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#stares at the jacket cover for their pirate single
somanyratsinthewalls · 6 months
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Hello,
This is the first ask I’ve ever done. So, I’ve had this idea that Law trusts you with protecting his literal heart during fights?
Oh my god? I am sewwww obsessed with this idea! It's simply so cute. If Law were here I would have him screw off your head and give your brain a little smooch!
Heeeeere we go!
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Keep it Safe (+18) 
Pairing: Law x afab!reader
Summary: After days of fighting, you can’t take it anymore. You want Law to stay with you somewhere safe, but he can’t, so he leaves you his most prized possession. 
Trigger Warnings: ANGST? sex, p in v sex, pRONE bONE, injured sex (again?) heavy petting, pet names, cringe, kissin n huggin
Word Count: 2200 hehe
*Arrhhhh!* You yelled as you felled what seemed to be like the millionth enemy pirate. You and the Heart Pirates had been fighting for 3 days now, neither side letting up for a single moment. Your captain was handling his own, but the enemy numbers were simply too many. You looked over your shoulder towards Law, enveloped in his blue dome, slicing the men into pieces with his massive blade. You could tell he was beginning to lose his breath, not even he could keep this up for as long as it had been going on. He meets your eyes across the destruction. 
“Y/n look out!” He yelled with wide eyes. 
“Wha-“ You were struck in the back of the head and knocked out. That was the last thing you remember. 
---
You woke up back on the Polar Tang, in a cold medical suite with metal walls. Law was jostling you awake. 
You mumbled, “What happened? Did we win? Law?” 
“Y/n there’s no time, I have to get back out there. I got you here as fast as I could. You have a concussion, but nothing major. You need to stay here and rest while staying awake.” He turned tail quickly and headed towards the door. 
“NO! You can’t!” You tried to jump off the hospital bed towards him, pleading him to stay. Law turned back towards you and stepped in your direction just in time to catch you as you collapsed forward in your weakened physical state. He caught you in his strong, yet weary arms and pulled you into his exposed chest, shirt and jacket both ripped from the battle. 
“You can’t go…” You sobbed into his chest, shaking your head. “It’s too much! We can’t win, you’re going to die out there! Please, let’s just sail out of here, please Law…” 
Law tilts your head up at him with his blood covered hand, hopefully not his own, you thought. You were so scared, tears streaming down your face, staring up at him babbling and begging for him not go and leave you alone. He pecks a sweet, lingering kiss on your lips. 
“Hey don’t cry. How about I give you a very important job to do, huh? Something to help you stay awake and not worry too much?” He was smiling down at you. 
“Hhuhh..? Like.. like what?” You sniffled. 
In the blink of an eye and a flash of a tattooed hand, Law was holding something close to your face. You leaned back and gasped. It was his heart. 
“Here y/n. Take it. It’s just as much yours as it is mine. Keep it safe for me, hmm?” He took his free hand and grasped yours. He held them open and placed his still beating heart inside them. He used his tattooed hands to fold yours up over the the thumping cube. He looked at your face and stroked your fingers with his thumbs soothingly, seeing your shocked expression.
“Don’t worry y/n. This way I can go back out there and you still have me with you. I’ll be back.”
“Law no, I could never-“ you protested but you were feeling faint again. 
“Y/n, I promise I will see you soon. Please try and rest. I love you.” He kissed your lips again and rushed out of the door he came in. 
You were alone. The rest of your crew was still out there risking their lives and you were stuck in the ship alone. 
*thump thump*
Not… totally alone… you thought. You had Law’s heart. He had trusted you with the most important thing to him. A sweet gesture, but what if he knew they’d lose the fight and would want you to have something of his to hold onto forever? The tears started falling again. What if that was the last time you’d ever seen him… Not even getting to say “I love you” back to him one more time? How could he do this to you? He was so selfish! He wanted to save you while letting himself and the rest of the crew die? He couldn’t even predict the guilt you’d live with?
No. Stop. He was coming back. He had to. 
“well… I guess we should find something to do, huh?” You asked the thumping heart in your hands. 
“OK I’ve lost it.” You sighed to yourself. You were talking to a disembodied muscle. You must have been hit a lot harder than you thought.
You carefully carried the heart to your room and gently set it down on one of the pillows at the head of your bed. You decided on reading a book to distract yourself and try to keep yourself from succumbing to your drowsiness. You pulled one of your favorite erotic novels from your large bookcase and flopped down on your stomach on the bed, holding your head up sitting up on your elbows.  The ship was so quiet, it did nothing to distract you from your worries about the crew. You couldn’t focus on any of the words on the page in front of you. 
*thump thump* 
“Well… Law always likes when I read to him… Maybe the heart likes it too?”
You shake your head at how silly you sounded, but you knew that reading out loud would keep your mind on the text as opposed to your lover’s fate. So you started reading…
"The lady of the manor lifted her skirt, reaching a slender hand down and spread-"
Before you know it, over an hour goes by.
“And just as she was about to-“ You look at the pillow next to you and you notice the heart start to beat slower. You close the book and sit upright, you grab the heart in your hands and take a closer look. The heart rate seemed to still drop… oh my god? Was he dying? You were watching him literally die in your hands. 
“LAW NO!” You scream desperately at the heart in your hands. It was so faint now… You panic, you didn’t know what to do. You were deep on the ship now, by the time you had made it to the surface he would be gone. You start sobbing, your tears dripping down your chin and dripping onto Law’s weak heart you had clutched to your chest. Your chest heaved as you let our wracked, pained sobs. You cried so hard you began to dry heave, body bent forward, snot and tears soaking your cheeks. 
*thump thump* 
What was that?
*thump thump* 
It was coming back. You felt Law’s heartbeat start to come back, it was erratic but it was back. You sobbed out a laugh with a relieved smile. He was still alive. You were happy but so overcome by emotions, you didn’t know what to think. You laid your head down on the pillow next to your- Law’s heart. You couldn’t stay awake any longer, you fell asleep listening to the soft thumping.
—-
“I thought I told you not to fall asleep.” You woke up to Law walking into your bedroom. 
“Law! You’re back!” Your eyes snapped all the way open and you jumped off the bed and into his arms. He winced, obviously injured from the fight, but he played it off as concern for you. 
“Careful now, you should still be resting.” He pushed you back towards the bed and gently set you down on it. He had barely made you comfortable before he flopped forward onto the bed next to you. You smiled. He had clearly been to hell and back but his only concern was taking care of you first. 
“Gotta shower…” Law mumbled, his face directed into your mattress and hat flopped off over the edge of the bed. 
“No.. Not tonight. Let’s just sleep.” You urged him to sit up so you could begin taking the clothes off his tired body. He relented and gave you full access to rid his body of blood soaked clothes. Eventually you strip your captain bare and stand up to fold his clothes at the edge of your bed. He grabs your wrist. 
“Stop, get in here. Take your nightgown off. Need you.” Law punctuated each sentence with a heavy breath. You oblige, stripping the soft garment over your head and letting it fall to the floor with the rest of his clothes you left unfolded. You climbed into bed next to him, on your belly propped up on your elbows. You look at him laying on his back next to you. You look at his tired face. 
“I thought… I thought you died… Your heart….” You look down and realize it’s still on your pillow. He hadn’t put it back in yet. 
“You took great care of it, y/n. You always have…” He leans up on his side and starts kissing you up your arm towards your shoulder. You feel his arm snake around your waist as he pulls you closer to him. Instinctively, without thinking you grab his heart with both hands. He jolts a little bit and grinds his hardening cock into the side of your hip. 
“You hold it so nicely, y/n.” Law licks a quick strip up your arm to the top of your shoulder and gently sinks his teeth in there. “Your hands are so soft and beautiful, just look at them, y/n. I especially love them when they’re wrapped around my cock…” 
Your pussy clenched. He was never able to resist you, even in situations like these. Even if he didn’t have the energy to give you the jack hammering of your life, he would still find a way to give you maximum pleasure.
"You know what else I love seeing wrapped around my cock?" He kissed the nape of your neck.
He continued, "Your pretty mouth... and your tight little cunt... Always so wet and soft for me... Like you were made for just me..."
He moved his body to be pressed on top of yours. You were high on his filthy words you could barely hold yourself up on your elbows anymore as he kissed down you spine slowly with an open mouth. 
“You are the most perfect girl, taking care of my heart so well. I knew I could trust you with it. You’re my perfect, sweet, y/n, isn’t that right?” He reached your lower back and stopped kissing you. “Right… y/n?”
“Fuck-“ You were so turned on. You never expected to be seduced after such a dramatic moment, but Law always had ways of melting you under his touch. 
“Yes, Law.” You breath out, throwing your head back. 
“Yes, what, my sweet love?” He sits up on his knees behind you. He pushes your legs open and hovers back over you, leaning on his arms. 
“Yes, Law. I’m yours. I’m your girl. I belong to you, forever!” You desperately choked out, starting to ache with need for him to be inside of you. 
“Mmmm… yes, and I belong to you y/n. Look at my heart in your hands.” He purrs into your ear as he leans back down over you and pressing his chest flush against your back. “It beats for you.”
He reaches his hand down to guide his cock into your dripping hole. “Law, I love you-“ You gasp out as he slides himself into you to the hilt. 
“Fucking shit y/n I love you too, always so good for me. Takes care of me so well.” You lay flat on your stomach as he languidly slips his cock in and out of you. Every now and then he places slow and sloppy kisses on your neck as you whine with pleasure. The force of his strokes were punctuated with a soft grunt from his own desperate mouth. The pace was slow, it was all he could manage right now, but it still had you building towards an incredible finish. 
“Law, more, please…” You elbows finally gave out, you flattened forward against the bed, still clutching Law’s heart into your chest. 
“Anything for you, my love. I’m gonna make you cum so good. Such a nice reward for holding my heart safe. Is that what you want, y/n? Want me to reward you like my perfect girl?” Law grips your hips harder and drills them forcefully into yours, getting as deep as he possibly can. 
His cock was nestled so deep into you, curving up to hit your favorite spot he always knew how to find, you were tossed over the edge of pleasure. You spasm and cream all over his shaft as you scream his name. 
“Gooooood girl baby,” Law praises you for cumming so prettily on his cock. “You’re so beautiful when you do that. Gonna fill you up now sweetheart, okay? Take it all, I know you will, so perfect…” 
You both groaned as he spilled his load deep inside of you. He buried his head into the crook of your neck and rode out his high, breathing heavily. 
“Y/n… love… you…”
“I love you too, Law. So much. I’m so happy you’re safe, I was so worried about you I-…” 
You heard snoring and the man on top of you got so much heavier. He had already fallen asleep. You felt a slow thumping in your hands and you struggled to push him off you. 
“Really? Can you at least put your heart back in first???”
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faithfully-yours · 4 months
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A Single Mom Who Works 2 Jobs [pt 1]
Fandom : Just Roll With It
Ship : None, implied pistolwhip
Summary : Ollie heard of the riptide pirates, and of the Grandberry pirates. He had been told by Chip, of a Triton nobel and a girl of the sun. Never did he think he would meet them.
Warnings : Cliffhanger/two parts, kind of implied kidnapping? Just thought I'd add it to be safe.
Notes : In this AU, Chip went missing before they ever met Ollie. It all gets explained I prommy.
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A knock on the door rings through the empty house. Ollie looks up from his homework. He sighs. If his dad was home, he would be the one to get it, but Chip was working.
He stands up from the dining table and moves to the doorway. He pulls open the wood door, and looks at the people in front of it.
Three people stand. A tall triton, who looks maybe 20, a long streak of pink going through his teal hair. He wears simple trousers and a lose white shirt. His hand rests on a sword. Beside him is a dark skinned woman, whose left eye is covered by a black eye patch. Behind them is a red haired women who looks around Ollie's fathers age, with blue eyes and a navy blue jacket that's ties around her waist.
"Uh, yes? Can I help you?" Ollie squeaks out. The people seem familiar, despite the fact he's positive he's never seen them.
The Triton speaks. "Yes, we are looking for Chip, no last name that we know of."
The women beside him scoffs, "Yeah, we're all confused about the missing last name."
Chip. Ollie's father. Not biologically, but in every way that mattered. He went, to protect him, by the name Aden Lafayette. That's all the towns people ever knew him by.
Meaning these people knew him before, everything.
"Are you Gillion?" Ollie is bouncing on the balls of his feet now.
The Triton nods. "Yes, how do-"
The ten year old shakes his head and moves the side. "Come in come in, all of you." He grins. It's them. Gillion Tidestrider, Jay Ferrin, Elizabeth Lafayette. He had heard stories, they were the ones he had fallen asleep to.
The group of pirates looks at the boy suspiciously, but walks in. He leads them to the dining room, and urges them to sit down. "Uh, my dad will be home soon, he's who you want to talk to."
The three pull out chairs. "Who are you?" The women asks, and Ollie has to forcefully contain a squeal. She looks at him weirdly.
"I'm sorry, it's just that, well your captain Lizzie!" His smiles. "But um, I'm Oliver, call me Ollie."
She nods. "Right, how do you know me?"
He grins wider. (if that's even possible) "I know all of you! Dad told me stories."
"You keep saying dad, do you mean Chip?" Jay asks.
Ollie doesn't have a chance to answer, because the door opens.
He jumps up. "That's him!"
He rushes to the main hallway.
Chip pushes the door closed. His long brown hair is tied behind his hair, and his bangs are held back with a bandana. He's still in his uniform, (a dark green shirt and brown pants) and looks tired.
He always looks tired these days.
He smiles at Ollie, his warm brown eyes sparkling. "Hey kiddo! Did you get your homework done?"
The young boy bounces up and down on his feet. "No! But I, I have a good reason!"
Chip chuckles. "Yeah?"
There's the sound of footsteps, and Lizzie appears in the arch from the main hall to the dining room. "Chip?" Her voice sounds, small. She doesn't like it.
Chip stares at her, then looks back at Ollie. "Ollie, go to your room."
"But-"
"You can talk with them later. Go to your room."
The small boy groans, but goes to his room all the same. Chip turns to his sister with a sigh.
"Right, how did you find us?"
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That was a loaded question.
"The others are in the dining room, we'll talk there." Lizzie says, trying to calm herself and get some semblance of control over the situation.
H Nods and follows her to the dining table, Jay looks up and stifles a gasp. "Shit Chip it's really you!"
"Hm? Oh, yeah it is." He looks up, but looks away when he meets Jay's eyes. "How did you find us? Well me, how did you find me?"
Lizzie slides him a letter. "Gill found this when we visited-"
"Allport." Chip mutters, snatching the envelope. "I sent this right after we got out but that was years ago."
"One, you left two years ago, it's not that long ago, and two, what do you mean got out?"
Chip looks up, confused. "You guys don't think I willingly left, do you?"
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Right so yes, I'm sorry, I left you there. Uh, if anyone actually wants more I'll post pt 2. So uh, yeah. Love you guys so so much!!
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gellavonhamster · 11 days
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genre conventions
One Piece || Smoker/Tashigi || set during the timeskip ao3 link rus || ao3 link eng
“They’re not such idiots if they still haven’t got caught,” Tashigi points out tentatively as she wipes her glasses with a handkerchief. She can feel a drop of sweat roll down between her shoulder blades with agonizing slowness, as if it is making fun of her.
Of all islands she’s had the chance to visit after Loguetown, Anemone, the southernmost islet of the Coral Archipelago, is definitely making the top five of the worst despite not having, say, quicksand or human-sized carnivorous plants. Sweltering heat and the air that feels thick enough to cut through with a knife. On day three, Tashigi gave up, said goodbye to shirts – even the short-sleeved ones were hard to survive in – and since then she’s been wearing only tank tops. Her subordinates approved of her new look with such fervour that she had to threaten the loudest commentators with the katana. It must be for the best that she didn’t bring any shorts and, consequently, is not tempted to put them on.
And so they’ve been marinating in this little tropical hell, because they have an order to help the local Marine branch track down and apprehend a smuggling ring presumed to have picked the island as their base.
“Idiots,” Smoker repeats huffily and takes a drag on another pair of cigars. The smell hangs in the humid air like laundry on a line. “'Cause in their line of work, only idiots would voluntarily slap on identification signs. Pirates are another thing, there’s…” he gestures vaguely. “Nothing but panache, every other one’s a performer. Smugglers, if they’ve got any brains, should keep it low.”
“Well, it’s not like the tattoos are on their faces,” Tashigi puts the glasses back on, having made peace with the fact that soon they’ll fog up again. All she does on Anemone is make peace with something. With most of the clothes she’s brought with her on this voyage not being suited for the unbearable climate of the island. With having to pin her hair up in a way she doesn’t like, so that not a single strand touches her permanently damp neck. With not expecting the local Marines, whose captain greeted them drunk (on duty! on Tuesday afternoon!), to be of much help.
“Face or not, sooner or later someone would see.”
“Some of us wear clothes,” murmurs Tashigi. She has also made peace already with her commander dealing with such hot weather by walking around not even with his jacket open, as usual, but completely shirtless. The fact that it is high time she got used to the way he dresses – or rather, does not dress – but instead she finds it harder and harder not to stare at him with each passing day seems to be another thing she has no choice but to make peace with. 
“Huh? What was that, Captain?”
She knows him well enough to distinguish a shade of a grin on his eternally stern face and know he’s not actually angry.
“Nothing, sir.”
Tashigi doesn’t know when it started. In retrospect, she is aware that generally speaking, she has always found him attractive, because she has eyes and can see, even if not so well. But that did not matter much back when neither of them had yet learned how the other takes their coffee, when neither of them had yet sat by the other’s bedside in the sick bay after the battle, when her hair hadn’t yet absorbed the smell of cigar smoke to the point that no shampoo could wash it off. Back when she didn’t yet find it exciting that his smell lingers on her as if he’s held her in his arms – which, of course, has never happened, and never will.
The smugglers may not be idiots, but she certainly is.
“We’ll cover the northern coast tomorrow,” Smoker says. “Judging by the map, it’s rockier than on the other sides, harder to approach. If there are no traces there either, we’ll return to the port. Perhaps the drugs are shipped right there under the guise of other cargo. Perhaps someone in the administration is involved. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
The little shabby bar across from them is finally open – the bartender and the waitress have brought out the chairs and thrown open the doors and a couple of patrons have already arrived, lured in by the music. Tashigi keeps swinging her leg to the tune until she recognizes it as the Soul King’s latest hit. Smoker puts his cigars on an empty tin can that someone has considerately left on the bench as an ashtray, and opens a bottle of water. Tashigi catches herself watching his Adam’s apple bob with each gulp, and digs her nails into her palm.
She’s going to lose her mind on this island.
“Can I have some? I’ve finished mine,” she hears her own voice say, and he passes her the water without a second thought, because normal people don’t think about the way drinking from the same bottle is kind of a little bit like a kiss.
Like many lonely children, Tashigi used to read a lot as a kid. Fairy tales, myths, legends, later – and still, when she has time on her hands – stories of great blades and the swordsmen who wielded them. Stories were not a passion like swordsmanship, not as integral to her life and soul. But she remembered: they could provide an escape, if only for a while. And an escape was precisely what she was seeking some time ago when she picked up the kind of books she had always looked down upon before. Someone else’s passions to distract her from her own; someone else’s affections being returned while for her it was not in the cards. She was hoping that would help.
It didn’t help one bit. Rather the opposite.
The main problem with romance novels, at least with the most popular ones, the kind sold on every newsstand of every island, was not even their quality, but the way in half of the cases heroines fell in love with pirates. Every time it outraged her like the first time. They are risking their lives in the Marines to protect civilians against these villains, yet the civilians in question keep on romanticizing them! In most other cases, the main male characters, while not pirates, were so clearly modelled after real-life pirates, Warlords, or even Emperors that it was probably even worse. In one book, a poor orphaned shepherdess was rescued by a golden-haired knight on a white horse. In another, a nightgown-clad ingénue with a candlestick in hand wandered the dark hallways of a grim castle belonging to an equally grim lord – haughty and cold, but with such wonderful eyes! In yet another one, a village beauty was protected from the landlord’s advances by a charming red-haired, one-armed bandit. And as recently as a month ago, she literally threw another masterpiece at the wall when she realized that the inspiration for the love interest was none other than Monkey D. Luffy. Obviously, Tashigi can’t boast that she knows him intimately (not if she could help it!), but based on the impression he made on her that was simply ridiculous. That was the last straw, after which she swore she wouldn’t touch such rubbish ever again.
But it was too late. Because another problem with romance novels was that while reading them, you could pick up certain… ideas. Ideas that settle in your head all by themselves, sit there quietly for some time, and then comes a point when they seize you in an iron grip – and you give in to an impulse and obey them.
She’s not planning to seduce him. It won’t work anyway, and thinking of potential consequences of such impertinence gives her the shivers. She just wants him to look at her. Really look at her just for once. The way she looks at him. She will bury this one moment deep in her heart to take it out occasionally, spend some time looking at it, and then replace it. Press the bottle to her lips not tightly enough; let a trickle of water run down her skin into the neckline of her tight tank top, into her cleavage. Her shoulders are too strong, her arms are too muscular, but at least she has breasts – even bigger than she would’ve preferred them to be every time she wears tight-fitting clothes. She doesn’t want everyone and their dog staring at her. Just him.
She puts her lips around the bottle neck, throws her head back a little, and…
…spills it all on herself. Of course. Naturally. She bursts into coughing because water has gone down the wrong way, even got into her nose, and then she glances down and sees that her top is all soaked and even her pants are wet here and there. At least it doesn’t look like she peed herself. Small mercies.
Smoker sighs crossly. That look on his face is also familiar enough to her – he must be doing his best not to snap at her. Like every time she drops one thing or bumps into another.
“Excuse-me-I’ll-be-back,” she blurts out, places the bottle on the bench, springs to her feet, and rushes to the bar.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Hey!” yells the bartender as soon as he sees the new customer dashing right for the door in the corner. “Bathroom’s for patrons only!”
“Okay, okay,” Tashigi replies without looking at him, and pulls on the door handle.
One of the stalls is occupied. Tashigi takes some toilet paper in the second one, pats her neck dry, presses it to her chest too but instantly throws it away – it will just stick to the fabric and won’t help much anyway. The clothes will dry on their own. That’s not what she’s here for. She’s here to try to calm down before the urge to break into disappointed tears takes over.
The dingy mirror above the sink is cracked in two and carelessly duct-taped. Tashigi leans on the sink with both hands and glares at her reflection in the mirror. Her lips are trembling against her will. Good job, well done. Then again, what else should she have expected?
That will teach her a lesson. There is no use trying to jump into a romance novel from a crime story.
Or a situation comedy.
The waitress that was putting out the chairs outside earlier comes out of the second stall, and Tashigi lets go of the sink, steps aside, and starts cleaning her glasses again. The woman – young, shapely, with long lilac hair – washes her hands and bends over the sink, almost pressing her face to the mirror – must be trying to see if something is stuck between her teeth. Tashigi puts the glasses back on, and her eye catches the tattoo on the small of the woman’s back, visible between the low-rise pants and the yanked-up T-shirt. A dagger wreathed in ivy.
The same as that of the two smugglers whose descriptions they were given.
Her face must be betraying her, because as soon as the waitress sees Tashigi’s reflection in the mirror, she turns around at lightning speed and takes a swing, aiming for Tashigi’s jaw.
It all happens swiftly and chaotically. Hand-to-hand combat is not her preferred type of fighting; it lacks the grace and dignity characteristic of a sword fight. But she doesn’t have Shigure with her – because this evening her and Smoker were meant to be not Marines but simple tourists simply strolling about and certainly not watching out for anything suspicious. Her adversary doesn’t seem to be in possession of weapons either, but she’s strong, twice as strong out of desperation. Tashigi dodges her first punch, but when they catch hold of each other, the waitress seizes the initiative, presses her against the sink and tries to smash the mirror with her head. Tashigi manages to wrench herself free, and when the supposed smuggler comes at her again, she grabs her, turns around, and slams both of them into the door. The door comes unhinged, and the two of them fall into the barroom; something’s crashing, someone’s screaming, but she’s not paying attention to anything around her until she finally pins the waitress to the floor.
When handcuffs are dropped on the floor next to her, she doesn’t question where they came from – just grabs them, puts them on the culprit, and only then raises her head. There are drinks spilled and broken bottles scattered all around and a couple of chairs knocked down close by. Two elderly patrons are making their way to the exit, having taken their glasses of beer with them. Smoker is looming over the bartender, whose arms are twisted behind his back and handcuffed and face is pressed to the counter. There is a dagger tattoo above the man’s left elbow.
“You alright?” Smoker asks, unfazed.
Tashigi gets up and clumsily helps the waitress sit up under the counter where they can see her. Another reason she doesn’t like fistfights – in the end she always feels like she acted dishonourably, even if that isn’t true. Her knees are hurting, her shoulder is burning, her glasses have cracked, but strangely she’s much more alright than several minutes ago, when she was trying her hardest not to burst out crying with shame.
“I’m alright. How did you get here?”
“I saw you through the window kick the door down with your body and that wench. Thought that was too extreme for you.”
Tashigi rolls her eyes.
“This guy here, instead of breaking up the fight, tried not to let me in,” Smoker continues.
“Let me guess: you punched him a couple of times and then just stood there watching me?”
“You had it all under control. Or am I wrong?”
Did she? All of it? Hard to tell at once. But she knows that if forces really were unequal, he would’ve come to her aid. More importantly, if he had thought her too weak from the start, she would’ve been mad at him and at herself.
She straightens her back.
“No, you’re right. I’m sorry, I…”
“Stop. Why are you apologizing again? Right now – what for?”
“I don’t know,” Tashigi says honestly.
Smoker opens his mouth to say something, but then the suspiciously cheerful Pike and Bomba barge in – so cheerful that Tashigi could have assumed their local comrades-in-arms are a bad influence on them. That is, if the personnel of G-5 wasn’t managing just fine without any outside influence.
“Helloooo, sir!”
“Hey there, sir!”
“I see you didn’t waste no time!”
“Ooh, Captain, what a scratch you’ve got! Gotta kiss it better…”
“I’ll kiss you worse!” snaps Tashigi. This is when pointedly unsheathing a sword would have been on point, except she doesn’t have a sword at hand. However, her countenance turns out to be enough for the jokers to back away.
“Take them to the base,” Smoker nods towards the bartender and the waitress. “Don’t let them out of your sight. We’re gonna interrogate them.”
Bomba flashes a wicked grin.
“Leave that to us, Vice Admiral, we’ll loosen their tongues in no time…”
“Don’t.” Smoker flicks his lighter, puffs at another pair of cigars, and looks the arrestees up and down with an even more sinister look on his face. “I’ll deal with them myself.”
The waitress, who doesn’t know that the Vice Admiral sticks to much more lawful interrogation methods than his crazy subordinates, blanches slightly.
“Ma’am,” Pike winks at her and places his hand on her shoulder. Bomba, a little disappointed, pushes the bartender to the exit.
Tashigi watches them leave.
“I called them as soon as I dealt with the bartender,” Smoker explains. Tashigi comes closer to him and leans against the bar counter. All of a sudden a terrible weariness descends on her; she doesn’t want to go back to the base, doesn’t want to interrogate anyone, doesn’t want to move at all. She just wants to stay where she is, elbows resting on the sticky counter top. “Guess they must’ve been in that tavern around the block.”
“Dutifully looking for the smugglers, no doubt.”
“In every glass.”
She giggles.
There is a mirror on the wall behind the counter too, cleaner than the one in the bathroom and not cracked, and in that mirror she sees herself – the too-strong shoulders, the too-muscular arms, the damned tight tank top, the fresh scrapes, the disheveled hair, the tired smile.
And on her right – Smoker, standing still, his eyes fixed on her.
She thought she had already learned all the expressions of his face, but she’s never seen a look like this before. Steadfast, heavy – but not with disapproval or displeasure, it’s just that it seems like she can physically feel its weight and heat on her body. Feel it flow down her skin like water before, but thicker, viscous. Like wax. Or honey.
She hasn’t seen the way she looks at him at times, lost in thought, but she suddenly realizes: this is how.
Tashigi’s breath hitches.
A moment later he glances at the mirror and notices that she’s noticed him. She feels caught red-handed – even though he started it first, even though he was the one secretly looking at her. Tashigi turns away hastily.
“Is everything okay, sir?” she asks, hoping that she sounds relaxed enough.
Smoker nods slowly. His face is inscrutable, but it seems to her like a vestige of that look is still smouldering in his eyes.
“Pike was right. Your shoulder’s royally scratched,” he says. “You’d better put something on it when get back to the base.”
Were the poor orphaned shepherdess from the knight novel in her place, she would’ve just cast down her eyes shyly. On the other hand, the heroine of that book she threw at the wall – a ruler of a small island country – might have echoed Pike’s recent joke.
How about you kiss it better then?
“There must be more of them,” she says instead. Maybe she shouldn’t bother trying to change the genre; nothing good will come out of it anyway. She is as far removed from romance novels as could be. She doesn’t belong there. “The sailors from the Ernestine saw two men, but neither was described to look like that one. And I don’t think that girl can be mistaken for a man even from afar.”
Smoker nods again and breathes out a lacework of white smoke.
“Yeah,” he says. “Well, let’s see what they tell us. They might like to have their sentence reduced. Let’s go.”
She belongs in a procedural about the daily life of law enforcers.
But so does he, so she finds she doesn’t really mind.
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Power Armor Punch Part Fifty Nine
Masterlist
(Trigger Warning for suicide attempt and severe self harm)
Lucille: I killed so many innocent people-! *the left side of her vision fills with a damage warning*
Nick: *sees the warning too, reaching out for him to stop* Gardio, stop-!
Lucille: *suddenly a sharp pain shoot through her shoulder as her arm is pulled apart and wires yanked out of their spots, soldered or not. Winces and screams, stumbling forward then breaking into a sprint*
Gardio: *covers his mouth in shock at the severed limb before pursuing her again, tears rushing along his face at what he's just done* Lucille-!
Ma: (Gasps in alarm at this, clutching her gun to her chest. She gives a quick glance at Nick before also going after the young woman who’s now down an arm and probably defenseless in her mental state)
Jasmine: (Keeps the shard in her side, blinking off with a thousand yard stare as everything bottled up in her mind jumps out to attack her in droves)
Donovan: (Still trying to find the right moment to cross the room and take the gun away from the girl, but she’s so sharp that he can’t move much) “Rosalinda, can you tell me what you want and or need? Anything at all. Even if it sounds impossible to achieve, we can work on inching towards it together.”
Jasmine: (Wants to die first off, but she’s sure that’s not what Donny means… Maybe she wants to get through ONE day without thinking about or doing anything terrible or saddening, along with sleeping throughout the night without a single nightmare. Just a normal, stress free day for once, maybe a happy filled one if she can be that lucky. But first she’ll have to deserve it, and she never will. This living hell is her well earned consequence for her actions)
Donovan: (Desperately) “Ro-Ro, please. Give me something to work with here…”
Jasmine: (Growls lowly, closing her eyes while more tears spill down her face)
Nick: *frowns. He doesn't know what's gotten into the woman*
Gardio: *running as fast as he can* Lucille, please don't do this!!
Lucille: *making serpentine movements. Wants to get lost in the fog and never be found*
Gardio: *won't let her*
Teshteal: *waited for a moment but decides to get up* I think they're going to need my nose. Lucille's making a run for it for some reason. *runs out the door and starts sniffing for Lucille and the others*
Joyce: (Reaches out to her boyfriend as he scurries out of the room, then draws back her hand, realizing that she’s now alone in the house at night. She slowly looks around the empty air with wide eyes) “Oh god…” (Reminds herself that Donny said that there was nothing lurking outside, yet she’s still frightened. She strains her ears for the sound of a boat approaching, holding her breath)
Pirate: (At the bottom of the makeshift elevator to the lighthouse, whining up towards the top)
Donovan: (Backs up at the growling. He’s walking on eggshells here) “Okay then… How about we both sit down on the sofa and take a breather for a moment, or maybe just you while I stand here. You’re looking a little green around the gills…” (Not to mention covered in cuts and blood) “I don’t want you to faint…”
Jasmine: (Stamps her feet and shakes her head, putting the arm that has the shard around her waist while letting the glass dig into the skin of her lower waist)
Donovan: (Realizes that Jazzy is probably feeling exposed and freezing right now due to not having much on. He wishes he had his coat to give her, or anything at all) “Are you cold? We are high up and it’s breezy in here. I’d go fetch you a jacket but I can’t leave you alone…” (Holds out his hand in a offering for her to take it)
Jasmine: (Hisses presses her back further into the wall, tightening her grip on the gun to the point her entire arm shakes)
Donovan: (Puts up his hands again, showing a bit of fear on his face) “I’m not your challenger or opponent, Rosie. I just want to get you to safety first, then I can help you work through whatever is going on inside your head.”
Gardio: *still chasing after his daughter, but he's starting to lose sight of her* No, no, no, no-! Lucille!
Nick: *listening for gun shots at this point*
Teshteal: *gets close enough to the group in a matter of moments* I'm tracking her.
Gardio: *realieved look* Good man. *nods*
Lucille: *trips and falls on her face, sending Kellogg's gun flying* N-no. I have to finish it- *struggles to get up. Winces and realizes she twisted her ankle. She starts to cry in frustration*
Ma: (Stopped to take care of some wolves that came over, shooting them and bashing them with the fury of a mother protecting her child)
Joyce: (Stands and starts slowly moving through the house as her heart pounds, creeping up the stairway)
Donovan: (Remembers how the girl cried out for her father after she got banged up the the trappers and how she’s been clinging to him ever since) “…Would you like to go down together so you can be with Detective Valentine? He seems to care about you dearly, he’s been by your side since he got back.”
Jasmine: (Sniffles, her eyes glimmering slightly at the mention of her Dad)
Donovan: (Notices that the mention of Nick brings little Rosie back into the sunlight and so he continues) “You really like him, don’t you? He seems like a good principled man, and a loving father to you.”
Jasmine: (Nods a little, suddenly feeling guilt claw at her chest when she thinks of all the trouble Nick has gone through to keep her alive and healthy, how heartbroken he gets when he sees his daughter destroy herself)
Donovan: (Holds both of his arms out to her, watching with concern as she starts trembling like a leaf in a raging storm)
Jasmine: (Feels so undeserving of the tender love and kindness Nick gives her, all she’s done is scream and cry to him. Maybe in the long run her being gone will make room for someone else to take her place, someone who deserves a father as generous as Nick)
Teshteal: *sniffs the air and darts to Lucille* Found her!
Gardio: Thank god!
Lucille: *trying to scramble for the gun* Just let me die!!
Nick: *kicks the gun away* No can do, doll.
Gardio: *sits and pulls her into his lap*
Lucille: Please-!! *having one hell of a mental break. She's squirming and fighting her father*
Gardio: Why do you want to die so badly?!
Lucille: The world would be so much better without me in it to fxck it up!!
Nick: Lucille that's a load of shxt and you know it. You know where I'd be right now if it weren't for you? Vault 114, as the world's most bullet riddled coat rack, that's where! The whole Commonwealth would be living under the Institute thumb without ya. You've made this place better. Not worse.
Lucille: *tears up* But all the people I went through to do those things- they had families!
Nick: *sighs* They did... but I've rarely seen you murder a man in cold blood, if at all. It's always been self defense.
Lucille: *knows that isn't true. The Prydwen wasn't self defense. Everyone there were merely defending themselves* Please... just let this failure die...
Gardio: *holding her tightly as she struggles* You're not a failure. *tearing up again* Please, stop calling yourself that... *looks up to Ma for help briefly before kissing his daughter's hair frantically*
Ma: (Shrugs off her jacket and slings her shotgun on her back, kneeling down beside the two. She drapes it around Lucille before gently holding her from behind so it’s harder for her to struggle) “Sshhhh, baby. Sshhh….”
Donovan: (Smiles at her despite the fear boiling inside his chest) “I sure your mom would’ve loved him too. She would’ve loved that such a kind man was taking care of her wild baby girl.”
Jasmine: (Swallows a lump in her throat with a strained cry, her knees getting even weaker. He’s right, Mamá would’ve adored Nick if she could’ve met him… But what if Nick is next on the chopping block for her terrible curse? She’s already straining the poor old detective to his limits just as she did to her mother and aunt)
Donovan: (Knows that Jas can play tough girl and warrior face all she wants, but at the end of the day she still just wants to snuggle her parent for comfort when things get rough. She can’t resist that feeling no matter how much sass or aggressive hisses she throws at people)
Jasmine: (Slumps against the wall so she’s partly doubled over, still holding the gun to her head but she’s aimed it away from her mouth. He fingers are getting heavier over the trigger)
Donovan: (Takes another chance at trying to approach)
Jasmine: (Weakly) “Stay away from me! You cannot be close…” (Starts to sob again) “Do not be close to me, please…”
Teshteal: I'm going to head back. I left Joyce alone and I'm sure she's freaking out. *scampers off. He doesn't mention the scent of blood because Nick has a hand in this situation. Hopes Jas isn't dead*
Gardio: You got a law degree before the war. That wasn't an easy task! You helped people! That is the exact opposite of a failure!
Nick: Vault 88 would be just a pit in the ground with a messed up mad lady as overseer without you! God- Curie- she'd still be stuck in 81 all alone. What would your wife do if you suddenly vanished, Luce? *kneels. Softly, worried for his friend* What about your kid? He'll miss you something fierce. Geneveve, too. She'd never exist without you now she's singing in Goodneighbor.
Lucille: *freezes when she hears Curie's name then resumes struggling knowing they have safe lives ahead of them* They'd be fine-!
Gardio: *shakes his head fiercely, remembering losing his wife* No- Not Curie. Remember how it felt when you lost Nate? The pain? The overwhelming grief? I don't know who Curie is but do you really want to put her through that same hell?
Lucille: *clarity hits her at the mention of Nate and compares it to what her wife would go through... guilt washes over her face but not for the atrocities she assumes she's committed*
Nick: *nods* She needs you, Luce. You don't want to let her down by pulling the trigger, right?
Lucille: *nods, holding back tears*
Nick: Then, chin up. *smiles reassuringly* I know the night just got darker, but it won't last forever.
Lucille: *sniffs* You've said that before...
Nick: And I'll say it again. As many times as you need.
Lucille: *just starts crying. Not even fighting anymore. Hearing him reassure her the same way he did right after killing Kellogg and finding out Shaun was in the Institute helps her more than the old synth knows*
Nick: Also you're still the best damn partner I've ever had. Can't let you die on me.
Lucille: *chokes out a laugh between her sobs. She'd smile and laugh at his remark if she wasn't relieving her pent up stress through her tears*
Gardio: *wonders if the worst is over for her. He prays it is...*
Ma: (Gently rubbing Lucille’s back, nodding along with what the two other men are saying)
Donovan: (Sees that he’s losing her again) “Don’t do that... It’s alright that you want comfort, it’s never been a weakness.” (Gives her a nod) “I won’t touch you, but you have to put down the gun, Rosie-Posie.”
Jasmine: (That’s not what she’s thinking at the moment, she doesn’t care how much she’s dressed or how much comfort she wants. She’s a danger to them, to everyone around her. Even if she’s not cursed, she’s sure as hell coded to kill people then spit on their corpses with a sick smile)
Donovan: (All he needs to do is to disarm the unstable girl, then he can carry her back downstairs kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes to bring her to safety. After that he’ll be sure Jas gets cleaned, bandaged, fed, then put back into bed even if she fights him on every turn. He saw that glimmer in her eyes, she’s IN there somewhere, and he’ll wait and care for her for however long it takes to set her free)
Jasmine: (Looks her childhood friend over, once again seeing the sweet goofy boy whom she loved to mess around with. He’s innocent, he has a good life here. She can’t taint that too, she can’t drag any of them down with her) (Coldly) “Turn around.”
Donovan: (Goes even more wide eyed, taking a step to her again as his heart pounds with dread) “What?!?”
Jasmine: (Through tears, shaking her head) “Turn the fuck around! Trust me, you do not want to see this.” (Takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, ready this time to follow through with what should’ve happened a long time ago)
Donovan: (Bolts forwards) “NO!!! DON’T!!!” (Grabs the girls arm and pushes it upwards high above her head just as she pulls the trigger, causing the bullet to go through the window instead)
Joyce: (Came outside to find Donny once she realized that she was probably safe, screaming when she hears the bullet shatter the glass from above) “DONNY!!” (Runs to the elevator and calls it down, panting)
Jasmine: (Goes feral when she’s kept from ending her life, her programming fighting skills taking ahold) “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE DOING!!! YOU WILL ALL BE DEAD IF YOU LET ME LIVE!!!” (Makes a move towards the other bullets still in the case)
Donovan: (Kicks the back of her legs to make her fall partially into his arms, trying to pry the gun and shard out of her hands)
Jasmine: (Throws herself forwards, sending them both into a tussle on the ground for the gun)
Joyce: (Takes the elevator up, yelping again when she sees the two struggling against each other) “Donovan!”
Donovan: (Snatches the teen by the waist and pulls her in) “Joyce! Go downstairs.” (To Jasmine who’s wrangling in his arms) “Calm down, baby! Please!”
Jasmine: (Tries to flip him over, but her arms are too weak to lift him up by that much) “GET THE FUCK OFF ME AND LEAVE!!”
Joyce: (Fearfully with an outstretched hand) “But-!”
Donovan: (Pins Jas by her arms to the ground, wincing as she kicks his groin) “NOW!”
Joyce: (Crying as she presses the button to go back down, so confused and scared for her brothers safety and the teens sanity. She puts her arms around her chest to hug herself tightly as she walks back into the house)
Jasmine: (Raises the thick shard to her neck, trying to slit it as she can’t reach the gun and death isn’t coming soon enough)
Donovan: (Holds her wrist in his, pulling back so the shard partly slices her shoulder instead) “Stop it!”
Jasmine: “I WILL END UP KILLING ALL OF YOU JUST LIKE I DID WITH THEM!!! I CANNOT LIVE WITH THAT ANYMORE!!!”
Lucille: *starting to calm down*
Nick: *heaves a sigh of relief* How about we get you back to the house. You never finished your food...
Lucille: *nods and croaks* Yeah...
Teshteal: *makes it back to the house and immediately goes to Joyce when he sees the frightened look on her face* Angel? What happened? What's wrong? *takes her shoulders in his hands, looking into her eyes*
Joyce: (Points behind her to the laundry room door that’s open, shaking all over as she stutters) “Donny… the little girl… gunshots… She’s trying to…” (Feels her knees buckle a bit, so fearful for her brother because of how strong Jas is and how feral she was fighting)
Jasmine: (Sobbing hysterically. Donny isn’t Nick, he doesn’t know about the shit she did. He doesn’t know what she’s capable of. He only sees her as that wide-eyed kid who’d bubble around town with a smile on her face. That kid is dead, she’s been dead since the moment she chose to go down this path when she told her mother off)
Donovan: (Also doesn’t know that Jazzy blames herself for the death of her family, or what happened to her baby and the four kids. He just sees his little sister having a major mental breakdown while bleeding from cuts that are shaped into horrible insults and words. He can give a guess where she was told these things, but he doesn’t have any details other than what he heard from Teshteal about the vault)
Jasmine: (Gets the rage back into her and she shoves Donny aside with all her might, running and sliding to the gun and the box with the bullets)
Donovan: (Recovers quickly with a grunt of pain, diving back to stop her as she expertly reloads the emergency pistol) “YOU NEED TO STOP!!”
Jasmine: (Shrieks as she is knocked against the cabinets, struggling to kick Donny again and get the gun pointed back to her head)
Donovan: (Doing everything in his power to not let Jazzy prematurely end her own life. He has to put his body weight on top of her in order to do this, wincing a bit when she screams a different note)
Jasmine: (Puts her legs around his waist and swings them both to the floor, her landing in the pile of shards)
Donovan: (Scrambles to get Jas out of the glass so she can’t use it or accidentally cut herself)
Gardio: Here. I'll carry you. *stands, bridal carrying his daughter, the remains of her arm under his own. Nods to the others* Lets go.
Ma: (Makes sure that her coat is nice and snug around Lucille before she kisses her head and nods back at Gardio, taking the lead in guiding them back to the house with her shotgun out. God help anyone who tries to mess with them right now…)
Teshteal: *catches her when he knees start to buckle* Whoa. Easy, love. Slow down and talk to me... *strokes her hair out of her face gently*
Joyce: (Grips onto Teshteal, heaving heavy breaths while her mind races to explain things clearly) “They’re fighting up there… I heard a gunshot. The girl was crying and she had the gun in her hands… She was covered in blood…”
Jasmine: (Puts the gun back up to her head, screaming with frustration when Donny once more pins her arm to keep it away from herself) “Stop it!!” (Glass cuts her skin while she swings and swats at the ghoul)
Donovan: (Takes the kicks and hits the teens gives him like a champ) “I’m not stopping, child!”
Jasmine: (Pulls the trigger on the gun again, smacking him across the face when he winces at the loud noise. She sits up and backs against the wall with the gun pointed at her head)
Donovan: (Cups his cheek and stands, pointing at her) “WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHER SAY TO THIS?!?”
Jasmine: (Freezes, shaking all over as she glares at Donny with bloodshot eyes) “She would not say shit because I am not her daughter!”
Donovan: “Bullshit! She loved you with all her heart just as she did with Cosmos and Lilac and the rest of us! You know that!!!”
Jasmine: “And yet she is dead along with my siblings! Because of me! Just like what happened to my first adopted father! And my baby! And those kids!!! My friends!!! The people in the vault! Settlers!” (Looks down at herself, squeezing her eyes shut) “ALL OF THEM ARE DEAD BECAUSE OF MY FUCKED UP SELF!!!”
Donovan: (Goes partially jaw dropped at her confession that he has several questions about, then takes the opportunity to spring forwards to tackle her once more and hold her arm away from her head, kneeling over her for a better hold)
Jasmine: (Lost in a pool of red of all the people that have crossed her path and died for it) “YOU ARE NEXT ON THE LIST!!! I AM FUCKING PLAYING WITH ALL OF YOU!!! YOU WILL DIE IF I LIVE!!!” (Sobs harder while she gaps) “I am playing with you! I am playing the role of the victim so I can eventually take what I want and kill all of you one by one! Because that is what they made me for!!”
Teshteal: *flinches hearing gun fire. He quickly leads Joyce to the couch* Stay here. I'm going to go see if I can sort this out. *runs to the light house door, absolutely obliterating the lock by kicking it. He runs up and freezes at what he sees. Wonders if he can give commands in this instance but considering the situation he pulls out the tone of an officer giving orders* A-001, Reset!!
Joyce: (Winces at the sound of the door being forced open, crying into her hands while she waits for Ma to come home or for her brother or boyfriend to come back down and explain what’s going on)
Nick: *walking along side them. Still worried for Lucille*
Gardio: *Just wants her to be okay*
Ma: (Hopes her two kids are doing alright, and Jazzy too. Lucille had pointed out that Jas was missing from the sofa and she assumed Donny went after her. She’s getting a motherly sense that something is terribly wrong back at home, and so far that instinct hasn’t lied to her)
Jasmine: (Has completely lost it already and is breaking through several layers of coding while at the same time letting it control her so she just screams something incoherent at Teshteal. He’s suppose to be her target, he can’t have control over her)
Donny: (Has literally zero clue on how to respond to Jasmines previous statement as he’s missing so many pieces of the puzzle. He’s sure that Jas doesn’t want to kill anybody, but he’s afraid of agitating her further if he tries to argue) “Help me hold her, she’s strong-!”
Jasmine: (Growls lowly and kicks Donny in the stomach to get him off her) “LEAVE ME BE FOR YOUR OWN DAMN GOOD!! I AM NOT WORTH THE FIGHT!!”
Donovan: (Falls back a considerable distance with a groan. She’s definitely getting much stronger, there might’ve been a crack from his bones at that one) “And your dad?!? What does he have to say about this?!? This can’t be the first time you’ve tried pulling this off!!!”
Jasmine: (Halts again, staring down the barrel of the gun while waterfalls stream down her cheeks) “Daddy…”
Donovan: (Nods, breathing a pained sigh as he grunts from the impact) “Yeah. Surely he knows more about you, right? Yet he’s still staying firmly by your side.” (Puts up a hand to stop Teshteal from approaching Jazzy. He doesn’t want to lose her to aggression as she’s incredibly unstable and fragile)
Teshteal: *freezes, keeping away until the time is right*
Ma: (Picks up speed, glancing back at the two men. She slows down slightly after a few minutes so she can whisper to Nick as to not worry Lucille or Gardio) “I-… Something is wrong at home.” (Looks back ahead, trying not to move too fast) “After taking care of people for two hundred years as a constant parental and maternal figure, you kinda develop a very strong second sense than most. It’s like an actual tingle in your skull.”
Nick: *nods and prepares for the worst. He gets ready to use the Reset code again*
Jasmine: (Whimpers as she eyes the gun, staring at her vague reflection in the shiny black casing. So tempting…)
Donovan: “I don’t think Detective Valentine would want to see his little girl go out like this. And I can tell you that neither I or Ma want watch you go either.”
Jasmine: (Sniffles, shaking her head as she sits up and backs against the wall) “You care too much about me… You are not suppose to give a shit what happens to my pathetic and worthless self…”
Donovan: (Sighs) “And who told ya that? The same people who said those horrible things to you?” (Gestures at the engraved words on her skin that are leaking blood everywhere)
Jasmine: (Coldly) “They knew me better than any of you ever will. They knew exactly what kind of damage I am capable of causing on innocent lives.”
Donovan: (Steers the conversation away from that) “I think your dad gives a shit what happens to your physical and mental health, no matter what people have said in the past or will say in the future.”
Jasmine: (Blinks on her tears, losing control of her breathing a bit but she stays alert. It would be horrible if Nick came up and saw her body on the floor surrounded by her own blood and insides) (Softly) “Daddy…”
Donovan: (Holds out his arms to her, offering another choice once more) “Wouldn’t you much rather be downstairs with him? I know you’ve always loved to cuddle, you could be doing that instead of being up here freezing and blood soaked.” (Pleadingly) “Please baby, put down the gun… I swear on my life that we’ll be able to work this out bit by bit.”
Jasmine: (Sniffles again, shuffling in the pile of shards) “I am not a baby or a kid!”
Donovan: (Sad smile at the teen girl) “I’m 15x your age, Rosie. I’ve lived through several lifetimes and eras during the apocalypse. You’re just a little baby girl compared to me.”
Teshteal: *slowly approaches the two on all fours like a timid animal, pupils saucers, making his expression softer. Softly* Rosie... I don't want to see you like this. I don't like seeing you like this. *begging her softly* Please listen to him... please let him help you. *looks so worried for the girl*
Ma: (Soon the group comes up to the path that leads to the house. The main gate is wide open and she can see the modified Mr Handy still patrolling the premises)
Jasmine: (Blinks at Teshteal for a moment with trembling lips, remembering that she wanted to kill him in cold blood not too long ago, and when he came into the room she got a spark of that feeling from the programming. She shakes her head vigorously)
Donovan: (Still holding out his arms to the teen, inviting her to fall into an warm embrace)
Jasmine: (So badly wants to deep down inside, but there’s a million reasons why she shouldn’t. She thinks of her Dad, then what has happened to Lucille because of her... She’s destroying this family from the inside) “He is going to be next… This family will be next on the chopping block…”
Donovan: “You didn’t kill your family, Rosie. Those deaths are not on you.”
Jasmine: (Angrily snapping, getting frosty eyes once more) “YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT!!! As long as I am still here, your days are numbered!! I will keeping going batshit until someone dies!!!” (Shaking all over again, staring down at the gun) “I am not worth saving for the cost…”
Donovan: (Inching towards her, glancing at Teshteal as Jas is getting riled up) “You’re not doing us any favors by trying to go through with this!!! Please put down the gun, you’re not thinking about this the right way!!!”
Teshteal: You didn't get them sick... you had nothing to do with how they died. *sniffs, remembering his own family- all whiped out from the bombs. Their bodies nothing but silhouettes on the walls. That wasn't his fault. That was the fault of the war* I know what it's like... but you aren't responsible for things beyond your control. *keeps inching forward. Softly* The voices are wrong, Rosie... Why would the people who hurt us ever tell the truth?
Nick: I'll go on ahead. *walks in and notices Joyce on the couch with her face in her hands. He frowns at that then deeper as he sees the lighthouse door. He approaches it*
Joyce: (Raises her head when Nick comes in, relieved that he’s back. She points to the laundry room as he passes) “The girl has a gun… Donny and Teshteal are trying to help her…”
Jasmine: (Growls lowly at the two men, labeling them as threats) “You are wrong. They would not have died if I did not come into the picture in the first place.” (Closes her eyes again) “The voices are right, they have almost always been…”
Donovan: (Takes the chance at tackling Jasmine when he sees an opening as he’s the closest)
Jasmine: (Fires the gun twice when she feels herself being brought to the floor, screaming at Donny to get off as she kicks and punches with all her strength)
Donovan: (Has an incredibly hard time at keeping the feral girl under control, he can barely keep her on the ground for a second before she’s flipping him over and hitting at his chest while the glass on the floor cuts at him)
Joyce: (Yelps at the sound of gunshots as they echo loudly from the lighthouse, covering her mouth with both of her hands. She hopes none of those had hit anyone…)
Ma: (Hears them as well from outside, rushing up to the door in a panic) “JOYCE! DONOVAN!”
Nick: *charges up the stairs as soon as he hears the shots. As soon as he crosses the steps* A-001, ZERO DAY. *not taking any chances this time*
Jasmine: (Gasps when she hears that command word that tells her to go completely numb and neutral from her father, but her mind is so fragmented that she just crumbles to the glass covered floor in defeat. She curls into a ball with the gun clutched to her chest like a teddy bear, weeping loudly while trying to cover up as much as she can with her arms and legs)
Donovan: “Oww, damn…” (Winces as he slowly rises from the ground so he’s kneeling instead, brushing off the glass from his body. He’s sore all over now and has a killer headache, but it’s nothing a little radiation and rest can’t fix)
Nick: *picks her up, taking the gun out of her hands and tossing it aside. His mechanical heart sinks seeing the words. Softly, reassuringly, but pained* Come on, kitten. Let's get you patched up. *before he carries her out of the room to Donovan* When he's available, might want to ask Gardio to shoot some radiation your way. *heads down to the med room to start fixing her up. He'll snap her out of zero day when she's bandaged up. He'll keep reassuring her through out so she knows she's safe*
Donovan: (Taking a moment to regain himself after the fight) “Yeah, I’ll see if I can.” (Slowly stands and hobbles over to the sofa, glancing around at the now messed up room)
Gardio: *takes Lucille up to her room and lays her in bed*
Lucille: *winces* My my ankle...
Gardio: *pulls out some med-x and gives her a shot* Ssh. *sets her arm to the side* You're going to be alright.
Lucille: *whimpers a little* I'm sorry...
Gardio: *strokes her forehead* It's okay...
Ma: (Bursts into the house, immediately rushing over to Joyce) “Baby what’s wrong?” (Lifts the young women’s face to hers, looking her over) “Are you hurt? What happened?”
Joyce: (Puts her hands on Ma, taking a deep breath) “Rosie was fighting with Donovan, and she had a gun. Teshteal went up when he came back and now the girls father is with them as well.”
Ma: (Worried about everyone at the moment, there are three people she wants to attend to. Lucille has her father looking after her and Jas is with Nick, Teshteal, and Donny while Joyce is alone. So first she needs to calm down her daughter) “And you? You’re not hurt, are you?”
Joyce: (Shakes her head) “Just a little rattled, Donny didn’t let me come close but I saw them fighting and heard the gunshots.”
Jasmine: (Chokes on her sobs and starts kicking the air while swatting at her Dad with one hand while the other clutches a shard she picked up, her mind shattered enough and dead set on dying for everyone’s sake that she can partly break through her programming)
Nick: A-001, reset. *trying to get her to go limp just so it's easier to attend to her on his own. He lays her out in the med room and takes the glass shard away from her, tossing it in the garbage behind him*
Gardio: I'll be right back, sweetheart. *runs down into the med room and quickly grabs supplies. He doesn't dare look at Jas- he's had enough heart ache for one day*
Jasmine: (Weakly whimpers as she goes completely limp on the cot, still hiccuping on her cries. Her mind tries to go through a full recount, but all she sees is white and black splotches. She’d be terrified out of her mind if it was someone else standing over her while she’s probably at her most vulnerable state ever, but she isn’t scared even the slightest as it’s just Nick who’d never dream of hurting her)
Teshteal: *knows he can't help Jas... but he can help Joyce. He slinks back down to the living room. Timidly from near the end of the couch looking like a kicked pup, worried she might be mad at him for leaving her alone and not comforting her when he got back* Joyce...?
Ma: (Held Joyce close so she didn’t have to see Jasmine while Nick walked by, stifling a cry herself when she catches a glimpse of the bloodied girl. She looks up at Teshteal with a sad smile when he arrives, then down at her daughter to see what she wants)
Joyce: (Raises her head when her boyfriend returns, so relieved that Teshteal is alright. She pats the seat on the sofa besides her to invite him to sit) “Hi… Are you okay? How’s Donny doing?”
Ma: (Wondering the same thing, already giving Teshteal a once over with worried, motherly eyes)
@lucilleandherrobots
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hollowpointpen · 2 years
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Smoke On The Everblack
The Ashfall port saw mainly trader ships coming from across the Everblack, most hauling cargo between Dawn and Aurora. Ashfall was merely a halfway point, a stop for the ships’ crews to feel solid ground beneath their feet, to share a bed with someone who didn’t reek of salt and fish. Welcomed by cold stone and narrow streets, the arriving crews quickly disappeared into the cityport, only to emerge at daybreak to return to their duty. 
Abigail Drake was no trader. She considered herself a business woman, a smuggler for hire, though there were others who would name her ‘pirate’ or ‘scoundrel’. She sat alone in her quarters, her black leather jacket hanging on the hook beside the closed door, the pen in her grip tapping at the notebook on her desk. She wrote line after line of coded names and dates and credits owed, all while the radio hissed white with static in the dimmed cabin lights. 
The ship had once been a pleasure barge off the coast of Aurora, and Abigail a song-girl below its decks. Each of the cabins running along the lower deck were purpose built for the comfort of their clientele, but there was no cage that could keep her. The night of the ship’s liberation was soaked in blood, but Abigail swore that her ship and all those aboard it would know no more masters, and so she named it Deliverance.
The night had been quiet on the open sea, water lapping gently at the sides of the ship while the engines hummed along at low speeds. Six nights since Dawn, one more to Ashfall, and forty in between the start of her journey and where it would end. Once she had offloaded her cargo, she could rest. Her honeyed stare turned to the window, to the twin moons creeping slowly over the horizon, all of their light lost to the Everblack, its gentle waters rippling like shadows beneath the stars. With her crew fast asleep in the cabins along the corridor outside, a single cigarette rocked side to side in the carved wooden box on her desk, urging her to the upper deck. She toed the rug beneath the desk with one black boot, straightening it out to cover the latch in the floor before rising from her chair, lifting the cigarette from the box and her jacket from the hook by the door.
The crew’s cabins were closed along the lower deck, the lights all switched off save for one beside the stairs at the end of the hall. Her quartermaster slept in the farthest room, and Abigail could hear him snoring from as far as her cabin. She stepped in time with each long rumble, masking the creak of the floor as she moved past each of the closed doors and up the stairs. 
The moonslight shone bright on her short auburn hair, and with the cigarette hanging between her lips, she sparked her lighter and felt its warm glow on her face. Dawnish tobacco tasted sweeter than anywhere else in the republic, and she held the smoke in her lungs to savour its warmth. Without the gentle crackling of embers and the hum of the engines beneath her, the silence of the Everblack would have driven her mad. The shadow-sea was fabled for its quiet black waters, and feared for the creatures lurking beneath them. Few had spent more time on it than Captain Drake. She leaned against the railing of Deliverance’s starboard side, dragging the cigarette down to its filter and flicking the remains overboard, watching the amber trail vanish into the black.
Is it safe?
Abigail spun in place to find the deck still clear, her crew still sleeping below. She was alone.
Is the package safe?
“It’s safe,” she said out loud. The voice seemed to form itself around her thoughts, its presence forming an itch she couldn’t scratch. “Though, if I had known what I was getting my crew into, I’d have doubled my rate.”
The voice ignored her quip.
See that it gets to Ashfall safely. 
“How will I find you?”
Silence. Her thoughts were her own again. If the voice had heard her, it did not care to answer. Abigail faced the ocean and the moons now hanging over the horizon. She found herself craving another cigarette, and as though she had summoned him, her quartermaster climbed the narrow stair to the deck behind her.
“A bit late to be up ‘ere mutterin to yerself, Cap,” he said, slipping his arms into a heavy blue coat that ran all the way to his ankles.
“I’ve you to thank for that, Shay. With your snoring, I’m surprised the depths haven’t come to claim us yet,” Abigail smiled.
“Ha!” he crowed. “It’ll take more than a bit o’ heavy breathin’ to wake those shadows, that’s fer sure.” He pointed to the moons over the sea. “Oriel and Nimae keep ‘em subdued to the deep. The light burns ‘em to the bone.” 
Shay was a Dawnish man with red salt-locked hair and a sun-leathered face. His beard twisted into two legs at end of his chin, each decorated with the hanging skull of a small bird. He stood beside Abigail at the starboard railing, his shoulder at her brow as he placed a packet of cigarettes onto the flat steel between them.
“You got a face to go with that voice in yer head yet?” he mumbled as he sparked his lighter. 
Abigail shook her head. She eased a cigarette from the packet in front of her and pressed its length to her upper lip, breathing in the scent of the dried leaves and sweetened paper.
“Do you think it’s right, what we’re doing?” she asked.
Shay shook his head and exhaled a lungful of smoke. “Hell on our tail. Nothing but darkness ahead. Ain’t no way of knowin’ ‘til it’s done, Cap.” He leaned on the railing with his elbows, green eyes staring over the Everblack. “But you ain’t ever steered us wrong before. Near gotten us killed plenty fer sure, but we were always on the right path.” He sparked his lighter again and held the flame to the cigarette in Abigail’s mouth, clicking it shut with a smile. “You’ve a good heart, Drake. When all o’ this is done, we’ll set off to Aurora and kick our feet up. Then, ye can find yerself a pretty lad an’ fuck his brains out ‘til festival’s end.”
She smiled at that, and they stood together in silence, smoking their cigarettes and flicking the ashes into the sea. If she had blinked, she would have missed the shadow flashing across the moons. Abigail’s stare shot upward, scanning the night in all directions.
“Cut the engines,” she said, her hand on Shay’s arm.
“Cap’n?”
“Cut the fucking engines and wake the crew!”
Shay straightened up, nodding once and vanishing below deck. The floor shook beneath the weight of his boots and the depth of his voice as he shouted, bashing his fist to each door that he passed. “Outta bed, ye bunch o’ half-fucked arseholes! The seas are calm, but the sky is angry, and if any of ye wish to see sunrise or another pair o’ tits in yer sorry lives, ye best be ready for a fight!”
Abigail smashed the remainder of her cigarette into the railing and pulled a pistol from her hip. All smooth black metal with glowing green sights, she held it to the sky and exhaled a slow and steady breath. Moving her finger to the trigger, she closed her eyes, and she listened.
The black water still lapped at her ship’s hull. The engines droned for only a moment longer before Shay shut them off from below deck. The wind passed by her ears in loving whispers, and still she listened. She listened until finally she heard it, like the distant flapping of sails, not from across the sea, but from the cloudless sky above. Eyes still closed, her arm snapped toward the ship’s bow and she fired a white-hot flash upward into the night.
A bloody screech pierced the quiet air, and moments after, the body of a man crashed into the deck, howling in pain, writhing in the blood spurting from one severed wing. The other flapped uselessly off of one shoulder, unable to lift him from the floor. 
Abigail charged across the deck, slamming her boot down onto his one remaining wing and pressing the barrel of her pistol into his forehead. His skin hissed at the touch of the hot steel, and Abigail bared her teeth at him in a wicked snarl. 
“How’d you find us, harpy?”
The male managed a smirk, groaning, “You’re stupider than you look, pirate. There’s nowhere you can run that the Prime won’t find you. It’s a miracle you made it this far.”
“The Prime are monsters!” she said, bearing her teeth at him.
The harpy cracked a laugh. “You speak of monsters as though you don’t carry one aboard this very ship.” His remaining wing flapped beneath her boot. “You’re going to die tonight. You and your pathetic crew.”
“How many are coming?” she asked.
He spat at her, his golden-brown skin starting to grey beneath a layer of sweat.
She bore down with her heel, moving the pistol away from his head and firing another shot into the feathered limb beneath her, blasting the remaining wing away from his body. He screeched again, high-pitched and deafening as Abigail pressed the gun back into his forehead.
“How many?” she demanded. “Tell me, and I swear I’ll make it quick.”
“Enough,” said the harpy.
Shay heard the shots from below deck. He barrelled along the corridor from the ship’s armoury, climbing the stairs two at a time with the rest of the crew on his tail and emerging onto the deck just as Abigail dumped the harpy’s corpse into the sea. His eyes moved to the still-twitching wing on the deck, and he nodded at Abigail through thin lips.
“A scout,” she said, addressing the crew as they breached the deck. “The Prime are coming. We don’t have long.”
She looked at Shay, at his heaving shoulders and concerned brow. He had armed himself heavily, a pistol in his hand and two more hanging from his belt. Beside him stood Sylina, the ship’s engineer. Sylina was a muscular woman with short golden hair and warm rosewood skin. Tattoos covered both of her hands and arms, one for each voyage she’d made across the Everblack. She too had a pistol hanging from one hip, and a large wrench from the other. The twins, Trace and Wynn, stood side-by-side, and would have been an exact copy of each other if not for Trace’s thick black beard, or the pair of breasts that Wynn had strapped tightly beneath her brown leather corset. Gunner was the youngest of the lot, his skin a sickly shade of green after three long nights of ocean sickness. He had his hands wrapped tightly around the body of a rifle as long as himself, using it to keep from keeling over. He barely spoke at the best of times, but Abigail could see the fear in his eyes, in all of their eyes. 
“We’ve four hours ‘til sunrise and an hour further to Ashfall, and I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve no plan of drowning in the Everblack tonight.”
A smirk moved across Shay’s face, the two bird skulls twitching on the legs of his beard. “Aye,” he said, quietly at first, then louder, hoisting his pistol into the air over his head. “Aye! Ye heard the captain. Sylina, cut the lights an’ get on the engines, see if we can’t beat the sun to port. Trace, Wynn, set up shop on the stern an’ keep an eye on the sky, if either of ye spots even a single shadow outta place, I want Gunner to know about it.” He moved to stand by Abigail’s side. “Our enemy would see us fed to the blackfins lest we reach Ashfall. What say we show ‘em the Deliverance ain’t to be fucked with!”
#
Sunrise hit Ashfall through a haze of smoke that dimmed its shine to a deep red glow on the city’s stone walls. Debris scattered the shoreline, remnants of a ship washed up in the early morning tide, all scorched metal and wooden cargo crates, blown to pieces at sea. The morning tide ebbed around whatever it couldn’t drag from shore, trailing blood from the body that lay with its hands clutching a large piece of driftwood.
Abigail Drake’s honey-brown eyes throbbed behind their heavy lids. The light burned like fire, her head was pounding, and every part of her body ached to the bone. She could smell blood. She could taste it. The shoreline spun circles around her as she struggled to her feet, straining to focus on the wreckage she had pulled herself from. Her leg twinged under her weight, and glancing down, she eyed the shard of wood piercing her thigh like a blade. Clutching it with both hands, she grunted at the fresh surge of pain rushing through her. If she had any hope of leaving the beach alive, she knew to leave the shard in place.
Her thoughts were broken, splintered into memories that she could barely piece together. One moment she stood on the bow of the Deliverance with Shay, firing blast after blast from their pistols into the sky, then she was sinking into the everblack with a silhouette watching her from the deck, wreathed in red light. The airship had reached them an hour before sunrise, and only the gods knew what happened after, or how she got to shore. Another splintered memory passed through her. She thought of the cargo beneath the hatch in her cabin, of the voice that spoke in her thoughts, and the journey that had brought her here in the first place. 
“Hello…” she called, unable to manage more than a dry croak as she waited for the familiar scratch in the back of her mind.
Nothing.
Perhaps it already knew that the prize she had stolen now rested on the sea floor. Abigail was no longer of any value to the voice in her head. Instead, she turned her attention to the beach, to the nest of red salt-locks gleaming in the sunlight ahead, jutting out from underneath a piece of the ship’s shattered hull..
“Shay!” her voice cracked. 
Her leg dragged behind her, moving as quickly as she could manage through the wreck. The pieces sticking from the sand were all that was left of her ship and its contents. The rest of it, the rest of her crew, all lost to the depths. More memories. Gunner was the first to die. The shot came from nowhere and knocked him from his perch above the ship’s topsail , his head striking the steel rail on his way down into the sea. The twins were next, vanishing inside an explosion that tore the aft apart. Sylina was below deck when Abigail was knocked overboard, but with the pieces of the Deliverance strewn across the shore, there was no way she could have survived. 
Abigail’s heart pounded in her chest as she neared the body laying in the shallow water ahead. She called to him again, hearing nothing in reply.
She gripped the shredded steel jutting from the sand and cried out in pain, in desperation, lifting with all she could to pull the wreckage from Shay’s body. And that was all that was left—a body. His green eyes now dead and grey, staring blankly without any hint of the man he had been only a few hours before. She grabbed at the shoulders of his long coat, tugging and heaving,  howling in pain, unable to pull him any further from the tide. Her leg screamed beneath her until she collapsed at his side in the wash of blood and sand. The skin on Shay’s face was already cold and stiff, bloated by sea-water. He was dead before he’d reached the shore.
She pressed her forehead into his and sobbed with her hands on his cheeks.
“I am so sorry,” she said, dragging his eyes shut for the last time. Her fingers delicately untangled the bird skulls from his beard. She held them close to her chest as she stood, almost indifferent to the pain blazing through her thigh. “May the light find you. May it carry you home.”
Prayers were lost on her. The gods and the light were the folly of children in need of idle comforts in order to sleep. She had witnessed too much sorrow in one lifetime for their promises to bear any of the weight she carried. But for Shay, she would speak the words and she would believe that he would be at home in Dawn, that he could finally rest, that the greying, bloated husk left on the shores of a city-port on the Everblack would not be his legacy. 
Abigail left her friend on the beach, limping away from the sea as the nearby city woke to the sound of morning bells. The smoke would draw them to the beach soon enough to scavenge the pieces of her ship, to take what they could from Shay’s body. She needed to get the wooden fragment out of her leg and lay low until she could gather enough credits to get to Aurora. As she stumbled from the shore, she noticed the shallow impressions in the soft ground, one after the other, leading away from the wreckage. She found a stick to balance herself on and hobbled along the trail of footsteps into the city ahead.
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chufa · 3 years
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i’m looking through my likes and half of them are pictures of kento y’all better shut me the hell up before i start barking all over the dash
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lunarastrobabe · 3 years
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Rafe Adler x F!Reader- “Mr Adler”
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(Warning: NSFW) (Some fluff/a little angst) 
Scotland 
“Nadine, it’s bad enough the Drake’s are involved.” Rafe said in frustration, walking alongside Nadine on their way to the cathedral. He clutched his handgun in his gloved hand, the snow crunching underneath his feet.
“You’d be surprised at how skilled she is, including knowledge on the treasure. Just give it time.” She replied, ignoring his tone of voice, she didn’t much care about his opinion, his funding to Shoreline was of the utmost importance to her. 
“Alright. Fine.” The snow gently falling in his hair and covering his shoulders like a blanket. 
“Good.” Satisfied, she made her way through the doors, following behind him into the cathedral and holstered her gun. 
You were invited to Scotland by Shoreline to accompany Nadine, your long-time friend and her partner into looking for Henry Avery’s Treasure, a 17th Century pirate who was known for pulling off the biggest heist in history back in 1695, known as the Gunsway. Rafe, now her partner in this hunt, you had only met him a few times, mostly at fancy events such as auctions and to make business deals considering how close him and Nadine were, she brought you along every time. 
You pulled your black furry jacket around you as tight as possible to stay warm as you waited in a room for Nadine to arrive with Rafe. It was dark, with a stone tomb in the middle of the room - quite small in size, and a map of the area. A large light stood in the corner of the room near the door, shining directly on the map, and a Shoreline soldier stood next to you. Multiple Shoreline cases piled up around the room, most likely filled with climbing equipment, ammunition and explosives, as you had known from working with Nadine, they’ll find any excuse to use dynamite. 
Hearing muttering outside the room, you darted your head back towards the sound, trying to stop yourself from shivering from the dropping temperature. Cold wasn’t even the right word to describe it, your limbs were numb and you just wanted to be home, curled up by the fireplace and watching tv or reading a book. 
Nadine walked through, pushing open the heavy doors and grinned at the sight of you in front of her. 
“[Y/N]!” She walked over to you and opened her arms and pulled you in for a hug, the sound of her boots echoing. “Nadine! I’ve missed you!” You were glad to see her again, it had been so long since you had seen each other, she was the one friend you could always count on whenever you had a problem. 
While you two were catching up, asking about each other and what you were both doing with your lives, and Rafe slowly walked in, an ill-tempered look on his face, completely ignoring your presence. You paused your conversation with Nadine and you both turned and look in his direction. 
“Rafe, any luck with those manuscripts?” She asked him, looking down at the map.
“Can we have a minute?” He lifted his head and stared at the wall, sounding calm. You looked over at Nadine and shrugged, as she gestured for you to leave while she spoke with him. The Shoreline soldier escorted you out and you waited patiently outside the door, trying not to eavesdrop but you also wanted to know what they were discussing. 
“Did you hear? They found a whole annexed area under the cathedral.” Nadine’s voice muffled because of the stone wall blocking your hearing. His voice was quiet, so not much could be heard coming from him, along with the sounds of explosions in the distance. The Shoreline soldier left your side and went to attend to an apparent disruption in the graveyard. You easily guessed who that could be.  
Thinking about what was going on outside, you hadn’t been listening to half of the conversation, until you heard him raise his voice, which caught your attention. 
“Well, I didn’t think he’d show up.“ You furrowed your brows, getting lost in your thoughts until a few minutes had passed and Nadine had left the room, shutting the door behind her. 
“I’ll come by later and we can go over everything.” She laughed a little. You could tell she didn’t like working with him, just from the stressed look on her face when she walked over to you. 
“Okay, wish me luck.” You said jokingly, giving her another hug before she left, two soldiers standing either side of her for protection. 
You turned back to the door, taking a deep breath and knocking first. Last time you had seen Rafe was at an auction in Paris. He was dressed in a black suit and a bow tie, handsome being the perfect word and the rest of that night, you had enjoyed the company of each other. 
“Come in.” His voice was soft, it made your heart skip a beat as it always had whenever he was around. 
Stepping back inside the room, letting the door close itself, noticing the map and the photographs were laying on the floor beside his feet. He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. You kept quiet, slowly walking over and bending down to pick up the mess. He watched your every move, not taking a single eye off of you, then relaxing his muscles as he realised who you were. As you gathered up the pictures, he crouched down beside you, and as he did, you looked in front of you and met his. They were still a beautiful blue, green colour, just as you remembered. 
“Here, I got it.” His voice quiet and deep. He kept his eyes on you, snapping out of your trance from getting lost in his eyes, stuttering to find the right words to say. The way he looked at you, or when he’d speak to you or say your name, it always gave you that butterfly feeling in your stomach, everything about him made you weak. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t in love with him, because goddamn, you definitely were. 
“Long time no see.” You said, standing up with him, watching him put the pile back on the stone tomb. You couldn’t help but admire his features, his slicked back dark hair, and that smirk that made you swoon. 
“Nice to see you too, [Y/N].” He spread out the photos and made sure the map wasn’t creased or damaged. He was always polite and kind towards you, more so than he was with the people who worked for him. He took a quick glance over at you then back at focusing on what he was doing. 
Flashing him a smile, “So, I see you’re looking for Avery’s treasure, huh?” You rested your gloved, frozen hands against the stone, raising an eyebrow. 
He chuckled with slight anger in his voice at the slow progress he was making, “For the past fifteen goddamn years, yes.” Turning his body to face yours. “Although, I heard your knowledge could be of great use to me.” You two were extremely close, you could almost feel the heat radiating from his body to yours in the distance that was between you. Now it was his time to admire you, his eyes travelled up your physique, scanning every inch of you, looking at your neck, then your lips, then your eyes once again. 
Rafe never really fell in love with anybody throughout his life, maybe once or twice, but his mind and motivation to focus on his parents business and now hunting for Avery’s treasure was something that he now had pushed back and instead, keep his view on you. That night during the auction in Paris, seeing you all dressed up and elegant, he had feelings he hadn’t felt for an extremely long time, feelings he couldn’t describe, and keeping up his mean, tough exterior, he had a soft, loving side to him, which he kept to himself. Being around you, he was able to let his guard down. 
“You could say that.” You smirked at him staring at you, his eyes fixated back onto your lips, silence filling the room. 
“Cat got your tongue, Adler?” Whispering, you moved a step closer to him, feeling his clothes brush against yours. With no hesitation, he immediately snaked his arm through your jacket and around your waist, the smell of his expensive cologne was intoxicating. A stray hair fell from his head, hanging over above his eye. 
Reaching up you gently moved it and pushed it back. “Kiss me.” Was all that he said in that moment, leaning in, your lips gently pressed against his, very lightly at first but then getting used to the sweet taste in just a few seconds. His free hand met his other, pressing his body against yours and deepened the kiss. After a few minutes, he pulled back and licked his lips. 
“Sorry. I couldn’t resist.” He leaned down a little to meet your neck and left soft small kisses on your sweet spot. A quiet moan fumbled from your throat. 
“Rafe-” Closing your eyes, melting into his touch and how his tongue danced around. “We have work to do.” You tangled your fingers into his hair at the back of his head, scratching lightly, relaxing the both of you. 
“Hm. It can wait.” He lifted his head from your neck and caressed your cheek with his thumb, then delicately tracing your lips letting the tip of your tongue come into contact with him. You grabbed the fabric of his clothing and pulled him to you, slamming your lips into his. He slid his hands under your thighs and lifted you up, placing you on the map, not caring about his mission due to the feeling as if he was under a spell. You wrapped your legs around his hips and pulled him close to you, the feeling of his erection pushed against your core. 
“Fuck.” His breath shaking at the adrenaline rush and the arousal he was feeling, the grip on your thighs with his large hands getting tighter, as you were rubbing yourself against him. 
Pulling back from the kiss, you shuffled back removing your jacket along with your gloves and throwing them on the floor, moving his work out the way and grabbed his belt bringing him closer to you, all you wanted was to feel him hold you, feel your skin touching, to feel emotionally connected to the man you were in love with. Rafe settled in between your legs, his arms either side of your body looking at the black soft sweater that hugged your figure so perfectly, he undressed you with his mind. 
Hovering over your body, his muscles tensing up he opened his mouth to say something but hesitated. You looked at him with a sympathetic look, biting your lip you asked him, “Is everything okay?” You rested your hand on his cheek, then running your fingers gently through the side of his hair. 
A small smile appeared on his face, he shuddered, starved for affection as it seemed, you’d think with all the parties he attends and gala’s, he’d be surrounded by multiple women, but he chose you. 
“Can’t keep your hands off me, can you?” He smirked. 
“Who said I want to?” Leaning up on your elbows you reached over and moved your hands to undo his belt and zipper and sliding them inside his jeans, making sure to keep eye contact with him the entire time. You felt his soul burn through you, as if he was looking to you for answers to a puzzling thought that plagued his mind. He grunted a little once your cold hand found its way to his hard, throbbing cock, ready to break free from its cage. Your fingers stroking his length through the fabric of his boxers, feeling your panties getting wet at the thought of him fucking you in this room right here, right now, knowing someone could walk in at any moment made it all the more exciting. 
“Don’t stop until I say so.” He hissed, his cock twitching every time you ran your finger to his tip, the pre-cum slipping through your fingers. Getting the impression that Rafe was the dominant type, turned you on, your clit tingling and begging to be touched. You gave him a wink and continued stroking him, taking it fully into your hands, sucking in a breath he pushed you down and laid you down on your back. 
“My turn.” He said darkly, unzipping your jeans, lifting your body up to pull them down revealing the black lace underwear you were wearing. At first he rubbed your soaking wet clit with two fingers through the fabric, your hips bucked along with the movement of his hand. Your hand working on him, pumping him till he grabbed your hand with his free one gently and said, “I think that’s enough.” and pinned your arms above your head. You whined at how much he was teasing you. 
“Fuck. Rafe.” You breathed, your eyes rolling into the back of your head, he now had inserted his fingers inside your entrance, the pre-cum dripping onto the stone block that you were laying on. Your legs shook as he pumped in and out, a few loud moans coming from you filled the room. Rafe didn’t care how loud you both were, he didn’t care who could hear you or what everybody else thought, he wanted them to listen to the sounds of him pleasuring you. 
“Don’t come for me yet babe.” You obeyed and he removed his fingers from you and licked his fingers, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. He sat up and kept in a kneeled position, you felt a spark ignite inside of you, unknown to you, Rafe had felt it too. You sat up to meet his gaze, he took your face in his hands and pulled you in for a hungry kiss, your tongues attacking each other for dominance. You pulled his pants down, his cock standing up, mumbling into his mouth, “I want you so fucking bad.” 
He laughed a little at your comment, and pulled back from the kiss, moving his right hand to hold your back. “You ready?” Nodding at him and licking your lips, enjoying the flavour of him settling on your tastebuds. He steadied himself and lined his cock up with your entrance, gently pushing himself in, careful not to hurt you as you got used to his large size. You winced a little but then relaxed, another moan emitting from the both of you. He placed the palm of his left hand firmly beside you, as he guided his hips and continued pushing in and out, as he closed his eyes, enjoying the euphoria. A strong feeling of love and passion struck his heart. 
“Goddammit-, shit, I love you.” He expressed in between sweaty breaths. 
His pace now at high speed. Shocked at the words he just said, you wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed his hot, flushed cheek and spoke, as you were about to reach your high. 
“Harder. Please.” And with that he pushed deep into you, quickly pulling out as he released himself over your bare legs, now shaking from the aftershock of your orgasm. 
Beads of sweat saturated your forehead, his hair fell and hung down, loosened from the wax and gel he had used earlier that day. Catching your breath, you sat up and grabbed some clean tissues from your jacket pocket, cleaning yourselves up. You pulled your panties and jeans back on, buckling your belt, and watching him do the same as he stood in front of you, 
“Hey, Rafe?” You slid off the surface you were sitting on and walked over to him, shoving your hands in the back pockets of your jeans. 
“Hm?” He hummed, sliding on his black jacket and zipping it up then looking at you as he smoothed his hair back down to it’s original position. 
“Why did you say that to me?” A confused look on your face, a nervous feeling in your stomach. You had so much love for him, worried your heart would break at anything negative he’d say. 
He scratched his chin and grabbed your hips holding you close to him. He chuckled. “Because I’m in love with you. Isn’t it obvious?” Now waiting for an answer. 
You let out a shy giggle, your cheeks blushing a bright red and sharing another kiss. “Well, aren’t you lucky that I love you too?” 
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Harry Hook x Pan! Reader - Misunderstood - oneshot
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Slight canon divergence - before D3 but after D2 but more kids get invited and actually taken to Auradon and Ben gets Uma and her boys over because he’s Ben
Slight angst btw 
the necklace:
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=
“IS THIS JUST A GAME TO YOU?!” Harry stared at you wide-eyed, clutching onto the stolen small bottle necklace, which held your precious pixie dust.
The last you had gotten from your dad before he died.
You took a deep breath, it caught in your throat as tears burned at your eyes “god, are you just THAT self-absorbed that you can't bother to think that people other than you have feelings?! Am I just not worthy enough you to have feelings?! Well, guess what Hook!? I HAVE FEELINGS AND IM FUCKING DONE DEALING WITH YOUR BULLSHIT!” you stormed up to the pirate and snatched the necklace from Harry, you took a deep breath, about to yell at him again, but you just snapped your mouth shut and shook your head, rubbing your eyes as you spun around and stormed away from him.
Harry watched you wide-eyed as you stormed away from him….were you…crying? Why were you crying? He thought the two of you were just having a good old fashion rivalry?
Apparently, you thought different, Harry shrunk in on himself, racking through his mind to try to find instances where you didn’t play along with his teasing.
….he couldn’t remember a single time you smiled during it.
Shit-he always thought you were playing along with him, throwing the playful insults right back and taking every prank like water off the back.
But now he knew that it wasn’t like that, he had gone too far in messing with the daughter of Peter Pan.
=
You let out a sigh, a sob cracking with your throat as you wiped the tears from your face.
When Harry Hook first came to Auradon, you had given him the same doubt you gave all the vks, that he wasn’t like his father.
And you were right….he was worse.
Constantly teasing you, insulting you and your late-father, stealing your things, and all with a big smile on his face.
Like making you feel like shit was just a game to him.
The only reason you didn’t tattle tale to FG was that you couldn’t bear him getting sent back to the isle. Even if after all he did to you, you didn’t want him to lose his chance at a good life.
You sighed, glancing down at the bottle clutched in your hand smiling in relief as you spotted no cracks or any damage.
Hopefully, Harry would leave you alone from now on, but knowing him, he would continue to make your life hell for fun.
=
As the week went on since the “Harry stealing your precious necklace” incident, the aforementioned Teen pirate hadn’t bothered you at all.
During your dreaded shared classes with him, he hadn’t even looked in your direction, instead, he sat curled up at his desk, eyes pointedly looking down at his notebook.
It was an odd but mostly welcome change.
Except for the fact that he stopped doing most things at all….which slightly worried you. He had gone from a proudly loud, chaotic, disruptive teen to a drawn-in, quiet, and only speaking when spoken to one…and while you knew you didn’t owe harry any of your worried feelings, you still did.
You did your best to ignore the pit in your chest, doing your best to ignore your growing worry for the son of Hook.
But one day
Someone knocked on your dorm room door, making you sit up from your desk confused, glancing at the clock. Almost 10pm, curfew, who would risk coming to your room this late.
Standing from your desk and walking over to your door, you unlocked it and peeked around as you opened it, eyes widening as you saw the son of Hook, standing at your door, eyes cast down and wringing his hands together.
“Hook?” you whispered, making his dull ocean blue eyes shoot to yours “what are you-what do you want?”
“i-“ Harry took a shaky breath, ruffling his hair “I jus’ came ta say…im sorry” you blinked in shock…sorry? “im sorry, I went too far in messin’ with ya, Im…im bad at reading social cues sometimes and I somehow never realized yeh weren’t having fun like I thought ye were”
“fun?” you snapped, glaring at him, Harry’s eyes widened and he waved his hands franticly.
“nonono not wha-i-shit-um,I-I thought we were just playing into a joke, like-I thought we were making fun of our parent's rivalry? Im sorry, I should have checked to make sure yeh were okay with everything”
You thought back to everything, every incident, every prank, insult, tease…..Harry was smiling a genuine smile, giggling to himself as you threw back each one, like he was having fun, like it was all a joke.
And it was, to him at least….great now you felt like shit. “look Harry im sor-“ Harry suddenly covered your mouth with his hands, his eyes wide.
“no! yeh have nothing ta be sorry fer, I wasn’t clear with meh intentions, its completely meh fault, and again, im sorry fer it.” He slowly took his hands off your mouth, giving you a sheepish smile “thas all I wanted ta say, im sorry for doing all tha’ and I’ll never do ‘em again”
You and Harry stared at each other for a moment, before Harry took a step back, glancing up and down the hallway “well….that's-tha’s it, um, bye” just as Harry turned to leave, you reached out and grabbed his jacket, stopping him from leaving. He turned to you confused, his brows furrowed “Pan?”
You smiled at him, his jaw-dropping slightly as you did “let's start over, hm?” you released his jacket and held out your hand “im (y/n) Pan”
Harry just stared at you, eyes flying between your hand and your smiling face. A small smile grew on his face as he turned to face you completely and took your hand, grinning as you started swinging them. “im Harry Hook”
“nice to meet you Harry Hook, I hope we get along” you giggled, scrunching your nose as Harry beamed, his dull eyes turning bright.
“aye, I hope so too”
You nodded, glancing at your clock and wincing “uuum, its ten o’clock” Harry's eyes widened and he leaned into your room, yelping as he glanced at your clock.
“shit! I have’ta go, bye Pan!”
“bye” you laughed, watching Harry rush back to his dorms. You snorted and backed into your room, closing the door and walking back over to your desk, sighing as you flopped in your chair and stretched “glad to finally have all that sorted out” you muttered, cracking your neck and continuing on your essay.
=
Harry slid into his room, slightly tripping over the rug and yelping, sighing as he regained his balance “whew” Harry rubbed his eyes, smiling at Gil as the other teen sat up on his bed,
“well?!” Gil pushed, leaping from his bed and speeding over to Harry, grabbing onto his shoulders “how’d it go?”
“id say she forgave meh?” Harry guessed, shrugging off Gil's hands and walking over to his dresser for his PJ’s “she smiled at me at least, but well see”
“that’s good, I’m glad your out of your slump, it was kinda sad to see you moping about like that” Gil sighed, walking back over to his bed and laying down, crossing his arms behind his head.
“aye, didn’t feel too good either” Harry muttered, shrugging on a tank top and sweatpants “well, night”
“night” Gil called back, turning off his light and getting under his covers, almost falling asleep immediately.
Harry walked to his bed and rolled under the covers, making a mental note to thank Uma for helping him figure out what to say to (y/n).
He shut off his light and pushed his head into his fluffy pillow, closing his eyes and ready for the next day.
Where hopefully he and (y/n) Pan wouldn’t be enemies anymore.
-end-
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Humans are Space Orcs, “Fifteen Seconds.”
Warning: For graphic depictions of injury that are sort of gross
The senator's son lay on the cold hard floor of the brig. The tears had long since tried up and the abject terror of his situation had faded to a dull sense of panic. He lay on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees rocking back and forth as he stared at the wall.
He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.
Maybe if he had just listened to his father, listened to his mother too and not taken the shuttle for a weekend gambling trip on the Tesraki home planet, maybe then he wouldn't be in this predicament. Maybe if he hadn’t gotten so drunk he would have seen them coming and been able to defend himself.
He squeezed his eyes shut, imagining all of his friends passed out back at the casino, probably unaware that he was missing. 
He looked down at his pathetic body covered in a flashy white suit and blue undershirt that had originally been designed to mirror the twenties for his outing, now it was rumbled and torn at the bottom, and his jacket was missing. He felt silly and stupid.
He wanted to go back home to the family mansion where it was safe and where the house staff would bring him breakfast in bed. He would have done anything, even tell his father that he was right, and that he’d behave. hell , he would even be happy to go to military school like his father had threatened on so many occasions. Anything to be away from where he was right now.
There was a rattling outside his cell, and he looked up to see two of the pirates standing outside his cell, the first the dark furred tesraki and the second a light-skin redheaded human with a crooked grin and bad teeth. He curled up further into the corner with a whimper. The human laughed, and the Tesraki flicked it’s ears, “not so cocky now are we Master Bauer.” he curled up with his head in his his hands and stifled a sniffle.
The other human laughed. It was an ugly sound.
“We have just sent word to your father Ten million credits for the safe return of his poor son, and no involvement with law enforcement or we shoot you out of the airlock.” The Tesraki leaned against the bars, “personally i want the money, but.” he jerked a thumb back at the read headed human, “Terry here wants to shoot someone out the airlock, so you better hope daddy comes through, or you will be experiencing a horribly painful death.” “Actually, it is likely he would pass out after 15 seconds and asphyxiate.” the human added 
The Tesraki glowered at him but continued on, “ANYWAY. We will leave you to your moping while we go wait for your father’s ransome. If he loves you enough he probably wont take too long. That is assuming that you were a good son and hes not GLAD that you got kidnapped by pirates.” The Tesraki looked at him thoughtfully, “Then again I am having my doubts. You are a little shit.”
Pier had to stifle a sob covering his mouth with his hand as the pirates laughed and turned away.
He begged his father silently to send the money, though doubts were beginning to weasel their way into his mind. He wasn’t a particularly good son. He had crashed multiple of his father’s vintage cars, stolen his new however car and wrecked that. He had brought police down on their family for drug charges, and forced them to pay thousands of dollars on court bills. He had lied and cheated and stolen He had maxed out seven credit cards, and his latest stunt had involved stealing his father’s shuttle to take his friends from private school out on a all expenses paid gambling trip to the Tesraki homeworld, where the age limit on both drinking and gambling was…. Well there was none.
He sobbed again, feeling his heart sink and knowing that his father would not come for him.
Why would he want him back after all the things that he had done.
Once upon a time it had all seemed like some big game, but now he could see that his past actions would be more than enough to guarantee his horrible and painful death.
Tears began to stream down his face again, and he was almost surprised to find that he had any left to give. No one was there, so he didn’t feel bad about his pathetic sobbing, and occasional whimpering for his mother. Maybe she could convince his father to come after him. Despite all the things he had done, he always had a good relationship with her. He admitted to himself now that he had used her love on multiple occasions to get him out of things he probably should have suffered as punishment, but despite that he knew their relationship was sound.
Please mother, please convince father to get me out of this.
He lay there in the darkness for who knew how long thinking about his parents and repeatedly begging them over and over to come save him. At first he expected the Tesraki to come in at any moment and release him into the waiting arms of his father’s security detail, but as the hours wore on, and the meals began to pile up by the door, his hope faded diminishing until he was dumb inside and knew that his father was not coming for him.
He had brought this on himself by being a horrible son, and he was going to suffer the consequences.
He fell asleep sometime during that night tears still wet on his face, only to wake up a few hours later to the sound of shouting and running footsteps. He sat up and tilted his head to the side listening as, in the distance, he heard the sound of gunfire, and the occasional body dropping to the floor.
He shifted and wobbled to his feet, walking over to the side of his cell and peering out with bleary eyes crusted with salt.
The screaming and yelling grew louder, but with one last loud BANG, everything seemed to go silent.
Then the voices started up again.
He leaned forward and thought that he heard the red haired pirate laughing in the distance.
He had no idea what was going on, but pressed himself further against the bars, trying to peer out into the hallway.
Things calmed down after that, and he was left alone again. 
He was just beginning to doze off to sleep, when the door to his cell was violently thrown open, and the Tesraki came marching into the room a look of absolute rage on his face.
Pier scrambled back into the corner of the room eyes wide as Terry followed behind. The man had a bandage on his cheek, and a gauze patch over one eye. His usual crooked grin had been replaced by a snarl of annoyance and anger.
The Tesraki stopped just before Pier, his fuzzy little hands balled into fists, “You…. you little bastard.”
Pier raised his hands as if afraid he was going to be struck, “I...I didn’t do anything.”
The Tesraki ignored him, “Your father could not follow one SIMPLE order, and now I am going to have to make an example out of you. The money would have been nice, but now Terry is going to get to live out one of his childhood fantasies”
Terry’s grin appeared again, and Pier screamed as the man reached forward and hauled him violently to his feet by the back of his shirt. He kicked and screamed and cried as he was dragged from the cell and out down the hall.
“I told your father not to get the authorities involved. I told him that if he loved you, than he was going to have to send the mone and forget any of this ever happened, but NO the man had to go out and do something stupid, and now we are all oing to come out with less because of this. I am going to lose ten billion and he is going to lose his only son.”
Pier screamed and tried kickin at Terry’s legs, which finally annoyed the man enough that he slammed pier up against the wall, a single massive hand clutched tightly around his neck. Pier tried to scratch as the man’s hands but he was rammed back against the wall until he saw stars.
His legs went limp and he was dragged the rest of the way down the hall.
“There is no use in fighting my dear boy. You are going to die in a way that not many humans have had the privilege. I think it might be less than a hundred. Either way it isn’t going to be pretty. Assuming there is air in your lungs those will probably rupture first, so you will suffocate, and then all the gasses will boil out of your blood because of the reduction in pressure. Sort of like getting the beds but very quickly. You will die very very quickly.”
Pier felt another sob coming on.
“I imagine that it is one of the most terrifying ways to die, staring up tat the stars overhead and underneath, exposed to temperatures below 400 degrees. Granted heat leaks out of your body slower in the vacuum of space so it actually isn’t the cold that is going to kill you surprise surprise.”
The Sick Tesraki Bastard seemed to be enjoying this, which Pier didn’t understand. He had plenty of Tesraki friends who he enjoyed hanging out with and while they tended to be a little bit greedy and weren't above counting cards, they would never think about killing someone in cold blood.
They made their way around the next corner, and into the docking bay where the rest of the crew was standing, and he was surprised to find another unfamiliar face, another prisoner.
At least that is what he assumed considering the man was kneeling on the ground with weapons pointed at his head.
Pier was thrown down next to the man as the pirates conversed among themselves.
He took the time to turn his head and look over at the other prisoner. The man turned to look at him and somehow managed a roguish and nonchalant smile, his blind hair sticking up in spiky tufts where drying blood caked through it. 
The man was dressed in a dark black undersuit designed to be worn with a space suit though the hood was down, and over his right eye he wore….. And eyepatch.
Pier’s eyes widened, and the corner of the man’s mouth twitched, “Ah, good to see you alive.”
“Y-your the guy from that movie.”
The man rolled his eyes, “yeah, I am the guy from that movie, but more importantly I am here to rescue you.’
Pier stared at him incredulously, and he felt his face go red with subtle anger, “Well you're doing a bang up job.” He snarled, “really, I am sure this is JUST how you planned it.”
Rather than looking offended or worried the man just shrugged, “No, no it actually went horribly wrong about two hours ago. Sort of one of those if it can go wrong it will go wrong things. Like it was a great plan and all but everything kind of went to shit all at once.” He glanced down to inspect his nails, “I was supposed to be able to get on the ship and sneak through to rescue you without any issues, but my suit malfunctioned and then my weapon malfunctioned and then the maps for this place were completely wrong, and etc etc. You know good times. Of course, I called in my crew for backup, but they probably won’t be here until it’s too late.”
Pier stared at him mortified, how was he so calm!
“Did my father send you?”
“Yes the Senator did send me.”
“And now we are both going to die because you fucked everything up?”
The man turned his head and frowned, “So negative. Are you like this all the time.”
“HOW CAN YOU NOT BE NEGATIVE WE ARE GOING TO DIE!”
The man just rolled his eyes, “Will you stop bitching for about five seconds. I am counting on the fact that I have used up all of my bad luck for today and all of my good luck is going to hit momentarily.”
Pier dropped his head into his hands. This IDIOT was going to get them killed. He was so mad at that moment that he couldn’t even cry about it.
“He should have just paid the ransom, not sent some asshole idiot to try and rescue me.” he moaned 
Adam snorted, “You think your father has that much money.” He barked a laugh and pier stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
The man shook his head, “Listen kid, your daddy isn’t exactly good with his money, a trait that you, evidently inherited. He’s about a month away from declaring bankruptcy because guess what, his son keeps racking up a literal shitload of debt, but apparently he pawned off his family jules at some point in there to keep you all going because he doesn’t have the courage to admit it and actually start living below his means.”
Pier stared open mouthed at him, “And he told you this”
“No, but I got suspicious when he didn’t do exactly what you said he should be doing, so I had my team of accountants, Tesraki by the way run the numbers on his net worth and gross income and all of hie expenses. Tesraki are rarely inaccurate when it comes to money.”
“So this is my fault.” He squeaked 
The man rested a hand on his shoulder, “Not your fault kid. It's your parents fault for turning you into the manchild version of Veruca Salt.”
He was about to be offended, when their conversion was cut off by the Tesraki who moved forward grabbing the man by the air had tilting his chin back, “Admiral Vir, you know if the GA didn’t have a policy against paying ransom, I would toss the kid out of the airlock and use you instead, but unfortunately you are now both useless to me.”
The admiral didn’t look too concerned as he grinned at the Tesraki, “Yeah sucks to suck for you I guess.”
The Tesraki flattened its ears back against its head, “You seem rather chipper for someone who is going to die in the vacuum of space.”
Admiral Vir shrugged, “You know I’ve honestly had way worse days than this. It doesn’t even reach my top ten if I’m being honest. I would put it somewhere around eighteen or nineteen.”
The Tesraki smiled an evil smile, “Well why don’t we see if we can change that. Terry, throw them in the airlock.”
The big ginger moved forward and grabbed them both by the back of their shirts, hauling them to their feet. Pier screamed and kicked and begged and pleased, but Admiral Vir only put up a token amount of resistance, a sort of glassy smile on his face as he was led towards the airlock and shoved violently inside. The door slammed shut behind them and Pier threw himself at the door screaming and sobbing.
Admiral Vir stood and dusted himself off looking around the room with a half frown on his face.
He tilted his head suddenly and smiled, “Glad to see you guys could make it. Do you mind doing me a favor.”
Pier didn’t pay attention to the rest of the man’s instructions as he continued to scream.
After finishing what he was about to say, Admiral Vir glanced around at the room, and his face lit up with a huge smile as he proceeded to stretch his arms and legs as if he were about to run a 5k, “I have ALWAYS wanted to try this.” Pier was nearly shocked out of his state of panic as he turned to look at the Admiral, who walked over to the nearby wall and used his elbow to shatter the glass on a handheld fire extinguisher.
He pulled it out and looked it over, “You know, there really is no point of keeping a fire extinguisher in the airlock, all you have to do is open the doors and vent the fire into space, but I guess whoever McGyvered this piece of shit together had no idea what they were doing.” He glanced down at it, “I sure hope this thing works”
He pulled the pin just as lights began flashing overhead.
Pier sobbed.
Admiral Vir walked over to him, grabbing him around the arm and looking at him with one hard, green eye, “I need you to breathe out, son.”
“What! Why?”
“Just do it.”
“No you have to-”
He saw the look in the man’s eyes and guessed what was happening too late as he drew back a fist and underhand punched him in the gut so hard he nearly collapsed to the floor, all the wind completely knocked out of him in one loud woosh, and his diaphragm ceased to work.
He couldn't even squeak out his pain as the man grabbed him around his middle fire extinguisher in his left hand hoze in his right.
And then All sound was sucked from the world and he was violently thrown off his feat as they were sucked from the airlock and into the vacuum of space. 
His ears ruptured into violent pain as his eardrums were torn apart.
Sheer unadulterated panic set in as stars whirled above him black and dark.
One
He heard nothing, he smelled nothing, he tasted nothing.
He couldn't breathe.
He wasn’t as cold as he thought he should be but death surrounded him on all sides, his body exposed to the direct touch of infinity.
Two
The only thing he could feel was the tight pressure of the Admiral’s Arm around his waist.
Three
He looked up, feeling no sensation against his kin, since there were no air particles for him to move through. Looking up At Admiral Vir’s face, lips pressed tightly together one green eye wide and manic.
Four
His body tingled and the surface of his eyes and tongue began to bubble slowly
They were jolted back again, and a trail of white vapor vented into space below their feet.
Five 
His lungs screamed for air, the bubbling on his tongue and eyes increased in intensity.
 Six
His skin Hurt.
Seven 
He was sure he was going to pass out.
Eight
His entire body hurt.
Nine
Then the darkness passed over them, and his vision was obscured.
They slammed against something hard and then dropped to the floor as gravity engaged.
If he could have screamed he would have.
The light of the stars was blocked out, and though he couldn't hear it, he felt the burst of air across his skin as the airlock was pressurized.
He gasped.
And that’s when the pain hit him, Pure unreal agony. Fire across his entire body
He couldn't see, he couldn't hear.
***
Dr Krill rushed into the airlock with the entire team of medical staff behind him. The two bodies lay on the floor like bloated corpses, their skin mottled a horrible purple red. 
There was no way they were alive.
He threw himself down next  to Adam, nearly unrecognizable now, and was surprised to find his chest heaving up and down as he was still breathing. He reached up and pulled off the eyepatch as others rushed forward to cut away their clothing.
The mechanical green eye spun to look at him, undamaged by the vacuum of space.
Someone placed an IV while Krill worked eye drops into his real eye and more of the same solution onto his mouth, nose and tongue, so dry it was like sandpaper or worse.
One of the nurses had to leave the room as the mottled skin of the two bodies was too hard to stomach.
“Knock them out.” krill ordered.
Adam wheezed the rehydrating solution doing it’s work on his tongue and throat. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose as the water made its way inside.
“You STUPID stupid man.” Krill snarled at the body, as the mechanical eye rolled back into his head, “Stupid stupid stupid stupid human.”
Granted he knew Adam had had no other choice, but still… only humans could survive in the vacuum of space, but this was the price, the horrible, horrible price.
***
Full body bruising and a couple of stem cell treatments later and Adam was feeling pretty chipper for someone who looks like a cruised corpse. His skin was a light delicate shade or purple unevenly spotted in certain areas, and his eardrums were just beginning to heal with their advanced medicine, so he was like a deff old granny for the moment, but all the same he was doing pretty good.
Granted the same stunt pulled in the movie Titan AE had been way cooler, considering those two hadn’t suffered any of the side effects, but now he could say he survived the vacuum of space conscious and lived to tell the tale.
Which was pretty badass if he did say so himself.
Which, he did.
Smiling, his face hurting. He walked with young Pier down the walkway both of them stiff and soar, walking like the old grannies they were as deff as.
At the bottom of the ramp two very concerned looking parents rushed forward to greet their sun eyes widening in horror at the state of him, mottled purple skin and all.
Adam stopped a few feet away wishing he could go lay down.
The senator looked up at him, “What the hell did you do to my son! Adam shrugged, “Well I stopped us both from dying is what I did, though it wasn’t easy. On the bright side, your son is going to make a full recovery and have an awesome story to tell in the process.”
The senator looked like he was going to lose his damn mind, but the boy cut in, “Dad….” “Yes son, whatever you want, whatever you need?”
He paused, “A nap would be cool and….” He glazed back over his shoulder at Adam, “Maybe military school wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”
Adam grinned and the boys parents looked shocked  but turned away as their shiny black car arrived.
He continued to smile as he watched them drive away and didn’t hear Sunny as she came up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder, “Are you ok.”
He continued to smile, through through his teeth he said, “Once they leave can you carry me inside, my soul hurts.”
***
Humans can survive 15 seconds in the vacuum of space.
We aren’t jealous of this ability. 
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chaseatinydream · 3 years
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pirate king (78) || atz
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You haven’t left the infirmary for a whole day.
“Ahhhh!” You shriek into your pillow for the fiftieth-something time that day, burying your face in the soft down, fingers winding into the sheets. “Ahhh!”
There’s an amused chuckle from somewhere in the room, and soft footsteps draw closer. The mattress of your bed sinks lightly from the added weight before a hand comes to rest on your head, gentle and comforting.
“What’s going on with you?” San’s light voice is full of amusement, and you peek out from under the covers to see your master sitting cross legged on your bed, teasing smile on his face. “You’ve been holed up in here for a whole day now. Don’t you think that you should go explore the town a bit before the Treasure leaves Tortuga? Did something go wrong when you tried to give Hongjoong the jacket?”
Instantly, your mouth twists into a pout and you bury your face into the pillow once more with a tiny, muffled scream. Your cheeks burn, and the image of Hongjoong looking at you with such tenderness in his eyes resurfaces at your master’s mention only serves to addle your mind further.
“Please shut up for a second, master.” You groan into the pillow, refusing to look up. San snickers, but then in the next second he gasps. “Wait, didn’t you mean to give him that handmade jacket? Did he reject it? I’ll beat up the ungrateful little bastard, why he-”
“No, no, master!” You catch his arm before he can march out of the infirmary. “He didn’t reject it, I did give it to him and he accepted it. It’s just that...” you hesitate for a moment, the words rolling about in your mouth. “It’s just that, well, captain... he...”
San stares back at you, unblinking. “He...?”
You bury your face in your hands. For some reason, the tips of your ears feel like they’re on fire. You try to speak, and the words come out a mangled mess - almost as bad as Mingi’s attempts at cooking.
“Words.” San encourages. “You know, with consonants and vowels. Using the mouth might be helpful.”
You make an unintelligible noise and launch your pillow in his direction. There’s a satisfying “oompf”, but the downside is that you’ve lost your only shield between the two of you.
San grins. “So?”
“Well,” you pause, trying to find words more eloquent within your choices and resulting with none. “He... confessed.”
Good job, Chin Hae! Your inner self cheers, full of pride. That’s was a full sentence!
Your master stills for a moment, pulling the pillow off his head. The previously amused expression he was wearing on his face morphs into one of concern as he looks at you. “Oh. Oh.”
You’re stunned for a moment, staring at your master. “I would have expected you to be a little more surprised. Do you mean you actually knew about this?”
​San’s expression softens, eyes pained, before his fingers come up to poke you in the nose. “You’d be surprised how dense you can be sometimes, Chin Hae. That’s not good for you, you know.”
Your lips purse as you pick at the ends of the threads of your blanket. “What am I supposed to do, master? Wooyoung too, both of them... I rejected them both, but still... it hurts...”
There’s a soft exhale that leaves your master, that lingers in the air, still in the silence before he speaks. “Only you can decide that for yourself, Chin Hae.” When you look up at him, he puts his hand on your head with a painfully gentle smile. “I promised to do my best to help you find a cure, but I won’t give either of us false hope - there is every possibility you might die. Since this concerns you and the two of them, you have to make the choice yourself.”
You have to make the choice yourself.
You sigh and rub at your temples, trying to resolve the onset of a headache you can already feel coming. All this thinking hurts your head. “You know, I wish you weren’t right all the time, master.”
“We all want the impossible sometimes.” San shrugs easily, his usual smirk tinged with a hint of cheekiness. You turn a glare at him, but there’s no heat to it at all - how could you? Instead, San yanks you out of the bed and you follow, a tad unwillingly.
“What are you doing?”
“Let’s go get some herbs from town,” San suggests, pulling you along with him. “A good walk about time will clear your mind, and the Treasure will be leaving Tortuga soon.”
You sigh, reluctant, but follow.
What could possibly go wrong?
>>>
The trip to town starts off fine enough.
Wooyoung whines about not being to go with the two of you - you remind him about his ban from the town due to his little hostage attempt (‘it was only one teeny tiny hostage attempt,” he protests) and the two of you set off hand in hand, chattering brightly about what you’ll find in the marketplace.
And well, apparently the Fates had been listening, because they were determined to proved you wrong.
It’s barely ten minutes into the market that you’re completely lost.
You have no idea how you ended up in this situation - quite alone, separated from San in the middle of a bustling crowd in the marketplace. The sea of people surge around you like the push and pull of an unyielding tide, and the last thing you remember is San’s hand separating from yours after a man bumped into the two of you.
You’re not too worried, you’ve come here quite a few times, enough to be rather familiar with the place. As long as you find your way to the central town square, you’ll definitely be able to navigate your way through the back alleys back to the harbour with the town square as a reference point.
That is, until you hear something.
“The Treasure is leaving the harbour soon. We should move as soon as possible.” A low mutter reaches your ears as you step into a dark alley, and the second you hear those words, you flatten yourself against the wall in shock. That definitely doesn’t sound like any of crew, you know most of their voices well enough.
“But the Pirate King is the captain of that ship.” A nervous tremble in the voice of the man’s conversation partner. He sounds reluctant, and for a moment pride wells up in your chest at the reputation your captain holds. “We can’t just attack them! We’ll die!”
What?
They’re going to do what now?
“Listen, you coward,” the man practically growls, his voice a low rumble. You shiver lightly at that, and peek around the corner. To your horror, you see a hulking, burly man with rippling muscles, tan skin decorated with swirling black lines that spiral down his chest and across his forearms. He could easily crush you under his foot. “The big bosses in the inn right now are discussing plans, big ones. The second the Treasure leaves the harbour of Tortuga, ten different ships are going to hit it all at once with everything they’ve got. There’s no way they’ll escape.”
You clap a hand over your mouth and crouch behind the brick wall again. Heart racing in your chest and cold sweat sliding down your temples, you think carefully over what you’ve heard. All thoughts of escaping immediately flee your mind. Ten ships intending to attack the Treasure?
“Pirates don’t band together, the loot split amongst them won’t be big enough.” The other man mutters, although he seems slightly more reassured. “You’re intending on fighting one of the most terrifying ships to ever sail the waters of the Caribbean!”
“Are you an idiot, or do you just not know how much the Royal Navy is offering for this capture?” The man’s voice is near maniacal with the delirium of his excitement. “They’re offering enough wealth worth an entire Spanish treasure galleon as well as pardons signed by the Queen herself. We’ll be free men, all of us. All we need to do is take down one ship.”
“What? Sounds like a load of rotten shellfish to me.” The other man snorts derisively, and your knees tremble at their words. Such a reward would surely make the Treasure the target of most ships, if not all, in the waters. “What exactly does the Royal Navy want with the Treasure? They’ve been causing less trouble than they used to ages ago.”
You know what they want.
“Some woman with a wooden hand on board, called Chin Hae or something along those lines. There are drawings of her image circulating, so we know what she looks like.” The man says roughly, and your legs nearly give out beneath you. You’ve got to run, run, but your legs won’t move. Sucking in deep breaths, you urge strength into your legs as you clamber onto your knees.
Run, run, run!
“Hmm, I heard something over there.” You immediately clamp your mouth shut, nails digging so hard into your palm you feel blood slide down your skin. Don’t make a sound, you chant in your mind, don’t even think about breathing. “Huh. Musta’ just been a bird or a rat. These alleyways are filthy.”
“Hmph. Go check anyway, it might be a street urchin or something. If anyone finds out that we were talkin’ about the plans, we’re good as dead in a ditch.” The gruffer man mutters, and you hear grumbling and footsteps drawing closer to where you’re crouched.
Your heart practically stops beating in your chest. Your hand slides into your healer’s satchel, trembling. What do you do?
“See? Absolutely nothin’, it must have been just a-”
The man rounds the corner, and in that single, desperate second, you strike.
Pulling the largest round bottomed flash that you’d just bought from the apothecary with San earlier, you smash it over the man’s head with everything you’ve got.
The man lets out a tiny scream and shattered glass flies everywhere, your eyes lock. He stumbles back, bleeding from the forehead where you’d struck him, and grabs for you again.
“That’s the girl! The woman with the wooden hand! Get her, you fool!”
At the sound of his partner’s bellow, you gasp as you see him draw his sword. The size of it along could cleave you in half across the middle. When you whirl around to flee, the scrawnier man grabs you by the back of your tunic, terrifyingly strong. “I’m not letting you go!” He swears, and you react instantly, just as Jongho had taught you all those months ago.
You shove the remains of the broken glass bottle straight into one of his eyes with all your might, and the man screams in agony, curling up on the filthy ground as crimson blood gushes down his face. The same hot, sticky blood runs over your hand and between your fingers.
You don’t have time to worry about him. You run.
“Stop right there!” You hear him pounding on a wooden door behind you as you stumble, cursing your legs. Move! “Oi, we found the girl! Get your asses out here and get her!”
You dash down the alleyways. People, people, get to where there are lots of people! Your lungs burn, and you hear angry shouting of ‘where did she go’ at your back, the voices drawing closer every second. You’re not as used to the maze of alleyways as these people are, what do you do? What if you take a wrong turn and just end up running deeper into it?
You pause for a moment at a cross section, glancing about desperately as you heave for breath. Left, or right or-
Your eyes lock on something, up!
“Sorry, coming through,” you apologise as you shove past a townsmen as you race up the stairs to the rooftops. The man shrieks at your invasion of his house, but you barely hear him. Yes! Up here, you can see the way to the harbour without the walls of the alleys in the way!
Luckily for you, the houses here are clustered and cramped together, and you leap across the roofs with relative ease - nothing compared to toeing the wildly swinging masts in the middle of a storm.
The harbour!
Your knees nearly buckle as you land hard, but you don’t have the luxury to stop and think about the pain. Picking yourself up, you run with all your might, leaping across a gap between two alleys and hear some more shouting. “She’s up there! Get onto the roofs before she gets out of the alleys!”
There’s a whistle of something sharp slicing through the air, and instantly you throw up your hands to protect your face and your neck (‘better your hands that your life,’ Jongho had told you once grimly).
There’s a heavy thunk and you stumble back at the sheer force of the blade, eyes screwed shut as you wait for the agonizing pain to come. But it doesn’t.
To your surprise, when you pull your hands away from your face, you look down to see a blade embedded in your prosthetic hand, the wood nearly split in half. You make a little amused noise, unable to keep the laugh in, half crazed with adrenaline. That hand has really bad luck when it comes to knives, wooden or not, you think.
There’s the rattle of loose stones behind you, and you whirl around to see one of your pursuers already clambering onto the roof and your heart drops into your belly. Yanking the knife from your wooden hand, you send it sailing at the man and it misses his head. Instead, it strikes his hand and the man screams in pain to clutch at it, before realising he’s still climbing and falls to the cobbles below, taking his friends down with him.
“Don’t let her get away! She’s the key to us getting rich! She’s our treasure!” One of the men from below roar, and you balk at the words, disgust pooling in the pit of your stomach. Courage surges up in you out of nowhere. “The only one who gets to call me that is Captain, you bastards!”
You don’t have the patience to see if they’ve heard. You dive for the exit out of the alleyways and scramble along the shops at the docks, ducking and weaving around startled shopkeepers as you yank your hood over your head.
Can’t let them recognise you, you think frantically as you continue sprinting down the docks, chest heaving. Behind, you hear your pursuers roughly shoving the townspeople aside in their rush to get to you before you reach the Treasure. “Oi, stop right there! Stop running!”
“Do they seriously think I’ll listen to that?” You mutter under your breath, but for all your bravado, the voices are getting closer, and you’re almost dizzy with exhaustion. You look about frantically for somewhere to hide, but before you can, a hand wraps around your wrist and pulls you into a narrow alleyway behind a makeshift tent selling an assortment of mirrors, shrouded in darkness.
Thrashing, you struggle to get out of the man’s grip but it’s as firm as iron, and strangely gentle. Gentle as it may be though, you’re ready to bite your way out if need be until a mild, lilting voice touches your ears. “Hey, hey, you’re alright now. Those men are gone.”
You still, trembling. The man’s voice is soothing, but there’s something that grips your chest about it; it sounds familiar, but not quite. Unable to resist the urge, you look up to look at your saviour’s face.
A slender, handsome face, sharp nose and delicate features. But your eyes lock onto his eyes, mismatched ones, one a familiar, kind green and the other a dark, murky colour, the shade of dirty, brackish water.
Your heart drops into your chest, and instantly, every survival instinct in you screams at you to run, so loudly that your head nearly splits.
He looks like... he looks like...
He looks like your captain.
Recognition flickers across his face, and the kindness in his eyes disappear almost in the a blink. Instead, that kindness is replaced by something that looks like depraved hunger, and you feel like a prey being stared down by a predator.
Your survival instinct screams at you.
Run!
“I found you.” The man whispers, one hand coming up to touch your cheek and you recoil, heart beating unnaturally loudly in your chest. Your head feels like its about to split in half, strange, disembodied voices ringing in your skull, each louder than the other. “My treasure.”
“S-stay away from me.” You warn, one hand gripping your head as if you could physically prevent your mind from shattering. “Don’t move another inch!”
The man doesn’t seem able to hear you, taking a step closer. Power spills from him, so dark and thick it makes you gag, flinching backwards. Your back hits the wall. “I finally found you. With your power, I finally can-”
“I don’t have any power!” You shriek, trying to stay on your feet but the pain that wrecks your head threatens to bring you to your knees. There’s something growing there, too large for you to push back, as if you’re trying to hold back a storm wave with your bare hands. “I’m a normal human, just like everyone else! I just want to live a normal life!”
You are still part of the Treasure, part of my crew, one of my family. Even if you are a woman, a clay one, instead of a man of flesh, neither of those things change for me.
“Normal? No, you’re not.” The man takes another step closer, and the pain resounds throughout your entire body, so badly till your fingers are trembling. “Human? Something like you could never be. No matter how much you try, you can’t escape what you are.”
He regards you with a smile that seems almost surgical, and your heart plummets.
“You’re not even really alive.”
There’s the sound in the back of your head that sounds like tearing cloth, and your mind rents in half.
The last thing you see is a pair of vividly blue eyes in the gloom, rippling in almost liquid surface of a mirror, startlingly lifelike.
It takes a second for you to realise those are looking right back at you.
Thunder and lightning surges, wild tempests riding like wild horses bringing about the end of the word, and everything dissolves into chaos.The man from earlier seems to have vanished, of course he would, who would remain in this storm? The person in the mirror looks at you in the eye as the hurricane rages all about you. You stare, unable to move.
Who are you?
The howling of the wind and the icy blades of freezing rain don’t affect you in the least, but your limbs are leaden. The reflection in the mirror opens its mouth to speak.
They will come bearing a gift. Kill the man, and return. There is no running from me. Free us both, ****.
The one-eyed green boy smiles at you, and holds out his pinky finger.
I am you.
The storm screams overhead. Kill him, kill him, kill him, it chants.
You are me.
You crumple to your knees, and everything goes black.
Kill him.
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inkedstarlight · 3 years
Text
Elriel: Halloween Edition
Summary: Azriel and his son go trick-or-treating and stop by Elain's house. They have an adorable encounter. Later that night, Elain goes to Feyre's house for the Halloween party she's throwing and meets her boyfriend, Rhys. Rhysand's brothers also come to the party and Elain runs into Azriel yet again. Let the romance ensue. Basically just a shit ton of fluff. Note: Read it here on AO3!
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There was nothing Elain Archeron loved more than giving candy out to little kids on Halloween. Which is why she was currently sitting on her living room couch in her costume, the bowl of candy in her lap as she patiently waited for the first trick-or-treater to come.
It was the first Halloween that she’ll have spent in her new house. She’d recently moved from her studio apartment to a small, two-bedroom house just outside the city. After being promoted from teacher to principal at the elementary school she’d worked at for more than five years, Elain figured a little change was in order.
Unfortunately, the new neighborhood was a bit further from her sisters than her apartment had been. They both lived in the city, Feyre taught painting lessons at the local art store while Nesta worked as a software developer at a start-up tech company. Feyre had also recently moved; her boyfriend of only seven months, Rhysand, asked her to move in with him. Elain hadn't yet met him but from what Feyre had told her, he seemed like he treated her sister really well. But Elain would be the judge of that.
Well, more like Nesta would be the judge of that. Elain was certain that her older sister was going to interrogate the poor man until she's squeezed out his darkest secrets. Nesta had a... unique way with people. Unconventional, but it'd been effective thus far.
Tonight was particularly exciting because the couple was hosting a small Halloween bash at their place. Elain had been bugging Feyre for weeks to properly introduce Rhysand to her and Nesta. Their schedules very rarely matched up.
The doorbell rang, pulling Elain from her thoughts and back to the present. She glanced at the clock. It was four-thirty in the evening. The sun still shone bright in the sky.
She grinned to herself. Let the trick or treating commence.
Jumping up from where she sat, Elain excitedly made her way to the front of the house. She swung the door open. What she saw on her porch melted her damn heart.
A little boy, no older than six, was dressed as a firefighter. He had a tiny hard hat on his head, his chocolate hair curling out from underneath. A dalmatian stuffed animal was tucked under his arm, his other hand clutching a jack-o-lantern bucket for candy. His eyelashes were impossibly long as he looked up at her with wide eyes and a goofy smile. It was contagious.
Elain also noticed that he was alone, no adult in sight.
“Trick or treat!” the boy greeted her.
“Happy Halloween!” Elain replied with a giggle. She put her bowl of candy on the ground to kneel in front of him. She looked around. “Is someone with you?”
“Yeah,” the kid sighed like he just got out of a stressful work meeting. Elain inwardly smiled. “My daddy. But he kept talking and talking about why he thought Mounds was his favorite candy, even though it’s obviously the worst.”
The boy stopped to look at her as if waiting for her to agree. Elain nodded her head vigorously. Naturally.
“He was just talking so much,” the little boy continued. He gestured for Elain to come closer before whisper-shouting, “You know, I really think he needs a girl in his life –”
“TOBIAS!” a strong, male voice called out.
“Uh-oh,” the boy, Tobias, muttered under his breath. He looked up at Elain with pleading eyes. “Don’t let me get in trouble.”
Elain suppressed her laugh and nodded at him. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Tobias held out his pinky finger. "Pinky promise?"
"Pinky promise," Elain swore. Gods, this kid was a gem.
Elain watched as a man approached her yard. His face was twisted with frustration, presumably because his son ran away, but he was… beautiful. Elain sucked in a breath as she ran her eyes up and down his body. He was wearing a loose white shirt, slightly sheer, that had a very deep V. The sleeves were cut off messily and he wore a fake sword on his hip. He was a pirate. A sexy pirate. But it was definitely a costume that wasn't advertised as 'sexy.' No, it was the man wearing it that made it sexy. And to make it even better, he looked as if he’d thrown it on last minute when his son reminded him it was Halloween.
The man stopped in front of Tobias. He crossed his arms, paying no mind to Elain.
“You’re in big trouble."
“But –”
“We’ve talked about this, Tobias. You can’t just run away from someone when you get bored.”
Now Elain really had to hold in her laugh. She covered it with a cough.
That's when Tobias’s father realized they had an audience. He directed his authoritative stare to Elain, and his hazel eyes immediately softened. She did her best to not fidget as his eyes ran over her. He must have seen the humor on her face because his lips twitched upward.
 Fucking adorable.
“Sorry about my son,” he said sincerely, shooting a glare at an oblivious Tobias from the corner of his eye. “I’m Azriel. And you are?”
“Elain," she told him with a shy smile.
“Elain,” he echoed, testing it out on his tongue. Shivers ran down Elain’s arms. His voice was like velvet. She could listen to him repeat her name over and over again for hours.
Stop being so creepy.
“You, uh –” Azriel stumbled over his words awkwardly as he tried to find the words. “I love your costume.”
Elain blushed appreciatively. But before she could thank him, Tobias groaned.
“C’mon, Daddy, that was so lame. Get her phone number or something.”
Elain clapped a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking as she nearly lost it. It was Azriel’s turn to blush this time.
“Tobs, now’s not the time –”
“But she’s so pretty and nice! I already love her,” he pouted up at his father.
Azriel mumbled incoherent words as he tried to usher his son off the porch. “We should really go,” Azriel said, trying to avoid eye contact with her. He was so awkward. She loved it. “I’m so sorry again.”
“Wait!" Elain blurted out, trying to delay his departure. Azriel looked at her and she gave him a sheepish smile. "You forgot to grab some candy."
Tobias didn't need to be told twice. Elain held out the bowl for him to choose. He fished around for a while before picking three Skittles packages. Elain gave him a wink before turning to Azriel.
“Everyone should get candy on Halloween,” she grinned at him.
He looked at her curiously before smiling gratefully and taking a piece of candy without even looking to see the options.
“Thank you, Elain," he said, his tone sincere and soft. She nearly melted right there.
"Happy Halloween," she murmured as she watched Azriel back away, Tobias looking at his father as if he had two heads. Azriel seemed to be in a daze, giving Elain a small wave as he continued to walk backwards. He stumbled over his own feet, earning a laugh from Elain. Then, he finally turned around and walked out of sight.
---------------------------
“It’s so wonderful to meet you!” Elain exclaimed, ignoring the hand that Rhysand held out and going straight in for a hug.
“Don’t suffocate him,” Feyre joked as she watched them embrace.
Elain had arrived to their place a couple minutes early, eager to meet her sister’s boyfriend. Elain backed away to let Nesta introduced herself. Elain leaned over to Feyre.
“You didn’t tell me how cute he is,” Elain whispered with a giggle.
Feyre laughed. “Did I mention he has two brothers?”
Elain’s jaw dropped. “No, you seemed to have conveniently left that part out.”
“Well, they’ll be here soon,” Feyre said with a twinkle in her eye. “And they’re both single.”
Nesta turned to them as they laughed secretively. Rhysand followed her gaze. “What are you two giggling about?”
Before Feyre had a chance to answer, the doorbell rang. She excused herself, Rhysand right on her tail.
Elain looked over at her older sister to see her glaring down at her. “Let me guess: you guys were talking about Rhysand’s brothers.”
“How’d you know?”
Nesta let out an exasperated sigh. “She’s already tried to set me up with one of them.”
“I’m guessing it didn’t go well?”
Nesta scoffed. “Horribly. She failed to mention that he was a grade A –”
“Fancy seeing you here, sweetheart,” a low voice interrupted Nesta’s rant.
A man approached them, hands in pockets as he strutted confidently. His long brown hair was tied up in a messy bun and a five o’clock shadow on his sharp jaw. Elain watched as her sister dragged her hands down her face and groaned at the mere sight of him. That only made him chuckle deeply.
“Miss me?”
Nesta ignored his comment and reluctantly gestured to him. “Elain, this is Cassian. Cassian, this is my other sister Elain.”
Cassian shot her a goofy grin and reached out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Elain. I’ve never seen anyone rock fairy wings like you are.”
Elain couldn’t help but blush. “Thank you.”
Nesta rolled her eyes. “Ugh, stop charming everyone!”
“I’m irresistible, sweetheart,” Cassian batted his eyelashes.
“I need a drink,” Nesta muttered to herself before walking away and in the direction of the kitchen.
Cassian winked at Elain before following her sister. “I could use a drink too!"
Elain listened to them bicker as they walked away, a smile touching her lips.
Over the next couple hours, more and more people arrived at Rhysand and Feyre’s place. It soon got crowded, Elain unable to hear over the booming music and incessant chatter.
She was sitting on an loveseat in the corner watching Cassian trying to convince Nesta to dance with him when she heard a familiar voice.
"Sorry I'm so late, the babysitter cancelled last minute and I had to find a replacement."
Elain's head snapped to the foyer where Feyre and Rhys stood with another man. Elain got a glimpse of his face as he took off his jacket, and her suspicions were confirmed.
It was Azriel.
Elain's heart was beating out of her chest as she watched Feyre lead Azriel into the living room where she sat.
Then he spotted her.
He stopped dead in his tracks, Feyre continuing to walk and talk, not noticing that she no longer had his attention. No, his eyes were on Elain and Elain alone.
Elain gave him a little wave. Azriel's lips turned into a full out smile as he caught up to Feyre, who had been leading him to Elain anyway. Presumably to introduce him to her and Nesta.
"Azriel, this is -"
"Elain," he finished. His eyes were still on her, disbelief on his face.
Feyre looked between them confusedly. "Do you guys know each other?"
"Uh..." Elain started, unsure of what to say. "Sort of?"
"I went out with Tobias and we incidentally stopped by her house," Azriel explained.
"Well," Feyre said with a mischievous grin. "I guess I'll leave you guys to it." She shot Elain a look that said, You should make a move.
And just like that, they were alone.
Azriel took a seat beside Elain, leaving only a couple inches between them as he turned his body toward her. He smelled amazing.
"So, you're Feyre's sister, huh?" Azriel gazed at her earnestly and bumped his shoulder against hers. "I guess that means we'll be seeing a lot of each other."
Elain bit her lip to stop herself from grinning like an idiot. "No complaints here."
A comfortable silence fell between them as they watched others dancing and drinking. The current song faded out and "Creep" by Radiohead began to play.
"Would you, um... would you like to dance?" Azriel asked her tentatively.
Oh my gods, yes! What kind of question is that?
"I would love to," Elain exclaimed.
Azriel stood and held out his hand. The moment Elain took his hand with her own, she was a goner.
He led them to the makeshift dance floor before bringing her hand to his shoulder and grabbing her waist gently with his hand. Fire shot through Elain when his thumb circled idly on her palm. Then, he pulled her in close.
"This okay?" Azriel murmured, his lips brushing against her ear. She shivered and nodded.
"Did I mention," he continued, spinning them in a slow circle, "that you are absolutely gorgeous?"
Elain hid her face against his shoulder to smile widely before craning her neck to look at with him, a twinkle in her eye. "I think you were too busy tripping over your own feet to mention that."
Azriel tipped back his head and laughed loudly. She loved the sound. "You wound me, Elain," he told her, but Elain could see the faint blush in his cheeks. He leaned in to whisper, "You're right though. You make me nervous."
The music swelled, and Azriel guided both of Elain's hands to cup the back of his neck. He encircled his arms around her waist until their bodies were flush against each other, their foreheads touching.
"I like Tobias. He's a great kid."
Azriel's entire body seemed to relax as he gave her an easy smile. "He's a handful, and I love him."
"I can tell," Elain told him. "You're a good dad."
"Thank you." Azriel huffed out a laugh. "You're something else, Elain Archeron."
Elain leaned her head back and she searched his hazel eyes. "Is that a good thing?"
Something unreadable flashed in his eyes. "Yes."
And then he was capturing her lips in his to give Elain the sweetest kiss she'd ever had.
-----------------------
tag list (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @sjmships​ @sleeping-and-books​ @sirgwaines​ @books-for-sure​ @blowing-mikey​ @b00kworm​ @wineywitch202​ @liquifyme​ @maastrash​ @thewayshedreamed​
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beware-of-you-98 · 4 years
Text
Domestic JJ x Emily During the Fall
☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️
Coincidentally, fall is both Emily and JJ’s favorite season
JJ likes how pretty DC looks during the fall
Her block is covered in trees with leaves of varying shades of orange, red and yellow
And the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, so the sidewalks are often covered in a liter of colorful leaves and bright pink petals
Emily likes fall simply because she can wear her suburban lesbian turtlenecks without people staring
(If she wears her turtlenecks in 90+ degree weather, that’s her business, okay?)
She likes the cool mornings and nights
She likes the whole fall aesthetic (something about the warm colors constantly around during the season makes everything seem oddly domestic and homey)
Emily is always cold no matter what season, but she’s always so comfortable in fall because she can tuck her hands into her sweaters (or coats if she wears them overtop of her outfit) and wear thicker, warmer pants to the office
She can wear her fuzzy socks to bed!!!
And, yes, as soon as the season changes from summer to fall, she’s in her favorite pair
JJ still wears short sleeved shirts or skirts, much to her girlfriend’s disbelief
(She always insists she won’t get cold, but somehow always ends up in Emily’s jacket or working at her side by the end of the day)
(Emily starts wearing hoodies to bed and drops them off at JJ’s office for her to wear when she does get cold)
(It always puts a huge smile on her face when it’s nearing the end of a long work day and she gets a glimpse of JJ in one of her oversized hoodies)
(It’s certainly worth the amount of teasing she recieves from Derek and Spncer for being “whipped”)
JJ loves wearing Emily’s hoodies
She knows it’s so cliche, but they smell like her girlfriend and it comforts her
(If someone were to ask JJ to describe it, she would say that Emily smells like home, sweet and familiar)
Emily will never, and I mean never admit this out loud, but she loves pumpkin spice drinks and treats
She never drinks coffee, but one of her weaknesses is definitely a PSL from Starbucks
JJ brings her one every few days, leaving it on her desk in a travel mug covered in cartoonish ghosts
JJ likes warmed apple cider with cinnamon
Emily figures this out early on in their relationship and learns how to make JJ’s favorite cider from scratch
Yeah it’s a huge pain in the ass and she swears she can still smell apples weeks later
And fresh cinnamon sticks are hard to come by during the fall because everyone and their mother must buy them in bulk because no store within 25 miles has any
(Emily ends up borrowing some off of Rossi, though, so it works out in the end)
Besides the end result is amazing
It makes JJ happy and really that’s all Emily cares about
(Her favorite mug to drink it from is a present from Emily with a cartoony jackolantern printed on the ceramic with the words “let’s get lit” underneath)
(She blames the mom in her for loving the awful pun so much, but really it’s because it’s so cheesy and Emily gets a kick out of it)
The first fall Emily spends is just with JJ and Henry and she’s very perplexed when the two start piling up the fallen leaves on the ground and then jumping into them
She doesn’t get it (she never really got to do things like that as a child)
JJ’s like “nope, unacceptable” and persuades Emily to jump in a huge pile of leaves
Emily feels like a fucking child after diving into a pile of dead leaves, but JJ and Henry’s giggles are infectious and what the hell it’s fun
They jump in leaves for hours, only going inside when their noses and cheeks are red from the cold
Emily gets them all a glass of steaming apple cider (Henry’s excited because he gets to use a grown up mug)
Then they all snuggle on the couch, JJ tucked up against Emily’s side with Henry squished between them both, and turn on Halloween movies
Henry’s favorite is ParaNorman or Hotel Transylvania
Emily’s is The Nightmare Before Christmas (she knows the words to every single song)
And, sue her, but JJ’s favorite is Halloweentown
She thinks it’s absolutely adorable and she’s always excited when it’s on
(Only the first one, though)
(JJ was not a fan of Return to Halloweentown)
(When Michael is old enough to form his own opinions and thoughts, Halloweentown also becomes his favorite movie)
She and Emily don’t really watch the horror movies that air during the Halloween season (they see enough real gore in their line of work, and that’s more than enough thank you very much)
Once they try to watch Final Destination 2 but end up switching the channel within the first few minutes
The concept is too ridiculous and the gore is too in your face for either of them to stomach
(Besides, Emily is really weirded out that the main character in the movie looks exactly like JJ if she were a brunette)
(JJ doesn’t see the resemblance)
Honestly, if you were to ask them what their favorite thing about fall is, both would immediately answer that it means a new season of Halloween Wars
The perfect way to end their week is cuddling up on the couch under a thick quilt with glasses of wine while watching The Cooking Channel
(They’re both completely in awe at how the artists and bakers create such amazing displays out of just pumpkins and sugar)
They often conflict on who they want to win (neither one of their picks has ever even made it to the final three, much to both of their dismay)
(And, yeah okay, maybe they both only watch Halloween Wars so they can come up with unique ideas when they carve their own pumpkins)
JJ’s pumpkins are always super cute and simple, but she makes use of all the pumpkin scraps to create whiskers or ears
Emily’s visions for her pumpkins are always way too ambitious, so she always ends up with a pumpkin carved all to hell with no decernable shape to her carving
(One time, JJ helps her carve a witch into her pumpkin and she’s so happy and so proud of it that she leaves it on the porch for weeks and weeks afterwards)
They both love helping the boys with their pumpkins
One time, JJ and Emily hold a friendly competition to see which team comes up with the more creative pumpkins (youngest vs oldest, so JJ’s with Michael while Henry teams up with Emily)
JJ and Michael make pirate pumpkins
(Michael gives his pumpkin an eyepatch and a “gold” tooth)
(it’s honestly adorable)
(JJ’s pumpkin has a “parrot” except she couldn’t find a toy bird that would work for her so it’s an orange worm on a string)
Emily and Henry make their pumpkins look like the teenage mutant ninja turtles
(Henry’s is Donatello and Emily’s is Leonardo)
And, well honestly, no one can pick which team did a better job so they all decide that their reward is four amazing pumpkins
(JJ’s porch definitely looks a lot cooler when she puts the pumpkins out for Halloween)
The best moments are honestly the ones where they all gather out on the porch swing, snuggled up together and drinking warm cider, or eating freshly baked cookies, as the sun sets
JJ and the boys practically smother Emily so that she’s never cold
It’s sometimes uncomfortable as hell, but Emily never complains because she’s content to just be with the people she loves the most
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thewildomega · 3 years
Text
Star in the sand Ch.5
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Getting to the inn he was surprised to find Bonez sitting outside in the small sitting area. Walking up to him he saw him raise his eyes from the pistol he was busy cleaning and look to him. "You are still here?" he asked.
"Wasn't ready to call it a night just yet, your room is the one on the end." he said in a deep voice before his eyes dropped to the woman standing close to Crocodile's side. Taking note of her strange clothing and bag he blinked. "Already found a new crew member sir?"
Taking a deep breath he looked down to y/n "Yes and no, this is y/n l/n. Y/n this is Daz Bonez." he told her even though he was sure she already knew.
"Hello." you said in a kind but soft voice looking to the man.
Nodding his head to the woman he turned his attention back to Crocodile.
"I will return to speak with you in a moment." he told the man and saw him nod. Taking a step towards the room he gently placed a hand on y/n's back, urging her to follow him. Opening the door to the room he did a quick glance over to make sure there was no danger inside before allowing her to enter the room. Closing the door softly behind him he saw her standing there looking over everything with her curious eyes. It was by no means a grand room, a decent sized bed with a small sitting area and table along with a bathroom. Lighting the lamp he saw her still standing int he same place. Clearing his throat he saw her turn to look at him. "I have to go speak to Bonez about some business matters so you go ahead and get some rest. Tomorrow I will help get you situated, alright?" he asked and saw her nod. He could tell she was still anxious and slowly moved over to stand in front of her, "I know this is overwhelming but try and rest. I'll be right outside if you need me." he told her and saw her nod again, a tiny grin lifting the corners of her mouth. Going to rub her shoulder he stopped short and stepped back, giving her a stiff nod before leaving her to her own.
Watching the door close behind him you took a deep breath and then looked back towards the rest of the room. Slowly walking over you removed your book bag and placed it on the floor beside the couch. Unzipping your jacket you laid it over the back and then removed your boots, sitting them neatly beside your bag. Going to the bathroom you relieved your bladder and then turned on the water to wash your hands and face, rubbing the cold water onto the back of your neck and closing your eyes as everything sunk in. You were in the One Piece world. You were in a manga story. A story that included pirates with super powers, most of wish were extremely dangerous. Were you going to die? No. No, Crocodile had said he would let anything happen to you and you believed him. You trusted him. Letting out a sigh you turned off the water and left the room. Looking at the single bed you bit your lip. This was his room, it was his bed. Walking to the small sofa you grabbed your jacket and rolled it up to form a makeshift pillow. Laying down you placed it under your head and curled up some so your feet would fit as well. Wrapping your arms around you you closed your eyes and tried to relax. Luckily for you your body and mind seemed to be exhausted from the hiking and then the other world travel and soon you were drifting to sleep.
.............................
Sitting with Bonez outside he quickly figured out, without telling the man everything, that he had returned to the exact same day and time he had left. It was like he never left even though he knew he had been in y/n's world for two weeks.
'You have two weeks...'
Hearing the old woman's voice echo in his head he turned his head to look around him but didn't see anything.
"This woman, y/n, what did you mean by she is and is not apart of the crew?" Bonez asked.
Letting out a puff of smoke he sighed, "She will be joining us yes but she will not be apart of the crew." When he noticed the man blank look towards him he narrowed his eyes, "What is it?" he asked.
"Is she your soulmate?" he asked and saw Crocodile's body stiffen.
"No." he answered quickly and firmly.
Nodding he looked back down to the gun in his hand. "What about a ship?"
Looking out towards the sea he rose his chin. "I will take care of that. I want you to start looking around for some possible crew members tomorrow." he told him and saw the man nod again.
"Yes sir."
Tapping out his cigar he stood and walked towards the room, opening the door and quietly shutting it behind him. Locking the bolt he removed his shoes and glanced towards the bed but didn't see her there and had a moment of worry come over him before he looked to the sofa and saw her there. Walking over towards her he furrowed his brows at the position she was in, her body looking even smaller, curled up into a ball with her arms wrapped around her. He hadn't meant for her to take the sofa, apparently he should have said as much. Noticing she was using her jacket as a pillow, leaving her with no extra warmth of any kind he removed his coat from his shoulders and gently covered her with it. Grinning when he saw her let out a small sigh he reached towards her and brushed back the hair that had fallen to her face, letting his fingers linger in her soft locks for a moment more than was needed. Breathing out he finally stood back straight and moved to the bed, removing his hook, belt and shirt to sleep. Laying down in the bed he stared up at the ceiling and thought back to Bonez's question. Brushing his fingertips over where he knew the soul tattoo was he glanced towards the woman sleeping on the sofa in thought. If only for a moment he allowed himself to hope before his common knowledge took back control and he shook his head, rolling over to face away from her. No, there was no way, soulmates weren't even a thing in her world. He couldn't allow himself false hope, he had given up finding his other half decades ago.
..............................
"Okay." you said, going to stand in front of Crocodile, biting the inside of your lip and looking down.
Dropping the newspaper he was reading he looked to the woman and saw her uncomfortable looking, glancing to the clothes in her hands he saw what looked to be one shirt and one pair of pants... nothing else. Looking up to her face he rose a brow, taking the clothes from her he placed them on his knee and lifted the paper again, "Now go find you some clothes." he told her.
Knitting your brows you looked to him, noticing how when he was sitting he was only a little bit taller than you. "I did, that's what I..."
"A single shirt and pants are not an acceptable wardrobe." he told her.
"I can mana..."
Sighing he stood and folded his paper, leaving in the seat along with the two articles of clothing she had already picked out. Walking over to the women's clothing area he looked over some of the choices available, not the best but it was the only thing he would be able to get until they went to another island. Seeing as she had already picked out a pair of black pants and she was currently wearing her jeans he scanned over the rack for something different. A dark blue material caught his eye and he grinned as he pulled it out to look it over. Holding it out for her he saw her eyes go a bit wide, her bottom lip get bit between her teeth a little. Tilting his head he felt his grin drop, "You do not like it?" he asked.
Quickly looking up to him you licked your lips, "No I do I just... well I can't pull off dresses very well." you admitted, your eyes dropping from his face in embarrassment.
Knitting his brows he glanced down to the dress and then to her, he didn't think there was anything she couldn't pull off. Hanging it on his hook he turned back to the racks and grabbed a grey tunic style blouse that matched his own outfit and would look nice with her black pants. Lastly he looked to the area with the women's undergarments and then back to her, "Go pick out your undergarments while I find you some pajamas." He told her, leaving no room for discussion.
Hearing how deep his voice was you sighed as he turned towards the lounge clothes. Looking to the underwear section you slowly walked over and scanned through the merchandise until you found one that caught your eye. Lifting the black lace you were amazed at how light the material was. The pattern was lovely and you allowed yourself the second to wonder if it was something he would find attractive, if you could pull it off. When your fingers hit the price tag you turned your head to look at it and then instantly placed it back down. No way. Plain black one it was. Grabbing two pairs of panties you turned back to the massive man and walked over to him, seeing him holding something new that looked like satin you tilted your head and tried to inspect it some but he quickly ushered you to the counter where it was tallied up and placed in a brown bag before you could actually look at it. The woman didn't have time to tell you the price before he held out a large bill making you bite your lip, you hoped it wasn't that much.
Taking his change he glanced down at her and saw her shoulders curled up some, her lip bit between her teeth like she did when she was anxious or upset.
"Thank you, have a great day." The woman behind the counter said.
Looking back up to her you gave her a small grin and mumbled out a "You too." Going to grab the bag you were surprised when Crocodile took it into his one hand and then looked down at you with soft eyes.
"Come on, back to the inn." he said and saw her nod. Leading the way he saw her eyes still looking around at this and that but he could tell she still looked upset. Did she not like the clothes? When they got back to the room he handed her the bag and got his answer.
"Thank you." you told him, looking down you licked your lips. "Is there something I can do to pay you back? Do you need help with anything?" you asked, slowly looking up at him from under your lashes.
Raising a brow he tilted his head some. "Why are you like this?" he asked and saw her brows lower along with her shoulders. "You did everything you could to help me, to take care of me while I was in your world but now that I try and do the same for you you think it is some tremendous act." Watching her look down he furrowed his brows. He was coming to realized that she did not think she was worthy of anything and he was determined to change that. Letting out a sigh he stood straight and curled his finger under her chin to lift her eyes to his, "You must stop being so blind to your own value."
Hearing how deep and low his voice was made you want to close your eyes but his silver eyes were staring into what felt like your soul. A sudden knock at the door startled you and you felt his warm fingers drop from your chin. Not another word was said as he walked to the door and opened a small amount, his deep voice speaking low to whoever was on the other side before he turned back towards you and shut the door.
Taking a few steps towards her he saw her look back towards him. "I must attend to some business. I will not be back until later in the evening but I would like you to stay in here until I return." Walking to the small table he found a small pad of paper and a pen, taking it to her he held it out. "I want you to write down anything else you think you may need or anything you want. When I get back we will have dinner." he told her and saw her nod. "Lock the door behind me and do not by any means let anyone in this room that is not myself or Bonez understand?" he asked, and again she nodded, a small grin gracing her lips. Sighing he restrained himself from reaching out and placing his hand on her head but he did give her a grin and nod before walking towards the door. Waiting to make sure she locked it like he had instructed her to do he looked over to see Bonez waiting for him.
After locking the door behind Crocodile you let out a long sigh and turned back to the room. Walking over to the brown bag you started taking out the new clothes and folding them before placing them neatly in your book bag that was now a suitcase. Looking over the blouse he had picked out you tilted your head and grinned. It was nice and airy feeling too. Next you looked over the pajamas he had picked out, a satin sleeping set that consisted of a emerald green button up shirt with short sleeves, shorts and pants that all matched. Smiling you folded them up and placed them in the bag. Not bothering with folding the panties you left one pair out and finally you came to the dress. Holding it up you bit your lip. It was a dark blue dress with long loose fitting sleeves and it looked like it would end at about your mid thigh. It was casual but also very nice looking with a flowy design and a modest V-neck. The dress it's self was very pretty you were just worried how it would look on you. Crocodile had said the two of you would have dinner when he got back so maybe you could wear this, he did pick it out so didn't that mean he thought it would look nice? Taking a deep breath you grabbed that and the black panties, heading towards the bathroom to shower.
...............................
When he got back to the room the sun was already setting and the small town was quieting down. Tapping out his cigar he knocked on the door and heard her soft footsteps coming to open it. When the door opened he looked down at her and felt his breath hitch in his throat. She was wearing the dress he had bought her, she had been completely wrong, she most certainly could pull off this dress. The dark blue dress fit her beautifully, her red hair was hanging down her back in waves and her eyes shinning up at him. Doing a quick glance over he felt his neck heat up at the sight of her skin. Clearing his throat he snapped his eyes back to hers, "I see the dress fits."  
Grinning you looked down and blushed, brushing your hair back behind your ear, "Yes, you have good taste." you told him and then giggled lightly, "You know if you ever wanted to retire form pirating you could always be a fashion designer." you told him.
Laughing he smiled and dipped his head to her. "I will take that as a compliment. Now, are you ready to go to dinner?" When she nodded he held out his arm and felt a warming in his chest when she took it. Taking her to a small cafe' he sat in front of her, at the table in the back of the place and ordered them both some wine, which seemed to surprise her. "Are you not a fan of wine?" he asked.
"I have actually never had it." you told him, glancing down at the menu.
"You worked in a bar and you have never had wine..."
"You saw that place. Did it look like a place that sold wine to you?" you giggled and saw him grin.
"I suppose not." he hummed as he too looked over the menu. "How long did you work there?"
"I started when I was sixteen."
Twelve years. "Was being a bartender what you wanted to do?"
"No but it paid my bills and kept me from starving to death." You told him just as the woman came over and took your order. Ordering a fish meal that wasn't expensive you placed took the wine glass into your hand and looked down at the red liquid curiously.
"Well what did you want to do?" He asked her once the waitress had left them alone again.
"Um well when I was little I wanted to be a mermaid." you told him with a small smile and then tilted your head. "But after realizing I couldn't grow a tail I dreamed of becoming a artist, one that traveled the world and drew everything I saw along the way." you told him in a soft voice, looking down at your drink. "Pretty stupid now that I actually said it out loud." you sighed, biting the inside of your lip, great now you sounded like a fool.
Knitting his brows he looked at her, "I do not think it is stupid."
Hearing his soothing deep voice you looked up to him and saw his eyes serious. Feeling a fluttering in your chest you grinned and brought the glass to your lips, "What about you? Did you always want to be a pirate?" you asked, keeping your voice low so no one would hear you but him.
Humming he took a deep breath. "Yes, like most young boys I wanted to be the next pirate king." he had never told anyone that but for some reason talking to her came easy.
"What about now?"
"Now I only want to stay out of prison." he told her and saw her smile. Once their food arrived they ate in a comfortable silence. He had been a little offended when her meal had come and he saw she had only ordered a pan seared fish filet and a side of vegetables, the dish costing not even half of what he had ordered. To his understanding though she was trying to be as cost effecting as possible. Didn't keep him from asking her if that was really what she wanted though.
"Yes this is fine, it's actually really good."
Sighing he made a mental note to force her to try the more expensive things in life. The whole mindset was strange to him, the women he had let accompany him before normally tried to drain his wallet dry but she was different. After finishing their meal he led her out of the cafe' and towards the beach. Seeing her eyes light up at the sight of the sea he grinned softly. Thankfully there was no one around and he found himself relaxing with her walking by his side down the moon lit beach. They were playing their normal game of asking each other questions, "Ketchup." he answered when she asked his least favorite thing to eat.
"What? What is wrong with you ketchup is amazing. It's how you cover up bad tasting food." you giggled.
"Or you could simply not eat said bad tasting food." he told her with one brow raised and the corner of his lip pulled up. "What about you?"
"Sauerkraut. I hate that stuff with a fiery passion. The head mother at the orphanage used to give us that shit constantly and I refused to eat it, went on a hunger strike and everything." you told him, hearing him chuckle. Looking out at the beach you smiled at the sight of the tiny sea turtles that were digging their way out of the nest and awkwardly moving towards the shore.
Noticing what had caught her eye he moved them to the large rocks to sit on so she could watch them. Thinking on something he lit his cigar and inhaled a large breath of smoke, thinking on how to ask, "You told me that the owner of the bar, Vick, had saved your life, what did you mean?"
Biting your lip you kept your eyes on the turtle hatch-lings. "Well I told you I got in trouble stealing food and stuff... when I was a teenager I was living on the streets, I'd steal food and clothes, I was barely making it by when winter came, One night I got desperate, I was freezing and tired and hungry so I sneaked into the bar and found the stock room. Vick used to cook every now and again so there was a little bit of food there and it was warm. Before I knew it I had fallen asleep. When morning came I left before he got there but at closing time I sneaked back in again. Did this for four nights in a row. On the fifth night I walked into that stockroom and found a plate of food sitting there along with a blanket and pillow set up on a small cot. I was so scared, he knew I was staying there, that I was breaking in and I was certain it was all just some trick and he would call and have me arrested. you told him and then grinned, "But he didn't. When I went to leave he was sitting at the bar and asked me how the food was." Shrugging your shoulders you watched the turtles disappear into the water. "He gave me a job, set me up in that house I was living in and took the rent out of my check. He helped me get on my feet and start my own life."
Furrowing his brows he glanced down at her and felt a ache in his chest at the thought of her like that. "He sounds like he was a kind man." he said lowly.
"He was." you nodded. Taking a deep breath you looked up to him, "So what is you plan to do now? I heard Bonez say something to you about a crew, planning on getting Baroque Works back together, Mr. 0?" you asked him with a grin.
Raising a brow he huffed out, "No."
"Aww but I liked Bon Clay, he's so funny."
"He's an imbosol." he said with a roll of his eyes and heard her giggle lightly. "Who was your least favorite of my employees?"
Tilting your head you raised your brows, "I wasn't really too fond of any of them except for Bon Clay, Bonez and Miss Goldenweek. I really didn't like Mr. 3 or Miss merry Chirstmas though."
Humming he nodded and continued puffing on his cigar. Seeing all the turtles gone he stood and held his hand out ot help her down.
Placing your hand in his huge on you thanked him as he helped you down.
"Come, I want to show you something." he told her.
Choosing to walk closer to the water this time you grinned at the feel of the sand beneath your toes. "What the devil fruit you ate look like?" you asked as you walked beside him.
"Roundish with a bumpy texture, about the same color as sand. Tasted horrible, probably the worst thing I have ever eaten."
"Bet you wished you had some ketchup then huh?"
Laughing he heard her giggling beside him and licked his lips. "The man's clothes you let me borrow, you said he was your ex, what was his name?" he asked.
Shocked by his question you flicked your brows but focused on the little waves kissing your feet. "John."
John. What kind of name was John? "What happened between you both?"
Licking your lips you felt a blush tint your cheeks, you could lie, he wouldn't know the difference but you didn't want to lie to him, as far as you knew he had never lied to you. Taking a deep breath you looked out towards the sea. "He was ready for intimacy, I wasn't."
That had not been what he was expecting. Glancing to her out of the corner of his eye he saw her eyes focused on the sea. He found himself biting down on his cigar as a strange feeling bubbled inside of his gut. "How long were you together?" he gritted out, trying to keep his voice void of the emotion he was feeling.
"A couple months." you shrugged, wrapping your arms around your body when the wind picked up.
Frowning he lifted his chin, "He expected that after only two months?" he scoffed.
"I guess we both had different ideas about what we wanted. Should have known better anyway." you told him with a huff.
"Why do you say that?"
"Nina is the one who convinced me to give him a shot. He was her cousin and he only came down every two weeks. I'm pretty sure you know more about me than he did."
Well that made him feel a little better but still, the knowledge that this man had tried to get her into bed with him made his temper flare. Looking back down at her and seeing her arms wrapped around her body and the dress blowing in the wind he removed his coat and folded part of it down before placing it over her shoulders.
Gasping a little at the heavy weight you looked to see he had put his coat on your shoulders. Looking up to him you furrowed your brows and went to give it back to him but he only it around you.
"I don't need you getting sick." he told her in a deep voice, leaving no room for discussion. When she stopped fighting he finally glanced down at her and felt that warmth spreading, his heart beating a little quicker. Something about the sight of her tiny form wrapped in his too large coat did something to him. Adjusting the cigar he looked up as a shadow came over the beach some and saw y/n look up at the ship. "That is my next plan." he told her and saw her look up to him. Grinning he wrapped his arm around her, "Don't scream." was all he said before he was lifting them up onto the empty deck.
Gasping you tensed up as the sand flew around you but did as he said and didn't scream. As soon as you were on the deck of the ship you watched his body reform to stand beside you, his arm still holding you in his side. " A little more warning next time if you please." you told him and saw him smile. Looking around the dark, empty desk you saw it was all mostly dark wood. "Would you be surprised if I told you I had never been on a ship before?" you said in a soft voice.
Raising his brows he slowly removed his hand from her side and watched as she cautiously walked towards the railing. Moving beside her he saw her eyes meet his, "Then allow me to give you the grand tour my dear." placing his hand on her back to start leading her around his new ship.
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crapitskizaru · 3 years
Text
For Everything. (X Drake x Hawkins)
Summary: Drake cannot bear with the past mistakes catching up to him anymore. He receives a Tarot reading from his one and only friend among the Beast Pirates. 
Warning: Wano setting so possible spoilers. And after catching up with most of the anime...I just had to do this. 
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The small room was shrouded in darkness. Only a single source of light remained - the man observed as the trail of smoke curled upwards from the candle.
He was scared. The cold fear crawled underneath his skin and confused his senses. He tried to reach back into his past, to remember what led him to this miserable point. Not many memories were left to conjure up in order to answer the persisting questions.
A quiet voice in his head kept reminding him that the end draws near, that death lurks even in the shadowed corners of his room, waiting to pounce and take his life.
The man didn’t want to die just yet. Not one person would remember him fondly if he did - he needed more time to fix his mistakes. The main issue was, however, that for a single mistake in the past he had to spend years in the present, desperately trying to turn it all around.
His eyes landed on the open journal on his desk. If he died now… There was a chance someone might find his notes and read about the crimes and sins he regretted more than anything in the world. He could try to persuade his own self that he was used, manipulated, forced to kill. But it certainly didn’t persuade his aching heart.
Should he tell him? Tell him everything? But what if he turns on him, and Drake will be left with enemies on both sides of the conflict? That would serve no one.
He swiftly got up and started pacing across the room. The most disturbing thought was the one that kept telling him there was no right thing to do. Both the Marines and the forces of the Emperor were committing to the wrong ideas, their hatred for each other only adding fuel to the fire of the looming war.
How could everyone be so short-sighted? Serving vicious men in power with only their own interests in mind. But then again, Drake shouldn’t be the one to judge. Everyone else must have had their reasons to do it, just like he did.
His cover will be blown, sooner or later. And then he will be left on the utter mercy of the Beast Pirates, no longer of any use to the Marines.
Drake closed the journal. He had to tell him. There was no other choice. Like an enslaved animal in a cage, no matter which side he turned to, there was always the cold steel of bars in front of him. And so his heart led him to the only path left to take - towards one sole friend; a friend he was going to lose at the end of that same night.
Gripping the journal, he left his room. No explanation or reasoning came to his mind, but he kept going. If he stopped now, he knew he wouldn’t find the strength to try it again - and so, he kept going.
Already, the shadows of the night seeped through the windows of the corridor. The Land of Wano had rarely been at peace, but at that moment it seemed like the whole world was calm, preparing for slumber.
Drake stood before the door, wondering where to start the conversation. Should he confess everything right away? Or paint a whole picture first? He figured that a start with a knock on the door should be the best option.
Before he raised his hand, the door opened.
“How long are you going to stand here for?” Hawkins asked. “I almost started placing bets with myself. So far, it’s been at least five minutes.”
“You’ve seen me in your cards?”
“No. Your shadow was visible from under the door.”
“Oh.”
Drake sent him a quick glance. The flowing hair he never got to touch, the piercing eyes, the regal expression on his face - merely looking at him was becoming painful.
He tightened his grip on the journal. With all the sweat he was producing, it was more than possible that all of the ink will get washed away soon.
“Drake? Can I help you?”
“Hm? Oh right. Yes. Yes, you can. Please.”
Hawkins bowed his head. “Very well then. Come in.”
You will hate me before this night ends, Drake thought, entering the cabin.
It was a lot brighter than his own, he had to admit that. At least two dozen candles were lit, placed on every possible surface - the floor, the chest of drawers, the windowsill, and the huge desk in the middle of the room, covered with piles of documents. Drake wondered how it was possible that they still hadn’t caught on fire.
It felt cozy and comfortable, at least in comparison to his own dark, lifeless, austere excuse for a cabin.
“I’m guessing you want to know what the cards say.” Hawkins sat behind the desk and gestured for Drake to take the chair across him. “Took you long enough to finally ask. It’s not like I charge for it, you know that.”  
“Actually, I’m here for something else-”
“Sit down.”
Drake sat down. Annoying his friend needlessly before he even starts to confess would only make this harder. With a sigh, Drake slid his journal across the desk, unable to look Hawkins in the eye.
“What’s this?”
“A matter I came to you with. It’s…I figured it’d be easier for me to write it all, rather than say it out loud.”
“First, the cards.”
“But-”
“Draw three. Left hand.”
Drake sighed again and drew three cards from the deck. The very same deck that he’d seen in use so many times - when Hawkins used his power, the cards glowed in creepy blue and usually meant bad news for either the enemy or Hawkins himself. Drake wasn’t very fond of that deck of cards.
“The Hierophant. Reversed. The Hanged Man. And the Knight of Pentacles.”
“You don’t seem happy with that.”
“I’m rarely happy,” Hawkins murmured, frowning. “You carry a lot of guilt and shame. Your actions don’t correspond with your values, which causes you to be at constant war with yourself.”
An awkward silence took over.
“Is that it?” Drake asked after a while.
“No. The Hanged Man means you’re stuck in a situation you desperately want to get out of. Think of it as being locked in a cell. In order to escape this stagnancy, you either have to make a firm decision or try to make peace with yourself. Let the events unfold, and maybe the cell door will open unassisted.”
“So you’re saying… When I’m locked in prison, I should just wait long enough and the lock will unlatch.”
Hawkins sent him a tired stare. “No, that’s not it. I’m saying if you try to calm your inner conflicts or attempt to solve some of them, your path will appear on its own.”
“What if I’m unable to do that?”
“This card right here-,” Hawkins continued without an answer, patting a card with a depiction of a knight on a black horse. “- could mean your difficulty in expressing emotions. One of the reasons for that might be a problematic relationship with your father figure.” A short silence followed that statement. “The card also paints you as a reliable, patient, and loyal man. I don’t know about the loyal part…”
Drake felt the tips of his ears catch on fire - the heatwaves suddenly erupting throughout his whole body made him consider taking off his leather jacket, but he discarded that idea at once.
“…since you’re a former Rear Admiral turned pirate, but I’d say the rest is accurate.” Hawkins looked him in the eye. “You are reliable. You don’t back away when a fight turns out to be inevitable. I know I can count on you.”
It was at that exact moment when Drake started regretting his choice at confessing. How could he admit treason to his one and only friend? Under his heavy stare, Drake felt worse than he had for a long time.
“I think you overestimate me,” he whispered.
“I think you underestimate yourself, Drake. And downgrade your morals.”
Drake shifted uncontrollably in his seat, making it screech. “You don’t know a thing about my morals.”
Hawkins smirked and quickly shuffled the cards. “Draw one. Right hand.”
“Listen, I didn’t come here for a lecture.” Drake stood up with haste, suddenly filled with determination. “I don’t fully…grasp the idea behind those cards, or the power you actually have over them. But I’m almost sure those pieces of paper can’t help me. At this point, I have no idea what can. I will be going now. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He reached for the journal, but Hawkins grabbed it first. His red eyes were calm but cold; tiny candle flames reflected in them, giving him an unearthly look.
“You seek help. You came to me, and since cards are my biggest asset, I’m doing my best to guide you. But it won’t bear any results without cooperation from your side.”
Drake’s hands gripped the back of the chair, knuckles turning white from strain. The man locked his eyes on one of the candles until his vision blurred, and the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding released slowly.
“I’m not judging you, Drake. I would be a fool and a hypocrite if I did. We all make terrible mistakes. Let me help you fix yours. Now, in the present,” Hawkins paused. “Draw a card.”
He couldn’t back out now. He couldn’t lie to his friend anymore, not after what he’d just heard. This was the only way. Drake drew a card from the very top of the deck. Immediately after his touch, it started glowing in blue.
Claiming back his previous seat, Drake stared at his colleague, trying to imprint his majestic features in his mind. After all, he wasn’t sure whether he’ll see those flowing hair ever again. Or that tattooed cross on his neck. He had always been fond of it.
The blue glimmer accentuated the sharp lines of his face, now furrowed in silent focus.
“I’ll be honest, you’re starting to freak me out a bit,” Drake said.  
“You drew The Lovers. Reversed.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad.”
Hawkins lifted his gaze and started absent-mindedly fiddling with one of the flames. His fingers caressed them as if they radiated no heat, and then, with one swift movement, he extinguished the light.
Drake watched a smudge of smoke travel all the way towards the ceiling.
“You need to accept that your present is the result of the choices that you’ve made a long time ago. Embrace your past. Only then you will be able to move forward.” Hawkins paused as if considering whether he should continue or not. “It’s also a rather strong indicator of you harboring feelings for your colleague. What’s most likely to be stopping you from engaging is fear. But don’t worry-”
Drake raised an eyebrow. Who in their right mind wouldn’t worry after all this information?
“- it’s not an unrequited love.”
Silence veiled the room once more, but Drake had no interest in disturbing it. Quite frankly, he wasn’t sure what to say.
Eventually, after most of the flames had died down and the wax stiffened on the candles, he stirred. He almost forgot about the true reason he came there in the first place - it was high time to get it over with.
“You may count on me during our battles, but I know you don’t fully trust me. It could be your cards hinting or solely your intuition…I want you to know you’re right for being wary of me. I came here to confess. And to apologize, if you’ll allow it. Everything is in the journal.”
Hawkins crossed his hands on his chest, leaning back.
“Everything? You wrote down your mistakes, both past and present?”
“Yes. My current…” Drake wavered, then gathered his composure. “- situation as well. It will most likely come to light anyway, but I’d rather confess it myself.”
“Good,” Hawkins replied nonchalantly, lifting up the journal. “I need you to watch closely now.”
So Drake watched. First, the man weighted the notebook in his hand, as if measuring its worth. And then he directed it over one of the flames, causing it to crackle and catch on fire.
“Wait, what are you doing? I want you to read it all. I need you to know.” Drake sat up straight, grasping the edge of the desk. “I can’t lie to you.”
“Then don’t,” Hawkins muttered, fascinated with the bright flame engulfing the papers in his hold. When it almost reached his fingers, he threw it on the desk. “Start again with me.”
The fire slowly turned the white pages dark and withered. As only ashes remained, Drake lifted his gaze.
“The desk could have caught on fire as well, did you take that into consideration?”
“I’m sure you would have come up with something.”
Drake wasn’t sure what to say. A simple ‘thank you’ wouldn’t suffice in this case. So instead, he reached out across the desk and touched Hawkins’ fingers with the tips of his own in silent gratitude. For everything.
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yoongi-sugaglider · 4 years
Text
Daegu Quarantine
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Jungkook x reader
Gang/ zombie apocalypse au
Warnings:
Gore, violence, blood, gun shot wounds, zombies, mention of drugs and drug dealing, weapons discharge in self defense, main character death, zombies, course language, zombies, drinking, did I mention zombies?
Summary:
They were the top of their game, known throughout the city as the smartest and most dangerous crew to ever hit the Daegu streets. But what’s going to happen when this group of young men encounter something right out of a horror film?
Word count: 2172
A/n: Omgg I am soooo sorry!! I forgot to add a read more T.T I fixed it I promise!!!
Part 13===Part 14===Part 15
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Jungkook was blind fury and rage, seeking those that'd dare harm what was his. He stalked through the halls, all caution thrown to the wayside as he mowed down body after body heading his way. It wasn’t the infected he was looking for though. 
“SEO EUN KWANG!!!” Jungkook’s voice rang through the hotel lobby, echoing in the empty expanse as he stopped in the center of the empty space to stare around.
“You know Boss…” A condescending voice drew his attention to the check in desk, “I never really wanted things to go down like this…”
Jungkook drew his gun to center mass, face a mask of emotionless disinterest at the man’s words. “Minhyuk and Sungjae are dead.” He growled the words out, vision tinted red at the corners as he watched Eun Kwang sigh and shake his head.
“I told them to take the night off. They weren’t even supposed to be at the warehouse. But you know how it is. Balancing out a mutiny with an apocalypse is just never going to go in anyone’s favor.”
“A fucking mutiny? What the hell is this, Pirates of the fucking Caribbean? You betrayed me Eun Kwang. After everything you fucking sell out piece of low end garbage. Not only that, you got HER shot.”
The older man shook his head once more with a laugh, leaning forward to place his elbows on the checkout desk’s high wall and tap at his temple with his gun. “Little dongsaeng, it was always in the cards for this to happen. You were just too blind to see that one little boy from Busan could never handle running the entirety of Daegu. You dreamed big, yeah. But kid, this city was just too big for you.”
“What the fuck are you even talking about?” Jungkook stalked forward, arms never wavering as he sighted the gun right for the center of Eun Kwang’s forehead. “I never wanted to run this whole town. You fuckers put that on me. I just wanted to make enough to get by. Make sure my girl had everything she needed. None of that included taking over a damn thing!”
“Easy there little cowboy. Another step closer and my boys are gonna have to protect me and the last thing I wanna do is end up killing you.” Eun Kwang smirked as Jungkook halted in place, eyes darting around to spot three men stepping from the shadows, each with their guns aimed at him and almost manic grins gracing their faces.
***
Pain.
Everything was pain and screaming.
“You’ve got to get her to wake up!”
I couldn’t help but to groan, hands reaching out to grab the nearest person as I fought against the pressure held against my outer thigh.
“It hurts...make it stop it hurts!” I whimpered, blurry gaze taking in the worried faces of Seokjin and Yoongi who were working to hold me down. Rose’s face appeared above me, panicked as she shushed me and pressed down on my forehead to keep me still.
We were in a room of some sort, no longer in the hotel kitchen so I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been out cold. Cleaning supplies surrounded us but the pain in my chest and leg kept me from being able to take in any more information as Yoongi had renewed the pressure on the molten mass of ouch that was my thigh.
“Can’t...breath…” I whimpered out.
“Release the straps on her vest. The ceramic plates will have shattered, if she’s got any broken ribs it’s gonna get a lot worse for her.” The voice in my ear crackled to life, startling me as I struggled for a moment to register Jimin’s calm tones whispering in my ear.
Seokjin released my uninjured leg, moving to lift my upper body. The pressure on my chest increased, blinding me for a moment as my lungs decided they didn’t want to work. I stared up at the ceiling, mouth open in a silent scream and tears chasing each other down my cheeks as Jin unzipped my jacket and fumbled to release the straps that’d been holding my tactical vest together.
As the straps released air whooshed into my lungs and I let out a sob of relief, though it didn’t last long as a strange shifting in my chest caused more pain to shoot through me.
“F...fuck…” I coughed, turning my head in Rose’s lap and shutting my eyes as a wave of dizziness rolled over me.
“Alright, once she’s breathing better shift those plates around and strap her back in.” Jimin’s voice came again and I turned my head towards Jin, eyes wide as I shook my head desperately to stop him. But it didn’t matter, and deep down I knew it as Jin pulled the straps tight and snapped them back into place. The pressure was a bit better, but damn did it hurt.
“Yoongi, have you got your silencer barrel on you?”
Yoongi grunted in reply, turning with one hand still holding pressure on my leg as he unscrewed the barrel from his sniper rifle. 
“I’d tell you to fire off a round or two but...not now…”
“I know what you’re gonna say…” Yoongi shifted upwards on his knees, placing the silencer on my chest for a moment and digging into his pocket. His hand reappeared and I watched on in a confused haze of pain and worry.
He nodded to Jin who groaned to himself as he picked up the silencer and held it delicately out to Yoongi. The silent assassin reached out, flicking a lighter and producing a flame that licked at the cold steel of the barrel.
My eyes widened in panic and I began to struggle, knowing deep down exactly what they were about to do.
“Keep her still.” Yoongi growled and Rose rushed to comply.
She grabbed my flailing arms, pinning them down to my sides as she shifted forward to keep a better hold on me.
Me struggling didn’t matter.
The pain no longer mattered.
The...the smell of my own flesh searing didn’t matter.
Only the bliss of one final scream chased closely by unconsciousness.
***
“Oh god…” Rose retched, losing her grip on the limp woman as Yoongi continued his grim work.
It really took no more than a moment to cauterize the bullet wound. It stretched less than 3 inches along the expanse of her outer thigh, but the blood loss alone would have caused quite an issue later on, not to mention the risk of infection. Yoongi treated the wound as best he could, wrapping it in the remains of the shirt Jungkook had tossed them before they’d locked themselves inside the supply closet of the hotel. 
Seokjin sniffed, covering his nose with the back of his wrist as he stared forlorn down at the cold sweat that glistened from the unconscious form of one of his favorite people. He shook his head, grinding his teeth before tapping the inner earpiece to signal to Jimin they’d finished the work.
The haggard doctor sighed through the communication device. “She should be safe to move. Just try not to jostle her ribs too much. I take it what Yoongi did made her pass out?” 
Rose whimpered, fingernails digging painful crescents into the palms of her hands as she struggled to regain control of the tears flowing down her cheeks. True, she’d been desperate for rescue the moment the news started rambling about people eating each other but...this? This wasn’t what she’d hoped for. She’d never wanted any of them getting hurt.
“I’ll hand things over to Tae, I’ve got to go get the infirmary prepped for when you guys get here. Try not to get hurt in the meantime…”
Yoongi grunted, eyes focused in on the hasty bandages as if waiting for them to bleed through. Taehyung’s voice returned, strained as if he’d been crying though none of them commented on his tone of voice.
“Alright, I’ve got visuals on Boss and Hoseok. The alley looks clear from this angle, along with the side streets that’ll lead you guys back in this direction.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Boss, I know you want to go after them...but we’ve got to get her back home. Yoongi hyung and Jin hyung could manage it solo but not without risking getting hurt or worse..infected…”
There was a brief moment of silence before Hoseok’s voice crackled over the line. “We’re headed back. Get ready to move out.” 
Yoongi nodded to the two figures either side of him, tucking the silencer barrel into a side pocket on his black cargo pants before handing the rifle itself over to Seokjin.
The trio were silent aside from the occasional sniffle from Rose but eventually they managed to pack as much as they could away, checking to ensure their weapons were all reloaded in the process. 
Yoongi worked gingerly, lifting y/n’s limp form into his arms bridal style and turning to nod to Jin. A single tap to the earpiece and the others were alerted that they were ready to move out and head home.
***
“Hobi hush. I’ve already told you none of the wounds are life threatening. If you wake the Boss I swear to all the high heavens that I’m blaming it on you and running.”
The whispering voices woke me, a welcome balm to the chaos that had been my nightmares.
Before opening my eyes and alerting them to my consciousness I took a moment to take stock of what I was feeling. The throbbing in my leg had gone away, probably due to whatever medication Jimin had managed to get in me. The weight alone let me know that it’d been treated and wrapped, though the weight in my chest hadn’t eased much.
I groaned, shifting a bit in an attempt to get a bigger breath of air. This got the attention of the two whispering voices which quickly stopped talking followed by the distinctive sound of shuffling bodies. After a moment a small hand slipped around mine, lifting it slightly as Jimin’s voice followed.
“Hey Boss Lady, you waking up?”
I peeled my eyelids open, one at a time before blinking to clear the blur and focusing on the two concerned faces hovering over me.
“Mmm...think I’m awake, though somehow I feel like I should be far more grateful for that stockpile of pain meds you like to keep around.”
Jimin gave me a shaky grin and a sniffle from beside him caught my attention. Lifting my head slightly I caught the sight of a forlorn Hoseok, eyes puffy and the normally sunshine glow of his grin nowhere to be seen. I let go of Jimin’s hand, fingers wiggling to catch Hobi’s attention.
“Hey, I’m here. I’m okay I promise.”
The poor boy whimpered, lower lip sticking out as he grabbed my hand in both of his. Closing his eyes he leaned forward, forehead pressed to my fingers as he sniffled his way out of the tears.
“Don’t...don’t do that to me again Boss Lady. I don’t like it when you get hurt….” 
I shook my head, giving a short laugh that only served to leave my head swimming as whatever was going wrong with my ribs shifted. “Ho...boy…” Releasing Hobi’s hand I arched my back as best I could, inhaling deeply and wincing as something strange popped in my chest.
“Alright now.” Jimin muttered, pushing me back down onto the bed with a frown. “I know it’s hard to breathe, but try not to breathe too deeply. You want those ribs to heal up properly you’re gonna wanna give them a chance to settle back where they belong.” 
I nodded, though relaxing back to where I’d been laying was harder than I wanted. I glanced to my other side, realising that the reason I hadn’t been able to move that hand was because a pair of incredibly toned arms was wrapped around it and a shaggy head of hair was currently pinning it to the bed.
I turned to the other two boys, arching an eyebrow at them in questioning.
“He hasn’t left your side since you all got back. Course...he hasn’t said much either.” Jimin sighed, rubbing his temples to release some of his pent up stress and then carding a hand through his hair. 
“Mmm… how long was I out?”
“Half a day. The Boss only just passed out about an hour ago though…”
I nodded, gaze returning sadly to the softly snoring form beside me. My heart ached for him, even knowing I was the one injured not him. I waved my hand, giving the two boys a soft smile to let them know I’d be alright on my own.
They left, Hobi sniffling the whole way as Jimin softly closed the door behind him. It was better to let Jungkook sleep. Things would run just fine without him for a while.
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Note
Ahim, Doc, Gai (the less aggressive half of the gokaigers), E
Anon, you should know that the way you phrased this prompt ended up heavily influencing what I did with it.
E is for equal
They drop anchor and the first thing Doc says is, “We need groceries.”
Luka groans. Joe says, quietly, “I have weapons maintenance to do.” Marvelous doesn’t respond at all, because he’s asleep in his chair.
Ahim, though, stands up immediately. “I will accompany you.” She’s already pulling on her gloves. “I also need to make some purchases, I’ve fallen behind in the ship’s mending. Gai, I’m going to require a large amount of fabric, will you also come with us, please?”
Gai beams at her. “I’d love to!”
--
The door slams open, and the whole room is filled with the delighted howl of, “We’re gonna be rich!”
Urak scowls. “Zou, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Bounties! Bounties on the hoof!” The door shuts, and Zou slumps back against it, panting, a wide grin on his face. “A red galleon just docked down at the port.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“You’re shitting me. There have to be other red galleons out there, you can’t have just spotted the Gokai Pirates.”
“Saw the insignia on the mainsail. Plain as fucking day. And get this, they’re split up, three of them went to go shopping. If we play this right, we can snag all of them and be swimming in zagins.”
There’s a long pause as Urak’s eyebrow goes up and up and up, and then he says, “You’re fucking serious. The Gokai Pirates are actually in port.”
“Would I lie to you?”
The eyebrow goes up further. It’s well past the crown of Urak’s head now.
“Right, yeah, I’d lie to my head-mother if there was enough money in it. But look, I got a picture.” Zou fumbles in all four of his sleeves before producing his portable comm unit and pulling up the screen. “See, right, there’s the ship--”
“Fuck. That is the Gokai Galleon.”
“I told you--and there’s the three who got off.” A few button-presses, and three bounty notifications pull up along the side of the screen, each picture matching the face of one of the people disembarking. “So that one there’s Don Dogoier, he’s a famous coward--”
--
Doc frowns at the various fish on ice in the market stall. “None of this looks like the best of today’s catch.”
The fishmonger just gives a rippling shrug. “Should’ve shown up earlier if you wanted the best of it.”
“That would’ve been impossible, we just arrived in port.” Doc stares at the fishmonger thoughtfully for a moment. “In any case, I know that’s not all you’ve got, where’s the good stuff?”
--
“And that one there’s the crown princess of Famille--”
“The planet with all the vineyards, the one where rich idiots used to go on vacation? Didn’t that one get destroyed?”
“Yeah, ages ago. Anyway, she’s cute for a hominid, I guess, but from the looks of her I’m surprised she can even lift that little umbrella she’s got.”
--
Ahim adjusts her grip on her parasol and nods cheerfully. “Yes, this is precisely what I’m looking for. I’ll require, hm...eight meters of the pale pink silk, ten meters of the light white cotton and seven of the heavy, and four meters of both in black, four meters each of the blue, red, and green satins there and three of the silver, and--oh, lovely, is that a wool there? Five meters of the yellow wool. And six meters of that canvas, the undyed one.” As the cloth merchant’s assistants scramble to begin cutting, she taps her chin with one gloved finger and then says, “And tools and notions, where do you keep those?”
“Right over here, Your Highness.” The cloth merchant has a look on their face like they’ve just struck gold as they start pulling out trays. “Was there anything in particular you were looking for?”
--
“Who the hell is...” Urak squints at the bounty notice and reads, haltingly, “Ekarry Gae?”
Zou shrugs. “No clue. Some hick they picked up recently, barely has a bounty to speak of. Looks like he weighs fifteen zagrets soaking wet.”
--
To his credit, Gai only stumbles slightly when he’s been loaded down with Ahim’s packages. Then, looking across the market, he brightens. “Hey, I can’t read that script, but that looks like a grocer, am I right? The one next to the vegetable stand?”
Ahim peers at the stall he’s pointing to. “Dry goods and confections, it says.”
“Even better! Here, Don’s still haggling with the butcher, let’s walk over there together, I’m going to get ingredients to make some candies for us. I haven’t had a chance to make candy in ages. Don’s going to want to buy vegetables anyway, he can meet us over there.”
--
“So this’ll be a breeze, then. They’ll have to go back through the port outskirts to get to their ship, we’ll get the drop on them...” Urak frowns at the map Zou’s pulled up before tapping a spot, “here, it’s got some good cover. Worst case scenario, we get three decent bounties.”
Zou nods enthusiastically. “Best case scenario, we can use them as hostages to draw out the other three and then we’ll be in for the real money.” There’s a symphony of popping noises as he cracks his knuckles, all twenty-eight of them. “We’re gonna be rich.”
--
Laden with groceries, fabric, and two different packages of magazines and books, Doc, Ahim, and Gai make their way back to the Galleon. It’s been a long shopping trip; the planet’s first sunset has nearly begun. Ahim hums cheerfully as she walks, parasol propped on her shoulder. “This has been a lovely day, I look forward to the work ahead of me.”
There’s a footstep behind them, and an unpleasantly damp and crackly voice says, “Isn’t going to be anything ahead of you, Your Highness.”
All three of them stop dead. Doc and Gai both turn slightly to look behind them, conveniently placing their backs to Ahim’s as someone else steps out in front of her. This one doesn’t sound nearly so wet, but does have four arms and three legs, so it’s sort of a different concern. “Nothing but a Zangyack prison cell and then execution.”
And Gai immediately, palpably relaxes. “Oh. You’re interested in our bounties, right?”
The damp one, whose single eye is a vomitous shade of orange, says, “Obviously.”
Doc sighs. “I guess we should have expected something like this.” He glances around for a clear spot and then, when he finds one, carefully sets down his bags. “They have gone up since the last time we made port here.”
“What in the hells made you three decide to go out without your scary buddies?” says the one with four arms.
“Oh, dear.” Ahim sets down her parasol and her own bags next to Doc’s, and then helps Gai put down his before taking off her white lace gloves. “I’m afraid you’re very mistaken, sir.”
An eyebrow arches up and up, past the top of the damp one’s head, as it says, “Mistaken? About what?”
She beams at it. “You seem to think we’re not the frightening ones.”
“Yeah.” Gai rolls his neck. “It’s sort of funny, actually.”
Doc sighs. “Funny, they say. I need to get this meat into the refrigerator, I don’t have time for this.”
--
Navi shrieks, “They’re back!” and Marvelous doesn’t quite rush to relieve Doc of his packages, although he does move at a speed slightly above a walk.
“What the hell happened to you?” he says, eyeing the smudge of dirt on Doc’s cheek as he takes the packages of meat. “Is that blood in your hair?”
“Oh, it’s definitely blood, but don’t worry about it.” Gai is unloading folded lengths of fabric into one of the cabinets at Ahim’s cheerful direction. There’s a long cut on his forehead, and another one in the sleeve of his jacket, neither of which he seems concerned by. “It’s not his.”
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