and for a moment you could have sworn he was shaking just as badly as you.

"Severus," you mumbled his name into his neck, "I think I'm gonna pass out." "I got you." You turned your face towards him as he eased up on his grip at the back of your head; you wanted so badly to kiss him. Like you had dreamt of so many times. The thoughts of kissing him invaded your mind but before you could even ask his lips were pressed against yours with desperation and the world exploded in colour and warmth.

I hope you enjoyed this fic! <3 It was only supposed to be about 2500 words but I had lots of fun writing it so it turned out to be over 4000 words - and I might do a part 2 if that's something you guys would want? ^^ Perhaps a little more intimate continuation?    

Masterlist page // Masterlist post

Taglist: @tahliamalfoydepp  @lizlil​ @the-one-who-is-chaoz 

[redrobinhoood]

the lakes | chapter 1, something of good quality

A sequel to no choir

AO3 Link | 2,800 words (approx) | Chapter 2

A/N: Experimenting with putting chapter titles on Tumblr

This was supposed to be a oneshot. It was supposed to be an in out and done. Less than 15% of this chapter was planned. I’m in writer’s agony.

Story Summary: Fox and Riyo are at peace. But Fox's injury has yet to heal, and they find themselves redefining who they are now that their prior identities have been stripped away. [M rating]

Riyo awoke to an empty bed beside her and the sound of retching. She threw off the covers and hurried to their bathroom to find Fox bent over the toilet. She sat down beside him and pulled him into her arms when his body had stopped heaving, running her fingers through his sweaty hair as he rested his head against her breast.

“I thought they’d said one month?” She said softly.

“So did I.” He huffed. “And I waited three.”

“We can go to a medic in the morning if you want.”

“I’ll see how I feel.”

Riyo reached behind her for the closest towel and wet it with water from the bath tap before raising Fox’s head from her chest and cleaning off his lips with the wet cloth. After she had set the towel aside she leaned down to kiss him, gently brushing her lips against his before she pulled his head back to her chest. “I just want to know you’re healing.”

“Well, my stomach works.”

“Fox.” She chided.

He laughed. “But not my liver, can’t even process weak Phibian beer.”

“Who would win; one genetically engineered super solider with patented DNA and deadly accuracy, or half a glass of rye water?” She teased, grinning as she felt his chest shake underneath her touch.

“I didn’t even drink the whole bottle.”

She leaned down and pressed a kiss into his jaw, taking delight in the scratchiness of his short beard against her lips. “I won’t tell Jek and Thire.”

“No, please do.” He chuckled quietly. “They’d love to hear from you.”

Riyo took in a deep breath, trying to cement the moment in her memory. Fox’s laugh, the press of his head against her breast, the sterile bathroom lighting falling over their bare skin. “Want to go back to bed?”

“Yeah. I think my stomach is settled.” He rose slowly from her lap and waited for her to stand beside him before they made their way back into the bedroom together. Riyo gently pushed him back down into the sheets before she herself slunk down into them. She turned away from him, pressing her back against his body, giving him room to breathe. But Fox wasn’t having that tonight. She felt an arm snake around her waist before he pulled their bodies together and buried his face in her hair. She draped her arm over his and closed her eyes, listening to him breathe her in as they fell back into sleep.

---

The light coming in through their bedroom windows woke Riyo first. Finding that she had turned onto her back during the night, she slowly opened her eyes to find that her head was resting against Fox’s, whose face was still buried in her hair, though now in the crook of her shoulder. Some small movement of her waking woke Fox in turn, and he stirred beside her.

“Jate vaar’tur, cyar’ika.”

“Kaliméra, philaítatos.”

“Oh?”

“Two can play at this game, Fox.” She craned her neck down to kiss his forehead, then his nose, then his lips as he pushed closer to her. Then she was the one being kissed when Fox leaned over her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, stroking the smooth skin beneath them. His hands were roaming over her bare torso, one thumb lazily stroking the curve of her hips as the other teased the waistband of her underwear.

He leaned further over to plant a kiss against her neck, only to flinch and draw away with a groan, reaching for the fresh scar in the center of his torso. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, don’t be sorry.” Riyo sat up to press her fingers over his, fully covering the damage that the sniper’s shot had left behind. She pried his fingers away from the scar and pressed her lips against the pink skin to leave gentle, fluttery kisses over the exit wound, then the surgical scars that his recovery had left behind. “I know sex has been painful for you with this bastard.”

Fox took her face in both hands and raised it back up from his chest. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“You did take two shots of blasterfire for me the week we met.” She closed her eyes and accepted his kiss. “And I know that you respect my opinions and will go to a medic today because you don’t want me to worry over you.” She continued when he had pulled away.

Fox laughed and brushed his lips against hers one last time before drawing away completely. “I guess the matter is settled then. Such a politician.”

“Blackmail is my specialty. Get me and a Jedi in the room and-.” She stopped, remembering there were no Jedi. Not anymore.

“I know, it’s still weird. And I was there.”

Riyo sighed and ran a hand over her scalp to push back her hair from her face. “Do you think the Emperor had anything do with it?”

Fox shook his head as he got out of bed. “I think he’s a slimy conspiring snake, and was a traitor to the Republic, but even he is just a politician, in the end. A damn good one too.”

“Has Thire found anything out?”

“No. He says the Emperor is good at covering his tracks. But I trusted him, Riyo. I really did.”

“I know.” She threw her legs over the edge of the mattress and stood up, walking around the foot of the bed to Fox and taking his hands in hers. “But that’s in the past. All that matters now is me getting you into the shower because you still smell like vomit.”

“And yet, you still kissed me.”

She took a moment to take in the man before her. The scars that stretched across his bare skin, a bruise stretching up from the waistband of his boxers from when he banged his hip against the counter two days ago, the familiar curves of his body that she had so often traced with her palms. “The logical part of my mind wasn’t awake yet. It is now.” She stepped back from him and slipped her underwear off, managing to throw it in the dirty clothes bag she had propped open against the packing crate that their bed had come in.  She didn’t look back at Fox’s reaction as she stepped into the bathroom to turn on the shower tap.

Fox joined her before the water had warmed. “You know it’s never too late in life for you to become a hover ball player.”

“That toss was for me, Fox.” She laughed. “Personal accomplishments are important.”

“After you missed with your socks last night.”

“I’d like to see you try to throw your clothes across the room!”

“Oh I’m sure you would.”

She reached out a hand into the water and found it to be satisfyingly warm. “I’ve changed my mind.” She said as she stepped in. “This is my shower now and you’re going to have to wait.”

“How ever will I recover from this devastating loss of my shower privileges? I suppose I should go for a run and come back and lie down in our bed to sleep it off.”

“Are you going to roll around in the dirt too while you’re out there? You animal. I suppose I could make an exception. Just this time mind you.”

“Just this once, I understand.” Fox stepped into the shower with her. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, head turned to block the flow of water from her face. Like this, she could feel the strong beating of his heart against her cheek. She could feel that he was alive. He reached around her for the soap, then he was running lathered hands over her body. She relaxed further into him as he rubbed slow circles in the soap on her back, wishing they could stay like this forever.

---

The smell of breakfast in the air reached Riyo even in the bathroom, where she sat perched on the countertop drying out her hair. Once, she would have immediately pushed it up into a ceremonial updo. But these days, she let it hang loose down her back. She didn’t know why she still dried it instead of patting it down with a towel and letting the warm air of Numidian Prime lift the moisture from the strands. She supposed that old habits die hard. Except for makeup. She’d had no issues with ditching her long makeup routine she’d once had as a senator. Coruscanti standards were far above par for her new home, and she didn’t feel the deep hunger to please everyone with her appearance anymore.

When she thought her hair to be sufficiently dry, she rejoined Fox in the kitchen just in time to see him setting their plates on crate that currently served as their table.

“Do you want juice?” She asked as she reached into the cabinets for two glasses.

“Water, please. I think if I drink anything with taste right now my stomach is going to turn itself inside out.” He said as he gingerly lowered himself to the floor beside the crate.

Riyo was beside him a moment later, setting the glass before him and running a hand through his half-dried hair before she took a seat on the ground opposite him. “You know, dear. I think we should buy some furniture. When the rainy season comes, we’re not going to be able to spend the whole day outside.”

“We could sit in the greenhouse.” Before Riyo could protest, Fox held up a hand. “I’m joking, Ri. There’s still holes in its roof. I agree. A couch, two chairs, and a table? Nothing fancy.”

“Nothing fancy, but something of good quality. You can enjoy the nice things in life with me, Fox. We’re not in danger of starving for a long time.” She’d been wise with her money as a senator, and now she was glad that she had put nearly all of her earnings away.

“I promise, Riyo, once I’m recovered, I’ll make a living for us.”

“We’ll make a living, Fox. We’ll do it together.”

He smiled fondly at her. “Together.”

“What are you thinking of doing?”

“Well, I fixed that speeder well enough. I figured I could do speeder repair, then from there learn how to fix other things. Get a small business going.”

“Could I go into business with you?”

“Do you want to?”

“My grandparents own a small farm on Pantora. My family were farmers for generations before my father became a senator. I grew up fixing farm equipment with my cousins.” She waited for Fox to finish his sip of water before continuing. “And for the record, I look really hot when I’m covered in grease.”

Fox coughed lightly, raising a hand to his mouth as he sat the glass of water down. “Then I suppose I’ll have to wash you off again.”

“I’d like that.” She winked at him.

They fell into silence. Having finish eating, Riyo sat sipping her glass of water and watching Fox try to stomach the small portion he had set aside for himself. His hand had fallen back from his mouth to his torso. Three months later, it still pained him. Three months later, she still had nightmares about it. Ones where Fox had died in her arms before the medics could arrive. Ones where the assassin didn’t miss. Once, one where Fox was never targeted and carried out his plan to kill the Emperor before being shot dead by a commander of the guard. Thire? Stone? Thorn? She hadn’t been able to tell. Maybe she had been the one holding the gun. She never told him about the nightmares. He must’ve known, sometimes she woke up to find herself bundled in his arms or pulled against his chest, but they’d never spoken about it. He had nightmares too. She could see it in his eyes when he woke, and in sleep she could feel his hands twitch as if around the trigger of a blaster. Sometimes she walked in on him holding the gauntlets of his phase II armor and a picture of four kama-wearing guardsmen sitting on the edge of a patrol transport as it flew over the city. She knew for a fact that one of his gauntlets had once been Stone’s, she had watched Fox repaint it to match his own armor, but she’d never had the courage to ask him who the other gauntlet came from. She didn’t have to. She already knew.

“Are you okay, Ri?”

She came back to the present to the sound of Fox’s voice. “Lost in thought. Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah. I can’t finish this.”

She nodded before standing up and making her way over to Fox, helping him to his feet. They walked to the front door together, Riyo stopping to put her shoes on while Fox took the remains of his food to the compost bin that sat against the side of the garage under the house. By the time he came back up, she had cleared the crate of her plate and their glasses.

“Are we missing anything?” She asked as he set his plate in the sink.

“Nothing we can’t live without for a few days.” The freezerbox and the cabinets were full, or full enough, to sustain them for weeks.

When Riyo stepped outside onto the porch, she took a moment to breathe in the air. Warm and wet. Alive. Everything Coruscant was not. She couldn’t compare it to Pantora either, whose chilly air and warm soils she had grown up in. For Fox, nothing in his life came close. Kamino, Geonosis, Coruscant. That was his scope of the galaxy. Dead planets with dead air. Here, the whole planet was covered in life.

“One of my batchmates would have loved it here.” Fox said as he stepped out of their home behind her. “Alien species were his specialty. He’d know the name and purpose of every lifeform on this planet in a week.”

“What happened to him?” Riyo asked as they descended down the staircase to the ground.

“He died on Kashyyyk at the end of the war.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s what we were made for. And we were never close.”

Riyo fell silent as they waited for the garage door to open. When it did, she pushed Fox to the passenger side and climbed in the driver’s seat. This was what she had wanted during their time on Coruscant; to drive around with Fox in the passenger seat like any other couple could. She waited until the door had closed once more and they were speeding through the trees before she spoke again. “Who were you close with? You never talk about your brothers.”

Fox sighed, sinking further into the seat and turning his gaze out towards the jungle. “Wolffe. And that ruled everyone else out.”

“I didn’t think he was that bad.” Riyo laughed.

“You met him for an hour. We lived with him for ten years. The only troopers who could stand him for extended periods of time were me and Thorn. We were a quite a trio. Sometimes Cody and his pet captain hung out with us, but we all knew we wouldn’t see each other much once the Jedi came for us. No sense in forming bonds like the regular troopers.”

“Was it Captain Rex?” By the look on Fox’s face, she knew it was. “I’ve met him. He came to Orto Plutonia with the Jedi.”

Fox’s look shifted into one resembling regret. “He’s dead too. He and Tano. Their Venator crashed. I know you two worked together before.”

“Yes, we did. She helped me lift the Trade Federation Blockade of Pantora. Which as you know, led to a bounty hunter being hired and ultimately, you.”

“Did you ever talk after she left the Order?”

“No, she just disappeared. I didn’t know she went back.”

“Cody was there. Cody told Bly, Bly told Wolffe, Wolffe told me.”

She grinned. “You gossipers.”

Fox laughed. “News travels fast between battalions. All we clones know is fight, gossip, and die.”

Riyo fought to keep her eyes on the road as she laughed. “Now you know fight, gossip, die, and cook breakfast. The foundations of the modern man.”

Fox went quiet for a few moments, and when he spoke again his tone was softer. “Riyo, if there’s something wrong with me and they can’t-.” He stopped, throwing his head back against the headrest as he fought to find the right words.

“There’s not.” She said firmly. “You’re fine. They just took you out of the bacta tank too early, that’s all. You’re going to be fine.”

[halevetica]

Oh Calamity(Sterek)

Derek closed the door to his apartment behind him as he flipped through the envelopes he'd retrieved from his mailbox. He dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and kicked off his shoes, making his way to the kitchen when he paused upon spotting a gold envelope with his name scrawled in fancy script across the front. His eyes slid to the top corner where he saw Lydia's name.

Ignoring the rest of the mail, he carefully opened the envelope to see an invitation to a baby shower. Lydia and Parrish were expecting.

Derek opened the card, only for a piece of stationary to flitter to the ground. He bent down, picking up the lilac colored page.

It was personally addressed to him.

Dear Derek,

I hope this letter finds you well. Or that's what Jordan said I should say, but what I want to say is I hope you're not dead. Not that we'd ever know cause you never write or call. At least not frequently enough. I know you keep in contact with Cora on occasion but it's not enough. We miss you, Derek. And even though it's been years, and you never come despite all the invites you receive. I'm sending you an invite to my baby shower. You're probably frowning at this letter wondering why. It's because you're important. You'll always be important to all of us, Derek. And I wish you'd get your stupid werewolf ass back here once in a while. I'd hate for Baby Parrish to grow up not knowing it's uncle Derek. Please think about it. You don't have to stay long. Just a small visit would be nice.

Sincerely, Lydia.

Derek glanced over at the small basket he kept on the counter that held invitations he'd been sent over the past few years. Scott's college graduation. Lydia's wedding. Mellissa's wedding. Sherriff Stilinski's retirement party. And now Lydia's baby shower.

All of them had been sent by Lydia, which was no surprise, she was the event planner, always had been. However, Derek had never gone to any of them. He felt it best he stay away. He had left for a reason.

Guilt ate at his gut as he tucked the letter and card back into the gold envelope to store with the others. He couldn't go back. It had been three years.

He stepped towards the basket to put the letter with the others when his eyes caught something on the floor. A picture. He bent over to see that when the letter had slid from the invitation there had been a picture with it as well.

It looked fairly recent. Lydia was pregnant in the picture and everyone was there. Lydia, Jordan, Scott, Malia, Kira, Allison, Isaac, Cora, Boyd, Erica, Liam, and- Derek's chest clutched in agony.

Stiles.

Derek fought a whine at the sight of his pack. He missed them dearly. He missed having a pack. He missed the comfort that came with being surrounded by people. His people.

-

This was a terrible idea. He didn't know why he had talked himself into this. Derek swallowed the anxious lump forming in his throat as he neared Lydia's house. The party was over. Had been for the better part of an hour. He had made sure of that. He didn't want to see everyone. But he wanted to see Lydia. Thank her for the picture. Thank her for always including him. And he wanted the baby to know it's uncle Derek, even if from a distance. He clutched the gift in his hand tightly, hoping the gift would be enough.

He knocked and held his breath. What if he wasn't wanted? What if she'd changed her mind and didn't want Derek to come after all?

The door opened before Derek could retreat to his car.

"Derek," The red head's eyes widened at the sight of the alpha.

Derek forced a smile and shoved the gift forward into her hands. "Congratulations," he turned to leave but she grabbed his arm.

"Whoa, wait, you can't just leave."

Derek's shoulders slumped. He should have guessed it wouldn't be that easy. He should have just sent the gift through the mail. But he knew that he wanted to see her. To see someone.

She pulled him into a hug then which he couldn't help but return even if hesitantly. He carefully buried his face into her hair, drawing in her scent subtly. God how he'd missed the scent of his old pack. She wore it heavily, having been surrounded by them all afternoon.

"You missed the party," She pointed out as she pulled back, a slightly accusing smirk on her lips.

"That was the point," He dropped his eyes as if in shame.

"Will you at least come in for a few?" Lydia moved aside, showing off the still decorated living room. Gold balloons and streamers littered the air while every surface was covered with a tablecloth or centerpiece to match.

When Derek hesitated Lydia spoke up again.

"At least have a cupcake and let me open the gift?" She looked up at him with hopeful eyes.

Derek could smell the hopefulness radiating off of her.

He hated to say no, but he really shouldn't stay.

Just as he was about to turn down the offer, her hand flew to her stomach.

"Oh. The baby's kicking," she smiled up at Derek. "Want to feel?"

Derek remembered when his mother had been pregnant with Cora, he had been enthralled with her. He loved feeling her kick.

Lydia, seeing Derek's hesitation to say yes, reached out and set his hand on her stomach.

The baby, as if sensing, gave a hearty kick just under Derek's hand.

Derek couldn't help the smile that sprung to his lips.

Lydia lit up. "Come on, please stay, just for a minute."

Derek could only nod.

Beaming with delight, Lydia led him inside, closing the door.

"Where's Jordan?" Derek asked, noticing the lack of the deputy.

"He's making a run to the store for me. I've been craving seltzer water and we ran out," She grinned. "He'll be back shortly."

Derek only nodded.

"I'm glad you came," Lydia lowered herself onto the sofa as Derek took a seat next to her.

"I wasn't going to but..." Derek didn't want to admit how much he missed everyone.

Lydia only smiled.

"I hope you like the gift. I wanted something that the baby would remember me by," Derek frowned down at the small wrapped box on Lydia's lap.

"You talk like they'll never meet you," She frowned.

Derek didn't respond as she carefully opened the gift.

She pulled put a tiny wooden wolf with a triskelion carved into the back. A tiny little ribbon hung from it's mouth with a tapestry attached. On it were the words, 'Not all monsters do monstrous things'.

Lydia looked up at Derek with tear filled eyes. "It's beautiful, Derek."

Derek gave a small smile. He was suddenly uncomfortable. He didn't know how to handle a crying Lydia.

"I know just where to put it," She pushed herself up off the couch with minimal effort.

Derek slumped his shoulders in relief. He was thrilled that she liked it. Now that he had delivered the gift, he could leave.

"Thank you so much for that," Lydia was smiling as she came back into the room. All signs of tears gone, much to Derek's relief.

He stood up and nodded, "I'm glad." He smiled. "I should really be going."

Just then the door opened, and Jordan walked in.

"Lydia, is that Derek's car out-well I'll be." Jordan cut himself off at the sight as he rounded the corner.

"My letter worked," Lydia beamed proudly.

Jordan only shook his head before sticking his free hand out to Derek, "Good to see you again."

Derek accepted it with a nod.

"Oh Derek, we're planning on going to the annual fall festival, you should come with us. I know the others would love to see you," Lydia gushed suddenly, her hands clapping together excitedly.

"Oh, no, I really wasn't planning on-"

"On what, seeing anyone? You were just gonna slip into town drop off that amazing gift and then flit out of town and disappear again for another three years?" Lydia snapped, crossing her arms.

Derek dropped his eyes in shame. That is exactly what he'd planned on doing.

"I shouldn't have come at all."

"Then why did you?"

"I'm gonna guess your letter was quite convincing, honey," Jordan pressed a kiss to his wife's temple, tossing Derek a sympathetic look.

"It was a mistake; I should have just mailed the gift."

Derek's shoulders were now stiff, and Lydia knew he was shutting down. She had to change her tactic.

"Derek, we've missed you. Why do you think we keep inviting you to things? You're always invited. We want you here. Don't you think if the pack found out you were here and didn't say hi, they'd be upset? Come on, just for an hour or two. It means the world to me that you came here for this, don't leave now," She looked up at him with tears in her eyes once more. "I need a recent memory for Baby Parrish about their uncle Derek. Please?" Lydia's voice waivered with threatening tears.

Derek's heart hammered heavily in his chest with panic. How could he say no to her like this? He didn't want to be the reason Lydia cried. What kind of horrible person would he be?

"Okay, fine, one hour. That's it," Derek could handle one hour.

Lydia lit up, all signs of tears suspiciously gone.

-

Derek had been wrong. He could not handle one hour. He had already been bombarded by Erica and Boyd and an old friend from highschool that he hadn't seen in ten years and it hadn't even been fifteen minutes.

Erica had gushed over him being back and how excited the rest of the pack would be once they arrived. Boyd had gently pulled her away when he sensed Derek getting overwhelmed with the promise to catch up later. Derek had been thankful for that. Unfortunately, he'd been instantly pulled into a conversation with an old friend from high school, Nick.

Derek listened as Nick rattled on about things that Derek could not have cared less about. Currently it was about his job at the police station. He was a deputy.

"Oh Derek, let me introduce you to a friend I met through the station. You'll love him, he's witty and hilarious," Nick said, pulling Derek over a few spaces.

Derek allowed himself to be drug towards the table only because Lydia was also there. He shot her a glare.

"Derek this is Stiles. Stiles, I want you to meet an old friend from high school, Derek Hale," Nick introduced.

Derek instantly jerked his eyes from Lydia, across the table, to the man next to Nick.

Stiles was indeed standing next to him. He looked older than the last time Derek had seen him. His hair was longer and the slight scruff on his jawline hadn't been there before.

Derek remembered the day he left well. It was abrupt and he had said goodbye to everyone expect the man in front of him now. Not knowing what else to do he put his hand out to Stiles. A hug would be unwelcomed he knew.

"Derek this is Stiles. Stiles, I want you to meet an old friend from high school, Derek Hale," Nick touched Stiles' shoulder to get his attention, but the name had already pulled Stiles from his conversation with the concession lady.

His eyes landed on the alpha, not believing what he was seeing. He hadn't seen the man in three years and now he was standing here in front of him.

Stiles tried to parse the emotions he was feeling, but there were too many. Happiness, confusion, sadness, anger, relief. He did his best to keep his expression blank. However, when Derek stuck his hand out to him, all the emotions morphed into one. Anger. Was he really going to pretend he didn't know him? Suddenly he wondered if maybe he didn't remember him. It had been three years after all and his appearance had changed some. Sure, Stiles had thought he meant more to the alpha, but that was before he left without so much as a goodbye.

"Nice to meet you," Stiles answered stiffly, taking Derek's hand.

Derek's stomach knotted at Stiles' words. Did Stiles not recognize him? He tried to get a whiff of the human's scent but there were far too many in the air. The festival was too chaotic with sounds and scents for Derek's senses to be of any use to him right now.

"You too," Derek gave a forced smile. Lydia had said everyone missed him. Had she lied? Derek hadn't thought to question it. Hadn't thought to listen for any upticks in her heartbeat. Perhaps Stiles was only pretending. But why?

At that moment Jordan stepped up to Nick, pulling him away for some reason Derek didn't bother to pay attention to. His attention wouldn't leave the man in front of him.

"Excuse me," Stiles said before turning and heading off into the crowd.

Derek wanted to call out, to follow after the human, but he remained still, unmoving.

"What the hell was that?" Lydia snapped, sending a smack up against Derek's head then.

"Ow, what?" Derek hissed, turning to face the annoyed red head.

"Did you two seriously just pretend you didn't know each other?" Lydia crossed her arms over her chest with a huff.

"He acted like he didn't remember so I-"

"Don't be a dumbass, Derek. He didn't forget you. How could he?" Lydia cut in, not bothering to let Derek finish whatever dumb thing he was about to say.

"We weren't exactly close," Derek shrugged. He knew on some level that was a lie. At least for him. Before he'd left Stiles had become his anchor. It was what had made Derek leave. He'd grown to care for the human too much. He couldn't bare it. He got scared and he ran. Just like he always did.

"You're kidding, right?" Lydia gave Derek and incredulous look. "You two were always together.

"For pack purposes," Derek insisted.

"I don't care what the purpose was. You were always together, and you grew close. Anyone could see it. He took it hard when you left. We all did but he took it the hardest. You didn't even say goodbye," Lydia's eyes were accusing now.

"I left him a note," Derek gave a half shrug. He knew it was a shit way to do it. But it had been the only way he could.

Lydia rolled her eyes. "He deserves an apology or an explanation at least."

"I don't have one to give," Derek dropped his eyes. Not one that he was willing to admit anyway.

"I think you do. You're just too afraid. But he deserves something. It wasn't fair. And now, pretending like you two are strangers. That's..." Lydia shook her head, disappointment covering her features.

Derek turned to see Erica with Stiles. He looked animated and angry.

"Does he hate me?" Derek dared ask.

"I wouldn't say hate, but I will say...he didn't want me sending the invite to his dad's retirement party a few months back. The sheriff overruled him."

That stung in a way Derek couldn't describe. Stiles didn't want him here. Lydia had lied. Not everyone missed him. Stiles didn't. The one person Derek missed most.

As if hearing his thoughts, the human's eyes met his across the crowded field. He turned then and headed for the parking lot.

Without thinking Derek was following after him.

Stiles' eyes met Derek's and he knew instantly that there was indeed recognition in them. Erica had been right. Derek remembered him. Somehow that didn't help the ache in his chest. It only stirred the anger boiling in his gut. He turned and headed for the exit. He needed to get out of there.

As he managed to reach the quiet of the back parking lot, he heard that familiar voice say his name.

Anger surged through Stiles as he whipped around to face the alpha. "Oh are we done pretending to be strangers?" he snapped.

Derek frowned, taken a back by Stiles' harsh tone. "You're the one who acted as if we'd never met."

"Me? You offered me your hand like some random passerby," Stiles scoffed.

"I felt that maybe you wouldn't be okay with a hug like everyone else," Derek's shoulders slumped.

"Everyone else," Stiles looked stricken.

Derek could smell the hurt start to seep off of him.

"Not everyone, but-"

"I don't think I want to hear it," Stiles cut Derek off then, his tone quiet as he turned to walk away.

Derek caught the human's arm. "Stiles wait."

"What do you want, Derek?" Stiles sighed.

Derek was suddenly at a loss for words. He didn't know why he'd followed Stiles out here. Hearing that he had been so distraught by his leaving had devastated him. He was sure Stiles wouldn't care. He'd been wrong.

"I'm sorry," Derek blurted then.

Stiles frowned. "What?"

"I'm sorry," Derek repeated, his hand now releasing Stiles slowly. "I didn't know leaving would upset you so much."

"How could you? You never called," Stiles snapped.

Derek winced slightly but didn't respond.

"You didn't even say goodbye," Stiles' tone was softer now, full of the vulnerability he clearly was feeling.

"I left a note," Derek frowned up at the human.

Stiles let out a scoff, "A piece of paper that said 'take care of it' with that leather jacket I always threatened to steal wasn't a suitable goodbye, Derek. In fact, I was confused, and it just hurt."

Derek dropped his head to his chin.

"Everyone else got a goodbye, why not me?"

Derek swallowed, closing his eyes. "Stiles..." Derek's tone was hesitant.

"I know that tone, don't give me that tone. I want to know," Stiles growled. It may have been three years since the two had seen each other, but they had known each other well. And Stiles knew that tone meant Derek was going to try and skirt the question.

"It's complicated-"

"Just tell me," Stiles cut in.

Derek looked up, his eyes sympathetic.

"Damn it, Derek, why? What did I do? I thought after everything we'd been through; I deserved a goodbye. A real one. I guess I was wrong, and I just want to know-"

"Because I knew you could talk me into staying and I couldn't allow that," Derek cut in sharply, his voice raised slightly so he could talk over Stiles'.

Stiles looked taken aback.

"Everyone tried to talk me into staying and I knew you'd try too, and I knew that you'd be able to talk me out of leaving. I couldn't let you," Derek lowered his voice, his eyes dropping in shame at the admittance.

"Why couldn't you just stay?" Stiles' voice was quieter now too.

Derek looked up, his eyes meeting the whiskey brown ones he loved so much. "I don't have an answer for you."

"Why not?" Stiles snapped, once again angry.

Derek closed his eyes. He shouldn't have come back here. This had been a terrible idea. Not only had he learned how much he'd hurt Stiles by leaving but he was hurting him now. The smell that hung in the air between them told him that. Sure, Stiles was angry, but he was also hurting. It was just layered beneath the anger and it was because of Derek.

"I'm sorry," He didn't know what else to say.

"I don't want your apologies, Derek. I want answers," Stiles snapped, stepping in towards the alpha, as if he could make Derek tell him what he wanted to know.

"It won't help the situation," Derek shook his head.

"Are you kidding me? As if you could make it worse? You've already built a wreck out of me, what more are you hoping to accomplish?" Stiles scoffed, throwing his hands up, as he backed away.

Derek frowned at Stiles.

"Oh come on, Derek. You couldn't possibly have thought you leaving wouldn't affect me. I was in love with you, you knew that. It's why you left that damn leather jacket, isn't it?" Stiles snapped. The malice in his tone felt good. He'd wanted to call Derek out on this for years.

Derek's brows shot up and his lips parted in surprise.

Stiles' eyes widened suddenly. "Wait, you didn't know?"

Derek didn't respond as he tried to process what Stiles had just said.

"Oh. Oh god. Okay. You're more oblivious than I thought. How could you not have known? Couldn't you smell it on me? Scott said it was super obvious. Everyone knew," Stiles ran one hand through his hair and flailed the other one as he spoke.

"I left because of you," Derek whispered then, causing Stiles to pause mid flail.

"What?"

"You became my anchor. I had fallen in love with you and I panicked. That's why I left," Derek's tone was still quiet.

Stiles gaped at Derek. "Are you kidding me?"

"No," Derek shook his head. He stepped towards Stiles, his fingers touching just under his chin.

Stiles didn't move.

"I'm sorry that I left. I'm an idiot. I didn't know how to cope with what I was feeling, and I didn't think you'd care," Derek brushed his fingers along Stiles' jaw.

"How could you know? You didn't talk to me about it," Stiles responded, his eyes not looking away from Derek's.

"I was too scared," Derek admitted.

Stiles scoffed. He never imagined Derek being afraid of anything like that. "But I don't understand how you didn't know about my feelings for you." He frowned at the alpha.

"Your scent never changed around me," Derek shrugged, "Not since you started trusting me that summer back in-" he cut himself off.

A blush filled Stiles' cheeks.

"That long? Really Stiles?" Derek smirked with a roll of his eyes.

"What, I was seventeen and we spent a lot of time together looking for the alpha pack, sue me," Stiles shrugged.

Derek couldn't help the grin that pulled at his lips.

"I fall hard and fast, okay?"

"I never even noticed," Derek shook his head, his thumb tracing along the stubble that had grown along Stiles' jaw.

"If you had, would you have stayed?" Stiles asked, curious eyes boring into Derek's.

"Yes," Derek nodded. He was sure he wouldn't have had the heart to leave knowing Stiles felt the same way.

Suddenly Stiles' lips were on Derek's.

Derek's other hand came up to cup the other side of Stiles' face as Stiles' hands fisted in Derek's shirt.

"Stiles," Derek pulled back, resting his head on Stiles'.

"Please don't," Stiles begged, closing his eyes. "Don't tell me you don't love me anymore, or that you have someone else back home. I can't bare it." His voice was a whisper between them.

"No, no, of course not," Derek let out a breathy laugh. "I just wanted to make sure you wanted to do this. I was an idiot and I don't deserve you."

"I forgive you, Derek," Stiles closed the gap, connecting their lips once more.

When Derek was younger his mom used to tell him of stories of kings and queens. He used to dream of meeting his king or queen one day. After the fire he was certain he'd be fine without one. Preferred it in fact, but then he met Stiles. And right now, in his arms, he knew, there's nowhere he'd rather be.

*AN*

Inspired by the song Oh Calamity by All Time Low

Consider buying me a coffee, I would really appreciate it!

[walkingchemicalfire]

The Stray: Luca

Chapter 4

Continued from here

A/N: So I had every intention to do Whumptober this year but my September was one thing after another and I just don’t have the bandwidth to focus on an event right now. I’m just gonna let this story come about the way it wants and that’ll be that, thanks everyone for sticking around and all the new people who took the time to check this out

CW: drugged whumpee, manhandling, dehumanizing language, pain, blood, beating

The dart struck Luca in the neck. The tiniest pin prick but enough for Luca to flinch. Give him a break, he thought he was getting shot for real. He reached up and plucked it out with a wince. He stared at the brightly colored and fluffy tip on the opposite end from the needle point.

“Huh, my worst nightmare shot me with a hot pink dart.” Luca chuckled. “Who the hell comes up with this bullshit?” He meant to say in a joking manner, but what came out was just a stream of random letters and a groan as the ceiling became the floor.

“Gah dahmm ith, wha t’fu—,” He tried again and reached out for the wall, stumbling to the ground when the wall turned to liquid and his hand went right through. The floor had no problem staying solid however and he landed hard on his knees. There was a zing of pain that shot through his legs, quickly becoming a dull throb to his knees. He blinked slowly and felt more of his body control slipping away. The fall the rest of the way to the floor was less than graceful and should have been more painful, but Luca was much too focused on how his head felt like it had a bowl of water encased around it.

“Stupid animal should count itself lucky we ain’t killed it already.” The deep voice of freaky Sasquatch man floated through on an air bubble in the ocean surrounding Luca. He knew he had a snappy retort on file somewhere in his mind, but that box was like buried treasure locked on some island far away. He could feel his tongue flopping around in his mouth, it felt like he was a fish on dry land but with just enough water to keep breathing for a little while longer.

Something pushed him on to his side. The wall remained solid this time when his back leaned against it. Sasquatch looked down at Luca as he jammed his boot into his ribs. Luca felt a breathy groan escape him, trying to push away from the prodding. He can’t seem to find his limbs though. The only sense he has any dominion over is sight and even that is compromised when the giant human crouches in front of him and pulls his eyelid back, but not without first jamming his finger into the delicate skin with more force than necessary. Luca can hear his own scream in his head but it doesn’t make it past his lips.

“What level tranq was that, P?” He asked as he peered into Luca’s blown pupils.

“Um, the mild one?” Peter replied from out of Luca’s eye-line.

The meaty finger retracts and Luca could cry in relief, in fact he’s fairly certain he already was, given that his vision has now joined his other senses under water.

“You tellin’ me you came in here with just a mild tranq dart and your shit aim? Ha, you got more balls than I thought!”

The comment goes unanswered by Peter and Luca strains to move his head from the ground. He must do something because Sasquatch grabs a fistful of Luca’s hair, yanking his head back where it thumps against the stone wall. “Stop your whining, mutt, or I’ll give you something to whine about.”

The quick tug makes Luca gasp and attempt to struggle out of the grip. He’s marginally successful since Sasquatch releases him, but Luca doesn’t count it as a win in his favor when his head is then dropped to the stone floor with a thud. It pops the bubble of water around his head though and he can focus on more than just the disconnect from his own body.

Sasquatch had moved away from Luca to inspect the manacles that previously held the werewolf and he subsequently ripped apart. The massive human gives a low whistle as he gets a closer look at the one cuff that is stretched out into a oval shape. “Guess the silver ran out too quick.”

“What does that mean?” Peter’s softer voice asked as his smaller frame shuffled toward the larger man, while keeping a wary eye on Luca.

“Means the beast is still too connected to its wolf. It shouldn’t be able to bend the metal like this,” Sasquatch fiddled with the silver rod “especially when it had to go through more silver to get out.”

Luca blinked away the false tears, beginning to feel the return of control over his limbs. He started small, wiggling fingers and toes, gradually bending his arms and legs after he watched Peter divert his attention to the manacles. Nothing felt broken from the fall, but he certainly was starting to feel sore from the initial tumble and the uncomfortable position Sasquatch had pushed him into against the wall.

Luca swam through the pain to reach out to his wolf, he couldn’t give up this chance of escape, he had to Change now before he was locked up again. He strained into a Change, so accustomed to it being as natural as breathing, it came as a shock when he could feel it happening inside him. He bit his lip to hold back the cry of agony as his skin began to grow hot and his bones ached. He had never had to think about how to Change before. Had this pain been present all those times? No. That couldn’t be possible. Luca knew he was strong but he also knew there was no way he could just block out this level of discomfort. It felt like his wolf was chained up and out of his reach, but he could feel him. He was attacking the chains that bound him, just as his human was fighting the newfound agony of the Change to reach him too.

Luca groaned as the pain spiked, the Change beginning to alter his physical form now. There was no way he was going to make it through this without passing out first. He wanted to stop. He wanted to rest. He wanted to be home with his Pack, safe.

My Pack. This is for my Pack.

The thought of his family waiting for him, having total faith in him to lead the humans away, trusting him with their safety. The sense of protection swept through him like a tsunami. Luca felt a rush of adrenaline, flowing through him and towards his wolf, urging him up to his hands and knees as his wolf snapped the chain and prepared to make the leap toward his human.

“FUCKING HELL!!” A loud shout boomed in the cell, just as something slammed down on Luca’s back. It hit him hard and forced him back down. At least he had enough wits about him to not smack his face on the stone this time. He turned his head to see Sasquatch had used his boot to hold him in place. He struggled and snapped his elongated teeth toward the man. It was enough to knock him off balance but the human didn’t fall. Luca growled, having just enough time to scramble to his knees before Sasquatch punched him squarely in the face. The pain smacked into him hard, his wolf howled as he continued to try and reach his human enough to fully Change.

“Not gonna happen, you mangey mutt!” The man grabbed him by his hair again, holding him up just to punch him in the gut. Luca gasped, pain in his face, and now his abdomen, disoriented him. He could feel himself slipping away from the Change, the wolf traits already retracting. His wolf wanted to protect him but he couldn’t focus up enough now to make it through that new pain of Changing.

The punches continued to rain down on him, alternating between his torso and his head, the later causing everything to spin out of control before beginning to have black spots appear. He could feel his body slumping more and more as the beating went on, waiting for the inevitable moment when he would fall unconscious. Luca smiled inwardly, recalling the last time he had been beaten unconscious and his wolf had come out to play. It was a small hope that it would happen like that this time, but Luca clung to it anyway.

“Nice knowing you, fuckers.” Luca thought and mentally flipped the bird.

“That is quite enough, Julian.” The familiar voice of Leader calmly said. The assault stopped and Luca squints through his watery vision. Sasquatch kept him upright by the hand in his hair as Leader stands beside him with their hands clasped behind their back. They smirk down at him for a while but say nothing. Luca glares as best he can. No chance in hell is he going down without a fight. If this is where it ends, he will face it head on.

Leader nods firmly once as they make up their mind. “Take it to the post for now, Julian. It’s time for it to be broken in.”

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