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dat-town · 3 years

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not gonna miss this chance

Characters: Han Seojun & soloist!female reader

Genre: fluff

Setting: true beauty au, set a year after the tv show’s ending timeline

Summary: Your career is on the verge of ending, hence your management puts you up to do a duet with the infamous Han Seojun. You have heard too many rumours about him to keep track of and yet, none of them could have prepared you for the feelings that came with meeting him.

Words: 4.1k

Self indulgent little snippet because he deserves happiness too.

You had heard of Han Seojun before meeting him, of course you had. Everybody who was in the industry had heard of the hot trend of a Newstagram star-turned idol and his band's shining debut from a year ago. They were told to have snatched teenage girls hearts all over Korea with their good looks and soulful music. You had heard their title track and you had to admit it was nice but nice wasn't enough in a cut-throat industry like entertainment.

Look at you, starting training at twelve, debuting at fifteen and now barely twenty-one you were on the verge of becoming a thrown away doll. Once you had been called cute and the it girl of your generation and now? People were saying you got boring just because your music had matured. Gosh, you couldn't keep singing about first love like your hit song had been for the rest of your life for god's sake. Your last album had been a flop, your company had been losing money and you were still afraid that even with a year left of your contract, they would cut you. But your manager had begged them for a chance and here it was: a collaboration with the newest love of Korea.

But the thing was, Han Seojun had quite a reputation and you didn't know who to believe. Some said he was well-mannered and hard-working. Others gossiped that he was always flirting with his makeup artists and Chen claimed he had been rude to her even when he had just been a ‘nobody’. Not that you were particularly fond of Chen either but as a fellow solo female singer you were a tad bit worried how the infamous singer would treat you.

Well, standing in front of Move Entertainment, you were just about to find out. Taking a shallow breath you followed your manager's lead, bowing to the receptionist and getting into the elevator after taking your visitor's badge. You had heard the company has gone through many changes after the executives were replaced due to the revealed Seyeon scandal but everything looked expensive, shiny and new, unlike in your small agency.

“Hey, I’m Lim Heekyung, nice to meet you. Seojun will be in a minute, too,” a woman in a pantsuit walked up to you on the right floor with a confident smile as she introduced herself. She led you to a meeting room which was apparently customized for a few people only and started preparing papers. She looked excited which was a relief and nice to see, at least someone from Move Entertainment was happy for this project apparently. You were a bit afraid they would see you like a leech, trying to cling onto their new star’s popularity.

“Shall we start? Seojun is a fan of dramatic entrances anyways,” Miss Lim laughed joyfully as if it wasn’t new to her that the idol didn’t make it on time. Ah yeah, you had heard rumours saying that he had something on the company and that was why they were so lenient with him.

You sat in silence, let your manager do the talk about the collaboration project. Seojun could play the guitar, you could play the piano, apparently it was perfect for a ballad duet, though if you used instruments yourself it added to the preparations time. But luckily, there was a songwriter named Leo at the company who had already sent in a few samples specifically for Seojun, so you didn’t have to start from zero.

“Ah, I see you started without me. What did I miss?” A tall boy opened the door wide and flipped down onto the chair across you casually. He had grown into his lanky limbs and with those wide shoulders hugged by the leather jacket, helix earrings in one ear and soft brown hair brushed to one side, it wasn’t a surprise how many female fans swooned over him. But there were a lot of handsome boys in the business, just his looks – no matter how confident he was in them based on the way he carried himself – wouldn’t make a difference.

Miss Lim patiently let Seojun know about the advances and only when she mentioned your name, did the boy glance at you. His dark brown eyes had a sharp form, just as piercing as his gaze, but the cunning smile spreading over his lips softened it a bit. He looked at you as if he wanted to see through you, to figure out how he should have approached you. You expected a snarky or arrogant comment, but in the end, he just flashed a blinding smile at you, one you could see on his posters, before turning back to Miss Lim.

“What’s the schedule?” he asked simply and you both were notified about the deadline of deciding and finalizing the song, the dates of planned recording sessions and the photoshoot. Since there would be no promotion period, it all would be done within a month and half from start to finish. You were a bit relieved hearing that and leave Move Entertainment without any confrontation.

You thought you were good at masking your wary feelings since the further meetings went well and the first recording session went okay-ish. Although both of you had been a bit scolded by the producer for not putting enough feelings into your singing. He claimed that the demo sent by Leo was much more emotional which made Seojun scoff and mumble under his nose. The PD called it for a day, making you promise to practice for next time and one by one they all left. Your manager told you that he would bring the car while you refresh yourself in the bathroom, so you really didn’t expect anyone to wait for you when you stepped out of the restroom, much less Han Seojun.

"Spit it out," he bit out barely glancing your way as he leaned against the corridor’s wall.

"What?" you spluttered as you were really taken aback by his out of blue appearance and question. The guy let out a tired sigh at your obliviousness and pushed himself away from the wall just to walk up to you, towering over your height with his.

"You look at me as if I killed your hamster or something. Which rumour about me bothers you? I fucking can't keep walking on eggshells around you, especially when it's just the two of us," he tsked and you gulped at the sudden called out. You didn’t think it bothered him, or that he was considerate enough to ‘walk on eggshells around you’, you merely thought he was so distant from everybody. It was still better than what Chen had told you.

"Oh, I… nothing. It's stupid. Sorry," you mumbled, feeling embarrassed for your your actions but Seojun apparently wasn’t satisfied without a real answer as he carried on:

"I didn't bully kids in high school but I threatened ones that deserved it, I didn't only get a pity chance from the entertainment, one of our makeup artists is actually one of my best friends, I'm not…"

"Chen told me you are rude and arrogant and have no respect for girls," you blurted out to stop him from speaking because you felt like you didn’t deserve to hear all that. He didn’t owe you any explanation for the way he was. You were just co-workers for a project after all, you had no place in his life, nor he had in yours, so he shouldn’t have been that bothered by your opinion but you understood that he felt uncomfortable due to your silent accusations.

Hearing your hasty interruption, the singer scoffed, a laugh-like sound leaving his mouth.

"Well, I have no respect for girls like Chen who harass my friends and turn their lives into hell just to go on a date with me," he said and it made you blink slowly.

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh. Check your facts before you go around believing such crap," Seojun stepped back with a roll of his eyes.

The whole situation made you feel made about how you acted, so you wished to apologise but it fell from your lips all too carelessly: "Sorry, I was just worried. This is my last chance, so–"

"Last chance?" the guy quirked a brow at you, curious but you quickly waved his question away.

"Nevermind, I just need this song to do well."

"Of course, it will. I'm Han Seojun, it will turn to gold under my hands," he grinned and made eccentric gestures as if he was about to do magic. You couldn't help a smile. “Or well, vocal chords.”

And turn it to gold, he did.

The rest of your recording sessions went smoother, even the previously grumpy PD complimented your for the development in your chemistry. Funny, you wouldn’t have thought that the wall pulled up between the two of you mattered that much, but at least you didn’t have a knot in your stomach, nor did you worry about every small thing you did around Han Seojun. He also acted more casual, more playful, joking around when both of you had a bit of time to take a breather. He snapped silly pictures, showed off with his height, smirked when he got too close but despite all his bravado and lowkey flirting, you believed even he wouldn’t have jeopardised his career over something like this.

Maybe that's why wrapping up the recording felt a tad bit weird: you got used to his presence, his jokes, his beautiful, deep voice that you could have fallen asleep to. Sure, sometimes he was cocky, a bit rough around the edges but he was a great singer and a fun guy. The project seemed to work out well and you loved it a lot, so you hoped the listeners would appreciate it as well.

But before all that you had one photo shoot together for the promotional pictures and the single's cover. You were grateful for the simple pastel colour background and elegant setting. The warm light latte colour and the clock in the background really fit the song's vibe. Luckily, your dress was decent and pretty as well, you didn't have to feel uncomfortable in it at least. However, you didn’t expect that happy yelp coming from one of the makeup artists stepping into the dressing room. You turned to face the girl, wondering whether she was your fan judged by her excitement.

"Oh my! I'm so happy to finally meet you! Seojun told us about you so much!" she beamed at you which obviously took you back. Well, that you didn’t expect at all. He spoke of you to others? Ah. Apparently to the makeup artist who was most probably that certain one of his best friends he had told you about?

"Don't exaggerate, Imju, I mentioned her like what… once?" Seojun walked in on cue. He rolled his eyes and cleared his throat, trying to avert the topic. "How's Suho?"

You had know idea who that said guy was but after a moment or two you could breathe properly once again while listening to their chatting.

“Just the usual. He’s excited about your duet.”

“Of course, he is,” Seojun grinned, a bit snarky but you could hear the proud undertones of it. When he looked at you, you were surprised by him leaning close though as he quieted down until only you could hear it. “Don’t worry, Jugyeong is really good and just stop her if she gets too gossip-y.”

“Are you talking about me behind my back, hah, Han Seojun?” The pretty girl called Jugyeong raised her fist as if she was about to hit the idol but he just laughed it off and left you two alone when he was hurried onto the set to start with his individual shoots.

“Have you known each other for a long time?” you couldn’t help but wonder as you were seated to get your makeup from her.

“Ah, almost 4 years, I think. We went to high school together. Plus, he’s best friends with my boyfriend. Though, they are always bickering like a married couple,” Jugyeong chuckled joyfully as she started with the cushion. You closed your eyes, listening as she kept going on about the time when Seojun had been obsessed with his motorbike, getting into trouble with his mother. It was strange hearing about a whole other side of him, mama's boy but the image tugged on your mouth, making you smile even though you weren't sure you had the right to know all that. You also learned that Seojun's sister was dating Jugyeong's brother and you felt so involved with the girl's trust albeit it was your last meeting, you were sure Seojun must have only told good things about you.

Hence, you felt shy under his knowing gaze when you walked out of the dressing room. He must have known that Jugyeong couldn't shut up for the life of her, so he looked a bit uncertain, too, stretching the back of his neck, forcing a cunning smile onto his smile when you took your place next to him.

To fit the ballad's theme, the setting was a piano decorated with flowers and you were instructed to sit beside him as if you were about to play a four hands piece. As you did what you had been told, you were very much aware of the way your arms brushed, his long fingers over the keys close to yours, his smile small but genuine.

"Great, great, guys! Someone help her onto the piano and Seojun, stand in front of her," the photographer directed the next scene but before any staff members would have rushed up to you, the singer next to you shushed them.

"I can do it," he insisted as he stood up and looked you in the eyes, silently asking for permission. You nodded while holding your breath back before Seojun put his hands on your waist above the fluffy tulle skirt part and counting on three, he lifted you onto the lid of the beautiful instrument.

You crossed your legs, watching in awe as your pink skirt fell down on waves but your breath hitched for an entirely different reason when you looked up, gaze meeting Seojun's feline eyes trained on you. You had never seen him look at you like that, lacking playfulness or suspicion or curiosity. He looked open, vulnerable, outright starstruck. Your lips parted meaning to ask something but your brain shut off when you heard the shutter of the camera go down and the director yelling compliments at you. It made you snap out of it and later, you blamed the evident blush on your cheeks on the makeup. Seojun blinked too, his guarded expression back in no time, finishing the photo shoot professionally, always lingering close to you, but never touching you. Even though you wouldn’t have minded.

"Hey," Seojun peeked into your dressing room just as you were about to leave, packing up, with a smile on his mouth and sparkles in his deep brown eyes. But unlike half an hour ago when he wore a fancy suit and looked at you like a prince would have looked at his princess, he acted just as casual as he looked in his denim jacket over dark tee. "Wanna grab something with me if you finished for today?"

His question took you back but first thing first you glanced towards your manager, eyes begging for permission which you had gotten with a sigh.

"Just be discreet and call me if you need me to pick you up," your manager shrugged, leaving you two alone with a knowing look that told you to be careful. You didn't need to be told though, you knew how much depended on the current public response to your image.

"Seems like a green light. Have you thought of anything specific?" you turned back to the boy with a subtle smile.

"Not really but I know a few less frequent, secluded places to avoid much talk about us," he said and you nodded, following his lead. Masks, caps and hoodies on, you barely talk on your way to the tent with the lovely ahjumma who welcomed Seojun (two heads taller than her) with a pinch of his cheeks and told you to get seated.

"Are you a regular here?" you inquire, carefully pulling down your mask since not many people are around.

"You could say that," the boy hummed letting you adjust to the place at your own pace, not pressuring you with extra reassessments about how safe it is there. Yet, he is so casual as if he wasn't afraid of a getting mobbed by Dispatch out of the blue. Not that it happened to you a lot of times but you heard stories and at such a crucial time in your career, you feared something like that more than anything.

"Do you want to come up to mine instead?" Seojun blurted out suddenly which made you wide eyed in a span of a moment as you splattered out a surprised yelp. "Come on, I don't mean anything by it. You just look really nervous being in the public," the singer said, his deep voice softening, soothing by the end and you needed to take a breather before answering. You didn't think it was so obvious but apparently you had never been a good liar with him.

In the end, you decided on going over to Seojun's place, so he asked the ahjumma to pack your food to go and you headed towards his flat a few blocks from the company. It was a small but cozy place, much softer and brighter than you expected, lots of pastels and photos of friends and family. While the boy busied himself in the kitchen, getting you plates, chopsticks and beer, you were encouraged to look around and you couldn't help but smile at his photos with not only his band members but high school friends, too. You had seen photos of his graduation with Jugyeong, then another one of his debut with her and another guy. He was a recurring person on a lot of pictures, so you assumed that he was the so-called Suho.

"He's Jugyeong's boyfriend," Seojun affirmed as he walked up to you which you acknowledged with a hum and smiled at his photos with his sister and mother. The makeup artist was right when she said he was only tough on the outside.

"You knew Seyeon?" you whispered as your gaze shifted of a picture of three boys smiling widely into the camera. The middle one was the talented boy you had known from the news of his committed suicide. Such a tragedy.

"Uhum. We were best friends. Him, Suho and me," Seojun nodded and without having to ask, he told you how they had gotten to know each other, what were their favourite past time activities and how they fell apart when he died. You could see he was hurting even now as he was talking about it, so you grazed your fingers against his knuckles as though to say you were there for him to listen, or whatever he needed.

Talking about his best friends and how a group of guys including someone named Chorong stuck by his side over the years warmed your heart. It was nice to know that not everyone had it as lonely as you who basically missed out on high school and memories from that time to be able to turn your dreams into reality. Your only friends were also in the industry but it made things both easier and harder.

"What about you? What did you mean by this being your last chance?" Seojun asked like a loaded gun but after everything he had just told you, you knew you could trust him with this and being in the industry for a while now, he must have understood, too.

You told him about the rising expectations, about your image and your company's ultimatum. It actually felt nice to talk about with someone other than your manager. Especially since Seojun seemed to understand exactly why you felt conflicted over the matter. You have given your youth to this dream of yours, so giving up on it would have felt like betraying yourself and everyone who believed in you but you weren't sure you could give it another 10 years of your life no matter how much you liked music. You had decent CSATs result, maybe you could have applied for a university program. Seojun even offered to arrange a meeting between you and Suho who was studying to become a proper songwriter.

You talked for hours and ate the tteokbokki even though it had gotten cold long ago and you couldn't remember when was the last time you had felt so light. You felt giddy even with just the tiny bit of alcohol in your system by the time you knew it was time for you to go.

Once you had felt relieved knowing that promoting your duet would be only one performance but recently, you started dreading the moment because that meant that you wouldn't have any more excuse to see Seojun. In the backstage, this time around you greeted Jugyeong like an old friend and teased to give Seojun a funny makeup before walking up to your own assigned staff members. Your look was full of sparkles and glow fitting the silver colour of your dress, completing the ethereal vibe off the stage you were going to do and the beautiful song you had grown to love so much you held it close to your heart. The last rehearsals went smoothly and if you noticed Seojun's gaze lingering a bit too long, you didn't comment on it.

"Are you nervous?" he asked before the final recording and you knew it would have been unreasonable to deny it, so you replied with a small smile.

"A bit."

"Don't be. You're pretty and you'll do amazing," he reassured you and the way he said those words oh so easy. As if they were natural. As if he believed in you and maybe this was all the reassurance you needed because when you walked up onto the stage, not taking your eyes off his, it felt like it was just the two of you there. All the stress about not being good enough, about being judged for who you were and what you wanted to do with your life was subsided as you focused on the moment, just to sing this one song with one while trying to fight your heart's crazy beating.

You didn't really have the luxury to have crushes. You had always been concentrated on your work, you couldn't let yourself have distractions, especially since love scandals always affected girl worse than guy. At least that was what you told yourself for always putting up a wall around you and guarding your heart all too well. But during the past few weeks, between playful or flirty remarks, between smiles and ruffling hair, Seojun took apart your wall brick by brick even if he wasn't aware.

So it might have been only a few days since you had last seen him but in that rare moment of boredom, alone in your room, you realized that you missed him. Hell, you liked him and the feeling made me want to scream into your pillow as if you were a silly teenager. As if on cue, your phone buzzed with a new message and seeing the KakaoTalk ID made you shy.

duet partner, han seo jun

so...

i've been thinking

you

sounds dangerous but ok

duet partner, han seo jun

don't get sassy with me, miss

you

what have you been thinking about?

duet partner, han seo jun

that i don't want to miss my chance

there's this girl i like

i thought of asking her out

do you think she would say yes?

you

oh. well... why wouldn't she?

i mean, you are talented, handsome, funny and reliable

duet partner, han seo jun

and what about my job? it's busy and a bit crazy

don't you think it would be unfair of me to ask?

you

I think you should let her decide that

duet partner, han seo jun

okay

are you free on friday?

you

um, sure?

duet partner, han seo jun

cool, then go on a date with me?

#han seo jun x reader #seojun x reader #han seojun #han seo joon #true beauty #stories #i just wanted to give him a happy end after ep16 #that's what this is about

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paterson-blue · 3 years

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Shadow of the Sea: Chapter 1

Summary: Kylo is used to being alone. It's how he's survived this long, in the cold ocean depths. He can take care of himself. Other creatures--other merfolk--are dangerous; he has the scars to prove it. Humans, however, are the worst of all. But one day, Kylo finds he has no other choice but to turn to one for help. The human he meets is nothing like he expects, and all he knows is he wants more. Is he willing to pay the price?

Word Count: 4,394

Warnings: fem!AFAB!reader, plot set up, kylo ren needs a hug confirmed, non-graphic descriptions of violence & bodily harm, brief mentions of blood & wounds, very vague medical descriptions lol, minor character death (happens off screen), oh but there's also one that happens on screen but it's brief, big time ocean nostalgia from your dear author— let me know if I need to add anything else!

A/N: Thank you @paper-n-ashes for beta reading! Icon behavior tbh.

Prefer AO3? I gotcha!

Kylo prided himself on his independence—his ferocity, his ability to fight his way out of every corner. His body was scarred and battle-hardened, but that didn’t matter. It was proof he was a survivor, and it’s not like he had anyone around him to care about his appearance. Most creatures he saw took one look at his massive form and ran.

He was intimidating, all muscle, his fins torn from previous fights. While his skin was pale, his scales were an onyx color; it made blending into the ocean depths easier. He couldn’t understand why merfolk’s standard of beauty was a brightly colored tail; didn’t it make camouflaging more difficult?

He guessed most merfolk didn’t care about that. They lived in large groups, colorful and cheerful and busy amongst other plant and animal life. Not many delved into the cold, murky areas Kylo had made his home. But he’d been there as long as he could remember, and there was no sense in changing things. He wouldn’t be welcome in the warmer waters anyway. They didn’t want him, and he didn’t want them.

So he kept away, and no one dared bother him. Those that did quickly learned not to. He had killed many creatures, and while it was all in defense, his reputation still preceded him. After all, he’d once fought one of the most dangerous predators the ocean knew, and he’d won.

He’d killed a human, after they’d captured him in their net. He’d overpowered them easily, yanked them from their boat into the water; he hadn’t even flinched when their little fishing knife plunged into his side. He’d watched with a furious gaze as the air left their lungs, their pathetic struggling eventually ceasing. Then he’d calmly cut himself loose from the netting. The knife wound had scarred over, but it was just one more to add to his collection.

Yes, Kylo prided himself on his abilities. He had no fear, no weakness; he never ran from a fight.

He was running now.

He’d been foolish. He should have realized why his normal hunting grounds had been so devoid of fish for the past few days—he should have seen the signs, should have been more careful. But hunger makes you desperate; makes you stupid. He hadn’t been paying attention, too focused on the singular fish he’d found.

It seemed to happen all at once. A sudden blow to his head that left him reeling, pain shooting through his skull as he whips himself around in attempts to find his attacker. A searing burn in his side the exact moment he feels a sharp pinch at the back of his neck. His head starts to spin with confusion, the scent of his own blood in the water.

He spots a figure out of the corner of his eye, and his heart leaps into his throat. It was a human, and they had some sort of weapon pointed right at him.

Kylo doesn’t think—he just bolts. They don’t seem to follow him at first, and he doesn’t understand why until he starts to feel the first symptoms of whatever they’ve injected him with. It makes him dizzy, makes his vision start to blur as a sickening metallic taste fills his mouth.

No, he thinks. I won’t let them do this.

He pulls strength from deep within and pushes himself to swim faster, farther. He hears a muffled shout from behind, and oh, they’re pursuing him now.

He swims frantically, skirting around rocks and through kelp forests, desperately trying to lose them even though he thinks he might hear the dull thrum of a boat motor over the thudding of blood in his ears. Kriff, he was so tired. It would be so easy to let the human magic overtake him, to sink to the ocean floor.

Was this death? A dreamless sleep that crept over your senses until you had no choice but to succumb to it? Kylo doesn’t want to die, not like this. Not where they can get to him, at least.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, doesn’t even know where he is until he catches a quick glimpse of a familiar rock formation. His mind is in shambles, drugged and panicked, lacking oxygen as his gills burn with the strain of his labored breathing.

A cove. Not too far from here. Too shallow for a boat, too rocky for humans. A cave to shelter in. Go, swim, fast, now, now, go.

The voice in his head doesn’t feel like his own—it’s frantic, urgent, thoughtless. Usually he was so composed, controlled. The threat of death had turned him into nothing more than an animal; he’s never felt so small.

He ducks and weaves as he swims towards the hidden cove, trying to convince himself he’s doing it on purpose and not just fading in and out of consciousness. If he can just stay awake a little longer, if he can just make it to that kriffing cave, he can die with dignity. Alone and cold, drugged and bleeding, but away from the humans trying to hurt him.

Kylo nearly loses his speed when he breeches the shallow waters of the cove, his mind wanting to shut down now that he’s made it. He forces himself to keep going despite his nausea and lightheadedness. His lungs are screaming, muscles aching; he scrapes his tail against the rocky outcroppings as he searches frantically for the mouth of the underwater cave.

It’s here, it’s here. I know it’s here, I’ve seen it, I mapped it. Where is it?!

His hands snag against an opening, just barely big enough for him to squeeze through, and he darts into it. It’s a tight fit, and for a brief second Kylo is terrified he’ll get stuck and pass out from whatever the humans hit him with—he’ll die, trapped, never to be found.

But then, quick as a flash, he’s through to the other side. The small tunnel opens up into a larger cavern, protected from the elements and decorated with several pools of varying depths. He’d explored it once, curious, thinking it would be a nice place to hide. It was a little too close to humanity for his comfort, but then again he’d never seen this area very populated. He’d figured he’d keep it in the back of his mind for later.

Turns out later was now.

Kylo pulls himself to the edge of the main and deepest pool, looking around urgently through spotty vision. There was a pool in the corner, half hidden by rocks—it looked shallow, but just deep enough to be submerged. Exhaling fast, he hauls himself up and out of the water, coughing and choking as his body tries to adjust from using his gills to his mouth and nose to breathe. It was never an easy transition, and he hated doing it, but right now it was what he needed.

He growls to himself as he pulls his heavy body along the rough stone cave floor, his normally nimble tail a dead weight. If he wasn’t about to faint, he thinks he’d be a bit more graceful. By the time he rolls unceremoniously into the shallow pool, his palms are all scraped up and bleeding. He doesn’t care; barely feels the sting. He’s not really feeling much of anything at this point, head spinning out of control.

Laying like this on his back, head propped up against the ledge of the pool, Kylo gazes up at the jagged rock ceiling. His lungs crackle as he heaves in breaths, heart still pounding loudly. It’s hard to hear anything else, and he wonders again if his attackers are closing in on him. Does it even matter? His dying mind questions. He doesn’t have an opportunity to think of a retort before his body finally breaks, and he succumbs to the drug induced sleep.

—————————————————————

You wake to the familiar sounds of distant crashing waves, whistling wind, and calls of seagulls. After years on the island, the noise was a comfort.

You’d grown up here, in this same cottage by the sea--been raised fishing, hunting for mussels, searching through tide pools. You and your siblings would bike into town to sell your wares at the local market before heading down to the pier to watch the boats come and go. It was a simple life, sometimes a little isolated, but it was good nonetheless. You loved the island and the ocean, and held great respect for them both. If you honor them, they will honor you--at least, that’s what your mother always said.

Your siblings grew up and moved to the mainland, but still you stayed. Got yourself a little apartment in town above the local grocery, worked at the marina as a clerk, and visited your parents on the weekends. When your mother passed, your father followed just weeks later—a broken heart, everyone said. Suddenly, your beloved little slice of heaven—of home—belonged to you.

So you moved back into the cottage you grew up in, a place haunted by the ghosts of memories and the sounds of the sea. If you’re being honest with yourself, you wouldn’t trade it for the world, no matter how many times you pretend to entertain your siblings’ urging to rent the place out. Think of all the money you’d make. It’s the perfect vacation spot.

Maybe so, but you don’t care. You don’t want strangers in your home—not those tourists who come to fawn over the village, who eat up the landscape with cameras without really seeing it, who gawk at the fishermen, who laugh at the prices at the market. They would probably call your cottage quaint and cute. You could picture them tittering over your family photos on the mantle, over the door frame where heights had been marked over the years.

Tourists, who both long for and pity an isolated life on the ocean. Oh, they have it so easy here, away from the stress of the city. Oh, could you imagine living this way, barely scraping by?

No, you didn’t want them in your home, a place so sacred. You didn’t care what money you were missing out on—you got by fine with your pay from the marina, and picking up shifts at the local cafe. You loved your cottage—savored every creaky floorboard, every leaky windowsill. The drip of the bathroom faucet, the howl of the sea wind through the chimney—these were the sounds of familiarity, of safety. No one would appreciate them like you did.

Twisting around in bed, you turn your gaze towards the open window that was letting in a fresh, salty breeze. It was early, the light still dim and grey, the air a little chilly. It makes you want to curl back up under your covers, catch a couple more hours of shut-eye. It was your day off, after all; you could afford to sleep in.

Except.

You sigh, scrubbing your hands over your face as you remember what your yesterday brain had planned. You’d told yourself you’d get up in order to gather mussels at low tide. There were plenty of tide pools around, especially in the caved area of the cove. It was your family’s little secret—the hidden grotto was all but invisible from the outside. The only reason you even knew about it was because your brother had been too adventurous for his own good as a child, always getting into places he shouldn’t.

Mussels, clams, seaweed, probably fish in the deeper tide pools—maybe some sea urchin you could sell at the market. Your stomach growls.

Well, that’s that.

Groaning, you haul yourself up and out of bed, wincing at the cold hardwood on your bare feet. You bounce on your toes, shivering, goosebumps appearing on your skin as you pad over to close the window. Despite growing up here, you were always surprised at the temperature. You stubbornly let in the breeze at night, all bundled up under your covers, pretending when you woke it would be nice and warm.

But nope, not here; even in the dead of summer the mornings were chilly. Sometimes you dreamed that you lived on one of those big, luxurious, heated beaches—hot sun and white sand as far as the eye could see, no craggy cliffs or rocky shores. Eh. You probably wouldn’t like it much anyway, too used to your own environment.

Glancing at the clock, you quickly throw on some warm clothes, half-assing your regular morning routine before grabbing your tide-pool hunting essentials: a flashlight, knee-high waders, a large bucket, and your trusty fishing knife. You take a deep breath at the front door, bracing yourself for the chill. Just think of the feast you’ll have later. And you can reward yourself with a hot bath and long nap.

It’s not too long a distance from the cottage to the rocky shoreline, and while the low tide has revealed the tempting sand leading towards the rolling waves, you head towards the jagged outcropping to the left. Years of following the same path means it doesn’t take you long at all to find the hidden entrance and carefully make your way into the cavern.

In the middle of a sunny day, light shone in through various cracks in the ceiling, glinting off the water and creating flickering reflections against the stone walls. Sometimes you came here just to think, or to take a dip in the largest pool. The water was always warmer here, protected from the full power of the currents by the rock face.

Now, however, it was dark—only the dimmest bit of grey morning light trickled in. You flick on the flashlight, humming softly to yourself. The melody echoes off the stone walls, and you set your bucket down at the closest tide pool, readying yourself to hunker down and get to work. The beam of the light scans the various pools as you turn to get your knife from its holder, and something catches your eye. It’s not much, and honestly if you weren’t so familiar with the cave you probably wouldn’t have noticed the dark shape in the far corner pool.

At first, you do a double take, eyes sweeping over the little red-tinged puddles on the floor. Blood. You grip your knife, mind racing with possibilities. Was there someone in here with you? Surely not. No one ever came out here. Swallowing hard, you take a couple steps towards the corner, torch in one hand and knife in the other. As you get closer, your gaze tracks the diluted blood trail into the pool, and at first all you notice is the black scales and fins of a fish. The grip on your knife loosens just a little, the fear of a possible threat fading.

It's a big animal, you can tell that even as you make your way over, and you wonder idly how it got in. You knew, logically, that the cave connected to the ocean somehow, but you can't imagine the tide being so high for a fish as large as this one to find its way into the back corner. You’re focused on this conundrum as you round the ledge that’s been shielding the animal from your full view--so much so that it takes you more than a couple moments for your mind to compute just what it's seeing.

The tail is thick and muscular, decorated in obsidian scales that lead to delicate looking fins at the bottom. There were smaller, fan looking fins on the sides of the tail--they were all ripped up, as if they had been torn in previous fights. Your brain clocks all of this in seconds but doesn’t dwell, because it’s focused on the top half of the animal--creature--merman.

Merman. A fucking merman.

The ebony scales at the waist fade seamlessly into pale skin and lean muscle, revealing a long, firm torso. If you weren’t so aware of the tail, you might--might--think he could pass for human. Well, except for the webbed fingers and razor-sharp nails adorning each of his hands. He’s half submerged in the water of the pool, dark hair covering part of his face so you can’t see it.

You stand there, frozen, staring, not quite knowing what to do. You weren’t… scared; weren’t even very surprised aside from the initial shock of seeing him. You’d grown up hearing stories, traditions, tales—it was more than folklore here on the island. Some of the elders believed in merfolk more than ghosts, more than aliens, more than god.

Mr. Mackenzie told tales of mermaids luring in his shipmates as prey, drowning them. You always thought they were just stories designed to scare children away from dangerous tides—and maybe they were. But other accounts, you weren’t so sure of.

It was the wonder on Ms. Fraser’s face when she recounted the long-ago memory of swimming along sandbars with a girl who could breathe underwater. It was the quiet reverence of Mr. McDougall’s voice when he whispered about removing an old fish hook from a merman’s tail. It was the tears in Mrs. Buchanan’s eyes when she insisted merfolk rescued her husband from a fishing boat wreck.

You believed them. You always had, even if you’d done it silently, bashfully. You knew those who still made offerings to the ocean and to the beings that dwelled within the depths. Your island community believed in things not seen, but passed down through generations of storytelling. It was your history, kept alive despite first hand encounters becoming few and far between.

Except, here it was—your own little slice of history, right in front of you. If you took a couple more steps, you could reach out and touch it.

Is he breathing?

The little voice in your head brings you back down to your body, and a sudden fear overtakes you. You can’t let him die—if he was even still alive to begin with. You glance nervously at the pinkish trail of blood leading to the pool; the sight makes you reach some sort of resolve.

Hyper-aware of the claws on his hands, you kneel down beside him, hesitating only briefly before you settle your hand on his large bicep. He doesn’t stir, and your stomach twists unpleasantly. Your hand slides down to his wrist, and while you can admit you aren’t an expert on merfolk anatomy, surely you’ll be able to feel a pulse from the spidery blue veins under his pale skin.

Relief washes over you in a wave when you do, indeed, find a pulse—slow, but strong. Okay, not dead then. Still, he doesn’t move, so you take it upon yourself to move his damp hair out of his face, curling it behind his prominent ears.

He’s handsome.

You feel yourself flush, immediately chastising yourself for the thought. This was—best case scenario—a complete stranger who was wounded and in possible danger. Worst case scenario… you didn’t want to think about. Needless to say, it was no time to be thinking about his level of attractiveness.

You force yourself back into action, cupping his head as you hold your hand under his nose. His breathing is steady, and you gently lay his head back where it rested on the rock ledge. Your fingertips brush against something, and you frown as you realize he has a lump on the back of his skull—as if he’s been hit. You can only hope it hasn’t done too serious damage; it wasn’t like you could really take him to the hospital.

Your attention moves down his body, and you make yourself bypass the gills in his neck in order to properly gauge his wounds. Minor cuts and scrapes littered his skin; from the number of scars decorating his form, you figure these aren’t a big deal, no matter how nasty they look. Not compared to the gash on his side, at least.

You wince when you see it, the delicate flesh torn open and ragged. The cut makes you think it’s from some man-made weapon, and you shake your head in disbelief. Who would want to harm a merman? Around here, it would be blasphemous to do such a thing.

Blood no longer seeps from the wound; you hope that’s a good sign—and that the salt water has somewhat cleaned the area. You think it may have needed stitches, but you’re no doctor with the ability to do such a procedure. If you're being honest with yourself, it’s probably far too late for stitches anyway. The wound would be another nasty scar, likely similar to the one marring his face, but the area isn’t red with infection. That’s a good sign, right?

You sigh, feeling helpless. You want to do something for the creature. There’s only one thing you can really think of. Chewing on your bottom lip, you study his face again. He still seems unresponsive, and you can only hope he stays that way a little longer.

The short trek back up to your home feels the longest it’s ever been, and your legs and lungs are burning by the time you rush through the front door, having run the entire way. You heave in breaths as you pack some supplies into a bag. It wasn’t much, but you should be able to use the waterproof gauze and antibiotic ointment to dress the nasty-looking scrapes on his hands and chest.

You hesitate for a moment before going into your bathroom and grabbing the waterproof pillow you had in the tub. Maybe it was silly, but you hated thinking about him lying on the hard ground for fuck knows how long. You almost grab some food for him—maybe the fish currently thawing in your fridge—but you decide not to. You weren’t sure what he ate, and there was no telling when he’d wake up anyway.

Your breathing has just settled back to normal by the time you’re jogging back to the cave, careful not to slip on any of the wet grass and rocks. The sun starts to peak out of the morning clouds, letting pale beams of light warm the grey morning. The cavern is illuminated slightly better when you enter; you find you can lay the flashlight at a distance and see just fine.

The merman is still asleep, and you feel a little relieved. You aren’t exactly sure what will happen when he wakes up—for all you know, you’ll return later in the day to find him gone. As it is, you plop down next to the pool he was in and get to work patching him up the best you can.

Taking the towel you brought with you, you dab at his scrapes, trying to dry them a little before applying the ointment and then carefully using the gauze to cover the wounds. His palms are so torn up that you wrap them completely, your brows knitted the entire time. It must hurt, but still, he doesn’t stir.

Finally, you’re left with the gash in his side. You debate with yourself as to whether you should cover it or not—if you even can. The front of his torso was out of the water with the way he was laying, but that could change at any second, and any real pressure on his body would cause him to sink into the pool.

Your urge to help him wins out in the end, and you decide you’ll try to bandage it to protect it from any further irritation, despite knowing water would seep in regardless. You lean forward, extra careful not to lose your balance as you pat at his pale skin with the towel once more. It’s an awkward angle and slow work, you trying your best to be gentle with him.

You add as much ointment as you dare to the bandaging, not wanting to put too much onto an open wound, before fixing the gauze to his torso with some waterproof medical tape. There. Sure, it wasn’t going to work a miracle but at this point you weren’t sure what else to do.

He’ll be okay, you tell yourself. He’ll be okay.

You take a moment to watch the rise and fall of his chest, reassured by the movement. Your gaze again drifts to his tail in fascination—you hope that, maybe, you’ll come back later and he’ll be awake. Maybe he’ll be friendly, maybe the two of you can talk. It’s illogical, you know. This wasn’t some fairytale, this was real life. You honestly just hoped he didn’t try to rip you to shreds on sight.

It’s with this thought in mind that you shift away from him, telling yourself you can’t sit and watch him all day. You have several other pools to collect mussels from, breakfast to cook, chores to do. You’ve done enough, and you have to trust that his body will do the rest—you refuse to entertain the idea that he might not make it.

Sighing, you pull yourself further away, but then remember the pillow you’d brought along. You grab it quickly before shuffling back towards him. He’s got a large lump of seaweed shoved haphazardly under his head in what you assume was a desperate attempt to soften the rock face underneath.

His damp hair is surprisingly soft when you gently lift his head to clear the ground of debris. You can’t help but run your fingers through it gently, brushing it behind his ears, almost trying to soothe his subconscious. You settle the small foam pillow in place, and slowly let his head and neck rest against it. You hope it makes some sort of difference, though you know it might be a childish thought.

Your task finished, you force yourself away from him once more, even though you suddenly ache to continue touching him. Picking up your things, you continue on your mission of prying mussels from each tidepool. You move slower and quieter than you normally would, shooting the merman furtive glances every few seconds.

By the time you’re finished with the last pool, you can’t find an excuse to linger any longer. He was as safe as he was going to be. The only thing left to do now was wait. You spare your new charge one last lingering look, then grab your things and head back to the house.

______________________________________________________________

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#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x fem!reader #kylo ren x afab!reader #kylo ren #kylo ren fic #merman!kylo #merman au #multi chapter #tori writes #feedback always welcome & appreciated!

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roger-that-cap · 3 years

Text

meet me in the gardens

summary: being the widow of a decently wealthy lord and sitting on a large plot of land automatically meant that you were a candidate for the program that you couldn’t say not to; the hosting. you had to sponsor a knight and keep them in your home for an entire year, which was troublesome enough on its own. but you never expected your knight to be a woman, and you certainly didn’t expect to have a full on illegal love affair with her, either.

warnings: lots of emotions, feelings, slightly cynical and bitter reader- she’s honestly just being a realist, we are chugging forward, did not check for typos, format could be fucked up bc i’m posting from my phone quite literally minutes before i clock in- PATHETIC LMAO

word count: 2.7k

this is a short chapter by my standards, but it felt long to me because of the things in it??? this is part five! all other parts can be found on my masterlist, it’s my pinned post!

“What’s got you smiling like that?” Wanda asked while she tied your corset, not even needing to ask whether it was too tight or loose. You looked up in your vanity and immediately tried to wipe your smile away, but it was too late. She knew you better than anyone, and she had yet to see a thoughtful smile on your face, ever. Pietro, who had caught you going back inside the previous night, caught on to the fact that you looked more carefree, and that you just seemed to look like you were carrying around less.

“Nothing.”

“Hmm,” Wanda hummed, an entertained look on her face. Something told you that she already had an idea of what was going on, even though there was no way she could have. Besides, you hardly even knew what was going on. “I’ll ask again later.” She looked you in the eyes through the mirror, a slightly mischievous smile on her face. “Maybe then you’ll tell the truth,” she said, flicking you on the side of the head, and then letting it rest.

§§

Natasha was out in the village doing whatever it was the knights did one night, and she was planning on spending the night at a bed and breakfast before coming back in the morning. As disheartened as you were about not being able to see her for your stargazing, you were partly glad for it. You missed being with the twins.

You had dinner with them alone, sitting and laughing about old memories and scheduling times to make new ones together. You loved the way you could be with them. Your laughter was allowed to go over the volume of a giggle without them looking at you like you had grown seven heads, your silverware were allowed to take a tumble onto your plate with a clatter without a second glance, and you were allowed to use whatever language you pleased. You missed the comfort that you felt with them, the comfort that your brain and the part of you that would always be the farm girl felt with them.

“And Pietro chased him all the way off, you should have seen how terrified he was,” Wanda recapped, and you couldn't help but grin at Pietro, who was sipping wine with his charming grin. “That boy will never lift another skirt, I can assure you of that.”

“I’m glad,” you mused, shooting Pietro a look that made him laugh.

“Enough about me,” he said after swallowing a sip of his wine that was much more like a gulp. “We’re not going to talk about how you’ve been walking on the clouds for weeks now?”

You nearly dropped your fork again. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve both realized,” Pietro said, motioning with his buttered knife towards his sister, who had a soft smile on her face as she observed your reaction. “That you have been significantly happier. Even with the circumstances-”

“Pietro,” Wanda hissed, but you just snorted and shook your head.

“It’s like you found your own little pocket of happiness. We were worried about you, but, you’re doing alright.” Ever the blatant one out of the three of you, he leaned forward with his trademark smirk, eyes full of curiosity. “What do you know that we don't?”

You hesitated for a second, mouth opening and closing twice as you grappled for anything to say, even a lie. And then, you settled on just shrugging your shoulders with a grin, shaking your head. “Honestly, Pietro, I know nothing. I don’t know anything.”

§§

Your heart was beating faster than normal as you looked at the woman next to you, your hand subconsciously itching closer to hers as you sat on the ground, ass on the blanket that you had brought out. “I would like to… show you something.”

It was probably the twentieth time that you and Natasha had met with each other, and still, you were entranced by her and everything that she did. And you were entranced while you stared at her and waited for her answer, just a little nervous as to what she would say.

As if she would ever say no to something you said.

“Show me anything you’d like me to see,” Natasha urged on, and you fought back a smile. You stood up, and she did the same, and then you were picking up the blanket and walking side by side with her. It was quiet the entire way there as you walked in step with her, hand brushing against her every few steps and sending tingles down your arm every time it happened.

The feeling that you got when she touched you made you feel both alive and scared to death. You weren’t stupid. You knew what you were steadily collecting more than friendly feelings for her, and that she may have been on the same page you were on. The game you were playing was a dangerous one, the risk threatening to swallow up the reward more and more by the day.

You had known that being with her by yourself was bad judgement, ever since the first time you did it. Hell, the look you gave her the first time you met her was far from appropriate. Every single conversation that you had with her was a risk, and both of you knew it. And now that your soon-to-be husband was approaching, it was even more scandalous. No one knew and you hoped no one would ever find out, but hiding forever wasn’t a choice. But what would you be hiding if there were no true feelings?

You hated yourself for falling for her and her pretty words.

“I used to come here to escape,” you started, pulling yourself out of your thoughts, voice low as you passed the tree line to get into the thick of the woods. You narrowly missed stepping in a particularly muddy spot on the ground. “This was my spot, before I got the garden of course.”

“The woods?”

“No, Nat,” you said, slightly amused as you stepped over a fallen branch. You smiled a bit when the sound of running water hit your ears. “The stream.”

You knew the exact second that she saw it, because her eyes widened and her breath hitched. “That’s not a stream, that’s a river.”

“It’s the forgotten part of the main river,” you explained. “It’s much skinnier and more shallow, and it doesn't have nearly as much fish coming through, so people forget about it.” You looked towards her and saw how intrigued she was by it, so you judged her armor free body with a slight smirk. “What? Never seen running water?”

“I lived in the capital, all they had was the ocean. And even then I was never allowed on the harbor if I wasn’t selling clams, and I didn’t sell clams much.”

You felt silence start to grow between the two of you, so you said the first thing that you thought of. “You don’t look like a clam seller.”

He looked away from the river and to you, a slight grin on her face even as she talked again. “And you don’t look like a petal kisser, blossom, but look where we are today.”

Your heart raced in your chest. “Blossom? Is that what you’re calling me now?”

“It’s only payback for calling me ‘cherry’,” she said, and you stifled a laugh at the retired name, glancing up at the red hair that you had gotten inspiration from.

“You didn’t actually mind it,” you said, looking off into the distance, only looking back at her when a warm hand slotted over yours. You blinked and looked down at your hands, which she had intertwined, and then back up at her again, only to see that she was staring straight ahead in the dark at the way the moonlight hit the water.

“How could I?” She asked softly, a subtle breeze picking up.”You were the one saying it.” She looked at you, and in the dim lighting, you could have sworn that her eyes were saying, you can call me anything in the book, and I will own it proudly. And then, the look changed to something else, something less devoting, and something more passionate. It took you a few seconds to understand what the look meant, and before you could fully register it, she was leaning forward.

A few seconds came and went where you could feel your heartbeat all over, and you tried to look somewhere other than in her eyes. You couldn't. “Don’t look at me like that.” When all Natasha did was tilt her head to the side and give you an even more intense version of the look, you let out a small sigh. “Please.”

“Why not?”

She knew why. She knew why probably better than you did after living in the capital. She saw what happened firsthand to people who committed crimes, and those who committed second degree adultery. If you two did what you were wanting to do with your entire heart, you would fall right into that category. “I know where this is going,” you said softly, “and this won’t end well.”

“Why not?” She asked again, and you turned your head to the side, shaking it slightly and closing your eyes.

“Because, I’m about to get married,” you hissed, and though you didn’t mean to sound so angry, you did. Natasha was hardly affected.

She lifted her arms and let them fall against her clothing with a soft slap that still echoed in the night. “You’re not married right now.”

“But I will be, Natasha,” you said, gripping her hands and squeezing them softly, begging for her to understand you. “What’s going to happen when I get married to a man who already has a streak for murdering his wives, and he finds out that I have feelings for you? He’ll kill me. He’ll kill you. And if he doesn’t, we’ll both be hung for adultery, after being put into torture camps for being… together as women.”

“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Y/N, you know that.” The fervency in her tone nearly shocked you as she took a bold step forward, nearly surrounding you in her scent and energy. “I would never let anything happen to you.”

“You’re too important for me to condemn to death and dishonor just because I have feelings for you. It was selfish of me to meet with you in the first place, but I can’t let myself do this. It’s a bad idea,” You said, voice hushed even though no one would have followed you. You were trembling, hand shaking more than anything else as you tried to understand how fast everything was moving; forward and backwards, sewing together and ripping apart all the same. If you were any more attentive to her expression, you would have seen the grin that lit up her face as your confession. “We were just about to cross a line. We’ve crossed quite a few dotted ones, but this one? It is bold and blaring.”

“Blossom,” Natasha started, and you just shook your head and kept going.

“And-and what we were just about to do? That crosses the line. We cannot.”

“Do you really think my feelings for you are going to change depending on whether or not we kiss?” She asked, her voice slightly deeper than usual, almost sounding insulted. “You’re telling me to close my heart off from you, not to not kiss you. And you know that.”

“What if I am?” You asked, eyes starting to burn with tears. “I’m doing it for the right reasons, Nat. I’m trying to save us from a world of hurt when reality finally sinks in.”

“That isn’t today.” She took another step forward and this time, you couldn't find the strength in you to step back. “And it isn’t tomorrow, and not even within the fortnight. You and I have something, and I know that you know it’s different. It’s special. We would be so stupid to ignore it, so stupid.”

“I know, I know,” you said, voice tapering off into a whine as you slowly felt your resolve come apart, even though you thought it was stronger. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Natasha said after a few minutes of pure silence, and you found yourself exhaling. “I just wish things were different.”

“I know,” she said, and you turned to look up at the sky, tears threatening to come down on your cheeks. The stars seemed to twinkle and wink at you, talking amongst themselves about a future you had no idea about just yet.

“Guess they’re never gonna line up,” you murmured to yourself, and then you heard Natasha grumble something from your side, and then she was coming closer, a barreling energy force full of passion and intent, and you knew exactly what she was coming for. For less than a split second, you thought about it. And then you turned your head and met her halfway.

You would have been surprised by the passion in it if you weren’t just as desperate for the contact. You twisted in her arms, already wrapped around you as she drew you in close, closer than you had ever been with her, and the tears that were welling up before were now escaping for a different reason. Your lips were pressing into hers, moving fluidly and with an air of fervor that she matched equally. You felt wanted, and needed, and you felt loved. You felt the tenderness of the moment with every brush of her fingers on the back of your neck and with every rub of your back over the thin material of your night dress.

Your legs were shaking, and she noticed before you did that you were getting weak in the knees. She held you up and pulled back slightly, just enough for you to feel her lips brush against yours while she asked if you were okay, like she wasn’t willing to take herself from you just yet. And honestly, you weren’t ready for her to leave you, either. You nodded, and she leaned in again, much slower, and then you had time to think.

Her eyes weren’t the same shade they were when the sun hit them, they were almost an eerie pale blue, but they were still just as gorgeous to you, especially now that they were slanted with desire. Her hair wasn’t perfect like she somehow always managed or it to be, and you realized that it was because you had gotten a hand to run through it despite the way that she had previously held you like a lifeline. Her lashes were long, and you swore that she was close enough that you could count them. Her cheekbones were accentuated in the lighting, making her look like something straight out of a fairy tale, like a floating fae creature that led people to safety. In that moment, you could have sworn that she was the answer to every prayer you had ever whispered, to every question you had ever asked your etiquette teachers. In that moment, and in every moment to come, she was your ending and beginning, your creation and destruction, your sunrise and sunset. She was Natasha Romanoff, and in that moment, no wedding or murderous man even held a candle to the way you felt about her.

What a beautiful person.

“Now you’re looking at me strangely,” Natasha said, her voice quieter than you had ever heard it as the both of you treated over the moment carefully, trying not to break it and leave it in shambles. “What are you thinking about?”

“How I’m going to have to pretend like this never happened in a few weeks,” you said softly, and part of you hated yourself for bringing up the bad part of the future so soon after you both had just lost all ties to reality.

“You don’t have to,” she said, stroking your hair. “We can just keep doing what we’re doing, sneaking off in the night and coming back in the morning before anyone realizes. Nothing really has to change, I just want you to know that I… that we can be whatever you want us to be.”

“As long as we’re in the confines of the garden walls.”

“And now the woods,” Natasha said, and you couldn’t help but laugh in her arms.

“And now the woods."

****

this is short, but i couldn’t see anything being tacked on to this. we’re at an important part, and from here it’s gonna be fun!! thank y’all for reading; if you liked it please drop a like and a reblog bc it makes my day!! comments also make me ascend y’all

tags!! : tags! : @teenwonder @saamwilscn @procrastinatingsapphictrash @fayhar @8plasma @slut-for-nat @dontmindmejustreading @swords-are-cool @200605chaeng @thescottishavenger @antidaytime @jenny-song @madamevirgo @natasha-danvers @blackxwidowsxwife @shycucumbersandwich @dailyavengering @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @ima-gi--na-tion @chickenhavewisdom

so sorry if i forgot anyone!!!!!

#natasha romanov x reader #natasha x female reader #natasha romanoff fluff #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x fem!reader #lgbt marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel au #my fics #natasha x reader #knight!natasha #knight au #lesbian!natasha #natasha romanoff x female reader

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fromthedeskofelizabeththird · 3 years

Text

Habanero

You're a good girl, well behaved.

Absolutely not the type to rail random guys in nightclubs.

Until you are.

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Polyamorous Erasermic x Reader

Rating: Explicit, MINORS BE GONE

Trigger Warnings: None in this chapter.

AO3: Here | Want to support me? I have a Kofi

Chapter: 15/16 (all chapters)

UA’s press conference aired two days after the incident, a deceptively simple move in the grander scheme of things. Their status as a household name and initial hesitation to comment on the incident had captivated the country. By the time the conference began, everyone had grown morbidly curious. Reporters chomped at the bit for answers; the general public watched with bated breath.

Hizashi glowered into his beer at the izakaya, stomach churning as the other patrons watched in suspense.

Nemuri sat down in front of her TV, ready to bury her face in the pillow she held to her chest.

Shigaraki and the League of Villains watched with expressions of glee, glancing across at Bakugo every so often in the hopes of catching the exact moment he lost faith in hero society.

Jirou, Hagakure and the other students yet to recover from the forest attack watched from their hospital beds.

Midoriya, Kirishima, Yaoyorozu, Iida and Todoroki watched from Kamino ward, hands trembling at the grim reminder that they shouldn’t have been there.

Your mother watched from the couch in your childhood home, alternating between sewing and shooting disapproving glances at the television, all while your father bellowed into his cell phone, demanding to know the name of the person that had allowed Moonfish to escape. In an oddly fortuitous turn of events, UA had escaped his ire. He had been personally involved in Moonfish’s conviction and took your injuries as a slight on his honour. It had never occurred to him to blame UA.

The world watched as Aizawa, Nezu and Vlad stepped out onto center stage, a fact that was not at all lost on them. Vlad gave his tie a forceful tug before stepping out into public view. Shouta took a deep breath and followed.

He had taken a crash course in interview techniques the night before, though if anything Hizashi’s coaching methods made him even more nervous. Hizashi was used to taking interviews, a consequence of years as a public entertainer. Eraserhead was rarely seen in public, much less interviewed by the press.

As Shouta, Vlad and Nezu bowed in apology, your eyelids twitched. You opened one eye by a sliver and then the other, taking in the darkness around you. You were still woozy from surgery and multiple rounds of treatment from Recovery Girl, every inch of your body feeling like lead. You didn’t remember who you were, much less where you were, and your initial inspection of your surroundings gleaned little in the way of answers.

The last thing you saw before closing your eyes again, overwhelmed by exhaustion, was the punnet of peaches at the foot of your bed- a flash of colour in the otherwise monochromatic room.

You slept for two days after that, fingers and eyelids occasionally twitching. The doctors were hopeful that you would wake up soon, though the news of any potential recovery on your part was swiftly drowned out by the chaos in Kamino ward.

The age of All Might was over and all of hero society needed to adapt. UA needed a plan now more than ever.

You were moved to Musutafu’s city hospital three days after the incident, Recovery Girl insisting that you were well enough to make the trip and it would be more convenient to have you closer to home. You slept through most of this process, briefly opening your eyes and staring at the strip lights above your head as they wheeled you through the hospital corridors.

You woke up fully coherent the following morning, eyes burning as they opened. Your body didn’t feel as heavy as it had before, but it ached instead, as stiff and sore as if you had run a marathon at full speed.

You sat up and immediately regretted it, for your side throbbed and left you flinching. You stroked a hand over the spot, remembering the last few moments before you had lost consciousness. You remembered the blade cutting through you; remembered the tightness in your body and stench of blood. When you lifted your pyjama shirt, though, there was no wound, only a ghostly patch of raised skin.

You wondered how long you had been asleep and scanned the room for any sort of hint, heart fluttering at the realisation that you weren’t alone. Someone was sitting in the chair next to your bed, face obscured from view by a textbook and snoring softly.

From the clothes and book title, you were able to make an educated guess who lay beneath. You only knew one person who taught English grammar.

“Hizashi,” you murmured, reaching out to touch his arm. “Hizashi.”

You tapped his elbow and he shifted in place, perhaps thinking your touches were part of his dream.

“Hey...Hizashi.”

“Hmmm?”

You eased the textbook off his face and put it down on the bed, watching as he began to stir.

“You’ll get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that,” you said, poking his arm.

“Sorry, (Name),” he said sleepily, taking off his glasses and rubbing his face, only to freeze in place and realise what he’d said.

He jerked up straight and shoved on his glasses, hands trembling so much that it took several attempts to actually get them on, much less see you properly.

“You’re real, right? I’m not dreaming,” he said, sitting down on the bed next to you and throwing both arms around your shoulders, resting his chin on your head.

“If it is a dream, it’s pretty meta,” you said, reaching up to touch the arm closest to your collarbone and looking up into his face, gaining a faceful of scratchy, tearful kisses in response.

You remembered dialling Hizashi’s voicemail; the way you had cursed every time you reached his automated message.

You had resigned yourself to never seeing him again, but there he was, holding onto you and kissing your cheeks. You closed your eyes, absorbing his warm body and familiar scent, tears running down your own face before you realised what was happening.

“Hey, (Name),” he said, loosening his grip on you and stroking his fingers through your hair, “are you okay? Does it hurt?”

“I’m just so happy,” you sniffled, “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t answer,” he said, planting a kiss to the top of your head.

You sat in silence for a while, overwhelmed with emotion and enjoying the moment. You rested your head against Hizashi’s chest, afraid that he’d disappear into smoke if you let go.

Unfortunately, the more you relaxed and focussed on his heartbeat, the more memories of that night came flooding back. You remembered stumbling through the woods, remembered why you had dialled his number in the first place.

You couldn’t breathe, your heart raced, memories of USJ creatures and men with patchwork faces dominating your every thought.

You knew you were having a panic attack; you knew dozens of techniques to get through them. Even so, it had been such a long time since you had had one and it crept up on you with so little warning that you were powerless to do anything. All you could do was grip onto Hizashi for dear life, hands growing sweaty and chest rattling with shallow breaths.

Hizashi picked up on your struggle relatively quickly and stroked a hand over your back, gently prising you off him and slipping one of his bracelets off his wrist.

“Here we go,” he said, slipping it onto yours, “slow and steady, focus on my voice.”

You reached for the bracelet and snapped the elastic against your exposed skin, relishing the sharp shock that rippled through your body and eased you back to earth.

“Just like that,” said Hizashi, stroking your hair, “nice and easy.”

You took a deep breath and rubbed your temples, head clearing and tension slowly leaving your body.

“How long have I been out?”

“About a week.”

“A week ?”

From the heaviness of your body and severity of your wounds, you assumed it had been much, much longer.

“Did you get my message? The address? What-“

“One thing at a time, princess,” he laughed. “A lot happened while you were asleep.”

“Really?”

“Well, for a start, UA’s reputation has taken a nosedive. Almost all of the students at the camp were injured-“ he reached for your shoulders as you flinched at the news, “-they’re fine, don’t worry!”

“Ragdoll,” you whispered, remembering the way she had told you to run, “is she-“

Get out of here, (Name). Tell the others!

Hizashi’s grave expression was all you needed to know. You clapped a hand over your mouth, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” you whispered, Hizashi letting go of your shoulders and holding you to his chest. “It wasn’t…”

“I know, sweetie, I know. We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

“No, I need to know,” you said, wiping your eyes. “Is she dead?”

You needed closure.

“No,” said Hizashi, “she and Bakugo were taken away by the League of Villains. Ragdoll lost her quirk, but Bakugo was rescued in time…in part because someone led us straight to their front door.”

“Poor Ragdoll,” you sniffed. “And Bakugo? Is he…”

“He’s going to be fine,” said Hizashi. “The League wanted to recruit him, but no such luck.”

You knew from conversations with Shouta exactly how volatile he could be. It was naive to think villains wouldn’t have noticed it too.

“Wait,” you said, “Shouta...”

Had he been caught up in the villain attack? Was he okay? You remembered dialling his number too.

Hizashi frowned, which only added fuel to the fire.

“Hiz...Hizashi? I-“

You willed him to tell you Shouta was fine, that he hadn’t thrown himself into danger. You knew him too well to believe that, though. You remembered how angry you had been with him after the events of USJ; how quickly he had thrown himself into the line of fire to protect his students.

Your throat tightened and you snapped the bracelet against the inside of your wrist.

“He’s fine,” said Hizashi. “Came out of it with nothin’ but bruises. Thing is, though…because of everything that’s happened in the last few months...a lot of people have lost faith in UA. We’ve grown negligent, taken peace for granted…”

“What are you saying?”

“Something happened the night they rescued Bakugo,” he said. “All Might’s power. It’s gone.”

“ Gone ?”

“I don’t know all of the details,” he said, “only that he can’t use his quirk to fight anymore. He’s going to retire soon. Without him, though…”

You shuddered, knowing exactly where this was going. All Might had maintained Japan’s low crime rate for decades. His departure from the hero ranks would almost certainly create a power vacuum on both sides.

“What does that have to do with Shouta?”

“Well, as I said, UA’s reputation has well and truly tanked,” said Hizashi. “Sho, Nezu, Vlad and All Might are going to visit the students today...try and persuade their parents to let them come back.”

You tried to absorb the news, habitually snapping the bracelet on your wrist to keep you grounded.

“Is he...okay?”

Shouta would blame himself for this. You knew that much without having to ask and Hizashi chuckled under his breath.

“As good as anyone can be when their lady’s in the ICU.”

Your heart skipped a beat at that. You remembered plotting with the Pussycats, the strategy they had put in place so the two of you could talk alone.

You’d never mentioned your feelings for Shouta to Hizashi. You’d never told him the pair of you had slept together. Before leaving for summer camp, you didn’t think you had never given him any reason to suspect you might have been Shouta’s ‘lady’.

Of course, the more you thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. You remembered calling him ‘Shouta’ in conversation without realising; remembered probing Hizashi for his address. Hizashi wasn’t an idiot and knew Shouta better than you ever would. It was naive to think he wouldn’t have noticed something was off about the two of you.

“You knew about that, huh?”

“You kiddin’? I don’t get how anyone could meet you and not fall in love with you.”

His words were so sincere that you giggled.

“I’m serious,” he said. “Did you know you have your own background music? What’s it like having cherubs sing behind you every time you take a step?”

“Stop it,” you said, face flushing red, “you’re making me blush!!”

“Good,” he said, kissing your forehead.

“Say, Hizashi.”

“Mm?”

“Don’t call me Shouta’s lady like I can’t be yours as well.”

There was no point dancing around the point now. You were well past the stage of breaking it to him gently.

For a second, you wondered if you’d made a mistake. He sat incredibly still, breath warm against your forehead. Slowly, he lowered his face, touching his forehead to yours as he caught your lips.

“Hizashi,” you murmured into his open mouth as he broke the contact.

“Sssh,” he said, cupping your face and moving in to kiss you again, “the cherubs brought out tiny violins.”

“You’re such a dork.”

“Adds to the appeal, don’t ya think?”

You looped your arms around his neck to draw him in deeper and lowered yourself down onto the bed. He crushed his lips against yours, every kiss sending ripples through your core.

It felt so good that you forgot you were in a hospital and why you were there. In that moment there was only you, Hizashi and months of lost time.

Hizashi slipped a hand under your pyjama shirt, lifting the fabric higher to expose your scar. He broke away from you and sat up a little to get a good look at it, pouting as you instantly dragged your shirt back down.

“I guess my two piece days are over,” you said, blushing bright red in an attempt to deflect your embarrassment.

You had exactly two scars on your entire body and both were from Moonfish, each as ugly as the other. Hizashi linked his fingers through yours and guided your hand away from your shirt.

“I was just thinking,” he said, exposing your scar, “it makes me kinda nostalgic.”

“Nostalgic? For w-“

You caught his meaning too late, remembering the night you’d slept together. You remembered the moment he dragged off the condom and came across your middle, covering you in spots as ghostly white as the raised skin.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” you squeaked, hiding your face in your hands.

“Am I wrong?”

He prised your hands away from your face, grinning widely. He wasn’t wrong and you couldn’t bring yourself to look at him.

“(Name), look at me.”

Against your better judgement, you looked up at him, only for him to lean over and steal a kiss.

“Am I wrong?” he murmured, face inches from yours.

You looked up into his face, slipping a hand out of his and tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear.

“No.”

You looked into each other’s faces for a while, enjoying the warmth and one another’s presence. You had had so much to say, but the events at the lodge had given you a new perspective. It didn’t matter to you anymore if you said it out loud. Actions spoke far louder than an awkwardly planned confession ever would.

“Let’s get out of here,” you said at last.

“You sure?” said Hizashi, nuzzling his face against your hand. “You were really badly hurt, ya know? Couldn’t hurt to rest for a little longer.”

“No,” you said, motioning for him to get up. “I have work to do.”

You had been gone for a week and the world had fallen apart. The children needed you; your colleagues needed you. They were the future of hero society and had already suffered enough. You couldn’t fix the world or undo the night at the lodge, but at the very least you could give them pats to the head and a sympathetic ear.

~~~~~~

It took a lot of coaxing for the doctors to let you discharge yourself. They insisted that you still needed rest, to which you argued you needed fresh air. You pouted your way through their examinations and tests, insisting you had rested enough. Your wounds weren’t open anymore and you hadn’t been on a ventilator since arriving in Musutafu. You were wobbly on your feet, but you weren’t in danger and you weren’t alone.

“Be careful,” your doctor sighed as you handed over your discharge papers, “your injuries were severe and it’s important you don’t push yourself too much.”

“I’ll be okay,” you said, knowing that he couldn’t stop you even if he wanted to.

“Don’t worry, doc,” said Hizashi, lifting you up into his arms like a newly wedded wife. “I’ve got Recovery Girl on speed dial.”

You giggled as he carried you out of the hospital and into the car park, holding you gently so as not to aggravate your injured side.

“Do you really have Recovery Girl on speed dial?”

“Of course I do,” he said in mock offense, “though I called her so many times this week that I’m pretty sure she blocked me.”

“Wow, should I be jealous?”

Hizashi laughed, stopping in place to kiss you on the lips.

“ Are you jealous?”

“Just surprised,” you said. “I didn’t have Recovery Girl pegged as a cougar.”

The pair of you sniggered as you crossed the car park, arriving at a flashy car that could only belong to Hizashi. He set you down on your feet as he reached for his keys and opened the doors, easing you into the passenger side front seat as if you were made of glass.

“Comfortable?” he asked as he fastened his own seatbelt. “I have some cushions in the back if you want one.”

“You sleep there often?”

“Only when I’ve got company!”

The ride home was a short one, though you made sure to absorb every detail; the soft synthwave music playing through the car radio; the city’s afternoon glow; Hizashi’s hand slipping into yours whenever you hit traffic.

Hizashi pulled up outside of your house and went on ahead to unlock your front door before helping you inside. You lingered in the doorway, Hizashi a couple of steps behind you.

“You good, little listener?”

“Yeah,” you said, taking a deep breath before crossing the threshold, “it’s just been a while, that’s all.”

Your home was exactly the same as when you’d left it, which shouldn’t have surprised you, yet did all the same. You hadn’t been there for so long that it smelled foreign. You normally didn’t smell the pot pourri or candles you had used to decorate the place, but suddenly they overpowered your senses.

You had left in a hurry, without much time to tidy up. Your breakfast dishes from that morning were still drying on the rack; your pyjamas lay abandoned in the laundry basket. You had left your laptop on the kitchen table, a pamphlet for Yamanashi next to it.

It was like a perfectly preserved time capsule and Hizashi wrapped an arm around your shoulder at your hesitation.

“We can go to my place if you’d like,” he said gently, “if it’s easier.”

“No,” you said, snapping the bracelet against your wrist and taking a few shaky steps towards the couch. “It’s fine.”

You sank down onto your couch, rummaging through your purse as Hizashi pottered around in the kitchen. At some point someone had switched off your phone and you turned it over in your hands, all too aware of how spotlessly clean it was. Someone had scrubbed away the bloody fingerprints, perhaps the same someone who had painted your nails. You spread out your fingers as you powered on your phone, taking note of how carefully it had been done.

Your phone came on at 13% battery, immediately bursting to life with messages, missed calls and voicemails.

You recalled the USJ incident, how overwhelmed you had felt back then when you had been in no danger at all and out of contact for only a few hours. This time you had a week’s worth of notifications to sort through. The groupchat you shared with your girlfriends had exploded; you had voicemails and missed calls from your brother, as well as a few from your mom. You had missed calls from Hizashi and Nemuri, though one name cropped up more than any other. Shouta seemed to have called you multiple times a day every day since the incident.

“Hey,” said Hizashi, sitting down next to you with a cup of steaming tea, “enough of that.”

He prised the phone out of your grip and set it down on the coffee table, slipping the tea into your hands instead.

“Thank you,” you mumbled, though for the tea or the intervention you weren’t quite sure.

~~~~

Several hours later, you sipped ice water at the izakaya, Hizashi peering out from your booth to the doors.

As a morale boost, he had invited the other teachers to the izakaya for drinks that evening. If the students refused to come back, they could drink away their woes. If they agreed, they could raise a toast to the new school year.

He hadn’t expected you to be awake, much less eager to join them, but you had looked so desperately lonely that he couldn’t refuse. What’s more, he didn’t want to leave you on your own. He never wanted to ever again.

You had gotten there early, long before any of the regulars, much less other teachers. Despite being the one to suggest getting wasted in the first place, Hizashi stuck to soda, not quite so desperate to let loose that he was willing to drive you home drunk.

He stole glances at you every so often, watching for any shiver or grimace of pain. It had seemed like a good idea to steal you away from the hospital at the time. Perhaps it was selfishness on his part, but he wanted to relive the moment of joy when you spoke his name. He could think of no better way to do so than by reuniting you with the other teachers, who needed the excitement now more than ever.

Now, though, he wondered if he’d done the right thing.

After you had finished up your tea, he’d sent you away for a nap. You had been reluctant to go, but he’d insisted, claiming you needed your strength for the partying that night. You’d pouted as he tucked you in, only to fall asleep again in minutes.

For the past few days, Hizashi and Nemuri had taken turns visiting your hospital bed. They both had lesson planning to do, though nothing they couldn’t do remotely. Shouta had visited a few times as well, though lesson planning and dealing with the fallout of Bakugo’s rescue took up almost all of his time.

Hizashi had continued to plot out his schedule while you slept, getting up every so often to poke his head through your bedroom door.

Even now he watched you like a hawk. He knew your movements were slower than usual, that your injured side burned with pain if you stretched too far. He had helped you bathe and dress ahead of the night at the izakaya, only too happy to rinse the smell of the hospital from your hair under the guise of being a pervert.

It was a useful facade, for whenever you caught him glancing in your direction, all he had to do was slip a hand onto your thigh and tell you you were pretty to deflect how concerned he still was and likely would be for the rest of your lives.

Nemuri was the first to arrive, massaging her shoulders as she stood at the bar. She glanced around the room to see who else had arrived and waved at Hizashi, unable to see you because of the angle of the booth.

She cursed as she arrived at the table, beers under her arm as well as a portion of garlic fries.

“Wake me up when the-” she grumbled as she arrived at the booth, freezing in place when she saw you sitting there.

“Hi,” you said, to which she let out a shriek of joy and threw herself into the seat beside you.

“It’s you!” she cried out, trapping you in a tight hug that she swiftly reconsidered. “It’s really you!”

“Yep,” you said as she pressed your head against her chest and carded her fingers through your hair, “it’s really me.”

“How did you... when did you?!”

She glanced from you to Hizashi, suspicion and joy playing out across her face. You had been fast asleep the last time she visited you, fingers occasionally twitching.

“This morning,” said Hizashi, leaning back against the walls of the booth and sipping his soda.

He’d considered texting her with the news, but you had been sleeping at the time and he knew she’d come right over. He’d considered texting Shouta too but decided against it. It would come across as incredibly unprofessional if a text came through while he was speaking to a concerned parent, after all. In the end, for better or worse, selfish or otherwise, he’d left it as a surprise.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said, tears rolling down her face. “Pinch me.”

You pinched her arm and she cupped your face, swiftly squishing you against her again.

“I’m coming to stay with you for the next few days,” she said, “we can watch movies, I can do the cooking-”

“Nemuri, she just got out of the hospital.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” she said, glowering at Hizashi and stroking your hair. “(Name), just ignore him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Hizashi protested the point, though you barely paid attention, catching only the occasional word here and there. Nemuri combed her fingers through your hair, defending both her honour and cooking skills.

“Honestly,” she said at last, reaching up to touch her own cheek. “I should go and fix my makeup. (Name), you come too!”

Neither you nor Hizashi commented on the fact that her makeup was fine and you weren’t wearing any.

~~~~

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

Nemuri paused, eyeliner pen in hand.

“Whatever do you mean?”

She had lifted you up onto the counter to get a better angle, silently painting away the dark circles under your eyes and returning the colour to your cheeks.

You spread out your fingers, flashing your scarlet fingernails.

“Guilty as charged,” she said. “It was the least I could do, considering…”

You remembered the last conversation you had had with her, right before you had rushed out of the door to meet Shouta and take on her duties as chaperone. She had sounded so upset over the phone; you had gone without a second thought.

“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” you said, tilting your head as she applied the eyeliner. “No one could have.”

“(Name),” she said, swallowing loudly, “the truth is...there was never anything wrong with me. I sent you there because...Hizashi and I wanted you and Aizawa to talk.”

“Huh?”

You had wanted to get Shouta alone, of course, but hadn’t thought of the trip to the lodge as anything more than a lucky break.

Not for the first time that day, you realised exactly how naive you had been. How many conflicts had passed by without your notice? How many sacrifices?

Shouta had pushed you towards Hizashi, Hizashi had pushed you towards Shouta. Both wanted the other to be happy, both wanted the best for all involved.

You laughed, you couldn’t help it. Every moment of hesitation; every second thought; it had always been part of something much bigger. You had always been part of a far more intricate sequence of events and now it was unravelling before your eyes.

You laughed so hard that your eyes blurred with tears, Nemuri joining in soon after.

“I’m such an idiot,” you said. “We’re all such idiots.”

Nemuri laughed with you, doubling over and smudging your makeup in the process.

“It’s really been that simple the whole time,” you spluttered, “ all this time .”

You laughed until your side hurt and you sucked in a deep breath, touching your hand to the spot as Nemuri ran a makeup wipe over your smudged eyeliner.

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Speak to Aizawa at the lodge.”

“Oh,” you said. “No. The attack happened before…”

Nemuri tossed aside the wipe and folded her arms with a smirk.

“Seems to me that you three have a lot to talk about,” she said, glancing from you to the makeup bag. “I need to rethink this...I need to rethink all of this .”

She reached for different eyeshadows and fresh brushes, ready to paint you in different colours.

“You listen to me, kitten,” she said, reaching for lipstick, “if they mess around with you like this again…” she ran her thumb over your bottom lip, “you come to me.”

Her thumb was warm against your lip, gentle enough to tickle but hard enough to bring heat to your cheeks.

Was she...

Surely she wasn’t...

Surely she didn't…

Your eyes darted from her slender fingers to the bright red polish coating her nails; the same shade she had used to paint your own. She smelled intoxicatingly sweet, like the fancy soap stores you often passed in Roppongi, the ones that left their doors wide open to lure in passers by with exotic fragrances.

Right then you felt just as curious; imagination wandering to paths never taken and decisions never made. A different lover in a different bathroom...maybe even this one.

“O-okay.”

~~~~~

Night had fallen by the time Shouta arrived at the izakaya, loosening off his tie with a grunt. He hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that he didn’t want to go. He could think of a dozen or more things he’d rather be doing. He had lesson planning to do, streets to patrol and that was without mention of stopping by the hospital. Your transfer to Musutafu made things a lot more convenient in theory, though his schedule had been so unforgiving that he still hadn’t been able to visit as much as he wanted to.

He walked towards the bar, ready to order something fruity and deceptively strong. For a moment at least, he wanted to distract himself from the chaos of the past few weeks.

“Sho,” said Hizashi, stepping out from a booth and draping an arm across his shoulders. “You made it!”

“Looks that way,” he said, eyes immediately darting around the room.

It had been a few days since they’d slept together and, in truth, he was still waiting for it to feel wrong. Hizashi had never been a stranger to putting an arm around his shoulders or reaching for his arm, but there was something different about his touches now. Shouta half expected everyone in the izakaya to stop what they were doing and stare in disgust, yet they carried on as if nothing had happened. Snipe and Nemuri faced off against each other on one of the arcade machines while Cementoss and Vlad played pool. Thirteen was sitting in a nearby booth with Ectoplasm, engrossed in a game of poker. All Might and Nezu discussed the day’s events, drinks long forgotten.

Shouta wasn’t used to public displays of affection. He wasn’t used to dating or letting down his guard. He had brushed off any of Hizashi’s attempts to hold hands, had been deliberately non-committal in arranging dates, and all because it felt like a betrayal. He wasn’t ashamed of being with another man, didn’t care that said man happened to be Hizashi. He did, however, care a good deal about doing either of those things without your blessing.

He didn’t want to commit to another person without hearing what it was you’d had to say that day at the lodge. He had told himself that you were better off not knowing how far you had gotten under his skin, but he didn’t believe himself anymore. He wanted the first thing you heard from him to be a prayer: a prayer that you wouldn’t leave him again; a prayer that you would forgive him for every time he had pushed you away and been upset when you didn’t follow.

Hizashi, who not only knew him better than he knew himself but had found himself in a similar predicament, didn’t push. Shouta told himself he would thank him for it when all of this was over.

“Listen,” said Hizashi, expression grave as he flagged down the bartender, “don’t freak out, okay?”

“Freak out? About what?”

“Hmmm...well…”

“You can’t just tell me not to freak out without context.”

“Uhhhh...well...the thing is…(Name) woke up earlier on today.”

Shouta’s eyes widened. He was glad he hadn’t yet ordered a drink, for he was certain it would have shattered on the floor.

“I have to go,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “I need to-”

He moved to leave, only to look back in surprise as Hizashi took hold of his arm.

“What are you doing? Let me go.”

Before this, Hizashi had encouraged him to go and see you. Why was he stopping him now?

“She discharged herself,” he said. “You won’t find her there.”

“She what ,” said Shouta, pulling his arm away. “That idiot , what was she thinking?”

“Wait,” said Hizashi, grabbing his arm again, “where are you going now?”

“Where do you think? I’m going to her house,” he said. “What if she tries to cook something and passes out by the oven? What if she tries to take a bath and dr-”

“Sho,” said Hizashi, looking more than a little bit offended, “you won’t find her there either.”

Shouta blinked, contemplating where else you might have gone. Had you gone to your parents’ house? No, he knew for a fact that it was unlikely. He paid close attention to just about everything you said and you hadn’t exactly made a secret of how little contact you had with your immediate family.

Had Hizashi set you up at his place? Had Nemuri taken you to hers?

Where were you?

He needed to talk to you, needed to wipe the last memory of you from his imagination. He didn’t want to speak your name and immediately think of you pinned to a tree. He didn’t want to remember your voice as a croak of despair.

Hizashi chewed at his bottom lip and Shouta’s imagination ran wild.

Was this his weird way of telling him you’d died?

“She’s over there,” said Hizashi at last, nodding his head towards All Might’s booth.

Shouta’s blood ran cold.

No way.

No fucking way.

He had wanted to speak to you so badly for so long. He’d wanted to see you up and about on your feet, back at UA as if nothing had happened. Now that you were there, though, in the same room and surrounded by other teachers, he didn’t trust himself to look at you. What if he fell to pieces like he had on that night at the lodge?

“You okay?” said Hizashi, prodding at his arm.

“I’m fine,” he said with a sigh. “Just...”

He wasn’t prepared to be vulnerable in plain sight. He didn’t know how he’d react when he saw you.

“Okay,” said Hizashi. “Hear me out…”

~~~~~

The past week had passed by you in a second, yet it felt like you hadn’t seen your colleagues in years and apparently the feeling was mutual. You found yourself on the receiving end of more hugs than you could count, more pats to the head in half an hour than you had received in the past twenty years.

That was without mention of your ever expanding collection of ice water. Everyone wanted to buy you a drink and you knew for a fact you couldn’t drink them all.

You ran your fingers through the condensation on your nearest glass as All Might and Nezu discussed the home visits, eyes darting to the izakaya doors every time they opened.

You had expected Shouta to arrive with All Might and struggled to contain your disappointment when that wasn’t the case. The more time passed, the more nervous you became. Part of you hated the idea of the first years’ hard work and training going to waste, but you didn’t know what you would do in their parents’ position. If your child went through the same experiences as 1-A and B, would you allow them to go back? Would your need to protect them overpower your need to see them happy?

You were biased and you knew it.

It was almost a relief when Hizashi came back to the booth and reached out an arm.

“C’mon, Little Listener,” he said, guiding you out of the booth and onto your feet, “let’s stretch those legs and greet your adoring public!”

You linked your arm through his and used his weight to steady your own, grateful for the prospect of leaving the booth even temporarily. You had been sitting there for so long that you were pretty sure it had remolded your butt.

“This way,” said Hizashi, leading you past the arcade machine and jukebox, through a side door that led outside to the back of the izakaya.

You took a gulp of fresh air, relishing the coolness against your skin.

“You okay, sweetness?”

“Yeah,” you said. “It’s good to see everyone again.”

He laughed softly, patting his hand over the one you had linked through his.

“ Almost everyone,” he said, pointing out a shadowy figure further along the street. You followed his gaze, eyes blurring with tears.

You would have known that silhouette anywhere.

You had wanted to see Shouta for so long; had wanted to speak to him for longer. There he was, right in front of you, and none of it seemed real.

He looked good , dressed up in a suit, though plainly tired of it, for he had taken off his tie and unfastened his top two buttons, leaving his collarbones on full display. You realised this was the first time you’d seen him with his hair up since Ego and, in all honesty, you were surprised your knees didn’t buckle.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Hizashi, clapping his hands together and stepping back into the izakaya, leaving the pair of you completely alone.

You stared at Shouta; he stared at you, neither of you quite believing this was happening.

“I,” you said at last, “the thing is…”

You never got to finish your sentence, for Shouta moved, stepping closer and resting his head on your shoulder. For a moment, you were sure your heart stopped.

“Forgive me,” he murmured into your neck, voice rumbling against your skin. You closed your eyes, tears rolling down your cheeks.

You considered asking him what it was he wanted forgiveness for, though decided against it. He’d spent the entire day apologising for events out of his control and this wasn’t the time to dwell on them even more.

You reached up to cradle his body, one arm wrapped around his shoulders, the other combing through his hair.

“Okay,” you whispered back, saying nothing of the wetness against your neck from tears that were not your own.

He lifted his head and touched his forehead to yours, catching your lips in his in a kiss that consumed every inch of you, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes; a kiss you wanted to burn you to ashes and scatter you on the evening air; a kiss you would remember with perfect clarity for the rest of your life, long after other details of that night lay forgotten.

~~~~

You stayed at the izakaya for another hour or two, Hizashi’s jacket draped over your shoulders while both he and Shouta hovered in your general vicinity like a pair of mother hens.

All Might and Nezu were the first to leave, staying only for a couple of rounds and catch up with Shouta, followed a short while later by Thirteen. Nemuri, who had had more than a little bit to drink by that point, tried to persuade everyone else to finish up the night at a club. Ordinarily, Hizashi would have said yes, but he had other responsibilities today, namely getting you home and finally hashing it out with you and Shouta.

He didn’t speak much at all on the drive to your house, glancing at you in his rear view mirror every time you hit traffic lights. He wanted to reach out for Shouta’s hand as he had yours; to congratulate him properly for his hard work that day. Once or twice, as you leaned your head against the passenger side window and drifted in and out of sleep, he reached in Shouta’s direction, only to pass it off as resting his hand against the gear stick.

Even if he did make contact, he knew Shouta wouldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t do anything without your knowledge. It was exactly the sort of honour he loved him for, but did nothing to warm his fingertips. Hizashi loved to touch and be touched; he liked being on the receiving end of attention almost as much as he liked giving it out. Not being able to touch Shouta was like being starved of oxygen and he felt himself wither with every second that passed.

It was a relief when they finally arrived at your house, Shouta lifting you up into his arms as you rifled through your purse for the key.

Hizashi followed the pair of you inside, watching as Shouta set you down on the couch and slipped off your shoes with a good deal of care- far more care than he ever afforded himself.

“We need to talk,” Shouta said as you rubbed your eyes.

“Sho,” said Hizashi, suddenly paranoid that you would be too tired for such an important conversation.

You sat up straight, though - of course you did - not quite wide awake, but coherent.

“It’s okay,” you said. “Let’s talk.”

The three of you sat in silence for a while. None of you had ever imagined getting this far.

Finally, Shouta broke it.

“I fucked Hizashi,” he said, so bluntly that Hizashi choked on his own spit.

“Hey, you...you don’t have to put it like that!”

“Why not,” shrugged Shouta. “It’s what happened.”

“Well yes, but...it sounds so dirty .”

For Hizashi, at least, it had been more than just fucking and even though he knew Shouta wasn’t an overly sentimental kind of guy, the notion that he felt otherwise prickled at his skin. He had been one too many people’s one night stand for it not to.

You glanced from Hizashi to Shouta with an unreadable expression. Finally, you nodded, crossing one leg over the other in the pose you very often took at your desk.

“Okay.”

Hizashi was sure his stomach fell through the floor. He’d expected you to be shocked, hurt or at the very least confused. He hadn’t expected your reaction to be so subdued.

“Does it bother you?” said Shouta.

“Why would it?”

“Well...uh…”

Hizashi glanced from you to Shouta, increasingly agitated by both of your poker faces. You were normally far more expressive than this and it was making him nervous.

“I fucked Hizashi too,” you shrugged and it took everything in him not to gasp.

It was one thing for Shouta to say it, but you?

“Does it bother you two?” you said. “That I’ve slept with you both.”

“Of course not,” said Hizashi, so quickly that it was a surprise even to himself.

The idea of being upset with you and Shouta for sleeping with each other was absurd. He wasn’t even completely upset that you’d kept it from him for so long. Shouta hadn’t been upset by the revelation that you had slept with him either, accepting it as easily as if he’d been told the pair of you had gone to the movies or eaten dinner.

“Then why should it bother me ?”

“We’re both men,” said Shouta almost immediately, to which you finally broke out into a smile.

“Trust me, I’ve noticed.”

“If we did it again...would it bother you?”

“Do you want to do it again?”

“Yes,” said Shouta, once again without any sort of hesitation.

“ Really ?” said Hizashi, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Sure.”

You sighed and rubbed your temples, adjusting your weight on the couch. Both Hizashi and Shouta stepped forwards to help but you waved them away.

“It’s okay with me,” you said. “It’s not like I own either of you. You don’t need my permission.”

“No, but I want it,” said Shouta, stubborn as ever.

You pushed yourself up from the couch and folded your arms, wrapping your fingers in the sleeves of Hizashi’s jacket.

“Do you remember how all of this began?”

“ Ego ,” said Shouta.

“No, before that,” you said, shaking your head. “When I got dumped...it made me question everything. Akira told me he didn’t want to settle down, he didn’t want to lock himself into a particular path...and I hated him for it. I thought I wasn’t good enough, that I was boring, that my entire life until that point had been a waste of time…”

“(Name),” said Hizashi, but you waved him off.

“I understand it now, though,” you said. “It was never really about Akira. It’s just...up until then I’d always been the one who settled. I was always the one who made sacrifices and hard choices. I was always the one who caved. Up until Ego I’d never done anything self indulgent. I’d never thrown caution to the wind and chased something I wanted. Until then I’d shaped myself to fit other people, because at some point I’d convinced myself that everything I actually wanted was silly or an imposition.”

You breathed a heavy sigh, cheeks flushing a bright pink.

“I want both of you,” you said. “I don’t want to choose or settle. Life’s too short to talk yourself out of doing things that make you happy. If you want to choose, I’ll support it, but don’t feel like you have to because of me.”

Hizashi looked across at Shouta. Shouta looked at him. Both of them turned to look at you and all of the confidence melted from your body.

“That is…” you said, shuffling on the spot, “I mean…”

“This is new territory,” said Hizashi at last, “it’ll take time to figure it out.”

“If it doesn’t work we can just reset,” shrugged Shouta, “it’s not a problem.”

“We’ll need to,” you said, trying and failing to stifle a yawn, “....go over boundaries.”

“We can have a longer conversation about it tomorrow,” said Hizashi, as you rubbed your eyes. “It’s been a long day.”

He reached into his pocket for his car keys, turning to Shouta with a knowing look.

Hizashi had had you all to himself for much of the day. It was only fair that Shouta got some time too, especially considering how much you likely still had to talk about. He doubted either of you would declare your undying love in an alley behind the izakaya.

“I’m heading home,” he said, “you two...don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

~~~~

After Hizashi left, you and Shouta fell into a comfortable silence. He helped you into your pyjamas and tucked you up in bed, planting kisses on your forehead any time you got close enough. It was so casually affectionate that you thought your heart might burst and you quite deliberately turned your face to his for more attention.

Your heart sank, though, when he actually tucked you in.

“I’ll be right next door,” he said, backing away, “call me if you need anything.”

You glanced from your bed to him, finally pulling back the sheets and motioning for him to come closer. You had wanted to hold onto him for what felt like an eternity and you weren’t going to pass up the chance now that it was right in front of you.

“Come here,” you said, patting the space next to you. “Get in.”

He considered it, the dilemma visibly playing out across his face.

“Fine,” he said, “move over that way.”

You did exactly that, wondering what his motives were. It would have been easier for him to take the side you pointed out to him. Had he picked the other side for no other reason than to be contrarian? It wasn’t outside the realms of possibility, but you had a feeling that wasn’t the case.

He unbuttoned his shirt and dragged it from his shoulders, exposing the sharp angles and scars of his body. This wasn’t the first time he’d done so in this room and heat pooled inside of you at the memory. You hadn’t been able to stop yourself staring then, either. You had seen the scar on his face from USJ, but not the mark on his elbow. You skimmed over the ripples in his skin, the same discoloration as on your own body.

Realisation sank in.

Shouta did indeed have a reason for choosing that side of the bed and it was far simpler than you might have imagined.

Anyone who broke into your house would have to pass your couch. Shouta had picked the side of the bed that was closest to the door. Anyone who came in would have to go through him to get to you.

You lifted up the covers so he could crawl in beside you, heart skipping a beat as he rested his head on the pillow. He looked at you in confusion, no doubt feeling your eyes on him.

“What is it?”

You rested your head on his chest.

“Nothing.”

In this situation, Hizashi would surely have pestered you for an answer. Shouta was almost certainly curious, but he didn’t say so, instead combing strands of hair out of your face in an attempt to see more of you.

You closed your eyes and listened to the steady thrum of his heartbeat, the warmth of his body enclosing yours. He held you close, though not so tightly that it hurt, the rise and fall of his chest lulling you to sleep.

You fell asleep safe and warm, with a peaceful expression that Shouta watched long into early morning.

~~~~~~

A week passed.

Your energy returned, albeit slowly. It took the best part of a day to get through your notifications and update your friends and family on your condition, much less make the time to have them over. It took all of your energy on that first day to make a single pot of tea, much less make conversation.

Nemuri, true to her word, stopped in every morning to make breakfast and help with laundry. Her cooking wasn’t the best and you found yourself redoing the laundry more often than not, but her heart was in the right place and you couldn’t bring yourself to turn down her offer.

Hizashi created a group chat with you, Shouta and himself as the only members. You knew exactly what it was for the moment you received an invitation, smiling at the emojis he had used as a title: 🐱 🎤 👑

If you were all going to date it made sense to have a group chat, though it made your stomach flutter nonetheless. You still couldn’t quite believe you’d signed up for this, much less that Hizashi and Shouta were just as up for it as you were.

It didn’t sink in even as the three of you ordered food and worked over the final details, which in the end took only a matter of minutes. You were all fairly laid back when it came to preferences and boundaries. You didn’t mind who slept with who or how many dates you had with each other. You were all busy for one reason or another and there was no point in keeping score.

You discussed threesomes last of all. Given your triangular relationship, it had always only been a matter of time before it cropped up in conversation. You and Shouta had never had one, while Hizashi’s experience mostly amounted to drunken fumbling with beautiful strangers. He’d never done it with anyone he wanted to date, much less anyone he actually was . It was new territory for everyone and all three of you were nervous for different reasons.

You agreed that if you were to test run something of that nature, it made sense to do so before the next school term. The teachers would become incredibly busy almost overnight and, while Nezu had gotten you a temporary replacement for the first couple of weeks, you would have just as much to catch up on when you returned.

And so it was that Hizashi sent an address to the group chat, one sent you flushing a bright pink.

👑: You do realise that’s a love hotel?

🎤: Yup! Best for it to be on neutral ground, don’t you think?

👑: I guess you’re right .

🎤: Plus, this one has alllllll kinds of facilities. They have a minibar, they sell toys at the counter, they have every kind of lube and condom you can dream of...it’s the perfect place for de p r a v i t y

👑: what do you think, Shouta?

🐱: whatever

🎤: Then it’s settled! We’re going to have so much fun! 🎉 🎉 🎉

You lowered your phone into your lap with a giggle, which prompted Nemuri to look over from the kitchen with a raised eyebrow.

She hadn’t asked too many questions about who it was you were always texting, mostly because she hadn’t needed to. Hizashi and Shouta took turns staying the night with you long after the strength returned to your legs. It never progressed any further than cuddles and they were always gone before she arrived, but you knew she wasn’t a fool and had likely already guessed what was going on. You’d agreed to tell her once the dust had settled and you’d figured things out.

“Something funny?”

“Somewhere, at this very moment, I’m pretty sure Shouta’s questioning his life choices,” you said between giggles.

“Ahhh,” she said, reaching into your cupboard for dishes, “must be Tuesday.”

~~~~

However nervous you might have been about going to the love hotel paled in comparison to how it felt when you actually arrived.

You had spent hours going through your wardrobe, wondering what on earth to wear. Hizashi was quick to remind you that whatever you wore would end up on the bedroom floor anyway, which did little to quell your nerves. You wanted tonight to be special; the kind of night you revisited over and over to better enjoy each detail. In the end, you settled on a simple dress and shoes, with the fanciest lingerie you owned underneath.

Your stomach fluttered as you caught sight of your reflection while you were getting dressed, the anticipation of the night ahead almost too much to bear. After tonight everything would be different for what you prayed would be the right reasons.

You bobbed on your heels as Hizashi booked you in, glancing around at your surroundings. It didn’t look any different to any ordinary hotel, though you weren’t sure why such a thing surprised you. You had heard stories of people spending the night in one by accident, as well as people who took advantage of the cheap rate to do so on purpose.

You glanced across at Shouta to see if he was as nervous as you, only to see him examining one of the posters on the wall. From the looks of things, the hotel offered themed rooms as well as generic ones and while some of the themes were pretty run of the mill, some were far more unusual. They had a dinosaur themed room and an aquarium, as well as a superhero room designed to look like a back alley.

They also had a cat themed one, complete with fluffy pink bed sheets and equally fluffy cat themed lingerie, which seemed to have grabbed Shouta’s attention the most. You made a mental note to do some online shopping at the next opportunity.

“Let’s go!” said Hizashi at last, dangling a key labelled 215.

You took a deep breath and followed him through the building, taking note of the luxurious interiors. You’d expected it to look seedy and the reality was quite jarring.

“Who’s excited?!” Hizashi cried out as you took the lift to the second floor. “This is going to be awesome!”

You couldn’t help but laugh at his enthusiasm, but even he fell silent when you stepped inside of your room for the night.

This...this was everything you had expected and more besides. Everything you looked at was more obscene than the last.

The room was bright red, with silk sheets and a mirror on the ceiling. There was a pole and set of couches in the right hand corner, as well as bookcases full of erotica. Across from the bed was an enormous flat screen television and a cabinet underneath it that you knew without looking contained porn.

Hizashi fiddled with the switches on the wall, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the spotlights on the floor and ceiling, all three of you taking a step back when one switch made the room rumble. The ceiling mirror shifted and a set of straps lowered through the gap.

“Is that…” you whispered.

“It’s a sex swing!” cried out Hizashi, unable to contain his excitement.

You had only ever heard of them until now and mostly as a joke. Hizashi rushed across the room to test the straps, looping his wrists into the cuffs and hoisting his weight up off the floor, laughing as he began to swing as if the three of you were in a playground and not a room full of sin.

On the leftmost side of the room was a wooden divider screen, with multiple wardrobes behind it. You approached them slowly, morbidly curious about what you might find inside.

What you actually found there made you cry out in glee.

“Oh my god,” you said, rummaging through the drawers. “Oh my god!!!”

“What is it?” said Hizashi, trying to unravel himself from the swing.

“It’s...oh my god. They have costumes.”

“Oh? You gonna be a dominatrix for us?”

“No, you don't understand,” you said, stepping out from behind the divider. “They have costumes.”

Both Hizashi and Shouta’s eyes widened when they saw what you were wearing. You’d found a familiar spiked leather jacket and gloves, as well as the shades to match the set.

“Hey, hey, hey listeners,” you called out in your best Present Mic impression. “It’s a beeeeeeutiful day to boogie!”

Hizashi was delighted; he struck a pose of his own.

“Put on your dancin’ shoes and happy smiles,” he said, “tonight we’re going Plus Ultra style!”

“I knew it was a bad idea for you two to spend time together,” sighed Shouta, rummaging through the mini bar.

“Are you saying there’s not enough room for two Present Mics?” Hizashi pouted, wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

“I don’t think the world is big enough for one .”

Shouta pulled out three beers and unscrewed the lids, passing one to you and another to Hizashi.

“Cheers,” you said, taking a long sip before setting the bottle down on the nearest surface.

Hizashi and Shouta did the same, the reality of what you were about to do sinking in.

“Anyone want to back out?” said Hizashi.

“Nope,” you said, Shouta shaking his head along with you.

“Okay,” said Hizashi, “in that case, let’s set the mood .”

You stripped off the leather jacket and gloves, watching as Hizashi played around with the various switches in the room. He returned the sex swing to its original position and fixed the lighting, choosing a setting that left the room in a soft light that resembled candles.

Shouta pulled the pillows from the bed and set them down on the nearest couch, fluffing them up as you slipped behind the divider screen and unfastened the zipper of your dress. You slipped it off your shoulders and down to the floor, excitement rushing through you at the knowledge that neither Hizashi nor Shouta had noticed yet.

You rearranged your hair, taking a deep breath before stepping out and perching on the end of the bed, stretching like a cat and waiting for them to turn and look at you.

It was Shouta who noticed first, turning from the couch and freezing on the spot. You flashed him a knowing smile and he reached out for Hizashi, who was searching through his phone for the perfect playlist.

“...so I’ve been putting this together for the past few days. I wanted something that was mellow but had a bit of a beat and-ow!”

Shouta poked him in the ribs and pointed in your direction, prompting Hizashi to almost drop his phone.

“I seem to have lost my dress,” you said, crossing both arms over your chest in pretend modesty. “Won’t you help me?”

“O-o-o-of course,” said Hizashi, “though for what’s worth, you seem to be doing just fine without it.”

Shouta sank down into a chair at the foot of the bed, reaching for his beer as Hizashi climbed up onto the bed behind you.

“You look,” he said. “I’ll supervise.”

Hizashi’s breath was warm against the back of your neck and you shivered as he planted kisses along your exposed back.

“Maybe it’s hiding behind your ears,” he said, lifting your hair and swirling his tongue around your earlobe. “Hmmm...nope.”

“Maybe this one,” you said, tapping your finger against the opposite ear and giggling at the tickle of his lips against your ear.

“No,” he said, sounding genuinely forlorn even as he kissed the back of your neck. “Not there. Perhaps… maybe...”

He looped his fingers through your bra’s fastening and unhooked it with ease. Your bra dropped down onto your lap and you tossed it aside, watching as Shouta leaned back in his chair and sipped his beer, an expression of satisfaction across his face as Hizash looped his hands around your middle and reached up to give your breasts a squeeze.

“Not here either,” he said, tightening his grip on your nipples and grazing his teeth against your shoulder. “Where else might it be?”

He slipped his arms under yours, maneuvering them into his line of sight and turning your hands so they were palm up.

“Not here,” he said, spreading your fingers in the same way you wanted him to spread your legs, “my my, we are in a pickle.”

He set your hands back down and moved a little further up the bed, leaning over to pull at your shoulders so that you followed. He guided you up onto your knees and tossed his own shirt to one side before resting a hand over your lower stomach. He snaked his free hand over your breasts, burying his lips in your neck as his other hand dipped into your underwear.

“Is it in here, perhaps?” he purred, slipping his fingers into your folds and earning a gasp from you in response. “Hmmm…”

He slipped a single, exploratory finger into you and you nibbled your bottom lip, remembering the last time he had gone down on you. You’d been a shivering, shuddering mess afterwards and you couldn’t wait to experience it a second time.

“What do you think, Sho?” he asked, glancing across at Shouta, who had cast aside his beer in favour of reaching into his pants.

“I think you should get a better look,” he said, resting his free elbow on the arm of the chair and resting his chin in his hand.

“Roger that,” said Hizashi, taking his hand out of your underwear. “Lay back for me, princess.”

You obeyed, rolling over onto your back so that your head rested at the foot of the bed, facing out towards Shouta.

“That’s a good girl,” he said, easing your panties down your thighs and over your ankles before tossing them over to Shouta, who held them up to the light, admiring the way the soft light shone through the pattern.

You blushed, heat pooling deep inside of your core as Hizashi planted a kiss between your breasts, hair tickling over your lower stomach as he spread your legs wide to expose your cunt.

The chill of being so thoroughly exposed lasted only a second; Hizashi ran his tongue over your clit before it could truly register. You gasped, reaching down to run your fingers through his hair and catching your reflection in the mirror on the ceiling.

You knew for a fact what was happening; you knew you were there, you knew who you were with. You saw your face, your naked breasts, the lacy stockings you had yet to remove and Hizashi’s head bobbing between your thighs. Even so, you didn’t recognise yourself.

You released Hizashi’s hair and spread your arms across the bed, watching as the girl in the mirror did the same. You watched the pleasure play out across her face, the muscles in Hizashi’s back shifting as he reached to slip in a finger. You cried out and so did the girl on the ceiling, back arching from the bed.

You could see Shouta too, jerking his cock in time to Hizashi’s movements. You watched the ceiling, watched as Hizashi took note of your silence and followed your gaze.

“Ah hah,” he said, waving at your reflections. “So Sho isn’t the only one who likes to watch!”

You blushed and turned your head to look at Shouta. You were on your back, so he was upside down, but the intensity when your eyes met was no different than usual. Before you knew it, you were reaching out to him, willing him to come over. You wanted to feel his hands against your body as well, wanted to see all three of your naked bodies on the ceiling.

You didn’t speak a single word of invitation, but you didn’t have to. He got to his feet and kicked off his pants and underwear, showing off how hard he had gotten just from watching.

Hizashi sat back, wiping your juices from his lips.

“Nice of you to join us,” he said, letting you relax your legs and roll over onto your side. Shouta approached the bed and you reached for his dick, propping yourself up on your elbow to coax him closer. He climbed up onto the bed and sat down on his knees, providing the perfect angle for you to run your tongue over his hardness.

You hadn’t tasted his cock before. Technically speaking, you hadn’t tasted Hizashi’s either. You had dipped a finger into the pool of cum he left on you while he was busy running your bath, curiosity and lust overtaking you.

It was too simplistic to say it tasted good or bad. The only way you could describe it was that it tasted of him, sweet and earthy in equal measures.

Shouta’s cock tasted far more bitter, though in a way that was more intriguing than it was unpleasant. He was broad, so broad that you couldn’t take all of him into your mouth without gagging, though you were so intoxicated by him that you were more than willing to try.

Hizashi crawled off the bed and kicked off his own pants, slipping a kiss to the side of Shouta’s mouth before leaning back down onto the sheets. He shuffled his weight until he could comfortably rest his head between your thighs, lifting one of your legs up onto his shoulders before returning to his earlier ministrations.

Maybe it was the change in angle; the moans you dragged from Shouta every time you moved your head. Maybe it was the way Shouta used his position to grip onto Hizashi’s hard cock. Whatever the case, you found yourself quaking at the prospect of everything to come. You could feel your stomach churning in anticipation; the wet sound of your lips on Shouta’s skin combined with the wet feel of Hizashi’s lips against your clit sending shudders of pleasure down your spine.

The first time you came, it was like butterflies in your belly, sending shockwaves through your middle that teased at what was to come. You moaned onto Shouta’s dick, Shouta squeezed Hizashi’s and all three of you groaned at the combined sensation.

“Do you think you’re ready for me, sweetness?” said Hizashi, sitting up from between your legs to look you in the face.

You nodded, rolling over onto your back while he got up to choose a condom from the box beside the bed.

“Hey,” he said, unable to hide his glee, “they have Present Mic ones!”

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

He laughed as he tore open the packaging and pulled it on, still overjoyed as he got back up onto the bed and aligned his hips with yours. He gave your clit a tentative stroke and you raised your hand up to get a good grip on Shouta’s dick from this new angle, jerking it gently even as Hizashi held onto your hips and slid his tip into you. You sighed at the feeling of being stretched, Hizashi slipping himself in and out a little deeper each time.

Both of you moaned the moment you took him to the hilt, as he gave one gentle thrust.

“Oooh, she feels so good, Shouta,” he said. “I’ll get her all nice and warmed up for you!”

Shouta didn’t answer, he was watching the three of you in the ceiling mirror and Hizashi reached for his shoulder.

“Sho,” he said, “earth to Sho.”

Shouta looked down at him, only to be dragged into a searing kiss, one that came with its own soundtrack of moans and flesh hitting flesh. Hizashi thrust his hips into yours with such force that it pushed you up the bed, leaving you little choice but to grip one of Shouta’s legs.

“Okay, little listener?” said Hizashi, breaking the kiss to peer down at you.

“Not going easy on me, are you?”

“What me? Never!”

He slammed his hips into yours and crushed his lips against Shouta’s, all while you moaned and held onto Shouta for dear life. Hizashi held one of your legs in place to secure you further, tangling the other in Shouta’s hair.

You wrapped your free hand around Shouta’s cock, jerking it roughly in time to Hizashi’s thrusts. You looked up, watching the pair of them kiss both above your head and on the ceiling.

Your insides grew tighter still; a spring inside of you ready to unwind.

You weren’t naive enough to believe Hizashi would let you come there and then. Sex was an artform to him and he had had enough time to plan.

“You feel so good, cupcake,” he said, breaking free of the kiss for a second, “Sho’s really missing out.”

He slowed down his thrusts to an agonisingly slow and deep pace that left you gasping into the sheets and digging your nails into the back of Shouta’s legs.

“...listen to that,” Hizashi murmured against Shouta’s lips, forcing him to listen to the wet sound of him fucking you, “it’s driving me crazy and I’m the one balls deep.”

He stopped for a moment and Shouta reached for his jaw.

“Don’t hold out on me, now,” he said. “Don’t start something you aren’t prepared to finish.”

Hizashi grinned at the command; you realised this was exactly the outcome he had been waiting for. He fucked you so hard and fast that you squealed in a mixture of surprise and delight. Shouta adjusted his weight, crossing his legs beneath him and guiding your head into his lap.

He stroked your lips as gently as if he had kissed them, reaching for the hand that had held his dick not so long ago and planting kisses on your knuckles.

“Harder,” he said, in a commanding tone completely at odds with the tender way he held your hand.

Hizashi was only too happy to comply, lifting your knees higher to get a better angle. You gripped Shouta’s hand and arched your back, trying to link your legs behind Hizashi’s back to hold him in place, only for him to tickle your feet in punishment.

Part of you couldn’t stand the growing tension between your thighs. You wanted to let go and lose yourself completely. The other, more rational part of you wanted to relish this moment, the combination of Hizashi’s rough and increasingly sloppy thrusts and Shouta’s soft touches.

“Deeper,” said Shouta at last and you screwed up your face as Hizashi obeyed, so close to shattering to pieces around his cock and yet so tortuously far. You spluttered in sheer desperation, holding Shouta so tightly that you feared you’d break the skin.

“Oh my g-don’t stop,” you pleaded, “like that, like that, like-“

You let out a whine, holding your body still as pleasure rushed through it. You bucked your hips into his as flutters of delight rushed through your core, enough to shake your legs though not enough to take over completely.

“Oh fuck,” you said as your walls clenched around Hizashi’s cock, a taste of what was to come and enough to send him over the edge.

He gave a strangled whine as his cock twitched deep inside of you, holding himself perfectly taut to ride out the wave. You knew the exact moment he finished, for the bones left his body and he flopped forwards, a goofy smile on his face.

“You tryin’ to kill me, Sho?” he murmured, head resting on Shouta’s chest and dick still buried deep inside of you. He pulled out with a sigh and rolled backwards, climbing up off the bed without any sort of grace. He reached for his beer as he pulled off the condom, making an impressed sort of noise as he held it out in front of him. “Look how much you made me cum!”

He threw a couple of fresh condoms onto the bed and Shouta picked up the closest one: a luxury branded one in simple silver packaging. He eased your head up from his lap and shifted positions, leaving you to watch as he put it on, body so close to release that it ached.

“Come here,” he said gently, helping you up onto your knees and holding his body against your back. “Just like that…”

“I’m so close,” you whined, “so close…”

“I know,” he whispered in your ear, “you’ve been very good and patient.”

You laughed at that, knowing for a fact that you’d been anything but.

Shouta reached down to take hold of your waist, holding his hand over the flat of your stomach and kissing the back of your neck. You arched your body into his every touch and ground your ass against him, relishing every time you brushed against his hard dick.

He guided you down onto your hands and knees, slipping a finger into you a couple of times before replacing it with his dick. You moaned in relief at not only being filled again, but in a different position. Every time Shouta pushed into you, he teased the sensitive spot inside of you that would turn you into a squealing mess; a spot that had gone thoroughly neglected until Akira dumped you.

Shouta went almost torturously slow and deep, gripping onto your hips to steady you. At first you gripped onto the bed sheets, before sliding one hand down to your clit. You wanted to cum so badly, but no Shouta wouldn’t go any faster no matter how much you moaned.

You never made contact with your clit, though. Hizashi got there before you.

“Let me,” he said, sitting down next to the bed and leaning over to reach his head between your thighs. You gasped at the combined sensations: Shouta’s deep thrusts and Hizashi’s masterful tongue.

“Oh my god,” you said, so overstimulated that you feared you’d explode. “Oh my god, don’t st-ahhh!”

For a moment, it was as if time stood still. You weren’t there; none of it was real. All you knew was pleasure, rippling from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, Hizashi’s tongue hot and sticky against your clit while Shouta groaned, your walls clenching around him almost unbearably tightly.

Your body shook, still twitching as both Aizawa and Hizashi eased you down onto your back.

“You okay, listener?” said Hizashi, stroking sweaty strands of hair from your face. “Are you with us?”

You blinked, staring blankly into their faces.

“I think,” you said, voice hoarse, “I think my soul left my body for a second there.”

Something cold touched your cheek and you realised Shouta was holding out a bottle of water from the minibar.

“Maybe we went too hard on you,” he said, sounding more than a little concerned.

“No,” you said, flapping a limp arm as you leaned over to sip the water. “That’s not what I meant! It left my body in a good way!”

“Hear that, Sho,” smirked Hizashi, “your dick is killer.”

“Speaking of which,” you said, “you didn’t finish.”

“You’re right,” gasped Hizashi. “Where are our manners?”

Both he and Shouta had flopped down on either side of you, cocooning you in warmth to negate how cold you had suddenly gotten. Hizashi shimmied over to the other side of the bed, leaving Shouta in the middle, all of his earlier fatigue forgotten.

“Now then,” he said, peeling the condom off Shouta’s dick, “let’s do something about this.”

At first you watched, body still heavy. Shouta rested his hand on Hizashi’s head as he trailed his tongue over the underside of his dick, looking Shouta dead in the eye as he lapped up all of his precum and took his dick into his mouth.

It was mesmerising; so different to when you were on the receiving end. You could make out every flutter of Shouta’s eyelashes; the way his body tensed whenever Hizashi hit a particularly sensitive spot or sucked that little bit harder. He looked so vulnerable there and then and you couldn’t look away.

Shouta opened his eyes and looked towards you, crushing his lips against yours before cupping your face in his hand. He pulled you further down his body, until you joined Hizashi at his waist. Hizashi leaned back to make room for you, holding the base of Shouta’s cock and guiding your lips down onto it, earning a sigh of relief.

“Like that,” said Hizashi, holding Shouta in place as you sucked at him. “Wow, you’re really good at this, check you out!”

“Maybe one day I’ll be as good as you!”

“Haha! Maybe! Now, (Name), I want you to do something real quick.”

“Oh?”

“I want you to sit tight and then, when I give you the nod, I want you to do this.”

He leaned over and wrapped his lips around the tip of Shouta’s cock, giving it a hard suck before letting go, making a loud popping noise as he let go. Shouta’s response was instantaneous; he hissed with pleasure and bucked his hips into Hizashi’s touches.

“Think you can handle that?” said Hizashi, bright eyed.

“I think so.”

He nodded and you sat up on your elbows to watch, eyes darting from Hizashi to Shouta as Hizashi began to jerk Shouta’s dick without a hint of mercy. Shouta ground his hips into the bed, arching his back just as you had and making deep, guttural noises you would never have guessed he was capable of. You could see how close he was getting, cheeks flushed and eyes darkened with need.

He gasped when Hizashi finally let go, though the torture wasn’t over. Hizashi gave you the nod you’d been waiting for and you wrapped your lips around the tip just as he had. You sucked hard, relishing the noises Shouta made almost as much as the pressure when he planted a hand on the top of your head in an attempt to hold you in place. You let go, knowing it would drive him insane.

You really were learning from the best.

Hizashi gripped Shouta’s cock and motioned for you to take the tip between your lips. He held on tight and jerked him hard, both sensations leaving him squirming into the bed.

“J-....F-...I…” he babbled, arching his back and reaching his free hand to grip the bed frame. “H-”

Hizashi tapped your chin, motioning for you to sit back. You obeyed and he jerked Shouta’s dick with even more force, only stopping as Shouta sighed in relief and cum seeped across his body.

You and Hizashi both watched him in contentment, taking in the ripple of his muscles as he gasped for air. You crawled back up to lay beside him, giving him a soft kiss to the cheek that he leaned into.

Hizashi crawled up to Shouta’s other side and flopped over onto his back, folding his arms behind his head.

All three of you stared at your reflections on the ceiling, drinking in the sight of your naked bodies and perhaps even thinking the same thing.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

‘What now?”

Art by the lovely @earthbender/ earthbender on tumblr / ArtemisRedd on AO3~

#erasermic x reader #poly!erasermic #aizawa shouta x reader #present mic x reader #hizashi yamada x reader #erasermic #habanero

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perriwinklesblog · 3 years

Text

Okay, so it won’t happen this way but I would love for Sam not to be infected by the egg, at least not fully.

Instead I’d like to see him struggle (I mean I don’t but for the purpose of the storyline), I’d like to see him fighting against the eggs voice in his head.

What if it’s like a chorus of voices, loads of voices in his head trying to pull him to the egg but because he’s been so against it he has moments of clarity which stop him from fully embracing it.

Sam hasn’t been able to sleep since he spent the night in the egg. He’s tried to keep himself busy, entertained but leaving his house takes more and more effort. The seed in his house has grown. Fran doesn’t like it. Part of him doesn’t like it but there’s also a voice telling him to love it.

There’s many voices in his head. Some sound familiar and some don’t. Sometimes he feels a comfort in letting the sounds swirl around him as he sits in darkness next to Fran. Other times he’s ripping his hair out screaming at it to stop.

He feels like he’s going insane.

Fran doesn’t like the eggs gift. She refuses to walk near it, instead growls and takes the long way round. It’s grown. It’ll mess up his inventions soon. He’s not sure he cares.

Sam has moments of clarity where he remembers everything the egg has done, where he knows how vile it is and what it made him do. But then the voice grow loud and those thoughts are drowned out. Part of him thanks them.

Captain Puffy had been worried about Sam since that day she rescued him. He wouldn’t let her inside his base anymore. Instead meeting her out the front, Fran closely following him. He’d have a grin on his face but it never reached his eyes. They were sunken and bloodshot, half the time they looked empty. Most of the time they were screaming in pain.

She’d been laying low since her confrontation with Bad and Ant. Both of them had been determined to kill her. Clearly she wasn’t even worth trying to convert. The egg must have declared her an enemy. She scoffs, yeah be afraid. She made a temporary camp near Sams base, half because it was so far away from people and half because she was worried.

Her worries prove right when one day she’s strolling near his base and all she hears are his screams. Hurriedly, she crafts a hoe so she can enter. Upon entering shes horrified by the red vines stretching across the place. She sees Sam crumpled on the floor, clutching his head eyes screwed up. Fran is biting at the vines. She sees Sam try and push her away but Fran won’t let up.

Puffy: SAM!?

Sam: Stooop. Fran. Stop. Stop hurting it. Please.

Puffy pulls the dog away. Sam rocks tears in his eye, shaking his head, his breathing shallow. Fran whimpers near him, too scared to get close.

Puffy: Sam? Sam, can you hear me? Hey, it’s okay. Sam.

She reaches out to touch him but he flinched away. Puffy searches around them, trying to find something to break through to Sam, to calm him down. She sees the potions stands and grabs a bottle of water.

Puffy: Much better if this was prime water but it’ll have to do.

She pours it over Sam shocking him. He stops and blinks, looking around him. After a few moments of silence he frowns. Puffy slowly watches as he stands, turning away from her and to Fran. He takes out his sword. In one swift movement Puffy blocks his sword with hers, standing between Fran and Sam.

Puffy: What are you doing Sam?

Sam: She was hurting the egg.

Puffy: Sam. That is Fran. Your Fran. You wouldn’t kill her would you? She was trying to protect you, protect you from the egg.

Sam: The egg isn’t bad, Puffy.

Puffy: You’re about to kill Fran, Sam!? You’d never harm Fran.

She can see Sam frown, his eyes start to screw up as if he’s fighting in his head.

Puffy: Think about everything the egg has done. Ruin your inventions, take away our friends. Try and kill Tommy, a child! It made you eat yourself, take away all your things! And now it’s trying to get you to kill Fran. Fran, Sam, Fran. Please. Look at her. Really look at her. It’s Fran. She’s your friend.

With every word Puffy can see the haze chip away at Sam. His hand falls, dropping his sword and he looks at his dog. Love fills his eyes and he falls to the ground, embracing Fran, burying his head into her fur.

Sam: Oh my god. What was I going to do? Fran? I’m so sorry. You’re the best girl. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

He looks up at Puffy, pleading with her.

Sam: Puffy. Help me.

And Puffy kneels next to him, embracing both the dog and Sam in her arms.

They stay like this for a bit before Sam composes himself. Puffy then sits and listens to everything that Sam has been feeling and thinking since the night with the egg.

Sam: It’s like sometimes the eggs voices drown out my voice of reason. Especially when I’m tired. And I’ve been so tired Puffy.

Puffy: I wish you’d told me. I could have helped you drown out the egg. I know now though, that’s all that matters. We will get through this.

Sam: I don’t know how. This egg... it’s so powerful Puffy. It has so many supporters now, including myself if I’m not thinking clearly.

Puffy: One step at a time Sam.

She dusts herself off before pulling Sam to his feet, Fran sticking closely to Sam’s feet.

Puffy: First things first, we rid this place and anywhere near here of Bloodvines.

Sam: No. it’s fine. We don’t need-

Puffy: Sam. The more of this stuff in here, the more control it has over you.

Sam frowns before dropping all of his stuff, including some obsidian blocks.

Sam: I think... I think when you start attacking it, it’s going to pull me to fight you. You’ll need to block me in some obsidian with none of my stuff so I don’t try to stop you.

Puffy: Won’t that... won’t that remind you of that night?

Sam: Yes. So you better move quickly. Blue fire destroys it for good.

Puffy nods and once Sam was trapped mined faster than she ever has before. It had spread through so much of the base that it took her longer than she’d wanted. The whole time she could hear Fran whining where Sam was, his cries and fists slamming against the rock echoing across the place. Once she was done she readied herself for helping Sam.

He looked awful but stood taller than he had been before.

Sam: It’s quieter.

Puffy: I bet. I think you should try and get some sleep. I’m going to get something that will hopefully help you even more.

Sam think is for a moment before nodding and crawling to his hole with Fran. Puffy goes to say something but decides that it’ll be a conversation for another day.

Puffy douses herself in invisibility potions so she can move about unnoticed. She makes her way towards the Church of Prime. It is pretty much the only area untouched by the vines. She fills several buckets of the water from inside the church. On her way out she freezes as she feels a pair of eyes on her. Slowly she turns to see Bad and Ant just staring in her direction. For a moment she thinks she’s been caught but she still had time on the potion, so they couldn’t be looking at her,right? No. They were looking at the church. Puffy frowns before sneaking her way back to the portal, making her way back to Sam.

At Sam’s base she uses some of the buckets to create a waterfall outside the front of his base, cleansing anyone entering or leaving. Inside the base, she creates a pool for extra measure.

When Sam wakes, he is resistant but Puffy finally convinced him to swim in the new pool. At first it’s a horrible feeling and the voices roar but soon they become whispers in the back of his kind, something easy to force down. He feels more like himself than he has in days.

Sam: The voices are still there but it’s quieter.

Puffy: That’s good. I’ve cleaned the place. I think this is almost as safe as the holy grounds.

Sam: okay.

Puffy: one day at a time, one second at a time. We will get through this. We will destroy the egg.

Sam just nods.

Puffy: I think I might bring Tommy here, Foolish and the rest of Snowchester too. So fair they’re untouched. I think this place might be the safest option for them. Is that okay with you?

Sam: Yeah. That’s fine.

Puffy: You still seem tired. Why don’t you chill with Fran for a bit? I’ll get us some food.

Puffy leaves Sam as he crawls back into his hole with Fran. He doesn’t seem as tortured as he was before. The mental scars are still there though. That’ll take time. But they’ll get there. One day at a time, one second at a time.

#dream smp #awesamdude #captain puffy #bloodvines arc #eggpire

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nancythebisexualslutwheeler · 4 years

Text

Momma’s Boy

Part Three to this:

It only took six months after Gemma was born for Went and Maggie to move closer. They’d only lived an hour away before, but even that was too far. So now, they lived as close as Richie would let them, which was about fifteen minutes. Eddie was now thankful for this as well, as the ages of their children, seven, four, and now a year, didn’t really work out with long distances.

It’s Labor Day and they’re late. Eddie hates being late. Even if it’s just to his In-Laws. “Gemma, baby, let’s GO!” He shouts up the stairs. He’d been in charge of the packing and food. So he had diaper bags, the games and toys, and the cooler packed and in the car, and no one was anywhere to be found. He’d then allowed himself time to dawdle, eat a popsicle as he wandered around the house grabbing himself a book to bring and Richie the tanning oil. But after that, there were still no kids.

Eddie checks his email on his phone before storming upstairs. It’s not that big of a deal, but the closer to dinner time it got, the less time there was for photos, and today was Ian’s official birthday, it was important to get them done before the friend party tomorrow. Richie always joked with Eddie and asked if there was ever one birthday that wasn’t important. “No, they’re all important Richard! This is how we make memories!” He says, scrunching his nose. Richie had laughed at how seriously his husband was taking it, “Okay babycakes.”

So every year they outdid it for everyone’s birthday. It made for a long year, but Eddie loved it, Richie did too, deep down, he just worried for his husband’s wellbeing. Ian is in the pack n play in the toy room, babbling away, which means it’s his older two, Gemma and Liam holding them up. There’s music, still the Frozen 2 soundtrack of course, coming from the bathroom. Eddie doesn’t know where to start with his bitching.

Liam is half dressed, standing on the toilet lid singing into a hair brush. Richie is dancing and Gemma only has one french braid done, but at least she’s dressed, though not in her matching outfit. Richie freezes when he sees Eddie, and Gemma bounces over to him,

“Papa! Sing with me!”

Eddie hoists her up,

“Baby, we can’t sing, we have to go see Grammy and Grampa.”

Gemma wriggles her way down and Eddie nudges her towards the sink so he can finish braiding her hair. He watches Richie in the mirror as he sheepishly grabs Liam and brings him to his bedroom to get him dressed.

It’s been hard since Eddie went back to work. Their routine was disrupted and Richie was back to watching the kids full time. He knew they’d been struggling to listen to the rules as much, Gemma had been pitting them against each other, and Richie had been feeling disheartened. The last thing Eddie wanted to do was make Richie feel bad, and he feared he’d done just that.

Eddie ties purple bows on the bottom of the braid, and makes sure to grab a third piece of ribbon for Liam. He’s been very into hair accessories lately. Gemma refuses to change, so she’s wearing an orange dress while the rest of them are wearing purple and gray and Eddie wants to have a meltdown, because they need pictures for their September page in their annual Calendar Christmas Present. He’s sure the food’s been sitting in the car too long, and Went will have given up and started cooking already, and damn he cannot wait to crack open a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and sit in the pool. He’s got pit stains on his shirt and Richie forgot to brush his teeth, and Ian’s now screaming because he’d fallen asleep in the pack n play and didn’t want to be in the carseat and Liam’s untied his hair bow for the third time and is sniffling, and Eddie’s hungry and tired and-

Maggie greets them at the car. She’s wearing a huge white sunhat and oversized sunglasses and she’s wearing a leopard print swimsuit coverup. She tries to open the door before Richie can even unlock the doors, “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. Eddie laughs, unlocking the doors and Maggie’s poking her head in the door,

“Hi my angels! Oh Ian, happy birthday my sweet boy! Gem, my princess! Liam, what’s wrong honey?”

Richie shoots Eddie a look and Eddie laughs. He laughs because he knows his husband hates it. He’s grown up with his mother his whole life, but Eddie never had that. Never had someone who loved him in the right way. He’d had the micromanaging part of having a mother, but not the nourishing part. Maggie and Went made him feel loved, and cared for, and yes it was too much, especially Maggie, but it was nice at the same time. They were family.

Eddie grabs the bags and leaves the heavy cooler for Richie. He heads through the gate to the backyard. The Tozier’s backyard is huge with a swing set, an underground pool, a hot tub and a fire pit. Eddie had never dreamed of it. Sure, with his own kids he saw all of the hazards, and sometimes it led to panic attacks, the thought of something happening to them. But then Richie reminds him to be grateful they’re not sick, and that he can take care of them but they don’t need him to if nothing is wrong. It’s all very confusing and scary but Richie is there and his therapist, Meredith is there and Walt and Maggie are there. Which doesn’t explain why his children are naked in the pool!

“We brought swimsuits!” He starts running toward them.

“No running by the pool son!” Walt shouts.

Eddie lets out a squeak, Maggie’s already undressing Ian,

“I have swim diapers!” He jogs on the grass around the pool, to her.

His son is safely in a swim diaper, when Richie finally strolls in, setting down the cooler. Eddie jumps up,

“Richie,” he whines, “they don’t have their suits on!”

Richie looks at the kids and laughs, before seeing Eddie’s distress. He gives him a hug. He’s so warm from the sun. Eddie relaxes and Richie kisses his head,

“Just relax. Mom’s got them, baby.”

Eddie always starts out up tight, mainly because he’s at work when Richie sets up the playdates, and brings them to the birthday parties, so he’s not used to other people watching his kids. But they’re safe, there’s a separator in the pool that divides the shallow from the deep and Liam has his life jacket on, and Gemma has water wings. Richie yanks his shirt over his head and leans into the cooler to grab out a hard lemonade. He pulls his keys out of his pocket and opens it with his bottle opener before handing in to Eddie. Eddie stares at the freckles and hair on his back as he bends over to grab himself a beer. He cracks his open before walking over to his mom, where she’s sitting on the stairs of the pool, playing with Ian. He gives her a side hug and a kiss on the head, before he goes to greet his pops. Eddie hears them greeting each other in accents.

Eddie all but downs the drink in his hand, and by the time Richie is walking over, he’s holding another one out to be opened. Richie sits next to him, body pressing against his. He’s sweaty. It’s gross.

“How are you doing my love?”

Eddie nods, and takes a sip of his drink,

“Everyone’s having fun.”

Richie nods, maneuvering Eddie so he can lay down on the sun chair, even though if Eddie stays in this position, he’ll be blocking Richie’s sun but he doesn’t complain.

“Except you, Eds. Relax. We’re supposed to be celebrating,” he says softly.

Eddie’s chest tightens. It’s times like this especially that he wishes he could calm down. It’s embarrassing. Eddie wouldn’t let Richie tell his parents what Eddie’s mom did to him, for fear of judgement, so it always feels kind of awkward. To Eddie at least. Why he preens a little too hard for Maggie’s approval. Which is why he appreciated keeping himself cooped up with his kids and no one else around. No one to perform for. Because Richie knows he’s a good dad.

Eddie gets a little tipsy, assuming by relax, Richie meant, with him, so imagine his shock when his husband slips out from underneath him on the sunchair and cannonballs into the pool. Walt is lighting a fire in the pit and Maggie goes into the house to fix the food he assumes. He should go help her. But then Gemma squeals and Richie dunks her underwater. It’s entertaining.

Eddie met Richie at one of his shows, the jokes were a bit more crass than he’d been willing to let the group of coworkers he’d gone out with, know he thought was funny. But when he saw the comedian at the bar,. Alone, he’d gone up to see him. Richie’s everything made up for the fact he was a terrible boyfriend. Forgetting anniversaries and dates, crude pick up lines. He traveled so much that Eddie started to feel like a constant one night stand. Richie’d be around for the sex but suddenly gone in the morning. He loved Richie, but it sucked. Eventually he’d given Richie an ultimatum. Although he was two years older than Richie, he was 29, and that was old enough that he needed to get his shit together. He knew Richie loved what he did and he made good money, and Eddie wasn’t worth all that. But Richie thought he was. That was the night Eddie told Richie about his mom. That was the night Richie proposed.

They get married in an elaborate ceremony in Paris, with their closest friends and Richie’s parents. They’d paid for everything. Eddie asks, one night after calling Richie ‘daddy’ for the first time, if he’d ever want to have kids. They go to a surrogacy clinic the following week. Raising Gemma was one of the hardest things they’d ever had to do, but after she made it out of her terrible twos, they were contacting Sierra, their surrogate again.

Eddie really loved Richie. He’d gotten so lucky. He’d never thought that someone who publicly talked about getting his asshole waxed would be a stay at home dad. But Richie had something that Eddie could never explain. Most times, if he raised his eyebrows, their kids would stop the undesirable behavior. He never got tired of kid music or waking up with the baby or having to relearn basic math with Gemma. He was the most beautiful person he knew. And that's saying a lot from someone who still made fart noises. (And not just when the kids were around.)

Eventually Eddie realizes he’s a bit too tipsy and sits up, tugging his shirt on. He pads up to the porch and lets himself in the screen door. The gust of air hits him in the face and he shivers. Maggie is singing to herself and setting up the food on the table. Eddie’s head is spinning.

“How can I help?” he asks, hoping he’s not slurring.

She turns around and laughs,

“Sweetie, you look sloshed. Sit, sit, I’ll get you some food.” She pulls out the barstool and he sits down. She makes him two ham and cheese sliders and puts them on a paper plate, passing it to him. “Soak up the alcohol.”

She busies around, and he can see she’s making the kid’s plates.

“Eddie, what’s wrong? It’s Ian’s birthday honey, you’re surrounded by family. You’re not having a good time?”

Eddie wolfs down the food and takes the opportunity to walk around the table and make himself a real plate. Richie’ll kill him, he usually lets him eat first, but Eddie deserves it. He scoops himself some potato salad,

“I never had any gatherings as a child. It was just my mom and I, so I think I get social anxiety or something.”

Maggie clucks her tongue,

“Well I don’t want you to ever feel that way around us. Where’s your mother now?”

“We don’t talk.”

Maggie hums.

“When I was younger she, she made me think I was sick.”

Maggie nods. Eddie shoves a bite of food in his mouth.

“I’m sorry that happened honey, I can’t imagine. But I’m so glad God blessed me with another son. You are a son to me Eddie. Went too. And you’re welcome anytime, even just you if you want to talk or anything.”

“Thanks Maggie, I appreciate it.”

“Of course honey. I’ll send Richie in. I can feed the kids.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Let me take care of my grandbabies! You relax.”

There’s that word again, relax.

Richie comes in and gives him a concerned look,

“You’re looking about 10% less hot than usual, so what’s wrong?”

“Can I have a kiss?”

Richie leans over immediately and pecks Eddie,

“Talk.”

“I told your mom about my mom.”

Richie lets out a low whistle,

“Damn babe. You wanna talk about it?”

Eddie shakes his head and smiles,

“No. I think I’m going to be more comfortable here from now on.”

Richie walks around the bar with his full plate,

“Want to go outside with the kids?”

Eddie shakes his head,

“No. Sit by me, I think they’ve got it.”

Richie grins,

“Sweet.”

Eddie’s right, he does get more comfortable with Maggie, and it’s not but a couple months later, when they’re supposed to go to the Tozier’s for dinner and Eddie finally decides to give in and call Maggie.

“Hey Maggie, yeah, we’re not going to be able to come.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh yes, Liam’s just not feeling good and Gemma’s in a time out and I haven’t even started the sides yet, so,”

“Oh that’s okay. How about we just come over? The ham is done and the mac and cheese, and I made that coconut cake for you. We don’t mind the kids when things come up. We still wanna see you guys. Eddie, come on, it’s your birthday hun.”

Eddie nods,

“Yeah, okay. That’s fine.”

“We’ll see you soon.”

It’s silent for a second,

“Thanks Mom.”

He can hear the smile over the phone,

“Of course honey, I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

Part One Part Two

#Reddie #my writing #reddie fan fiction #richie tozier #Eddie kaspbrak #it chapter 2 #it 2017 #it 2019

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vannahfanfics · 4 years

Note

Ooooo there's a part of me that really wants to challenge you and ask for Drake and Nami (can be shippy or general) for the prompt "Snow."

Voila, my dearest! Your challenge was pretty fun to write, and so I hope you have just as much fun reading it! :3

Frenemies

“Oh shit.”

Nami could not think of anything more eloquent or lady-like to exclaim in her situation, not that there was anyone around to critique. She shuddered and pitifully rubbed her bare, paling arms as the snow whirled around her in frantic flurries and shuffled her feet constantly as the cold moisture soaked into the absorbent fabric of her boots, all while staring wide-eyed at the dismantled mess that was the Weatheria hot air balloon she may or may not have taken for an unauthorized joy ride. She had only wanted to jaunt around in the sky for the bit, had that been too much to ask? The crash wasn’t even a result of her inability to pilot the massive thing; par for the Grand Line course, a giant bird had taken affront to its territory being invaded and attacked it with a razor-sharp beak, tearing the fabric asunder and sending Nami plummeting down. She had only just managed to land on the shore of a nearby island, but unfortunately it bore a winter climate.

Nami had not been dressed for the occasion in the slightest, having only prepared for the warm and sunshiney sea; as such, she was wearing far less than the required clothing, a tank top and some shorts. “I’m so screwed,” she whined pitifully and hung her head. The snow crunched under her feet as she trudged back to the destroyed hot air balloon; she could buy a few hours of time by basking in the lingering warmth of the trapped gases under the fabric, at least. She grabbed the wicker basket and turned it about such that it faced opposite the direction of the wind, then snuggled herself inside. The gas was slowly leaking out from under the billowing fabric, which provided a small dome of heat for the marooned navigator. Still, she knew that it wouldn’t last very long; she just had to hope and pray that someone would come for her. From the air, even though she was spiraling out of control, she had not spied any sort of settlement on the relatively small island. It looked completely abandoned, and therefore marching through a blizzard scantily clad as she was would constitute no less than a death wish. Nami rubbed her numbing fingers before placing them in the bubble of dissipating heat, hoping to stave of frostbite for as long as she could.

The cold crept in slowly, like a lioness stalking her like the meek prey Nami was, all while the snow continued to rain down endlessly. A healthy bit of it had piled up on the edge of the wicker basket; due to the lingering heat, the bottom portion was gradually melting into icy water, seeping through the woven wood strips to drip down onto her already chilled frame. It splashed against the numb skin of her shoulder with steady, repetitive splashes, and Nami imagined it as the ticking of a clock; first, a steady progression towards her rescue, but as time continued to pass, the nagging thought began to form in her mind- that it was a countdown to her freezing to death. She was not sure how much time had passed at all when the first shiver gripped her body; fifteen minutes? Fifteen hours? It was so hard to tell with only the dripping to tell time, as the dense gray clouds above hid the sun.

She was shuddering hard now, shaking the wicker basket with every wracking tremor. The snow sloughed off the edge of the basket to begin piling up beside her, progressively building a thick wall between herself and her continuously dwindling heat source. Every time that Nami swept her arm over the rising snow mound, the snowflakes countered by sinking into her flesh with sharp little teeth, spreading even more numbness across her already cold, unfeeling body. She would then desperately hug her arm to her chest, praying her body heat would revitalize it just a little bit.

By the time the breath was fogging in little puffy clouds before her face, her eyes were beginning to droop. Sleepiness was never a good sign but Nami could not muster the will to fight it. Her arms and legs were beginning to feel like ice itself, blocky and rigid and so, so cold. The ends of her fingers were white as the piling snow outside, as all the heat had begun to drain from her extremities to protect her core from the spreading chill plague. Her head lolled to the side, bumping against the wicker basket as she struggled against embracing the allure of restful sleep. Only for a few minutes… I’ll just rest until help gets here… she thought in the wintery haze. She was very aware of her heartbeat pounding in her ears, but it was strange, because it sounds like boots crunching against hard snow. Hope flared in her chest at the realization, and she managed to turn her stiffened neck to look out the basket’s open end. Was someone here to save her? The fabric of the hot air balloon had flattened out, only occasionally rippling with the tug of insistent winds; Nami was out of time. She opened her mouth to call out to whoever could be there, but the words were frozen in her throat. There was no mistaking it now; they were footsteps, they had to be-! Somehow, she managed a feeble whimper just barely audible above the whistling snowy winds. Please-! I’m right here!

Nami felt like she was going to cry as a navy-blue gloved hand curled over the edge of the basket. The snow was pushed around into heaps as the person effortlessly whirled the basket about to peer inside. Nami’s heart instantly plummeted and she felt incredibly nauseous, her hopes dashed in a matter of seconds. Her savior- if she could even call him that considering what could happen next- was none other than notorious Navy officer-turned-ruthless pirate X Drake. With another meek whimper, she pressed herself into the corner of the wicker basket looking the entire picture of a sopping kitten, dampened by the leaking ice water; to think that Cat Thief Nami had been reduced to such a state. It was pathetic, but Nami really didn’t have much in the way of an arsenal to combat it. Terrifying scenarios began to bounce through her half-frozen mind.

What if he kidnaps me and turns me in for the reward? What if he manages to track down someone else from the crew and tries to ransom me off? What would he do to me in the meantime? What if he has no intention of pawning me off at all and keeps me around as some form of morbid entertainment? What if he just kills me off right now? Her eyes had dilated greatly from terror and her breath was coming in shallow, high-pitched bursts now. With the remainder of her strength, she reached for her Climatact strapped to her leg.

“St-stay away!” she warned him. Despite her sorry state, she still managed to pour plenty of venom into her shaky voice. X Drake just stared at her levelly, his blank expression never shifting. Nami had no idea what was running through his mind at all.

“There’s no reason for you to be afraid. I have no intention of harming you.”

“Fat chance of that! You’re a pirate, a traitorous ex-Navy pirate at that!” she spat. That seemed to get at least a slight rise out of him, as his ginger eyebrows arched down over his dark eyes, just barely shadowed by the curved brim of his hat. “Why should I trust you?”

“You’ll freeze to death otherwise. Believe me or not, you don’t have much choice but to trust me here.” His reasoning was maddeningly sound. Nami didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have the time to wait around from someone from Weatheria any longer; she could very realistically die within the hour. Biting down on her lip in frustration, she frantically wracked her mind for any other alternative before uttering a very simple, curt “Fine.”

Drake stepped away from the basket as she shifted on her hands and knees to crawl out; it was more effort than she would’ve ever imagined. Her limbs had grown as stiff as oak wood from spending the entire time curled up in a single position, which was exacerbated by the freezing cold. Her palms burned like they were afire as she plunged her hands into the deep snow, and she wasted no time in pushing herself to her feet. She almost fell right back down, however, as her knees knocked together wildly from how hard her body was shaking. She hated that she presented such a meek, weak figure to the tall, menacing pirate, and to combat that image some she made sure her face was twisted into a very distrustful scowl.

“What a fierce woman you are,” he laughed heartily, not intimidated in the slightest. Her shrugged out of his fur-lined coat and held it out to her. Nami’s pride dictated that she accepted no pity and that she march on through the blizzard clad as she was, but holy hell, she could feel his intense body heat radiating from the garment, whispering sweet nothings of warmth and comfort. Nami threw her pride out the window and pretty much dove into the coat, sliding her arms through the long, wide sleeves and nearly melted into a puddle on the spot. Is was gargantuan on her, falling down to the middle of her calves and requiring her to roll up the sleeves several times, but that just seemed to make it all the more a bundle of life-giving heat. She found herself immediately relaxing despite the presence of the man beside her. Feels so good… she thought, her mind now muddled by the lovely warmth. She only looked at X Drake when he began to chuckle good-naturedly at her, and it was then that she noticed that he was dressed in a great many layers. It was freezing, no doubt, but not that excessive.

Right… His Devil Fruit power is reptile-based. Is his weakness the cold? She wondered. It would make sense. Considering that, the fact that he had trekked across the island to investigate the balloon crash and offer her the very nice coat chipped away slightly at her mistrust of him. Rumors weren’t everything; maybe, just maybe, Nami had been lucky to land before a pirate captain who carried some form of chivalry.

“I am curious. Where did you come from?” he inquired as he kicked the destroyed fabric of the balloon with a small frown. “I had heard rumor that the Straw Hats had been scattered after the events at Marineford. Considering you are alone and piloting this thing, I surmise that is true.” Should she tell him? Weatheria was very close; he might even offer to bring her there. Then again, would she put the weather wizards of Weatheria in danger by revealing her location? If he ever desired to exploit the fact that Nami was separated from the monstrous members of her crew, he could jaunt over and kidnap her like it was a Sunday walk. His eyes flickered to her, intense but not menacing. “I see you are still mistrustful of me. Very well then, I won’t pry.”

“You can rest assured in the fact that someone will come for me eventually, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“’Rest assured’? I think not. I hid out on this island to avoid the Marines; it isn’t much of a secret hideaway if someone knows that I’m here,” he pointed out with a voice that had finally taken some edge. She swallowed nervously; it was beginning to seem that she was right in not trusting him. He made no move, however, only watched her guardedly, and she knew her next move would determine her fate. Nami decided to bet that some honesty might get her out of this unscathed.

“I came from Weatheria. The weather wizards don’t have much interest in the squabbles between pirates and the Marines. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.” The corner of his mouth twitched in what have may have been an attempt at a smile, and then he straightened up to his full intimidating height, towering over her as he tried to gauge the truth of her statement. Nami felt highly uncomfortable under his interrogative stare but did her best not to quail.

“Very well.” As he whirled on his heel to begin tromping away, she was a little unnerved on how easily he accepted her statement. She really couldn’t get a read on the guy, and she really prided herself on her ability to measure people up.

It was then that Nami noticed that the cold was beginning to seep back into her skin, despite the very padded coat. Right! My clothes are soaking wet. He raised an eyebrow at her as she drew har arms into the body of the coat and began to fidget around. “What are you-“ he didn’t finish his sentence as he saw Nami’s shorts drop into the snow, and his face immediately blazed a rich shade of crimson. “Why are you getting naked?!” he cried and whirled around with a hand over his eyes, though Nami was more than concealed by the coat.

“My clothes are wet. The coat won’t do any good if I’m still wearing them,” she answered while nonchalantly pulling her shirt through the neck of the jacket. It dropped against her shorts with a wet plop, and Drake let out a strangled gasp. A smirk appeared on Nami’s lips. So, the big, bad X Drake is shy around women? Good to know, she thought. She decided to keep her underwear on, because she didn’t trust him nearly enough to go completely commando with him around yet. She bent down to pick up the sopping wet clothes, then looked up to find him tromping several feet ahead of her.

“Come on, unless you want to die out here,” he called to her without even looking over his shoulder. He was probably mortified by his raging blush. Resigning herself to the fate that would at least prolong her survival, Nami hurried after him. It was a struggle for several reasons: her small stride was dwarfed by his, covering at least a foot and a half per step, and the snow had piled up to her knees. She had to hold up the hem of the coat as she literally waded through the thick white powder, while Drake was just moseying along with the stuff barely coming up to his calf. Nami very quickly fell behind, huffing and puffing; she was fairly certain that she had developed a fever to combat hypothermia as well, for her skin was flushing an angry red color and sweat was pooling on her forehead and making her tangerine hair stick uncomfortably to her scalp. After a point, Drake glanced back to see her several yards behind attempting to push her way through a snow drift. “Do you want help?”

“No!” she barked back at him, face twisted in a determined frown. She had already presented herself to be a damsel in distress enough today, and like hell she was going to let him carry her the rest of the way. With a jerk, she forced her leg through the wall of snow and stepped down, only to find that it concealed a very large hole. With a shrill shriek, her entire body sank down to her shoulders, with her arms splayed out over the top of the snowbank and her head tilted back to keep from getting a mouthful of the stuff. Immediately her skin bristled at the intense cold, and she very shrilly squeaked, “Yes, help me, please.” X Drake was chortling to himself as he strode effortlessly through the snowdrift to pluck her up by the back of her hood, lifting her like a kitten by its scruff. She dangled in the air for a second as he allowed her to brush as much of the wet snow from her body as possible.

Thankfully he decided not to carry her bridal-style or another degrading manner, but piggyback-style. His shoulders were so broad that Nami’s arms could barely meet around his neck, and it was an effort to hook her legs around his hips. She really didn’t complain, though, as the sheer amount of furnace-like heat rolling off his body chased away the rest of the cold and left her warm and content. It was even better that he was blushing bright pink from head-to-tow since he was very aware that she had naught but underwear on beneath his coat; Nami found that so amusing. Still, it was a little embarrassing clinging to him like some kind of little spider monkey. “Why are you doing all this?” she asked, unable to contain her curiosity. She could count on one hand the number of pirate captains who would take it upon themselves to rescue her asking nothing in return, much less let her parade around mostly naked under their coat without giving her more grief.

“I may have defected from the Navy, but that doesn’t mean I have become completely ruthless. A man has his own personal code of values, and chivalry towards women is in mine,” he answered with a small shrug, but given his size, he very nearly pushed her off and she had to wrap her arms tight around his neck to keep that from happening. “I would have to be a total monster to leave a young woman to freeze to death in the snow.”

“I know of several members of the Worst Generation who would do just that, or ‘rescue’ me only to hold me hostage or ransom me to the Marines,” she grumbled. His shoulders shook with a rumbling laugh.

“They don’t call us ‘the Worst Generation’ for nothing, indeed. I suppose you should count yourself lucky, Nami.” As she thought; he knew exactly who she was. Still, she was beginning to feel at ease with the ginger-haired pirate’s companionship; he seemed to have no ulterior motives and had not attempted to molest her in any way as of yet. She was still on her guard just in case it was all a front, but at the very least, he was easy to talk to. “Tell me, why is it the Straw Hats have decided to go their separate ways?”

“We’re training to take on the New World,” she answered. It wasn’t like he could use that information specifically for much of anything, so why lie? The Paramount War had been broadcasted on Saboady Archipelago for all to see; everyone knew that Luffy only escaped by the skin of his teeth, and was severely injured. The only reason that rumors weren’t flying that he had died was because he had declared war on the World Government only a few days later.

“And the World Government,” he mused as she thought about the incident. “Straw Hat sure is a bold one. He has a very loyal crew, for them to be willing to join in his crusade against them. The World Government isn’t a bunch of pushovers.”

“I believe in him one hundred percent! He’s going to be King of the Pirates, after all!” she insisted and was completely unabashed to do so. X Drake laughed heartily again, seemingly finding her confidence very entertaining rather than insulting. “Why’re you laughing? You’re shooting for the title too, aren’t you?”

“I have my goals and ambitions, yes,” he mused while looking back at her with glittering eyes, “but I would be a fool not to admit that the boy has potential. The fact that you speak so confidently of him is a testament to his charisma and uncanny ability to draw people to his cause.” Nami found herself smiling broadly, because he was right. Even his enemies found themselves admiring of him; he was just that special. The smile drooped like her lead hot air balloon as he added, “However, don’t think that I will be singing his praises if we meet in the new world. I won’t simply allow him to become Pirate King because I think he’s neat.”

“Bring it on. He’ll kick your ass,” she said bluntly. Another round of booming laughter. She had heard tales of his brutality and menace, but Nami was beginning to think that when he wasn’t a rampaging dinosaur, he was a pretty laid-back guy. It was almost a shame that the next time they did meet they would be enemies, because she almost liked him.

“We’ll see about that,” he responded in a contented hum. He suddenly stopped walking and looked up, frowning; Nami followed suit and could not silence an overjoyed cry as she saw the unmistakable form of a hot air balloon drifting through the billowing gray clouds. “It seems that the weather wizards have come to retrieve you after all,” he remarked wryly. No doubt, Nami’s shock of orange hair was visible against the harsh backdrop of white, as the hot air balloon immediately began to descend towards them. With a huff, Nami hopped down from X Drake’s back, landing in the snow. It wasn’t that deep there, and her boots were able to keep most of the cold out, as they had dried some while she was being hauled on his back. “Until next time, then,” he remarked with a tip of his hat and turned to walk away, cloak flapping in the winter wind.

“Wait! Thank you for everything.”

“Do you think it wise to thank your enemy? He may hold it against you someday,” he remarked cryptically, but looked back at her with a wry smile.

“Then let’s be frenemies!” He gave her an absolutely dumfounded look, to which Nami responded with a beaming grin. “Y’know, we’re enemies when it’s necessary, but the rest of the time, we’re friends!” He blinked at her, every stage of grief passing through his expression, before he let out a snort of laughter.

“Straw Hat certainly keeps amusing company,” he remarked. Nami giggled and stuck out her tongue a little as she smiled charmingly. The hot air balloon had since descended well into range, and a rope ladder dropped down to dangle right above the snow beside her.

“So, again, thank you. Oh! I should give you your coat back!” Nami cried and began wriggling out of the garment, causing Drake to blush furiously and whirl around.

“No! Keep it!” Nami laughed, because of course she had no intention stripping down to her negligee in front of the ex-Marine. She hopped up onto the rope ladder, and the weather wizard in the basket far above her head began pulling it little by little back into the hot air balloon. Nami tossed a wink and a smile over her shoulder at the still-blushing pirate captain.

“See ya in the New World! I hope it’s under good circumstances!” she called down to him before climbing up the rungs of woven rope. It certainly wasn’t an encounter she had been expecting to have in the limbo that was this two year-training period, but hey, Nami wasn’t entirely ungrateful. The more enemies she could charm for Luffy’s sake, the better! Besides, conversing with X Drake wasn’t really that bad. If things were different, she could almost imagine the Straw Hats idolizing him.

Alas, they already had their idol in the form of a dorky, airheaded, optimistic but reliable straw hat-wearing boy destined for greatness. Sorry, X Drake, but frenemies it’s gotta be!

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to perusemy Tableof Contents!

Tag List: @searchfortheonepiece

#one piece #nami #cat thief nami #x drake #diez drake #general fluff #fluff #friendship #fanfiction #fanfic #one piece fanfiction #one piece fanfic #oneshot #oneshot collection

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starwarshyperdrive · 5 years

Text

I’m concerned about the Star Wars canon

I’ve always been a huge Star Wars fan but didn't follow the old EU (extended universe) because it was too convoluted and well.. a bunch of gobbledygook (granted there were some good bits in it, who doesn’t love the Thrawn trilogy even though he is pretty much a different character now), so I actually welcomed the new canon. Start over with a clean slate and make sure everything is connected, makes sense and feels Star Warsy. So far the story group has done a decent job, even though there were some questionable bits and pieces. As hardcore Star Wars fan and apologist I can force myself to get behind a lot of things and I was cool with the Bendu somehow, but the Clone Wars Mortis arc, as well as space whales and the world between worlds really rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of people are celebrating Dave Filoni as savior of the true Star Wars spirit and he is certainly an inspired artist and nice guy but I once again have to wonder whether or not some of the comic bookish stuff REALLY fits the Star Wars universe. Yeah I know ‘it’s a huge universe bla bla’ but do we really have to accept everything?

Someone recently described hardcore fans (such as myself) as a ‘cult’ and Star Wars Celebration to a religious ceremony and if I’m being honest and self-reflective I can’t really argue against it, but that’s also why you always need to check yourself and not just ‘swallow’ everything without questioning it. Keep a critical eye. Things like time travel and other super hero stuff ( I haven’t seen any of the recent Marvel or DC movies) have no place in Star Wars. Of course Star Wars is for everyone, but does that then also mean we need a Star Wars romcom, a Star Wars coming of age movie ..or ..? I don’t know..porn? Leave that to fan fiction.

Star Wars was always more about mythology, some sort of buddhist Excalibur and I am seriously concerned that at some point the ‘people in charge’ will forget that and it will become a shallow bubble gum entertainment focus on ‘what is selling at the moment’. A good example are - again - all the super hero movies picking up on trends. I don’t want a Thor Ragnarok Star Wars movie with a Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. Don’t make everything the same. Keep Star Wars unique. Keep ‘that Star Wars tone’.

‘XY doesn’t UNDERSTAND Star Wars’ is an overused and abused phrase and in so many ways pointless as there are many facets to Star Wars especially now that we have generations of fans who grew up with the prequels, the Clone Wars, Rebels or even Resistance - I should point out that I actually liked Resistance because it’s not tempering with the mythology - but the lore has been laid out in the original trilogy and everything needs to acknowledge that. We cannot have some Terminator-franchise kind of disaster a la ‘Ezra traveled back in time and actually was there with Yoda on Dagobah’ or what not.

By now it’s common knowledge that - despite what they say - there has been no overall plan for the sequel trilogy, which is quite concerning and feeding into my concerns that it’s all downhill from here (after The Rise of Skywalker and the Mandalorian or course). I know a lot of people who vehemently defended The Last Jedi when it came out, mostly as a reaction to all the stupid hate it got for the wrong reasons and I am one of them myself, but most of them are admitting now that there is something off about the movie. It is written into a corner and not picking up on the clues given in The Force Awakens. It has some amazing scenes and I will keep defending it, but there are some scenes that just don’t feel right and leave a bad aftertaste. I frequently rewatch all the movies and besides Attack of the Clones it’s the only one where I think ‘Now I have to endure THAT bit again’. I go to a lot of Q&A and it’s interesting to see how people who have worked on the movie feel the same. Even if you 100% loved it and it’s your favorite movie ever, let’s be honest - the humor is completely out of place. Fart jokes in The Phantom Menace > Your Mom jokes. And it’s just too long. Of course we all want MORE Star Wars, but where does it end. Would you go and see a 6h movie? If you are a good filmmaker you should be able to say what you want to say in the same about of time as the other movies. But that’s just my personal 2 cents. It just felt like someone who was hellbent on doing his own thing for the sake of doing his own thing and not for the sake of the story. Don’t get me wrong. It was a great idea to (spoiler alert) kill off Snoke that casually, so the movie has redeeming qualities that save it for me. Then again, as a Star Wars fan I WANT to like it. I still watched it 13 times or so. I was in the room for the trailer reveal at SWCO. I want to take ownership and be part of the hardcore fan community, but they shouldn't bank too much on it. I still want a good movie. I’m not gonna be meek and mild about something contradicting the core mythology. Ryan Johnson is allegedly still doing his trilogy and then there is the Benioff and Weiss trilogy. They didn’t exactly do a great job wrapping up Game of Thrones and left fans in awe about how the show ended and have not really proven that they can handle a franchise well either. Will all off them have free rein and just go to town on a Star Wars story as they please? Am I the only one who finds this a bit odd?!

I trust JJ Abrams to do the right thing and I hope my trust is not misplaced. I think the allegations of The Force Awakens being a A New Hope reboot are misplaced as there are also a lot of similarities to The Phantom Menace, so.. if you’re a fan you know what comes next.. ‘it rhymes, it’s like poetry’. So it makes sense. So I think ‘he gets it’..

My main concern in the new canon overall. I made an effort to get all the publications of the new canon, but the books and comics already started to get weird again. Star Wars always had a slight alien but yet familiar vibe and some stories feature people smoking cigars, drinking coffee in the morning and doing other stuff never depicted in Star Wars before. How long until someone gets a Star Wars burger at Star Wars McDonalds or orders Star Wars pizza while watching Star Wars HoloNetflix. I’m sorry. That’s ridiculous. It’s not automatically Star Wars just because you use Star Wars terminology like death sticks or Nerf steaks. Watch the movies and make an effort.

And now the novelizations of the movies are apparently not considered ‘hard canon’ anymore because the authors didn’t know the direction the next movies are going, so the clues and hints may be completely useless. So why do I force myself through some really not very good books then (others are great, no generalization here)? That’s quite alarming. Wasn’t the entire reason they got a story group to avoid that? What’s with all the loose ends? That's also why I think they will shy away from using canon characters in the movies (for the most part). Its easier to have a self contained canon universe where you can introduce Purge Troopers in a comic and then have them in a video game. I once read an interview with one of the Star Wars authors who invented a character and then got told ‘give him that name / make him this person’ instead of having this particular character in mind from the start. This is how you lose consistency. I’m well aware that over hundreds and thousands of years that’s EXACTLY how ancient history was written, which is why there are flood legends all over the world and why Jesus and Mithras are pretty much the same person, but they DID NOT HAVE A STORY GROUP and ancient mythology hasn’t been written over a course of a few years.

At the same time it’s interesting how there seem to be purists who are very determined to bring that original Star Wars vibe back. Like Jon Favreau with The Mandalorian. And like I said earlier about Resistance. Its so much easier to do that if you stay away from the mythology. It’s really tricky and so much could go wrong. The stuff introduced in Rogue One like Guardians of the Whills and the temple of Kyber is a perfect example how it’s done. Some of the stuff in the Clone Wars and Rebels is the complete opposite, so I’m really curious to see how Dave Filonis involvement in The Mandalorian pans out. He is really great with stuff like Mandalorians, Clones and I even came to accept Ashoka after reading the book and seeing her all grown up as Fulcrum, but I’m very skeptical when it comes to his ‘mystical side of the force’ interpretations.

In conclusion I know that I sound like a preacher and George Lucas repeatedly stated it’s ‘just for 10 year old kids’ but tell that to all the dead Bothans.

Please just don’t ruin Star Wars.

#star wars #star wars movies #star wars theories #Star Wars The Force Awakens #star wars the clone wars #star wars the rise of skywalker #dave filoni #jon favreau #gareth edwards #the mandalorian #star wars rebels #star wars resistance #star wars fan #lucasfilm #story group #pablo hidalgo

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hitandrunduorp-a · 4 years

Text

The Deal

Matthew coughed as he pushed himself off the ground, his body weak and drained. It was the final fight against Arupa, and other than a handful of creatures, him, and Ezhno...everyone else was gone. Bruce, Stalt, Slade, Alex...one by one they had all fallen. The human wasn’t even sure how he was alive, having spent the last bit of his energy to finally kill Shadow, he expected his body to either fully succumb to corruption, or to break from the strain.

Looking up, the battle was over. For how long, he was unsure...moments, maybe..but he saw Ezhno laying beside him, his breathing shallow and weak, and wounds pouring blood onto the ground below him. Matthew couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not, but he didn’t think, only moved, trying to push himself over. He had...he had to fix those wounds. Somehow, despite his own wounds, he was alive, and he couldn’t be the last man standing.

He couldn’t let Ezhno die.

So, he tried. Damn if he didn’t try with all his might, but already having spent all his energy earlier, even just trying to heal the other’s wounds felt like his very being was being ripped apart. Ezhno’s eyes shot open, hearing the pained gasps of his husband, whom he had thought dead. He was sure the other was gone, having heard nor felt a heartbeat, a trace or sound of his mind...and yet, there he was, watching the other grip at his heart, tears flowing down his face as he tried in vain to desperately heal him...

“Ma...ttie...” He chocked out, emerald eyes watering up, watching as the other’s eyes snapped open to stare back at him, fear and desperation flooding those violet eyes he’d grown to love.

“Ez! J-Just hang on!” Matthew stammered out, trying to catch his breath as he went to attempt again. But with each attempt at a heal, it only hurt himself more, the strain taking a toll on his very soul. “Matt...ie...stop...please...” “...I can’t...I can’t!” The blond cried out, trying to swallow his sobs and cries. “Please Ez, mon loup, please hang on! I can’t...I can’t do this alone,” “I’m...so-*COUGH*-sorry, sunshine...” The lovers hearts broke, knowing there was nothing to be done...but though one has, as pained as he had to, accepted this, the other was desperate to cling on. Matthew choked on his tears and cries, moving to kiss his husband dearly. “Nonononono- please, love, please! I can’t...not you...not you too” “Please, Mattie...please...live. Live for me...for Alex...all of us...please Sunshine...please promise...me...” “I...I can’t...please, don’t make me promise that! Ezhno, please, I can’t! You can’t leave me like this! I CAN’T BE THE LAST ONE!” Tears streamed down his face as he cried. But try as he might, he was powerless. He couldn’t stop this...any of this...he couldn’t protect their sons, their friends...everyone.

“...forgive me...matthew...i love...you...” Ezhno’s voice had grown soft, his the light in his eyes slowly dying out. Panic crept in, Matthew unsure as to what to do. Everyone. Everyone he cared about so dearly was now gone.

“No...NO! EZHNO PLEASE!” He weakly shook the other, sobbing as he stared at the man he loved with all his being...the man who had given him a newfound love for life, for all that he was ignorant to before...was now gone.

He was alone once again...

“My, my, my, what tragedy!” A voice spoke, and violet eyes snapped up to see a figure standing before him. He vaguely recognized the being, the description matching what he had read in tomes in the library of their home...a trickster god, known to make deals with those in pain. “...what do you want,” He growled, glaring at the other through tears, and watching as the god chuckled before a sly grin crossed his lips. “Why, an educated boy like you should be able figure that one out, to know who I am already~” He cooed, and Matthew narrowed his eyes.

“Feh...unless you’re planning on bringing back 5 lives...then leave me alone,” He snapped, his anger nothing more than a weak flame as he rested his head against his husband’s chest. “5? Hm, a bit more than I anticipated...but all the fun in the same~!” Looking back up, Matthew was shocked to see the other holding spirits...the only one not being held, was Ezhno’s... “So...What is it you would like, little mortal~?” His eyes were wide. Could...could this trickster god actually bring them back? Stalt, Bruce, Slade, Alex...even Ezhno?

“...You know what I want. But what...are you expecting in turn?” There was always a catch, but for the life of him, he couldn’t even begin to imagine what he could offer the god...though that creepy smile wasn’t comforting in the slightest. “Simple; entertainment~” He explained, before circling the human. “I will bring the lives of your friends and loved ones back...but, they will not remember you,” “Wh-What?” “It’s like...how to put this...

Ezhno will remember his wedding day. Yours two’s first meeting and everything from then until this battle, but looking back at the memory, he, as with the others, will never see you, nor hear your voice, speak your name...it’s as if they were talking to air, an imaginary friend~” He snickered, while Mattie looked at the other in confusion.

“Of course...if any of them ever remember you...it will all be undone,” He added on, stopping with his back towards the blond. “They will all die,”

Matthew bit his lip before looking back down to his husband. He knew the other hated gods, and honestly, Matthew wasn’t partial to them either...but this...

He would still be alone. He’d have to forgo his life with them...He’d never be able to see his husband, his sons... “...what would they remember of this battle?”

“Nothing,” Matthew looked up, glaring a little before the god clarified himself. “They will remember it starting, but they will not remember what happened during it all. Obviously, they would guess they won, seeing as they lived. But they won’t remember the actual battle, their deaths and they’re struggles...that is what will be hidden, alongside you,” He hummed before walking up to the blond, and offering a hand.

“So...do we have a deal~?”

Common sense told him no. Everything told him not to do this, to move on, keep his promise to Ezhno...but he couldn’t. He’d happily suffer...if it meant the ones he loved to dearly could continue to live on.

So, despite better judgement...he reached his own hand out.

“...we have a deal.

#hxnterwxlf #ic #v; broken family #au version #should give it its own verse tag but idk #sharesd this idea w/ kota and i HAD to make a drabble for it xD #and ngl i sobbed so many times writing this xD #tw blood #tw pain #tw death #tw angst

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pointlesstrashyexistence · 5 years

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My Thoughts on Allison and Luther

Let me explain -

I understand people are tired of the “it’s incest” excuse and I get it, I have other reasons for not liking it, but that was a very big initial part. Let me start this off discussing that section.

As adopted siblings, Allison and Luther have no biological connection that we know of, unless the theory of all the children sharing an alien father that they don’t know of became true. However, it’s difficult to not still get incestuous vibes from them when the Hargreaves siblings refer to each other as brother and sister. Yes, they did not think of each other as siblings when they were young, but that’s still the foundation of their relationship. They are raised together from birth as brother and sister, and even when Reginald didn’t actually treat them like his children, we still know Grace, whom all the character refer to as “Mom”, and Pogo raised them as siblings. Yes, it was a school, not a home, in which they were trained every day, but it’s still where they all live together, raised from birth to care for each other as siblings by the people actually caring for them as people, not soldiers.

It’s likely that you could claim the siblings only did this because the siblings, as humans, want to feel a strong social connection, especially in a stifling emotionally devoid environment, and call each other brother and sister to have the strongest connection possible. Ok. So they bond together out of necessity. That shouldn’t mean that they carry on that idea into adulthood then right? It’s obvious that all the siblings have grown to be dysfunctional assholes in some unique way, and they are all extremely distant from each other. There should be no reason to continue this idea of being siblings? We still see this sibling-like interaction between every party, including Allison and Luther. Yes, their’s is a romantic one, but they still refer to each other as brother and sister. Allison, when talking about Luther to her daughter doesn’t refer to him as her friend Luther, like she could have to make the relationship less weird, but her brother Luther or “Uncle Luther.” There’s no reason to continue this idea, but they still do.

Outside of this though, I feel like this pairing is generally wrong for each other, and not just because I find Luther the most dislikable of the siblings as characters, which I do. I feel, in general, Allison is to good for Luther, and he has yet to do anything that would be a good influence on her and he hasn’t actual tried to be a better person. Luther literally has his head attached to a gorilla’s body. Any sexual attraction between the two is immediately thrown out the window when you have to try and get past the idea that Allison would have to fuck a gorilla, bringing bestiality into the equation now. I didn’t believe Allison would be that shallow and it might not have been part of the equation until Klaus admits that Luther fucked a random girl, who thought Luther was a furry, not a head attached to an actual gorilla body. I don’t know if her reactions stems more so from just Luther not trying to be romantic with her as a person or him fucking someone that wasn’t her, but it made me uncomfortable.

Next, we have the fact that Luther has yet to try and be a better person, while the repentant Allison accepts her faults and tries to make up for what he’s done. Luther in general has been a asshole to any character that wasn’t Allison or her child. Yes, it is something that stems from his abuse and all the siblings are imperfect in some way, but just because it relates to his mental trauma doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserved to be called out for his shit. This was something I really saw that was prevelant in the Dear Evan Hansen fandom, where a lot of people hated Zoey because of how she treated Conner. They completely missed the fact that Zoey hates Conner because he was an asshole and a horrible brother and having a mental disorder doesn’t excuse that. Luther is given opportunities to try and be a better person, one of them most important, in my opinion, being when he goes behind Allison’s back and tries to attack Vanya. In that moment he breaks the trust of the person he supposedly loved the most and showing a selfishness that likely stems from him wanting to continue to be Number 1, the supposed best figure to lead when he was actually just the best unquestioning soldier, and his unfulfilled want for validation from Reginald bundled into his idea of how to best eliminate a threat, not a sister whose abuse he participated in. Until Luther tried to better himself, he will put his own wants and desires above what is best for other.

Now, we go to Allison. She fucked up. A lot. She cries in her car while thinking of all the times she brainwashed people and changed reality so she could get her every desire, creating a failing marriage that latter denied her rights to her child, likely because what she was doing would’ve been seen as abuse seeing as she obviously has a career that makes money, could provide for her daughter, and is the mother. She’s fucked up almost every part of her life by abusing her powers, and she’s trying to repent and be better, something which makes me a bit kinder on her when she attempts to use her powers on an angry Vanya as, under extreme stress, people generally go to whatever their default defense mode is, even if that means doing something you might not like. She still tries to be better and do better. She tries to free Vanya, she shows her forgiveness, she asks Vanya for forgiveness before the earlier fight, she tries to go and reason with Vanya in a brief heartbreaking scene where they are both betrayed by the people that should protect them, she keeps Vanya from being left behind to die by Luther. Everything Allison tries to do is best around protecting those she cares about and repenting for her sins. Allison deserves someone who will encourage her and help her achieve these goals while also developing as a person, not someone so caught up in their own issues that they can’t help anyone else except those they are attracted to and don’t have any actual incentive to help.

Along with this, I don’t find Luther enjoyable as a character. Klaus and Five are shitty people, but they are great characters. They’re witty, sarcastic, quirky, and a general joy to watch on screen. Every scene with them is interesting. With Luther, everything feels so dry and boring, except for when he’s surrounded by other characters. That’s literally the only time I ever feel interesting when Luther is on screen. It’s kind of like reading Pride and Prejudice and getting to the scenes with Mr. Collins. He is slimy and annoying, but it’s entertaining to see his interactions with other characters, especially Elizabeth and Charlotte who slyly mock him or shut him down when necessary through cutting wit behind Regency era politeness. Allison is somewhat on this wavelength, but she’s expressive and constantly wants to interact with people, making her someone I actually like seeing on screen and pay attention to. However, interactions between Allison and Luther make me uncomfortable for the previously stated reasons, making the scenes far less enjoyable.

So those are my reasons for why I feel like Luther and Allison shouldn’t get together. Not only were they raised as siblings and refer to each other as such even in adult life when none of them have seen each other in years and any familial bond is almost gone, but we’d have to bring in issue of bestiality, and most important, Allison and Luther, at this point in the story, just aren’t compatible. Allison is in a phase of repentance where she is trying to do her best to help and protect others to correct her precious wrongs, and needs someone who will encourage her on her endeavors, but will also remind her that she is a good person, if a bit invasive and opinionated, and needs to consider herself and what’s best for her sometimes. Luther is not in a space to do so. Luther is still in a space where he is inconsiderate of generally all else, is willing to betray those he should care about, and was willing to basically murder the sister he helped emotionally abuse and turn into a villain, as well as briefly physically abused. Allison has yet to influence him in a good manner and likely will not be able to until Luther is forced to confront and accept his faults and I fear, if they did get together, that Luther might harm Allison’s personal development.

#the umbrella academy #tua #allison hargreeves #number 3 #umbrella academy luther #number 1 #tua luther #allison x luther

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bee-kathony · 6 years

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Four Years | October 18th, 2014

January 2nd, 2014 - February 15th, 2014 - March 8th, 2014 - April 12th, 2014 - May 2nd, 2014 | Year One - June 13th, 2014 | July 29th, 2014 | August 9th, 2014

Year One - October 18th, 2014

My strength was returning. Day by day I felt myself knitting back together, becoming whole once again. One of the things that had really helped me was a support group for people who had survived or were going through cancer.

Damocles Syndrome. The name given to the feeling of fear that the cancer or illness will return, an ever present sword, dangling above your head. To survive was one thing but to continue to live… that was something else entirely.

During my weakest moments, I begged for death to take me. The white light as they say. I wished for no more pain, no more feeling. Most of all I wished to rid Jamie of the burden that was me.

That’s why when I voiced these thoughts to him late one night, he suggested going to a support group.

“There’s only so much I can say, Sassenach, only so many times I can tell ye I love ye and yer beautiful.” His hand traced a pattern back and forth over my arm. “And I will tell ye everyday but ye need to be around people who can understand… really understand what’s goin’ on inside that wee head of yer’s.”

“You’re right.” I sighed, “The hospital has a few different groups, I suppose I can call Joe and ask him to sign me up for one. If it will make you feel better…” I moved closer to him in the bed, no longer shrinking back from his touch but craving it.

“Aye, Sassenach. It will make me feel better to know that while ye heal physically…” he kissed the top of my head, his lips pressed against the short hair, “yer mind heals as well.”

“I’m not promising any results, Jamie, only that I’ll go and check it out.”

“I ken that. But I’m praying to God himself that ye’ll finally start to see yerself as I do.” He looked at me as if I was his whole world, his hand now cupping my check as we lay together.

“And how do you see me?” I couldn’t help but ask, what girl wouldn’t?

Jamie sighed, a smile curving across his lips, “I dinna have enough time in the world to tell ye everything but I’ll say a few.” He pulled me into him, his hand covering the back of my head as I rested it into the crook of his neck.

“First of all, yer a damn fucking warrior.” He laughed, shaking my body with his, “Ye barely even complained, Sassenach. I saw ye hurtin’ but ye never made a fuss. Weel… ye maybe complained about the food but aye, who wouldn’t.”

I felt safe against him as he wrapped his body over mine. Jamie was my outer shell, protecting me from what I couldn’t protect myself from. Willing himself to save me, to save us.

“Yer also a good surgeon, even tho ye havena touched a blade in a long time, I know ye wield it with power, a healer’s touch.”

“You barely even knew me while I was still operating on actual patients,” I thought back to the day he told me he loved me, the same day I learned about my tumor. That was barely two months into our relationship.

Now it’d been nine months since the day I found him in the shower. The scars I had seen on his back I now felt under my fingers, slowly tracing the outline of a particularly deep cut. Jamie’s scars were external while mine were internal. Together we were a mess… but a beautiful mess.

That night I had fallen asleep with Jamie’s body close to mine, his mouth confessing my bravery and kindness. During the night I woke to hear him whispering something in Gaelic but every few words I understood a word in English. I heard “dove”, “preserve”, “harm” and “beloved” and drifted back to sleep, the word’s of my protector covering me.

++++++

The air was changing, turning from the heat of summer into the crisp chill of autumn. I’d taken to sitting out on our balcony in the evenings. The fresh air filling my lungs as the breeze calmed my soul.

My feet were propped up on the railing, a cup of ginger lemon tea in my hands, warming the chill that never seemed to leave my body.

“Bonny day, isn’t it?”

“Mmm, yes.” Jamie walked out, a cup of coffee in one hand, the other he placed on my shoulder.

“Would be even more bonny if we were somewhere tucked away in the Highlands, do ye think?”

On our first date, Jamie promised to take me to the Highlands after my confession that I’d never been. As a doctor, my time was spent with patients; before Jamie, I had no reason to travel outside of Edinburgh.

“Are you asking me?”

Jamie walked to stand in front of me, his hand settling on my propped up ankle, “Will ye, then? Go to the highlands wi’ me? Dance under the stars? ’Tis yer birthday in two days is it no’?”

“Yes, it is my birthday,” I smiled, “And I’d like that very much, please.” Jamie dipped his head to kiss me, “Aye, dinna worry about packin’ yer bag,” his face hovered close to mine, “I’ve already seen to it.”

++++++

We were six hours into our journey to the Isle of Skye. Jamie had booked a small cottage in the highlands, remote from the rest of the world. One week, one peaceful week to get away from all the sickness and hurt that was always lurking. A change of scenery to boost my spirits.

We should’ve been there by now but Jamie insisted on stopping in Fort William to check out Old Inverlochy Castle. I had to admit the Highlands had a certain… magical element about them. The heather moorlands were strikingly beautiful, the purple jumping out as we drove past.

My eyes had been staring at the inside of our loft and the hospital for months. To finally venture out was just what I needed. I also knew this would be good for Jamie, he wasn’t a homebody but he became one for me.

“You packed the board games right?” I tried to look back into the boot of the car.

“Aye, dinna fash, Sassenach. I’ll no’ make ye sit around, I’ll keep ye entertained.” His hand slid over my knee, smoothing over the small rip in my jeans.

Twenty minutes later we reached our destination. Set against the greenery of the Highlands, the small white cottage looked idyllic.

The next few hours we spent on the couch, watching the last two Harry Potter films. One day I hoped that we could actually visit the theme park in Florida.

“Do you think next year, when I’ve been officially tumor free for one year, we could go and visit Harry Potter World?” I voiced my desires to Jamie, his body under mine, breathing steadily.

“Aye, that’d be incredible actually.” He perked up, “We could get robes! And ride the train, the chocolate frogs, Sassenach! Just think about the chocolate frogs.” Jamie smiled, his hands resting on the small of my back.

“And wands too.” I placed a kiss on his lips and it deepened, the movie forgotten for the time being. I could feel another “wand” directly below me that I wanted to have.

I shifted my body slightly so I sat up on Jamie’s lap. He watched me as I brought my hands to the waistband of his sweats. No words were spoken, they didn’t need to be. This was my turn to show him how much I loved him.

Jamie’s breath grew shallow, his eyes turning a dark blue as I pulled down the material over his hips along with his briefs.

Since that day in the gym bathroom, I hadn’t seen his cock. We had never dressed or showered together, avoiding temptation as best we could. Jamie was a saint, if I was being honest with myself. What grown man sleeps next to a woman each night and doesn’t at least try and sleep with her? And I was even surprised at myself, back in the day I had been quite provocative; I blamed the medication for my lack of sexual drive.

I knew the time was coming though, when I would be ready. My pain grew less and less each day.

I took him in my hand and met his gaze.

He was warm in my grip, a throbbing against the palm of my hand. I started to stroke him, and the pad of my thumb pressed against the tip of his cock. Jamie’s eyes were small slits, I knew he wouldn’t close them completely — just so he could watch me.

His hands came to hold my waist, “Sassenach,” he sighed and I moved my hand faster, sliding my other hand in-between his thighs to grip his balls. Jamie arched his back off the couch then fell against the cushions, his breathing becoming more rapid, “Christ, yer wee hands.”

“Does this feel good, Jamie?” I added more pressure from my hand and he squeezed his lips together, unable to speak. I was feeling quite mischievous, so I reluctantly released him and bent my head over his stomach to take him in my mouth.

Jamie’s hand pressed against my shoulder, “No, Sassenach, ye dinna have to.”

“I want to Jamie.” I smiled and my tongue flicked out over his warm skin, the wiry hairs under his belly button scratching my cheek. Jamie groaned as I swirled my tongue on his cock. It didn’t take long before he was groaning and arching his back as he came in my mouth.

His hand was almost too tight on my arm and then suddenly he pulled me up to meet his lips.

Jamie’s grip loosened and he rolled us over so we now lay on our sides. With one hand he tucked himself back into his sweatpants, “Dinna need that hangin’ out or I’m afraid I willna be able to stop myself from takin’ ye mo nighean donn.”

“Soon, I promise.” I whispered against him, our foreheads now pressed together.

“Aye.” He kissed my nose, “Thank ye, Claire. For that.” Jamie’s cheeks went a deep shade of pink, his ears following suit.

++++++

After the movie, we cleaned up and started preparing dinner. Jamie had prepared two grilled cheeses, cheddar, gruyere, and feta with tomato soup on the side. My appetite had grown exponentially so I asked for another and ate it swiftly.

Laying on a blanket outside, hands intertwined, the sky shined above us, the stars twinkling their best for us tonight. Jamie’s thumb rubbed back and forth over my finger, sending a swarm of butterflies to my belly. For months now I hadn’t felt much of anything, least of all butterflies.

Just then, he rolled onto one side and sat up, with his head resting on his hand, “Sassenach, I just want to say a small thing and then I’d like to ask ye to dance.”

I reached up to brush back a stray curl that had fallen in his eyes, “What is it, love?”

“I willna stop lovin’ ye.” His fingers traced along my lips, “No’ in this life or the next, ye are my ev’ry thought,” his fingers brushed my neck and down softly against my collarbones, “my ev’ry heartbeat belongs to you.” Like a marble statue, I lay still as Jamie’s hand continued to trace down my arm and settle to hold my hand.

“Yer face is my heart Sassenach and the love of ye is my soul.”

Closing the space between us, I rolled to my side to kiss him. Jamie knew all the right words to say. I often felt I couldn’t express my feelings properly, at least not in the way that he did.

“I love you, Jamie. Even when I don’t say it as often as I should… just know I’ll never stop loving you either.”

Jamie moved his hand to cover my head which was now adorned with a beanie, the fluffy kind. “I think yer short hair is growin’ on me, Sassenach. Maybe I should join ye and shave off my own hair?”

I opened my eyes wide, “Don’t you dare shave off that beautiful red hair, Jamie Fraser!” I laughed, my hand now touching said hair, “I can pull off this look but you cannot, dear.”

“Och, yer sayin’ ye only love me for my hair then?” He laughed, scooping me up to lay on top of him.

“Aye, Jamie ’tis what I’m sayin’” I mocked his accent which made him laugh and my body move with his.

“Ahh, Sassenach. One of these days I’ll teach ye a proper Scottish accent, yers is terrible.” He kissed me then, thoroughly.

“I promised ye a dance under the stars, mo cridhe and a dance ye shall have.” Jamie rolled us to the side and stood, offering his arms out for me to take. There was music already playing from a small portable stereo Jamie had brought outside.

As he wrapped his arms around my waist, I tucked my head against his chest and the music filled the air.

“And you laugh like you’ve never been lonely, that’s alright, honey, that’s alright with me. Oh you laugh like there’s hope in the story.”

Jamie’s hands rested on my waist, holding me closely to him. The words of the song echoed through my bones. Reminding me to live and to laugh while I still could.

“Oh, you laugh like I’ll be there to hold you always, always here, I’m aways, honey, always here.”

His t-shirt was thin and I felt his rough scars against the pads of my fingertips. The pain that he had been through, the hurt, hanging in the balance of life and death. Jamie had come out on the other side, torn and bruised — but whole. As Jamie swayed us in slow circles, the stars bright above us, I knew I would make it out of this.

++++++

On my birthday, Jamie woke me up with a chocolate cake in bed, softly singing ‘Happy Birthday’. I rolled over onto my back and stared up at him, he was beaming and his smile was so wide it was infectious. I found myself filled with a happiness I hadn’t known for so many months.

“Blow out yer wee candles, Sassenach.” He held the cake out and I inhaled deeply before blowing out the 2 and 8 candles on top.

Jamie set the cake on the side, “What did ye wish for mo nighean donn?”

I pulled him closer and kissed him, “I can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”

“That’s no’ fair…” he kissed my nose, “Weel — is it somethin’ I can do for ye?”

“Like what?” I laughed and then froze as he shimmed down the bed and pulled back the covers. His hands grabbed hold of my ankles. “Jamie,” I said nearly breathless.

“Happy Birthday, Sassenach.” Jamie smiled as he spread me open and placed his mouth firmly between my legs.

#four years fic #mclairefras #jamie fraser #claire fraser #claire beauchamp #claire x jamie #outlander #outlander fanfic #outlander fanfiction #happy birthday sassenach #claires birthday #highlands #october 18 2014

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deviantconnorarmy · 6 years

Text

...There’s Always A Chance...

AN: Sequel for "Statistically Speaking..." Mainly cause I was begged for a sequel. I'd already entertained the idea, but the begging settled it. By the way, this ended up being super long, soooo there’s going to be a part 3. This is officially a mini series haha. I’m calling it the “Survivability” Mini-Series

Characters: Fem!Reader (Referenced), Connor, Hank Anderson, Captain Fowler

Pairing: Connor x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Language, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of Death, Injury/Mentions of Injury, Angst

Word Count: 2387

<---Previous Part Masterlist Next Part --->

“It comes and goes in waves. It always runs back, but it’s never quite the same. Well I think there’s something wrong with me. Got nothing to believe, can’t you see it on my face. I was going for the title got it by a tidal wave. Can’t stay in the shallows, please tell me I won’t wash away. When it pulls me under will you make me stronger, will you be my breath through the deep, deep water? Take me farther, give me one day longer. Will you be my breath through the deep, deep water? Deep water. Deep water. Ain’t even scratched the surface. Thinking I deserve the dream, but I don’t deserve the hurting. I want the flame without the burning, but I can’t find my purpose when I don’t know what my worth is.” --”Deep Water” by American Authors

The whir echoing through the parking lot grew louder, turning into a grating whine. The dim red glow under the snow brightened, flickered, puttered out before lighting up bright and alarming.

Rebooting...Rebooting...Rebooting...

A cough. Sputtering, choked, fresh blue soaking into white.

The snow was disturbed from where it had settled hours ago as limbs moved, choppily bracing against the ground before pushing up with a groan.

Warning: System Failure Imminent. Warning: System Failure Imminent. Warning: System Failure Imminent. Warning: System Failure Imminent.

Thirium struggled to flow through damaged systems, leaking through the holes and breaks in the very wiring that was supposed to keep it in. Inner components struggled to work after exposure to the cold for hours, grinding and groaning with the effort, occasionally seizing before being pushed forward by sheer will.

Thirium Levels low. Warning: System Failure Imminent. Biocomponents Damaged. Warning: System Failure Imminent.

Arms tried to drag a struggling body forward, but the parts wouldn’t cooperate with the will, only moving enough to prop up on locked elbows.

“He...help...”

The synthesized voice broke through the quiet of the parking lot, choked out by more thirium streaming to the ground over trembling lips.

Again.

“Help!”

Warning: System Failure Imminent.

“Help!”

LED flickered, dimming--limbs slowly lowering back to the ground.

Not yet...not yet...

“Help...” A strained whisper.

Footfalls. Voices. Muddled as the non-vital components started to shut down, power diverting to the parts needed to continue operating. Optical units were one of those already shut down, but someone could still be heard approaching.

“Holy shit--”

“This was fairly recent--”

“He’s still alive! How the hell--”

“He still has something to live for. Help me with him--”

“We need to move fast, or he won’t make it--”

He was being moved. Arms wrapped around him, hands grasping to help support, snow and thirium slipping to the ground.

He’s still alive, they’d said, whoever they were.

He’s still alive.

I am alive.

*Hank POV*

Day 1

Hank was on his feet, pacing slowly in the waiting room. Even though Connor’s sacrifice got you to the emergency room, your condition was volatile. You hadn’t woken up, you had crashed twice already, you’d already been in and out of the surgery room three or four times, and the doctors weren’t very optimistic about your chances. All Hank could do was pace and wait, since he was worried about what he would miss if he left. It had been a stressful first day, and he hadn’t even dealt with what had happened to Connor yet.

Hank’s phone started ringing in his pocket. A quick look gave him an unwelcome name.

Fowler.

He’d already ignored his calls for the first half of the day, he might as well answer now. If he pushed the guy too far, he might lose his badge. Besides, usually Fowler knew to give up if Hank hadn’t answered by now. If he was still calling, it might be something important.

Hank’s voice was sharp as he finally answered. “What?”

“For fuck’s sakes, Hank, why the hell haven’t you answered your goddamn phone?” Fowler yelled. The frown that had been on Hank’s face for hours by now deepened into a full-fledged scowl.

“She’s still at the hospital, and her conditions unstable, where the fuck do you think I’ve been, Jeffrey?” Hank barked back.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for hours--Cyberlife wants to know where the hell their android is, and I’m tired of them riding my ass for your fuck up!”

Hank paused. “Where their--what d’you mean, where their android is? I told you, Connor was lying right where we found them!”

“Well apparently you weren’t paying attention, cause it’s not there now, and Cyberlife is pissed! Are you sure it was destroyed?”

“I’m pretty fucking sure, Jeffrey! He was pumped full of bullets and his LED wasn’t on--not to mention all the blue blood all over the place was his. There was no way in hell he was still alive!”

“Well then how the fuck do you explain it not being there when Cyberlife went to recover what was left?”

“Maybe they should have gotten out their faster?” Hank suggested in an acidic voice. “If they took their sweet time finding Connor, someone else might have got there first and scavenged him.”

The thought made Hank sick, but it was the only explanation he could come up with for why Connor wasn’t still out there. He’d seen the android--he’d been destroyed.

“That android better show up in the next 48 hours, or you’re dealing with this mess, Hank, not me!” Fowler snapped, hanging up the phone before Hank could yell at him any more.

“Ghaa!” Hank fumed, barely resisting the urge to pitch the phone. As if the entire situation hadn’t been fucked up already.

Hank looked back in the direction the doctors kept appearing to give him updates on your situation. He needed to figure out what had happened to Connor, but...it would have to wait until your situation stabilized somewhat.

He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he left and something happened to you.

*Undisclosed Location*

“I’m going to need more thirium. And do we have any 9428v components?”

“No. Have you fixed the--”

“I’ve already done everything I can for the thirium flow, we need to replace some of these damaged components if he’s going to make it off this table.”

Footsteps. A new voice.

“You said you found someone?”

“Yeah--he was lying in the snow, barely alive, but he was definitely trying to hold on.”

The footsteps moved closer. A pause.

“I know who this is...why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“You were gone, and he needed attention--”

“This is the deviant hunter.”

Silence.

Then, quietly, “He needs help.”

“You’re always telling us to be better than them. Now’s our chance.”

“You don’t understand, if he wakes up, we’re all dead.”

“We can’t just let him die, either! It’s not right!”

“What should we do?”

Silence, again. Longer this time.

“What does he need?”

A soft sigh of relief. A noise of frustration.

“Thirium, obviously. Some biocomponents, a replacement for that leg. He’s highly advanced, though, we won’t find some of these parts at your everyday Cyberlife warehouse or store.”

“We can’t help him, then--that solves the problem.”

“I never said we couldn’t help him...”

“...It’ll just be dangerous. The stupid kind of dangerous.”

“Or suicidal.”

“What should we do?”

*Hank’s POV*

Day 3

Dead ends. Busts, false leads, and dead ends was all Hank’s investigation had gotten him, and he was shit out of luck. Jeffrey would be trying to reach him again at any moment now, demanding Hank deal with the heat from Cyberlife for losing their advanced prototype.

He’d honestly tried to find out what happened to Connor, but by the time he got to the crime scene again, the snow had covered any possible tracks, and the thirium had disappeared long before his arrival. He couldn’t see any tracks to follow, or any sign of a third party, or that Connor had miraculously gotten up and walked off on his own.

Though if Connor survived, Hank was sure he would have showed up by now. It was because he hadn’t returned, and because Hank had seen him and known he was dead, that he’d ruled out the possibility of Connor still being alive.

At the moment, however, Hank firmly believed the investigation could go fuck itself. You’d crashed again, and were once more in emergency surgery. From the way the doctors were talking, they were just about ready to give up. As a result, Hank was once more in the waiting room, Sitting firmly planted in an uncomfortable chair, leaning forward with eyes staring blankly at the ground in front of him.

The entire situation felt too much like what had happened to Cole.

This part of the hospital was particularly busy--it was Detroit. People got injured all the time. They were numerous enough that Hank had grown used to ignoring all the bustle and started to only respond when it was a doctor approaching him about your status. The rest of the time he could effectively ignore everyone else.

So it was that he didn’t hear the footsteps or see the figure walking carefully towards him.

He did, however, hear the voice loud and clear.

“Lieutenant?”

Hank’s head snapped up, followed quickly by the rest of him as his shock propelled him to his feet.

“What the fuck?”

It was Connor. In once piece. Standing in front of him like nothing had happened.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Connor’s clothes still looked disheveled, his tie was missing, his shoes looked like secondhand sneakers instead of his usual dress shoes, and there was a clear bullet hole in his pant leg. The only reason he wasn’t soaked in blood--at least visibly--had to be the whole thirium disappearing after a few hours thing. And considering the bullet hole in his pant leg, Hank was almost positive if he looked there would be bullet holes in the back of his jacket.

Hank would have asked if it was just some replacement sent by Cyberlife if he couldn’t see the serial number on his jacket and all the evidence that this was the very same Connor that he’d seen destroyed the other night.

“How the hell are you here? I saw you--you were dead!” Hank’s disbelief was obvious as he strode up to the android, taking all of him in. Aside from the clothes, he looked...different. Something had changed.

“Not yet, Lieutenant. I had to reboot my systems--it took a few hours,” Connor said carefully.

“So you just...what, walked off without telling anyone?” Hank asked, feeling a surge of anger at the thought.

“No. I didn’t walk anywhere,” Connor said vaguely.

Hank leaned back, appraising Connor closely. The android was usually painfully specific, not frustratingly concise.

“Someone helped you?” Hank prodded.

“Yes.”

When Connor didn’t elaborate, Hank leaned in, eyebrows raised. “Well? Who was it, who helped you?”

Connor actually hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Lieutenant.”

That was a surprise.

“You can’t tell me, huh?” Hank echoed, watching Connor closely. The android stared right back, but with hard determination in his eyes.

He wasn’t going to budge. He wasn’t going to breathe a word of who had helped him.

It sure as hell hadn’t been Cyberlife. So whoever had helped him...very likely had broken quite a few laws in doing so.

“Can’t or won’t?” Hank asked, watching Connor’s expression carefully.

Connor remained silent, but Hank saw that determination in his eyes harden.

In other words, he knew, but he wasn’t going to tell.

Atta boy.

“All right...well, what matters is that you’re here now, right?” Hank said carefully, backing away. Connor watched him closely, almost like he didn’t think Hank was just going to drop the subject just like that.

But he was. For now, anyway, since Connor was clearly protecting someone.

Connor looked down the hall in the direction the doctors were currently in surgery with you again. “It’s been three days--how is she?” he asked.

“She’s still alive, but...the doctor’s aren’t too optimistic. She’s been in and out of surgery, she’s in a coma...they say it was a miracle she made it to the hospital in the first place. You wouldn’t happen to know something about that, would you?”

Connor’s LED flashed red so quickly Hank wasn’t entirely sure he’d actually seen it. Again, Connor remained silent.

He’s not going to talk about what happened.

Connor remained fixed in place for a few painfully long moments before he broke the silence that had settled between the two of them, his LED blinking yellow.

“Do you think she’s going to be all right, Lieutenant?”

Hank leaned back in his seat. “Whatever you did out there helped, Connor. But I think the only thing we can do for her right now is hope she makes it.”

*Connor POV*

Connor didn’t move again until the doctor approached them, an android nurse following close behind. Since Connor hadn’t torn his gaze from the hallway, he saw them coming first.

It felt like his gut was twisting itself up in knots, throat tightening as he fixed the cuffs of his ruined jacket.

Somewhere in the far back of his mind he had the thought that he’d need replacement clothes, and he’d have to come up with an explanation for Cyberlife, but he didn’t let his thoughts wander much beyond that, because the doctor was approaching them, and all of his focus right now was on you, not Cyberlife and his own current situation, you.

“How is she?” Connor asked before Hank could even finish rising from his seat. The doctor gave Connor an odd look, then turned his attention back to Hank, addressing the Lieutenant over Connor.

“Her condition is getting worse. At this point, there’s really nothing we can do for her, except perhaps an experimental treatment. But the chances of success for the treatment are far too slim for me to confidently suggest it.

“What’s her chance of survivability if she has the treatment?” Connor asked sharply, though this time he was addressing the android nurse specifically.

“Eleven percent,” the android promptly answered.

“Is there any way to increase those chances, even marginally?” Connor pressed almost as soon as the android finished answering his first question.

“Certain situational adjustments could increase chance of survivability, but not by much.”

“Not enough for me to change my mind that it’s not a good idea,” the doctor said sternly. Hank, however, was looking at Connor.

“What do you think, Connor?”

Connor looked sharply at the Lieutenant, an intense purpose in his eyes. “She had a two percent chance of survival in the parking lot before I made situational adjustments, eight percent before I was...interrupted. Her odds of surviving with this treatment are better than her odds for making it out of that parking lot alive were.”

Something flashed in Hank’s eyes at Connor’s statement, though Connor couldn’t quite gauge the emotion he was displaying on his features before Hank turned back to the doctor.

He was the only human here at the hospital to speak for you, so the decision was his.

“Do the treatment, then.”

Next Part --->

Tags: @tea-with-loki @kawaiispacepriincess @thecrazybluefangirl @littleblue5mcdork @noodledraw

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cherokeegal1975 · 5 years

Text

Chapter 1 of “Unexpected Cargo” by Meriah Smith

Running A desperate man fled through a desolate landscape east towards the safety of the weathered stones ahead. He hoped he had lost his pursuers for good this time. The day was already beginning to grow hot and he carried no water, no food and no gear to help him to survive for long and he needed to find shelter from the desert sun until nightfall. His dust colored robes and pants billowed back in the rising wind and he worried that a sandstorm might be approaching. It would a blessing if he found shelter in time. Jonathan Taylor Smith, who was sometimes also known as Desert Rat, didn't really know why he was being pursued so determinedly across the Red Sands Desert by King Richard's personal guards. He was just a political nobody that transported cargo and passengers; offered his services in various trades in general labor now and again. He had made himself an excellent reputation for always delivering his cargo to where it needed to go on time. Admittedly, not all of his cargo and business ventures were technically legal, but he never hauled anything immoral like slaves bound for the market (except on the rare occasions when he planned to liberate them), narcotics for pleasure or cargo meant for harm like weapons. Of course his trade might have been the reason why he was now being hunted, Johnny reflected as he tried to run even faster in spite of his exhaustion. They thought he had something they wanted. Just the night before they had captured his sand ship (a kind of multi-functional low flying hover craft that resembled a train) after a long chase along a dirt road that led away from the little trading post he had just left behind at the breakneck speed of nearly two hundred miles per hour. To the observer, his rust colored vessel looked like a boxy and ponderous near derelict, but it was capable of going over terrain that most wheeled vehicles would have difficulty with or found impossible to traverse. His sand ship could travel at greater speeds than one's initial impression would suggest as it sat still or floated slowly, almost silently over the ground. It could turn on a stone, stop dead in a heartbeat and accelerate from zero to one hundred and eighty in sixty seconds flat. It's interior and exterior were spelled to handle the physical stresses of the sudden shifts in speed without damaging itself, its cargo or its passengers. No matter how fast his sand ship sped above the ground, his ship and his cargo never suffered from the additional g-forces. The spells kept gravity at a steady normal, as if it were standing still. Johnny mentally cursed and mourned the loss of his sand ship as he panted through parched lips and his thick leather boots beat the ground with every running step. It had been his home as well has his main source of his livelihood and he was uncertain if he would ever get it back. However, he was not so blinded by the loss of all of his possessions that he couldn't remember to be grateful that he escaped before the guards or Prince Richard decided on the best way to kill him. And he thanked the Goddess of all Creation with every fiber of his being that they didn't catch Goldie and Little Girl. They would have killed Goldie outright and sold Little Girl back into slavery as a gladiator in the worst blood sport events some of the oasis towns had to offer. The very thought of Goldie dead and Little Girl winding up mad and broken of spirit from the abuse of her captors and fighting life and death battles just for entertainment, squeezed his heart with fear and worry. He would die to protect them both. He spared a glance up at the sky and was rewarded once again with the form of a young dragon leading him on towards the safety of the rocks and water just ahead. She carried what little supplies she managed to recover, with Goldie clinging to the base of her neck. This was his dragon that he had rescued from slavery and then adopted as his own daughter. He called her Little Girl because he couldn't think of what else to call her and she refused to respond to any other name. It wasn't her true name, neither he or Little Girl knew it. They hoped to find it together someday, if they survived being hunted. Little Girl would have let him ride her across the skies along with the rest of what she was carrying if she could have, but she was still too small to bear his weight. In her true form she was not much bigger than a Great Dane and she was yet unable to make herself any bigger by shape shifting alone. One day she would grow to the size of an African bull elephant, but she was only about ten years old now, not much more than a baby in dragon terms. She could only lead him on and carry Goldie the female desert rat he had befriended as a boy. He staggered up a long steep grade that led up to the big jagged rocks he was headed for. Just a bit farther...just a bit farther...then they could rest. Even now he could see the cave entrance that didn't look to be more than a mere shallow crack. He knew there was a concealed passage just to the right once he squeezed past the narrow opening. There was good shelter inside and a pool of spring water, its overflow trickled further back into the cave system, so no one from the outside would discover there was water here. Unless they had the assistance of a desert rat, a dragon's unfailing ability to find water even when it was miles away, plus his own working knowledge of the local landscape. His hunters neither had the assistance of his companions nor possessed his intimate knowledge of the desert. No self-respecting dragon would willingly permit herself to be domesticated by anyone and the royal guards hated desert rats. Like most city dwellers, they tended to kill them on sight whenever possible, which was not easy to do. Desert rats were intelligent, opportunistic, highly alert and magically gifted. Anyone trading in grains or other edible food stuffs had a terrible time keeping the tenacious rodents out of their stores. They could bring a trader to ruin in a matter of days without the proper wards to keep them out. Johnny stumbled and fell gasping; another one of those damned cramps had him in its grips again. He didn't know the source of what ailed him, though he suspected magic. The source of that magic might have been the princess that found him eight days before. She was recently widowed when her husband was killed for the throne by his younger brother. She had fled for her life, found Johnny and asked for his help. Warning bells went off in his head, but one look at those big dark eyes tearing up after he initially refused her and he had to relent. Johnny was tough as nails, resourceful and capable of cold practicality when needed. Yet by no means was he heartless; it was both his strength and sometimes his weakness. His good nature got him into trouble more than once in his thirty years of life. The princess was a competent white witch; she had drugged him somehow or cast a sleep spell on him shortly after he agreed to help her. When he had awakened, she gave him the royal seal, asked him to keep it safe for her until she contacted him again and requested its return. He accepted the task along with twenty-five pieces gold as a retainer. Yet he had sensed some other motive and that keeping the royal seal safe was just a cover for the real reason she needed his help. Before he could discover the truth, they had been attacked by Prince Richard's guards. He made his escape at Princess Elena's barked command to go while her own guards fought to protect her. He liked Princes Elena, but he wanted nothing to do with politics. Getting too much attention from royalty meant they might discover the less than legal cargo he sometimes carried. He would honor the contract that he made with the Princess to the best of his ability; he had a reputation to maintain. Besides, Elena could take care of herself. In addition to her personal guards she was powerful in her magics. Johnny had no knack for spells himself, so he could not divine what the princess had done to him while he lay in his enchanted stupor. Nor had he been able to ask any practitioners of magic along his usual trade routes. Since agreeing to help the Princess, every time he stopped for more than a few hours, Prince Richard's guards would find him again. Why Prince Richard wanted that stupid hunk of metal bad enough to kill him for, he didn't know. The cramps started just twelve hours after he had escaped capture from the royal guards. They started as annoying twinges he forgot about as soon as they passed, but the steadily became worse. The cramps would go from a dull pain nothing would fix, to so agonizing that it left him sick and weak until it passed and he could catch his breath. The constant dull pain passed in a couple of days, but the periodic attacks would come and go without warning. After four days of this, he realized couldn't continue business while trying to hide from the guards. So, he stocked up on extra supplies and headed out into the deep desert intending to stay there until things cooled down and Prince Richard lost interest in him. For three days the ruse seemed to work, relatively few people dared to live in the largely unmapped and completely untamed wilderness where water sources were unknown to the city dwellers and royal houses of the Red Sands. Johnny had grown up there and had lived with a nomadic tribe of honorable thieves since he was twelve years old. He knew how to survive in the desert far better than any of the royal guards that were chasing him. Then somehow they located him, after he had passed briefly through a tiny trading post looking for any useful local gossip. They chased him down with their heavy wheeled vehicles after he and his family had fled back into the Dune Lady, driving away as fast as his sand ship could go. He might have gotten away if they didn't have a powerful armor piercing rifle that took out his main engine before he could make it to terrain too rough for them to cross at any great speed. Little Girl had been sitting in the passenger seat in her child form holding Goldie in her lap when the sand ship suddenly dropped out of the air and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, nearly tipping over sideways more than once as it came to rest. "Get out!" Johnny had ordered desperately as he leaned over them and shoved open the passenger door. "Take Goldie and fly away from here! Go find the other dragons and stay with them! I will catch up when I can." "Daddy, no!" she cried in protest as she hugged the frightened rat to her bare chest, terrified tears running down her cheeks. Already he could hear the guards approaching through the rapidly dissipating dust cloud. He couldn't fight them all, defend them both and he wasn't fast enough to escape them on foot. He had to get Little Girl to flee. "GO!!!" he shouted at her with a gentle shove toward the open door. "Fly into the sun as fast as you can! Do it now!" With a sob, the brave and beautiful child tumbled out of the passenger door and shifted into her true form with Goldie still in her arms. She did as she was told, flying into the sun as fast as she could. The guards fired their guns at her, blinded by the bright sun they missed their target and she was soon out of sight altogether. They had hauled him out of his broken ship and attempted to subdue him with great difficulty. He knew he couldn't fight them all, but he was determined to kill as many as he could before they killed him. He could at least buy Little Girl and Goldie some more time to get away. He managed to break free of the first guard that grabbed him, killing that one first with his pistol and then several more. They rushed him before he could reload, but he managed to kill three more with his curved short sword. He might have brought down a few more, possibly even escaped in spite of his initial misgivings, if he hadn't come down with another attack of those damned debilitating cramps that caught him by surprise and involuntarily doubled him over in agony. Johnny cursed the princess under his breath, face pressed in the dirt, as they pinned him to the ground and took his sword. They tied his hands behind his back with rough hemp ropes and hobbled his feet then stood him up again. He watched helplessly as they ransacked his sand ship's cargo hold, tore up his and Little Girl's few personal belongings and maliciously blew small holes into his ship's hull with their fire arms after they finished with their reckless search of his ship's interior. They found the seal. He didn't have time to hide the troublesome thing while he was busy running and hiding in the oasis towns that were his usual haunts. They "officially" declared him a thief, a murderer, and a traitor to the crown and he was to await judgment by his Highness King Richard...blah, blah, blah... Johnny didn't care, all he wanted was to escape, with his sand ship if possible and find Little Girl and Goldie. He wasn't loyal to any established government. How could he be a traitor to a kingdom that he was not a citizen of? The sun was setting when he had finally been captured. He soon learned that Prince Richard himself was coming in person to see him. The guards' orders were to remain until he arrived early the next morning. Johnny's heart sank. A personal visit by royalty in the middle of nowhere couldn't be good news. Out here, one could get away with murder and worse without anyone in polite society being any the wiser. The guards didn't feed him or give him any water. They kept his confiscated supplies and their own to themselves. Laughing and gaming with cards or dice, they would sometimes try to torment him by offering him food and water then denying it. After the second time, Johnny just ignored them, laid down and tried to rest as the night cooled uncomfortably. He didn't know how long he lay there, shivering on the still warm sand in the cold air. They had not provided him with a fire to keep warm and his only company was a single guard that watched over him grimly. It was clear to Johnny that he would rather be gaming with the others. Sometime later, he heard his guard say with a nasty chuckle, "Have a drink!" Johnny opened his eyes and then rolled out of the way barely in time to avoid being urinated on. The guards all looked up, laughed at him and cheered his antagonist as he put his private parts back into his loose fitting grey pants. They laughed again when Johnny doubled over in pain as he lay on his side, trying not to cry out as his lower belly cramped up. The mysterious attacks never lasted long, but they left him sweating and sick to his stomach. So far he managed to avoid vomiting; he needed to conserve his body fluids as much as possible. He didn't know how he was going to escape in his current condition, but he was determined to try once the opportunity presented itself. Until then, he let the guards think he was completely subdued. He tried to make himself comfortable on the sand again, trying not to shiver, trying to will his stomach to settle and trying to ignore the increasing ache in his limbs from being tied up for so long. Then to everyone's surprise off to the west, came a sweet singing voice with words no one could quite make out. It was haunting, achingly beautiful and filled with such longing that tears were brought to Johnny's eyes. He knew who it was and prayed that Little Girl would come back to her senses and fly away again. Even a few of the royal guards started to sniffle quietly; it would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the Little Girl's singing. Their leader barked an order for some of his underlings to go find the singer and bring her to him. While everyone was distracted by Little Girl, there was a soft almost inaudible scuffling coming up from behind him, then a tugging sensation at his wrists. Johnny smiled, he didn't know whether to praise or reprimand Little Girl and Goldie for coming up with this plan. He feared that they may be all killed before he got the chance to either. Goldie continued to gnaw as fast as she could through the tough ropes at his wrists from inside of his left sleeve so the guards wouldn't spot her. It was a good thing that Johnny's sleeves were so loose fitting because Goldie was the size of a small domestic cat. In about thirty seconds his rat's teeth made short work of the rough hemp rope and then she scrambled silently to chew through the rope binding his feet while hiding inside his loose pants leg. By now, all the guards were straining to see who the singer was through the darkness of the moonless night. Little Girl kept eluding the guards hunting her as she kept singing, no easy feat, even for a dragon. Johnny resisted the urge to sit up and stretch his limbs and instead remained unmoving with his hands still behind his back. He planned to wait until the last second to make a run for it. He looked up carefully at the guard standing next to him, he was staring fixedly to the west, head slightly cocked and listening intently. Goldie cut his ankles free and hurried back to his hands, pressing her furry back into his palms. To his surprise, a small sheathed hunting knife was strapped to her back by a leather cord. He grasped the hilt with his right hand and Goldie backed up to free the blade from its sheathe. Suddenly she leapt up onto Johnny's shoulder and then launched herself at his guard's black bearded face. She went for his eyes, viciously tearing at them with her sharp rat teeth before the man managed to dislodge his attacker. Johnny was on him a second after the guard had roughly dislodged the rat from his face with a startled cry of pain and revulsion. In one practiced move slit his throat to keep him from calling for help or try to stop Johnny from escaping. His limbs aching and stiff, Johnny none the less managed to flee with as much speed as his long legs would carry him, a blood stained Goldie following close behind at his heels. Fortunately, none of the blood was hers; she had managed to escape injury when the guard had thrown her. It only took a few seconds for his captors to realize what happened and they were after him with shouts and ringing explosions of gunfire. Little Girl circled silently as an owl above Johnny just out of range of the firelight, so she was nearly invisible in the darkness. Whenever a guard got to close to her father she spat fire balls at them with deadly accuracy and neatly evaded being shot by their fellows, flying quickly away from the area she had launched her fireballs; making herself an unpredictable and elusive target. She hated to use her fire on living things, but she would not allow the men to hurt her father. Johnny ignored the screams as they burned and he fled deeper and deeper into the desert. He stayed in the scant scrub and rocky places where the guard's vehicles couldn't go as easily as he and his companions did. The guards knew that so they continued to chase him on foot, but they couldn't keep up for long. For all of their special training, compared to him, they were soft and a little out of shape. They couldn't run in the desert all night with barely a pause. Johnny however could, because he had great stamina built up from many years of hard work in harsh conditions. And he had two other boons in his favor that they didn't have, he had a dragon and a high steep cliff looming ahead of him. At just inches above six feet tall, Johnny knew that his lean frame was too much weight for Little Girl to carry any distance; however she was strong enough to slow his fall. "We got him men!" shouted their leader from some distance behind as they tracked him with their electric torches. They saw the cliff too and assumed that he would stop once he got the edge. "Goldie?" he panted as he pointed to the cliff's edge. "Okay go," she squeaked as she guessed his plan. "Meet you below." Then she was gone, vanished into thin air. Trusting that Little Girl would see what he was up to and in total confidence in her, he ran even faster, almost heedless of his footing as he fled towards the cliff. "HEY! He's going to jump!" Someone shouted. ZZZZZING! A bullet was fired at his shoulder with the intent of slowing him down, but missed in a flash of greenish light he saw out of the corner of his eye. Little Girl hit the marksman in the chest with a fireball and he fell screaming and rolling in the dirt, trying to put it out. Too busy running for his life to contemplate the significance of what he had just seen in that green flash of light, Johnny filed it away in his mind for later and kept moving. "He's warded!" another guard shouted. "SHIT!" BANG-BANG! "Where is that fire coming from?" "Watch out!" "Hurry up! Don't let the prisoner get away!" The shouts of the guards barely registered in Johnny's mind. Just then he reached the edge of the cliff, heart leaping even higher into his throat than he knew possible, he gathered himself up and jumped as hard as he could before he lost his nerve. Little Girl screaming in horrified protest as he fell with his arms spread wide, she dove after him, catching him in a matter of milliseconds after his leap of faith. Johnny got a vague impression of a small dark mass falling past him as she caught him. She had been carrying something and had dropped it to be rid of the extra weight. Smooth scaled forelegs wrapped around his upper torso just under his arms, her hot breath gusting in desperate pants just above his head, Little Girl's feathered wings beat frantically to slow his decent to the rocky ground below. Johnny did his best to help her by trying not to move too much and cause his weight to shift around. He also tried to not act as terrified as he felt. If he panicked so would she, possibly causing her to make a fatal mistake. Thanks to the moonless sky, he couldn't see anything beyond Little Girl's beating wings. Below, it was almost pitch black at the base of the cliff and he couldn't see how fast they were descending. Fortunately Little Girl's eyes would have no trouble seeing in the dark; she could see well enough for both of them. Little Girl made high distressed whistling noises every exhale as she strained to save her father's life. Her wings beat harder as she redoubled her efforts to slow them down and he could literally feel her frantically slamming heartbeat between his shoulder blades where her chest was pressed firmly up against him. The controlled fall and the rush of wind seemed to take forever and Johnny began to worry they might not make it. Then he could just make out the starlit ground a few yards below his hanging feet. It was coming up fast, almost too fast. He gritted his teeth and braced for impact and he resisted the urge to tell Little Girl to slow down; he knew she was doing her best. "OOOFF!" he said as the wind was knocked out of him as he finally hit the ground and tumbled sideways. He nearly slammed into a thorn bush when she was forced to drop him a couple of feet off the ground to avoid crash landing on top of him and injuring them both with the impact. Fortunately the satchel Little Girl had dropped had landed in front of the bush and it served to stop his roll before he wound up in a rather prickly situation. He sat up panting and looked around to see if Little Girl was alright. She was fine...and she was seriously pissed off. She had landed a few feet away to his left with her eagle wings and elongated triangular head drooping tiredly. Tongue lolling, her mouth hung agape as she panted hard to catch her breath, causing her flanks to heave with every inhale and exhale. Her furiously glaring yellow gold eyes flashed dimly in the starlight as they fixed on him when she lifted her head. They were wet with tears that had been blown back during their decent. Her tail lashed back and forth like an angry cat. Her jaws still hanging open as she breathed in great steaming gusts of the cold night air, she bared her fangs and emitted a short growl. "Sorry Sweetie," Johnny apologized with complete sincerity as he tried to catch his own breath. "I'll make it up to you, alright?" Little Girl barked angrily, hopped on her forelegs, landing stiffly with a soft thump and kicking up small puffs of dust with impact of her front feet. Before she could make any further comment, her attention was suddenly diverted by a sound Johnny didn't catch at first. The shadowy form of her head had whipped to the right and upward, then she snarled viciously. Then he heard it as Goldie finally came out of hiding and curled up in his lap. Engine noise from some of the trucks as the guards started them. He knew there was a way to drive down from up there and it would be only a matter of time before they found it. He turned to Little Girl and asked, "Can you fly?" Little Girl lifted her wings experimentally and then chuffed an affirmative. "Good." Johnny grabbed the satchel with its unknown contents. Untying the sheathe from Goldie's back, he replaced the knife he had somehow managed to hang on to, placed both in the sack and gently tossed it to Little Girl. She caught it deftly in her forepaws as Johnny stood up with Goldie in his arms and placed her on Little Girl's withers. Goldie clung tightly to the dragon's feather mane with all four feet, readying herself for takeoff. Little Girl launched herself up into the air with Johnny running along behind her. They went like this all night, stopping only briefly to catch their breaths. Luckily, Johnny's attacks were not frequent and he managed to recover quickly enough not to slow them down too much.

(This book can be purchased as a paperback book or as a Kindle on Amazon)

#Fantasy #dragon #mpreg #hetrosexualmpreg #literature

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