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wildflowerluver · 2 years

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sharing

aaron hotchner x fem!reader

3 times aaron shares his clothes with you

cw: nsfw mentions, aftercare, bau reader, injury, case details

wc: 1.4k

༺♡༻

suit jacket

aaron hotchner is rarely seen during work hours in anything other than a suit.

there’s exceptions, of course, such as cases up north where he can be found dressed in jeans and a quarter zip. but then again, how often does the team get sent to a place like alaska.

the team was sent up to vermont. the suspected unsub lived and hunted in the thick forests which made profiling extremely difficult. days later, when you finally had a suspect, you and the team wasted no time in speeding through the pouring rain to get to his location.

arriving first, you and morgan shot off running after the unsub who had escaped out of the back of his rural house and into the woods. the team stayed behind to raid the home for one of the missing girls as well as setting up a base camp for the arrest.

by the time you caught up with morgan who had already apprehended the unsub, you’re soaked from the rain. it doesn’t help that you have to walk up another hill to get back to where you hope the team is.

you’re absolutely drenched and can’t stop shivering.

the bullet proof vest that sits across your chest has transformed from its normal navy blue to a near black; mud streaks across it to add to the mess.

once you appear in the sight of the team, emily is the one who reaches you and morgan first.

you’re both a little out of it from a combination of the weather and the chase. her voice is muffled but the hands cupping your cheeks are easy to feel. they’re warm and seem to ground you.

the warmth you’re feeling is leaving as quick as you registered it. emily’s soft hands are replaced with larger, more calloused ones. ones you know very well; aaron’s.

“honey, are you alright?” his voice is quiet.

it takes you a moment to meet his eyes.

“s’ cold,” you chatter.

aaron takes you being able to respond to that as a win. his expression shifts to relief as he places a tentative hand on your shoulder. “the ambulance is here. we should get you checked out.”

you allow him to guide you over. morgan’s already been cleared which is a good sign.

the emt’s waste no time in bombarding you with questions. you’re still shivering.

not even thinking twice, aaron slides off his suit jacket to place it on your shoulders. you know you won’t be fully warm until you get out of the clothes that you’re in but the jacket is a kind gesture.

aaron doesn’t care in the slightest that his jacket is getting wet. you, on the other hand, frown and try to push it back. you know how expensive his work clothes are. they’re the only thing in your shared closet that gets sent to a dry cleaner for special cleaning.

“y/n,” aaron scolds. “please take my jacket.”

you feel like a child at his words. his usual term of endearment had shifted into just your name for emphasis.

you grumbled quietly before allowing aaron to readjust his jacket over your shoulders. it doesn’t just provide you with warmth from the material, but simply from knowing that it was aaron’s.

he stays seated next to you the entire time. His arm had snaked around your waist to hold you close.

aaron waits until the emt’s successfully clear you and move to check on some of the others before he raises his chin so you meet his eyes.

he leans down to kiss you gently. it’s short and sweet. you barely have any time to process it before he’s pulling away.

“all better.”

sweater

the house is slightly chilly when you wake up.

normally you would take this opportunity to roll over and bury yourself into aaron’s chest. he was a personal furnace.

instead of finding aaron beside you, you’re met with an empty bed. his covers are neatly tucked in and his pillow is fluffed. the mattress is cold too, a telltale sign aaron’s been out of bed for quite a bit.

though tiredness courses throughout you, the urge to find aaron outweighs that.

you shiver as your feet hit the hardwood floor. the shirt you decided to wear to bed seems like a bad choice. across the room, a grey article catches your eye.

the sweatshirt is soft in your hands once you pick it up. you know it’s aaron’s judging by the print on it. he had a habit of keeping his old college apparel.

the george washington university logo had faded and cracked from years of wear but it smells like aaron. you don’t think twice before sliding it on.

you pad down the stairs and shuffle into the kitchen in search of your boyfriend.

the sleeves of aaron’s sweatshirt go a bit past the tips of your fingers and you bring your hands up to your chest.

aaron is by the stove, humming along to the music that plays out of the record player as he cooks breakfast. he’s dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. you have no idea how he isn’t cold though you’re sure he’s planning on building a fire in the fireplace to combat the chill of the blowing snow outside.

you waste no time in moving forward to wrap your arms around his midsection. your head finds a place between his shoulder blades as you squeeze him a little tighter.

“good morning,” you smile.

aaron places his spatula to the side and turns the stove down. whatever he’s making can wait.

he’s turning around to face you. your arms remain around his waist and his move up to cup your cheeks.

aaron moves down to kiss you deeply. your heart beats faster as your lips meet. despite the months of dating, you never get tired of kissing him.

“good morning, honey,” he mumbles against your lips.

aaron’s eyes leave yours and look down at your frame. you bite your lip.

“is that my sweatshirt?” he asks.

you hide your face in his neck. “maybe,” you mumble. you know he’s not mad but the embarrassment of getting caught makes your face flush.

aaron kisses the crown of your head.

“i don’t mind. looks much better on you anyway.”

shirt

you’re still breathing hard when your head finally hits the pillow.

aaron takes his time pulling out. you whimper at the empty feeling but he kisses you gently as if to combat the feeling.

“so good for me,” he presses the words into your neck. “so perfect.”

aaron thumbs away a few stray tears, purely from pleasure, that have fallen down your cheeks. your eyes are still a little clouded and aaron notices almost immediately.

“feeling okay?” he kisses your cheek, then your forehead, and finally your lips.

you nod, face flushing. “more than okay.”

aaron hums. aftercare after sex is one of the most important things to him but he first needed to make sure you were okay.

“c’mon, let's get cleaned up,” aaron snakes an arm around your waist to pull you flush to him. you keep your head in the crook of his neck as he helps you to your feet and into the bathroom.

aaron takes his time with you in the shower. he makes sure the water is just the right temperature before he pulls you in.

his hands are soft as they wash and massage your scalp. he’s mindful of your sensitivity and when you’re done, he wraps you up in a big fluffy white towel.

“what can i get you?” aaron asks.

“bed,” you mumble, tiredness finally taking over.

aaron kisses your forehead. he squeezes your hip and leaves you to walk over to his drawer. he returns just a moment later with one of his t-shirts in hand.

“arms up,” aaron instructs gently.

you do as you’re told, the soft material concealing your body in the best way possible. the smile on your face tells aaron he made the right choice in his pick of pajamas for you. you can’t help it, there’s something so intimate about sharing clothes with a partner.

you finally make it back to the bed. the sheets had been changed and the covers are pulled back to make it look extra inviting.

aaron helps you before sliding in after you.

you promptly curled into aaron’s side.

“goodnight honey,” he whispered.

you’re asleep before you have the chance to answer.

#criminal minds blurb #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds reader insert #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds angst #criminal minds #aaron hotch fic #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch imagine #aaron hotchner fanfiction #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotch x you #aaron hotchner fluff

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mournings-stars · 6 months

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i loved the adam with a fat!reader 🥹 so cute, id love to see lucifer with a reader similar? like maybe shorter like him and a bit on the chubby side 🙏

AHHH THATS SO CUTE

imagine you’re like a chef or baker or something, maybe hellborn, maybe a sinner, and you meet him at an event that he’s just required to go to, so he’s staying by the catering tables and just busying himself with food so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone

“i know it’s a buffet, darlin’, but you’re milking my lil’ supply dry.” and imagine you have the cutest lil accent like maybe it’s southern if you’re hellborn or soft, 50’s movie-type transatlantic if you’re a sinner (i kinda wanna write this now actually so tell me what u prefer…)

first he’d look up, just expecting you to be taller than him, but then he’d look down and see you and immediately try to hand his plate back because how could he take your business for granted when you’re standing right in front of his and so sweet… and beautiful — like he’s not blind, he can see that you’re gorgeous. and if he’s honest the food isn’t good enough to get so many plates, but your restaurant would certainly be popular when you’re the precious little face of it

but he has to stop himself because his thoughts are certainly bordering on rude now, so he’s scrambling to apologize like, “i’m sorry — i see why your food’s so popular now, HAHA, you’re gorgeous — i mean, your food is amazing, but—“

“but?” and then he just shuts up. “no keep going, but what, your majesty?” and he is fumbling, because he can’t tell you he thinks the food is mediocre when he’s been shoving it down his throat all night, but then you say, “i know it’s not my best; they had me here last minute, frettin’ over twenty trays each of my best dishes, which can’t be the best if they’re repeated twenty times,” and even though you’re talking on and on, he’s listening and nodding on and on because because you’re just speaking to him so naturally

“am i talking to much?” “yes — i mean, no! i could listen to you talk all night!”

the rest is literally history, like you tell him to come to your restaurant to see what your cooking is really like, and when he finds out its just a small little restaurant with a couple tables and an old kitchen, he’s amazed because it tastes even better than it did at the event

once he decides to ask you out, and he decides quick, he knows he can’t ask you out to eat, or to an event, or to his house, or to the movies, or—

“you wanna get somethin’ to eat sometime?” and you’re literally asking him before he can even think to ask. “maybe you could cook for me?” you suggest slyly and he’s too flustered to say anything so he just nods. “i’ll make sure i dress fancy for you then, majesty.” and this man is MELTING

and if there’s one thing he learns about you that night its that you are not insecure about anything — your first conversation of you doubting your cooking skills might’ve made him think otherwise, but now he knows it’s just not the case

and you have no reason to be insecure; about your cooking, about anything — hell, you look amazing all dolled up just to come to his home for his 8-minute spaghetti… at least he made homemade meatballs. and those were pretty good! you even complimented them, which gave him a very much needed ego boost to get through the night confidently

and when his confidence finally shows, you’re sure he’s what you want, so you don’t bother taking your time with leading up to kisses or anything past that. you take what you want, with permission, and give him what he wants

and he loves it about you, like, you’re so sure of yourself, confident, and carry yourself with so much charm that people just step out of your way, even with your short stature, which he also loves about you — it’s nice having someone shorter around for once, but he’d definitely shape-shift and let himself be shorter than you for a day or so if you wanted

along those lines, he would give you any and everything you wanted. even if you didn’t ask, he’d give it to you — he’ll get you a new restaurant, new equipment, appliances… hell, he’ll even get you a new apartment… that is, if you don’t move in with him

and he would ask, a million times he’d ask because he just loves being with you that much. whenever you come over, or he goes to your place, he’s stuck to you. he watches you cook, helps if you let him — he bakes! he can bake, but of course he finds out you can too, and he insists you’re much better, but you insist that you do it together since this was much less dangerous than letting him rummage through your spice cabinet

if he’s not helping you, he’s hugging you from behind and watching what you do, hands running all over you, feeling the soft plush of your thighs and hips, your stomach, anything you’ll let him touch which he kisses your cheeks and neck and shoulders — literally anything you’ll let him do because he just loves listening to your precious laughter as he loves on you, or your sighs when he marks your neck or shoulder

this man LOVES lying with his head on your lap or in between your thighs. literally anything to do with your thighs or resting his head on your stomach, like, he’s fully back in heaven

he also loves you on top of him, straddling him while you comb your fingers through his hair, legs across his lap as you read, cuddled up to him as you watch a movie or sleep, he can’t get enough of you

and don’t get me started on the nsfw like… head between your legs all fucking day, squeeze his head with your thighs — like actually do it because he will come undone

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #lucifer morningstar #hazbin hotel fanfiction #hazbin hotel headcanon #lucifer morningstar x reader #lucifer hazbin hotel #hazbin lucifer #lucifer x reader #lucifer morningstar imagine #lucifer headcanons #lucifer fluff #lucifer magne #hazbin hotel lucifer

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collidescopeeyes · 5 months

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Random Relationship Headcanons: Viego

- Wants to be near you literally all the time. Loves physical contact and will find any excuse to get it.

- He physically can't blush, which is a tragedy because otherwise you could see how flustered you make him :( you still catch him just staring at you with open adoration so it's ok though

- Gives you privacy if you ask for it but his default state is wanting to be around you. Kind of guy who would be thrilled to watch paint dry with you cuz it means you get to spend time together. Will follow you around until you pay attention to him, 100% sulks if neglected for too long but can't stay mad at you for long.

- Gets jealous easily but is working on not being so possessive, so he just gets clingy(er) if he's feeling insecure. It's kinda cute.

- Low key gets freaked out if he doesn't know where you are. His last love died painfully in front of him ok he's got Trauma

- Can tell immediately if there's something up with you, pls talk to him about it, he worries and he just wants to help

- Likes to read, from romance novels to historical texts. Goes through surviving texts from Camavor frequently, trying to jog his memory. Keeps a journal now, in case the mist takes any more memories. A lot of it is prose about how pretty you were today, a fair hand at sketching too.

- Likes animals, especially dogs and horses–royal hunts were a big family event growing up. Animals do not like him anymore, the mist makes them uneasy. It makes him sad sometimes :(

- Has strong opinions on wine and ballroom music. Will talk about the composition of a symphony for hours if you let him. Would love to teach you to dance.

- Used to care a lot about how he dressed, but those memories are still pretty fuzzy and he doesn't really think about it anymore–dying kinda puts vanity into perspective. Likes dressing you up though, and will definitely dress to match if you're going somewhere. He likes the idea of coordinated outfits.

- Gets moody occasionally, it all gets a bit much for him sometimes and he starts thinking about all his fuck ups. Alternates between sad and self-blaming to frustrated and kinda bitchy, but does his best not to take it out on anyone. Instantly feels bad and apologizes if he says anything out of line. Give him time, cuddles and reassurance and he'll start feeling better.

- Can't sleep without you in his arms. Doesn't choose to sleep often anyway (he gets bad nightmares), but will happily lay there all night watching you sleep. Doesn't like to admit that though bc he knows it's kinda weird.

- Doesn't need to eat or sleep or drink, but likes doing it anyway. The other wraiths in the isles are shadowy mist creatures because they're souls the mists have taken, and the bodies are somewhere else. Viego’s situation is closer to him ACTUALLY being the crown and just possessing his own body constantly, sort of like he'd possess anyone else’s. He's still technically undead though so his only real bodily need is the magic that's keeping him walking around

- The crown can't be moved, his head just moves with it. It's sort of like horns, except they're not actually attached to his head. Yank him around by it ;). He can demanifest it if he tries but it makes him feel numb and weirdly claustrophobic

- Speaking of, is claustrophobic. Man was trapped in a sword for like a thousand years; he was only quasi aware that whole time, kind of like having a nightmare or sleep paralysis, but it still makes him uncomfortable. Doesn't come up much since he just kinda mist teleports out if he starts feeling cramped. If it's ever for some reason necessary he will be holding you like an emotional support stuffy and you won't get a choice about it.

- His tears are black and dissipate into mist after a bit. It's very goth. Can control the amount of mist pouring from his heart; at its thickest it's almost like a small waterfall.

- Lets you put your fingers in his chest hole exactly one time. It was so cold you couldn't actually feel anything. He described it as akin to someone squeezing his heart.

- He can float but it takes concentration and he honestly prefers just walking. Also, he's tall asf. You need something off a high shelf, he's your man.

- His sense of temperature is fucked. He can tell if something's hot, but if you hand him an ice cube and a piece of wood he can't tell which ones colder without looking. Worries his hands are too cold for you since you always feel warm to him (they're not)

- Looking at his reflection weirds him out, and sometimes you catch him staring at his hands. Man doesn't have an introspective bone in his body though so he couldn't tell you why, but really he only sort of remembers what he used to look like and sometimes the dissonance gets to him.

- In the far far future of TIARW some of the restored shades will choose to stay in the kingdom, since apparently Viego was beloved by the people before his wife died and he went fully off the deep end. Viego gets the opportunity to redeem himself to his people and kingdom, and another shot at being king but older and wiser now. With you as his queen, he swears not to make the mistakes of his past and to rule with the best interests of Camavor in mind. Maybe I'll write an epilogue along those lines at some point.

NSFW (under cut)

- Look he's perma stuck in honeymoon phase he's Thirsty

- High libido. A menace if you let him be but 100% respects if you aren't feeling like it, he knows he can be a bit much. Does need lot of physical intimacy but that doesn't need to be sex necessarily, he just likes making you both feel good

- Despite this, doesn't jerk off much. It's being with you that gets him going, not that he specifically wants to get off

- He doesn't get tired. Like ever. 0 refractory, will just go until either you tap out or he's so overstimulated he can't anymore. Watching his cum drip out of you just gets him so worked up though so it's a vicious cycle

- He's got a filthy mind and will have you every which way he can think of, in every room you'll let him. Fav position is probably you riding him cowgirl though; he likes the view

- Likes leaving lovebites, but he lowkey feels bad if he bruises you by accident. He gets carried away and forgets his strength sometimes, you'll have to convince him you're fine. He heals too fast for you to leave marks on though, it's tragic :(

- He's touch starved, we all know this, he was trapped in a sword for a thousand years. In particular though, his neck is very sensitive, as well as his thighs and lower back. Doesn't like the area around his chest cavity being touched. Loves having his hair pulled.

- He's got experience. He was a heartbreaker in his youth and he figures out exactly what you like uncannily quickly

- Love love loves going down on you, he loves watching you and he gets to make you feel good, doesn't even care if he cums as long as he gets to eat you out

- Boss him around, he loves it when you take charge. Loves being both praised and degraded, will try so so hard to be good for you. Edge him until he cries, make him cum over and over, yank him around by the crown and tell him what a pathetic cum drunk slut he is, he'll take it all and beg for more <3

- Not specifically dommy so if you aren't taking the reigns he's the perfect combination of loving and so horny he can't think straight. Tells you how pretty and perfect you are while he makes a fucking mess of you.

- He's so loud. If he's not telling you how good you feel or how perfect you are, he's moaning and whimpering and swearing. Ask him a question and watch him struggle to put a coherent sentence together in real time.

- If you want to give him a task you know he'll fail, tell him to keep quiet. Fucks it up immediately and he gets SO upset, full tears in eyes begging to make it up to you.

- Will happily do whatever makes you both feel good, willing to try most things you want to. Hard limits, wouldn't like saying mean things or hurting you even as part of a scene (receiving tho, yes pls). Also, very mixed feelings about doing it anywhere anyone could ostensibly see you–on one hand everyone should know you're his and he's yours, on the other he'd have to kill them. It would be the only way, they gotta die.

- Aftercare is a must, whole nine yards, hot scented bath and cuddles and affirmations all around.

#league of legends x reader #league x reader #leauge of legends #x reader #reader fic #f!reader #reader #viego x reader #viego lol #headcanons #look honestly i just wanna bully him a lil yk

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kaiso-woo · 11 months

Text

Just Stay.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　

-> Masterlist

PART 1 of my ‘Stay Series’ - a long hypothesised journey of a relationship between Bang Chan and Reader.

WC: 6.8k | Overall ‘Stay Series’ Synopsis: Bang Chan experiences the suic!des of Stays, so when you lot choose to die, he dies right along with you. Reader is the “antidote” to this condition.

Notes: Second Person Narration, Skz Fluent in English, Swearing, CaféOwner!Reader, Fem!Reader, Idol!Chan, Barista!Chan, Suic!de (Strong Descriptions), ANGST (LITERALLY EVERYWHERE, NO NEED TO SQUINT), Fluff (At the End)

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺

PART 1

!!Casual reminder this is entirely fictitious - Chris/Christopher in my work does not represent the actual Bang Chan - this is purely my imagination and nothing more - this goes for all other SKZ-Members too!!

What should you do when you witness the end of a life? Cry and wallow in the darkest corners of disconsolation? Feel your heart shatter, a million fractals of sharply glittering reflections exploding in a mere fraction of a second? Some believe time is nothing more than an illusion though – so should you instead decide to lie on your bed, a place of restless solace, and stare up at the empty ceiling?

If this were the case, could you then be compared to a lonely garden gnome, fated to ponder life’s every aspect through a single perspective? Would you shrivel away from the light, choose to accept the pitiful concept of simply existing and allow your garden to wither; green to grey, flesh to bones, petals to stems? Perhaps your coping mechanism is to simply scream. Shut the doors. Close your blinds. Block your ears. Scream. Dry your eyes. Breathe…

Scream.

He does none of those. Instead, his eyes flutter closed momentarily, chest heaving, hands shaking, before he pulls himself away and picks up the computer mouse again. They’re becoming more frequent, or maybe he’s becoming more attune to them.

He doesn’t witness these deaths, exactly. He feels them; what it’s like to have the frigid wind tug at your hair, howling in your ears, the moment of impact with the blistering ground causing him to flinch violently, hand clamped over his mouth in a desperation to quell any yell; what it’s like to have your vision swim, blotting in and out of darkness, your throat constrict as though a pressure is forcing its way from inside out, desperate, erratic gulps for sweet sweet oxygen achieving nothing; what it feels like to stand there, shivering, your heart rate increasing tenfold, breaths quickening to mere pants, as you will every instinct in your body to remain still – ‘do not move’, you think, ‘it’ll be over soon’, you remind yourself, ‘the lights are closer now, and they’re fast, they won’t stop’.

How dearly he wishes for them to stop.

He’s better at dealing with them now, definitely more subtle. The panic that envelopes him every time he realises something is about to happen however, will never leave him. He’ll drop what he’s holding, frantically disappear into one of the empty rooms in the company building, lock the door and rake a hand through his hair. The number of times the stylists have grumbled at him for messing up his styled hair is limitless, but he doesn’t care, why should he?

The studio door clicks open, and his head snaps to the sound. Immediately, he attempts to steady his breath, and pulls his expression into his signature straight smile :] as Jisung enters the room, a plastic bag filled with takeaway containers in his hand.

“Eh? What’re you doing here…?” Chan grins, his eyes widening dramatically. Swiftly, he swipes his computer mouse to the top of the screen to check the time.

2.23am

“It’s so late Jisung, were you practicing choreo?” he continues, hitting save on his keyboard so he doesn’t accidentally delete his work while distracted. “I brought you food,” Jisung mumbles, lowering it onto the coffee table and carefully unpacking it all. Chan’s mouth begins to salivate excessively as the smell of chicken wafts towards him, but he rubs his face and resists the urge to sit down with Jisung and eat to his heart’s content.

Jisung plucks a drumstick from the box, “Why are you working here alone?” he questions, a sad pout on his chubby cheeks as he wanders over to the computer, careful not to drop any crumbs. Chan shrugs, hoping it’ll satiate Jisung’s concern.

It doesn’t, of course, and his pout morphs into a small frown. Jisung tries to shove the chicken into Chan’s mouth, offering it to him demandingly. “You eat, you eat,” Chan waves it away and turns back to his computer, “You wanna listen? I think it’s almost finished, something’s just not right with the auto tune… I think. It sounds off,” he picks the headphones off the desk and holds them out for Jisung, who has taken a bite of the chicken happily and is munching away. Again, he tries to give Chan the chicken drumstick, and refuses to take the headphones until Chan is eating the chicken.

As Jisung listens to the song, Chan’s mind drifts back to the corners of his thoughts, the shadows that have been swirling there for a long while now. He doesn’t know when it first began, doesn’t want to remember it to be honest. He was in his room, dozing off into a comfortable sleep, the purple LEDS providing a soft glow to the darkness.

It was abrupt, swinging into him out of nowhere, but he sat bolt upright, hands grappling with the sheets desperately. His vision swam, and he retched on dry air. He groaned and keeled forwards, hands suddenly clutching his chest as it tightened painfully – corkscrewing into his heart, but at the same time it was as though someone was trying to pry it open. He retched again, and he regretted in that moment that he had chosen purple to light his room earlier. The colour was making his head pound, his belongings swimming in and out of his vision, worsened by his unstable swaying.

In a panic, he crawled over to the side of his bed. Then with a last hacking cough, he vomited onto the floor, the acrid taste on his tongue causing him to recoil, the stinging burn in his throat making his eyes water. Not that it mattered. He couldn’t see shit anymore. A dry sob escaped his lips, as he desperately tried to fumble for something to ground him back to reality. He saw speckles – grainy, fuzzy, surreal.

The world tilts, and maybe he falls off the bed too. And he’s gone.

“It’s not the auto tune effect – it’s the timing of the bridge,” Jisung drags Chan back to reality, his head bopping slightly to the music. Chan blinks and scoots aside to allow the younger to fiddle with the computer mouse, rewinding the audio so he can listen again. Chan is finishing off the chicken drumstick, so he hums in acknowledgement instead to Jisung’s feedback. “Yeah, it’s the bridge. The vocals need to be delayed a little,” Jisung concludes, “Want me to fix it up?”

In the silence of the room, Jisung pulls over another chair and gets to work. Chan watches him contentedly for a while, happy to absorb himself in the clicking and tapping of his first child’s proceedings - watching him edit and perfect the track they’ve been working on for the past few months. Jisung glances at Chan, his concentration breaking, “You’re unusually quiet.”

Chan reaches over and squeezes his shoulder comfortingly, “Just thinking.” “Right... well, eat more. And then go to bed,” Jisung insists, briefly squeezing the hand on his shoulder in return. Chan sighs and hoists himself out of his chair, sinking back onto the couch so he can easily dig into the food. “Thanks mate,” he mumbles, and when the man makes no move of acknowledgement, Chan smiles softly and nibbles on some more chicken.

He woke that time, on the floor of his bedroom, dangerously close to the stinking heap that was his vomit. His head pounded, a dull ache ringing in his skull as he mustered all his strength to simply stand up and pull over the blinds.

“What the fuck was that?” He groaned, resting his head on the window and basking in the warmth of the early morning sun, so comforting, so full of life – a steady presence. After he spent the next ten minutes gathering his wits and cleaning up the mess, he brushed it off as food poisoning; maybe something in the food Hannah cooked last night (he’d never tell her that, of course).

On another day, in another place, maybe a few weeks from then, he had returned to Korea, jumping straight back into his busy schedule. They were in the middle of an interview, not the first, and certainly not the last. In hindsight, he was thankful he had chosen to stand in the back row. At first he thought he merely needed to cough, a ticklish sensation wrapping around his throat, a ghost of a hand caressing his neck. He swayed dangerously when he felt it tighten harshly, so suddenly, and his heartbeat escalated, his legs becoming jelly.

His head snapped back as his whole body teetered over the edge of the platform he was standing on. A searing pain blazed across his neck for a second, causing him to grapple with it in shock. Changbin grabbed his arm at that point, preventing him from completely falling over backwards.

“You okay?” he whispered, careful not to draw too much attention to the pair, professional as always. Chan corrected himself and tried to control his breathing, forcibly inhaling and exhaling through his nostrils. He pulled a face, his eyes wide, and waved his arms a little, “Thanks. Almost lost my balance there.”

Throughout the rest of the interview, he remained silent, thinking hard. What just happened? And why did it feel like… he had just been… hung?

It took him months to string two and two together, months of spontaneous moments of death, in which he remained alive. He’d be drowned countless times, be stabbed infinitely, shot in the head, electrocuted, run over by train… after train… after train, until he fully accepts that these were all connected.

As time wore on, he began to hear things too, inner monologues he supposed, of their voices. He figured if this condition, whatever it was, lasted long enough, he’d soon be able to see it too.

Stay. Just stay. Stay’s. It’s you. You’re not staying. He was burning in the middle of a fire. That much was obvious by the scorching pain on his skin, brutal enough that he just wished he couldn’t feel. He screamed into the couch pillows, knowing full well that the studio was soundproof, but paranoid all the same that any of his members would hear him.

‘Thank you Stray Kids, for everything.’

Stay. He couldn’t tell at this point whether the pain was his or from the person who was dying. Both, perhaps. All this time, the people who were dying, the people who were killing themselves, were Stay’s. Or maybe this time was a coincidence, maybe this person just happened to be a part of the fandom.

It wasn’t though.

More and more often, in the midst of some version of death, he heard thoughts, whispers:

“You got me this far Stray Kids.” “Skz you’re my everything.” “Keep fighting Stray Kids.”

“Chan, I love you.” “Thank you Chan.” “Life was good thanks to you, Chan.”

Fuck. This. Shit.

Stay.

His members were either dense, playing dumb or he was an incredible actor and the sneakiest being on all of planet earth. He had no idea how he had managed to hide this, for so long, and not hear a peep out of any of them.

Sure, he attributed his puffy eyes (from tears) to a lack of sleep, or too much time in front of a computer screen. Maybe his lack of sleep could be contributed to insomnia, not that he genuinely didn’t want to sleep with the fear that he might wake abruptly to a strangling death. Again.

More recently, in an attempt to be more cautious, when that panic settles in - a familiar feeling of fear, 'I can do this. I'm going to do it. I want to die. Do I want to die?' - he'd excuse himself to the bathroom.

“Chan hyung’s gone to the bathroom.�� – posts Hyunjin.

Yeah. To die.

He yawns, stretching as he returns to the studio from a genuine bathroom break. He’s excited to return to his work; a sample he’d stumbled across waiting to be incorporated into a new song. After he shuts the door, he checks the time on his phone.

There’s an hour and a half until 12am– he needs to do Chan’s Room soon too, it’s Sunday. He was comforted by Chan’s Room, to see so many Stay’s on his lives, thankful to have them there, rather than at the top of a building, or sinking at the bottom of a river. He decides that the sample can wait – it’s saved anyway.

He flipped his black hood over the top of his cap, carefully adjusting it so it was presentable, and began to set up the live. He had a few songs in mind that he’d play for you all but was really hoping you’d contribute to the song suggestions too. He smiled, and he laughed, and he danced along to the songs, joyously reading your comments and responding with enthusiasm despite it getting later into the night.

Then the mood shifted when his eyes skimmed over a particular comment. He froze, and his bubble of security popped. He wasn’t sure if he had managed to blot you out, or if the fear had only crossed through after you had sent that message, but he was positive that the person who typed the question, was the person currently pressing a knife to his heart – a small, sharp prick on his chest.

Chan inhaled sharply and swivelled in his chair, “Yeah don’t… don’t hurt yourself, yeah?” The chat exploded with questions and comments, wondering why he was bringing it up and offering words of comfort. The sharp pain on his chest receded slightly, but the fear was still there, the emotional pain ever present. “Just because you have a lot of stress, it doesn’t mean that you have to relieve it by hurting yourself.”

There. Same user. New comment. ‘Your future isn’t worth living for’? Bullshit.

“If you think about the future… it’s best to just keep away from that and find different ways of relieving stress.” Self-consciously, he fiddles with his hoodie drawstrings and swivels in his chair again, desperate to hide the panic flicker across his features briefly. The knife was back.

“You never know what’s going to happen in the future. Something might go wrong, then there might be a turning point and then- from then on you feel really, really regretful,” he’s rambling at this point, thoughts unhinged, spluttering and mixing like mush in his brain. He just needs to get you to stay.

He takes a deep breath, and drills his eyes into the camera, pleading with what little he could offer, “If you really, really can’t help it or if you really just don’t know what to do or you’re really- really lost, as I’ve always said,” he smiles, eyes shimmering, “come here; look for me, ask me, talk with me.” He waits, praying, fiddling his thumbs below the desk.

And the agonising feeling fades, leaving him deflated, relieved.

“I’ll try my best to relieve your stress,” he concludes, then spreads his arms wide. He knows Stay didn’t ask for it, but he was offering one of his hugs more for himself than them.

His relief would be short-lived. He can’t save everyone.

I guess, it’s about time I introduce you. You, not as one of those who have given up. Not as one of those who have caused Chan’s suffering. I introduce you, as simply you. You, who carefully pulls your keys out of the café door. You, who draws down some of the shutters with a soft smile. You, as wonderful, loving, bubbly you.

You make your rounds around your haven, your café. It’s a combination of everything you could possibly imagine to be creative. It’s been your dream to create a safe hub for the public that incorporates a library, a café, study area, art studio, computer labs, rehearsal room and even a recording studio.

Pets were welcome, of all kinds, as long as they wouldn’t fight with each other, and you were open from 7.30am in the morning until 1am the following day.

If anyone fell asleep studying, working on music or reading, you’d leave them where they were and pull out the blankets you kept in storage. The policy for this was simply a bond of trust. Customers could stay working for the night as long as they didn’t mind watching you drift around in the morning in your bedhead and PJ’s, slowly beginning to set up for a new day.

You would always offer them a morning hot chocolate, coffee or tea, free of charge, but more often than not, they’d leave their money on the counter when you turned away, refusing to let you best them in a game of generosity.

Books could be borrowed, studios and study rooms booked, pets left in the backyard day/night day care. Equipment was supplied in all the rooms, instruments for loan, computers to log into, art tools for perusal. The rule for these? Don’t break them. If customers break them, they pay for them.

If something run’s out, let you know. You only offered the basic necessities anyways, so you restocked them yourself. Anything else customers bring for themselves. It was safe. It was cosy. It was yours. Yours to give. Admittedly, you still had to pay off the loan you took out to set up the place, and if time grew short you were considering shutting down the recording studio – it was the least used area.

You pushed the last few stray chairs in as you considered whether to make yourself a final cup of tea before settling down in your apartment upstairs. There were two people currently dozing in various locations of Café Studio, one of whom was a regular. A third customer was sipping the last dregs of his coffee, watching your humble movements out of the corner of his eye.

“Mind if I call it a night on one of your couches?” he asks, scraping back his chair to place his mug on the counter by the coffee machine. That’s James. James fucking Jamison. Always here for whatever reason, never not here, where you wanted him to be. You withhold a sigh and the temptation to pinch the bridge of your nose, “Yeah, go for it. You know the drill.”

You welcome all customers, all are valuable guests. Except for him. He just won’t take a hint.

He saunters idly over to you, hands in his pockets, and clears his throat, “So… are you sure you won’t be free any time this week?” You can feel his eyes drilling into your back and scrunch your nose distastefully, pulling out your phone as if to check something, “I can’t, I run this place.”

He’s still staring at you, so you whisk your earphones out from a pocket in your apron and plug them into your ears. It doesn’t take you long to press shuffle on your playlist, and immediately your current favourite song begins to play, as if it knows exactly what would help you through this situation, or maybe they knew.

“What if you just shut the place down for the day?” he asks with an awkward laugh, running his hand through his hair dramatically. So cool. You roll your eyes and turn around to face him, internally dancing to the song in your ears. You give him a once over, genuinely considering him, “I can’t shut down my only source of income for a day.” “Even for-”

“Especially not for you.” The two of you stare at each other and you can sense that somewhere in those blue eyes of his, you’ve angered him. He’s not pleased, and he never has been with your constant rejections, but so far he hasn’t tried anything. He would be stupid to do so, with surveillance cameras set up everywhere and two customers sleeping not far away.

Go kill yourself.

You wince as sharp pain crackles across your forehead, “Sorry what?” James blinks at you quizzically, his sizzling demeanour vanishing at your confusing outburst. “I didn’t say anything.”

Go. Kill yourself.

You hiss, hand clutching your forehead, and stumble into the nearest table. James is onto you in a second (“Woah there”) trying to support you, when the table was doing just fine. “Back off,” you snap, pushing him away, which causes you to stumble back into the window, the last one without its shutter pulled down, “and shut up.” Again, he blinks at you, ever the stupid dolt he is.

‘Heh… funny.’ Why’d I say that?

Desperately, you swivel and press your forehead to the cool of the glass window, groaning in agony. The music playing in your earphones becomes too much, so you tug them out of your ears, your phone lighting up on the paused song of “Silent Cry”, by Stray Kids.

I wonder if it’ll still be funny after- if I-

You crack your eyes open and peer outside, dimly trying to discern whether this was a voice in your head, or a voice in real life. It spoke with a pained clarity, exhaustion numbing what could have been a voice of laughter and passion. How you knew this, you had no idea.

“Hey, are you good? Are you on your period or something?” James piped up helpfully, and if you weren’t so heavily concentrated on scanning your surroundings outside you might have kicked him out of your store right then and there.

Then you spotted someone. A lone figure, shrouded in the hazy glow of a streetlight, leaning over the bridge railing. Café Studio was located on the banks of the local river, wide enough for boats to barge through, deep enough to be terrified of the unknown creatures writhing within.

You watched, the incessant pounding in your head diminishing the longer you stared at the figure. If he wasn’t standing in the middle of the light, you wouldn’t have spotted him in his completely black outfit. Someone certainly wasn’t one for colour. He leaned further over the railing, clutching his beanie to his head as though afraid it would fall off in the wind.

In seconds, you had ripped your phone and headphones from your apron, leaving it on one of the tables, and fumbled with the key to unlock the café door. It was chilly out, but you ignored the goosebumps speckling your skin, and James’ confused fucking shouts – like would the guy stitch his mouth shut please.

That was him. The idiot leaning too far over the railing was the one whispering nonsense in your brain. How you came to this conclusion was to anyone’s guess, but it was him. In the seconds it had taken you to sprint over to him, he had clambered on top of the railing, balancing precariously, his hands in his hoodie pockets, gazing into the depths of the water.

Maybe in another life, if you weren’t out of breath trying to stop him from ending it all, you might have been enamoured by his features. As you drew closer, you could make out the defined cut of his jaw, his wide shoulders, plush lips tinged with pink from the cold, dark eyes alluringly intimidating. This wasn’t that life though, and you paid no attention to any of it really.

A dawning realisation settled on your features however, after a brief assessment of his face caused you to realise that you knew him, perhaps not personally, but still knew him. “Bang Chan?” you whisper, the name falling from your lips in a panicked whisper, “Chan no…” your legs work harder, and you pray almost deliriously that he doesn’t do it. Don’t do it. He can’t.

“Bang Chan!” you yell, losing all sense of discipline as he sways gently, contemplating, “Chan!!” he doesn’t appear to hear you, absorbed in his own mind. You’re there, you’re right there, and this time, when you call desperately, “Christopher!” his eyes snap up to meet yours.

It’s this particular moment, that will be ingrained in your mind in the following years. The way his eyes spark in shock at the sight of you, then relax, as though he understands, and has complete control over everything in his life.

Without hesitating, you snatch at his clothes and tug him backwards. His heavy body crashes into yours, but you don’t care. You wrap your arms safely around his waist as you tumble to the paved path in a heaped mess of clothes and limbs.

He wriggles around in your grasp, trying to position himself more comfortably, and eventually wind up staring each other dead in the face, blinking through your lashes up at him, his palms on either side of your head.

An uncomfortable silence settles between you, fizzing in the limited space between your faces. Then without warning, you roughly shove your hand behind his head and pull him down into a hug, tears beginning to stain your cheeks.

“What the fuck? What the fuck?” you croak, needlessly shoving your hand underneath his beanie so you can tangle it into his curled hair, “What the actual fuck, were you doing?!” you cling to him tighter, and your breath escapes in garbled gasps that quieten to silence when you feel the trickle of wet tears on your neck.

Gently, you remove your hand from his head and relax your body, allowing him to remove himself from you if he so wished. He burrows his face further however, his arms collapsing onto his elbows, and suddenly you can hear him sobbing.

The tears on your neck weren’t your own. He sounds so broken, crying his heart out as though he were a lost little child who dropped his ice cream. The raw emotion and lack of restraint in his sobbing scrapes at the threads of your heart, and again, you’re crying. Crying with him, for him – understanding everything, and nothing at the same time.

Eventually, you wipe the tears from your face, trying to figure out what to do next. You need to comfort him, talk to him, remind him that he’s worth this world, and the world doesn’t deserve him because by god- if anyone knew even a scrap of what this man meant- he’s laughing. Why is he laughing?

His warm breath tickles your neck as he chuckles, his sobs magically morphed into an amused laughter, which is the most concerning thing by far. Chan pulls away from you, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he laughs and hastily dries the tears on his face.

“Sorry. I am so sorry you had to see that,” he grins, and you frown at him. “Sorry I had to see what? You almost jump off a fucking bridge, or your tears? It better not be the latter Christopher, or I’ll gladly rewind time and push you over myself.” Almost immediately, you regret the words tumbling out of your mouth when his face crumbles again, “Would you really?” he whispers, sitting up beside you.

“No. No I was kidding. I was just- you’re allowed to cry, Chan,” you sit up too, and then it’s just the both of you, sitting alone, a strange pair, by the railing of a bridge. “So you know who I am then?” he dutifully asks, gingerly fixing his beanie and offering a small smile.

“Yeah,” you take note of the way his posture deflates, and add quickly, “But it doesn’t matter. None of that matters. What matters is that you tried to…” your words die in your throat at the reproachful glint in his eyes, shimmering eerily in the lamplight. Instead, you stand up and offer him a hand. He cautiously accepts it, allowing you to help him stand with you. “Y/N Y/L/N. Nice to meet you,” you smile, giving his hand a shake. He stares at you, bemused, and shakes your hand back. “Christopher Bahng. And… thanks.” You’re not sure if he’s thanking you for stopping his plummet to death, or for helping him sit up, or for letting him cry… he could be thanking you for a lot of things, so instead, you do the next best option.

“Want to head over to my café? I’ll make you a cup of coffee,” you offer, flicking your head to the still lit building, where fucking James is standing outside, ogling you from afar, his hands on his hips. “Sure… only… I assumed you’d know I don’t drink coffee,” he shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets again, and as your eyes slide from James and then back to the man in front of you, you suddenly struggle to process everything that’s just happened.

“Why would I? We just met,” you flash him a coy smile and lead the way. You stroll into the café, holding the door open for Chris so he can step through, his hands still in his pockets. James makes to follow, but you slam the door shut in his face and lock the door swiftly.

“Uh…” Chris begins, his eyes wide, asking for an explanation. “No questions. He won’t leave me alone, and that’s that,” you grin brightly, then rush to disappear behind the café bar and begin to prepare him a drink. He seats himself on a stool and tries to watch as you work. You grow uncomfortable in the silence, especially with him watching you so closely, so you instinctively begin to ramble.

“This is Café Studio. You might have noticed by the sign out front.” He nods, indicating he’s paying attention. “I run this place entirely myself, and I live above…” You tell him everything you can think of, from the studios attached to the café, to your favourite pets that frequently get dropped off for day care or overnight stays. His eyes light up when you mention the recording studio, and you have a feeling he’ll go back to the topic after.

In no time, you have two hazelnut croissants prepared, a steaming mug of white hot chocolate for yourself, and a mug of caramel hot chocolate with a dusting of cinnamon for him (you refuse to tell him what’s in his drink, which makes him pout sadly because he loves it). You lapse into silence as you eat and drink, and you know you need to breach the topic again, somehow, you can’t just leave it unattended.

“Can I ask…” you begin, but he interrupts you smoothly. “I just wanted to see what it would look like.”

Chan knew he could never tell you that he’d experienced death a hundred times over in the past months. You’d think him insane.

You knew you could never tell him you heard his voice, loud and clear in your head. He’d think you delusional.

“About that… recording studio… does anyone use it?” he inquisitively asks, and you shake your head sadly in response, wiping croissant crumbs off your face. “Not really… I’m considering selling it. I need to repay the loan I took out, and if the recording room is just dead weight then I don’t see why-” “Don’t. It won’t be dead weight,” he hurries, and is about to say more before he reconsiders, “Mind if I check it out?”

Of course you don’t.

Chris returns to his hotel later that morning. It’s 4am by the time you crawl into bed, recounting the events of the day in a sluggish fashion. Only 2 and a half hours ago you had pulled him away from certain death.

A shiver disturbs your spine as you replay the memory, and you curl tighter into your blankets. What if you hadn’t? His inner monologue certainly didn’t sound like he simply just “wanted to see what it looked like.”

Somehow, you manage to drag yourself through the rest of the morning, living off a few hours’ sleep at most. Thankfully, there aren’t many customers to begin with, giving you a chance to get organised a little later than usual. Chris had left with a small smile and a wave, and you watched him disappear down the street, a part of you worried he’d decide to try the bridge again.

He returns in the afternoon with the same small smile and wave, shocking you to the core. He’s got a cap pulled low over his eyes, hood pulled neatly up, and a black mask obscuring most of his face.

The only reason you recognise him this time is because of those actions, and the particular way his eyes crinkle, disappearing when he genuinely smiles. Quietly, he asks for the same drink you made him earlier that morning and asks to borrow the recording studio – “change of scenery,” he explains casually.

As the days go by, he visits as often as he can, always with those same twinkling eyes, and always still carefully covered up. You have no idea how he’s managed to convince his company to continuously let him out in public without staff, nor how long he’s staying here for.

He must be on vacation or something because this was certainly not Korea. You frequently check up on him too, never hesitating to ask whether he needs any support. He shakes his head every time and stares at you unblinkingly, trying to convey a message through only his eyes.

You’re already helping him. This haven, your haven, is helping him already. You don’t know this of course. Nor do you know that his odd connection to suicidal Stay’s has ceased. He hasn’t felt them in ages, and in a twisted way, he’s relieved – hasn’t felt this light in a while.

“Mind if I book the whole café out for a day?” he mumbles to you from your side, his hands nimbly working with the coffee machine to produce an order for a customer. One day he had asked if you could teach him a few things on the machine. Before long he knew how to make every drink, and happily watched underneath his mask as customers sipped his creations.

Every drink that is, except for the special one you made for him – it was actually your Mum’s recipe. You refused to teach him, but he could easily figure out the ingredients and method to make it for himself by now, if he really wanted to, which perplexed you every time he asked you to teach him.

Truthfully, he didn’t really want to know. He just liked seeing the tiny crease on your forehead and adorable smile whenever you refused. And now… he had even more reason to come back. For the hot chocolate. Definitely.

“The whole-? Library and everything?” you inquire, as you refill the jar of chai powder. “Mhm,” he hums, nodding to a regular as they float by, “Staff want us to film a Skz-Code Episode while we’re here, and they left it up to us to decide where.” “Oh. Sure. What do you need, for me to close up for the day?”

“I want you to stay though. Don’t disappear upstairs to your apartment… please. Can you stay and… watch?” he innocently asks, and you stare at him in surprise, clipping the jar in your hands shut with a snap, “Am I allowed to?”

It turns out that would be their last day. They returned to Korea on the following. In hindsight, you wish you had hugged Chris tighter when he tackled you with one before they left after filming, raising the eyes of several staff members and causing the Skz Members to chuckle with one another.

Chris was hugging you because he would miss you, and he was afraid that if he left, the traumatic episodes would return.

You were hugging him because you were full to the brim with Stray Kids’ warmth and happiness, but also because an unfamiliar safety nestled into your stomach as he hugged you, burying his face into your neck – the same place he had where he first met you.

“See ya soon, mate!” Felix called, carrying a box of your brownies. He had given you his recipe, and you eagerly followed its instructions while you watched them record their episode, smiling contentedly at their tinkering laughter, “These taste better than mine!”

“No one can beat Felix’s brownies,” Hyunjin muttered through a smile, but he’s happily munching on one of yours all the same. Jisung also has his mouth stuffed, his chubby cheeks wobbling as he nods his head. Seungmin offered you a polite handshake, and Jeongin an energetic round of high fives.

Somewhere in the distance, Changbin calls out your name, and performs a half heart above his head. You complete it, sticking your tongue out playfully. Not surprisingly, you and Chris have to duck back inside the café to hunt down Minho, who’s been playing with the cats left in your care for the day.

You didn’t find out that Stray Kids were leaving until that night when you spotted a live of them on your YouTube at the airport, and your heart plummeted with a sadness you couldn’t explain.

What… a strange… dream.

Everything become’s more surreal when you discover an envelope by the coffee machine the next morning, tucked neatly under the corner where Chris would usually stand to make his coffee’s. You pull it out carefully; there’s no name penned on the front. Curiously you pull out two sheets of paper. The first you open is in Chris’ handwriting (he had been leaving random notes and scribbling his signature wherever he could during his visits, so you were relatively familiar with it now),

A B C D E F G I wanna send my code to you Eight letters is all it takes And I’m gonna let you know

Lyrics. You flip over the paper and stare in a daze at the phone number scribbled there. Further down the page, there’s more lyrics, but from a different song.

Together, I feel time has flown so fast In my time, memories are crowded I didn’t know the sky was so clear like this until I met you I thought the sun was only scorching Thank you for coming to me And becoming the same shadow as mine before approaching the light

“Chris you cheesy ass,” you laugh, heartbeat thumping loudly in your chest.

You can STAY.

You’re so lost in your own thoughts that you almost forget about the second piece of paper. It’s a receipt. And on the bottom, are more words written in his handwriting.

The loan for Café Studio has been paid off, and the rent on your apartment. It’s all yours now. You can thank me when I come back.

Your eyes widen, and a small gasp leaves your lips. You fumble for your phone and add his number to your contacts. Then sparing no second, type out a message.

(A/N: When dialogue is in script format, it's meant to represent text messages)

You: “No you did not”

In the few seconds that you stare at your message, that you sent to Chris, disbelief written across your features, your phone buzzes with a response.

Chris: “Oh but I did”

You laugh, the sound gradually increasing as you throw your head back, giddy, a delicate pink tinge warming your cheeks.

“Something good happen?” James interrupts, rapping his knuckles on the counter to get your attention, “No side barista with you today? Who was he anyways, and what was with that mask?” “He’s… a good friend. Care for some tea?” “But I don’t like-” “Perfect.”

What should you do when you witness the end of a life? Cry and wallow in the darkest corners of disconsolation? Feel your heart shatter, a million fractals of sharply glittering reflections exploding in a mere fraction of a second? Some believe that time is nothing more than an illusion though – so should you instead decide to lie on your bed, a place of restless solace, and stare up at the empty ceiling?

Chris: “Are you awake?” You: “I am now” Chris: “Sorry go back to sleep” You: “I was kidding Christopher” You: “Of course I’m awake” Chris: “That’s not a good thing” You: “Look who’s talking” You: “Are you all good? Can’t sleep?” Chris: “Just felt like a chat”

They only visited him in nightmares, he discovered, which was still an improvement from before.

You: “Sure” You: “Care to explain your latest Insta post?” Chris: “No haha” You: “You burnt Stayville to the ground” You: “I think that deserves an explanation”

Chris smiles and flops back into his pillow. It certainly was an improvement from before. His mind was working over the possibilities, the many different choices he could make from here on out. Did you have something to do with this condition? Were you the solution to it all? What was it about you, exactly, that drew him to you?

You can thank me when I come back, he had written.

He thinks… he’ll be back for sure.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺

-> PART 2 -> Masterlist

Yay! Milestone Event 1, Check!

Feedback is always appreciated, negative and positive alike. I apologise for any editing or formatting errors, I’m forever learning.

Until next read! - Kaisowoo

#bang chan #bang chan fluff #bang chan x reader #stray kids #bang chan angst #bang chan fanfic #bang chan x you #bang chan fic #suicide #feminine reader #cringecheeseycornycrap #swearing #wth idk what other tags to include #just don't read if you can't handle dark themes and SEVERE angst and strong descriptions of suicide :D #bang chan imagines #skz #stray kids fanfic #stray kids x reader

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chaotic-orphan · 8 months

Note

hiii!! so i am asking (reaaaally nicely) if you are able to continue 'intoxicating fear'? its so good and your work is amazing. thanks for your time <333333

-athena (@andtheysaidspeaknoww

Intoxicating Fear — part X

ATHENA?! BADASS IN THE ARENA?! UNMATCHED, WITTY AND QUEEN OF THE BEST STRATEGIES WE’VE SEEN?!

I am honoured, I have always loved your work except for a couple questionable things with Medusa but I understand…

Of course! This is for you @andtheysaidspeaknoww I hope you enjoy it <3 I also want to dedicate this part to @xxgalgurlxx for making ART of the boys™️ which I’m attaching to the bottom because it is so cool and I love it a lot :;) ENJOY SOME FLUFF/comfort for Kit (Hero).

Also! In case you haven’t seen Hero and Villain have names now! Hero’s name is Kit, and Villain’s name is Ambrose. I will link their character descriptions here.

Read part one here

Continued from this part here

I hope you enjoy this part!

*~*~*~*~*

Kit cleaned his arms of the leftover blood, gritting his teeth and hissing when the water ran over his cuts. He screwed his eyes shut, trying to ignore them as much as possible, but it was hard to when they still hurt. When Kit stood from the bath his tracksuit bottoms clung uncomfortably to his legs. He stepped out with a squelch of his socks hitting the tile and dabbed the towel gently over his arms.

The towel came back with bright red streaks across it, and he wanted to scream. He can’t even have a towel in his own fucking house. Kit stormed out of his bathroom and straight into his room, slamming the door shut. Just for effect. Just to show Ambrose that he was pissed, and he would let him know it.

Though, now that he thought about it, the sadist probably got off on his anger or something.

Change out of those clothes.

The command echoed off the walls of Kit’s skull, but he just stood with his back against the door, hands on his knees. His breaths coming out laboured and rattly. Kit tightened his grip on his knees until his knuckles turned white, trying to hold himself back from obeying Ambrose’s command.

If he fought it long enough… when Superhero came back, he’d see.

Kit squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth as he felt his body fighting against his mind.

Come on, Kit pleaded with his limbs. Please. Listen to me, not Ambrose. Obey me.

Even if Kit wanted to disobey this particular command, he couldn’t fight the damp coldness permeating from the wet clothes. If he stayed in them any longer, he’d probably get sick for real. The sleeves on his shirt weren’t wet per se, just damp, cold and irritating. And his tracksuit clung to his legs awkwardly making Kit feel colder than he actually was.

Kit let out a sigh.

He would change, he decided, and that was important. That Kit decided to change, not Ambrose and his stupid power.

Kit took his hands off his knees and straightened up before stepping into the room and grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it up over his head. Once his shirt was off, he already felt ten times better as he obeyed the command got out of his wet clothes. He quickly slipped out of his tracksuit; the soggy fabric slapping wetly against the wood. Kit took his socks off and dropped them on the dirty pile to bring to Ambrose.

He opened his wardrobe; eyes drifting lazily over the selection of clothes and froze. His eyes caught the multiple cuts on his inner wrist, and he wanted to throw up. Kit swallowed the dry lump in his throat as he reached over gingerly to run his finger down along one of the deeper cuts. He felt the ridges the knife created against his skin, the valleys between the flesh of his wrist and how much was cut away.

Kit stepped back, casting his eyes to the ceiling to stop the tears from falling. It wasn’t like they were the first scars Kit ever had, but it didn’t feel like a scar he got from fighting some random Villain. It was so much more personal than that.

So much more violating because Kit had done it to himself, but it was Ambrose’s marking. His brand. His sign of ownership over Kit his strings. Ambrose decided exactly how many cuts, the varying depth of each of them. A cruel, insidious reminder that Kit really was nothing except what Ambrose wanted him to be. That even if Kit fought tooth and nail against Ambrose, he would never be able to win.

A sudden, helpless fury overtook Kit, the energy coursing uncomfortably under his skin. Tight and wired and itching to be released. Kit drew his fist back and punched the wall of his wardrobe, and without waiting delivered a second harder punch.

“Kit?” Ambrose called from some other part of the apartment. “Everything okay in there?”

Kit swallowed a sob, a mix of anger and despair clogging his throat. He wiped the tears from his cheeks and swallowed again before calling back: “yeah fine.”

Kit pretended it didn’t come out as pathetic as it sounded, because that’s all he could do anymore. Pretend. Fool himself. Cower in his imagination away from Ambrose. Make himself appear more like a Hero and less like a… Fuck, what even was he anymore?

Kit grabbed a black crew neck jumper from his wardrobe and another pair of slate grey joggers. He slipped on another pair of socks before scooping up the wet clothes and walking out their door.

“Here,” Kit grumbled, handing Ambrose the wet clothes. Ambrose smiled down at him.

“Thank you, Christopher.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kit snapped. “It’s not my name.” Ambrose grinned and pinched his cheek like Kit was a child.

“But you did such a good job following orders,” Ambrose cooed. Kit slapped his hand away with a huff and turned on his heel towards his room again.

He hadn’t even taken a step forward when Ambrose spoke. “Ah, where are you going?”

Kit’s hands balled into fists at his sides. “To my room. Is that allowed?”

“Hmm… why don’t you ask nicely?”

Fury winded through Kit again as he turned, eyes blazing at Ambrose who stood with the wet clothes still in hand just smiling at Kit’s anger.

“Haven’t you humiliated me enough already today?” Kit demanded.

“Clearly not if you think you can take that tone with me,” Ambrose replied nonchalantly, cocking an eyebrow at Kit when he took a step forward.

“Please, just give me peace, for…” Kit said all anger leaking from his frame once he knew he wasn’t getting anywhere with it. He ran a shaky hand through his hair, licking his lips before continuing: “For an hour or two, I’ll be good I’ll just go into my room and make no noise or do anything bad I promise just please can I have a moment alone? Please?”

Ambrose said nothing for a minute. Instead, he just drank in the desperation oozing from Kit’s tired frame, his sunken shoulders and his hands out, palms facing up as if to show he was no threat.

Begging.

Maybe Ambrose’s lesson finally sunk in this time. Maybe he did crack a little of Kit’s usual steel resolve.

Ambrose inclined his head. “Fine. I didn’t really have anything else planned for the day anyways, so your time is yours.”

“Thank you,” Kit said with a breath. Closing his eyes and savouring the moment. Kit turned for his room again, walking towards it waiting for Ambrose to speak again. To laugh or say “gotcha” and force Kit to do another horrible thing to himself or…

Kit’s hand touched the handle of his bedroom. The cool metal beneath his palm and fingers a shock to his system, that Ambrose was actually allowing him to relax. Kit licked his lips in anticipation and opened the door. Before he walked in though, Kit looked over his shoulder at Ambrose. His dark eyes were following Kit the whole way, and when they met Kit’s the corner of his lips twitched up with amusement.

“Thank you,” Kit said again, forcing his gratitude and relief into his voice. Ambrose blinked, tilting his head slightly as if trying to see from what angle Kit was trying to get over him. “Really.”

Kit turned again and walked into his room after that, letting the door close behind him. Ambrose stood rooted to the spot, staring at the closed door where Kit had disappeared.

He swallowed, only remembering the wet clothes in his arms. Ambrose cleared his throat, ignoring whatever that was all about and focusing instead on getting the clothes out of his arms.

Perhaps he went too far… perhaps he did more than crack the little Hero. Ambrose’s gaze flickered back to the door.

Only time would tell.

*~*~*~*~*

Continued here

This is @xxgalgurlxx art for Kit and Ambrose. Which I love, thank you again <3

The Orphanage (plz lemme know if you want to be added or removed <;3) - @nameless-beanie @andithewhumper @annablogsposts @whumpasaurus101 @0eggdealer @rejectedbytheempty @sleepy-pearl @n3rv0usn0v4 @whumpatize-me-captain @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @sunshiline-writes @burningkittypoet @honeyed-euphrates @sacredwrath @theonewithallthefixations @acer-gaysimpstuff @m3rakii @xxgalgurlxx @princess-bubble-blossom

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flowerpotmage · 11 months

Text

Tight Grip, Broken Dam (12)

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You don’t question it anymore, when Miguel appears in your bed at night. He’s not there for sex, no, you’ve never even kissed—though you would be lying if you said you weren’t open to the idea of kissing him. He’s there for comfort. For rest. If only it could stay so simple.

Pair: Miguel O'Hara & GN!Reader

Notes: for series: slow burn, ambiguous relationship, found family dynamics, reader is in their late 20s. for chapter: sexual tension, injuries and injury aftercare, references and nightmares about 90s comic run canon events

Word Count: 2.4k

Read this chapter on Ao3 here. If you like my work, please consider leaving kudos there as well! You do not need an account to do so.

a/n: deepest apologies for this series' absence! i hope this (only slightly) shorter chapter and the knowledge that i am already working on the next and hope to return to semi-regular updates will tide you over.

Your brief trip across town leaves you more winded than you hoped and less tired than you feared.

Your apartment is empty but for the presence of warm midday sun and green leaves when you return, kicking your shoes off and carefully setting yourself down on the couch, bones heavy with the weight of grief and exhaustion. There’s nothing to do now but rest, and so you don’t resist the warm embrace of sleep when it curls around you like hungry arms.

Brrring brrring!

The ring of your phone wakes you, the light now coming more brightly through your balcony doors.

A disoriented grumble escapes your throat as you shift, lifting yourself back up to lean against the back of the couch and immediately checking your side.

Sore. Sore, mostly dry, and unopened. Good.

Brrring brrring!

You find your phone in your coat pocket, having fallen asleep still fully dressed. Karen’s name lights up the screen. Rubbing the sleep from your eyes and clearing your throat, you answer the call and hold the phone to your ear.

“Karen, hey.”

“Hey!” She chirps through the line. “Matt and Foggy just won a case today, and–”

“Come drink with us!” Comes Foggy’s voice, shouted from somewhere in the room Karen has called from.

“I’m assuming you caught that.” You can hear the bemused expression on her face.

You try to chuckle, and fail, body too tired to force any levity. “I shouldn't tonight,” you say, wrinkling your nose and trying to roll out the stiffness in your neck. “I, uh—sick. Not feeling great.”

“Oh no!” Karen says, sympathetic. “Are you okay?”

You can hear the sudden silence from Foggy.

“Yeah, just uh. Out of it. Probably gonna just rest up for a few days, it’s a little rough.” You wince.

“Do you need anything?” She asks. “I don’t think it’s too far out of our way if you need some food. Some soup?”

You smile, heart warming at her thoughtfulness. “No, no, I’m all set. That’s really sweet though, thank you Karen.”

“Of course,” she says. “Rest up. We’ll see you when you’re feeling better.”

“Take an extra shot for me tonight.”

“Not like Foggy needs the excuse,” Karen laughs.

“What? What don’t I need an excuse for?”

“Wow, nosy,” you joke, smiling. “I’ll see you all next time.”

“Alright. Text if you need anything. I mean it.”

“You’re too nice. And I will, I promise,” you can’t help but smile. “Now go celebrate.”

Farewells are exchanged and the call ends. You drop the phone onto the couch, a heavy breath leaving your lungs. You linger for a moment before finally mustering the will to pull yourself off the couch and trudge into your room to change into your loosest pajamas.

Sleep pulls you back under its currents again.

Something pulls you from your slumber hours later, your cheek stuck to the pillow with dried spit, your vision blurry.

You haven't been this tired or slept so much since the spider bite that changed your life.

Your spider-sense pings and seconds later your bedroom door cracks open, Miguel in the open sliver between door and wall. His eyes meet your own, your head lifted slightly off the pillow from the surprise ping moments before.

“When’d you get here?” You ask, voice muffled and slurred.

“About an hour ago,” he replies, opening the door further. “You needed groceries, and I know you weren't going to be getting them anytime soon.”

You groan, letting your head fall back to the pillow. “You didn't need to do that for me.”

He crosses his arms, leans on the doorframe.

Now, with the door open, the smell of cooking finally reaches you and you rub your eyes. “ And you cooked?”

“I did.” There it is, his disproportionately endearing, pleased little half smile. Miguel crosses the distance from the door to your bed to help you up. “ Vamos, come on.”

“Thanks,” you mumble, when your feet finally find the floor. And again, after you’ve eaten and you sit side by side on the couch, sleep dragging down your eyelids once more: “Thank you, Miguel. For dinner, and… everything.”

“Of course,” he murmurs, and you slip into dreams once more.

The next morning, thankfully, finds you less fatigued. Miguel changes your bandages again, makes you breakfast, again, before leaving to fulfill his self appointed duties.

It continues like this as you heal. When Miguel isn’t at Spider Society HQ he’s in your home, cooking your food and cleaning your dishes and changing your bandages (You try not to go insane from the feeling of his hand on your bare skin). You don't ask, but you’re fairly certain the only sleep he gets is in your bed—a place you have to yourself less often than ever before.

Not that you’re complaining. Neither of you mentions it, of course, that he's visiting more while the skin over your ribs heals. You both seem to immediately accept this new normal and move forward as if it has always been the way things are. For Miguel’s part, he knows you don't have anyone here to take care of you properly—he knows you’ve lost family and more friends than most Spider-People usually had to start with—and so he takes the responsibility of you upon himself, and does so happily.

And mostly things are the same… mostly.

He learns about your favorite color, the watering schedule of your plants, how you miss having a pet but with the life you lead it doesn't feel like the responsible thing to do. He tries not to think about how it feels like learning more about someone you’ve been with for years, because he already knew which spoon was your favorite out of the somewhat mix-and-match selection, already knew about your aunt and your aunt's girlfriend on the force who still checked in on you up until her own death, your personal ASM-97 event.

He starts to feel disconcerted about how little he's shared in return, and tries his best to give something back. He mentions Gabriel in passing when talking about his childhood one day, during lunch.

“Gabriel?” You prompt.

“Ah,” he pauses, lowering his fork. To his plate. “My brother.”

The two of you are sitting on your couch, the balcony doors open wide to let in the fresh afternoon air that meanders through the open glass. Miguel holds his plate in one hand, you rest yours on your lap and your feet on your coffee table.

“I didn't know you had a brother,” you say. You want to rest your arm on the back of the couch, but despite your wound being at less risk of opening and bleeding, you’ve still been advised not to stretch the skin. So you pick at the couch cushion by your thigh with your nail instead, glancing at him.

Miguel nods. “Gabriella was named after him.”

Your heart squeezes. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive and well,” Miguel gives a reassuring, if rueful, smile. “It's just us two now.”

You nod. “Older or younger?”

“Younger,” he says, smiling at you. He rests his plate on his lap now, like you, and rests an arm on the back of the couch to angle towards you.

“Ah, oldest brother,” you raise your eyebrows and nod sagely. “That explains a lot.”

Miguel raises an eyebrow back at you.

You gesture at him vaguely. “I mean. Come on.”

Miguel scoffs, smiling, and then he tells you more about his family. About Tyler Stone and the secret his mother kept, how he’s not a true O’Hara but still carries the name. You sense he’s still keeping some things to himself, but you don’t press the issue, happy enough to even be let in this small amount. You hope that your adoration doesn’t show on your face too much as you watch him talk, lit with warm afternoon light.

Miguel feels lucky when he wakes up and can’t remember his dreams, because the nights that he does…

Flesh torn and shredded under his fingertips as gravity pulls the arm from his grasp, the man attached dangles infinite stories up from the streets and even farther to Downtown. The writhing gasp and scream of a man in pain and Miguel trying to save him and only making it worse. His father, angry and raging and taking it out on his mother. The smell of rotting flesh from his Vulture’s pantry, rotting cadavers stored haphazardly in a dark room in the underbelly of downtown waiting for—

No. Even in dreams it’s too sick to name.

Sometimes the horrors of his early days as Spider-Man blend with his life now. Gabriella’s rotting body in the pile in Vulture’s pantry. Gabriella, caught in an attack on his apartment, or in the crossfire between him and the Public Eye. You, hanging from his desperate grip after the lab explosion that changed him forever, your face twisted in fear and your arm shredded under his finger-pad talons as you slip from his grasp and fall to your death. You, in the pods for the long discontinued Corporate Raider program and killed in a fatal human-animal gene splicing test. You disappearing into the air, turning to less than ashes in his arms, or sometimes worse: You, holding Gabriella and reaching for him and the both of you disappearing when he reaches out, unable to so much as touch either of you one last time.

It’s not every night. Sometimes he dreams nonsense like everyone else, surreal landscapes with changing figures and storylines that mean nothing. Sometimes he dreams of happy memories or past almosts as if they had followed through on their potential. Schooldays with Xina or childhood games with Gabriel, or taking Gabriella to the Spider Society HQ like Peter does with May.

Sometimes he dreams about your skin, and your sheets, and your breath. Those ones always leave him distracted, off kilter and embarrassed through the rest of his day. He wishes he could bury them properly, leave them in his subconscious where they belong. Wishes he could keep himself from wanting to cross that line.

But tonight brings no dreams of pleasant pasts, no surreal landscapes, no ecstatic gasps and tangled sheets. Tonight he dreams of loss and pain.

A sudden jolt uproots you from sleep, dreams turn to evaporated particles in the air. At first you think there might be a threat, that perhaps your spider senses were what woke you, but the shallow and forcefully measured breaths in the bed next to you quickly inform you otherwise.

“Miguel?” Your voice is but a whisper as you prop yourself up, mindful of your ribs, your hand searching for him through the blankets. “Hey, hey, it's okay–”

He starts to say something, his voice dying in his throat before the first letter can even form on his tongue. His hand finds yours, wrapping tightly around palm and fingers alike. You scoot closer, doing your best with one hand now out of commission, and then you're partially hovering over him, your held hand supporting your weight.

“It's okay,” you whisper, and you begin to pet his hair back from his face. “You're okay.”

Even in the dark your eyes find each other. Before you can blink his arm is around you and you're pressed into his chest, his face hidden in your neck. You can feel each thundering beat of his heart through your chest as it slows, still beating too hard to fall into rhythm with your own.

“I’m here,” you whisper.

His arm tightens around your middle at that, a brief squeeze pulling you closer to him. His shuddered breath gusts across your skin where he’s buried his face.

“Bad dream?” you whisper into the hair above his ear, shifting above him to rest on his chest properly and rest one arm on the pillow by his head, the other sliding around his side to hold him in return.

“Sorry,” he whispers, ignoring your question, loosening his grip. “Your ribs-?”

“They’re fine, Miguel,” you say, your arm on the pillow by his head shifting.

As his heart slows, as his breath steadies and you wake fully, you become conscious of your body pressed into his. His face is still buried in your neck, and you feel his ribs expand under your body, raising you into the air.

His head falls back from your neck, resting on the pillow, and you lift your head to look at him in the dark.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

He pauses, eyes flitting between each of yours before he looks away. He pulls his arm back from around you, hand sliding to rest on your waist under your ribs.

“No.”

“Okay.” You prop yourself up further. “I’m here, though.”

He sighs, nods, closes his eyes.

Silence returns to the room, pressing in on your chest, squeezing your ribs like the bandages around your calf. You are too aware of your position nearly atop him, body pressed into the side of his chest with his hand still resting on your side, yours on his and your other bracing you above him on the pillow beside his head. You've been this close before, of course, and held one another much tighter in the dark. But something about this is different. Perhaps it's the way his fingers begin to unconsciously stroke your side and the way you've never gotten to look at him like this, above him, his eyes closed under you—

Your breath catches in your throat, and you lift your hand from his side to touch his face. His brow twitches, his hand tightens and relaxes on your side, and he sighs again as tension slowly drains from his body. You let your hand rest on his cheek more solidly, and his eyes flicker open to meet yours in the dark.

You hope he can’t feel the way your heart skips and then beats just that much harder. You swallow, hold your breath, and let your hand slide into his hair.

His eyes flutter shut, and everything freezes.

“Thank you,” he whispers, and the pressure of the air eases.

“Of course,” you finally say, your mouth dry, stroking your thumb back over his temple into his hair. You shift, settling down into his side.

His arms wrap around you once more. Neither of you speak, and you don't fall back asleep for a long while.

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#miguel o'hara fanfiction #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x y/n #miguel o'hara x gender neutral reader #miguel x you #miguel x y/n #miguel x reader #spiderverse fic

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ns-imagines · 1 year

Text

Hurricane/Typhoon Prep

Platonic 141 x gn!reader

SFW | Word Count: About 500 |Headcannons/ Drabble

A/N: Its the Afternoon before the Typhoon (hurricane). There is currently a typhoon where i live in Japan. We rushed to get off work. Fingers crossed the power doesnt go off. This post is just for fun lol. Lemme know if I use too much military lingo. I’ll translate!

-Let's say everyone lived in the barracks. Even though Price, as Captain, would get base housing and Ghost would be in the officer barracks...anyways, you and the boys heard about the hurricane from Price. Apparently, this is going to be the worst storm the island has seen in a few years. They say that about every typhoon though.

-Ghost immediately went to the commissary (on-base grocery store), but he didn't get any good snacks. He just got stuff to meal prep in case the power went off. His idea of snacks is high protein snacks. The man loves to bulk up and maintain that muscle. Lots of protein bars... will 100% mention how he has to make up tonight at the gym.

-You and Gaz got stuck at work. "The typhoon doesn't dismiss you, I do." It's already starting to rain, and the wind is picking up. So much for staying dry. Gaz completely forgot to charge his portable batteries, even though you had a few days' warning before the storm. You’re pretty sure you have an extra!

-Price took his work home. He has a few mission reports to type up that can't wait. The commanding officer is waiting for them to review. #Officerthings So he took his laptop back to work until the power goes off. If it goes off.

-Soap managed to get off work before you and Gaz. He went straight to the gas station exchange (names of the stores on base) to stock up on snacks. There wasn't much left, but he grabbed everything that looked good. Some chips, ramen,and the last case of beer left!! Better than eating the MREs they hand out for typhoons. You’ll be constipated for days if you eat those…

-Finally, you and Gaz were let out of work and sped back to the barracks. You both took it upon yourselves to park really close to both sides of Soaps car. Don’t want the storm to blow it away! Changing into civilian attire, you both met in the hallway. Ghost and Soap were already together, hanging out in the room. They were quick to open the door as soon as they heard the knock.

-Soap definitely has the hangout room, along with Gaz. Gaz's room is more for drinking and playing cards all night, while Soap's is geared towards movie nights or typhoon campouts. The snacks lay displayed on his desk, and the fridge is full of beer and drinks. Not allowed to drink during a typhoon though. So soda and juice it is. Maybe one beer

-Price is the last to show up. He's been in the barracks for a while, but he wanted to finish that paper. All of you pick a spot on the couch or sit on Soap's bed to watch the movie. The wind howls outside, and the wind slaps the window. We'll definitely have tomorrow off.

This thing is literally edging us i want it to hit already so I can go outside!!!!!! Hopefully my motorcycle doesnt blow away or tip over….

Update: my motorcycle fell really hard and now im hiding it in my barracks room. Fml

#call of duty x reader #gaz x reader #simon ghost riley #soap x reader #price x reader #141 x reader #platonic 141 #ghost x reader

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capn-twitchery · 9 months

Note

buttercup for twitch and grace

Buttercup - Does your OC have any odd quirks/habits?

OOO let me think >:3c twitch up first but honestly it would be quicker to list what Isn't odd about twitch

obvious one is refusing to be seen without their glasses, those are very important!!

since they spend so much time at zee, they tend to walk oddly and sway when they're on dry land. zee legs too strong, ruined their real legs. (i wish i could find an irl example but this incredibly low quality jack sparrow video will have to do)

they are never, ever, still. if they're talking, they're gesturing. if they're thinking, they're pacing. if they're sitting, they're fidgeting around. if they're sleeping they are swinging the hammock. perpetual motion machine

terrible habit of hopping over the ship railing and just hanging over the side of the ship, for no reason whatsoever. yes they have fallen off before, yes they will fall off again, no this will not stop them

they make way too intense eye contact. you can't really tell, since you can't see their eyes, but i'm not sure if that makes it better or worse actually

not sure if this counts as a quirk but they 100% laugh way too loud. laugh you can pick out across a crowded bar

for grace:

he hums & whistles to himself a lot when he's alone working on tasks--mostly sea shanties the crew used to sing on expeditions

he won't go to zee (on the rare occasions he does now) without a sketchbook, some watercolours + something to read. he's seen cabin fever at its worst and wants to keep his mind busy

a semi-rich upbringing & navy training affect all of his mannerisms--he was there for a long time. perfectly pressed clothes, perfectly made bed, walk like you have so much purpose everyone gets out of your way instinctively even though he looks like a sad wet dog

he's Very still & calm, doesn't gesture much when he talks & is very good at staying stoically polite & approachable. (you can tell when he's stressed bc this starts to crack. if he's pacing he's 0.2 seconds away from a breakdown)

when he's nervous, he kind of obsessively attends to "duties." on a ship that means keeping extra tabs on crew & supplies, constantly making sure everything is accounted for, offering help to anyone within range. otherwise, it means cleaning. a lot.

internalised enforced politeness also means he greets almost everyone with a handshake like it's a goddamn business meeting. this is the only physical contact you will ever get out of him bc he values his personal space too much otherwise

has a habit of just kind of hanging around, in case he can help. he finds it difficult to know what to do with himself when he's not needed

Flowery OC Asks

#inquiries #giaffa #sorry this is so long i kept thinking of more as i was writing >:3 #thank you for the ask!!! :D ♥#londonmusings #grace #twitchery

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moosemonstrous · 9 months

Text

(There's no time to explain, get in the jaeger)

Ghost Rider Pacific Rim AU - perception shift

“They, um. Mapped all the seizure points. The risk is minimal. I just don’t know how long it will take, so—”

Robbie doesn’t know who he is trying to convince – himself of Gabe’s shift teacher. Mrs Lai has the expression of someone who has had to sit enough children through conversations like this. He catches her glancing towards the box of tissues on her desk. Her eyes are dry.

“Of course. Gabe is more than welcome to stay in the children’s centre as long as you are away.” Mrs Lai winces, just a little. “But, just in case—”

“Just in case,” Robbie repeats like it’s a spell.

“We don’t have any next of kin information. Is there anyone...?”

He sat through a four-hour long psychiatric evaluation last night. He’s not going to break down in a teacher’s office. You cried in the shower like a little girl. And now he’s fine. Great. Can we get a move on? When he doesn’t answer for long enough, Mrs Lai nods to herself, one sharp movement like she’s putting a decisive dot at the end of a sentence.

“I will make sure to schedule Lisa for a wrap-around shift. She and Gabriel get along really well.”

He opens his mouth to say: that won’t be necessary, and shuts it again. Just in case.

Mrs Lai recommends that Robbie leaves through the staff entrance to avoid bumping into Gabe, then insists when Robbie wants to see him before he goes.

“It’s already halfway through the music class,” she says. Not unkindly. “I saw you tell him you will pick him up as normal. Let’s stick to that plan, shall we?”

Robbie never lies to Gabe. What is he doing? What the hell did he agree to? Only the best chance at making something out for yourself. Come on, move it, let’s go let’s go let’s go! The weird mix of dread and excitement makes him too queasy to even consider breakfast. He sits on the stairs at the back of the children’s centre with his head in his hands for who knows how long, until enough people passing give him weird looks that he has to go or attract security.

See, another benefit. Rangers don’t have to worry about security. Yeah. They only have to worry about catastrophic brain damage. The only type of brain damage worth having, if you think about it.

Robbie has been living out of the academy sweatpants for several weeks and the way the undersuit clings to his skin feels a little suffocating. It’s heavier than he expected, too. It’s all the circuitry. Pull the hip plates up or the techs will do it for you, and they ain’t gentle. The neck brace clicks in place, just push it together, it won’t break.

It’s like going through the motions, even though he’s never seen one of these suits up close before. Or maybe it’s just not that hard to figure out. Like in the academy, he has the vague sense of what to do next, and next, and next, and it all breaks apart if he thinks about it too hard, so he lets the instinct drive him forward in an unknown direction and hopes it will all turn out alright in the end.

Did he watch his dad suit up at some point? He must have.

Each active jaeger has its own dedicated drivesuit room, most at the top of the dome with the detached Conn-Pods waiting to be lowered onto the mech, and Cherno Alpha’s right off the walkway, feet away from the open hatch to it’s built-in cockpit. Hell Charger doesn’t have one set up – yet – so the techs have rigged one of the maintenance rooms a level below the access point with all the monitoring systems. At least a dozen pairs of eyes fix on Robbie as soon as he walks out from behind the stack of boxes serving as his changing room. Somebody takes his phone and clothes out of his arms – he meant to text Gabe before turning it off, is it too late to—of course it’s too late to back out, don’t be a pussy.

“Damn,” the head tech lifts up his goggles to take a better look at him. He’s a big guy, tall and broad and clearly used to people giving him a wide berth. “Ain’t this a blast from the past.”

Robbie swallows around the growing lump in his throat. “Yeah?”

The man reaches out for a handshake. At least the undersuit hides how sweaty Robbie’s palms are all of the sudden. “It’s Canelo. I used to run power routes for The Charger back in the day.”

Oh. Oh! “R-Reyes.” Don’t get star-struck, he’s just a wrench. “You knew my--?”

“There’s still a few of us around from the good old days, yeah,” Canelo slaps his massive hand on Robbie’s shoulder and pulls him to the centre of the room. He makes ‘good old days’ sound like a curse. “We’ll catch up once this whole thing shakes out, hm? I assume Cho talked you through the procedure.”

Robbie nods to confirm. When he looks, Cho gives them a thumbs-up from across the room. He always looks three coffees past bedtime, but he’s been extra jittery today. Even now, he’s gesturing around the screens with an open can of an energy drink and the tech next to him might brain him with her power tool if he spills anything.

“Stand still, limbs apart,” Canelo instructs Robbie, pointing to the markers on the floor. As soon as he takes position, he’s surrounded by people carrying pieces of the drivesuit armour. It’s not a full set; just enough to ensure Cho can monitor his brain activity. The uneven weight distribution makes him feel half-dressed.

“We disconnected the joint motors.” Canelo’s booming voice carries over the noise of the drills screwing the pauldrons to the chest plate. “You’ll only be able to move the head and upper torso after you plug in. It should lighten the neural load, keep you from going under.”

Killjoy.

Robbie does his best to cooperate with the techs, but he hates being prodded and he hates people looking at him, and rather quickly he finds himself hating the way the circuitry against his skin heats up when the switches get flipped. You can feel that? Shouldn’t he? Is something already going wrong?

The hot spiderweb along his spine cools down almost immediately. Huh. Maybe it’s just the initial power surge.

“Right,” Cho appears in front of him like he wasn’t just elbows deep in a mess of cables leading from the monitoring station to the back of Robbie’s drivesuit. His gloves are black from grease and some of it made it up his forearms. He’s got a surprising amount of know-how in this department for someone ostensibly in charge of the biology side of things. “Everyone else will be watching the feed up on the bridge. Canelo got a new helmet prepped; we’re going to modify the Conn-Pod so you don’t have to initialise the drift yourself.” He peels the gloves off to take said helmet from another tech. Yet another wraps the thick cable running from it’s top on a pole to hook it directly above Robbie’s head. Now that he's noticed, the whole ceiling looks like it's crawling with tentacles. Cables. They're just cables.

Here we go. It’s happening. Cho hands him the helmet and it’s honestly a miracle Robbie doesn’t immediately drop it. Keep it together. Think about the—the medical insurance or whatever. Come on, you’re panicking, do the breathing thing. He does, and Cho must notice, because his expression turns into something... guilty.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he says, sounding as confident as usual but with a very different set to his eyebrows. “I will see a seizure coming before you even get a tingle. We’re not taking any chances, we’ll pull you out the second there’s a blip on the radar, okay?” He puts his hands on the shoulder guards on either side of Robbie’s neck. “I’m not getting you killed.”

Robbie wonders if he feels like he did when speaking to Mrs Lai. He licks his lips, but there’s nothing to say, so he just nods instead. Cho nods back before stepping away, and then all there is left to do is to pull the helmet over his face and hope like hell he wasn’t lying.

The relay gel immediately washes down the HUD, the display flickering to life. He can tell when each circuit activates by the hot flashes travelling along his skin and he has to force his breathing even again. You’re doing great, kid. Keep it up. You’re nearly there.

“Alright, everyone to position,” Cho calls, muted through the helmet. “Prepare for drift protocol.”

Oh god, he’s going to throw up. You’re fine. Stay on the surface and don’t go chasing whatever you see, and you’ll be just fine.

“Drift activating in three, two, one—”

The washed-out blue pulls him in like a whirlwind, completely out of his body. It’s like travelling at high speed past monochrome images – he sees himself carrying Gabe on his back through the flooded ruins of Los Angeles, the face of the firefighter urging him through the break in the fence, Gabe strapped into the seat of the first car he bought. On the other side – there are no directions, everything is happening forward and all at once, but there is his side and the other side – somebody gets punched in the stomach, and his dad is stepping in front of him, and a helicopter barrels down from the sky. He does his best not to look – impulse triggers, Dr Montesi said. That’s how you lose the thread. Each scene flashes for maybe a fraction of a second, long enough only to register before moving on, and on, and on, until both sides crash into each other and—

Fuckin’ A, kid! A voice whoops like there’s someone standing right next to him. No, don’t focus on that. The egghead’s talking.

“—process successful!”

Robbie blinks. He realises he’s bent his neck forward at some point, and when he lifts his chin, it’s like the helmet suddenly weighs several tons. There’s a loud creak outside the room, followed by a second of stunned silence inside of it. Robbie blinks the blue away to see a tech run to poke her head outside the door.

Cho waves a hand, and Canelo steps into Robbie’s field of vision. “Any bright spots? Nausea?”

Without thinking, Robbie shakes his head no. More creaking from the outside, like a bridge settling. The lookout tech shouts something in Cantonese and Cho’s focused expression breaks into a grin.

“No signs of kick back,” he says. “Hey, Reyes! Can you shrug?”

Slowly, it dawns on Robbie what’s happening. He lifts his shoulders, the extra weight becoming more natural by the second. Someone cheers. Watch this. Next time he blinks, he’s looking at the hangar like he’s standing on the access walkway, and—

Oh god. He can see through the jaeger’s head cameras. He’s standing in the middle of a concrete room, and he is the jaeger, and then there’s a third view – he’s inside the jaeger’s cockpit, watching the status displays light up with something that feels almost like happiness blooming in his chest.

Excuse you, that’s my side.

When he blinks back to the control room, nobody seems to be talking to him for all the noise of multiple people speaking all at once. He blinks again, and the LOCCENT bridge seems to be within reach of his arm. The more he does it, the easier it gets to hold both views, like he’s inhabiting two bodies at once—

Three bodies. The third view settles in among the others, unmoving but undeniably there. He’s pretty certain Cho talked about this – normally, there are three views, but Robbie doesn’t have a co-pilot.

Don’t think about it too hard.

Are you--?

Relax, we’re one and the same, yeah?

Robbie focuses on his real body. Behind the monitoring equipment, Cho is frowning, but doesn’t look concerned so much as—

He’s fucking thrilled, that’s what he is. He wanted a solo drift and here you are, drifting solo. Enjoy the moment.

He wishes he could see The Charger move when he does. He’s seen the footage from his accident, but the miniscule shift of the giant head was almost imperceptible. Now, he can feel the hydraulics under the steel hull like he can feel the way his muscles strain when lifting a kettlebell.

Pretty cool, huh?

It—it really is pretty cool. He’s really doing it, and other than the quick bursts of heat along the circuit lines there is barely any discomfort. His bad eye feels a little hot, but it’s no worse than having a bright light shone into it during medical exams.

He’s not going to die. Told you. He’s drifting, and it’s working, and Robbie isn’t going to die.

“Reyes, talk to me,” Canelo taps on the side of his helmet. “How’re you doing?”

“Good,” he croaks out. He sounds a little manic. “Good, is it really moving?”

Yeah she is!

“Yep, we’ll get you the side-by-side later. Medical wants to know if your vision is clear in both views.”

He doesn’t even have to blink to be sure. “It’s clear,” he confirms.

Canelo nods and pushes the mic from his comm link to speak into it among the noise: “Pilot confirms, vision clear,” and the realisation hits Robbie like a freight train.

He’s piloting a fucking jaeger.

#ghost rider pacific rim au #robbie reyes #eli morrow #merry christmas yall #we're at the first high point of this ride strap in you know how rollercoasters go

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imtrashraccoon · 11 months

Text

I was looking forward to this prompt for so long but I couldn't pick between them so I had to do both!

@scrambledmeggys

First Day, Previous Day, & Next Day.

Day 12: Pillow Fort & Pillow Talk

You were helping clean up the kitchen when Frisk tugged on your sleeve to get your attention. "What's up, kiddo?" you asked and glanced down at them.

They smiled and signed, "Can we have a sleepover? With everyone?"

You chuckled and ruffled their hair. "What, am I not enough? We have a sleepover together every night, don't we?" you asked teasingly.

"It's not the same..." they pouted and crossed their arms.

"Ask Papyrus and Sans. If they agree, then it's alright by me."

Frisk grinned and you watched them scamper over to the sink where Papyrus had just finished washing the dinner dishes. Frisk practically threw themselves at him and hugged his legs tightly.

Papyrus smiled and after drying his hands, gave Frisk an affectionate pat on the head. "What Do You Want, Sunshine?" he asked gently.

You couldn't help but smile at the cute nickname. It kind of made you wish you'd come up with a better one for Frisk rather than just 'kiddo'. Still, they'd never complained and so it had just become your thing.

After Frisk had explained their idea, Papyrus nodded. "I Suppose We Could Have A 'Sleepover' If You Want One So Badly. You Can Ask Sans If You Want But I Doubt He Would Turn Down Any Excuse To Sleep."

Frisk beamed and darted off, undoubtedly to go find Sans. Papyrus chuckled and shook his skull slightly. There was a brief moment of silence before he asked you a question. "I Have Never Had A Sleepover Before, Could You Explain It To Me?"

You nodded, "Of course, Frisk and I used to have them a lot. We usually made a pillow fort and watched a movie, sometimes we even played games and had snacks."

He hummed thoughtfully, "I Suppose That Sounds Fun."

"It is, just give it a chance and I think you'll enjoy it," you said with a smile.

Unsurprisingly, Sans had agreed to participate as Papyrus had predicted he would. So under Frisk's supervision, the living room was transformed into by far the largest pillow fort you'd ever seen. The brothers had quite a few extra pillows and blankets, which when combined with having extra help, made the actual construction of the fort much easier than it ever had been on your own.

Sans plopped down in the nest of blankets and cushions that had been arranged on the floor. To your surprise, Frisk chose to settle down next to him which you found rather sweet. This left the couch to you and Papyrus, which was just fine with you.

You watched some sort crappy action movie together and while Sans seemed to fall asleep fairly quickly, Frisk persisted and managed to stay awake for half of the movie's run time. While the movie itself wasn't anything special to write home about, Papyrus held you close and once the others were asleep, you'd snuggled up closer to him as well.

When the movie was over, you reached for the remote and flicked off the tv. Rather than get up to put the disk back in its case though, you elected to do that later as you were pretty comfortable right now.

Papyrus seemed to silently agree and wrapped his arms around you in a gentle embrace. "You Were Right," he murmured as he gently nuzzled against your head. "This Was Fun."

"Right? I never did this sort of thing much as a kid but I started doing it with Frisk to give them something to look forward to," you said thoughtfully. "It's just nice to spend time with people I think."

Papyrus hummed quietly. "You Know What Would Make This Moment Even Better, Precious?"

"What?"

Instead of responding, Papyrus shifted his body to the side and tugged you with him. You went along with it since you were admittedly curious where this was going. He maneuvered your body in such a way so you were both laying down and facing each other on the couch.

For a moment, you both just laid there, gazing into each other's eyes. You found yourself admiring what a pretty shade of red his eyelights were and how they especially stood out in the now darkened living room. Part of you wondered if he could see any better than you could or if his eyelights just glowed for looks. That was something you should ask at some point.

"I Am Happy To Have Met You, Rihanna," Papyrus finally whispered. "Even Though We Are So Different, I Would Do Anything To Keep You And Frisk Safe."

You nearly let out an audible "aw" but restrained yourself for now. His words had touched you and you couldn't help but make a confession of your own.

"You want to know something? Of all the people I've met in life, you're the only one I've connected with this closely with before."

He smiled warmly and moved a few locks of hair out of your face. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something but then he didn't. You weren't sure why but the longer you two stayed there just gazing into each other's eyes, you had a realization.

You might actually love him.

Maybe he felt the same but you wouldn't know unless you asked. Yet, you couldn't bring yourself to admit it, not right now at least.

It wasn't meant to be. The King had ordered all humans to be killed and you were pretty sure he intended to wage war on humanity once the barrier was destroyed. Ever since you'd fallen down here, your death was inevitable, it was only a matter of time but you were going to die one day. Still, you could live in denial for a little bit longer.

"I guess I never told you much about myself, did I?" you asked quietly.

"No, But I Never Asked Either."

"I didn't think things would turn out like this, but there's some things I want you to know about me..."

You told Papyrus a little about what your life had been like on the surface. You told him about your parents and how growing up with an older brother had been. How you'd moved away from your small coastal town for college and met your best friend, Terence. You told him how you'd gotten a pretty good internship at a big corporate office but had been nearly working yourself to death. How Terence had passed away after a tragic climbing accident a few weeks before falling down into the Underground which nearly broke you. Then, you told him about your relationship with Frisk, how they had quickly become your world and you thought of them sort of like a younger sibling.

Papyrus listened rather intently as you spoke, absentmindedly tracing patterns across your back with his claws. He only asked a few questions to clarify some things but he was a bit surprised by what you'd said about Frisk. Apparently, he'd been under the impression that they were your biological kid, which while you could understand with how you'd been treating them, was a little embarrassing.

In return, Papyrus told you a little bit about himself, although you could tell he was a little hesitant at first. He told you how he'd grown up with only his brother and neither of them remembered who their parents were. How they'd had to be mean and scary in order to survive because of the "Kill or Be Killed" rule. He told you how it'd always been his dream to join the Royal Guard and one day become the Captain. Finally, he told you how he'd always wanted to have true friends, rather than having to make people afraid of him all the time, and how he'd always dreamed of seeing the surface one day.

It seemed like hours had passed while you'd both talked and when you'd finally laid everything out, you had the feeling that Papyrus was seeing you in a new light. In fact, you could see that he had more depth to him than you'd thought. Sure, he was still a powerful monster who had killed countless other people, but you felt empathy for how he'd struggled just to survive this long.

You didn't remember falling asleep but the last thing you did remember, was Papyrus pulling you slightly closer and pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. You wouldn't know how much more he admired you now either nor how his opinion of you had changed a bit. Where before he'd assumed you'd had an easy life on the surface, he now could see that you were also a strong person; maybe not physically but emotionally.

He so desperately wanted to say that he loved you...

#selfshipufpap #underfell #undertale #underfell papyrus x reader #underfell papyrus #reader #named oc #the hand we've been dealt #thwbd #alternate universe #raccoons drabbles

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gaintsnowflake · 1 year

Text

𝐆𝐄𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌

PAIRING - George Karim x Ex!gn!Reader

ONESHOT - in which george has a breakdown in the bathroom

SONG - michael in the bathroom by george salazar

TRIGGERS - drinking, mental breakdown, being left

A/N - please mind any typos or grammar mistakes, it is proof-read only by me so I won’t be able to catch everything

WORD COUNT - 1k

masterlist

THE WORLD is spinning.

I knew it was a bad idea to come here, a even worse one to drink when I had seen them, hoping to just make the pain go away. I should have never listened to Lockwood. I should have stayed home. I could be home, curled up reading a book. I could be doing research about another case. I could be fighting a fucking ghost, that sounds better than being here right now.

I am crying in the bathroom at the biggest party of the fall. I could just sit right here and disappear, nobody'd even notice at all. Not Lockwood, not Lucy. Hell if I didn't know any better I would say they are snogging in a random corridor. I am a nobody to anybody here.

Outside the door, people of high status fill the large rooms. Those who are not high status are the drunken agents who are partying like there is no tomorrow, probably because they may not have a tomorrow. But here is I am. I'm the creeper in the bathroom, because my buddies left me alone.

But I would rather fake pee than stand awkwardly staring at them from across the way. But it can't help but bring back the memories of the last party I had gone too. When everything felt fine, cause I was half of a pair. Though no fault of mine, there is no other half there. Because they left us. They left me. Not the other way around.

They left me, so now I am just, George in the bathroom. I am George in the bathroom at a party. God I forget how long it's been. And no one can come in.

I will just sit here and cry, waiting for Lucy and Lockwood to come in get me or I'll wait it out 'til it's time to leave. This would leave me with hours of time to do nothing but sit, pout, and possibly pick at grout as I softly grieve.

All because I'm just George, who you don't know. George whose flying solo. I am just George in the bathroom by himself. All by myself. I am hiding because their out their. I'm ignoring all our history. Trying to forget all the pain they brought me. I hope my memories get erased, maybe get replaced, with a newer cooler version of me. Because they deserve that. They deserve their second half, even if it isn't me.

But now I hear a drunk girl, singing along to Whitney through the door. "I wanna dance with somebody!" Her words are slurred, but it only bring backs memories of the good old days. But my feelings sink, cause it making me think, now there is no one to make fun of drunk girls with anymore.

I am left alone, nobody to call my home. No one to bring me tea, when I am up late at night. No one to watch over me. I am just me.

Now it's just George in the bathroom, George in the bathroom at a party. Could I get any less pathetic, as I sit and choke on the sobs. The alcohol in my system only making my emotions worse. I half regret the beers, cause its making the tears flow harder and faster. All because I am just George in the bathroom, George in the bathroom at a party.

I can try and hide, choke back the tears, wait as long as I need, 'till my face is dry. My eyes are red from, how do I even try to cover that?I could wait until they become less flush, or maybe I'll just blame it on weed. Or something in my eye.

How would anyone know? I'm just George who no who they don't know. George flying solo. George in the bathroom by himself. The last person they think of when they think of cool. I am just an oddball who no one likes.

As I continue to clean off my face, trying to hide the fact I am crying, hiding in the bathroom by myself. Just waiting it out, till I hear a knock. Maybe I'll be free. Then I hear a few more, knock, knock, knock. It is getting more aggressive as I prepare to leave. They are gonna start to shout soon, hell yeah, I'll be out soon. I won't be on my own, it sucks they left me here, all alone, here in this battle zone.

The noises get louder as they pound harder. I can feel their anger, the pressure blowing up. I knew it was a mistake showing up. If I just splash, some water on my face, everything will be just okay.

So I throw some water on my face, and now I am in a better place. But as I go to open up the door, I can't hear knocking anymore.

I missed my chance, I missed my escape. I can't help but yearn, for a different time. One where I can get out of here, make my presents clear, have the courage to stand for what's right. But then I look in the mirror, and it becomes much clearer. There is no denying, I'm just George in the bathroom at a party, is there a sadder sight than... George in the bathroom at a party.

This is a heinous night, I wish I just stayed home instead. Maybe just lay in bed. Or I wished I offed myself in bed, wish I was never born. Then I wouldn't have to do this all again. No one would care, no one would notice.

I am just George who's a loner, so he must be a stoner. I ride a PT cruiser, god I am such a loser.

But what's worse is when I hear the creek of the door. The lock is gone. I look over my shoulder, to see their face. The memories coming back to me. This isn't worth the pain, as they look at me, heartbreak in their eyes. I am now who they think that they know.

I am not the same old boy, so much has changed. They don't know me anymore, and that is their fault.

"Georgie?" Their voice is still the same, sending my heart fluttering at the name.

But all they know about me is my name.

"AWESOME PARTY, I'M SO GLAD I CAME."

#lockwood and co fanfiction #lockwood and co #fanfic #george cubbins #george karim #george karim x reader #george karim x you

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n7punk · 2 years

Text

As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You) - Interlude: Three Years Ago

This is an interlude/short companion fic for As Many Lives As It Takes (To Be With You), my Nine Lives AU. It's set three years before the main fic.

Main fic on AO3. Pairing: Catradora. Chapters: 3/? (probably 8-ish total). Word count: currently 17k. Rating: T.

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Interlude Summary: At nineteen, Catra finally accepts help, even if opening up to Scorpia feels like it might kill her. At least it wouldn't stick. Word count: 3.7k. Intended Order: After Chapter 3 (after Chapter 2 is fine too). Notes: This is "skippable" considering it wasn’t in the original outline, but I wrote it on a whim and liked it, so have it over here. The real chapter four will be back in present day and up in a day or two. (Reblogs are off because I don't want this further removed from the context of the original fic, where it won't make sense).

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Interlude: Three Years Ago

It’s warm by the stove, far warmer than Catra has been since the summer gave way to fall and then winter. Sometimes she curses Bright Moon for having a full season’s cycle. Other times she knows that it’s better than the constant heat or cold some other places have to deal with. The rain from being off the coast is a lot to contend with, though.

Catra stays on the opposite side of town from Bright Moon Bay if she can help it — the last thing she needs is to drown, again — but the tropical storm that blew in took the rain to her. Absently, she reaches up and scrunches her hand into her short hair. For being a pixie cut, it holds a lot of moisture, and water runs down her fingers. It’s worse than her clothes sometimes, especially right now when she has at least changed out of her top. She feels uncomfortable in the loose uniform shirt she is wearing over the pants she wrung out in the bathroom and then put back on, but it’s nice to have something dry on.

Catra huddles closer to the stove, hoping its warmth can work into her bones before the scorpioni slowly moving around the kitchen decides she’s done and heads home. Catra isn’t eager to go back out into the rain, but any time away from the downpour is worth it. It has to be for her to come inside like this. It always makes her feel cagey. She has stayed in shelters before, but they scare her, maybe even more than this small kitchen filled with the smell of baking does. Shelters felt like a place where people would look for her. No one would ever picture Catra of all people here, bedraggled on the floor of a small kitchen filled with cutesy pink things.

“Scorpia! Anyone come in yet?” Rose says, brightly, looking up from whatever she is brewing on one of the freestanding stovetops. Catra flinches as the younger of the women becomes visible, shuffling through the open doorway to the shop. No, they haven’t. Catra’s hearing is on overdrive trying to find the threats that surely must be lurking under the stacks of teacups. No one who had anywhere to go would be stupid enough to be out in this weather. Scorpia shakes her head, throwing her mom a smile.

“I put a notecard on the counter to yell to the back in case someone does come and we don’t hear them, but I doubt anyone is out.” Well, that’s the first smart thing Scorpia has said. “We should probably head out if there’s a lull. Otherwise I think we might end up stormed in. Mom’ll be so worried.” Make that two things, even if this one makes her ears pin back. Heading out means sending Catra out.

It will be miserable, but at least she’ll be out in the open again. Safe. She guesses. Nowhere feels safe with this storm all around them.

Rose sighs.

“We can once I finish prepping things for tomorrow. I don’t think it’s going to let up. If it looks like it’s about to get worse, then we should head home, but for now let’s just wait it out,” she agrees. Scorpia nods, her whole body bouncing with the motion.

Adora used to do that, Catra’s mind reminds her. Traitor.

As if she can hear her, Scorpia turns her attention on Catra. Catra shrinks back despite how she hates showing fear. She just wants to ball up here and sleep forever. Lay down a blanket and it would be perfect. No one would be stupid enough to let some random homeless person sleep in their family shop — she can’t believe Scorpia even came out to the alley when the storm started and invited her in, much less that she accepted — but it’s a nice fantasy.

She’s only entertaining it because she hates being wet. It reminds her of-

Fuck, does she have no options that don’t tug at one of her traumas? Outside is open and “safe” — except for how it’s definitely fucking not, even on an average day — being indoors is being trapped, being in the rain is drowning again, and she’s left with nothing. At least the stove is warm. Scorpia doesn’t take her tail tightly wrapping around her ankles for the hint that it is and shuffles closer. She stays out of striking distance even with her stinger, but Catra feels a growl rising in her throat and quickly looks away.

She’s only proving that they should tell her to go, but instead Scorpia just sits down on the floor with her for some reason.

“Quite the storm, huh? Like being inside a washing machine. Just woooosh,” Scorpia seems to mime clothes spinning around in a washing cycle by circling her pincers in front of her. Something in Catra feels warm. The stove is working, then. She grunts an acknowledgment. Speaking words is risky. She has learned to spit teeth at any who approach her, but she has to hold her tongue when someone is there to help. It stings her pride, but she wouldn’t have made it this long if she hadn’t learned to take some kindness. Scorpia gave her more of it than she deserved already when she let her in. The least she can do is not snap at her.

And listen to her ramble, apparently, because she goes, “Oh, this one time…” and then she’s off telling the story of how they got stuck in an awful storm like this while driving between towns and thought their car was going to get swept away. Catra grunts occasionally and shuffles to readjust her position so the other side of her can get more warmth before something she can’t feel starts getting burned. Scorpia’s story peters out around the time Catra is readjusting her arm, maneuvering it with her left hand and tucking it into her lap a couple of different ways before she finds something that she thinks works.

She can feel Scorpia staring. She can even see it out of her periphery. It doesn’t feel predatory or anything, like she’s cataloguing her weakness, but Catra still pulls her lip back to show her fangs. She doesn’t know why she bothers when Scorpia’s stinger could take her out before she even got close enough to land a hit, but Scorpia raises her pincers in surrender.

“Sorry, I’m not trying to be rude! It’s not my business. I was just wondering if there was anything I could do? I don’t know if a sling would help or…” She trails off, already looking around the kitchen as if she will magically see a medical station appear. Catra finally speaks just because she thinks Scorpia is five seconds away from standing and rushing around to find something. Tracking her all over the restaurant again is going to start wearing on her nerves.

“It’s paralyzed. Nothing is going to make it better,” Catra grits back. She can tell Rose is listening, even if she isn’t looking at her. Rose seems just as nice as her daughter, but they could both be deceiving her. Catra is almost sold on Scorpia. Rose… Well, Rose doesn’t directly remind her of anyone she already trusts, so she’s on thin ice. That might as well be the Catra equivalent of a golden pedestal, though.

“A sling could keep it from getting in the way!” Scorpia pipes up, like Catra hasn’t thought of that. She has tried, once or twice, with an improvised scarf or something. It actually just puts her arm in the way and makes her feel more helplessness. It certainly makes her look it.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt, anyway,” she mutters back. Except when people touch it, she doesn’t add. That doesn’t happen a lot unless someone happens to bump into her, so it might as well not be weakness. She shifts to tuck in her arm a little more, like hiding it from view will change the subject. Scorpia just keeps looking at her.

“If you want to talk about it-” Catra growls, “-not that I’m asking! We’re going to be here a while is all, and… I get the feeling you’ve never talked about it. Talking about things usually makes me feel better. Sometimes my roommate will just sit and listen to me while I unload and it helps a lot even without her talking back or even looking at me,” Scorpia hurries to placate her before losing the plot. Catra grumbles, tucking her face down into her arms. Yeah, she doesn’t think talking is going to be anything like that for her.

She doesn’t usually even acknowledge it’s paralyzed. She has had to say it a few times, but the closest she has ever come to addressing anything that happened was when she ran into her old classmate, and even thinking about that makes her throat tight. The way he looked at her- How is she ever supposed to tell someone what happened when she’s just opening herself up to that? Scorpia isn’t looking at her with sick fascination, though. Her eyes are just big and soft, like A-

“I fell,” Catra replies, cutting that thought off before it can finish. Watching Scorpia light up when she realizes that she’s telling her and then her expression fall as she remembers what they’re talking about is kind of funny. Scorpia always seems so open and warm. The light in her heart felt near blinding the first few weeks that Catra ran into her. Okay, maybe she just reminded her of someone and it felt like someone pulling her ribs out of her chest when she looked at her.

“That’s, uh, quite the fall. I’m really sorry about that, Wildcat,” Scorpia says. Catra feels something that might be a trill rise in her chest and swallows it down, tucking in a little tighter. She didn’t realize she was starting to uncurl. It’s just a stupid nickname, she doesn’t know why it makes her feel anything. It isn’t even a nickname, just what Scorpia started calling her when Catra wouldn’t give her a name at first. She knows it now, and her moms use it, but Scorpia still calls her Wildcat. No matter what, Scorpia keeps trying.

She doesn’t know why. Catra knows their family helps out other people who come around here – that’s how she found out about them in the first place – and yet Scorpia latched onto her for some reason and seems determined to fix her. Maybe she’s the most broken person that comes around. Maybe Scorpia isn’t used to people not immediately loving her. Maybe Catra is just her age. For some reason, she keeps trying to get Catra to open up to her.

I get the feeling you’ve never talked about it before. Is that all it takes? To look at her, see she’s alone, and want to fix that? Why? She has been alone for years. No one has ever really tried to help before. Give her a few dollars here, let her sneak into the bathrooms there, but in general, she has been by herself. Not that she has ever asked for help, but why would she do that? They wouldn’t give it to her.

Most people wouldn’t, anyway. Most people wouldn’t get hissed and snarled at and still come running to the back door to hand out food and try to make small talk while claws were flashed at them. Not that Catra ever raised her hand in a real threat at Scorpia, but she has certainly prepped her claws when Scorpia looked like she might get closer or got too chummy. Catra doesn’t know why she’s still trying, still being nice when Catra has never shown that kind of grace back. Adora’s mom used to talk about putting back out into the world what you wanted to be given. Catra has only ever given back what she got.

And right now, she isn’t even doing that. She wraps her tail tightly around herself and runs her fingers down her arm. Her fur is completely dry there. She probably showed it to the oven too long.

“I can’t feel it except when other people touch it. And then it just hurts,” Catra murmurs. She doesn’t know why. She just told Scorpia how to hurt her with explicit instructions, but all Scorpia does is nod with a sympathetic look on her face.

“Is that… normal for paralysis? Is that what phantom pain is?” Scorpia asks. Catra actually laughs, a dark chuckle that feels foreign in her chest. Yeah, big Adora energ-

She clears her throat.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just a me thing,” she replies. Scorpia looks concerned and it makes Catra’s chest hurt, but for once, it kind of feels good? She’s used to hollowness, or angry buzzing, or bitter regret, but this feels more like stepping outside for the first time on a cold night, a shock to her system and tightness in her lungs. Eventually the numbness sets in, but in this moment? It feels good.

There’s a warm oven right next to her. Frostbite doesn’t have to creep into her fingers.

“That doesn’t sound good. When was the last time you saw a doctor? I know it’s probably hard to, but there has to be a free clinic or something, right?” Scorpia asks. Catra snorts, her hand still on her arm. She squeezes. She doesn’t really know why. It’s lax beneath her fingers, no muscles flexing to harden it.

“Never,” she replies. Rose stops pretending to be busy, freezing as Scorpia’s jaw drops. Suddenly self-conscious, Catra hunches her shoulders. “I was- I was homeless right after- Actually because of-” She cuts off. She doesn’t owe them an explanation. So why does she feel like she should have one? Why are tears burning at the back of her eyes?

She doesn’t want a doctor. She knows this. Any time she gets near a medical professional, it’s dangerous and panics her. How much could they suspect this long after the fall, though, when everything would be healed over? When she can just tell them whatever she wants about what happened? They wouldn’t be able to help, she always tells herself, and she’s right, but the fantasy of someone being able to is so alluring. A fantasy of being cared for, and things getting better, and more warm ovens while she’s at it.

“I- You need to. I know you probably can’t afford it, but it can’t be that expensive, right? Just for an appointment?” Scorpia asks, twisting around to look at her mom as she asks. Her mom turns around and looks just as stressed. Catra’s throat tightens. No. No, she can’t even let them suggest spending their money on something that would never help.

“No. Once it’s paralyzed there’s nothing you can really do. Any money I’ve ever had has been better served going towards food, or new clothes, or a room for the night. Things that keep me alive,” Catra replies, shaking her head. Food, clothes, things they’ve already done for her. They don’t need to do more.

She isn’t expecting Rose to turn to her, looking like she is about to cry.

“You’re so young. How did this happen to you?” she asks, her tone distraught enough for Catra to know it isn’t a real question, just internal horror making itself known, but still her mouth opens and closes a few times.

There are tears in her eyes. That realization is the last wall crumbling down as she buries her face in her knees and allows herself to cry for the first time in a long, long time.

Catra hasn’t really been in a car in the last three years. Scorpia doesn’t question it when she curls up in the backseat, dripping again from the rain that came down on them as they made the run from the shop to the car. Catra is still wearing the employee t-shirt, her bag that never leaves her side on the floor of the car beside her. Rose said her clothes were still soaked and Scorpia could just wash the shirt and bring it back when it was time.

Catra isn’t sure when is going to be the time. She isn’t sure where they’re going really, or how long she’s supposed to stay there, or how long she’s going to stay there, but she’s so exhausted that she just couldn’t fight it or find a reason to say no when Scorpia offered for her to stay with her while she got herself sorted out. She thinks the offer is a few days, with the condition that she actually do something about improving her life.

She isn’t sure where to start. She isn’t sure she’s ready to start. But she is sure she’s tired of this. If she walks away from this opportunity, she isn’t likely to ever get another one, or at least not one as kind as this. She doesn’t know there could be someone kinder after she cried on their floor for two hours and unloaded horrific shit on them as she went through what she could – first the fall, and then the homelessness, and then further back with the “near” drowning, and by then they got the picture but they still flinched when she mentioned the window, and Rose was crying as hard as she was when she talked about Weaver.

She doesn’t know why they let her do that. She depressed them, she knows, but instead of telling her it was time to go, they started workshopping solutions together, looking at her for input and approval while she just sat there, stunned.

Her toe claws flex against the floor of the car and she watches them almost snag on the car mats. She doesn’t trust this, but she has lived every day of the last three years in fear anyway. Might as well be indoors while she stews in her discomfort, right? As long as they’re willing to offer it. If this can last just long enough for her to get in a program or something like they suggested, maybe she can get somewhere that she trusts is safe. She’s scared to exist again, but she keeps telling herself it has been three years. She has the paralysis to show as “proof” of injury from the accident. She can sell this lie. She had it half-formed in her mind already, from times when she has had to brush up against the story before, but she put together something coherent on the floor of that shop, she thinks.

They offered her a home, so apparently it was good enough. She just has to hope that whatever government employee gets saddled with her case thinks so too.

She tenses when they finally park. Scorpia’s apartment block is pretty big, but nondescript. She can’t really tell what it’s going to be like from the lobby or hallway, but when Scorpia opens the door for her, the apartment is in good shape. Nothing fancy or expensive except maybe the TV, but nothing is broken or stained at first glance, and they have enough furniture to fill out the space. The couch looks like it will probably be the most comfortable place she has slept since last winter, so she doesn’t really care what Scorpia’s roommate is like as long as she doesn’t try to make her leave.

“Entrapta! We’re home! I brought a friend,” Scorpia calls, her booming voice forcing Catra to pin her ears back. Friend is a bit of a stretch, but it seems to interest Entrapta enough for her to emerge from down the hall after a few moments. She cocks her head as Scorpia busies herself with closing the door and putting away her shoes. Catra considers waving and ends up grimacing instead as she drops her bag from her shoulder and cautiously bends to set it beside where Scorpia put her shoes. The thing is filthy.

Catra straightens up and leaps in the air when she turns around and finds the girl with pigtails right behind her. She hisses, her tail shot straight out and her fur fluffing up, but Entrapta doesn’t even look at Catra’s claws snapping out and her left hand stiffening into an attack position, she just bends way too close to inspect Catra’s arm, which obviously swung as she moved.

“Fascinating! How long has it been like that? Can you feel it?” Entrapta asks, pulling a fucking wrench out of her pocket. Scorpia steps up beside Catra on her left, waving her pincers a little frantically.

“Entrapta, you can’t ask that! It’s rude!” Scorpia tries to stop her. Entrapta looks up, blinking at her. Scorpia throws Catra an apologetic look. “Sorry, she really doesn’t mean anything by it, she just doesn’t interact with a lot of people-”

Then Entrapta touches Catra’s arm. She screams into her teeth, buckling until one of Scorpia’s pincers catches her on her left side and she manages to stumble onto her feet again. Entrapta watches her with fascination.

It isn’t a great first meeting.

#amlait #writing tag #fic extra #ficmeta #tbh im still undecided on sharing it this way so like. this is where it is for now #it may remain here forever. it may not. but it was not part of My Vision(TM) for the fic #and felt like it pulled it down as part of the main thing so. over here #no one look at my indecision just take the sad words #people who mostly post fic on tumblr how the hell do you format #this is hell #okay i've futzed with this for too long just fucking take it

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littlewalken · 2 days

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~I think I posted this before, it might have got lost in the fog, so here it is again~

Citrus free Husbands, Aziraphale/Brother Frances comes to the rescue when Crowley/Nanny Ashteroth’s duties to Warlock cause some distress, woe be them if they are caught in a compromising position!

GOOD OMENS (Cold Nanny)

“Master Warlock I have told you to stay away from that pond! The ice is much too thin!”

Aziraphale, in his guise of the gardener Brother Francis, hated scolding the boy, even if he was the Antichrist, but safety was safety, and he had heard the terrible sound of the ice breaking followed by a frantic splashing.

I shall have to have a word with Nanny Ashtoreth about this, any excuse to see Crowley-eh? he chuckled to himself. “How about you make a snow fort? I’ll show you how…”

As Aziraphel neared the duck pond he saw Warlock and his friends running away from it. All for the better if you don’t want a scolding from your nanny! Where was she? Something was wrong.

At first the ice of the duck pond looked undisturbed. Then he saw the remote controlled vehicle Warlock had got for Christmas. Then he saw the umbrella.

“Oh help! Do help!” Aziraphale called as he made his way out on to the ice. “Someone help! The nanny’s fallen through the ice!”

Now, you should know there are a great many snakes who can swim. There are a great many demons who can swim. None of them however swim in icy water because none of them are the least bit built for the cold. For if you had taken any sort of notice in wildlife documentaries you would have noticed all the creatures of the arctic or antarctic are rather plump with a great covering of blubber. And if you were any sort of noticer of Crowley’s forms the words “plump” and “blubber” would not in the least bit apply to him.

It was by any and all means that Aziraphael managed to pull Crowley out of the icy water. “Oh! Poor nanny!” Aziraphael sighed, just in case anyone was watching. “You’ll catch your death a cold if you’re not warmed up!”

The house was too far to take a human in wet quickly turning to ice clothes. The gardening supply shed was closer. Yes, get Crowley in there, put on the electric kettle, get him out of these wet things! So may wet things!

Aziraphale set Crowley on a pile of seed sacks in the gardening shed and plugged in the electric kettle.

“Smudge pot,” he told himself. “I’ll light up a smidge pot!” Yes, even though that would be outside the door it would still put out a good amount of heat. “And then we’ll have to do something with getting you out of those wet clothes!”

Always the angel was looking to see if someone else was coming, if anyone had heard his cries for help. How awful, just down right awful would it be to have the gardener be caught undressing the nanny!

Now you should assume two things about all of Crowley’s clothes, even in his guise of Nanny Ashtoreth. First they are all black, unless noted otherwise, and they are all made of artificial fabrics. That is, if they were made of natural fabrics such as wool, silk, cotton, or linen, their natural wicking motion might not have left the situation so cold and damp.

To peel off the layers of the onion that made up Nanny Ashtoreth it was best to start with the outermost first. I hope we don’t have far to go, Aziraphale readied himself for the task ahead. First in removing all of Crowley’s wet things was the furry black muff with its red satin lining. This was hung up to dry. Finding a place to hang things up would soon become a problem of its own.

Next came a felt cap, which didn’t look like a butter bowl, and a knitted scarf with just the slightest hint of red. The scarf was so wet it could be wrung out. Now it was time for the cloak with its little slits for one’s hands to poke through. The buttons for this were quite large and it seemed like each took a dreadfully long time. On being hung up upon a rake to dry the cloak began to drip as if it were going to worm a pond of its own.

“Here, now, miss Ashtoreth, have a nice warm cuppa.” Aziraphale said as he made a cup of instant tea for Crowley. He looked out the door at the flaming smudge pot. Oh please someone come and help me get her to the warmth of her bed. He put the cup in Crowley’s hand but the demon failed to grab it and the tea spilled to the floor.

The shoes had to come off. Leave it to Crowley to chose boots with countless eyes! The laces were quite frozen over and the boots were so tight the laces had to be pulled completely out to get them free and expose Crowley’s tosey-woseys clad in their stockings.

One by one the fingers of the gloves were tugged on, loosening them up just enough so they could be removed. The removal of gloves could be a very sensual thing if done right. Done in a hurry they were bunched and pulled and dropped to the floor with a distinct splosh sound.

They were down to the winter version of the suit Nanny Ashtoreth always wore. Aziraphile liked the cut of the jacket, the slightly puffed sleeves, the wide cuffs, the little peplum in the back. It too was sopping wet. Fussing with the buttons the angel wondered if it was time to perform a miracle yet.

Now it was time for the skirt. The cut of this Aziraphale didn’t like. It was too tight here, too full there, and the drape didn’t do any favors. Like the fasteners, who ever thought that a skirt needed a buckle?

This would be the perfect time for someone to come upon us! Here is the gardener with the nanny bent over him as he fiddled with the zipper of her skirt! It would be nice if you could come to and help, dear Crowley.

We must be nearing the end, the angel thought, how could you possibly be wearing much more? But Crowley was still wearing more. For being a demon and used to the fires of Hell he liked being warm and had been told the best way to keep a human body warm was to wear many layers.

Aziraphale’s fingers went to the red silken bow of the scarf at Crowley’s neck. This was allowed to flutter to the floor because the blouse its self, wet, thin, see-through, and clinging to every inch of what lay underneath it, gave the impression of being real silk.

“This I must be careful with,” the angel told himself as he cast a glance outside but no one except the smudge pot was watching. But by the third button he could tell the blouse wasn’t real silk and he allowed himself to rush along.

By this time Nanny Ashtoreth was quite undressed but not completely. She sat on the pile of sacks, eyes presumably closed, looking half dead in a shimmering full length slip and stockings. If circumstances were different one might have found themselves distracted by the sight, admiring the human form that God had created in her own image. But a nearly naked and wet demon was turning a shade of blue that was not becoming to him.

What few clothes that remained on Crowley’s body were somehow still soaking wet. The slip had to come off over his head, one of the satin ribbon straps was starting to fray, it would need to be replaced, that could be done tonight, nice and new by the morning.

And still Crowley was wearing more! Under the slip there was a full and sensible brassiere and then some sort of girdle looking garment with suspenders that kept the stockings up.

Knickers, were there knickers? Did Crowley even wear knickers?

Yes, all these things seemed to be wet too but not as wet as the outer layers. These would have to remain on. As tempting as it would be to fuss with all the brassiere hooks and all the little clips holding up the stockings this layer of dainty underthings would have to remain.

Aziraphale quickly found a piece of burlap to wrap around Crowley. He thought he heard someone coming. If they were they’d find him outside at the smudge pot trying to dry his smock.

“How are you doing in there, miss Ashtoreth, feeling warmer yet?”

Warlock’s mother had come looking cold and quite worried, “Warlock said nanny Ashtoreth fell through the ice.”

“Oh, it’s not quite as bad as that but I’m afraid she’s quite cold,” Aziraphale said. “She should get promptly to bed though. I’ve been trying to warm her up, but slowly mind you, too fast might cause shock.”

***

Nanny Ashtoreth lay in her bed wearing a flannel nightgown under many layers of blankets.

Brother Francis came in with a bouquet of winter flowers. “Feeling better are we, Miss Ashtoreth?”

“Yes, much warmer.”

“I saw your clothes to the laundry for you.”

“Thank you, brother Francis.”

Aziraphael looked around to see that they were indeed alone and leaned close to Crowley to whisper, “You could have lent us a hand with a few things there.”

“And deny you of all that fun?”

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #nanny ashtoreth #brother francis #comfort fic

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