#to finish a whole goddamn research report

[sennsational]

everyone around me: how are you holding up?

senn: *insert the newest spin-off chapter where baji gets delirious bcs he’s been studying too hard and chifuyu who has been helping him study all this time, both having had little to no sleep*

[xmint-conditionx]

tongue tied | myg

pairing: yoongi x reader, f2l

w/c: 3.5k

summary: you've been best friends with yoongi for almost a decade, and you're hopelessly in love with him. he's the most important person in your life, and you don't want to mess that up, so you can never be anything more... right?

written as a response to a request from the old blog -- the requestor was @yoongi--enthusiast; thanks again for your request, i loved doing it!!! "I had an idea... something based off of the song “tongue tied” with yoongi. I feel like it would be super soft with soft smut... I just think it would be nice to read so can you please wright it 🥺👉👈"

tags/cw: 18+ please, smut, outdoor sex, overall a little angsty but super cute too

a/n: i did not know that there was a song called tongue tied by marshmello before i wrote this so... i hope the person who requested this didn’t mean that song because I wrote this drabble over the grouplove song lmaooo but anyway, here goes! thanks luv, enjoy! also reposted from the old blog!!

Yoongi’s laugh is so beautiful. It’s rare, so when you see it, you soak up everything you can about it. The way his eyes crinkle up into crescent moons, the way his lips curl back putting his gummy smile on bright display. You can swear you see his eyes sparkle.

You are in love with him. You are in love with your best friend.

He makes loving him such an easy thing to do; bringing you into his inner world, showing you the sweet and warm center he conceals from everyone else. The way he looks at you, the way he says your name, the way he pouts when he wants a back scratch, all of those little things that make him who he is only deepen your infatuation with him.

You’re with him again this Friday night, making the drive to Bom’s house. It’s been a long week for the both of you; he’s been wrapped up in producing a track and you’ve been nose deep in college textbooks. His track is completed, and your exams are over. It’s safe to say that you both could use a good break.

It’s the end of the spring semester and the weather is going to be gorgeous tonight. The racing summer breeze coming through the open car windows is exhilarating. The sun is setting, and the warm evening light on Yoongi’s dewy skin makes him appear absolutely radiant as he navigates the highway.

You’re just listening to fun little summer jams as you speed off toward the city’s suburbs. Ones with funky little basslines that are easy to groove and sing along to. Ones that make you shout and laugh into the rushing wind. Ones that make you drink in the moment you’re having with Yoongi; ones that make you soak up all of his joy.

And when he steals a sly look your way, one hand still on the top of the steering wheel, you can swear your heart stops.

You’ve loved him as long as you can remember really knowing him. Since you were both 12, bonding over games of tag and basketball and the spilling of secrets to each other. You’d sit beneath the big tree in his backyard and share the snacks you’d bought at the corner store. He’d always let you have the last chocolate.

The only secret you’ve ever kept from Yoongi is the matter of your infatuation, and you are pretty resolute in keeping it that way.

He is the single most important person in your life. He had been there with you through it all; when your parents split up at 13, when your dad got you your first car at 15, when your long time boyfriend cheated on you at 16, when your dream college denied you at 17, when you got a full ride scholarship to a smaller university outside of the city right after that, when you were drugged at a house party at 20, when you were diagnosed with depression at 21, and when you were accepted into your masters program at 22.

You needed him, and because of that, you could never tell him.

You pull into the gates that surround Bom’s neighborhood. Her parents are pretty wealthy, so they live on a golf course. As you pull up into the driveway, you see some other students milling about, catching Frisbee. There’s Eunha, Ireum, Ji-Ah, and Miyeun that you recognize from some of your classes, but there are a few more that you’ve never met.

After a few rounds of drinks and a few lost games of flip cup, you all head outside to the back patio with all of your schoolwork from the year. Bom turns on the bluetooth speaker and sets it on the railing. You take in the night air and gaze up at the sky, wishing there was a shooting star to wish upon.

“Alright, everyone,” Bom begins, “essays and lab reports first, then tests, then miscellaneous homework.” Yoongi helps you dig through your stack to fish out the cursed papers. You all toss the stapled packages into the fire pit, one by one, each hitting with a soft thud. Once everyone has thrown their woes into the pit, Bom tops it with actual firewood and unceremoniously sets the whole lot of it on fire. You gaze into the center of the flame, watching your entire year catch fire. All the hours you spent doing that research project, all the disappointment when your group members wouldn’t follow through. Gone, like it never existed.

Yoongi’s holding your hand in his, and he’s busy drawing little circles with his thumb on your palm. Your head rests soundly on his shoulder, and you sigh into him, comfortable in where you are. The whole group piles in more papers, as you lament about the shitty professors and the shitty group projects and the shitty caf’ food and the shitty grades. Yoongi turns into you and nuzzles gently on your forehead. You feel his soft lips graze your temple, breath warm on your skin, tingles rising through your body, and you’re right where you want to be. Under the moon’s gaze with the person you love.

Before long, the breeze sends a chill through you that even the fire won’t remedy. Yoongi feels your shiver and unceremoniously removes his hoodie and puts it on over you, pulling up the hood and kissing your forehead. You always love when you wear his jackets; they surround you in his warmth, his smell. A smile plays across your lips until you notice Yoongi’s goosebumps.

“Hey,” you pout, “I don't wanna wear this if you’re gonna be cold.”

“I don’t wanna wear it if you’re gonna be cold,” he snaps back, smiling.

“Here,” you say, standing up from your deck chair. You take the step to get you to Yoongi’s chair, and sit in his lap. “This way we can both be warm, yeah?”

It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms firmly around you again, mumbling a “yeah, that’s fine” when you glance at him over your shoulder.

Your attention is called back to the group with Bom asks if you’re going to the Summer Romance Festival by the river next weekend. She’s been pushing you to get yourself out there more. The last time you were in a real relationship was high school, after all.

“I’d love to go; I hear they have the most beautiful fireworks display,” you start, “but I don’t think I will this year.”

“Well,” Bom says, “Why not?!”

“Because I don’t have a date, Bom!” you say, covering your face in the sweater paws you’ve made from Yoongi’s hoodie. “I don’t think I could find one in enough time.”

“Ya, just get Yoongi to go with you! You already do everything together anyway,” Eunha quips.

You notice that the steady rise and fall of Yoongi’s chest has stopped.

“Hey, you know we’re just friends, right Yoongi?” you look to him for backup.

The man nods, looking down and to the left.

“Okay,” Ireum speaks up, “In that case, do you want to go with me?”

“Wait, what?” you say.

“Do you want to go to the Summer Romance Festival with me? As a date?”

Yoongi tenses beneath you.

“Oh, I don’t know…” you breathe, “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent. We can even get dinner before we go. Not too much, though. I’ll want to get us a treat from one of the dessert stalls.” Ireum says with a soft smile.

“Yeah,” you say, smiling back at him, “Okay. We’ll go together.”

Yoongi stirs beneath you. “Hey, can you get off of me?”

“What, why?” you pout.

“I said get off.”

“Yoongi, wh--”

He doesn’t wait for you to finish before he abruptly stands up, forcing you to catch yourself. When you look back at him, he’s walking toward the French doors that lead back into the house.

“Ya! What was that about?”

He keeps walking. You storm after him and slam the door, trapping you both inside.

“Yoongi, I’m talking to you! What’s your fucking problem?”

He whirs around.

“Oh, I have a problem?”

“Well, it sure seems like it.” you spit back, hands on your hips.

“Why don’t you go talk about it with your date, huh?” he says, gesturing out the window to Ireum. “Don’t you have some details to work out? He gonna pick you up? You gonna let him hold your hand? On your nice little extra special romantic date? I guess I’ll just fuck right off and leave you two alone, yeah? That’s what you want, cause we’re just friends and all.”

“Yoongi, we… are friends! You’re my best friend!”

“Did you ever for a second think that I could want more?”

“What?!”

“I fucking love you, Y/N! Isn’t it obvious?! I’ve loved you since the 7th grade. You remember when we played spin the bottle at Ha-joon’s house? Do you remember when you kissed me?”

“Yoongi…”

“No, let me finish. Do you remember the frat party we crashed junior year? Remember when we got up onto the roof and made out until we fell asleep? And then you weren't there when I woke up so I walked back to my dorm and then we just pretended it never happened? What the fuck was that, Y/N?!”

You reach for his arm, but he backs up, flinching away from you.

“I am so in love with you it hurts!”

“Yoongi.”

“But I guess if that guy can make you happy, then whatever,” he sighs.

“Yoongi.”

“Go on your little date and have fun and I’ll just go write some more goddamn songs about you--”

“Yoongi!”

He stills, pain flashing through his eyes.

“Yoongi,” you say quietly, easing toward him, “I had no idea. I left the roof to go inside and get you some water. When I came back, you were gone. You had been drinking a lot that night… and I felt really bad because… I thought I had taken advantage of you… Ever since I first kissed you at Ha-joon’s house, I wanted to do it again. And again. And, you looked so good that night and up on the roof when you were laughing about the quarterback I just… I couldn't hold myself back anymore. I thought surely you didn’t want to actually be kissing me.”

“Why the fuck would I have kissed you back, then?”

“You were drunk, and I--” you’re cut off when he grabs your wrist.“I have wanted to kiss you every time I’ve seen you since you first kissed me,” he says, glancing down at your lips. ”I want to kiss you right now.”

You take no time in closing the distance between the two of you, your lips crashing desperately. You’ve tasted his kiss before, but this time feels different. His hands are winding through your hair, pulling you deeper into his kiss. You moan against his mouth, and he responds with his tongue teasing your lips, asking for entry. You grant it, and he explores. One of his hands holds your jaw, the other still intertwined with your hair. His tongue runs along your bottom lip before he sucks it in, drawing out a small whimper from you. Taking his hand from your jaw, he runs it down your neck and décolleté and then down over your stomach and latches it on your hip, sinking his fingers into your skin. He gives your hair a small tug, just enough to break the kiss and expose your neck. He breaks off and trails kisses up your jawline and then onto your neck, speaking in between kisses.

“You have… no idea how… much I’ve… wanted to tell… you everything,” he breathes onto your neck, and you feel a heat pooling in your panties.

“Please, Yoongi…” you say as you begin to run one hand under his shirt. He stops kissing and looks up at you with the softest expression.

“What is it?” he asks as he grabs both of your hands in his, bringing one of them up to his mouth to sprinkle kisses along your fingers.

“You…” you begin and sigh, “you have no idea how much I want you.”

He stills.

“Are you sure? We don’t have to, I’m sorry, I just…” he trails off, eyes getting lost in the way his jacket is draped on your figure.

Him eyeing you up doesn’t make it any better.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” you say, eyes pleading up at him. “I’m tired of waiting.”

After a beat, he sighs.

“Neither of us are waiting another minute,” he says, landing a quick peck on your lips and going across the room to the couch, grabbing the throw blanket that rests on the arm.

“Come on, I have an idea,” he says, grabbing your arm and leading you out of the front door, across the street, through someone’s back yard until you reach the top of a hill on the side of a fairway. You watch as he scans the area, holding the blanket tight. His gaze lingers on two hills near the green of whatever hole this is, where there are a few more trees and hills to block you from the sightline of those second story windows. He looks at you, eyes asking the question. You smile and nod, and that’s all he needs.

He tugs your hand and you both go running down the fairway, laughing along the way. Once you reach your spot, he quickly puts down the blanket and lays on it. You’re still standing at his feet, hands fiddling with the ends of the jacket sleeves.

He smiles up at you and holds his arms up in your direction and says, “come here, beautiful,” while doing little grabby hands.

You slowly walk up to where he’s laying and sit on top of his hips, feeling how hard he already is. His hand rests on your hip underneath the fabric of his jacket, the other holding the side of your face.

“Let me see you,” he says with a tinge of whine in his voice, and that gives you an idea.

You reach under the still zipped jacket and fiddle around. Yoongi looks up at you befuddled, the corners of his lips turning down slightly as he tries to figure out what’s going on. When your hands emerge, one is holding your strapless bra and the other is holding the halter top you had been wearing. You can’t believe you managed to unzip the back by yourself.

You throw the garments to the side, and watch as understanding hits his face. His eyes glaze over and he licks his lips, clearly shaken up by your little trick.

He carefully dips his fingers below the waistband of your shorts and eases them down. You put your weight on him and give him a few kisses as he continues to move them down your legs. Once they too have been tossed to the side, you sit back up, lips red and swollen from the kiss.

He gently reaches up to the zipper of the jacket and begins to slowly pull it down, letting the cool night air in. You feel your nipples harden at the exposure to both the night air and Yoongi’s hungry eyes. He swallows and licks his lips as he runs his eyes over every new inch of you that is revealed. Memorizing your form, your perked nipples, the way your chest rises with each anxious breath.

He reaches back up to the collar and eases one shoulder of fabric off. You move to take the rest off despite the cold, but he stills your hand with his.

“Keep it on, please. I love seeing you wear my clothes,” Yoongi says, intertwining his fingers with yours.

You bring his hand up to your lips, pressing them against his knuckles as you slowly grind your still covered core on his length. He groans in frustration, his pants getting tighter. You let go of his hand and run your fingers up beneath his white cotton v-neck, his ab muscles flinching under your touch. You help him remove his shirt, taking in the way his pale skin shines under the moonlight.

Seeing you look at him makes his cock twitch in his pants, and you think it’s time to provide him some relief.

You scoot back and start to undo his belt, getting low and staring up at him through your lashes. His breath hitches when you make eye contact with him, and then it starts to pick up as you undo the button and zipper. You shimmy down the denim, but leave his black boxer-briefs where they are.

You come back up to the waistband after releasing his jeans, and you take the elastic in between your teeth. You tug them down with your teeth while your hands pull them on the sides. His erection springs free, and he sucks in a fast breath when his cock meets the cool air. You take the opportunity to let your warm breath ghost over his throbbing cock, coaxing a deep groan from Yoongi. He puts his hand to your cheek, and you look up to meet his gaze.

“I don’t think I can last if you put me in your mouth, baby girl. We can do head next time,” Yoongi says, and your heart soars at the pet name. You ease back up so that you’re straddling him once more, and reflexively start to grind on him again.

“Please let me take care of you. Look how wet you are,” he says, running his fingers over your clothed slit, dipping one finger in to collect a bit of slick. He tastes his finger and says. “Yeah, we’re definitely going to need to do head next time.”

You blush at the thought of him buried between your thighs, vulgarly slurping up everything you have to give him. You clench just thinking about it, and Yoongi notices. He pulls your panties to the side, takes the head of his cock and presses it to your clit, teasing your entrance. His precum mixes with your wetness, and you can’t resist him any more. You’ve resisted him for years, and you’re done.

You slowly ease yourself down on his cock, only making it halfway down before you have to wait for you to adjust. You both look at each other; Yoongi’s jaw is set and his eyebrows are furrowed together. Your mouth drops open as you raise and lower yourself again, feeling the delicious stretch that accompanies it. You bottom out and begin setting a slow and gentle pace.

Your body is rolling steadily, moonlight creating beautiful shadows on your body as you take him in over and over. As many times as you’ve dreamed of this, you still didn’t fathom it being this good or it feeling this right.

Yoongi is everything you had imagined he would be and then some. The way he is looking up at you, the way his soft little moans escape every time you bottom out, the way his eyebrows furrow together at the sight of your dripping heat enveloping him. Perfection.

He takes his hands and trails them up the curve of your waist, stopping just below your breasts. He runs his thumbs over your nipples, making you shudder and arch your back, pushing your chest into his hands. He palms them, kneading little circles around your areolas.

You lean forward, putting your weight on him again, and he meets you eagerly with another kiss. He wraps his arms around your back, keeping himself under the jacket, and you pick up the rhythm. Yoongi scratches his nails all the way down your back. Once he gets to your ass, he cups it, squeezing gently. You place your forehead against his, and your eyes meet.

“Y/N,” he whispers, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear, “you look so beautiful on top of me like this. Please let me see this sight for the rest of my life.” You whimper at the praise, and pick up the pace.

“Please,” he continues, small grunts mixing in with his words, “Don’t wake up tomorrow and pretend like this never happened. Please... don’t break my heart,” he pleads.

“Not a chance, Yoon. I can never let you go. You’re everything to me. You’ve always been.”

“Baby, I am so close. Can I--”

“Come with me, Yoongi. Let’s do it together,” you say. Yoongi’s hands are on your hips and he’s thrusting up into you with an unrelenting pace. At this angle, you can feel his head graze against your cervix with each thrust, sending white spots in your vision.

You both reach your end at the same time, breaths mingling as you come down from your highs. You lay your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat gradually slow. He presses a soft, lingering kiss to the top of your head and sighs into your hair.

“So…” he begins, “do you wanna go to the festival with me?” Yoongi asks.

“Are you gonna pick me up? Let me hold your hand? Have a nice little special romantic date?” you fire back, trying your best to sound like him. You sit up on your arm, letting your hair hang over to one side, and watch the light dance in his eyes as he laughs.

“Yeah,” he laughs, “I might even get us a little snack from one of the desert vendors.”

[blue-mood-blue]

Juno’s vision fizzes out right around where the man’s face should be.

He rubs his eye. The interference doesn’t go anywhere, and he sighs. He’s already tired - always is, lately - but this, at least, is not on him. Will the wonders of modern technology never end, he thinks, and there’s a ping at the back of his head of what is probably admonishment. I’m right, he thinks back, stubborn.

The man sits down at his table. Juno leans back; the shadow already obscures his features, but something about not seeing the expression on the face of his unexpected guest makes Juno want to sink farther into the darkness. He doesn’t like being looked at - call it paranoia, call it being shy, whatever. When you have one person in the world - another ping at the back of his head - one and a half people in the world, being generous, most people’s attention loses its appeal.

Juno waits. He doesn’t talk much, anymore. His voice is... uniquely recognizable.

The man is probably smiling; his tone sounds teasing, and that’s about all Juno can glean from the unnaturally stilted sound. Audio distortion, too - whoever this is, the chip in Juno’s neck is throwing a blanket over Juno’s head in an outdated and unneeded attempt at protection. He would get angry, or suspicious, or march over to his partner in crime with a scalpel and demand it out of him, damn the consequences... but he knows the feeling of that shadow in his head, now. The chip doesn’t know why this is happening.

“Do I have the good fortune of speaking to one of the pair people are calling ‘the new Buddy and Vespa’?” The man is tall and skinny, and folds himself into the seat across from Juno like it was left out for him. Juno feels one of his fists clench and hopes the scowl isn’t clear on his face, visible or otherwise.

He’d like to correct the man; he’s not trying to be anyone else. Juno doesn’t speak. His voice would be a dead giveaway.

“Not much for conversation, hm? That’s fine. We don’t have much to talk about.” The man leans closer. Juno guesses that the look directed at him now is one of quiet intimidation; he can’t say, since the features are blurring out like static on an ancient television screen. “You’re here for the Maxine Rutherford job. I’m here to tell you to drop it.”

Juno tenses, and the thief - because that’s what he must be, if he’s here to talk another thief out of a job - must pick up on it, because he chuckles. “It’s a big ask, I’m aware. There’s a pretty penny to be had - that experimental technology is worth an incredible amount of money on its own, and that’s not even touching what might be gained from selling her out to a competitor.” There’s something in the way the thief is sitting, the set of his shoulders - or maybe it’s just the chip in Juno’s neck, setting off urgent warning signals. This is a threat. “But I need you to understand something. Maxine Rutherford is mine. And you do not want to be in my way when I get to her.”

Juno pushes the panic button in his head, the one that will bring Jet running. And he’ll need to run, because Juno’s about to do something incredibly stupid.

“Not if I get to her first,” Juno says in two voices. The thief is still, and if he’s afraid, Juno doesn’t blame him. He remembers the way he felt, the first time he heard the Theia layered under his words.

~~~

The detour wasn’t part of Buddy Aurinko’s plan. Even calling it “on the way” would have been generous; the Carte Blanche should have passed it like it had a hundred other space stations, and it would have. It would have, except for the seven names Rita had been listening for ever since she left Hyperion.

“It doesn’t hafta mean anything,” she’d told Juno, holding her tablet to her chest and looking nervous. He remembers thinking it wasn’t her usual kind of nervous, with fretful energy and too much talking - she’d been holding onto the tablet like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the ground. “Maybe it’s not even the same person, but. But I was doin’ some listening, you know, and a name came up, and.” Juno remembers thinking she looked almost sick, saying it out loud. “One of those names. And the soul.”

Juno doesn’t know what he thought he could do about it. He’d wanted to try, and when he and Rita went to Buddy, when he’d forced the bones of what happened in Hyperion from his throat and onto the kitchen table during a family meeting... they’d all wanted to try. Maybe that had been his mistake, Juno considers. He could have been quiet. He could have let it go.

It started with an infiltration. The Dogstar Space Station was small, relatively, but it was still the size of two major cities; finding Maxine Rutherford in the crowd would take some looking, with or without Rita’s ‘listening.’ Juno and Jet would go first, bumbling tourists who might, if they were lucky, stumble across a newly-acquired lab space. The idea was to uncover everything they could - location, security systems, layout, plans - and then get back to the ship to decide a next step. Juno packed for a short surface stay. He pulled the last Theia soul from where he’d stowed away in the back of a drawer and, after a long moment and with no clear reason, put it in his pocket. He squeezed Rita and whispered in her ear that he’d be okay when she had a hard time letting go. He kissed Nureyev and promised to call. He walked away and he didn’t look back.

Twenty-four hours later, the siege started.

That’s what the reporters on the hotel’s screen called it, while Juno and Jet sat on the edge of the couch and watched everything change. Some kind of hostile takeover, a grab for power or property or... something. The reporters didn’t know, and if the way they looked off-camera during their reports was any hint, there wouldn’t be time to find out.

If there are gaps in his memory after that, Juno thinks it can only be that he doesn’t want to remember. There’s him, running behind Jet through streets that are eerily quiet and terrifyingly loud by turns. Hiding, and running, and hiding - the thought that it’s a good goddamn chance Jet seems to know where he’s going because Juno is already lost, the shouting of soldiers behind them, the emblem on a ship Juno spends just a little too long looking at because something is wrong. The two of them finding a back entrance to the docks, using the chaos to cover them. The... wreck.

Juno will never forget the wreck.

They must have hit the docks first, is his first thought. It’s the last semblance of reason over the high, keening sound that’s enveloping the rest of his brain - they must have hit the docks first so no one could get out, they must have destroyed every waiting ship to keep the people of the Dogstar Space Station right where they were, because there is nothing but wreckage and broken parts.

Juno might have screamed. It might have been Jet. It might have been someone else, any voice out of hundreds speaking for all of them: loss, despair, desperation. It didn’t matter; the damage was done, and they were alone.

Jet held his hand. Weeks, months - however long they survived on the Dogstar after that, it was with Jet holding his hand and Juno clinging back. There were names they didn’t say for a long, long time but they held onto each other while the soldiers-who-weren’t-soldiers rounded up stragglers and led them to the government facilities that didn’t belong to any government Juno had ever heard of. They were lucky enough to have each other, but it didn’t feel like luck; it felt like borrowed time.

(He said he would call, and he did. He called, once, and he didn’t know what he expected - but he got no answer, and if he dropped his communicator the next time they ran, well, who was going to miss him?)

“I get it, if you hate me,” Juno said into the dark of the shelter they’d found, a hidden nook between big, steel beams of a bridge. “For her. For all of them.”

“I do not hate you, Juno.”

He didn’t know if that felt better or worse. “You should. You’re the only one left to feel anything about it, and they deserve -” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to; Jet knew already.

A relapse, Juno will call it later. Healing is not linear, not when the wounds are torn back open every other day or so, and these things happen. Sometimes there’s a stumbling block on the way to better. And Jet will look at him, ask him if he’s any closer now, and Juno will tell him “a day closer than yesterday.” Jet will nod, because that’s all Jet ever asks of him.

Survival became an exhausting thing. When Juno knew the streets of a couple of districts of Dogstar like the back of his hand, he felt like a rat in a maze, nudged back and forth along pre-determined paths by uniformed sentries and reinforced vehicles. Jet had the kind of patience a person worked for, and Juno could see him clinging to the shreds of it; just shreds, because the hope of patching it back into a serene whole was less likely with every hole the two of them were flushed out of. It had always been only a matter of time before they stood outside of the lab doors and asked each other if they were going to do what they came here for.

Maxine Rutherford was on Dogstar. Maxine had been on Dogstar a long time, plenty long enough to set down roots for a research facility and collect a space station’s worth of subjects by force. If it looked like anything else from the outside, well, that was just a pretty face to convince everyone else that it wasn’t their problem and it wasn’t worth getting involved. The first news reports were of a siege, and that was the last outgoing message anyone received; by the time the theory fell apart, communication outside was an impossibility.

The reality was that Dogstar was a testing ground. Maxine had the Theia, and she had plans.

Juno and Jet became her personal annoyance. And it felt good, for a while; Juno felt alive, Jet laughed sometimes, and at last there was a purpose in being the ones left behind beyond dumb luck and timing. It felt good like another hit felt good, like dodging blaster fire close enough to feel the heat of it on your face felt good, and they would take what they could fucking get. There wasn’t anything else.

(They needed something, in that hell of a prison they were trapped in, with no guarantee that the people they saw were people the way they used to be. The reports they stole were horrifying and complex, and Juno was as frustrated as he was relieved he couldn’t parse the science of it. Bioengineering, maybe, or technology taught to behave like biology - a machine fed raw materials that grew them into circuitry, twisting and growing like roots into a person, along muscles and bones and into the brain and good luck, Hanataba, coming up with instructions to rid a person of an infestation that deep. Juno put down the reports. He pulled out his own Theia, considered crushing it under his foot - looked at the way Jet looked at it and knew he would understand if Juno gave in to that little violence - and then put it away. He talked about close escapes and running guards, and Jet laughed, and who cared if they were running along a cliff’s edge because they needed something.)

A relapse, Juno will call it later. An instinct he thought he’d put away, dragged back out of him into daylight. In hindsight, he could even see it coming.

Maxine had gotten sick of them, clearly; her guards were better armed every time Juno and Jet went in, and the escapes were getting closer. The thought of can we afford to do this anymore had been pushed back by well, what else are we going to do and it was a compelling argument, especially to a couple of people carrying their grief along with them everywhere.

It only took a second. Out of the corner of his eye, Juno saw it: one of the guards unclipping something from his belt. There was just enough time to think he wouldn’t, he’s too close, he’d get caught in the blast, just enough time to see the look in his eye and think if he has the Theia and he thinks this is for the greater good, he would. Just enough time to push Jet forward and press the button for the door.

Jet has to tell him what happened next, and he does, eventually - by stops and starts, in pieces, and it’s the way he tells the story that tells Juno how much it hurt. When Jet opened the door, Juno was... broken. He may have been dead already; Jet didn’t stop to check. He scooped him up like a doll and carried him away, deeper into the lab until he found a room with a reclining chair and a looming machine hanging over it.

Here, he always pauses. “I could not be alone, Juno,” he explains. “I could not lose you too, after everyone else. I could not.”

There were instructions. He needed a Theia and he had one, fished out of Juno’s pocket. He didn’t know if he was making the right decision, so he held his emotions at arms’ length, leaned into his work with the quiet, steady determination required of him in a dusty clinic hidden beneath Mars’ surface, and he knit Juno back together again with filaments of woven metal.

(So much later that it feels like a different life, Juno gets to see it. The scanner picks up the roots that wrap around him, concentrated on the back of his neck at the base of his skull. They’re in his muscles, his bones, around his brain. Tiny, delicate, firm, and Juno can trace the fault lines that would have killed him in their paths.)

Juno didn’t dream, he tells Jet later. When he woke up there was just a heaviness in his mind that he didn’t understand yet, the lab, and Jet standing next to him. When Jet looked down on him, he looked so angry that Juno was sure he was going to scream until he was hoarse - but Jet pulled him close and held him like he was something breakable.

“Never again,” he whispered, and he sounded so pained that Juno was already nodding into his shoulder, agreeing to whatever he said. “You will never do that again. You will not make that choice, for me or anyone else.”

They stayed away from the labs. Jet held his hand all the time while Juno remembered and relearned how to walk, how to move his body, how to deal with the heaviness of his mind. Every time he spoke, Jet squeezed his hand harder... and eventually, Juno just spoke less. He could hear it talking from his mouth. If he had more energy, that would have terrified him. But Juno had other things to be afraid of.

There was something else in his head. It didn’t speak; it could have, maybe - it had the last time it had been there, supplying him with information and rote instructions and orders. The Theia didn’t use words anymore, by choice or by limitation, and it’s presence was still inescapable.

Juno didn’t talk about it at first, the ideas and images that came from nowhere. They were tentative and reserved, and it was so unlike what he was used to that he was half-convinced it was all him and the disjointed feeling was just... the result of shoddily-repaired brain damage. That was a thought awful enough that it didn’t bear repeating to Jet, who already looked at Juno in the silence sometimes like he was asking himself how much he’d broken by trying to fix him. Juno shoved the whispers back into the shadows, and they went willingly; he never met resistance, and that convinced him he was right. His head didn’t work the way it used to, but nothing did; it was another adjustment while they picked their way over the ruined station.

And then he answered a question Jet hadn’t asked.

Juno stormed into his own mind. Jet saw the glaze of his eye, took him by the shoulders and called his name to coax him back out, but Juno was flooded by frantic, overlapping images of radio towers and the repair of something he didn’t know was still floating in his blood. For communication, the Theia said without words. For the kind of communication the chip knew better than spoken language - direct transmission.

Direct transmission.

It was the beginning of an idea. It was the only thing stopping Juno from doing something they’d all regret, ripping the chip back out and to hell with it.

Juno spent a lot of time in his own head after that. He poked, he prodded, he looked for traps. The Theia didn’t have anything to offer - the Theia didn’t have anything to hide. He was given the impression of a long, dark quiet, a nothing; even disconnected and not operating, something in the chip had... stayed awake. Being where it was now felt like a second chance.

There are a lot of other people I’d rather give second chances to, Juno snapped out bitterly, silently. The chip already knew. Hard to keep secrets in his own head.

Juno pushed farther. He pushed out, and sometimes Jet turned to look at him, a strange expression on his face. Sometimes, a radio hissed and whined with feedback, or a screen popped and shuddered, or he and Jet stopped walking when Juno’s view was suddenly too high. Whatever Juno’s head was doing, it didn’t work like it had before - where that invasion used to operate something like a two-way knife, now it was a battering ram, ungraceful and swinging wildly. The repair the machine and the chip had attempted in tandem was a miserable patch job at best, dangerous at worst, and Juno pushed anyway. Jet asked him about it once, and Juno let him into his head instead of answering, invited him right in to see the mess of complicated feelings and uncertainty. Jet reached for his hand.

Every day, Juno found something new. It was the worst kind of game, running up against walls: a new rat maze that he was running mostly alone, but never really alone because he was never really alone anymore. He stuttered like anything over Rita’s name, out loud and to himself. The chip caught stray transmissions and placed them right in Juno’s head, a disorienting mix of updates from the lab and tentative calls from survivors. Some memories took a long time to recall, and some weren’t his. And he ached, he ached with every step while his body healed around him.

They walked. They hid. They planned. And when they reached the dock’s communication hub, Juno leaned his forehead against a transmission tower, exhausted all the way through, and gave everything to one last attempt.

(“Symbiosis,” he says later, so much later in a different life and a different world, the kind of life that has room for beds and money for transport to other places; the kind of life that calls them thieves instead of survivors. Jet looks over at him with a raised eyebrow; if that word in two voices upsets him, he’s good at not showing it - but Juno knows better. He knows. “That’s the word for it.”

“The word for what?”

“For me. For... us.” Juno looks up at the ceiling. Jet knows which ‘us’ Juno means - he knows. “We’d be dead without each other. I get held together and it gets to exist. Symbiotes.”

Jet hums. “You are more than a chip’s second chance to be, Juno.”

“But I’m that too,” Juno says in two voices. “I’m always that, too.”)

They get away from Dogstar. Of course they do; if Dogstar and its destruction couldn’t kill them, if a tossed bomb and losing absolutely everyone and everything couldn’t finish them off, maybe they just weren’t meant for death. One call makes it through the communication barrier with enough memorized confidential information to send several planetary governments scrambling into action and Juno sleeps for a week, but no one besides two and maybe a half people know the connection. Jet carries Juno onto one of the ships sent in to clean up the mess and hides them in a distant corner; they don’t speak, and eventually concerned authority figures leave them alone. When they land somewhere - anywhere - else, Jet leads them away from the ship.

It feels like a rebirth. It feels like a second chance that Juno isn’t sure he deserves, but won’t waste - if not for his sake, for theirs. For Jet’s.

Maxine Rutherford gets away, too. She’s long gone by the time the authorities descend, no doubt trying to sink her roots into some new place, and when Juno picks up that transmission from a closed, secure line and shares it with Jet, there’s no discussion. They’ll do this, one more time, for the right reasons. After that? After that is anyone’s guess.

Jet and Juno waste no time; the flurry of criminal activity in their wake inspires rumors and nicknames, and when Juno thinks to ask Jet if that bothers him, Jet chuckles.

“The legend lives on,” he says. “I think they would be pleased.”

~~~

“I’m guessing that means you poached our contact,” Juno mutters. He’s annoyed enough about the waste of his time that he has no reservations about subjecting his guest to more of his voice - and the thief is unnaturally still, which is satisfying and offensive at the same time. “What, did the people who told you the nickname not warn you about the voice?”

“Let me see your face.”

The flatness of his tone is obvious, even with the audio distortion. Juno frowns; he can’t picture what kind of expression goes along with a tone like that, and it makes him uneasy. “...why?”

“Please.” He hasn’t moved an inch. Juno would wonder if he was still breathing except that he keeps talking. “I just need to... please.”

Not without seeing his first, Juno thinks. He doesn’t have to ask the chip to know that it’s working on it, but it’s the kind of work that’s going to take months of concentrated effort - reclaiming Rita’s name taught him that, and that’s still not a sure thing.

Jet, stop where you are.

I am almost there.

That’s great, big guy, but I need your eyes for a second and if we do that while you’re moving, you’re gonna run into something.

Juno can feel the skepticism; no lying to him in his own head. If you say so, he says anyway. What do you need?

Somebody stole our meeting and I need to see his face - the distortion on this guy is something else. Can you take a look and tell me what you see?

Jet doesn’t answer in words; he doesn’t need to. He looks, and the inside of Juno’s head is quiet for a long time. Juno, he thinks, and there’s a strange echo that usually only comes from him -

“Juno?”

Juno, it’s -

But Juno doesn’t need to be told. He knows. There’s no evidence for him to point to, but he knows the person who would say his name like that, can hear what it would sound like in the right voice in his memory.

Juno leans forward. “Nureyev?”

[welllpthisishappening]

But Once a Year (3/5)

This is a trick.

It has to be. Something Pan planned, or some nonsense only possible in Neverland, because one second Emma’s sitting outside the Echo Caves and wondering how exactly things could possibly get worse, and then the world decides to take her up on the challenge. She’s not where she was. Or when she was, either.

And the future isn’t entirely what Emma expects it to be, but that might not be entirely horrible and Christmas with a husband and a family that quite clearly loves her is only kind of messing with her head. God bless us, every one.

————

Rating: T Word Count: 9K and change, but also stuff happens AN: I cannot tell you guys how much I appreciate you continuing to appreciate this story. It’s exceptionally nice, and I think you’re wonderful. Here’s a whole slew of feelings and tradition and magic. Like, lots of magic. 

Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll || Or start from the start

————

This is a problem. 

Multiple problems, honestly. Like, at least seven different problems that Emma can think of off the top of her head, and obviously the most pressing is getting back to the right part of her timeline, but only marginally less distressing is the overall domesticity of her life at this point of her timeline. 

It’s more than the pillows. Of which there are just an absolutely ridiculous amount, actually. They hover in couch corners and fall to the floor with alarming regularity because, between the two of them, Hope and Lucy are something akin to forces of nature, hopped up on Christmas-type sugar and the cookies that people apparently just hand out on the street in Storybrooke. Someone’s always got some sort of baked good, freshly out of the oven — and while Emma’s discovered she’s particularly partial to Granny’s snickerdoodles, she can’t imagine any of this is very efficient. 

For Storybrooke’s economy, or whatever. 

There’s no bank. Emma looked. And asked. Several dwarfs, actually. All of whom immediately bowed and narrowed their eyes at her like she’d totally lost her mind, which seems pretty accurate at this point. Five days after waking up on that couch, with all of its pillows and questionable comfort, and only a handful of people actually know what’s going on. 

Not Hope. 

And no one actually told her to do that, but Emma figures it’s kind of like deciding to take her boots off in the house. Polite. Plus, a growing determination not to traumatize a ridiculously cute four-year-old, even when that four-year-old appears to be far more adept at stealing cookies than anything else. 

Crumbs line the counter in the morning, and there’s usually a bit of evidence directly outside Hope’s bedroom door, signs of a late-night theft that shouldn’t make Emma smile. She does anyway. Can’t seem to stop it, which might be problem number four. Three is definitely Killian’s consistent lack of jacket, which admittedly is a very surface problem, but the button-up shirts are all ridiculously patterned, and trying not to ask who initially took him shopping is like, problem, three sub-a. 

So, no one tells Hope that her mom isn’t her mom. Technically speaking, at least. They go through the motions, and Emma smiles when she’s supposed to, and she eats what is undoubtedly the world record for snickerdoodle consumption by a wayward princess, but trying to be herself, while also not being herself continues to be a rather daunting prospect. 

Particularly because whomever Regina believed would know more about Neverland vegetation and its ability to ruin everything is taking their sweet time responding or showing up in Storybrooke, and they’ve tried what feels like several thousand things to get Emma back, but magic beans were a no-go, and some very fancy wand didn’t do anything except infuriate Regina with it uselessness, and it’s still Christmas, so there are apparently a metric shit ton of traditions and expectations, and—

“Wait, what?” Emma asks, perched on the edge of her desk in the station because that’s at least something she’s used to. Less so to Killian’s presence at the only other desk, and she doesn’t remember the only other desk being quite so close to her’s, but it’s entirely possible that’s a trick of her not-quite coherent mind. 

Might be problem six. Maybe seven. Making it six gives it power, and acknowledges how much the state of his tongue continues to affect her cognitive abilities. Of which there were already very few, especially while she was exhausted in Neverland, and Emma’s not willing to risk anymore. 

“It’s something of a requirement,” Killian says, not for the first time. Princesses have a ridiculous number of requirements, Emma’s rather quickly learned. And he can’t seem to sit straight in any chair. Also ridiculous. 

“Does that not hurt your spine?”

Shrugging, he smirks at her and that’s been happening more often. Not that she’s keeping track, or anything. She’s just—aware, that’s totally the right word. Of him, and what he does with his face and his patterned shirts, and there’s been no bare arm again, but Emma’s still not really his wife, and she knows the hours he’s spent holed up in one of the copious rooms in their quasi-mansion have been dedicated to research. 

And getting his wife back. 

That’s fine. It’s fine. Definitely not a problem. Hasn’t even crossed her mind. 

Emma doesn’t want him to want her. Like, ever. 

And they’re waiting for her dad, anyway. To report back on some magical failing in Wonderland. Seriously, everything is so fine that it's almost a problem as well. It’s too fine. Everything is—

Great. 

“Are you concerned about the state of my spine, darling?”

Melting is not an option — so far as Emma is aware of, but it’s certainly very appealing in the moment. When that moment includes tilted lips and an angled neck seemingly designed to ensure Killian’s hair falls artfully across his forehead, as if the strands are there to frame his eyes and the hint of light in them. 

She takes a deep breath. 

The light brightens. Or she imagines. 

“A tree lighting, though,” Emma says, not-so-subtly changing the subject. Killian’s brows jump. Up his forehead and past those strands of hair she’s only passably obsessed with. “Isn’t that kind of...I don’t know, it’s not very fairy tale.” “Regina lights the candles with magic, if that helps.” “So why do I have to be there?” “The monarchy usually stands on a platform, waves lovingly to their subjects and—” “—God, how is there more?” Emma balks, but that only gets her a more powerful smirk and eyes that are far too blue to be fair, and they still haven’t painted the dining room. She’s not going to ask about that. 

She’s not. 

“This is something of the central hub for the rest of the United Realms,” Killian explains, “and with Regina and the Charmings here, it makes sense that people...flock.” “Like birds.” “Not the ones your mother can commune with, but I suppose the metaphor is appropriate.”

“Who decided to hold Regina’s queen election?” Eyeing her speculatively, Emma does her very best not to wither under Killian’s expression. She’s not altogether confident it works, but they’ve almost come to something like an understanding, and it’s very easy. This, them. No, not them. There’s no them and while Emma’s done her fair share of staring, there can’t be a them now because that will undoubtedly fuck with the timeline and probably everything else, just to keep inspiring problematic lists, and her increasing desire to kiss him until he also has to deal with wobbly knees is just something she’s going to have to deal with. 

“Maybe I won’t remember when I get back,” Emma reasons, but that one word comes out as wobbly as her knees have been and Killian purses his lips. “Ok, fine—tell me something totally random, then. A fun-fact, as it were.” “Random.” “Do you not know what that means?” He rolls his eyes. “I know at least three more languages than you do, so—” “—No you do not!”

Nodding, Killian smiles over the edge of his coffee mug, and neither one of them mention that his proclivity to drinking a gallon of coffee every morning could probably be this so-called fun fact. “English, obviously, and—” “—Ok, I can clearly speak English,” Emma argues. She nearly bites her tongue in half at the force of Killian’s answering look, part amusement and even more heat and that only circles her back around to the melting thing. 

“Aye, but I definitely know more curses than you do, so that’s got to count for something. Also that’s simply my base language, as it were.” She sneers. He chuckles. Into the mug, but it feels like the emotion behind it sinks under Emma’s skin and times up with her pulse, less erratic than it had been those first few nights, and she’s actually started sleeping consistently. “Then of course, I’m rather familiar with Latin.” “Dead, it doesn’t count.” “Impressive, though.” “Sounds like you’re fishing for compliments, Captain.” “Unnecessary, when I know you’ll be all wide-eyed and amazed in a moment,” Killian promises, swinging his legs to prop his feet on the edge of her desk. “There’s also Greek, and—” Waving her hands, Emma doesn’t explicitly try to swat at his legs, but he’s just so goddamn close, and still exuding heat, and she’s starting to have some assumptions about that as well. Of the possibly magic and decidedly—no she’s not doing that. They’re not that. Not like this, anyway. And Killian doesn’t immediately move, but that only lulls her into a false sense of security, the metal of his hook is cold enough that she yelps when it circles both her wrists.

“Fairy,” he finishes, and Emma refuses to believe he leans forward on purpose. 

“No.” “You keep objecting to my facts and you’ll give a man a complex, Swan.” “Why would you know Greek, you’re a—” “—Fairy tale character?” 

Emma presses her lips together. So as not to make an undignified noise. She’s already whimpered enough, and cried more than she thought possible and the hitch in his voice threatens to shatter several things. Moving her hands is impossible, which is probably for the best, but all of her would very much like to cup his cheek, if only to see if he’ll kiss the inside of her wrist, and she’s like ninety-two percent positive he would. “Pirate prince,” she corrects lightly, and does get her a smile. “Do you have an official title here?” “Captain.” “That’s it?” “Not impressive enough, huh?”

There’s no music on in the station, but they’re clearly dancing all the same — around each other, and the maelstrom of feelings Emma is doing a God awful job of ignoring, and at some point one of them is going to have to pull away from the other. In more ways than one. 

“I didn’t say that,” she shakes, “and don’t bother telling me it’s another argument, I don’t care. I’m just—curious, I guess.” “About me?”

Nodding is the least dangerous response when she’s so worried about tripping over her own feet in this metaphorical waltz, but it’s one of the more accurate things she’s said since she got here, and now she’s got an excuse. No repercussions, nothing exactly permanent about these conversations, or this information, and no one’s told her whether or not she’ll retain her memories once she gets back, but they also don’t know she’ll get back so—

Fuck it, honestly. 

“Yeah,” Emma replies, not bothering to gloat when Killian’s the one whose eyes go wide first. 

“Oh.” “Is that unexpected?” “Maybe at this point.”

Humming, she files that away, preening slightly under the not-quite-compliment. “Not an answer though. Habit of yours.” “Not really, you’re just very demanding in this incarnation.” “Product of my situation, I guess.” He laughs. It’s something that happens more often here than it did when Emma knew him — knows him, whatever tenses get confusing in time travel. Still, the sound consistently manages to catch her off guard. Free and easy, and the magic that rustles in the back of her brain might deserve its own list. 

Or another conversation with Regina. “The Royal Navy,” Killian says, an answer Emma nearly forgot she wanted. Her eyes widen. He looks triumphant. “See, told you.” “Like an Enchanted Forest GI bill, huh? See new lands, learn new languages.” “Something like that, aye.” “How’d you get to fairy?” “Did you meet the Lady Bell before—” “—I got yanked out of Neverland?” Emma quips, and it might be a defense mechanism. Making jokes, but she also hasn’t gone into detail about the plant-thing yet, and that might be because she doesn’t want to freak him out. 

Anymore than he already is. He spends at least an hour in that room every night. 

“Yeah, I did,” she adds,” after she kidnapped Regina and told us Greg and Tamara were dead, which...y’know—” “—Wasn’t the worst thing in the world?” “Does that make me a horrible person?” Killian shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” “Are you going to tell me you learned fairy language from an actual fairy?” “Not much else to do on a hellish island for several hundred years, and it’s a rather complicated tongue. Takes some practice.” “Oh, you’re doing that on purpose now.” The speed of his grin is like molasses. Emma assumes. She’s not sure she’s ever encountered molasses in real life. Even so, the whole thing is bordering on obscene and the opposite of the Christmas spirit and—“Alright,” she concedes, “learning fairy is actually pretty impressive.” “You flatter me, love.”

“What’s your favorite fairy curse word and do you think anyone would be totally scandalized if I used it during this super fancy, exceptionally royal tree lighting?” 

Absolutely, goddamn obscene. The tip of his tongue finds the corner of his mouth, and his eyes get noticeably darker, Emma’s pulse picking up until she’s sure they can hear it on the other side of town, and there’s already barely any space between them, but that appears to be decreasing with every passing second. She’s got no idea who’s moving. She might be moving. 

God, she hopes she’s moving.

Losing control of her limbs may send her off some ledge. 

And she’s just about to throw caution to the seemingly ever-present wind that comes off the harbor, because the front of this patterned shirt looks particularly yankable, but the station door creaks, and a muscle in Killian’s jaw jumps and David clicks his teeth exactly once when he walks in. 

“Interrupting something, am I?” “No, no,” Emma stammers at the same time Killian mumbles “absolutely not,” and neither of those things sound all that honest. 

She’s never gone into cardiac arrest, but if this is what it feels like, it’s kind of disorienting. 

“You hear about the tree lighting, Emma?” David asks, and that’s obviously where her inability to tactfully alter the course of a conversation comes from. Killian rolls his eyes towards the ceiling, slumping back into his chair. 

Exhaling feels like an admission of guilt, but Emma can’t have anything to feel guilty about here, and she hopes Killian’s getting sleep. On the couch. He keeps sleeping on the couch. 

Of course he does. 

“Do I have to wear a gown or anything?” “It’s outside,” David says, “there are trees involved.”

Killian’s hook pokes at his chair arm. “Only one tree, as far as I knew.” “Why are you like this?” “You’re charmed by it, I know,” he chuckles, eyes flashing towards Emma. Coincidence, she’s sure. Her cheeks are very warm. 

She’s very warm. Passably magical, maybe. 

David sighs. “No, there are no gowns. It is in fact only one tree, and Em—you don’t have to say anything. Regina will thank people for coming, Snow will open up the meal and that’ll be that.” “Should I know what the meal is?” Emma asks, and her gaze doesn’t automatically drift towards Killian either. It just, sort of—meanders there, naturally. His tongue is still doing that thing. 

“I was going to get to that part eventually.” “There’s kind of a reception,” David explains, “with cookies.” “Shit, how many cookies can one United Realm eat?” “An exceptional amount,” Killian mutters, and Emma might guffaw. While realizing why her other version had been baking so much before. 

“You don’t have to do anything,” David adds, “just show up and smile, and you’ll get some cookies out of it.” “Will I not get cookies if I don’t smile?” Not able to stop whatever noise rumbles out of him, the force of Killian’s grin makes Emma glad she’s sitting down again. “I’ll swipe you some if you don’t.” “Very gallant.” “Happens from time to time.” Flirting in front of her father is wrong. That’s if this counts as flirting. As far as Emma knows, most of their banter has been a product of their mutually ridiculous lives, and whatever situation they’ve found themselves in at the moment, but this moment doesn’t hold any danger and it is so goddamn easy. 

She smiles. 

Killian beams. 

David sighs again. “Anyone want to hear about Wonderland now? Or how the White Rabbit can’t draw any portals? Or—” “—This is a really extensive list,” Emma grumbles, and Killian’s smile is going to get stuck on his face. Permanently. She’s very charmed by the crinkles around his eyes. 

“Tinker Bell is here.” Slamming his feet back onto the floor, Killian practically snaps to attention, and Emma’s body goes through another reaction she does not expect. What feels suspiciously like jealousy rattles down her spine, rooting her to the spot and drying out her mouth and David’s far too observant. 

He clicks his teeth again. “When?” Killian asks, already standing and offering Emma his hand. She takes it, not thinking about what that means — or how it affects the half-green tint clouding her vision, and her heart misses a beat. As soon as his fingers lace through hers. 

“Just now. Went to Regina’s, but I had to come here, so one of Snow’s birds told me.” “You can talk to the birds too?” Emma balks, stumbling while Killian all but yanks her towards the door. 

“No, no, they carry messages now.” “Ah of course.” “Did Tink say anything yet?” Killian demands, David already shaking his head and they’re picking up speed. All but jogging down Main Street and towards Regina’s office, and the nickname probably isn’t important. It’s fine. Everything is fine. It’s all going to be good. 

Even when the fairy in question snaps towards the office door as it swings open, practically lighting up when she notices Killian and Regina’s eyes go noticeably thin. Staring at Emma like she’s trying to read her mind. 

Her fingers are still tied up with Killian’s. “Hook,” Tinker Bell exclaims, and she doesn’t have any visible wings so she can’t fly out of her chair. She tries all the same, arms that bump Emma as they hug her not-quite husband and he mutters a greeting. It takes a moment for Tinker Bell’s gaze to find Emma, trying and failing to keep her expression even, and Killian might chuckle. 

She kicks his ankle. 

“Emma,” Tink breathes, “it’s good to see you again, you have to get the hell out of this timeline.”

“So, that’s it,” Tinker Bell finishes, shrugging like Emma’s not dangerously close to fully breaking down and Killian’s thumb keeps tapping the side of her palm. Because he’s still holding her hand. Cool, it’s cool. She’s not totally preoccupied with that. 

Regina’s totally staring, anyway. 

“Will-o-wisps,” Killian says, “I thought that was a rumor.” More shrugging. There’s too much shrugging for Emma. “I’ve never heard of it in practice,” Tinker Bell reasons, “but can you think of another plant in Neverland that could do such a thing? That rumor you’re talking about always mentioned how it would draw a traveler in, bewitch them with lights and—were there lights, Emma?”

She nods. Swallows, or tries at least. But her tongue is expanding again, and her heart might be shrinking, and the whole thing feels like a very cruel trick. 

“Pan would have known about all of that,” Tinker Bell continues, “and used it to his advantage. If he could get Emma to follow the light, then she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.” “But I didn’t actually move anywhere,” Emma argues. “There was no following the light.” Regina exhales. “Probably more metaphorical, giving into what the light offered.” “Which was?” “This, obviously. What we talked about, and what you thought you couldn’t ever have while you were stuck in Neverland, convinced of a whole slew of wholly negative things. So, there was no walking, but—” “—I wouldn’t have just run away!” 

Voice cracking is a sign of impending mental breakdown, Emma’s sure. As are Killian’s tightening fingers, although she’s starting to depend on those fingers just a bit because sitting hadn’t even crossed her mind before and now that might be the only reason she’s still standing.

That keeps happening. 

“Doesn’t sound like you had a choice,” Regina says, “if Pan wanted to tempt you, will-o-wisps seem like the perfect way to do it. See the light, get pulled into this future, he gets Henry, and everything he wants.” “But Henry is here. He’s—he’s a grown man, with a kid and—” “—None of that is set in stone,” Tinker Bell interrupts, magic roaring in Emma’s ears. Killian’s going to cut off the circulation to her hand. “With you out of the way, Pan’s got a straight shot at the heart of the truest believer, he can change what you would have eventually done. Make sure he gets the magic that’ll save Neverland. That’s why everything else is falling apart.” “I’m sorry, what?” “Magic,” David clarifies. “All of it acting strangely? Turns out that is because of you, kid.” Scoffing makes her lean forward awkwardly, but Killian doesn’t mention the strain it’s undoubtedly putting on his arm, and letting go of her hand is disappointing for about two seconds. Before it turns into his arm around waist. 

Regina’s expression turns calculating. 

“Again,” she says, “it’s what we talked about. Things falling apart because you got pulled off the board. Into this exceedingly tempting place.”

Widening her eyes at the unspoken judgement doesn’t do anything to alter Regina’s face, but Emma didn’t really expect it to and her eyes hurt. From not crying. She can’t possibly cry anymore. “I’ve never been to Wonderland, though. How could I fuck up its magic?” “You’ve been other places, love,” Killian murmurs, “and all of that has ripple effects. Savior saves one place, and other realms reap the benefits.” “Is Neverland in the United Realms?” “No.” “Just like that?” “Just like that,” he echoes, smile not quite reaching his eyes. “What do we do now, Your Majesty?”

Taking a deep breath, Regina lets it out almost immediately — staring at limbs and their out-of-place placement for a moment, before glancing at Tinker Bell. Who shrugs, again. Emma’s going to scream. Before she cries. Maybe then all the emotions will balance out. “We figure out a way to get Emma back to the right place, so she can save Henry and defeat Pan, then we hope that things haven’t been altered so much in the past that this version of the future crumbles entirely.” “What was that about no pressure before?” Emma huffs, David laughing under his breath and the feel of something on her hair is absolutely not Killian’s lips. “And honesty, what options do we have left? As far as time travel goes.” “Eh, we're far from exhausted on possibilities,” Regina says. “Just need to get creative.” Tinker Bell’s gasp is very loud. “Have you tried—” “—No,” Killian cuts in, sharper than anything else he’s said. “That’s not going to work.” “But you haven’t tried.” “Because it’s not an option.” “Oh, that’s very negative.” He hums, and Emma waits for the rest of the conversation. Another verbal volley, but it doesn’t come and Tinker Bell looks very disappointed. She’s got another migraine. “How long do you think we have until this future just—disintegrates?” Emma asks. 

She counts to twenty-four before anyone replies. “Maybe a couple days,” Regina replies, “a week at most.” “So—Christmas, then?” “I bet he didn’t plan that on purpose, just one of those crazy happenstances.” “Yuh huh.” “Try and sound more convincing next time, that one sucked a bit.”

Hearing the so-called queen of these supposed United Realms utter the word sucked without a hint of irony is not what Emma expects to be the straw that breaks her back, but it is and her back hurts, and all of her aches, and saving people is her gig. She’s got to figure out a way to do that. No matter what. 

She can’t do that while standing here. With three matching looks of concern, and one of absolute and total fear boring into the side of her head, and Emma’s also very good at running.

That would suggest she’s got control over her limbs, though. Stumbling down the stairs, she makes it about three-quarters of the way down before the whole thing is too challenging and her lungs appear to be disappearing, or possibly melting, and something in her spine cracks when she falls forward. 

Hair brushes Emma’s knees, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs and the volume of her breathing and the hand that lands on hers doesn’t surprise her as much as it should. “In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Killian instructs, only for Emma to flat out fail at that too. 

Becoming a very frustrating theme. “Why are you so worried about my oxygen intake?” “It concerns me that you’re not, actually.”

Letting out a breath she definitely could have used, Emma’s head lolls. Towards his shoulder and the very solid nature of him, and he doesn’t try to roll her off. Just shifts his arm so it’s back around her waist and that does make it a bit easier to keep her lungs functioning. 

“Was it all of reality collapsing, or Regina using that particular word?”

Emma groans. “Mind reading’s kind of a violation of privacy.” “Invoking my pirate excuse.” “That’s not a thing.” “Eh,” he says, and she hears the smile. That’s...nice. “Having no regard for laws is something of a requirement for piracy.” “This is not working as well as you think it is.” “I respectfully disagree. We’re going to fix this, you know that, right?” “I can’t imagine how.” “Sheer stubbornness hardwired into your personality.” Laughing hurts her very tight and anxiety-riddled chest, but Emma can’t help herself and she’d been right about the smile. Magic flutters under her skin, a steady pulse that’s slightly different than her normal pulse because it’s also more consistent and Killian’s nose is close enough to brush her cheek. If he wanted. 

She wonders if he does. She’d like him to. 

But that’s another problem, and more danger than anything Neverland could offer, and—“Fuck Peter Pan, honestly,” Emma proclaims, Killian’s response warm on her skin because it also includes a sound drifting close to a guffaw and she supposes his mouth is as close as his nose. What with the general structure of faces, and all. 

He kisses her cheek. 

Quick — barely there, really. Over before it has a chance to register, but Emma’s certain she’s been catapulted into the stratosphere, and he blinks almost hyperactively at her. She’s right about the palm thing too. 

He turns into her hand as soon as it finds his cheek. 

“Apologies,” Killian mumbles, retreating back into formalities and behind walls Emma had been clinging to only a few days before. Now they’re just kind of annoying. “Force of habit.”

“Was it the fuck Peter Pan that got you?” “You’ve always been something of a wordsmith.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Emma smiles. “Can I—can I ask you a question?” “No need to preface it, darling.” That’s something like the eighth time that’s happened. In the last two days. Second in the last hour or so. Emma’s not counting that either. “Do you remember this?” “Currently?” “Don’t be an ass,” she snarks, but his hook is around her wrists before she can even try to lift her hands. “The will-o-wisp attack. I—well, it was my turn to watch and I was kind of wallowing because of everything that had happened, and—” Telling him she wanted to kiss him then and now and possibly for the rest of time is also very appealing. And terrifying. Emma bites her tongue. Coward. 

“No,” Killian shakes his head. “I don’t.” “Is that weird?” “Decidedly.” “So, then—wait, I’ve got another question.” He lifts his eyebrows. Smirks. Has the absolute cheek to lift his thumb and brush tears away from her skin, and Emma resolutely refuses to acknowledge the shiver that goes through her at that. “What was with your huh’s, then?” “Last night, you mean.” “I said Echo Caves and you totally froze. Is that—” “Quite a lot of things happen in Neverland,” Killian finishes, “and not all of them have happened for you yet.” “Menacing.” He hums again, takes a deep breath that clearly isn’t a sign he wants to kiss her again. When he does not actually kiss her again. Fine, fine, fine, super. “Not all of it,” he says, although the words sound suspiciously like a promise and neither one of them blink when a bird flies through the open window nearby. 

“Are those birds flying in sync?” “Stop talking, you’re going to get us in trouble.” “What was that about pirate code, or whatever?” Grinning up at him and his scowl, Emma can’t help but be a little proud that she’s managed to distract the great and passably royal Captain Killian Jones during the United Realm’s annual tree lighting. Which in retrospect, does seem kind of strange since Emma can’t imagine they actually have Christmas in the Enchanted Forest. 

That’s a conversation for a different time, though. 

For now she’s willing to keep playing distraction, and it’s very fun to flirt. With Killian, specifically. She’ll consider the repercussions of that later, too. 

“As far as I’m aware,” Killian whispers, trying to keep Hope from jumping into the nearest snowbank, “your mother has instructed them to appear at certain and integral points in the ceremony. For dramatic effect.” “Kind of gaudy, isn’t it?” “A requirement of royalty, so it would seem.”

The muscles in her cheeks are starting to ache. From overuse, and that’s—another problem. Being here a tease. That one strand of hair that always manages to fall towards Killian’s right eye is the worst. 

“How long have you been holding onto that particular opinion?” They haven't turned the tree on yet, so whatever light reflects in his eyes is more theoretical than anything. Regina must have practiced this speech at some point. No way this is all improvised, not with the dramatic pauses and introductions and— “Oh shit,” Emma mutters, the ends of Killian’s ears going red because Regina is introducing them and Hope is nothing more than four uncoordinated limbs and Henry snickers very loudly.

Ella elbows him in the side. 

Emma likes her daughter-in-law. She hasn’t allowed herself to think about that title, or the granddaughter it comes with, but she’s getting very good at putting thoughts in boxes and only partially acknowledging what they mean and Killian's hand finds her again. 

Magic rushes from the top of her head to the very bottom of her feet, standing a bit straighter in another pair of boots, and Killian’s whole body moves towards her. So as to make it easier when he openly gapes at her. 

That must happen a lot too, though. No one bats an eyelash. “If you’re all done,” Regina drawls, but Henry isn’t and Ella can’t contain her laugh either. Mary Margaret looks overjoyed. Even as her birds break formation. 

Emma nods. “All good.” “Gods, the whole lot of you are annoying. You know—” Waving one hand, candles burst into flame without a word, multi-colored lights appearing on every branch, and it takes Emma a moment to realize that everyone in the crowd is holding an ornament. 

“What are they for?” she asks Killian, not bothering to lower her face over the cheers. People are cheering for the tree. “They’re wishes, Mama,” Hope cries. “From everyone!”

He nods when the four-year-old doesn’t explain anymore — already rushing towards Mary Margaret and her ornament. “That’s why people come from all over. Aside from the festive nature, and the talented birds, it’s an old superstition. Place an ornament where the candle was, and you’ll get your wish.” “What happens to the candle?” “Supposed to bring it home, and light that space with the feeling of the solstice.”

In any other situation, exhaling as forcefully as she does would be embarrassing. As it is, Emma figures she’s got a thousand excuses and the hand in hers gives no indication of letting go any time soon. So, seems like a wash. “Gods, that’s nice.” “Aye, it is.”

Hope puts an ornament on the tree. 

So does Henry. 

And Lucy. The list goes on and on, but all Emma can do is stand at the end of Granny’s counters and eat her weight in Snickerdoodles. 

She's the worst, frankly. 

Snow starts to fall just as Emma’s wavering between that happy medium of pleasantly buzzed and legitimately drunk, and she’s got to ask someone who doles out the liquor licenses in this realm because it appears Granny’s hand has grown a bit heavy over the years. 

Lucy scampers towards the far window as soon as she notices the storm, already talking a mile a minute and detailing plans with Hope and Neal — and this happy medium makes it impossible for Emma to be too frustrated by that, but she also hasn’t actually asked what happened to Neal or why he doesn’t appear in Storybrooke, so it seems it’s more difficult to rid herself of the self-imposed asshole moniker than she’d like. 

And the bell over the door rattles like it’s the goddamn town crier, another familiar face stepping through the frame. With red highlights in her hair. “Are we doing this, then?” Ruby asks, flanked by a woman Emma doesn’t recognize and another redhead who is obviously not Ariel and it’s strange to see Mulan out of armor. 

“Cap?” Ruby presses, when no one responds quickly enough, “this is happening, right?” Glancing at a wary Henry and back towards a clearly confused Emma, Killian grits his teeth. While she does her best to come to terms with nicknames, and another tradition and Hope tries very hard to climb up Emma’s side. 

So as to yell in her ear easier. 

“It’s snowing, Mama. We’ve got to play!” Emma blinks. “In the snow.” “It’s a...thing,” Killian explains. “Gets almost—” “—Bloodthirsty,” Mary Margaret says, which is not the most shocking thing that’s happened so far, but Emma’s buzz is starting to ebb slightly and someone’s knocking on the door. Another redhead, with her hair in braids and what looks like suspiciously like a crown on her head and David lets out a joyful noise when he notices the guy behind her. 

Mary Margaret tugs at the edge of Emma’s sleeve. She might be nearly drunk too, actually. If her slight wobble is any indication. “In the past,” she starts, “there’s been some notably magical snowstorms here. It was quite an event when Elsa first arrived, but then well—you helped save her, and her sister.” The redhead waves, as if she knows she’s being talked about and Emma can’t fathom how she makes that connection, but she’s getting better at puzzles. “And now,” Mary Margaret continues, “it’s become something of a ritual.”

Ruby gags. “Oh Gods, don’t say it like that. Sounds ruthless.” “Isn’t it, though?” Henry challenges. “The gist is, that Elsa shows up after the tree lighting with her snow powers and we have a snowball fight.” She’s too drunk for this. Definitely well past buzzed at this point. “A snowball fight,” Emma repeats, half a dozen nodding heads replying with equally large smiles and the almost audible sense of anticipation hovering around them. 

Hope widens her eyes. It’s a very good trick. “She practices that,” Killian mutters, more mind reading that Emma doesn’t bother to point out because the redhead is shouting "come on, let’s go'' and that sounds like a command. And bloodthirsty is a very appropriate adjective. 

Teams are quickly formed, alliances announced and the guy Emma realizes is named Kristoff claims “honor must be defended” enough times that it appears to be a catchphrase. Laughter rings out around them, dancing on the magically-induced snowflakes and off the lights, and there aren’t as many candles on the tree anymore, but some flames continue to flicker, casting shadows across faces and snowballs. 

As they fly past Emma’s ears. 

“Your aim could use some work,” Killian says, breathing heavier as he ducks behind a snow drift they’re using as a blockade. Emma sneers. “Where’d the kid go?” “Ours?” She nods. Tries not to die. Only marginally succeeds. Killian doesn’t appear to notice. Force of habit is a very strong rationalization, it seems. “She’s allied herself with her much more impressive brother, who—” Lifting out of his crouch, Killian cups a hand to his mouth, like that will help the volume of his ensuing insult. “—Has clearly been practicing snowball creation in the Wish Realm and only knows how to win by cheating!” “I learned it from you,” Henry calls back. 

David’s laugh is loud enough to disrupt a whole flock of birds. Perched on the branches above his and Mary Margaret’s head. 

Goosebumps make a glorious return to Emma’s arm — and quite possibly her soul, which only seems like an exaggeration until she notices the spots of color on Killian’s cheeks and the bits of snow clinging to his hair. His eyes get bluer when she brushes the moisture away. Have to, if only to explain Emma’s fluttering magic and fledgling pulse and a snowball slams into her left shoulder blade. “Gotta hide better,” Anna calls, the blonde behind her, who is definitely Elsa, shaking with the force of her laughter. Everyone keeps laughing. Everyone is so happy. It’s—

A goddamn Christmas Utopia. 

“You did offer yourself up a bit,” Killian reasons, Emma gasping at the betrayal. Pulling on the front of her now-damp jacket, he tugs her back against his side and they’re very close. Too close. Possibly not close enough. 

“And what would you suggest o ye master strategist?” “Little wordy, don’t you think?”

“I retract my compliment, then.” “Ahaha,” he chuckles, “a compliment, was it? Well that’s totally different, then. Now, if you just stay here with—” The rest of the sentence gets caught up in his grunt and groan and Emma’s not particularly disappointed to see Hope’s return to this side of the snowball fight, but she’s also fairly certain there was a me looming on the tip of Killian’s very distracting tongue and she’d like to hear that. Selfishly. “Oh, switched allegiances again, have you, little love?” “Henry can’t enchant the snowballs,” Hope says, like that’s supposed to make sense and it almost does because Emma has magic, but she’s never tried to use it on snow. At least not yet.

“I don’t—” she starts, only to cut herself off. At the overall circumference of Hope’s eyes, and the color of Killian’s and there’s something to said for sheer force of will. “Gimme a snowball, baby.”

Excitement immediately colors her daughter’s face, smile wide enough that it’s probably a record and Killian doesn’t say anything. Watches without a single shift of his chest, which means Emma is staring at his chest, but he’s also obviously not breathing, and her lungs can’t stand up to much more of this. 

An admittedly lackluster snowball gets plopped in Emma’s upturned palm, and she blinks away the cold like this is old hat. Or something less lame sounding. Snow packs together like—well, magic, she supposes, a perfect sphere that isn’t quite iced over, but won’t fall apart when one of them throws it and obviously Hope’s got to throw it. 

“Ok,” she says, nodding encouragingly. “Who did you want to take down?” Killian’s lips disappear. Behind his teeth. To stop himself from grinning like a maniac, or so Emma very quickly convinces herself. 

“Uncle Kris,” Hope announces, and this family’s apparently only grown in the last decade or so. Maybe Emma should be more concerned about her heart. And its ability to burst. 

“We can do that. Just—toss it up, and…”

She’s got no idea, really. Just generic hope, and a surplus of feeling, but Emma’s always been told that magic is emotion and she’s not sure she’s ever been more emotional, which is a scathing commentary of her life, but this is also her life and— Killian scoops Hope up, an impressive act of balance and dodging incoming snowballs, and Emma will use that emotion as a reasonable excuse for what she does next. Reaching forward, her fingers curl around the brace at the end of his arm, not able to actually touch skin because he’s wearing a leather jacket, and that’s only sort of messing with her mind. But the motivation is the same, and she’s got all those suspicions and thoughts and—

The most powerful magic in the world. 

“Throw it, love,” Killian directs, Hope’s arm pulling behind her like she’s a professional baseball player, and Emma squeezes her eyes shut. Warmth curls at the base of her spine, inching up her vertebrae until it takes root at the base of her skull, spreading out through her brain and the rest of her limbs and he definitely kisses her hair again. 

She’d been counting on that, just a bit. 

Muscles loosen under her skin, no sense of tension or that ever-present anxiety Emma’s always just assumed was part of her genetic makeup. Shouts echo around her, in addition to the snow, but she can’t quite hear any of it over the explosion of magic between her ears, and Hope’s cry of success will probably be branded on Emma for the rest of her life. 

She hopes so, at least. 

Opening her eyes to find Kristoff sputtering, and Anna as impressed as she is indignant, Emma only barely has a chance to catch her breath before there’s a kid flying into her arms. It’s harder to hold her when she doesn’t let go of Killian. And Killian doesn’t pull away. 

He watches both of them. Traces over Emma’s face, the same way she had in the hallway, and something happens. Something important. Passing between them, and cementing itself in her gut and her soul and his lips twitch. At her magic, probably. “Thank you,” Killian mouths, Emma nodding against Hope’s hair. She kisses it. Out of habit, or whatever.

Strands of hair are damp against Emma's temple by the time they traipse back to the house, Hope asleep on Killian’s shoulder. Enchanted snowflakes linger on the back of her jacket, hovering on her eyelashes for maximum effect and peak cute, which didn’t need any help if Emma’s being honest and she might be willing to err on the side of that particular feeling right now. So as to keep the feeling, all year long and maybe even indefinitely. 

Or whatever they said about Ebenezer Scrooge. 

After he learned to love Christmas. And other humans. 

Emma’s still not thinking too hard about that particular word, though. So, maybe complete honesty’s something of a stretch, but the kid is undeniably adorable and it’s admittedly difficult to think straight when Killian is—

Killian. In italicized and underlined lettering, meeting Emma snark for snark, and snowball for snowball, and she really wants to know his Monopoly cheating strategy, but that’s a problem for an entirely different list because that list has impossible words and improbable feelings and he’s staring at her.

Where she’s leaning against their front door. 

Using possessive and collective pronouns isn’t helping her cause. 

“Are you alright?” he asks softly. For the benefit of the sleeping kid, Emma figures. Not the state of her pulse, or the magic he could feel, and the cyclical nature of time is just toying with her at this point. 

She nods. “Better than, somehow.” “Oh, that’s a little negative, Swan.” “Kind of my schtick, isn’t it.” “Not always,” Killian says, another pair of words that shouldn’t sound like a promise and clearly do not care. Emma feels her smile. Like, possibly in the very core of her being. At least between her ribs, where the growing sense of belonging has decided to linger, this feeling of home and possibility and staying here is not a possibility. Tinker Bell will figure something out. 

Emma will — that’s how Savior’ing works, after all. 

“You know,” Killian adds, Hope humming into his neck and there’s quite a lot of neck. Emma might be staring at his neck. “At some point we concoct this very impressive buttered rum recipe, that’s notoriously good at warding off chills.” Digging her teeth into her lips does not do anything to disperse the butterflies in Emma’s stomach, but she’s also not all that interested in them leaving. “Concerned about my breathing and my overall body temperature?” God, she’s an idiot. 

Flirting isn't quite second nature, though — and Emma’s even less accustomed to flirting as a two-way street, but this feels as easy as it has and will and there’s those tense-based issues all over again. Killian grins. Slow, and measured and inching almost close to lecherous, sparking a handful of other other ideas that—

Immediately disappears when the four-year-old wakes up. 

Brushed teeth take precedence, as do picking out pajamas and Hope is in possession of more pajama sets than Emma knew could exist in one set of drawers. Then there’s a bedding routine, lifting comforters and crawling under sheets and Emma doesn’t know the story requested of her. 

She’s got no idea what happens after Prince Charles spun around with his sword. 

It’s got to be impressive, though. 

“Oh, Hope I—” she exhales, fear creeping back into the forefront of her mind. Until fingers find they’re way back into hers, and they’re just as warm as they always are and it takes Killian less than three minutes to promise a different story on another night. 

No tears are shed, so that’s got to be a victory and Hope’s eyes are already fluttering closed when Killian flicks off the light. Lingering in the hallway, Emma’s not sure what she’s supposed to do or where she’s supposed to go, but there’s a hook pressed into the small of her back and buttered rum turns out to have a ridiculous amount of cinnamon in it. “Shit,” Emma mutters into her glass, and Killian looks far too satisfied. “This is really good.” “Took some trial and error, but we got there eventually. Or get there for you, I suppose.” Sipping instead of responding is another cowardly move, one Emma won’t ever admit to and it doesn’t matter because he can read her mind. At least her face. Open book, and all that. 

“I’m sorry.” Killian blinks. “For what, exactly?” “God, throw a dart. Everything I—showing up in your life and making the right Emma disappear, maybe, and that’s got to be fucking with you, and—” “—You’re not the wrong Emma,” he interrupts, with enough force to pull her up short. Buttered rum drips on her chin. So, she’s a picture of romance and flirting potential. “Just a little early, that’s all.” “Not what you said when I got here.” “Aye, well that was the bastard version of me. He’s a—” “—Bastard?” “Absolutely,” Killian nods, “and maybe a little unsure of himself when it comes to you.”

It’s her turn to blink. More than once, only a little concerned the scene in front of her will change, but it doesn’t and it won’t and there’s got to be a limit on time travel. Emma’s reached her quota by now, she hopes. “Because I’m a mess now? I mean, this version of me. Not the wife one.” “You’re worried about Henry. And I understand that, did then as well. I just—you want to know why the Echo Caves gave me pause? Because if you got tugged right after that, then all you’re sure of is that I think I could move on from Milah, but nothing else has happened for you yet. No promises or—” Swallowing, he sets his glass down and there wasn’t much room between them, but there’s even less now and Emma’s got nowhere to put her hands. Except on his thigh. Where it bumps hers. “Leaving behind that bastard who wouldn’t give you the magic bean was always something of a challenge, but you made me want to. Made it easier to do just that. Because eventually you do trust me, and you believe in me, and—”

He exhales. Licks his lips. Emma can’t move. “The thought of losing that terrified me,” Killian finishes. 

They’ve stopped dancing. Are standing stock-still in the middle of the floor, while other people twirl around and wait for them to get their rhythm back. And Killian doesn’t blink, which is equally frustrating and overwhelming and a much more positive adjective that Emma can’t be bothered with because she’s too busy saying, “I...like you?” “Was that a question?” “Maybe,” she admits, “it’s not really my forte, and I told Neal a bunch of shit in the Echo Caves too, so—is...did my parents name their kid after him?” “Yuh huh.” “Don’t sound particularly pleased.” “We’ll get to that,” Killian says, “Rehash the liking stuff, please.” Maybe laughing at inappropriate times is actually his greatest talent. Emma’s head drops, bumping Killian’s shoulder, but then there’s an arm back around her waist and there’s so much of him, and that’s always been the problem. Opposite of a problem, really. 

“You just—” Emma mutters. “Came back, for us and me and I...that kind of terrifies me too, but you always make sure if I'm ok, and that’s—not a ton of people do that.” “Becomes something of a habit.” “I’m going to ask you a question.” “Still don’t need to preface it.” “Are you Prince Charles in the story?”

Surprise is a good look on him. All of them are, but Emma’s already crossed one emotional threshold and like wasn’t really the word she was thinking about before. “Aye,” Killian says, soft enough that it’s difficult to hear. 

“Does that make me the princess?” “In almost every story I tell.”

The warmth moves to her cheeks, and the same skin Killian’s fingers graze, coming dangerously close to the edge of her mouth and barely parted lips. “So, uh,” Emma stammers, “not our first time travel adventure?” “Gets confusing when you haven’t done that other part yet.” “Time travel might be overrated, honestly. But we get back, right? That’s—I mean, you’re here.”

Nodding, his nose replaces his fingers and it’s oddly endearing. “If you remember this in the past, I refuse to be held accountable, alright?”

“Seems fair,” Emma laughs, and she thinks she hears him swallow before he responds. “You give up your magic, for me—which is something else I never entirely pay you back for, but then we get pulled into the portal, adventures ensue, including that very impressive spin move, and then your magic comes back.” “How?” “With that wand Regina used before, that’s why she thought it would work.” “You’re skipping over things,” she accuses, and flirting might not be the only two-way street. He’s getting easier to read. “Was that was it you? Helping with my magic?” Shrugging isn’t easy when they’re so tangled together, but Killian’s ears are as red as Ariel’s hair and Ruby’s highlights and—“The only reason I magic’ed that snowball was because I was holding onto you. Control’s not something I’ve got much of right now.” “You would have been able to figure it out.” “Not with a kid waiting, and all those people and—” Problems be damned. Lists be damned. Time itself, be goddamned. “Paying me back is a stupid thing to think.”

“Swan.” Shaking her head, Emma moves before she can reconsider how incredibly dumb this is and possibly even more dangerous, but he keeps staring at her and it’s so easy and normal, and if she were someone who breathed with any sort of regularity, that wold be an appropriate analogy. Killian shifts too, so that helps. 

And she definitely mumbles kiss me like some harlequin romance heroine, but he doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t object and the fingers that find her hair help ground her. To this plane of reality. Nice exists for about half a second, before it rather quickly evolves into need and desire and there are hands everywhere. Emma’s and Killian’s — tracing each other like this is the first time all over again, and her back arches once she clamors into his lap. 

Rocking down at the same time he rocks up draws out several sounds Emma’s never heard before, and would not mind hearing on loop. Fingers search out skin, pushing into the tuft of hair at the nape of his neck, and she can’t tilt her head enough. To get the right angle, or more of his tongue and his tongue’s already swiping at her lips. 

He groans again. When she opens her mouth, lets him trace as much as he’d like, and Emma would like even more, but she’s always been kind of greedy when it comes to him and really oxygen is vastly overrated. 

She can’t keep her eyes open. 

Can’t imagine how anything gets better than this, or them and there’s that pronoun again. 

Both of their shoulders heave when they finally have to pull apart, more black than blue in Killian’s eyes and— “We’re really good at that,” she mutters, working a laugh out of him. That he presses against her neck. And under her chin. Drags across her jaw, and up towards her temple, kissing whatever he can reach and everywhere he lands and it takes a power she did not know she possessed for Emma to keep herself from demanding he take his clothes off as well. 

She opts for the next best thing. “Thoughts on sleeping in your own bed?” 

The eyebrows, honestly. Flying up, and reacting quicker than he can respond and Killian kisses her. Soft and easy, and as normal as anything. “Vast,” he says, mostly into her mouth, “and it’s difficult to fall asleep without you, so it’d be nice to actually do that.” “Yeah, ok. That works.”

[ceescedasticity]

Jin Guangyao’s Hoarding Problem, version 2, part 1

Okay I’m still not writing this PROPERLY.

Canon notes: This is mostly but not entirely CQL-canon. If I write it through to the end, it will probably turn out better than canon for JGY, but not what you’d call WELL.

***

Jin Guangyao has a lot on his plate: scheming for the Jin Sect’s advancement and Jin Guangshan's elevation to Chief Cultivator; scheming for his personal advancement within the Jin Sect; trying to get Qin Cangye to let him marry his daughter; trying to juggle his sworn brothers; dealing with the tragic death of his half-brother; dealing with the weird thirteen-year-old half-brother that's been dropped on him in some sort of power play; managing the whole Yiling Laozu… thing. There's a lot. He didn't particularly want more. Really.

So Xue Yang — all right, technically Xue Yang is his fault, in that he went and found Xue Yang and brought him back, but his father wanted someone who could do demonic cultivation for them, and that basically meant Xue Yang. The demonic cultivation (n.b.: demonic cultivation may involve any or all of animated corpses, murderous ghosts, and visible resentful energy!) was Jin Guangshan's idea, so Xue Yang is his fault. The whole demonic cultivation… workshop in a subsidiary Jin property near Jinlintai is also Jin Guangshan's fault.

(…This "workshop" needs a name. Wiktionary tells me that "dizang" (地藏) can be a literary term for cellar or basement. The workshop is not completely underground, but it partially is; plus, the word is also the name of a bodhisattva and the irony appeals to me. Hopefully this is not a terrible mistake, but: let's call it the Dizang.)

The Ghost General being chained up in a cell rather than being destroyed was… mostly Jin Guangyao's idea, actually. Jin Guangshan wanted to destroy the thing that killed his precious son, but he accepted that having an example fierce corpse — an example conscious fierce corpse — could only help their research. He also salivates at the idea of being able to control him.

Jin Guangyao floated the idea of also keeping Wen Qing, who after all was an unmatched physician…? Jin Guangshan blew him off. Who cared about a stupid Wen bitch, probably the Yiling Laozu's whore… he hopes she screams when she's burned.

The heavily bruised woman in Wen Qing's clothing does scream. She doesn't say she's not Wen Qing, because at least this way she doesn't have to go back to Xue Yang. None of the Jin cultivators assisting at the execution notice a thing, because they are all stupid.

Jin Guangyao doesn't know Wen Qing, but he knows of her, from his time in Qishan, and Xue Yang has met her and contribute a little more information. Wen Qing isn't afraid to get her hands literally dirty, but metaphorically — she doesn't like it. But she would do anything to keep her brother safe. Wen Ruohan kept her on a leash for years. It's doable. He can just keep her shut away in the Dizang, and no one will know.

He wants her to cooperate, not try to escape, treat anyone he brings to her for treatment, and prepare medicinal compounds upon request. In exchange, she gets to live, she'll be decently treated, Wen Ning gets a break from being a research subject to come see her at least once a month, and Wen Ning will be used only as a research subject — they won't use him to kill anyone.

She agrees.

Wen Ning gets his attention, when he's being escorted away after the first visit, and says that if his sister is given any victims to patch up and send back for more, he will end the deal himself, by killing everyone involved if necessary. He's… probably bluffing? Jin Guangyao really wasn't expecting conditions from that corner but agrees, sort of — any such patients will be negotiated for separately.

Then he has to go, cause there's a pledge conference he has to get to.

Jin Guangyao's reasons for having Su Minshan use a teleporting talisman to take Jiang Yanli to Wen Qing may include, but are not limited to, the following:

He actually kind of likes her, as much as he likes anyone in Jinlintai. She's always respectful to him. Her kindness reminds him a little of Lan Xichen.

If her life is saved because Jin Guangyao's man took her to Jin Guangyao's personal physician, then Yunmeng Jiang will owe Lanling Jin and Jiang Wanyin will owe Jin Guangyao. Granted Jiang Wanyin wasn't a whole lot of help to the last people he owed a massive debt to, but Jin Guangyao is a lot more willing to aggressively hold it over his head than Wen Qing and Wen Ning were.

Having Wen Qing's first patient be someone she would like to save, who is not a prisoner, may help… start slow. Ease into things.

If Jiang Yanli dies, Jiang Wanyin is going to become intolerable, and Jin Guangshan will probably push dealing with him off on Jin Guangyao.

So that happens.

Su Minshan is not otherwise occupied with a second flute. Wei Wuxian is running on too much resentment and not enough sleep, his own grief and guilt and fury tangled up with all the feelings he's been around — from the Burial Mounds, from the history of Nightless City, from the live people right there. He was at least half out of his mind when he arrived and it only got worse from there, and things… happened, and the corpses weren't listening to him anymore. He did try to stop it, when Jiang Yanli asked him to. He couldn't, but not because of outside interference. He just couldn't. And he's vaguely aware that Jiang Yanli might not be dead, that someone was yelling about a doctor, but she looked pretty dead and it was his fault and everyone wants the goddamn Seal and they're killing each other over it and he ruins everything he touches and there's nothing left, nothing, and Jiang Cheng is telling him to go to hell—

He falls.

The bloodbath grinds to a halt, slower than it should have with one primary driver. A lot of people are dead; a lot of people are still alive; many of them are even ready for action.

In another universe, Jiang Sect might have elbowed its way into taking the lead in the hunt for the Yiling Laozu's body. Jiang Cheng would have found Chenqing (and maybe something more, that he discreetly buried and never spoke of). In this universe, either someone stole Jiang Yanli's body or else — and he doesn't even want to let himself hope but he can't not — she is alive and he doesn't know where she is. Neither of these scenarios is acceptable. Finding her body (don't hope for more, don't hope for more) is the highest priority. Jiang Sect mostly clears out.

Much of the available members of Jin Sect take off for the Burial Mounds for plunder and wiping out the remaining Wens! [Who did not turn themselves in with Wen Qing and Wen Ning, that was stupid.] It really wouldn't do to have anyone else get the loot and/or have everyone realize the Wens are noncombatants. (The Jin know perfectly well they're noncombatants.) They aren't alone — there are a number of tagalongs from sects great and small — but it's mainly Jins. This is roughly as it is in the usual universe.

Lan Sect is abruptly preoccupied with internal issues, which internal issues are also taking off for the Burial Mounds, also as in the usual universe.

Nie Sect gets left with more than its share of cleanup, most likely also as in the usual universe.

Jin Guangyao, who as we recall rose to a position of significant trust in Wen Ruohan's Nightless City, takes a shortcut down to the bottom of the cliff (which is not actually lava that is very unsafe). Just to look, before he follows to the Burial Mounds to make sure they don't miss anything important in the looting.

He isn't expecting to to find Wei Wuxian somehow still alive. Just barely.

The logical thing to do would be to finish him, or summon everyone and let the careless handling kill him in minutes. Everyone wants him dead, he's clearly dying, simple enough.

Except…

Wei Wuxian is insane, and has been at least since he walked away from power and privilege to go camp in a mass grave with a pathetic bunch of fugitives. Probably longer. But there's no denying he's brilliant. No one every cultivated with resentment without Yin Iron before him, at least not at such a scale. And it's not like he's dangerous in this condition. And would anyone really be surprised not to the find a body? Maybe he turned into evil smoke and floated away. So maybe…

He has to wait for Su Minshan to get back, because trying to move Wei Wuxian in any normal way would probably kill him straight out.

Wen Qing gets about an hour break between healing Jiang Yanli to the point where Su Minshan can safely take her back to the normal Jin healers and Jin Guangyao and Su Minshan teleporting in with 90% dead Wei Wuxian.

(If he's here, no one is protecting the Burial Mounds. It was all for nothing.)

She thinks it might be kinder to let him die. She seriously thinks about letting him die. But she can't bring herself to do it.

There's only so much she can do, of course, in the absence of a golden core. But she can keep him alive, for the moment.

When he's stable — for the moment — Jin Guangyao comments that she wasn't surprised by the lack of a golden core.

Wen Qing says of course she wasn't, she was his doctor in the Burial Mounds for a year.

Jin Guangyao says that he was surprised, because he'd read Wen Zhuliu's reports and he never said anything about destroying Wei Wuxian's core — just Jiang Wanyin's. (He's lying. He noticed the oddity of Jiang Wanyin's non-missing core almost immediately after the war, and while at first he suspected Wen Zhuliu must have lied for once in his life, Wei Wuxian's non-use of spiritual energy led him to suspect something close to the truth. He wasn't sure Wen Qing was involved until just now, but that's not a surprise either.)

He says he knows she did it. (He's not lying. Wen Qing schools her expressions well, she had to in order to survive Wen Ruohan's Qishan, but Jin Guangyao is on another level.)

Wen Qing says it doesn't matter, it doesn't work without a voluntary donor, so it's of extremely limited utility. (This is not technically a lie, as it has definitely never been done without a voluntary donor. And it might be true in general.)

He lets it go, for the moment.

Wei Wuxian is slow to wake, and not in a very good place once he does. It's a relief and a comfort to know that Jiang Yanli is alive, and Wen Qing is alive, and Wen Ning is no less alive than before.

But with Wei Wuxian out of the way the Jins are going to kill everyone in the Burial Mounds and all of them know it.

Practically speaking it doesn't make much difference — the sects were going to attack the Burial Mounds one way or another, and Wei Wuxian was in no condition to defend anything. But dying trying to defend them would have been better than dying for nothing and abandoning them.

Wen Qing mostly doesn't blame him, because it doesn't make much difference and she knew he wasn't going to be making many rational decisions. But she tells him the best thing he can do to try to make up for it is not abandon her and A-Ning now.

He lives.

That doesn't mean he's well enough to reconstruct the Stygian Tiger Seal, or interpret any of his notes, or even talk to you, Xue Yang, does Jin Guangyao know you're here?

Xue Yang is eminently unsuitable for delivering supplies to a sickroom, and Su Minshan has a sect he's supposed to be running and can't be lurking around Lanling all the time. So, Jin Guangyao conscripts Mo Xuanyu, weird thirteen-year-old, who is desperate for any scrap of attention and approval and becomes instantly devoted to him, and who no one is going to miss anywhere else.

(If Jin Guangyao had waited a little longer to pull Mo Xuanyu into his orbit, this wouldn't have been the case — Jiang Yanli would have taken him under her wing. But right now she's isolated, still both convalescing and mourning, and Madam Jin keeps Mo Xuanyu well away from her.) (Mo Xuanyu considers Madam Jin's treatment of him completely normal, incidentally.)

And for a little while we have a status quo.

[zipstick-writes]

Inktober 2020 Day 16 - Rocket

The crew of the brand-new Galactic Navy ship named the Skeld had just departed for a newly-discovered planet, Polus, that Earth scientists had determined would be able to support human life with minimal terraforming. Their mission was to join the established research centre and finish the job.

But for now, the crew, consisting of newly-trained Navy recruits Princey, Dad, Hot Topic, Logan, Trash Man, and Janusss, had to complete the in-flight maintenance to keep the ship in as perfect a condition as was possible while on board, as was made standard by the inter-planetary signing of the 3128-AD Quality Control Act.

Normally, this would be a relatively uncomplicated process. However, the crews of many other ships that had departed from the same Space-Dock had reported impostors murdering crewmates and interfering with vital functions of the ship, often resulting in total system faliures.

And thus, the crew of the Skeld were constantly on the lookout for any suspicious activity from their fellow Astronauts. This is their story.

-

 Day 1

 -

The six climbed down the ladder from the bunk-room above the cafeteria and checked the screen on the southern-facing wall to see which faults had been detected by the ship’s systems overnight. One by one they walked up and touched their tablets to the info-port on the side of the screen, logging their tasks to them.

“Looks like I’ve got to submit my bio-scan.” Logan said, reading from his tablet screen. “Would one of you please accompany me so that they can verify my innocence, should anything happen?”

“That’s quite suspicious of you, isn’t it, Logan?” Trash Man giggled. “Sounds just like what the impostor would say.”

Princey shook his head. “How do we know it’s not you, brother? Accusing another right off the bat like that-“

“Alright kiddos, that’s quite enough fighting.” Dad cut in, glancing at his tablet.

“I’m older than you, remember?” Princey interrupted again.

“Princey, will you shut up?” Sighed Hot Topic exasperatedly.

“I’ve got to scan myself in the Med Bay too,” Dad said through the mounting chaos. “I’ll come with ya, Lo.”

“Thank you. This will be adequate.”

-

Having downloaded the blaster records from the weapons room, Hot Topic was on his way to Administration to upload them to the International Space Agency database. He was at the door when he heard footsteps behind him in the cargo Storage. He turned around, seeing Trash Man standing in the door frame of the hallway.

“Hello, Hot Topic!” He greeted. Overly cheerful for there being a potential murderer on board, Hot Topic noted suspiciously.

“Trash man. Hi.” He responded, measuring his tone carefully so that his suspicion wasn’t noticeable. Hopefully. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I just came to swipe my card. How about you? What are you up to?”

“I’m uploading the data from our weapons systems to HQ.” He said, narrowing his eyes at Trash Man behind his helmet. Despite not being able to see past his helmet, Trash Man seemed to catch onto Hot Topic’s suspicion and stopped talking, moving on to attempting to swipe his Crewmate ID card.

“Ugh, why is this damn thing so goddamn difficult?” He mumbled, swiping his card furiously back and forth in the machine.

“Trash Man! Stop, you’re gonna damage the reader.”

Trash man stopped swiping and looked up at Hot Topic.

“It’s really not that difficult,” Hot Topic said, and having completed the upload was now walking over to where Trash Man was holding his card defeatedly. “Here, give me that card. I’ll do mine, then I’ll do yours for you. Okay?”

“Thanks, Topicy!” Trash Man responded.

“And don’t call me Topicy.” He said. Hot Topic swiped his own card, pleased when the light blinked green the first time. He then swiped, or rather attempted to swipe, Trash Man’s card, but was surprised when the red light blinked and the machine buzzed.

“A bad swipe? That’s weird.”

He was about to try again, when the warning lights began flashing and the alarm beeped loudly and repeatedly. The automated computer-voice repeated the phrase, Oxygen Filter Damaged, followed by a countdown of 30 seconds.

Hot Topic jumped, haphazardly throwing the card back at Trash Man and seeing him move from where he was leaning casually against the wall.

He rushed towards the oxygen room, hands shaking slightly as he inputted the code. Janusss and Dad were standing behind him, having entered O2 after him.

He breathed a sigh of relief. “That was close.”

“It sure was, Kiddo,” Dad remarked, “I wonder what could’ve caused that?”

“The Impostor, of course. Why else would the system fail?” Janusss said sarcastically.

“Oh of course, I’m so sorry for being so ignorant, Lord Janusss.” Hot topic snarked back, bowing over-dramatically. He (figuratively) straightened up, and said, more seriously this time, “I’m heading over to the Cafeteria. Trash Man’s acting off. And his card wouldn’t read in Admin.”

“Trash Man’s always acting off.” Dad replied. He paused to think for a moment, “But I suppose it’s better safe than sorry. I’ll come with you.”

-

EMERGENCY MEETING

-

The three remaining crewmates arrived at the Cafeteria and seated themselves around the central table.

“What happened?” Princey asked.

“There’s something off about Trash Man.” Hot Topic explained. “He followed me into Admin saying he was there to swipe his card, but the reader wouldn’t take it. Not even when I did it for him. And the O2 sabotage happened while my back was turned. He could’ve done it.”

“Was there any noticeable change of behaviour that indicated he was being imitated?” Logan asked.

“Well no,” Hot Topic replied, “But I can’t help but feel like the sabotage was a distraction to draw people away if he was about to.. y’know, kill me.”

“I’m sure that’s just your anxiety clouding your judgement. I realise my brother can be a bit… How do I put this? Bizarre, but that’s no reason to accuse him of sabotage.”

“I’m with Princey.” Logan said, and Hot Topic was sure he could hear him say ‘for once’ under his breath. “We understand your concern, but it’s simply not enough evidence to eject him.”

“Skip?” Dad asked.

“Skip.” Princey and Janusss responded in sync.

-

No one was ejected. (Skipped)

1 Impostor Remains

-

The nighttime alarm sounded, indicating the end of the work day, and the crewmates returned to their bunks and settled down to sleep.

-

 Day 2

 -

The crewmates once again descended the ladder and downloaded their daily tasks, this time in silence. There was no conversation as the six walked in different directions towards their daily tasks.

Logan and Princey set off towards storage to refuel the engines, and Dad went with Hot Topic towards navigation to set a course. Trash Man went off towards electrical maintenance to repair corrosion to the wires.

Janusss made his way over to the reactor.

Once inside, he opened a wiring panel to the reactor’s left. He took out a pocket knife and snapped a couple of wires.

Just enough to cause some trouble, he thought. Checking there was no one around, and glancing at the nearby camera to make sure it was inactive, and opened the hatch leading to the ventilation system. He quietly climbed inside, shutting the hatch behind him.

-

He lifted up the vent and poked his head out, checking he was alone.

Coast’s clear.

He climbed out silently, right as Trash Man rounded the corner. He was about to climb back in, but it was too late. He’d been seen.

Trash Man made to turn around, but Janusss was faster. He lunged, pulling out his knife, and stabbed him in the back.

“One down, four to go.” He hissed.

He was about to return to the vent when it occurred to him. He could get away with this easily.

Janusss opened the panel for the lights and flicked the switches up, disabling the lights on the whole ship. Satisfied, he then went back in the vents and crawled swiftly to the reactor. He poked his head out. Nobody was there. He set off back to electrical, and after a few moments Logan was beside him, having come from the upper engine.

The others were crowded around the panel, and as soon as a light switch was flicked into place it was switched back again.

I could get another one here.

He pulled out his gun, and fired at random. Logan dropped to the floor, and before the others could react, he hid the pistol in his pocket again.

The others abruptly abandoned the lights and looked around frantically. Janus did the same.

Dad was the first to realise who’d been hit.

“Logan.” He cried. “They got Logan!”

Janusss feigned a look of shock before realising that he was wearing a helmet that rendered his face unreadable. Princey stepped back, turning towards where Janusss had killed Trash Man.

“Look.” He said. “Trash Man’s dead too.” He knelt down beside his brother. “I swear on my beautifully manicured sword I will have revenge-“

He was cut off by Dad, who told him they were going to the Cafeteria to have a discussion.

-

“Who did it?” Hot Topic asked.

“It wasn’t me,” Dad said. “I was clearing asteroids with Princey. He can vouch for me.” It’s true.”

“It’s true.” Princey said. “We were together the whole time.”

“Well, me and Logan were in the top engine before the lights cut.” Janusss explained. It was a half-truth; as he’d always say, the best lies contain half the truth. “I was refuelling it and Logan was realigning it.” He could almost hear Logan (and probably Trash Man as well) screaming at him from beyond the grave. But he knew the others bought it. They had seen him and Logan enter together, after all, and they nodded along to the deception.

A sudden voice jolted Janusss out of his thoughts. “What about you, kiddo?” Dad asked, and it was directed at Hot Topic. “You’re the only one who’s not spoken yet.”

Hot Topic was hunched over, seeming nervous despite the space suit hiding his face. “I was in the Med Bay, inspecting the samples.”

I can get one more, Janusss thought. I just need to twist this a bit.

“It may just be me thinking this,” He began, “But it does seem a little suspicious that you’re the only one of us without an alibi.”

Princey and Dad nodded in agreement. “Although I hate to admit it, Janusss is right. You’ve got no-one to verify what you were doing.” Princey said. “Sorry, Emo.” He added.

Hot Topic sighed. “Fine. Eject me. But one of you is lying, I just know it.”

Princey and Janusss held Hot Topic’s arms behind his back as they led him to the airlock, and he didn’t struggle. Dad pulled down the lever to open the door, and Janusss smiled to himself behind his visor.

-

Hot Topic was not The Impostor.

1 Impostor Remains.

-

 Day 3

 -

There was no conversation as the final 3 remaining loaded their tasks onto their tablets. They each went in a separate direction. Dad towards communications, Princey to the Med Bay, and Janusss into storage.

Dad was scared. There were only him and two others left. One of them was the impostor, and they’d only know for sure if they were caught. If they didn’t, they’d all end up dead.

Dad’s hands were shaking as he frantically tried to fix the wiring of the computer.

He heard footsteps behind him.

He turned.

Janusss was standing in the doorway.

Dad froze.

This is it.

Janusss walked towards him, and time seemed to slow.

A gunshot sounded throughout the ship. Everything went black.

-

DEFEAT

-

“Dammit!” Roman slammed his fists on the table. “How are you so good at this?” He asked, glaring at Janus. “This is the third game in a row you’ve won!”

“What can I say?” He said, smirking. “Deceit’s my thing. This game was made for me.”

Patton rolled his eyes, smilling good-naturedly. “Alright, settle down. Who’s up for a rematch?”

“Oh, you’re,” Logan said, pausing to hold up a vocab card, “’On’.”

“If Jan gets impostor again he’s gonna win!” Roman shouted.

“I’m just better than you.” Janus snarked. “You’ll just have to deal with it.”

Virgil smirked. “I can’t wait till I get impostor. Oh, I am so gonna get my revenge.”

“Hey, revenge is my thing!” Remus shouted. “Who knows, maybe I’ll get it first.” He said quietly, smiling maliciously at Janus.

Virgil started another round. “Let’s do this.”

[rainythefox]

Nightfall (CH.15)

Synopsis: Pre-Resident Evil 1, slight-AU/Canon Divergence. Claire Redfield comes home to visit her  brother Chris for the holidays but gets caught up in a dangerous game of  cat and mouse with Albert Wesker, the Captain of STARS, after stumbling  upon dark secrets. She can’t call the law; Wesker is the law, and she  can’t tell Chris. She is trapped…Claire/Wesker & Slight Chris/Jill (There’s Wesker & William Bromance too lol). Rated M for smut, language, violence, adult content.

AO3 Link

Chapter 15:Infatuation

Claire was awake when she heard Chris getting ready for work, but she stayed in bed. She didn’t join him for breakfast or a cup of coffee. She didn’t see him off. She just turned over on her side, away from her door where the hallway light creeped through underneath. She had endured a near sleepless night of tosses and turns, the aches in her muscles a stinging reminder of what she had done.

She must’ve fallen asleep for a couple of hours because she awoke to sunshine peeking through the curtains. The sun was out, reflecting off the snow that blanketed the city. Claire got out of bed and did her usual morning ritual: dressing, brushing her teeth, hopelessly trying to come up with a way to escape her grim situation. Funny how that last one had snuck into her daily routine. Her new normal apparently.

Claire made herself toast and orange juice for breakfast but barely touched it. She tried distracting herself with the newspaper, but there wasn’t anything interesting to read in Raccoon Times.

Umbrella Corporation opens new distribution center, creates 600 new jobs

Mayor Warren promises more funding for local orphanage

Kite Bros. expands Downtown travel with new subway tunnel

Clock Tower Plaza puts up traditional Raccoon City Christmas Tree

Even though Chris left her his truck again, she didn’t want to go anywhere. Where would she go? See a friend and potentially drag them into her situation? Try and get help from someone else that was under Wesker’s boot or on his payroll? Raccoon City seemed like an illusion now, a cesspool of collusion and extortion. As though the rose-colored glasses she had once viewed the city in were ripped from her eyes to expose all of the red flags and blood she couldn’t see before.

Besides, she felt bad for the fight she had with her brother last night. Despite Chris overstepping boundaries with his overprotective nature, he was just concerned for her. He knew she was hiding something and was worried. The Redfield siblings only had each other, for nearly nine years now. Chris had sacrificed time and time again for her, to make sure they could stay together, to make sure she could go to college, always making sure she had what she needed over himself. Even when Chris’s behavior got him discharged more than once, he always put her first.

He knew she could take care of herself. He made sure he taught her all he could. Most brothers were protective of their sisters, but Claire wondered if Chris’s...excessiveness was perhaps a form of PTSD from what happened to their parents. Stepping into that guardian role, he went right into the Air Force, just like their parents. He abandoned a normal future to ensure hers, to keep them together, and to somehow get closer to the parents they had lost.

That was why it was hard to stay mad at him. Even if this time he unmindfully didn’t know the danger he was putting them in with his good, albeit intemperate, intentions.

Claire decided she would apologize when Chris got home that evening. And so, she spent the day trying to be productive, to keep her mind from wandering. She studied for a while, and then cleaned the house for a bit, blasting Queen at high volume. However, no matter what she did, she couldn’t keep herself from thinking about not only her situation, but the man that now had her literally pinned under him. She worried what his next scheme for her would be. But she’d be lying to herself if she denied the excitement that also thrummed through her veins. The strange mix made her queasy.

By the time it started getting dark, Claire realized she had wasted most of her day deep in thought, trying to make sense of it all, plotting for a way out, and maybe spending more time than she’d care to admit thinking about what happened between her and Wesker.

Chris would be home soon, so she started dinner. While cooking, she turned on the television to keep her mind focused, but after a few channel changes, a local news station caught her attention with a caption that filled her lungs with ice.

“Raccoon University professor missing, linked to drugging and sexual assault of multiple students.”

Claire turned up the volume, perturbed, because she just knew which professor they were talking about…

“-ow long has this been going on, Alyssa?” asked the anchor.

The news reporter, a pretty, bob-cut blonde, was quick to answer while standing out in the cold in front of Raccoon University, wearing a white coat and a red suit. “I’m being told this may have been happening for over a year now. The RPD are keeping the victims’ identities under wraps at this time, but I do know there are at least four. Dr. Simon Lowery has been missing for a little over 24 hours, having fled after trying to drug a female student at the open house last night. We have yet to get a statement from his wife, but police are saying she had no idea of his behavior. We’ve heard the same testimonies from colleagues. This is one of those -”

Claire clicked the remote. The TV went black, silent. She stared at the screen, a shocked reflection looking back at her. The news story rubbed her wrong. Lowery was a bad man, she knew that much. He would’ve killed her over those documents, would’ve strangled her in the snow when they fought to keep her quiet over stealing whatever it was she had stolen. But not once did she get the feeling he was like that.

She’d bet money that the news story over Lowery was made up to cover up what really happened. She wasn’t sure if Wesker came up with the story or if it was any of his numerous pawns. Didn’t matter. It proved what she already knew, just like the other day when the news covered that Finley guy’s supposed “suicide” in his car. Just as Wesker had told her before, their fates were whatever he decided. Not just their deaths but their legacies, tainting and twisting them, dismantling and disgracing them, like a true god of death.

The city would never know what really happened to Finley and Lowery, whether they deserved their fates or not.

Claire shook out of her thoughts, a chill running over her as she recalled Finley’s head exploding, blood spraying all over the snow. Why had fate led her down that very same path that day?

A smoky, tangy smell pervaded her nostrils. Dinner was burning! Cursing, she raced into the kitchen to save it. The pork chops were burned on one side but other than that, the rest of dinner turned out okay.

Chris came in not long after she had finished cooking, silently walking over to her spot on the couch as she read a book. The couch shifted when he sat down, and so she looked up from the pages. Still in STARS uniform, her older brother scratched the back of his head, uncomfortable but presenting her an apologetic smile. It was hard to stay mad at him with a puppy-dog face like that.

“Hey…”

“Hey,” she mimicked.

“I’m sorry, Sis. About last night. I clearly went overboard. It’s been eating at me all day.”

“Chris, it’s -”

“Let me finish,” he pleaded. “I know you’re an adult. I know you can kick anyone’s ass. I’m overprotective because of what happened to Mom and Dad.”

She sighed. “I know.”

“But that’s no excuse to act the way I did. I trust you, Claire. And I believe in you. But I get so...obsessed with making sure you’re safe and-and fine that my stupid brain can’t see anything else! I let it get the better of me too much. So, from now on, I’ll work hard to keep myself from going overboard and to trust you more. N-Not that I haven’t trusted you! You’ve never given me a reason to doubt you. It’s stupid of me to act like you have. We’ve always had that unspoken pact that we can tell each other anything and it will always stand.”

Claire shifted uncomfortably in her spot. “A-Always.”

“I love you, Sis. I’m really sorry.”

The Redfield siblings were both stubborn and proud, and so sometimes it was Chris who apologized first and sometimes it was Claire. Although Chris usually gave in before she did. Despite that, this was still pretty soon for Chris to give in, as big as a fight they had. Claire wondered if something happened at work that made Chris come to his senses faster. Maybe Jill talked to him? Wouldn’t be the first time. She was her brother’s best friend, after all.

She decided it wasn’t important for now. She had been ready to apologize to her brother when he got home, and here he was apologizing as well. She was ready to put the whole fight behind them and move on...as best as she could in her predicament anyway. At least Chris had seemingly given up pushing her for answers. What a lucky break! Jill must’ve really lined him out.

Claire hugged Chris. “I’m sorry too, Bro. Love you!”

His strong arms wrapped around her and squeezed hard. For years growing up, it had been the safest feeling in the world. She always cherished it. Soon they pulled away, and got up to eat dinner.

William paced, flipping through pages, catching important details and logging them away at a rate far faster than the average person. Wesker leaned against the wall, dressed in his STARS attire, watching him pace a trench in front of him. Always calm, always collected. How did he do it?!

The cable car shuddered, flicking the light overhead as it rose to the surface. He hated taking this hunk of junk! Normally, he didn’t have to, but they were meeting Irons in the sewers. Perfect place to find the slimy rat.

“No! Goddamn it, no! Why? They said Sheena Island was strictly testing and experimentation! That old bastard is moving my Hunter research there without my consent, and now the Tyrants? Mass production on a prototype? Even if they perfect the Epsilon strain, it’s nowhere near ready for cloning!”

“Are you truly all that surprised?” Wesker asked.

“No, I just…” William sighed. “It’s shit like this that tells me Spencer has no plans to put me on the executive board! If I don’t get in there, we’ll never be able to fulfill our plans! And there’s no way in hell I’m bartering the G-Virus for that spot. It’s my legacy, mine to completely control. He’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers!”

“Best not tempt fate, old friend.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“At any rate, your tantrum is premature. With those numbers, the Sheena Island facility won’t be operable for any kind of mass production until August at the earliest. The research team on the Epsilon strain knows that the T-002 will be obsolete by the time it is finished. More than likely a new model is being developed and that will be the one they intend to manufacture. We have time to take this knowledge and use it to our advantage later.”

Birkin snorted. Lately Al’s “optimism” gave him anxiety. "Don’t you think we have our fingers in too many pies already? And toes at this rate. We’re wearing ourselves thin, Al. With too many enemies waiting for us to screw up.”

It was a reasonable concern. Sheena Island’s true motives were still mostly top-secret for now, going by this information sent by Alex. Roth must’ve bought this information from this other cohort of his, and was probably trying to haggle deals with Mueller, Lowery, and Bard. As well as Crawford and Finley. William made a mental note to thank Alex for this later. Wesker may have been a member of the Umbrella Intelligence Division as well, but he meticulously watched his dealings, aware of Spencer’s tabs on him. Alex didn’t have this problem, and so was their go-to source of anything they weren’t privy to.

His partner scowled. “That is such an absurd idiom. Regardless, we are committed at this point. Roth still has our stolen data and the plans for Sheena Island directly affects our goals. You admitted it yourself.”

The cable car shook and screeched, sliding to a halt. The light above the door turned green, and the robotic female voice told them to watch their step and have a good day. No, he would certainly not have a good day! He was having to deal with this and was about to meet a big rat in a stinky sewer. Didn’t the stupid voice know that? How insensitive!

“Yeah, I know. Guess we better be careful how we handle this.”

Wesker and William exited the cable car and walked side by side through the sewer facility. There weren’t many workers, but they all gave them a wide berth, keeping their heads down.

Wesker chuckled to himself, but William heard it over the water pumps and machinery.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just acknowledging that your prolonged bout of paranoia has made us change places. I’m usually the one telling you we need to be careful.”

They were both ruthless and ambitious, but Wesker had more patience and control. And although his back-and-forth stints of paranoia did make him more cautious, Will still hadn’t developed the patience or control that his partner had always had.

If only you knew why...what he’s making me do…

William frowned, rubbing his shoulder and quickly cleared his throat. “Well, no wonder you're so optimistic lately, taking after me. Like a little ball of sunshine!"

His partner didn’t respond to that, and William hoped it wasn’t because he had caught his nervous tic. In case he did, he quickly changed the subject. “So, did you get the kind of reaction out of Ada you were expecting?”

“More or less. I’m still annoyed by how you handled it though.”

“Look, you asked me to bring Claire up in a way to get a reaction from Ada to see if your suspicions were right and I did just that! You’re welcome, by the way!”

They reached the monitor room where they were meeting with Chief Irons. William entered first, and the Chief immediately noticed him, an Umbrella mercenary on each side of him. His pudgy eyes squinted testily and he opened his mouth to start his usual complaining. That is, until Wesker entered right behind him. His mouth quickly snapped shut. Ah, the benefits of having Al around!

Irons glanced around the room, his usual air of arrogance belittled and squashed like a bug. But there was nowhere to run in this room, nothing to protect him. He was at their mercy, but the tough-as-nails Irons wouldn’t be one to break so easily.

He half-laughed, half-snorted, attempting to cover his discomfort. “Now this must be a special occasion if you're both here. Rumor has it when you two are together, someone's going to die...or wish they would."

"Well, funny thing about rumors, Brian," William smirked. "There’s always some truth to them."

It was fun seeing the color drain from his face only to completely flush red like a cherry. He glared their way, fists forming tightly at his sides. "Oh yeah? And how exactly am I on you two assholes' shit list today? Considering all I do is cover your goddamn tracks and provide you with security all hours of every fucking day. Wait, don't tell me, you two have a rehearsed good cop, bad cop routine just for me?" He laughed. "No thanks."

Will nudged Albert. "Damn it, he guessed it! Wait, am I bad cop this time? I forget?"

"I'm always bad cop."

"No fair! We should take turns!"

Irons rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. "Just get to the point of why I'm here. If we're negotiating new deals, it's a bad time. I'm a busy man, after all."

"Funny you should mention that, Chief," Wesker sneered. "We're done negotiating with you."

The Umbrella mercs pulled their guns on the Chief. Irons froze on the spot, eyes bulging and going to the trained weapons, and this time he turned a bit green.

“Listen, Albert...let’s not get too hasty. Let’s talk like gentlemen. I-I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

His resolve was cracking slowly, but William wouldn’t count the bastard out just yet. Irons had grown complacent in his position, taking advantage of anything he could get his grubby hands on. William and Wesker had allowed much of this behavior to slide in the knowledge that Irons would eventually get himself into a bind. And that’s where he was now.

“Of course, Brian. I am a sophisticated man, after all. Take a seat.”

The Chief of Police looked relieved at that and pulled out a chair and sat down. The Umbrella mercenaries stood at his back, guns still aimed to the back of his head. William and Albert sat down across from him.

William slid a sealed yellow envelope across the table to Irons. “Open it and take a good, hard look, Brian.”

Irons wiped his mustache, a little sweat forming on his brow. He slowly opened the envelope and sifted through the contents. Each page he flipped through he grew a shade whiter, until he was pasty like a ghost.

“What the fuck is this?”

William leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Oh, I don’t know. You tell us.”

Irons trembled in his chair, both from anger and fear. He flushed again, one fat fist crinkling a page and he quickly stood. “You fucking bastards!”

One merc’s gun barrel pressed into Irons’ skull and he quickly remembered his place. He slowly sat down. He sure was sweating a lot now!

“You put yourself in this situation, Brian,” Wesker stated. “You know I keep tabs on you and yet you got sloppy. Arrogant, too, thinking you’d be able to set me up.”

“Your sick fantasies with the mayor’s daughter will be released to the public. Your replacement has already been chosen. You will die,” William continued.

“No! No, please! We can come to an agreement!”

“There are no more agreements to come to, Brian,” Wesker growled. “Just two choices. You can die like William so eloquently stated or you can sell the remainder of your pathetic soul to our cause.”

And unsurprisingly, the Chief went with the option that kept his sorry ass alive. “Deal! You got it!”

“And just so we’re clear. That -” William motioned to the envelope. “- never goes away. This is your last chance. Next time...well...there won’t be a next time. Just you dead and your dirty secrets exposed for all to see. Never forget how replaceable you are, Brian.”

Irons slowly nodded, guarded. “And exactly what are you two going to want me to do for your “cause”?”

“You will still perform your normal duties for Umbrella, and only report to me,” Wesker explained. “But if William and I tell you to do something, you do it. Even if it goes against your orders from Umbrella.”

“Fine.”

“William will be taking over as your handler. You should thank him. It was my intention to kill you tonight and he convinced me otherwise. If he asks you to perform in the circus, I expect you to clap your flippers and balance that ball without any disinclination. Do I make myself clear?”

Irons ground his jaw and stiffly nodded. “You always do, Albert.”

William sat up a little straighter, a haughty grin spreading. Albert’s protectiveness of him always gave him a feeling of empowerment, feeding his ego, and made a darker part of himself more bold, more ambitious.

“Don’t worry, Brian,” Will said with a fake, friendly smile. “You do a good job and stay on my good side, I always pay really well, way more than Al does.” He added a postscript after seeing the Chief’s interested grin. “Get on my bad side, however, and you’ll be my newest experiment...just ask Lowery.”

The Police Chief’s relief was short-lived. The mention of Lowery’s name struck something in him. He scowled, stiffening once more, looking between the two partners in crime.

“So you two were behind what happened at the university?”

“Oh yes,” William bragged. “Which is partly how we found out about your little attempt to set up Albert.”

“Which brings us to our next order of business, Brian,” Albert added. “Who was with you when you met up with Aaron Roth?”

Irons shook his head, hands on the table, still aware of the guns at his back. “Look, Lowery and Bard paid me to keep their business dealings hush-hush. I think they were trying to coerce Mueller into selling key information on his project in exchange for getting some crucial research going down on some island.”

Will sighed. “Don’t make Al repeat himself, ya idiot.” He snapped his fingers. “His name? Who is he?”

“S-Some bigshot from Europe who works on this island. He’s partners with Roth, buying and selling research within Umbrella and other companies. Goes by Stefan Bennett, but I couldn’t tell you if that’s his real name or not.”

When Will glanced at Al, a subtle flex in his shoulder was all he needed to read him. Bennett wasn't anyone known to them.

"Where are they hiding out?"

Irons shrugged. "Don't know. I'm only being paid for their meetings. Bennett will be at Bard’s annual Christmas party. I don't know if Roth will be there. He acted like he had other plans."

Like selling my research, the bastard...

"Then I suppose a meeting with Nathaniel Bard is in order," Wesker announced, sunglasses glinting under the fluorescents as he looked to William with a dark grin.

William returned his partner's smirk. "Yeah...It's party time."

(photo by IsmaelUchihaSan)

It was the perfect day for Jill to be off, or not have her shift until the evening anyway. Late morning, while Chris was stuck at the RPD, the girls enjoyed a light brunch and lattes at a quaint coffee shop before doing some last minute Christmas shopping.

Claire always enjoyed hanging out with the older woman. They had a lot in common and Claire was always learning something new with her company. She often found herself wondering if her oaf of a brother would ever romantically ask Jill out. It seemed like everyone could see it but them. Then again, perhaps they didn’t pursue their feelings because of their careers. Claire didn’t know the policies of STARS, but there might be restrictions there.

The two of them picked up Claire’s gift she had bought for Chris and took it over to Jill’s house. The box was tall and rectangular, about the size of a small adult. Though bulky, it wasn’t as heavy as it looked, and with each of them on one end, was able to carry it easily into the home.

They were greeted by Jill’s overly affectionate golden retriever, Bella. Claire flopped onto the floor to properly greet the fluffy, blond dog. Jill giggled at the sight.

“Hell of a guard dog, ain’t she?” Jill joked. “She’ll lick you to death.”

Better than getting my throat ripped out by Wesker’s dog…

Claire pushed aside that unpleasant memory and stood back up. Hard to believe that was only a few days ago. Her hand was already a lot better, but her ankle still hurt like a bitch.

They carried the box into Jill’s other bedroom that doubled as an office and home gym. The STARS Alpha member’s house was a three bedroom, two bath. She assumed the third bedroom was a guest room, but Claire wasn’t sure. Chris’s house was a bit bigger, with three bathrooms. They had their own in their bedrooms and then the guest bathroom in the hallway.

“Thanks for keeping this here for a bit, Jill.”

“No problem. I guess my home is the popular choice to hide gifts. Chris has yours here as well. I’m just waiting for Barry to ask to keep the girls’ gifts here, as if they don’t have enough space in that big house of theirs.”

“Well, you know how Moira is. She gets into everything. They can’t hide any gifts from her! She’s gonna be a handful as a teenager!”

They laughed and returned to the living room, Bella trailing behind them. Jill fetched them some water and the girls took a load off on the sofas.

“The punching bag was a good thought,” Jill declared. “I know Chris has been wanting one.”

Claire nodded, smiling as she watched Bella carry around her favorite plush duck toy. “Yeah. He’s been really wanting to start bulking up more. Although when we were playing on his guitar last night, I realized he needs a new toolkit for it. So I might have to go pick up one of those as well.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot you play too. Why haven’t I got to see you play yet? I’ve watched Chris lots of times.”

Claire shrugged. “I guess we just never think about it when I'm visiting.” The Redfield siblings didn’t mind playing guitar in front of others, but they cherished playing together, reciting notes and melodies their father had played for them when they were young. “Chris told me you played piano? I need to see that!”

Claire didn’t get the piano at all. That was entirely different from the guitar.

Jill softly laughed. “Yeah. It’s ingrained from childhood. Had the meanest instructor ever. Chris jokes that playing the piano won’t ever do me any good, and suggests I learn something else.”

“He’s just jealous,” Claire joked.

Jill laughed at that. “He totally is. You know, I’m happy you two reconciled so quickly. Chris can be so stubborn sometimes.”

“He can be, but I’m not one to talk. Whatever you said to him, it must’ve worked. So thank you for that. I know he’s just trying to look out for me, but it gets old. I’m an adult and can take care of myself.”

The older woman furrowed her brows and shook her head. “It wasn’t me.”

“Huh? It wasn’t?”

“No, it was the Captain.”

Her heart flipped, twisting her lungs to where she choked on air before she could take a drink of her water. It took all in Claire’s power to keep a straight face and feign something catching in her throat. “I’m sorry?”

“The fight you two had upset Chris a lot, affected his performance when we were doing some training. I guess Wesker picked up on it. Apparently, they took a long lunch together, and the Captain helped Chris get his head straight. At least, that’s what Chris told me later.”

Claire was completely freaked out by that information but hid it, wiping her suddenly clammy hands on her pants. She drank half of her water in one gulp and squeezed the bottle so hard it crumpled in the middle.

“O-Oh, I figured it was you.”

“Not this time,” Jill answered. “But it wasn’t without a lack of trying. He just didn’t listen. Not until he had gone too far anyway, the ass. At least Wesker got through to him.”

“Yeah…” she cleared her throat and stood up. “Well, I should get going. I don’t want to take up all of your free time and I have some studying to do. Thanks for helping me pick that up and letting me hide it here.”

It was partially true. Claire didn’t want to take up all of Jill’s day off before she had to go in for night shift. But mostly the recent news had unsettled her and she needed to gather her thoughts on the matter.

Jill smiled, nodding as she patted Bella on the head as the retriever’s big brown eyes stared up at Claire with that duck still in her mouth, tail thumping hard on the hardwood floor.

“No problem, Claire.”

“Stay safe tonight, Jill.”

“You’re not on the schedule...again.”

Ada sighed, crossing her arms and looking at the guard like he was stupid. He was. “I know that. But that won’t matter. William will still see me.”

The guard shifted uncomfortably, studying her suspiciously and then glancing at his list again. “Dr. Birkin is an extremely busy man. He’s been doing important tests all day and asked me to not allow anyone but Mrs. Dr. Birkin and Dr. Wesker entry. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“I’m here on behalf of Albert. He’s busy at the police department currently. Just give him a ring and you’ll see.”

The guard hesitated, thinking and unsure. Clearly, he was scared to disturb his boss in the middle of his important work.

Ada smiled flirtatiously at him. “C’mon, Johnny. Help a girl out? It’s important.” She winked.

Johnny sighed. “Oh, alright.” He put a hand to his headset. “Dr. Birkin? I’m sorry to bother you, but Ms. Wong insists on seeing you. She says she’s here on behalf of Dr. Wesker.”

The spy didn’t miss how the camera up in the corner of the hallway turned down their way, aiming the attached machine gun right on their faces, blinking red light a far deadlier version of Candid Camera.

“Yes, sir. I understand. Will do,” Johnny said into his headpiece. He nodded at Ada and stepped aside. “You may enter. But please, keep it short. He has much to do.”

Ada waved him off. “Thanks, Johnny.”

She went through the automatic door, was sprayed down again, and strolled through the large, multi-room laboratory. She turned a corner, saw bright yellow and outstretched arms, and, on reflex, kicked the thing away from her.

“Ow!” came a muffled voice.

“Will, you idiot. Don’t sneak up on me like that,” Ada snapped.

The mad scientist pulled the hazmat suit’s helmet off, waddling over to the nearby safety station to strip it off and hang it up.

“I think that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to scaring you!” William laughed.

Ada crossed her arms, glaring at him. “You didn’t scare me. You didn’t even startle me. You mildly annoyed me.”

“Ugh, you sound like Al. One day I will scare him. It’s on my bucket list. It might get me killed, but imma do it!”

The spy shook her head. “I don’t know about you sometimes.”

Birkin seemed extra...quirky today. He had an extra bounce in his step, grinning, humming as he left the safety station to his main desk. That’s when Ada noticed numerous empty energy drink cans and half a cup of cold, forgotten black coffee.

“How many of these have you had?” He did kind of look like one of those zombies Ada had seen being dissected in the Arklay lab, pale skin and dark circles under his eyes.

“Uhh…” he pondered, counting on his fingers as he twitched and quivered restlessly. “Five? I think?” He flopped down in his chair, shifting it side to side.

Ada leaned against his desk, glancing at the disorganized paperwork strewn about. Her sharp eyes caught many interesting and familiar things: G-Virus, Plant 43, Hunter Beta, Cerberus, NE-Alpha parasite, Lisa Trevor, T-Virus Epsilon. Then her eyes caught the interesting things that she had only seen once and was curious to find out more, now with associated words that intrigued her further: Prototype Virus, Project W, eugenics research, Progenitor, Ndipaya.

She had only a few seconds of absorbing these words before William snatched up the two papers that had anything on it. She watched him open his safe and put them inside, only accessible with a scan of his hand.

Ada acted like none of it interested her. “Five, huh? And how long have you been up, exactly? You look like shit. You smell like shit.”

William lifted his shirt and smelled. “I don’t know, when did Al and I go talk with Irons?"

“That was yesterday morning.”

“Oh...shit. Well, it’s been over 24 hours then.”

“I can tell.”

“So, how’d it go with Mueller?”

“As well as you’d expect. I’ve already relayed the info to Albert. Mueller won’t be a problem. In fact, he’s willing to help if it gets rid of Roth. I guess he feels scammed by the trade.”

William smirked, still swiveling slightly side to side in his chair. “I bet he does. Well, with Lowery no longer having a tongue and Irons and Bard put in their places, looks like we might be able to wrap this up by Christmas!”

Ada rapped her nails on the desk, frowning. “Albert told me the plan. Look, between you and me, I gotta ask...what’s the deal with him and Claire?”

Will chuckled. “What’s wrong? You jealous?”

“In your dreams. It’s just that...I mean, I don’t know the girl,” she lied. “But I thought he was just using her to get to Roth. Why have a fling with her? He doesn’t do that...at least not with just anyone.”

“You sure are a curious little kitty,” William half-joked, half-warned, leaning back in his chair. “What are you hoping to use this knowledge for?”

Ugh, she hated when he was an asshole. Then again, he was protecting Albert and so she should’ve known better. The spy sighed. “Fine. I’m just a little worried about Claire, alright? Can you blame me?”

She knew how Wesker worked. Claire was in way over her head. Didn’t matter how smart and strong she was. Despite being his type, she was still different than most and he did seem to have some kind of soft spot for her. And that is what both bothered and intrigued Ada.

“It’s not like you to worry about others like that. And I can blame you, actually. You got yourself tangled with Al. That’s on you.”

Ada bit her tongue. This wasn’t about her. “And poor Claire got tangled out of her control. C’mon, Will. I’ve helped you two a lot recently. Throw me a bone here. I deserve something in return.”

Will kept a straight face, thinking it over. Ada glared at him. Finally, the Golgotha creator grinned widely and leaned forward. Ada recognized the child-like delight, and knew he was about to spill the beans.

“Alright, alright! I think he has feelings for her.”

Ada laughed skeptically. “Whatever, Will! Tell me for real.”

She had to admit, she had thought something similar a few days ago when she spied Wesker nearly pinning Claire against his car. But she soon dismissed it. He definitely liked her and was attracted to her…but had feelings for her?! That was a little hard to believe.

“I do! He is obsessed, I’m telling you. The girl would’ve been dead a long time now had it been anyone else. He’s given her more chances than I’ve ever seen. He had the chance to pop her brother in the back without anyone knowing and didn’t do it! I don’t think he knows it himself, or he purposely keeps himself in denial, but...there’s something about her.”

Ada frowned, thinking it over. William had a point. All of Claire’s stunts to try and fight Albert should have ended with her dead a long time ago. And how her brother had been getting suspicious and snooping around, well, it should have ended the same with him by now.

“You think she reminds him of Anezka?” Ada asked.

Was that her name? Ada couldn’t really remember. She wasn’t around back then and had only heard all the different stories when she came here a couple of years ago.

“Nah...I mean they’re both redheads and feisty, but I don’t think that’s it. Anna jilted him, and besides being a little touchy over it, he’s moved on.”

“Is that really what happened?”

William shrugged. “I guess? No one really knows...not even Al.”

Ada wished she had been a fly on that wall when Anezka was still around. So many rumors and gossip about what happened. She practically disappeared, as though she was only a dream. But Albert remembered...resentfully. Ada knew him well enough that it wasn’t just his ego that got hurt. He actually had cared for her, and he hated that he did.

“Well, Albert’s given Claire all these chances to let her live. You think he will let her go when Roth is dealt with, as he has promised her?”

William scowled, leaning back in his chair. “What do you think?”

The double agent had no idea why, but her heart sank a little. As if she was hoping for something she knew better of. And here she thought her line of work had snuffed out all remaining optimism in her life.

“He won’t kill her. I guarantee it,” William boasted. “As obsessed and possessive he already is of her, she’s stuck. There will be conditions he gives her. I’m sure you know what those would be.”

“You sound happy about that,” Ada pointed out.

He shrugged, but the slight upcurve of his lips gave him away. “I like the girl. Sherry adores her. She’s proven to be quite resourceful and clever. She’ll be handy to have around. Besides, if Al actually has feelings for her, I gotta see where it goes! The geneticist in me really hopes he knocks her up.”

It may have sounded like a dark joke, but Ada knew the lunatic genius was dead serious. “I’m really disturbed by how obsessed you are with your best friend’s love and sex life.”

“I’m just looking out for him!”

Ada would never understand Wesker and William’s relationship. One of life’s greatest mysteries. But what was also another mystery still was why Wesker had feelings for Claire.

Was she the next Anezka?

She parked right down the road. It was already nearly dark, but at least the temperature hadn’t dropped too much. Claire stuck to the recently salted sidewalks, hands stuffed in her parka. Her heart pounded in her throat, and her mind raced with what he could want this time.

Wesker called her while she was waiting for Chris to get off work, summoning her to his house for an “important discussion”. She was anxious for two reasons. One, the last time she saw Wesker just a couple nights ago, they had sex. And two, after learning from Jill that Wesker was the one who dealt with Chris, she wasn’t sure what that meant for her or her brother.

She was queasy, butterflies in her stomach, but she wasn’t about to lose her cool. More than anything, she feared her body would betray her once more, a dark excitement coursing through her blood.

Upon reaching Wesker’s house, Claire spotted a vehicle she didn’t recognize in his driveway. She didn’t get too close to it, but it looked like a ruby-colored Porsche Boxster. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not about not being alone with the STARS Captain, but she took a deep breath and rang the doorbell anyway.

After a minute of silence, anticipation eating at her, the door opened. Her heart skipped when those familiar grey-blue eyes and dark smirk greeted her. Her stomach twisted, but Claire couldn’t tell whether it was from disgust or excitement.

“Good evening, Claire,” he purred. He stepped aside to allow her entry. “Please do come in. I don’t want you catching a cold.”

She rolled her eyes and stepped inside. “Thanks.”

He shut the door while she looked around. Odin padded over and sniffed her, docked tail wagging slightly. But she didn’t see anyone who could’ve owned the car outside.

Wesker’s hands brushed up her back. The bad thing was Claire realized she didn’t blench this time. No, this time she shivered in pleasure. She inwardly scolded herself as he took her coat off to hang by the door.

“We have much to discuss, dear heart,” he said, one muscular arm locking around her waist and pulling her deeper inside the house.

That’s when the younger Redfield saw a familiar face come into the living room from the kitchen, carrying a full glass of red wine. She nearly blurted Ada’s name, surprised, but quickly bit her tongue, hiding any reaction. Wesker didn’t know that she and Ada had already met personally. And it needed to stay that way.

“I sure hope you weren’t saving that malbec wine for a special occasion, Albert. I helped myself,” Ada said. When her eyes landed on Claire, she was the perfect actress. There was no recognition, no subtle signs given to Claire. “Is this her?”

“The one and only,” Wesker affirmed.

Ada took a long sip of her wine and sat it down on a coaster on the center table before walking over to them. Wesker stepped away while the double agent looked Claire over, one arm crossed and one hand on her chin as she thought. She walked around Claire and even grabbed her arms and lifted them and spun her around.

“Hmm...Yes, I can definitely work with this.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Claire grumbled. Ada spun her around again and grabbed at her hair. “Hey! What’s the big idea?!”

“Hold still, hun.”

Ada withdrew a tailor tape measurer. She measured Claire’s waist, chest, and height, even her arms and legs. Afterwards, she yanked Claire’s ponytail out and felt through her tresses.

“What are you doing?” Claire snapped.

“Taking measurements,” Ada replied. “Trying to figure out what to do with your hair.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain later,” Wesker stated. His Doberman sat at his side, head cocked curiously as Ada got handsy with her measurements.

“Okay, finished,” Ada announced, rolling up her tape and putting it in her pocket. She retrieved her wine and took another drink. “I’ll have something ready by tomorrow.”

“What ready?” Claire demanded. “What’s going on?”

Wesker’s lips barely curled upward. “Oh, where are my manners? Claire, this is an associate of mine, Ada Wong. She originally was to pick you up at the university. Ada, you know Claire, I’ve told you all about her.”

The Eurasian beauty dipped her head. “Charmed.” Still completely in character, although Claire now saw something subtle in her eyes as she stared at Claire. Perhaps a warning? Or just acknowledgement?

“You too...I guess,” Claire said.

Wesker chuckled, catching their attention. “You do not have to pretend to be strangers on my account, ladies. I know you’re well acquainted.”

Claire ground her jaw, glaring at him. Ada didn’t even flinch, expressionless. Taking another sip of her wine, she shrugged.

“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can I Albert?”

“Oh come now, Ada, don’t be that way,” Wesker teased. He obviously sensed something from her that Claire didn’t. He stepped around the agent’s back and, besides her tensing barely, she didn’t look disconcerted. “You knew the risks when you decided to meet Claire behind my back.”

Ada didn’t say anything to that. Wesker’s dark grin grew a bit more.

“I’m quite curious of your intentions. You’re not the jealous type. And you’re not one to have concern for others. So why so curious about Claire? I know this has nothing to do with what Sergei asked of you.”

Jealous type? Claire glanced between them, not sure what kind of undertones she was reading here. She was missing something, that’s for sure. She could only infer that Wesker was gauging Ada for something.

“I was just curious what you saw in her, I guess,” Ada dismissed calmly.

Cool under pressure. Just like the man testing her.

“And did you figure it out?”

Ada’s eyes locked with Claire’s. “I think so.”

Wesker’s soft chuckle told them he didn’t believe her one bit. “You and William should give up trying to find something that isn’t there.”

Ada didn’t have to say anything. Her smile told it all. She was pleased somehow, as though she read deeper into Wesker’s words somehow. Claire wished she would tell her the secret. And also shake this weird feeling in her chest.

“Am I going to get filled in here on why she needed to take my measurements?” Claire grumbled.

“Yes, my apologies,” Wesker admitted, his full attention on her now, and the younger woman regretted saying anything. “Ada, you may go now. I’ll fill Claire in…” He smirked.

Oh god. Did he just…? Her stomach pitched and rolled. She knew what would happen once Ada left them alone. In his house. It was an instant body verses mind battle.

Ada shrugged and walked away. Claire never wanted someone to stay and leave all at once before. But the Eurasian woman plopped down on one of the leather sofas instead, resuming drinking her wine. Odin left his master’s side to plant himself in front of her, as if expecting Ada to give him attention now that she was sitting down. Claire released a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

Wesker scowled. “Or…make yourself at home.”

“I will,” Ada answered nonchalantly. “I’m not about to let this delicious wine go to waste.” She made a show of swishing the red liquid around in her glass. The wine complimented her burgundy fingernails.

Claire caught the agent’s honey brown eyes as she looked right at her while sipping from her lipstick-stained glass, a coded message for her. You’re welcome…

Claire swallowed mixed feelings and glared at the STARS Captain. “So what exactly are you making me do this time?”

“Relax dear heart, it’s nothing you’re a stranger to. We’re going to attend a party.”

His stereotypical college girl jab aside, it sounded easy enough. But Claire knew better. Whatever kind of party it was, with Wesker involved, there would be danger, deception, and death at every angle…

Claire stared at the mirror, stunned. She wasn’t one to get dressed up, not this fancy anyway. Her red-brown hair was pulled up into messy curls with a few tresses hanging around her face. She had more make-up on than what she was used to. The jade-colored halter dress complimented her hair, eyes, and heels. She was only in the shoes for less than half an hour and her feet were already cramping. How did women wear these things all day?

The two assistants Ada had helping her with Claire were finally finished and departed from the big, spotless, and up-to-date bathroom. They were in Wesker’s living quarters in NEST. The younger Redfield tried not to think about what happened the last time she was here. Wesker and William awaited them in the very same room where she and Wesker fornicated, only having arrived a bit ago while Claire was still being made over.

Ada looked her over one last time, one final judgment for approval. Claire didn’t say anything. She really wanted out of this bathroom, but at the same time, she wasn’t ready for the next step.

Apparently, the crooked STARS Captain had meticulously planned tonight. Chris and Jill were working graveyard shifts while he was off and Claire had to tell her brother that she might would have to stay the night at William’s house babysitting Sherry if her parents had to work all night. All the chess pieces were in place so far. Bard’s Christmas party would last well into the night, and depending on how it played out, they might be there awhile. She could only hope nothing went wrong and would get to return home tonight.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Claire. There’s no doubt about that,” Ada said finally.

“T-Thanks.” She wasn’t expecting a compliment from the older woman.

She looked in the mirror again, distracted. This was a little too much for her, but she had to blend in with the other guests at the party.

“I won’t be surprised if Albert takes you home with him tonight after the party.”

Claire blushed, taken off guard, a near panic in her chest only broken by blood rushing like electricity through her veins. She turned to the double agent, holding her breath. Ada sounded so sure as she looked Claire over. As if she knew something the younger Redfield didn’t. Surely, Ada didn’t know…

“I know what happened between you two,” Ada admitted, reading her mind.

“He,” Claire started to blame her captor, but stopped. Could she honestly say it knowing she had decided to do it? Wesker may have manipulated her into wanting to, but she still chose it all her own, no matter how much she wanted to deny it.

“He what?”

She shook her head. “…Nothing.”

“I told you he always gets what he wants, didn’t I? He’ll make you want it, too. That tongue of his is far more deadly than any weapon he has on him. You have no idea how way in over your head you are, Claire.”

The college student glared at the Eurasian beauty. Was she serious right now?! “You’ve got it all wrong! It was just a one time fling. And as far as the rest of my situation goes, I think I’ve been doing pretty damn good considering!”

Ada sighed. “You’re clever, strong, and resourceful. You’ve handled yourself impressively this past week, but that’s partly why Albert’s so infatuated with you.”

Claire frowned, not sure what to say to that.

“Albert’s hardwired to manipulate and take advantage of anyone and anything he can. You give him an inch and he’ll hook his claws so deep in you, there’s no escape. You gave him way more than that.”

“So what? I’m trapped forever now? Is that what you’re saying?” Dread seized in her chest.

Ada looked to the door, as if suddenly paranoid Wesker and William could be listening in and slightly lowered her voice. “I don’t know. Look…yes, he’s using you to take care of Roth in exchange for your freedom, but William and I suspect that Albert may have developed…”

“What?” Claire urged when the agent trailed off.

Ada quickly shook her head, frowning. “Never mind. Just…keep your head. Do what you must to get Roth where Albert wants him for you and your brother’s freedom. Albert’s got a soft spot for you, he’ll likely keep his word if you’re good. As far as this affair is concerned, I cannot help you. That’s your business. My only advice is that you be careful.”

Soft spot? Where the hell was she getting that? There was nothing soft about that man. Then again, she and William, two people who knew Wesker best, kept saying that, so it had to be true to some degree.

Claire wanted to tell Ada that there wasn’t an “affair”. It was a one time slip up, a mistake, it wouldn’t happen ever again. But she couldn’t even believe herself, so there was no way she would convince the double agent.

“Ok…thank you, Ada. For everything.”

Ada exhaled through a small frown. “Don’t thank me just yet…” She turned, walking for the door and motioning for the younger Redfield to follow her. “C’mon, we have a party to get to.”

Claire inhaled deeply, gathering herself, and followed her out of the bathroom. They came into the den, where Wesker and William sat across from each other on the leather sofas talking. They were dressed in posh black suits. Claire berated herself for goggling Wesker. The bastard was so damn attractive anyway, but that suit was hot! She couldn’t believe how much it actually affected her seeing him in that outfit.

The men noticed them and stood up, but their eyes immediately went to Claire. She suddently felt exposed. William’s jaw dropped and he ogled too. The smirk that slowly grew on Wesker’s face as he took off his sunglasses to look Claire over was wicked. More so, it was hungry. He popped William’s mouth shut without taking his eyes off of Claire and closed in like a predator about to sink its teeth into its coveted prey. His eyes entrapped her, an instant, breath-taking spell, and then she was hungry too, felt it spreading through every inch of her body like wildfire.

Ada was right…Wesker would be taking her home with him tonight. And nothing was going to stop him.

[reveurmaudit]

MIND GAMES - PART ONE

TW: Gunshots, abduction 

It felt as though I had been enraptured in my own personal passage of time. The sun peeking through the custom drapes plainly brushes up against the headlined front page of the New York Times — it’s the word “abduction” that throws caution to the wind . . . And my father’s name painted as the suspect is written in bold, black lettering.

Before I had the chance to finish the well-researched article in its entirety, Father’s manservant came barging through the room’s French doors with a message of urgent matters in need of discussion. His reluctance when entering the illuminated room seemed to surprise even him the second he shot me a gaze.

I followed Alistair down the curved stair of the mansion’s east wing, through Dad’s mahogany office doorway. Numerous bookshelves of various popular poets and fiction authors who spent their entire existences devoted to the written word resided within these four walls, but they were all on display. Years ago, before separating his third wife who was fifteen years her senior, my father would actually sit down at the grandeur desk of his, the one I’d inherit after his passing, and read. Every single one.

Father dismissed Alistair with the wave of a hand before he glued his cold, amber eyes to mine. “Where were you last night, when you said you were with Emily?”

I practically laughed in his face. “I’m not tarnishing the family name, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I was almost too irked to claw my way further into the web of agony I had created, and yet, I couldn’t seem to help myself either. “Besides, it’s none of your business. It hasn’t been for a long time.” To those who came into this world with a name that grandfathers and grandfathers before him would vow never to defame, it was difficult to find time and space in which breathing the same air was no longer a viable chore.

“People talk, Lucien. Don’t you think I have eyes and ears everywhere in this Goddamn city? Being foolish and arrogant in random clubs and bars in a place that never sleeps won’t get you everything I’ve built over these last decades.” His stern voice carried through the still air like a kite soaring through the light of day. But his scolding lecture of rights and wrongs didn’t seem to faze me.

Whatever hopes and dreams Father had wished for me to obtain over the years, I’d come to realize I was a product of creation. It was ridiculous of him to believe I was still the same boy I once was.

“I think we’re done here. Believe it or not, Dad, you have much more important matters to attend to, instead of fixating on my whereabouts,” I spoke calmly and evenly, despite my father evidently boiling with rage. “You’ve read the Times this morning, haven’t you?” His face turned cold, and just by looking into those golden-like eyes of his, I could sense the panic burning inside.

I turn, temporarily hovering over my father’s desk before he inhales sharply, and I’m catching my breath. And with that, I left my father to the multitude of stacked papers beside him, as Alistair snuck back into Father’s office where his presence was requested immediately.

[Flashback - Yesterday Night]

The four enclosed walls of the bathroom in the Blue Ocean Nightclub, one of the most exclusive nightclubs in the entire city, made my skin crawl like the smallest insect had simply been eating me alive from the inside out until I was nothing more than a rotten corpse.

I had drank a day’s worth of bourbon, and after tending to Father’s expanding business like I was told, I wanted to implode — for being a puppet in a larger crusade made the days feel elongated.

Perpetually scraping away at the remnants of my sanity that was left to fend off aggravating, drunken souls, I was lost in thought. With memories lost in the void of darkened hearts, I feel a hand caress the back of my shoulder.

“Did you miss me?” I grinned pleasurably at the spoken words he uttered. I must have been lost in my own fragmented illusions for too long, because the next thing I remember was the man’s lips pressing mine, as he roughly slammed me up against the navy blue backsplash tile.

It wasn’t so much so that I had found anything resembling hope — no, it was but a longing sensation, as if aching for something, quivering at the mere mention of its name made it worth the heavyweight that it carried.

A distraction keeps the mind afloat in a thunderous wave of darkness which I lay victim to.

But alas, our time of love making came to an end when the DJ out in the main space lifted the turntable of the record player, and I could hear the muffled gasps and commotion from go-getters alike. I listened to the echoed vibrations that bounced off the bathroom walls before putting my clothes back on and kindly shoving the young gentleman off of me.

I pushed the door open, and immediately saw a horde of tasteless people hovered around one another in common chatter, as the smoke diffused into thin air. I stood there, stunned, as a young woman, likely underage, quietly handed me a coral iPhone with a renewed headline plastered across the bottom of the screen.

"Assistant to real estate mogul Gabriel Orza missing . . ."

I lifted my chocolate eyes up to see the shock painted across each of their faces and felt my stomach churning.

Father had far too many tales that ought to remain buried so as not to wreak havoc on the Orza name — as did I. And on this night, I had made a big one that needed to stay buried.

[End of Flashback]

Secrets in the eyes of the keeper needed to prevail in order to be the ones kept hidden from the public. And in a social media-ridden world, the crimes committed are part of the stories we must bring to our graves.

A duty to the name, I presume — never a product of creation, just a product of one’s own demise.

From the moment the story broke in the Times, every journalist reporter in the city was standing outside the Orza Estate, waiting for Gabriel to give a speech — a proclamation that he knows nothing about Mr. Shay’s whereabouts.

“I’m sure each of you have numerous questions in regard to the Shay case, specifically my involvement in my assistant’s abduction. However, I’m here to tell you all that I am just as curious as you are. It pains me that I am even considered a suspect in this case. Mr. Shay was a dear friend of mine for years. I hope the NYPD finds him and brings him back alive to where he rightfully belongs.” Gabriel’s voice echoed through the clouded wind distancing himself from the reporters of various magazines and newspapers, both local and national, such as the New Yorker and USA Today. He brought with him much poise and eloquence in articulating his words whole-heartedly.

I, myself, stared out into the vast majority of anonymous faces in the crowd of correspondents from the high steps leading up to the front door of the mansion. I felt the cool rush of air brush up against my tanned skin, as I stood beside Alistair — both of us representing the ruptured desolation to Father that existed following Mr. Shay’s abduction.

Of course watching Gabriel provide a heart-warming speech to ease the souls of those mourning the mysterious absence of a good man, in the distance was none other than my half-brother, Xavier, whom we shared different mothers. The glance we exchanged lasted only a few moments, but it was one filled with emptiness and contempt. Always two steps behind, three steps from slipping through the cracks of an endless void to Hell’s haven.

And that’s when I felt my heart sink, as the gunshots were fired into the air when the sound of the bullet scraped my eardrums before steadily breaking off into splintered echoes of disbelief. I watched, as the voices faded into oblivion, the reporters evading the shot. I could feel my body fill with paranoia and hatred before Father turned his head toward Alistair.

“My God, sir,” Alistair said in a soft murmur, the distress in his voice severely evident, as he drew breath sharply.

Utter hysteria was unleashed in the crowd of journalists who were gasping for air. My father’s eyes widened with horror, as we both followed his gaze, as it traveled from Alistair’s face to Dad’s lower abdomen that was gushing with crimson blood. I felt my mind slip into thought — into delusions of the head, and the heart. That’s when I knew it was only the beginning.

I made my bed, now it’s time to lie in it.

[thiswasinevitableid]

7 with indruck?

7: I’m assigned to write a piece rounding up all the bad press that you, a famous celebrity, have been getting and you show up in my office and demand me to write a retraction and get the ‘real’ story”. I went SFW

“Dude! You can’t go in there! Hey, wait, dude, hold on!”

Jake’s voice jars Indrid from staring miserably at his computer screen. But it does nothing to prepare him for the stack of papers that slams into his desk. 

“Where the fuck do you get off man?” 

Staring him down is a man with dark hair, mis-matched eyes, a scar down his right cheek, and an extremely pissed-off expression. Indrid recognizes him instantly, both from T.V and his last assignment.

“Mr. Newton?” 

“Yeah, that’s me, the guy you been draggin through the goddam mud!” 

“I-”

“Where are you even gettin this stuff? Substance abuse, bad break-ups, the split between me and my team, who the fuck told you that bullshit?”

“I am not going to reveal my sources.”

“Oh now you get some fuckin ethics?”

“I was just reporting what people told me. I was assigned to round up the press around you now that you’re relaunching your show, and this is what I got. I’m sorry if that upsets you.”

“Upsets me?” Mr. Newton plants his hands on the desk, leaning into Indrid’s space, “buddy, I ain’t even on the same planet as upset right now. I’m actually feelin pretty damn calm, because I know who the fuck is to blame.”

“It’s not my fault” Inrid snaps back, “I got assigned it at random, so if you have issues kindly take them up with Woodbridge.”

“Sir, if you insist on raising a fuss in my office-”

“This him?” Mr. Newton points to Woodbridge as the editor appears from his office. 

“Yes.” Indrid glares at Woodbridge through his glasses; he told him these kind of stories would lead to trouble, and it wasn’t even his usual beat.

He braces for Mr. Newton continuing to escalate, but instead the stocky man takes a deep breath , holding his hands up apologetically.

“Look, I’m real sorry, shouldn’t have come in guns blazin like that, and I know you fellas gotta make a livin same as anyone but this kind of stuff-” he whacks the papers into Indrid’s lap, “y’all gotta remember there’s a human on the other end of it.”

“That’s a very fair point, Mr. Newton-” Woodbridge gestures towards the door.

“A human with a damn good lawyer.”

“Mr.Newton, free speech”

“Protects you from the government, not from the Duck. I don’t mind the break-up nonsense, that happened plenty during the first show. Leo, Minerva, and I have been through every relationship configuration known to man, accordin to papers like yours. But the shit about me drinkin? That could damage my career. So could the reasons your ‘sources’ gave for why the show ended. You tellin me you’d hire a fella who apparently yelled at his co-hosts day in and day out and ‘couldn't hack’ bein’ outdoors?” This last question he directs at Indrid, who shakes his head. 

“Mr. Newton, retracting the story would look very bad for us. However, we’d be more than willing to publish your side of the story.”

“Close, but my word ain’t enough to counter those claims about me bein’ incompetent. I’m goin’ on a month and a half tour to location scout and shoot the first two episodes. I want one of your writers to come with. Specifically, I want him.” He points to Indrid.

“Wait, why me? I’m not a travel writer, and I have a photography assignment due next week.”

“Because you’re the one who caused this mess, slim.”

Indrid starts to protest when Woodbridge turns to with a smirk.

“Start transferring your assignments, Indrid; you’re going on a roadtrip.”

----------------------------------------

Indrid grumbles to himself as he waits on the curb with his bag. Duck, as Mr. Newton has said to call him, told him to pack only one bag, and to bring his camera (“saw your shots when I was researchin you; you might like shootin out on the road”).

A motorcycle pulls up to the curb as he checks the time on this phone. He doesn’t give the vehicle a second look until the rider speaks to him.

“Glad you’re on time.” The helmet comes off, revealing Duck looking much calmer than the last time he saw him, “let’s get your gear on the bike and get goin’.”

Indrid stares at him in disbelief, “were you at any point going to warm me that I’d be doing this whole trip on a death machine?”

“Didn’t think I had to. Figured you knew this was how I traveled now, given all your, uh, thorough research.” Duck fixes him with a shit-eating grin as he straps his bag onto the bike, then hands him a helmet.

Indrid groans, jams the helmet on and awkwardly climbs onto the back of the bike.

“Gonna have to hang onto me, slim.” Duck’s voice crackles through his helmet, “don’t worry, I ain’t gonna bite you, even if I still kinda feel like it.”

“How encouraging.” He loops his arms around the T.V star, winces as the bike pulls out into traffic. There’s a laugh as he tightens his grip in fear, Duck’s body suddenly the only safe thing in the world. 

They zoom onto the freeway, and promptly come to a dead stop in traffic.

“Truly invigorating.” Indrid mutters. 

“Ain’t gonna be much fun until we’re outta the city. And I ain’t about to go zippin’ between lanes to cut ahead; great way to get us both killed.”

As they inch along, Indrid starting to sweat from the heat of the pavement, Duck asks, “did you ever watch the show?”

“Is there anyone who didn’t? Wild World was on every day. I’m fairly certain it’s still all Animal Planet plays some days.”

“Yeah but, uh, did you actually watch it on purpose?” 

“I did, now and then. I found Minerva’s tendency to try more extreme forms of exploration stressful, but I generally enjoyed what I saw. I’m not surprised you’re the one who picked the show back up; you were always oddly compelling on camera, and it was clear it was a passion project for you.”

“Yeah, it really was. Is. Feels weird to be doin’ it without them. Can’t blame ‘em for havin’ their own lives and goals though. Leo was ready to retire after the Gila Monster incident, and Minerva’s wanted to run an adventure bootcamp for years.”

“You know, if you hurry and explain everything in the next ten minutes, you can just pull off there and drop me at the edge of town.”

A chuckle, “Nice try, Indrid. You ain’t gettin outta roughin’ it that easy.”

“It was worth a try. Alaska was the last episode run, right?”

Duck’s posture shifts so subtly that, were he not holding him, Indrid wouldn’t have noticed it. 

“Yeah. Yeah it was. Nothin’ like gettin attacked by a wolf and takin a bunch of rabies shots to the gut to put you off filmin’.” 

“It really was a wolf? Everything I read said-”

“I’d misidentified what attacked us? Yeah, I know. American wolves never really go after humans, that’s why we were so fuckin’ screwed when this one did. Poor fella. He was sick. We coulda proved what happened except I told Leo to destroy the footage and we had a knock down, drag out fight over it until he did.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because I didn’t want my pain, Minerva’s pain, and the wolf’s pain to become some goddamn viral sensation!” Duck snaps. 

Indrid decides to drop it, feels Duck sag in the drivers seat. In spite of dragging him out into the wilderness, Indrid doesn’t bear Duck any bad feeling. And he doesn’t like seeing him sad. 

“I, ah, I always liked the episodes where you showcased moths and butterflies. Moths are my favorite creatures, they’re so varied but so overlooked.”

Nothing but the traffic around them, then, “I once saw a Luna Moth bigger’n my hand. Didn’t get it on camera but damn was it a stunner.”

“Where did you see it?”

“Now there’s a story…”

By the time Duck finishes the cars are finally moving, and Duck changes them into the lane leading towards the exit for a single lane, county highway. 

“Fuckin’ finally. Alright Indrid, hold tight.”

What follows is simultaneously the most thrilling and most terrifying four hours of Indrid’s life as Duck speeds down the road, win whipping around them and the world going by in a blur that’s much more alarming when not behind metal and glass. They find a rest stop, where Indrid shotguns an entire bag of skittles under Duck’s amused gaze, and get back on the road for an only slightly less terrifying four hours more. 

They stop for the night at a KOA (“you’re lucky, slim, I got us a cabin to ease you into things”). Whereupon Indrid is treated to the sight of Duck stripping off his road gear, back muscular and sporting several scars.

“How are you likin’ life on the road?” Duck asks, not turning but starting to undo his pants. Indrid doesn’t look away until he’s down to his boxers.

“You know, it’s growing on me.”

They make their first shooting destination the next afternoon, setting up camp in a mostly-empty campground before hiking off into the woods. Duck shoots B-roll while Indrid photographs, the pair working in near total silence before meeting up with their contact near a jumble of boulders.

“Nice to see you again, Thacker.” Duck shakes the man’s hand, and gets a pat on the back.

“Good to you too, sport. Who’s the new fella?”

“My biographer.”  Duck deadpans.

Duck spends the rest of the day filming as Thacker helps him find nest and burrows and creatures to shoot and narrate over. In spite of the show being done on a single camera, Duck is compelling as always when he talks about the natural world. 

Indrid just wishes he’d sprung for better hiking boots.

“Ooof.” He mutters, face down on his sleeping bag.

“Not surprised, we did about ten miles all told today.”

“I repeat. Oof.”

A kind, sympathetic laugh, “C’mon, you’ll feel better after some dinner.”

Later that night, as he’s climbing into his sleeping bag, Duck pokes his head into the tent.

“Psst, Indrid, come look.” 

Indrid follows him out, kneels by a clump of flowers when he waves him down. 

“See, look, riiight there” Duck points, “it’s a Hummingbird Moth.”

Indrid gasps, delighted, and watches the pollinator flit from blossom to blossom. Duck sits beside him, answering his questions when he asks them, until it’s too dark for either of them to see.

--------------------------------

Duck never thought he’d have a travel companion again. Not after Alaska, not after the attack and what came in the nights to follow. 

He certainly never assumed the wiry, silvery haired writer who’d nearl fucked everything up would turn out to be that person. But Indrid, for all his initial skepticism, has become an excellent partner. He’s easy going, eccentric enough that Duck’s own quirks don’t phase him, quiet;y awkward, and a damn good photographer. The fact his alienly handsome face has become a bit windburnt and his pale hair a little longer only adds to his charm.

Christ, Duck wants to rip those red glasses off and kiss him until he’s breathless. 

Currently, he’s missing the feeling of long arms around his waist, as he left Indrid back with a family whose jeep had run out of gas. They’re in one of the long, monotonous stretches of desert highway where passersby are few and cell phone service is unreliable, so Duck volunteered to ride ahead to the next gas station and bring some back. As the Jeep comes into view, he sees the family waving. Indrid is leaning against the car, smiling as if Duck is the greatest thing he’s ever seen. 

That settles it; when they make Santa Fe, he’s calling The Weekly Rounds and asking Woodbridge to extend Indrid’s assignment. And if the old man refuses, well, Animal Planet is thrilled to have him back, and made it clear they’d be happy to pay for an additional camera man.

------------------------------

This time they’re the only ones in the campground, and Indrid suspects it might technically be closed. Indrid could do this forever. He wants to stay like this, with Duck, day in and day out, have their evenings be like this. Duck makes a fire, keeping it small to be safe, and the evening progresses like normal, the two of them swapping stories and munching on the dinner they whipped up from leftovers from the last gas station. Then the moon rises, two days from full, and Duck doubles over with a groan. 

“Fuck, fuckfuckfuck.”

“What’s wrong?” Indrid moves to help him, but Duck raises his hand to stop him.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, ‘Drid, fuck, I thought I had another day, thought we could make it somewhere I could keep you safe.”

“Safe from what? Duck, please, you’re hurt, I can call for help, just hold on.”

“No” Duck snarls, still hunched over, “you ain’t callin anyone. What you’re gonna do is run, far and as fast as you can, away from me. Find a tree, find a cave, flag down a car if you can find one. Go, please, fuck.” He falls off the stump he’s sitting on, and in spite of his instructions Indrid tries to help him up.

“Go!” It’s a growl now, and when Duck looks up at him his face is changing shape. Duck drags himself away from the fire, into the shadows, and Indrid turns, starting to run. There’s howl of pain and he stops. He can’t leave Duck like this. He won’t.

Resolute, he turns back to the camp and immediately regrets his decisions. Whatever is in the shadows isn’t human, not anymore. It’s growling low and labored, as it rises onto two feet and howls. 

“Oh fuck me.” Indrid doesn’t dare turn his back, tries to slowly creep away and trips on a stray piece of firewood. The monster lowers to all fours, padding into the firelight across from him. It’s fur is dark and shaggy, it’s hands sport claws and when it opens it’s mouth to grin at him it’s teeth glitter like rows of knives. 

He has to keep the fire between him and it, even if he has to spend his night running in some Scooby-Doo style circle around the fire pit. It’s his only chance.

In one, large leap, the werewolf clears the fire and lands in front of him, front paws bracketing his body when he tries to crawl back.

“Told you to run, slim.” 

“I, I can’t.”

“Didn’t think you were stubborn to the point of dyin’.” 

“Y-you told me not to run from predators, and I c-cannot drive the bike. And, and I didn’t, I couldn’t leave you.”

“Ain’t that sweet.” Duck grins again, “but why do you think I told Leo and Minerva I wasn’t safe to be around no more? Because a werewolf don’t know friend from foe.”

“That’s, that’s a lie. Y-you clearly know me, you know your past, you’re not some mindless killer ahgod.” He whimpers as a muzzle finds the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply before sending hot, hungry breath across his skin. 

“Mmmmm, you smell good, sugar.”

“You’re not going to eat me.” Indrid says, eyes shut.

“You seem real sure about that.” Another snuffle, tongue dragging along his throat.

“You’re not because you are still Duck, just very large and covered with fur and with a mouth full of unnecessarily sharp teeth, and even though you seem convinced you’ve become bloodthirsty you are still you.” It comes out in a rush and he holds his breath as a clawed hand cups the back of his head. Duck tugs his head back, nosing along his exposed neck. He stares at the stares, praying they’re not the last thing he sees. 

“I could rip your goddamn throat out.” Duck says matter-of-factly. 

“Do you want to?” He whispers, hands coming up instinctively to protect his vital organs.

A long growl, and then Duck’s face blots out the night sky, “No. I don’t.”

“Ohthankgoodness.”

Duck rumbles out a laugh, “that’s puttin it mildly, slim. No one ever stuck around long enough to see what I’d do because I always hid myself or they had the goddamn good sense to run when I said too. Always assumed as soon as I was all the way changed, I’d wanna hurt people, even if they were people I loved.” He plucks Indrid’s glasses off, setting them carefully on the picnic table before using the pad of his thumb to wipe away a tear he hadn’t realized was there.

“What do you want to do instead?”

“In general, or to you?” 

“Both?” Indrid is puzzled by his phrasing. 

“Kinda amped up, like I wanna go for a run. Transformin’ basically releases a shit ton of adrenaline so your body just doesn’t collapse from the pain. But as far as you’re concerned…” the muzzle his back, snuffling at his face and chest, “dunno, mostly just wanna keep you close. Protect you. Some part of the wolf-brain is kinda just screamin ‘mine’ over and over again.”

“Oh. Ah. That’s, that’s good.” It’s also painfully arousing, but he’s not quite ready to admit that aloud yet.

“Probably helps that you’re wearing my shirt, since it means my scent is all over you already.”

“You let me borrow it AHHEY, gahthattickles” Indrid cackles as licks and nuzzles his face.

“Aww, didn’t know you were ticklish, sugar.” Duck grabs him, begins mercilessly rubbing his face on any exposed skin he can find.

“I’m not you are just very AHhehe hairy!” In retaliation Indrid reaches between them and scritches his fingers against Ducks chest and belly.

ThwupThwup

They both look at Duck’s tail with surprise. Indrid rubs his belly again.

ThwupThwup

“Didn’t know it did that. I mean, guess makes sense on account of bein’ kinda canine, but I guess I ain’t ever been really happy when I been like this before.”

“Should I keep doing that?”

“Fuck yeah. Hold on, here.” Duck adjusts so he’s on his back with Indrid more or less on top of him. Indrid resumes petting him, Duck making little happy whines as he does.

“Damn, that feels good sugar, ooh right.” 

“Why do you keep calling me that? It’s a pet name.”

“I, uh, fuck, um, fuck, I didn’t, meant to say, uh, fuck.” A deep breath as Indrid sits up to meet his eyes, “I’m real fuckin into you, ‘Drid. I, I didn’t wanna say nothin until we were somewhere you could bail out easily if you needed to. But I ain’t felt this way about anyone in years.”

“Is that wolf-you talking or you-you talking?” Indrid asks, toying with a patch of fur.

“Both. I wanna be with you, and wanna keep travelin with you as my partner, as my, uh, my boyfriend. As my mate. Okay, that last bit was definitely the wolf talking.”

“I...I would like that as well, Duck. I didn’t know how to say it, I was afraid that what happened with your friends meant you didn’t want to be close to anyone. Including me.”

Duck sighs, “I wish I’d known then what we figured out tonight. Maybe things woulda ended a little better between us three. I just, I couldn’t face the idea of bein’ out on a shoot with ‘em and havin this exact thing happen.”

“I must admit, the lack of a full moon is rather confusing.”

“It ain’t just the full moon. It’s a few days after and before too, and I thought I had one more before it hit. Plan was to sneak out of the hotel in Santa Fe and hole myself up in a cave somewhere.”

Indrid strokes his cheek, the fur a little coarser there, “That was what attacked you three, I take it.”

“Uh huh. We were trackin it, thinkin’ it was some kind of huge predator we might be able to film.  It jumped Minerva first, but she’s a tough one, managed to hold her own and only got scratched up. I pulled it off her and it bit me. I, uh, I shot it point blank while it was doin’ that. Turned into a man as it fell in the dirt. Leo and Minerva said I did what I had to but I...well, let’s just say I still see that fellas face a lot in my dreams.”

“No wonder you wanted the footage destroyed.” Indrid murmurs.

Duck nods, waves one hand in front of his face, “damn skeeters, c’mon, let’s get in the tent.”

The tent is a tight fit, but Indrid couldn’t be happier. He crawls onto Duck’s chest, nestling against his fur with a sigh. 

“Now if you have bad dreams when you’re like this, you have someone to to hold.”

Duck kisses the top of his head, “Thanks, sugar.”

Indrid falls asleep atop a giant wolfman, and wakes up to the morning sun and much smaller, human man sprawled beneath him, who he wakes with a flurry of kisses. 

They make Santa Fe by noon, riding in feeling freer then either of them has in a long time. When they ride out the next morning, Indrid has a new job and Duck has a new cameraman. But all either can think about at the moment is his new boyfriend, and the future spreading out ahead of them beneath the rising sun. 

[maladaptive-ninja-returns]

Mission Turn It Up In The Club (It’s The Avengers)

Loki x Reader Avengers The Office AU (Slowwwwww Burn)

ONE SHOT

Warnings: fluff, dirty brains, drunk babbies, cutest allies, shocked fathers, confused jocks.

Series Summary: Living in the Avengers facility post-apocalypse in a better timeline   Tony Stark has decided to capture every moment by pulling The Office on the Avengers. All of housemates are pretty used to the idea except for you, who had just come here to finish her degree, and the newest member- Loki.

One Shot: When Thor indirectly challenges you- a complete noob with zero knowledge of espionage- to go on a relatively easy mission and get some intel, you accept it, never really ready for what's about to happen. And the camera crew records it all.

Word Count: Never underestimate the power of your inner voice because boy does it make you feel amazing about yourself sometimes!

Written for @captain-kelli 500 Fam Writing Challenge. Thank you so much for letting me participate! I picked the Quote (not a dialogue) : There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.

MASTERLIST in bio, darlings. Tags are open (check bio)

You come with your shades over your eyes and a yoghurt smoothie in your hand, and sit down on the chair in the recording room, adjusting your 'noice and toit' t-shirt before looking in the direction of the equipment. Clearing your throat and shifting back in the chair- going as back as you possibly can- you nod at Javier and get ready for the camera to roll, never taking off the shades.

You: *sighs* *rests face on your palm* *in a coarse incomprehensible voice* It all star- *tries to clear the coarseness of the throat* ahem ahem *makes bleching noises before groaning* *stops* *sighs* Hmm...where were we? *looks straight past the camera at Javier with half-open lips* Right...right. *looks back at the camera* *lips still half-open* It all started yesterday when a stupid b**** tried to become over smart.

Twenty-Four Hours Earlier

Everyone sat in the lounge of the Avengers Compound reading the reports that had just come in from Fury about a cartel trying to traffic alien wreckage- mostly weapons- to the black market. That 'everyone' excluded you, your adopted dog Zuko, and a very unamused and unbothered Loki sitting on the raised platform by the french windows with a copy of Sapiens and your favourite mug filled with hot tea.

The camera zoomed in on you concentrated on writing something on your laptop; so engrossed you were that you never noticed when Clint quietly gorged on your choco-chip cookies and drank your orange juice.

"But we only have to gather intel from a couple of guys meeting in the city today?"

Thor- who was finally at an Avengers meet after getting things in order for his Asgardians somewhere in Norway in their 'new Asgard'- pshd at the tablet in his hands and chuckled.

"Gather intel. Is that the human way to say drink some beer with these filthy humans and let them talk everything about their plan?"

"Damn right," everyone around him muttered.

"So easy even Y/N could do it," he chortled, catching your ears and a long sigh from the God sitting by the window enjoying the sun.

"Woah, now," Tony interjected, slapping Thor's shoulder with the back of his hand, "don't give her any ideas."

You narrowed your eyes at Tony. "I'm sure if Thor says I can do it-"

"Thor also said none of you ladies can process Asgardian mead," Clint added, buried in the sofa next to you, his tablet acting as a shield against the warm early afternoon sun.

Flashback to a party at the compound

Sam wobbled, trying to stand with the support of the bar while Clint kept muttering ‘I think I can see inside you guys. Like, really see.’ Bruce was being consoled by Thor in one corner. “The big guy hates me, Thor. He doesn’t-he doesn’t love me at aaaalllllll.” Scott and Bucky tried to wager who pin the donkey. The former didn’t even get to hold the tail in his hand. While all this mayhem unfurled, Natasha and Wanda sat by the bar recording everything on their phone while sipping their third Asgardian mead cocktail. “We should do this more often,” Natasha had suggested at one point during at night.

"I don’t get how you can't process it after the first buzz," Natasha called out from the dining table, never looking away from her tablet but still smiling.

"I'll sit this one out," Thor declared, sitting next to you, "I'm sure the Black Widow or Wanda can handle that."

You looked at him with an unwavering gaze for quite some time, making Thor uncomfortable after a certain point. Loki, who had caught you through the whole shebang, had a soft smile creeping on his face on watching you make his brother so uncomfortable.

"Wow," you finally spoke, letting your head move with the exclamation, "you are such a jock, aren't you?"

"A what?"

Loki: *smirks**snickers**snickers turn into uncontrollable laughter**continues laughing**stops midway with a serious look to shout* FINALLY!

"You don't want to go because there won't be any fighting and show of power," you state, turning yourself towards him, "and having conversations with guys seems too boring. Mostly because of your hate for bad guys. You know they won't give you answers straight away if you ask them politely, which I know you hate. So the next step is- 'why can't we just beat the shit out of them after they gave up on my offer to tell everything like good boys?'."

Thor: *crinkled brows* ...we can't? *looks behind the camera* why can't we? 

Tony and Steve stood next to each other- former's brows creased, latter's raised, both in a bit of admiration shock- taking in your breakdown. Finally, Steve leaned a little towards Tony to whisper, "did she just profile Thor?"

"Oh, yeah," Tony answered on the same wavelength before Steve could even finish his question, "she definitely did." He concluded with a smile filled with soft pride.

 "You know what, I'll take it," you casually declared to the lounge while leaning on the coffee table next to you. "Take what?" Steve asked, wanting to find out more of whatever was coming from your mouth. "The challenge," you shrugged, "I'll take up the part of getting some men to blabber about the locations. And while I'm at it, I'll get them to tell me about their boss' headquarters as well. Hmm?"

"Of course, you will," Tony chuckled softly in a trance for one second and furrowed his brows in confusion the next. "Wait, what?"

"You heard me," you announced in his direction before going back to whatever it is you were so busy doing on your laptop, leaving Tony to let his mouth open in displeasure.

"Young lady, you're not going anywhere near those sons of bitches."

Steve looked at the camera with a raised brow.

Steve: You know that moment when you see one of your best friends do everything reckless in this goddamn world, wanting you to curse him with having to once step in your shoes and see what it's like to keep him in check? *smiles with satisfaction* This is one of those days when you see it coming true. When God finally heard your prayers and sends that very friend's kid to make every one of your wishes come true. *nods* *gets serious* Though I'm against putting Y/N in danger. *shakes head* Would never let her do something as reckless as her biological father. *smirks* But damn it feels good.

 Tony: *narrows eyes at the camera* Is that what Captain Star-spangled underwear thinks? *Nods* Hm. *clicks tongue* Well, that day isn't far when I fund research led by Bruce to make super babies with Steve's *makes air quotes* super semen and make him go through the fate of a father and the burdens that come with it.

*Silence*

*camera pans out to show a very pregnant and a very weirded out Pepper sitting next to him with her head resting in her palm as she hears her husband talk*

Pepper: *looks into the void* *inhales* Or you could just make him the mentor for the young heroes in the compound and watch him struggle to get them in line. *shrugs* Better yet, let him be in charge of showing Loki the ropes.

Tony: *still silent* *looks into his void* *blinks* *tilts his head* *looks back at the camera* *smirks* Pepper?

Pepper: Hmm?

Tony: *turns to face her* Have I told you how much I admire your genius?

Pepper: *making circles on Tony's arm* *whispers suggestively* You have but I won't mind you saying it again.

Tony: Well, you are genius, darling. A genius with the power to create countries and throw dictators off their high horses.

Pepper: *raises her head from her palm with a glint in her eyes* *softly announces* Anthony Stark, we're going to your office and you won't stop saying all of it till I tell you to.

Tony: *feels a visible shudder go down his spine as Pepper gets up and walks away* Y-yes ma'am. *looks at the camera with a hint of disbelief*

Pepper: *from outside the room* Now!

*Tony rushes out*

.

The Confidential Club

The camera went from black to a few neon lights flickering in the distance. A heavy base song faded in when everything started coming into focus.

Don't get sick

Don't get strep

Don't get bronchitis

Aye

A soothing glow of blue lit up the walls, which the camera did a slow three-sixty, through which two figures- both tall, one slender and the other jacked up- walked in a sexy slo-mo as the club started another track.

So this money shit, yeah it's been on my mind

Fuck ya possy bitch

I'ma pop off a tonne with the tummy miss

Yea this how I slum I'm bout' to see some tits

Yea ya mummy is fine

Aye

The boys walked into the neon-grazed club glowing with a hue of red, their freshly shampooed hair bouncing with every step till these two stopped right when they entered the floor, scanning the club and the club doing the same to them, but with lost breaths, increased temperatures and some very dirty thoughts and very dirty moans.

I'm a good boy I don't hit no licks yeah

I'm a bad boy flexing with some chicks yuh

I'm a weird boy smokin' on some Brits yuh

Who dat boi

I'm that boy yuh

The slo-mo continued, recording every pair of eyes that turned to get a look at the brothers whose presence was electrifying the entire building. Ladies forgot their drinks and men, men forgot their dates and- with a swift internal jolt- their toxic masculinity and the genderless seemed to have found Gods in the club tonight.

We them bad boy come give baby kiss

We just dropped it now

Now the swallow kiss

Have to beg these ladies try to do the splits

Tryna get the boy to do the coochie little

People moved as if these Gods were gravity, walking under those flickering club lights and smoked room, hands trying to get a touch, eyes wanting to get just one sweet stare, legs wanting to get a little brush, the heat pooling inside them looking for just a little satisfaction.

Yea I'm Neo watch me on the Matrix

All these sussy boy I just implore I do not play with

Baby (Baby) sure you're crazy

Boy that gave me 8 bars and some new restraint

Who that boi

I'm that boi yuh

The blond locks seemed to find suggestive fingers in them, while some other stray ones roamed on Thor's chest. Loki watched his brother being surrounded with the crowd of thirsty thots, his face dripping with pure displeasure, letting the camera catch it frame by frame, with brilliant tilts, doing it till Loki was looking right at the lens.

Who that boi

I'm that boi yuh

Another camera standing a little further recorded Javier on his knees trying to catch Loki's displeasure and piercing eyes- at anyone who even suggested that they wanted to touch him- before he looked at Javier. "What are you doing?" Loki judged Javiers' slow camera tilts.

Javier raised his index finger for a few moments, still recording those sour expressions before giving a thumbs up, getting up and walking towards the crowd that had surrounded a quite flattered Thor.

With an eye roll in his brother's direction, Loki turned to find the other camera looking at him, quite possibly directing him somewhere else because the next moment he was looking away. The camera turned in the same direction to show- behind the crowd of mellow, drunk and horny people- you laughing with your head tilted backwards, sitting with a group of men he had seen in the report when he was forced by Thor to come on this stupid so-called mission with him.

You sat between four men, enthusiastically narrating something to your small audience with wide eyes and wildly moving arms, entertaining the viewers with intention known to them and these green eyes who could see right through every one of those scums.

The camera- swivelling between you and Loki- caught him walking towards you only to be stopped by a pale hand- carrying beautifully manicured nails in blood-red- landing on his chest.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Natasha suggested to the God with a bare hint of a smile on her lips.

Loki looked down at the Black Widow dressed in a body-hugging black dress. "Oh, I wasn't going to stop her from having some fun, I assure you," he implored.

Natasha brought her hand forward for Loki to take the earpiece in her hand. "She's got this. But you're welcome to listen in on the conversation," Natasha offered.

"My brother can fill in for me considering Y/N is already doing his job," he mentioned, pointing towards the crowd taking selfies with a giddy Thor making girls swoon all around him.

"Hot molten chocolate cake!" came a voice from the earpiece, loud enough for Loki sensitive ears and the recorders in all the devices to catch before the God could walk away.

"That's the safe word," Natasha declared into the earpiece, before turning to look at the table where you were.

"I really should go," you colourfully begged the man who had his hand wrapped around your arm, never letting go, "my girls must be waiting for me."

"Call your girls," the man holding you said, "we can all party in the private room upstairs."

"Call my girls?" you said a little louder as if asking Natasha what to do.

"On it." Loki heard another voice come through the comms, making Natasha's tensed back go straight.

"It's okay, Y/N," she confirmed into your earpiece, "go ahead. Tell them the girls can't wait."

The camera caught Natasha turning with a smirk that sent a cold shiver over the glowing dance floor, making Loki mirror that smirk, looking forward to it all.

The enthusiasm in Natasha's face was disturbed by some invisible ripple. "Where's Thor?"

 Other Side of the Club

Javier's camera showed the blond God sitting at the bar with at least twenty ladies huddled with him, handing him drinks.

"Now this one," a petite little girl stated, handing him a tall glass of Long Island Iced Tea. Thor happily took the glass, had a decent sip, gulped it down, furrowed his brows and smacked his lips.

"No," he finally declared, earning a cheer from the girls. "Not laced!" they shouted before handing him another girl's drink.

.

Upstairs

The camera stuck to the corners as it followed the men violating your private space, their arms around you, walking in front of and behind you, leaving no space whatsoever to look for any signs of the cavalry.

"Woah, guys, how about you go in and I'll go look for my sisters-"

"Oh, no," the one with a stubble and a nice jawline declared, "you're coming with us and your friends can follow. Come on, let's get some more alcohol in you!"

"Haha, yeah!" you pretended to cheer, stepping inside the room behind the guy with a ponytail, who stood in the middle of the living room like a statue for a good second.

"What the hell is this?" He announced more than he asked, pointing to Anna- the camera girl- sitting at the other end of the room, recording the entrance.

"Oh," you exclaimed in realisation, making all four men turn towards you, never noticing the door be closed by another figure in the room, "that's my camera gal. She follows me everywhere. My dad kinda got into this idea of making a documentary out of our lives so one of them is always around me except for when I'm studying or in the bathroom. But I have seen them recording me once or twice when I was in the librar-"

"Shut up!" The jawline guy roared, taking out a gun from his back, "Shut the f*** up! Rory, I told you she was a student. She'll fetch a good price on the market."

You wanted to be frightened by that gun but the camera caught you more in offended disbelief than in fearful shock. "Excuse me? How old do you think I am? Just because I'm studying, you little-minded bitch?! Learning has no age limit, you arrogant paedophiles!"

"Oh well," Jaw-guy shrugged, taking off his jacket, "you're no use to the bosses then. Looks like we'll have to make use of you. And your pretty friend there can record us doing it." He grinned, both at you and then at the camera.

Ponytails looked at you with a wrinkled forehead. "Something's wrong," he stated, taking a step close to you.

"What do you mean?" The guy in the brown leather jacket asked.

"Look at her," he answered, pointing towards you, "she isn't even sweating right now."

You looked at Ponytails with furrowed brows. "You've set the temperature quite low, dude. I'm practically shivering in here."

"That's actually true," Jacket acknowledged, nodding at you.

"No, you dumb fuckers! She isn't scared!"

Jaw had a moment of realisation at Pony's words, taking hurried steps towards you, grabbing you by your throat and pushing you into the wall behind you.

"Oh my Gaahd," you tried to exclaim through whatever air was able to pass through your lungs, as you felt your hand automatically go grab the one that was causing you pain.

"Who are you?" Jaw hissed through his teeth close to your face. "Who do you work for?"

Your brows lifted. An aching moan left your lungs. You took in a little gulp of air. "I never thought this is how it goes down."

"That's because you picked the wrong men to mess with, darlin'."

Your raised brows crinkled at Jaw's statement. "What?"

You: Oh, I was thinking about the horny wave I got when he tried to choke me. *stretches the corner of her mouth in embarrassment* Yeah, turns out not the first thought that should come to your mind when someone's trying to kill you. But on the bright side I discovered a kink so *does a thumb up with both hands with a big grin.*

"But we haven't even started messing with you boys yet."

The camera swirled from your agitated, flushed face to the doorway leading to the bedroom, catching a very disinterested Wanda leaning on the wall as she checked out her nails.

"Wow," you choked, "were you always this hot, Wanda?"

"Who the fuck is this? Who the fuck are you?" Ponytails pointed his gun at the Scarlet Witch in haste, bringing forth a plasmic red spark in between her fingers, which, with a little twist, made the man point his gun at his buddy.

Another camera entered through the door to catch Jaw pulling you away from the wall to hold you in a lock with his gun pointed to your head. "One wrong move and I blow her brains out, bitch."

"One wrong move and I'll be doing the same to you, bitch."

Natasha stood behind Jaw with a gun. "Let go of her before my friend and I paint these walls with your insides."

Jaw cursed her under his breath, taking a few moments before releasing you. You quickly walked to a safer corner of the room, next to the fireplace, breathing with ease now.

"Y/N," she called out, "you okay, sweetie?"

"Uhh...just a little light-headed. Otherwise, I'm good," you responded, finding yourself lowering your voice, "though I wish someone else was choking me right now." You looked at the camera and narrowed your eyes. "Don't you judge me," you criticised in a whisper at it, feeling yourself tilt to one side, losing your balance, already fearing to hit the floor before being caught by strong hands.

"Oh," you sang while the camera panned out from you and those pale hands to show Loki very gracefully breaking your fall, "Hey, handsome!"

Loki didn't even blink as he tried to bring you back on your feet. "Drinking on a mission? Really? I thought you were better than this."

"Ugh," you bleched at him, "shush! I was in my form with those gin shots, okay. These whiney thirsty boys were blabbering the moment I sat down. Let's see your brother pull that off-wait. Why are you here?"

The two of you were oblivious to the fight going in the background being recorded by the other camera; the Black Widow breaking bones like twigs while the Scarlet Witch was making them vomit on their fears.

"Oh, I wanted to see what petty excuse do you humans use to enjoy and forget this pathetic world-"

The camera panned in on you while someone outside the frame screamed and was thrown into a wall. You smiled with pure emotion in your eyes while looking at Loki.

"You didn't know we were here, did you?" you asked with that smile still stuck on your face.

"No."

"Thor dragged you here, didn't he?"

"I came here by my own accord."

"What did he blackmail you with this time?"

"...I wasn't blackmailed! No one can blackmail m-"

Loki: Tony said he'd block my access to his library. *clenches his teeth* That old rusty metalhead.

"Fine if you don't wanna tell me. I'm just glad you came," you pointed, patting him on his chest, completely missing the knife flying towards you being blocked by his reflexes- nothing having been displaced but for his arm.

"Wow," you gasped, letting your hand touch his chest again, "what do you have under there? Rocks? How the heck is your chest so hard?"

"I'm a frost giant darling," he asserted, twirling the knife in his hand before throwing it forward without looking, landing right on Leather Jacket's hand about to pull the trigger and shoot Wanda.

"And I'm a human. What's your point? Why are your boobies so hard and mine so squishy? Look!"

You took his hand to make him feel your chest. "Okay," he cut you short before you could forcibly make him grope you.

"You are clearly running on alcohol right now."

You snorted. "No, dummy. I'm standing. Are you sure you're not the drunk one?"

Loki looked at the camera.

.

"I'm sorry," you whined.

The camera caught your figure partially as you hid behind Loki in the compound elevator while Wanda and Natasha stood on either side.

"Don't worry," Natasha reiterated, "we'll take care of it. Just don't tell Tony about the..." she waved her hand in the air like it meant something to you.

The ding announced your arrival to the lounge. Elevator doors opened to see Tony standing at the entrance with crossed arms, his eyes boring straight into everyone in front of him, not even bothering to blink.

Behind him Scott and Bucky sat on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and Home Alone on the big screen, their eyes and ears focused on all of you rather than the movie.

An everlasting moment of silence passed and you managed to get a look of those eyes of judgement over Loki's shoulder before quickly curling back into your hiding spot.

"Where were you?"

The room didn't even have time to register the chill when you heard Natasha speaking. "Wanda and I were out shopping. I don't know about these two," she announced with her hands raised, walking out while mouthing 'sorry' at your face that had just experienced third-tier betrayal.

"I suggest you come out from behind Aro here," Tony digressed, "he's not gonna hide you for the rest of your life."

Loki took a step out of the elevator, getting a little closer to Stark, towering him just a little, his hands resting in his pockets. Stark was visibly hating the suave play from the God.

You were stuck there for a few more seconds before stepping beside Loki, letting the camera capture the wide eyes, a gasp of shattering shock and the fumes dissipating to give place to something new.

Panning in on you, the camera caught the bruise growing on your cheek, the size of a pear.

"Y/N-" Stark had barely begun to address his horror when Loki cut him short.

"She’s fine, Stark. Just a little-"

"Who did this?!"

That erupting gaze was meant for you to answer the question and so the entire surrounding went silent for you to answer him. Even Home Alone was muted to hear what you had to say for this bruise.

"Mr Stark, I can explain." Your voice was a quarter of what it was half an hour ago, barely coming out in front of your father. "Please don't be mad. And please keep an open mind about it."

None of you could gather what rushed into Tony's mind because the next thing you knew, he felt himself shift back a little. Curse words flew under his breath as his hands tried to run over the tensed muscles in his face.

"Oh, my G-is this some sort of new...new thing you kids are into?"

Now it was your turn to be confused. "What?"

You: *cringe* Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew! Get it out of my head! Ew!!

"N-No! I-what?! Nooooooo!" you stressed at the word as much as possible. The God stood there seemingly trying to make sense of this conversation.

"Loki and I were out on a date. We were karaoke-ing and I was dancing on the bar counter when I slipped and hit myself."

Loki did not miss even a second to look at the camera with pursed lips.

Loki: That's not what happened.

 Flashback to the club

You forced Loki on the dancefloor while Natasha took care of the goons.

"Come on, show me your mooooves, Loki," you shouted over the music before giddily jumping and taking a step back, colliding with a guy.

"Oh, I'm so-"

"What the f***!" The pasty blond guy cursed at you before looking at Loki. "Take care of your bitch, asshole."

Before Loki could take a stance between the two of you, he felt your hand block him, your eyes glowing at that rude stranger.

"Who the f*** are you calling, asshole, you dried pulp-less raisin!"

The guy twisted his jaw before stepping very close to you.

Loki- clearly uncomfortable by the distance- tried to pull you towards him and away from that pathetic excuse of a human

"Alright," the God announced, "you better watch-"

The camera caught the full-blown emotion of offence on Loki's face as you swatted his hands away.

"I called. Your boyfriend. An asshole. You c***."

Loki blinked in a sense of amusement at the audacity of that man, the ripples of tensed muscles under his black t-shirt quite visible for the ones who watched.

"At least I can take a pounding unlike your ego, you smelly ballsack," you spat back. "Now walk away before I bring a mirror and show you what a real asshole looks like." The infant rage that Loki was carrying in his entire body suddenly screeched to a halt as he looked at the back of your head with shocked confusion. "What kind of insult was that?"

The pasty guy was fuming now. Your words clearly rubbing him the wrong way.

"Oh, what happened?" you sang in a sarcasm filled tone. "Did your boring comebacks turn flaccid? Just like your virgin d-"

He pushed you back. "Shut the fuck up before I make you shut up."

Loki body stood as a shield- only behind you- wanting to go ahead and do something to that guy but you were not giving him a chance to do so.

You gasped. "The audacity of this bitch!" And pushed him back. "What're gonna do, fight me?"

No one saw it coming. The punch landed on your face within seconds, pushing your back into Loki's chest, the latter having to grab you to stop you from falling.

"Okay, that's it," Loki pulled you up, his eyes on fire glaring right at the man with the intention to kill. And as his luck for the night would have it, you used him as a support to gather a bit potential, scream "Son of a-" while charging at the guy. By now the rest of the ladies on the dancefloor had witnessed enough to come to your aid and beat the living hell out of that man. Pure, chaotic energy spreading over the floor that reflected in the pleasant amusement in Loki's eyes.

"By the Norns," Loki whispered, looking at the scene unfolding in front of him before looking at the camera, "remind me never to get on Y/N's bad side."

The pasty guy screamed out of the frame, making Loki turn at him with a layer of disappointment.

"Oh, you asked for it," he shouted at the man screaming for help before being swallowed whole by the river of women.

 You: *sighs* Of course, I can't tell Mr Stark I got punched while defending your honour.

Loki: *giggle snorts*

You: *turns to look at him* what?

Loki: You're right. I can see him never believing that.

You: *nodding in agreement* right?

Loki: Because he would cut my head off the day he does. *stops smiling*

You: Aw! I won't let him, buddy.

Loki: Oh, I doubt it. He is still in shock about the whole 'date' thing.

The camera flips to the lounge showing Stark sitting in between Scott and Bucky, looking in the distance- still in shock- while those two munched on their popcorns from the popcorn bowl kept in Tony's lap.

"Nah." he finally says out of the blue, almost making Scott jump, "Y/N can't date Loki? I'm sure she's just pulling my leg for not letting her go on that stupid interrogation mission."

Scott and Bucky exchanged glances before nodding and patting him on the back, resuming their movie with a 'sure buddy'.

You: *sheepishly* Yeah, I think we broke him.

Loki: At least he's behaving like he's supposed to, unlike my brother in such situations.

You: Huh...*nods* *furrows brows* speaking of Thor...where is he?

Loki:

You:

 The Club-a-Dub-Dub

The camera captured a face covered by flickering neon pink shades looking down at a laptop in those big hands while glowing neon party necklaces adorned his neck.

"All right let's do this," Thor stated in all seriousness, using a pink tic-tac to pull his hair up above his ear. The camera zoomed out a little to show him looking at a laptop placed in front of him on a pedestal.

"We are gathered here for a task that is too important for this world to be left to another time. A task so huge that my heart feels both burdened and honoured to be able to put it to fruition. A task so pure in its being that anyone who stands up against it in this club shall face my wrath. But not before I try to make them change their mind with love. Rosa and Gina, I ask you to step forward and be the blessed lot of this sacred ceremony."

The slow panning out of the frame showed two beautiful women step forward and face each other with pure smiles.

"By the power vested in me by becomeaminister.com, I am honoured to announce you wife and wife. You may now kiss."

An uproar of elated excitement filled the club just as Thor finished; the brides kissing and their friends celebrating. Everyone toasted to the newlywed couple before someone shouted to do the cha-cha slide.

The next thing you know, Thor and the rest of the people in the house were sliding left and right.

"THIS IS SO MUCH FUN!!!!" Thor shouted with the jumps and twists, "I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER WHY I'D COME HERE!!"

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Deborah “Shoulder Scarf” Birx is so sorry she stood there in the White House briefing room with her thumb up her ass while Trump recommended drinking Clorox and lied about numbers of cases of COVID and masks and everything else about the virus for a year.

Lindsay “Little Lindsay” Graham bought himself a shiny new AR-15 so he can defend his house against marauding “gangs,” and probably because if you don’t own one of these things, they throw you out of the “base” on your pin-striped butt.

You remember the phrase, “there is no bottom” don’t you?  The idea, principally involving Donald Trump, that he couldn’t possibly go any lower than he just went with his latest tweet or his latest lie.  Well, I’ve got news for him.  He’s got competition.

Little Lindsay, for one.  Can you imagine this lame squeak-toy masquerading as a senator from South Carolina and his own personal assault rifle?  Don’t you wonder where he keeps it, so he can defend against all those “gangs” that are determined to steal all his antiques or take the brooch he inherited from his mommy, or whatever the hell else he thinks he’s defending?  Well, at least we know which gangs he’s not afraid of:  The Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, because of course they’re they ones who were “kissing and hugging” the Capitol Police on January 6, according to Lindsay’s golf partner and Mar a Lago lunch-buddy.  Nothing to worry about from them, no sir.  We’re not afraid of those gangs, because, you know…they’re not Black.

But it was last night’s CNN special entitled “COVID War:  The Pandemic doctors speak out,” that takes the cake for this week’s How Low Can We Go Award.  What fucking war?  There was never a goddamned “war” on COVID!  You point to one thing this country did during the 12 months or so Trump and his administration were in charge that amounted to a “war.”  Did they institute a nation-wide campaign against the disease, one in which all 50 states and Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories would all be doing the same thing at the same time to fight the disease?  If anything even remotely resembling a national unified effort was undertaken, I must have missed it.

And the very idea of collecting these nincompoops in one place with the apparent purpose of asking them what really happened?  I mean, they had 365 opportunities between January of 2020 and January of this year on any given afternoon to pick up the phone and call CNN or the New York Times or MSNBC or the Washington Post or anybody for crying out loud and unburden themselves about what the hell was really going on inside the White House or the CDC or the DHS or the FDA, because that’s where they worked, or allegedly worked anyway.  Any one of them could have called a press conference out on Pennsylvania Avenue in sight of the White House and blown the whistle on the fucking criminal enterprise that was the Trump administration’s response to the most deadly outbreak of disease in this country in a hundred years.

Nobody was stopping them.  There wasn’t a squad of D.C. cops or Secret Service agents out there preventing them from opening their mouths and telling the truth.  Birx tried to imply that somehow Trump threatened her, at least that was the question from CNN.  “I got called by the President. It was very uncomfortable, very direct and very difficult to hear."  “Were you threatened?” CNN asked her?  "I would say it was a very uncomfortable conversation."

Oh, goodness!  She must have broken out in a sweat and got one of her scarves all damp and everything!  A very uncomfortable conversation,” she said.  What about all the “very uncomfortable conversations” happening in every fucking hospital in the country when doctors walked outside to tell family members that dad, or mom, or a son or a daughter just took their last gasp on a respirator?  How many times you figure that happened?  Ten thousand?  Twenty?  A fucking hundred thousand times?

And who in the flaming son of the devil is Dr. Robert Kadlec, identified by CNN as a disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services.  You ever remember hearing from or about this goof over the last year?  You would think that being the assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for “disaster response” would put you right in the middle of the COVID pandemic, wouldn’t you?  So where the fuck was Kadlec?

Well, I had to look him up and here’s what I found.  He was the subject of a long-forgotten whistleblower complaint from way back in May of last year that I have a dim memory of.  While the COVID virus was rampaging through the country and killing at first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands a day, Kadlec was awarding a sweetheart no-bid contract for a fucking smallpox vaccine to some company called Emergent BioSolutions he had a personal connection with, at a price that was twice what the government had previously paid for the same vaccine.  So what did Kadlec do?  He proceeded to go after the guy who filed the complaint against him, Rick Bright, who was the head of BARDA, the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority.  Kadlec demoted him, transferred him out of BARDA and put him in a job where he had nothing to do.  So all the time Kadlec actually has something to do, an actual “disaster” to respond to, he’s running around awarding insider deals for a vaccine against a virus we haven’t had a case of in fucking decades.

And he’s one of the SOBs that CNN chose to have on its “COVID war” special.  (Rick Bright, on the other hand, was recently appointed to President Biden’s coronavirus advisory board.)

Let’s not even discuss Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC who was in charge of shutting up everyone in that once-prestigious government agency.  Or Stephen Hahn, head of the FDA, who, shall we say, didn’t exactly distinguish himself or his agency as 500,000 souls were buried under his watch.  Or Brett Giroir, the former four star admiral you used to see standing next to Trump during his Rose Garden appearances when he was screaming about “opening up” the economy and telling us the coronavirus was going to “just disappear.”  He was Assistant Secretary for Health and was put in charge of COVID testing, which we will all recall was such a success that more than a year after COVID, it is still a gigantic pain in the ass to get a test for the virus.

CNN had all these goofs on its air last night because they know “the real story behind the scenes” in the “war on COVID.”  Not one of them ever flapped so much as a corner of their bottom lip to tell what they knew about how fucked up the whole Trump administration was during the year they served under the Golfer in Chief.  Not one of them considered for even a moment resigning from their position and going public.  And now, we’re told, they are all working on restoring their reputations while there are 500,000 dead bodies out there who were buried on their watch which will never be “restored.”

I’m so glad Joe Biden made it to the White House so he could stand out there on the back lawn the other day where Trump used to tell all his lies to the press and finish answering a reporter’s question about Georgia’s new voting restrictions by saying, “You can’t provide water for people about to vote.  Give me a break.”

I’ve wanted to hear someone say “give me a break” for four long years.  Give me a break, CNN, asking all these lame fucks to tell us the truth about Trump and COVID, 500,000 lives too late.  Give me a break, Shoulder Scarf, with your whining about Trump making you feel “uncomfortable.”  Give me a break, Little Lindsay, with your brand-new shiny shootie-thingie that’s going to scare all those nasty gang guys.

Lucian K. Truscott IV

[mollymauk-teafleak]

I will love you if I never see you again (chapter two)

Huge thanks again to my beta readers, @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian whom I love very much

Please consider leaving a comment on Ao3, it takes two seconds, is completely free and it’s hugely motivational and helpful to fic authors like me!

Chapters: 1, 2

-------

It had been four hours, not even half a day, and Juno was already losing his mind.

He had called in sick at the crack of dawn, unsure of what else to do or what he was going to say when that excuse ran thin, putting the phone down sharply on Rita’s protestations that Mistah Steel never voluntarily called in sick. As often happened when he talked with- or rather shouted at- Rita, he immediately regretted being so sharp and so curt, the second it was too late to take the words back. It just always seemed like he couldn��t control himself in the moment, like someone else, much angrier and snappier, took the reins when he opened his mouth.

Which didn’t bode well for his new job.

He walked away from his comms and stared balefully at the tiny, wrinkled peanut of a baby lying in the middle of his hastily cleared and aired out bed. How such a loud and relentless noise could come from something so small, he didn’t have the faintest idea but she’d been going at it since the ten seconds after Nureyev had walked out of the door.

Not that Juno could blame her. He would scream his head off too, if he’d been abandoned in some stinking, cramped little apartment with a stranger with a scowl like his own. He understood why but good god, it was getting painful.

Every time he made an attempt to soothe her, picking her up or talking to her, she’d just rev like a little engine and the screaming would kick up in pitch until Juno was wincing and fighting the urge to clap his hands over his ears. He’d tried everything he could think of, even zipped open the bag Nureyev had left and pulled out the cloth cat he’d talked about. He had to admit it was cute, the compound eyes done in little sequins and everything.

And when he’d held it out in front of Bianca, she had kicked it out of his hand furiously and sent it across the room.

Juno sighed, feeling a headache root itself in the very base of his brain, ��Are you hungry? Is that it?”

She gave no answer but to ball up her little fists against her face, now red as the planet she was trapped on. Juno was getting apprehensive, that colour couldn’t be good to maintain for an extended period of time. Would she just burst if she kept on like that? What would he tell Nureyev then, when he came back?

If he came back.

That thought had gnawed at his brain stem since he’d seen this new, exhausted version of Nureyev with his hair growing a little too long and the shadows under his eyes. He tried to marry it up with the Nureyev he’d known, the man with the sleek, predator’s smile and poise and the heart underneath it all and he couldn’t make a man who would do something like this. Like any of this, having a kid, protecting them, upending the life he curated so carefully for something out of his control.

And if that was true, what did it mean? Had Juno set himself up as neatly as he’d done for Rex Glass? What if Nureyev had no intention of ever coming back?

He didn’t know this new Nureyev, with the broken heart and the tired eyes. He couldn’t say what he wanted, what his plan was. If he acted only in his own self interest, what was he trying to achieve by leaving him with this squalling little noise maker that had been cursed with half Steel DNA?

A hundred different anxieties sat in the pit of his stomach and clawed at it’s walls, making him feel sick and intensifying his headache. He couldn’t puzzle it out, like a mass of string that grew more complicated as a tugged at it.

Groaning, he tugged at his curls and said, “Fine. Food. Let’s try that.”

Making a bottle was far more complicated than he ever could have imagined, especially with Bianca balanced in one arm and screaming. He had to wrestle with the tub of formula to get it open then was greeted with a nauseating burst of artificial milk smell when it finally popped open, as well as a large amount in his hair and his good eye. It had to be measured out just right, he had to wash his hands, he had to boil the kettle then leave it for a full half hour, all while tiny little fists flew and a tiny little tantrum raged. Finally he had gotten it stirred all together, ran it under the water to cool it, even splattered some on his wrist to see if it was too hot like people did on streams.

He was proud of himself for five seconds until he sat back down on his bed, trying to angle Bianca so he could feed her. She made an indignant chirp sound as he tipped her, suddenly finding herself staring up at him. She seemed to ignore the bottle in her face, spluttering like a struggling engine, just looking at Juno. There was a moment of pause there, like they were both holding their breath as near identical pairs of eyes seemed to see each other for the first time.

And then her foot connected with the bottle and the top joints of his fingers where it hurt the most, sending it out of his grip and into his lap, where the top burst off and soaked him in lukewarm formula.

“Okay!” Juno burst out, startling them both. He jumped up, setting her down firmly on the covers, frustration making his cheeks burn, “Look, I know you’re in a strange place with a strange lady and you don’t get what’s going on but there is no need to make it this difficult! This sucks for me just as much as it does for you and it’s only going to get worse if you insist on being such a little mons-”

Juno stopped himself, sucking the word back in like a vacuum had opened up in his throat. But another voice finished it for him, a voice he’d expected to have grown hazier in his mind with the years between the last time he’d heard it and now. But no, it stayed sharp and clear as ever, like it lived on in a dark corner of himself.

And god, it terrified him.

He took a deep breath, tugging his hair, trying to keep himself grounded. It was a fight he was quickly losing until he realised that the room had become quiet. Quiet in a way it hadn’t been in for four hours.

Bianca wasn’t crying. She was looking at him, her little chest heaving like she might start again any second. Her round cheeks were wet and her fists pulled tight to her chest, fingers working nervously.

She needed him. She didn’t like it, he didn’t like it but it didn’t make it any less true. And Juno found himself looking at the exact same choice Sarah Steel had faced, one he had never wanted to have land in his lap.

He could fall apart and let down this tiny little person who was depending on him. Or he could not.

Juno had seen the consequences that one of those paths lead to, he lived with it’s scars every day of his life. And he couldn’t bear to take that road himself. It would be hard. He might still fail with every new step. He may well be doomed to tip and fall to the other side, it might be written into every cell of his body.

But even if it was, he could still fight it with a clenched jaw and split knuckles. And damn it, he was going to.

Sighing, Juno crossed over to his wardrobe and kicked away his now soaked sweatpants, exchanging them for his only other pair, the ones that were from his slightly slimmer HCPD days but would suffice. Then he came back over and picked up Bianca, carrying her back to the kitchen.

The steps were easier to follow this time, now he’d done them once. Wash the hands, pick up a fresh, sterilised bottle, two scoops of powder, fill with cooled boiled water up to the line. Test it on his wrist.

While he waited, he looked down at Bianca and regarded her, really looked at her. He couldn’t think of her as his daughter, not yet, that would be asking too much too soon. But he could see the resemblance even with one eye. She had his skin colour, his eyes, even the grumpy set to his face.

Suddenly, he was certain Nureyev would come back. She clearly missed him so much, what would there be to miss if he hadn’t given her love from the moment she was born? He’d meant every word he’d said about how precious she was to him, even if Juno couldn’t make sense of it with the man he’d known Nureyev to be. Why he’d made the choice he’d made, how he had come to shift his whole motivation, his entire driving force to include her, Juno didn’t know and maybe he’d lost the right to know. But it was what it was and he’d made a promise.

“Listen,” he eventually said, voice raspy with the lack of sleep, “I know it’s Nureyev you want. I know you miss him. But he can’t be here right now so you’ve got me instead. And...well, I’m no one’s first choice, never am. But I’m gonna try, kiddo. Alright?”

Bianca just blinked, opening her mouth for the nib of the bottle when Juno tipped it towards her, latching on quickly and feeding greedily.

“Alright,” Juno nodded, with a grim satisfaction.

One step taken.

“HCPD, Captain Khan speaking, how can I help, citizen?”

“Oh good, Khan, it’s you. I really didn’t think McCluskey was going to put me through after he chewed me out for ten whole minutes…”

“Wha...Steel? What the hell have you gotten yourself into now? What the hell could be worth giving me another goddamn aneurysm?”

“Little rude, Khan, I could be calling to report a crime for all you know.”

“Oh, you usually are, Steel. You just don’t realise you are and that you’re turning yourself in.”

“You’ve never been able to make any of those charges stick and you know it...but I’m really not calling about that, I’m calling to do some...research. For a case.”

“What do I look like, a library?”

“For crying out loud, I thought you guys were supposed to help citizens. Look, it won’t take five seconds, I just need to know if there’s anything you can do to get a baby to sleep through the night.”

“If...Steel, what in the hell is this case you’re working?”

“Not important! I just need an answer and well...you got kids, right? I thought you might know?”

“...Steel, you are by far the strangest individual I have ever had the misfortune to-”

“Khan, do you have an answer or not? This case is...time sensitive.”

“Well...I mean, lots of different people have different ideas on the subject. But I’d say the main concern is two fold, establishing a firm routine and then teaching the kid to self soothe. Kids love a schedule, y’know, helps them get into the rhythm of things. Same time every day, dinner then bath then tuck in. And put them in the crib when they’re drowsy but not fully asleep, that way they learn they call fall asleep on their own. The wife had to be very firm with me on that one, I can tell you, just too tempting to let them fall asleep in your arms-”

“Okay, that all sounds great. Thanks, uh, Captain. This will be very useful for my...my case.”

“I still don’t see what kind of case this could possibly be useful for, Steel…”

“Oh and wouldn’t you know it, that’s my client awake...um, I mean, calling. Got to go, Captain, thanks again!”

“Is that...crying?”

Juno had to remind himself he wasn’t getting any less sleep than he had before. But there was something about the fractured, broken glass snatches of sleep he was getting versus the low, barely awake fog he’d existed in before that was just leaving him feeling more drained than he ever had. Maybe it was the waking up to screams he couldn’t decipher, a loud and angry puzzle he couldn’t solve, rather than to a silent apartment and silent ghosts.

But there had been some small wins in the last three days. If he wanted to be optimistic, something Juno only was in his most desperate moments, he would say those wins were getting closer together.

He’d managed to wash Bianca’s dirty onesies in the sink with newly purchased detergent so she’d have clean ones to wear, rather than just burning through the pile of new ones she’d been left with. He’d bought a steriliser for her bottles and had actually set it up without anything exploding. He’d gotten her to accept the cloth cat, rather than brutalising it when he suspected she probably wanted to aim those tiny fists with their incredibly sharp nails at him.

And just now he’d managed to change her diaper without getting them both in a worse mess at the end than when they’d begun. He was actually starting to anticipate when she would try to roll off the table, able to snag her before she could.

Juno set her down on her blanket in the middle of the room, “Right...stay there and try not to be gross for five seconds. I just got the stains out of that little suit you’re wearing.”

Bianca answered as she usually did, with an indignant burble and a scowl she seemed to be perfecting. She was clearly still confused and bitter that he wasn’t Nureyev and Juno couldn’t exactly blame her. It was probably for the best that she saw him as a temporary annoyance.

“I’m gonna go get Kitty, you stay there and don’t roll anywhere or pull anything down or barf on anything,” he instructed as firmly as he could, pointing at her for emphasis like that was going to make any difference.

Bianca replied exactly as he’d expected, which was to stare at him like he was an idiot. It was eerily similar to Nureyev’s.

Kitty was where they’d been left, in the moses basket Bianca slept in beside the bed. Juno tried to imagine it in the corner of whatever hotel room Nureyev was staying in on whatever complicated and history book worthy scheme he was pulling, under whatever elaborate, flowery name he’d constructed. At least he’d found someone to see the stars with.

He snatched up the toy, holding it awkwardly by the poison stinger, admonishing himself for thinking about stupid stuff when Bianca could be losing his security deposit and pissing off his landlord in any number of inventive ways.

Which was when he heard the door open. And his heart leapt into his throat.

He flung himself out of the bedroom, hand groping for a blaster he hadn’t been wearing for three days and couldn’t even use, other hand forming a fist, ready to just throw himself at whatever threat had just walked through the door if he couldn’t shoot it dead.

Fortunately, a second before he could do that, he heard her voice.

“Well, hello there! Who might you be, little bean?”

Juno’s shoulder slammed painfully into the doorframe as he skidded to a halt, all his momentum and panic turning into a rush of air that sounded vaguely like, “Rita?”

“Mistah Steel!” Sure enough, his secretary was standing in his living room, peering curiously at Bianca, though she’d turned to give him her kilowatt grin as he’d entered, “Where’d you get this cutie from?”

“Rita,” Juno managed a clearer though no less stunned attempt at her name, “What are you doing here at this hour, it’s…” he realised then he didn’t actually know what time it was.

“I’m here cos you aint been in the office for three days!” Rita exploded, a worry she’d clearly been distracted from by Bianca flooding back into her expression, “You called in sick the first time but then you didn’t answer any of my calls and I thought maybe you’d dropped your comms in the toilet again cos it was never right after that first time when the screen went all wibbly���”

“Rita,” Juno groaned, slumping against the doorway. A lot of conversations with his secretary turned into just repeating her name to punctuate her long, rambly monologues until she clicked on that he was trying to talk to her. It was like paying a toll to cross a bridge.

“But, Boss, my goodness but you haven’t answered my question! Why on Mars is there a baby on your living room floor?”

Juno scrambled for a lie, he hadn’t decided yet what he’d tell anyone if they asked about Bianca. He hadn’t been anticipating having to tell anyone, really. He had no friends after all and he didn’t have the kind of face that invited casual conversation in the street.

And he’d never been any good at lying to Rita. Which is why he avoided telling her anything she wouldn’t want to know.

“I’m...I’m watching her for a friend, while they’re out of town,” he eventually coughed up, “Just for a little while.”

Rita turned back to her, studying her face. Her face, so similar to the one looking at her nervously, minus thirty eight years and an eye.

Eventually she grinned, “Well, I can see why ya offered to watch her. She’s a real cute little madam.”

Juno gave a rough, strained smile. That was why he never lied to Rita. She always believed him without question.

“But, Mistah Steel, I gotta say, this apartment is not set up for babysitting duty! You could’ve called me, cleaning this place is a two person job for sure. Probably six or seven. But we’ll work with what we got.”

“Oh, Rita, no,” Juno groaned, “You don’t have to do that…”

“Well, with all due respect, were you gonna look after her all by your lonesome? When you...well, forgive me for saying so, Boss, but when you forget to look after yourself sometimes?”

Juno flinched, “I’ve been doing fine!”

“I mean...sure, Boss,” Rita ducked her eyes and he saw just how much her owlish glasses magnified them when they slipped down her nose, “But...I mean, as long as I’m here, I could maybe stick around? Sure has been lonely at the office without you. I promise I won’t clean nothin’ if that upsets you...”

Juno closed his eye and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose where he could already feel a tightness brewing, “I wasn’t trying to...yeah, fine. Hang around if you want to but no later than...I still don’t know what time it is…”

“It’s six in the afternoon, Mistah Steel.”

“Right. Well, no later than eight, Bianca has to have a bath before bed. I’m trying to get her into a routine.”

“Bianca?” Rita’s face lit up, her hair frizzing out the way it always did when she was excited, like the emotion was an actual electric current running through her body right to her dyed purple tips, “That’s such a sweet name!”

Juno winced internally. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that, given her a fake name or something. But it was Rita, after all. Nureyev didn’t have a Rita.

So Juno just crashed onto the sofa and watched as she made cooing noises to Bianca, earning smiles and interested looks that he hadn’t managed to earn with three days of feeding her and changing her diapers. It was enough to make his lip turn down on one side. She’d never made those happy bubbling noises for him or stretched her hands out to be picked up by him.

As he said. It was probably for the best.

After a while, he felt his eyelid growing heavy and things started to turn fuzzy around the edges, a yawn pulling at the edges of his mouth that he refused to let go. He folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the broken springs that had somehow become misshapen enough to hold him with some comfort.

“Rita…” he mumbled, voice turning vague.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Mistah Steel, me and Bee Bee will have a good time, you get some shut eye.”

Juno tried to say something, maybe to protest that it wasn’t her name or maybe to tell her that the stuffed cat on the floor was her favourite, but whether he managed before he fell asleep, he couldn’t have said.

Juno had been thinking a lot about what Rita had said, when she’d asked him if he’d really thought he’d be able to do this on his own, in a voice like he’d been a complete idiot. Because with a week gone since he’d been involuntarily paired up with Rita, he was realising that she was right.

She came over every day now, to walk Bianca’s silly little cloth cat across the back of the sofa and put on elaborate pantomimes with the other parts being filled by her toys with lower billing and, when the cast grew thin, Juno’s shoes. Juno himself would scowl at any parts offered to him and sleep on the side of the stage. Or else, pretend to sleep while keeping his eye half open so he could follow the story. He found making bottles and doing laundry were far easier when he could use both his hands and he wasn’t sleep deprived and, yes, it was nicer to have time and brain space to actually make proper food for himself rather than eating take out all the time. And, well, if he accidentally made too much and Rita was there and they ended up eating at the same time at the same table while Bianca napped in her moses basket then, well...that was nice too.

But sometimes he would find a bitter taste on his tongue and find a thought in his mind to accompany it.

Nureyev had none of this.

He’d done everything on his own and presumably, in another few weeks, he would come back and take her away and continue to do it all on his own.

Tonight though, Rita was visiting Franny who’d apparently had a fall or maybe it was her birthday, Juno could never follow any story about that woman. And Bianca was clearly realising that she wasn’t getting any entertainment or cuddles that night, given how she was fussing and kicking her little legs and getting that grumpy look that Juno used to think was his own but he’d definitely seen that expression on Nureyev’s face many times. Definitely after Juno bounced the balled up doodle of a cat off his nose.

Juno sighed and regarded her, chewing on her fist and cycling her little legs in the air, lying on her back in the middle of the bed. Every attempt to lie her down in her own had resulted in a shriek. Even after a bottle, a bath as full of bubbles as Juno could make it and one of the stories Nureyev had packed for her, she was wide eyed and full of subdued fury as ever.

“Well,” Juno frowned at her, mimicking her expression just to amuse himself, “We can’t sit around and gripe all night, can we?”

Bianca seemed to agree for once, grabbing her ankles and attempting to put those in her mouth as well.

“Yeah,” Juno rolled his eye, folding his arms, “How about a walk then? If you really won’t let go of any of that energy.”

He’d realised a long time ago that walking without purpose through the streets helped him to settle his mind when he felt it getting out of control. It had been Ben’s suggestion, back when they were teenagers, that if he tired out his legs then his brain might follow suit. Well, his brother’s actual suggestion had been to dance his feelings away but he’d made it clear what he’d thought of that. Walking had been a compromise.

Some of his best case cracking ideas had come about when he was marching along some no name street of Hyperion city, alarming the passers by when he would suddenly flap his hands and jump and punch the air in his eureka moment.

And it had occurred to him that Bianca might feel the same, not that she had any cases to solve apart from why things stopped existing when they weren’t in her field of vision.

She seemed to like the motion if nothing else, as Juno buttoned his coat around her just in case she got cold and set off into the evening just starting to tip into twilight. He didn’t set off with any particular destination, he never did, that was a one way ticket to undoing everything he was trying to accomplish with the walk. Once you decided you were trying to get somewhere, then things got tricky. One foot in front of the other was so much simpler.

It was a nice night, all things considered. The dome overhead was catching the sunset in a pretty way, the electric veins of it highlighted in the gold of it so it all looked like a fancy jewelled hair net an Earth socialite would wear. The tops of the palms were dusted in it too, making the leaves shine all glossy, and even the tops of the buildings looked sharp and striking, like cut outs of black paper against the watercolour sky. Things could be beautiful in Hyperion, if you cracked your neck far enough back.

There weren’t too many cars out, there weren’t too many people airing grievances on the sidewalk. There weren’t too many reasons to not want to be here. A pretty good night.

Until he realised where his feet were taking him.

Bianca shifted against his chest at the sound of the birds. This was the only place in Hyperion city where you could hear birds in the trees and see the boughs of the palms bend with nests and find feathers on the ground to pick up and realise they were always softer and had more colours in them than you’d remembered.

The gates were just up ahead, black iron stark against the sunset so the words Halcyon Park stood out bold and bringing memories he’d rather forget, memories of other nights like this. Warm, golden nights that had seemed endless and beautiful and had ended up meaning less than dirt.

That was one thing Juno hated more than anything else. It wasn’t just the bad memories, it was the way they poisoned even the good ones, their roots cracking through the few sweet moments of his childhood and reminding him of the horrors that had been just around the corner that he’d never seen coming. In the end, the good memories hurt all the more.

Everything in Juno told him to turn around. But Bianca was poking her head out of his coat, looking around with wide, curious eyes, at the sounds of the birds maybe or the scent of the flowers that grew in thick, crowded rows along the stone paved paths. Maybe she’d never seen anything like this before? It seemed cruel to give her a glimpse of it now and then take her away.

And besides, she’d pitch a fit if he turned back for home now.

So, resigned, he walked into Halcyon Park, turning Bianca around so she could blink and burble at everything they passed, seeming more content than she had all day. Everything in the park centred around the fountain so that was where they ended up, hearing the soft whisper of the water before they saw it. Juno sat heavily down on one of the light wood benches, styled after the old parks of Earth, the ones that now only existed in picture books like Bianca’s, with their well dressed people in long dresses and tall hats and fresh air.

It didn’t take him long to realise he was sitting exactly where Sarah would sit, while he and Benzaiten would run rings around each other, more often than not tumbling into the fountain itself and getting soaked. And sometimes he would look up, through his dripping curls and see her staring off into space, like the two of them weren’t even there. And sometimes he would see her watching them with such intensity and an emotion he’d been too young to name and couldn’t remember now. And he would never be sure which he preferred.

Bianca had been watching the falling water devotedly, awed by how it split the fading sunlight and sparkled as if a handful of stars were tumbling from the darkening sky into the fountain like pennies for good luck. But now she yawned, resting her head on Juno’s chest, putting all of her weight against him.

Juno looked down. He hadn’t held her like this since she’d arrived, just cradling her because he could. Whenever he’d picked her up before it was always to move her from place to place or to balance her awkwardly while he put a bottle together as hastily as he could to stop her shrieking. He couldn’t remember just holding her for its own sake, feeling her warmth and weight and her little heart beat going like a hummingbird against his own.

And he knew why he hadn’t.

But now he was, Bianca had settled into it so easily, almost as if she’d been waiting for it, crying for it since she’d arrived and not understanding why he hadn’t listened. She was resting against him and patting her little starfish hand against his chest softly, nodding off to the sound of the birds and the smell of the flowers and whisper of the water and the rhythm of his heartbeat. Eventually she reached one of those hands up and patted around his ear, maybe looking for a golden cuff earring. Instead her fingers found the curls of his hair, where they were tighter and closer around the arch of his ear. Almost immediately she fastened on, stroking and petting and grasping where it had been getting longer than he was used to. And she fell asleep, content. So easily, she pillowed her head in the comfort that Juno was there. She trusted him.

Juno realised he was crying just in time to wipe away the tears that were sliding down one side of his face, catching them before they dripped onto Bianca’s head. And he felt like he could name the emotion he’d seen in Sarah’s eyes on those broken, golden nights of his childhood.

[fireblaze5555]

Another quick Kastle short while I am quarantining.

------

Frank found himself beat to hell and tied to a chair, his most recent war had some unseen players that broadsided him. It was unusual for him to be caught unawares but shit happens and here he sat. His face was throbbing and he was pretty sure he had at least one busted rib but he wasn't overly concerned yet. So far, the man who claimed to be the head of this mess had just talked. Endlessly. About his 'empire' and how stupid 'the Punisher' was to have interfered.

Frank hadn't said a word since he woke up, which by his estimation was several hours ago, mostly just looking unimpressed and annoyed, sizing up the room for when he made his move. He was brought out of his contemplation when they set a laptop in front of him on a small table, the screen black. He raised an eyebrow at the man before saying, "First time I've had a complementary movie, very considerate of ya." His voice was rough with disuse and he punctuated it by spitting some blood from his mouth.

The man, Marcetti, that's what he'd said his name was, gave a low chuckle before having a henchman turn the screen on. It only took Frank a second to recognize what he was looking at and suddenly all he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears.

Karen's apartment. He knew from the angle that the camera had to be in the bookshelf and he wracked his brain, trying to think of when they could have had a chance to plant a camera in her place. Or how they knew she was connected to him, he had been so careful with his Karen Page related indulgence.

Frank didn't say anything but the look he turned on the mob boss had the man taking an involuntary step back. Marcetti recovered quickly though, arrogance lacing his tone, "Are you surprised? Didn't think we would know that the Punisher has a soft spot for tall blonde legal assistants?"

An irrational part of Frank's brain wanted to correct him, she's a P.I., freelance investagative reporter and so much fucking more you piece of shit, but he knew that would only confirm to the man that he had struck a chord. So he ignored him, facing back to the screen and fast tracking his plan to get out of here so he could clear her apartment before she got back. He desperately hoped that she had made plans with Nelson or even Murdock and wouldn't be returning to her apartment any time soon.

His heart sank in his chest when he saw her come into view, carrying a clothes basket. Everything slowed down in that moment and details stood out in striking clarity as fear gripped him. She was wearing that tank top he liked, the one made of soft material that showed off the perfect shape of her breasts. It was shorter in the front so when she stood he could just see her belly button and a strip of taut pale skin on her abdomen. It was loose and flowy, granting him easy access to aforementioned breasts. She had on yoga pants, her favorite pair, and her hair was braided as it often was when she was cleaning the apartment. Karen settled on to the couch to start sorting laundry, he saw her haphazardly throwing her socks together before she came upon a pair of his. His heart ached as he saw her roll them the way he did on the occasion he was there to help with domestic tasks.

Frank's world sped back into focus as Marcetti clicked his tongue appreciatively, "My, my, you do have good taste Mr. Castle. She is lovely. I'm glad I ordered them to bring her here, I think she will be great fun to keep around once you are dead." Frank's whole body jerked towards the man involuntarily. The mob boss flinched trying to hide it by motioning for a lackey to land a few punches to Frank's snarling face. His eyes returned to Marchetti after every blow, unyielding.

"You put your hands on her and I will make sure you die as slowly and painfully as possible." His voice was low and full of promise.

"You aren't really in any position for threats. So just sit back and enjoy." His smile made Frank want to make the man swallow his own teeth. He was about to tell him as much when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Karen tense up and turn to the direction of her front door. A second later she was on her feet with the coffee table between her and two men.

Frank's breathing was labored as he watched them slowly approach her. Dread, panic and guilt churned in his chest, he was going to have to watch someone else he loved die, once again not being able to do a goddamn thing about it. When the first blow landed on her face he let out a bellowing yell that had everyone in the room step back. Frank pulled on his restraints, fighting to get his emotions under control. He had to get out of here, now, he may still be able to get there in time.

He froze though, when he saw Karen lash out with a vicious kick to the side of one of the mens' knees, collapsing it sideways. The other grabbed her by the hair but she instantly dropped to the ground causing him to lurch forward which brought him in range for her to snap her head back into his nose. As he clutched at his bloodied face, Karen stood quickly, swaying slightly, Frank was sure that the blow to the back of her head was disorienting. In a matter of seconds she had her .380 in her hand steadily staring the man down.

Pride swelled in Frank's chest, his panic ebbing only slightly, as he watched her beautiful mouth giving the man hell. Her hands were steady and her form was perfect. If he wasn't so terrified for her safety, Frank would be incredibly turned on. He knew she was telling her assailant to get on the ground, she would shoot if she had to but she would avoid it if she could. When the man lunged for her, she squeezed the trigger, two to the chest. The man who's knee had been collapsed managed to get to his feet, taking a swipe at her while she was distracted. It was his last mistake because she turned and put two bullets in him as well.

Frank heard the men cursing around him and he gave a small laugh, despite himself. People were always underestimating his girl. On the screen, he saw Karen process for a moment, his heart giving a lurch when he saw her cover her mouth and let out a sob. But then she was moving, grabbing her bag and a jacket and heading in the direction of the door, no doubt headed to the safe house, just as they planned for situations like this.

He forced his face into a smug mask, turning from the screen to meet the eyes of his captor. The man was seething, still staring at the screen where two of his men lay dead. When Marcetti did turn his eyes back to Frank he snapped his fingers at two men to his right, they instantly stepped forward, "Go find that bitch. Do what you have to, just get her here, alive." He waved them off sharply before kicking the small table and laptop out of the way to stand in front of Frank. It was just him and two other men in the room with Frank now.

Frank shook his head slowly, a corner of his mouth tipping up smugly, "You probably should have done more research on her. I mean, it's really never good to underestimate a woman, especially not one with such good aim." He forced his voice to stay even in the hopes it would further rile Marcetti. He was half sick with worry, at the very best Karen was going to be frantic when she couldn't get a hold of him, at worst she could be attacked again. So he needed his captor to make a mistake soon.

Thankfully it only took another minute. Marcetti stepped right in front of him bending to speak right into Frank's face. Perfect. Before he could get a word out Frank headbutted him as hard as he could in the face. Frank had taken a lot of blows to the head so he only saw stars for a split second, recovering much faster than his victim. Taking a page out of Karen's book he lashed out with a powerful kick to the man's knee, collapsing it backwards. There was a flurry of movement at that point, the two remaining men hurrying to pull their boss back out of reach. It was enough time to allow him to finish slipping the zip ties around his wrist completely off.

When one of the lackeys pulled back to punch him, Frank was ready, quickly breaking his arm and taking the firearm at his waist. The man was dead before he hit the ground, the second guard had barely gotten his hand to his waist before he was also felled by a headshot. Frank rolled his shoulders, ignoring the twinge in his side, checking the magazine in the stolen gun. Four bullets left.

Marcetti had started to crawl away but Frank kicked him over onto his back, promptly putting a bullet in the remaining good knee. He let him scream for a second before Frank put another in his right shoulder and another in his left shoulder. Stepping over the prone man, Frank leaned down, grabbing him roughly by the jaw, forcing him to stop screaming.

Frank let all of the pent up rage show on his face for the first time since he saw Karen disappear from the camera feed. His voice was deadly quiet when he started to speak, "You're lucky, that she got away," he shook the man's face as his weeping got louder, "Shut up. Like I was saying, you're lucky she got away because now I don't have time to make this as painful as I wanted. You really shouldn't have messed with my girl, asshole."

Frank stood to his full height, giving Marcetti a second to start begging before putting the last bullet in his head. The beast in Frank wanted to make him suffer. He could have spent hours dragging out the man's death for bringing Karen into it but he had to make sure she was okay. She was his priority now.

Grabbing the gun off of the second man he shot he held it at the ready as he moved through the building. Thankfully it was abandoned and he only had one more person to shoot before he was clear of the building and striding as quickly as he could towards a main road. He wasn't sure where he was so the likelihood of him being anywhere near where he left his van was slim to none.

Luckily his captors had not stolen the money in his pocket so he was able to hail a cab to get him within a couple of blocks of the designated safehouse. Thank God for NYC cabbies, there wasn't a word or even a backwards glance as Frank climbed in, beat to shit and covered mostly in his own blood.

He was planning as he stepped out of the cab, where to go next if he didn't find Karen in the safehouse? Maybe she would have gone to Murdock's place. If she hadn't, maybe Murdock could help him locate her faster. His busted rib was giving him hell for the pace he was setting but he needed to know she was safe.

It seemed like an eternity but Frank finally came to a halt in front of a rusted door at the back of an apparent abandoned warehouse. He had been watching his surroundings and didn't have a tail so he punched in the code to the door, sliding in quickly. Out of precaution he had a gun ready in his hand before calling out, "Karen? It's me."

For a moment he didn't hear anything and his heart began to sink in his chest. Then he heard the subtle click of a safety being clicked into place and she was rounding the corner that served as a makeshift kitchen. He was lightheaded with the relief that flooded him, she was here, she was safe.

Before he could process more she was right in front of him, her slender hands on either side of his jaw as she looked him up and down, "Frank what happened? Are you okay?" Her hands were roaming over him, searching for injury, "I tried calling you a dozen times and you didn't pick up, I didn't know where you were. These men...they.." She let out a hiccoughing sob that had him instantly pulling her to his chest, murmuring comforting words into her hair. She recovered quickly though, wiping the tears away harshly and pulling him towards the first aid kit.

"Are you okay, you're not hurt anywhere are you?" This time he was the one running hands over her, voice rough, eyes resting on the bruise that was blossoming on her cheek.

"No, no I'm fine." She rested her hand over his on her cheek before steering him to sit down. Frank closed his eyes as she ran a cool cloth over his face, wiping away the blood. Her voice was quiet as she worked. "How did you know I was here?"

His eyes opened quickly, rage and panic suddenly burning hotly through him again, remembering watching the men attack her, remembering his own helplessness to stop it. Without thinking Frank brought his hands up to cradle her face, to reassure himself that she was here, that he wouldn't wake up to find she had been taken from him too.

As if she could sense his rising panic, which she probably could, he could never hide anything from her, Karen wrapped her hands around his wrists and gave them a reassuring squeeze. She pressed a soft kiss into his palm before she continued to slowly wipe the blood from his face. She knew he would answer when he was ready.

Frank grounded himself by watching her eyes as she worked. Every once in a while her clear blue gaze would meet his and he would see them crinkle reassuringly at the edges before she focused on her task again.

Finally, when he felt most of the remaining adrenaline drain out of him, he spoke slowly, his voice full of gravel, "This last mission, I almost had them all wiped out but I missed something and they blindsided me. I woke up and they had me tied to a chair, giving me the usual bad guy speech, ya know?" She gave an amused huff but he saw the worry creep into her visage as she cleaned out a gash she found in his scalp.

"They pulled out a computer that had a live feed to a camera into your living room."

Karen froze, meeting his eyes quickly, "You saw them attack me." It wasn't a question, she was always one step ahead of him it seemed.

Frank gave a slow nod, feeling sick as he remembered watching the men advance on her. How she almost died because of him. Again. He attempted to shutter his expression, he needed to create distance between them, he had to push her away. He knew that this would happen and yet he kept selfishly pushing himself into her life. He was going to get her killed. He-

He let out a growling curse as Karen abruptly and none too gently pressed gauze covered in alcohol to the cut in his scalp. His gaze returned to hers sharply and she was waiting for it because her expression was defiant.

"I already know everything you are thinking Frank and we've been through all of it before. You're not pushing me away, I'm not going anywhere and so help me God if you even THINK about telling me 'I'm not safe' or 'I'm not good for you Karen' I will beat you within an inch of your life. Do you understand me Castle? Yes, people came after me. Yes, they did it to get to you. But they didn't get me, I got them."

Her voice was strong but he felt the small tremor in her fingers as she began applying the butterfly sutures to his head. Gently, he grabbed her hand, pulling it down to press a lingering kiss to her knuckles before he replied, "I know you can handle yourself, I've seen you do it more than once and I was damn proud of what you did today. But Karen," he leaned down to catch her eye again when she looked away, "You shouldn't have to. You're good. I'm tainting your life, forcing you to make decisions you shouldn't have to make."

She stared at him for a moment before slowly shaking her head, like she thought he was incredibly dense, before she stepped in to stand between his knees. Her hands came to rest on either side of his strong jaw as she tilted his head up to look at her. Slowly she lowered her head and gave him a soft lingering kiss, one that made his chest swell and his arms ache to wrap around her. A kiss that made him realize just how foolish it was of him to think he could walk away now, after she was so deeply a part of him.

After another slow press of her lips, this time to his forehead she spoke softly but with all the authority of the goddess she was, her words full of steel, "I would make that decision over and over again if it meant I got to keep you in my life. We're a unit now Frank. We deal with things together. I don't always agree with the wars you wage but I will always be there once you are done fighting them. I'm not going anywhere. I'll tell you as many times as you need to hear it."

Frank stared up at her, both wanting to take her to the bed in the back and show her with his hands and mouth how much he worships her and wanting to shake her until she sees sense and runs in the opposite direction as him. Though the latter would tear him to pieces.

He settled for a happy medium, once he was patched up, he had Micro set up focused surveillance on this safehouse and then called in a favor to have the two bodies removed from Karen's apartment as discreetly as possible before settling them both into bed and tucking her securely against his chest. She was out almost instantly, her fingers securely wrapped around his as she slept.

Frank was a monster, he killed people, deserving people, but it was killing nonetheless. He constantly made Karen worry and he most certainly didn't deserve her love. But as he watched her sleeping in his arms, her blatant trust and care for him evident in the way she gripped his hand, he realized he was also a man. A man that needed Karen Page as much as the Punisher needed his war. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head, drifting off as well. Maybe one day he will be strong enough to push Karen Page out of his life for her own protection...but he doubted it.

[bewareofchris]

Public Relations 4/??

PG-13 atm | Alec Hardy/Dr. Bill Masters | Broadchurch, Masters of Sex | Strong language, eventual sexual situations

“The fact that Alec Hardy was not currently, had not ever, and did not want to date the American sex research did not seem very important at all to the town of Broadchurch.  They did what they had always done with a little bit of juicy gossip: they made a spectacle of it.”

<< prev

It would have been nice to blend in with a crowd on the beach.  Bill had been looking to find some kind of anonymity in numbers but the beach was mostly barren.  The waves were battering the empty shore, and the sand itself had the look of having gone untouched by anything heavier than a light wind.  It was funny how it was this, a stretch of abandoned beach, that made his chest ache. 

 He had made it through Betty’s well-meaning speech about how he needed to take a break, and how they (although he got the impression it was mostly just her) needed a break from him.  As if he had done something unforgivable just now instead of the variety of sins he’d been concealing all these years.  That was the part that didn’t make any sense to him, the part that left him feeling like he’d missed some part of his own life.  

No, no.

He hadn’t missed it; he just hadn’t been as good a liar as he thought he was.  He had been playing a game with the pretense of privacy.  He’d been demanding everyone keep secrets and he had thought those secrets were undetectable.  There was no reason for Libby (his wife, his goddamn wife) to have known that he had been sleeping with another woman all these years.  And yet, when he thought back through it, when he assessed the desperation to be nearer to Virginia, he thought how stupid he had been to think Libby wouldn’t know.  His wife, his beautiful wife, had been promised fidelity and she’d settled for predictability.  She had known the whole time.

All Bill had done was tell the truth, at last.  It had been a relief to be faced with consequences; but he might have kept his secret if he’d known how Libby would scream at him, how she would tell him all the secrets she’d been keeping.  How she’d settled into a lackluster life of being the wife of a sullen, angry man.  How she’d accepted that she was second-best, and last thought of, and how she’d convinced herself that it was okay.

Oh hell, all alone on an empty beach, sitting on his ass in the sand, the only thing that Bill could feel in all the world was the horror of the echoing realization of Libby’s agony.  He was a selfish bastard of a man, and he deserved to feel the hopelessness that washed over him now.

He deserved to wonder where his life would go.  He deserved to wonder who would stand by him when the dust settled, and to know that he’d made such a mess of things there was nobody left to care.  He deserved to wonder what his children must think of their father.

There was no anonymity on this empty beach, but there was nobody there to see him press the heels of his hands against his eyes and give up the fight against the inevitability.  All alone, out on the beach, he was safe to cry as long as he liked.

--

Alec had never been more ready for a shower, and his bed.  Miller had been full of twinkly assumptions when he’d said there was no point in sitting around the office staring at things they already knew, waiting for inspiration to hit them.  (He might have been doing just that, but his body ached in a way that couldn’t be ignored a moment longer.)  He was dragging himself through the door of the hotel, hoping to get away with being avoided.  

It all looked so promising, as if he just might be able to make it to his room without incident, except that he could hear them in the next room.  The sounds of their intrigued voices, whisper-shouting to one another.

“We don’t know anything about it,” was the good Reverend, being the calmest voice of reason in a village full of excitable idiots.  (Unless he was a murderer, then he was a very polite psychopath that preyed on pubescent boys.)  “Its none of our business.”

“But he was crying,” Becca said.  It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, it didn’t even sound like it was the first time she’d had this conversation.  No, her tone was full of confidence, the way you got when you knew you had the right answer because you’d already convinced someone to believe you.  “Right out on the beach, he was crying.”

“That doesn’t mean--” Reverend Paul tried.

“I heard that shitface was yelling at Aunt Ellie outside a coffee shop.  Dawn didn’t hear everything but she said that it looked very tense and that it definitely had to do with the gossip around town.”  That was Ollie, the junior reporter, full of circumstantial (incorrect) facts. 

“Well, it’s not very inconspicuous is it?  Staying in the same hotel?” 

Reverend Paul sighed, “that doesn’t mean--”

“I’m sure they’re just ‘friends’,” was said with audible air-quotes.  Becca was moving things around while she spoke.  “I don’t care.  I’m just saying that you can’t go off getting angry at people taking an interest whenever you’re... flaunting it.”

“Flaunting?” Paul repeated.

“I haven’t seen him yet, the American, what’s he look like?”

“I don’t know,” Becca said, “like an American.  He’s a doctor but he looks scruffy to be any doctor I’d want to see.”

“What’s his name?” Ollie asked.  “I could look him up.”

“No,” Paul said, “come on.  We are not researching people on the internet, that’s uncalled for.”

“Is it?” Ollie said like there was no point in trying to protest on the basis of privacy and morality.  “Seems like it’s the only thing that shitface has been doing since he got here.  Its about time someone did the same to him.  Figure out all his dirty little secrets.”

“William Masters,” Becca said, “it’s not exactly a secret.  Everyone knows about his American lover he stashed in my hotel.  I’ve had more people stopping by for a drink today than since I’ve opened.  It’s been great for business.”

Reverend Paul made a noise in his throat that was a groan and a scoff of disgust that didn’t quite mean as much when he was doing nothing at all to stop the proceedings.  

Hardy thought about stepping into the room; he thought about telling them all exactly how despicable they were.  He considered pointing out that he wasn’t hiding a secret American lover.  But there was no point in it.  The rumor had developed its own beating heart and the only way to let it die now was to starve it until it passed.  Certainly there had been worse things thought of him than his secret gay love affair.  

In fact, in comparison to the notion of being a colossal fuck up and allowing a child murderer to go free, being gay was a pleasant assumption for someone to make.  Bill was perfectly nice looking too, and he was a doctor.  There was nothing malicious in the rumor, and aside from the awkwardness of the town converging on the American stranger, there was no reason to fight it.

Hardy was tired, and the day was so close to over.  He left them to finish their giggling gossip.

next >>

[sushantkholi18]

Somethings are best left to the mobiles- Mobile attendance application

Back in school, every morning when I entered the premise I used to encounter a long queue. Not students, but the teachers waiting to punch into the biometric system and mark their attendance. Weird, but more advanced than having to check the watch to note down the time in the register. It’s been a few years since I finished school, and today, there is a much more phenomenal, convenient, and sophisticated technology to do the same task. In fact, more than just that.

 The shift from telephones to mobile phones, (which could be carried around whenever, wherever) was dramatic enough. On realizing the convenience that this little hand-held device provided, innovators added in more and more features to it. Soon there was radio, games, music, news, emails… all at the tip of your finger. Today, if I begin to list, I am sure I won’t be able to list 10% of the things this magic device is capable of (considering my lack of knowledge and interest). One of my interesting ventures is a mobile time attendance system. How about I tell you more about the features of this system!

 Your attendance, in your hands

 Well, I guess we have established that we cannot leave the house without our phones on us. Keeping this in mind offices have started taking attendance of employees through their phones itself. Some applications are customized to suit every organization’s setup. What employee entered at what time, how much time they spent working, was the task in-house or on-field and what time did they exit; all these details are retrieved with extreme ease and without the interference of anyone other than the employee him/herself and the management. Doesn’t the system sound error-proof, unbiased, and practical?

 Report cards, not just for kids

 Besides the attendance part, the application is equipped to generate a whole report card for every individual in the organizational setup. Feed-in the task on hand and let the phone track your activity with location (lol). Picture this, your task for the day is to deliver packages to as many people as possible. From the moment you enter the office and login, every activity of yours can be traced. The places you visit, the packages you deliver, and the time you spend. This way, towards the end of the day a report can be generated speaking of your productivity, areas of strength, and efficiency. When the seniors get their hands on the reports of many such individuals they know how to of task delegate, pay, promote, or train deserving employees. I love how this system can eliminate biases makes it fair for everyone putting in hard work. Employees themselves can analyses how the can improve their productivities.

Digital - 1, Paper - 0

You would rather trust a computer with calculations than your own. Similarly, since all the databases are on a digital medium, results are considered more reliable. Moreover, it not only helps eliminate paper files but reduces the need for the workforce as well. What better way to manage data!

Money matters

Working on projects, and going on trips with friends all fun, until we bring up the topic of expenses. There have been multiple instances when I tend to pay for everyone and then feel embarrassed to ask for a reimbursement. We all go through this! It's not hard to guess that your work life will put you in situations of the same kind. Many small office expenses form one big one. While an employee feels hesitant to ask for a reimbursement, the management is completely unaware of the scenario. That’s is where I introduce to you this brilliant feature of the app on which you can keep a track of work expenses made on your pocket and by maintaining 100% transparency be reimbursed on time.

Tickets make it all easy

Want a leave? Raise a ticket. Want to inquire about the services/products? Raise a ticket. Want to complain or make requests? Raise a goddamn ticket. It’s become that simple. The ticket system doesn’t just apply to the employees of the organization, it can be used by the people who are customers already, probable customers, or leads as they are called. All sorts of concerns can be raised via tickets and the status of these can be tracked at every point in time. Employees can keep a check if their leave proposal has been accepted, rejected, or pending. Human resource management receives organized data and can respond and resolve tickets efficiently.

 Now if one mobile application has so much to provide, there is no reason an organization shouldn’t adopt it. It streamlines the entire functioning of the organization, helps avoid confusion concerning the allocation of work, improves productivity and punctuality of determined employees, and facilitates data handling. To every organization that aspires to grow, installing such a system is only going to be a step towards progress. Why wait when you can do it today? Start researching now, and for starters, you may want to have a look at the best mobile attendance application based in UAE. Check out the offerings, you won’t be able to resist!

[ikesenhell]

Courage

GLITTER & GOLD, CHAPTER 5. You can find all other IkeSen works of mine here. NOTES: Mildly traumatizing content? Implied gore and suicide? It isn’t too bad I promise.  Thanks to all my readers who stopped in and @velociraptor-detective​ for always line editing.

They started the meeting with the usual things that were always discussed when it came to Waŋblí Hoȟpi; food, storage, transportation, the recreation of the rail lines, so on. Masamune didn't know why he’d been summoned until the tail end, when Ieyasu smacked down a tiny mechanical thing in front of him.

“Ieyasu,” Mitsunari squeaked, “I appreciate your fervor, but please be more careful with it, it did take a while for me to fix that--”

Ieyasu pointedly ignored him. “If you really want us to track down where your ghost ship goes, you have to do something stupid, apparently.”

Masamune poked at it. It looked almost exactly like a box, except with a small slot on the front, a little lense, and a few buttons. “What is this, pre-war tech?”

“Yes.” The blonde returned flatly, crossing his arms. “It is, and it took me forever to find the damn thing, so you’d better keep good track of it. It’s a Polaroid camera.”

“No shit. Huh.” Masamune picked it up and pretended to fumble it, catching the device a half second later and relishing the look of horror on Ieyasu and Mitsunari’s faces. Mitsuhide hid his face behind his jacket sleeve. “What do you want me to do with this?”

All eyes turned to Mitsunari.

“Well,” Mitsunari started, slower and less enthusiastic than usual, “You see, we did develop a map of possible patterns and pathways the ship takes. It appears to be pretty consistent, according to the reported sightings.”

Masamune seriously considered juggling the Polaroid and stayed himself. “Okay. What’s this got to do with the camera?”

“Further research is necessary. If we know where it is, then it would behove us to find out… well… what it is.”

It all clicked at last.

“You want me to photograph this thing.” Masamune paused. “Is that what’s going on?”

“Yes!” Mitsunari brightened up. “Preferably from as many angles as possible. The Uesugi-Takeda settlement is coming for talks, and they have an excellent mechanical engineer who I want to take a look at it--”

“That’s a hard no from me.” Masamune pushed the device into Ieyasu’s arms. “You want me to get near the mystery murder boat that happens to have a cult of devotees? Are you insane?”

“Told you,” Ieyasu muttered to the camera. It remained stubbornly mute on the subject.

“You asked us to locate it,” Mitsuhide pointed out reasonably. “And along the route, there’s a fair chance that you might find something of value. We are talking about kidnappings, after all. We did our part--”

“Your part involved being around a fucking table, not chasing down the goddamn--” Masamune sputtered for words. “Ghost scurvy ship!”

Nobunaga, who up until now had remained utterly silent behind his table, finally spoke up. “Would you rather we get someone who isn’t already on the cultists radar? I’m certain if I asked Hideyoshi nicely enough, he’d put himself in the line of fire.”

Masamune shook his head. “Don’t do that.”

“Maybe Mitsunari? He certainly seems game. Or perhaps your precious shopkeeper--”

That was enough. Masamune drew the machete and leveled it at the other man. “That’s not fucking funny.”

Nobunaga just shrugged. “I never implied it was.”

“Don’t--don’t ask her,” Masamune pleaded, lowering the weapon. “She’d do it, too.”

Silence. Mitsunari wilted. Masamune seriously considered blowing up on the spot. “You asked her anyway, didn't you?”

“Well, I asked her first,” Mitsunari confessed, pushing his fingers together. “Since she also seems so invested in this problem. She said she would, but wanted to have you with her…”

Fuck.

“Give me that,” Masamune snapped, snatching up the camera from Ieyasu’s arms. “Does it come with a goddamn harness, or should I just wave it at the death ship freehand?”

“It has a harness.”

“Give it to me.”

They handed it over without commentary. Steaming, Masamune stalked from the room.

---

She was already waiting by the motorcycle as he exited.

“They hassled you about it?”

“Sure did, Kitten.” He sighed raggedly, sweeping past her and into the house. She followed. “Are we really doing this?”

“Masamune. We went stalking around a corn field at night and nearly got shot by a bunch of shotgun-wielding yokels, and you laughed.”

What could he even say to that that wasn’t so close to the truth? He fetched a glass and wriggled it at her, an understood question of do you want something to drink? She shook her head. He puttered around the kitchen, moving Ieyasu’s seedling peppers out of the sink and onto the windowsill for sunlight, and tried to buy himself some time.

It wasn’t enough. He could practically smell the gunpowder. He could hear his father in the quiet echo of his pulse, in the empty space where his eye once was.

“How much did I tell you about how my dad went?” He asked at last.

She hesitated, opened her mouth, closed it, and finally allowed, “Not much. You weren’t really coherent, and then you just…”

“Took off,” he completed for her. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Silence. He paced around the table and ignored the glass of water he’d poured. “Dad saw the ship first, you know. He wasn’t really a superstitious guy, but he was getting up there and losing it a little. Grandad had dementia, so I think that was kind of starting to kick in, you know? He--he was always so strong. I can’t explain what happened. But the ship--the ship just punched the wind out of him somehow.”

She said nothing. He stretched out his arms as if physical exercise would chase the ghosts away. It didn't. Talking faster--like that would hurt less!--Masamune continued. “And like, you know, it only gives you a week. That’s what the legend says. You’ve got a week. We didn't really tell anyone at the time, cause he was a silent type and I was not really that spooked, right? But it got to Dad. I think he thought if we could get through the week, it would all be okay. He started staying up real late and drinking coffee all the time, maybe some herbal stuff. I don’t know what all he did. He didn't want it to get me.”

“Right,” was all she murmured. “I remember that.”

He pushed on, trying to punch through the burning in his eyes. “I just watched him--I watched him dissolve. He turned from my dad into some fucking stranger in a matter of days. It ate him alive. At the end of it, he couldn’t have told me what was sane and what wasn’t. All he thought was that--he thought that taking me at his own hand was mercy. He thought it was cleaner. He thought--”

Could he even say it? Masamune buckled onto the floor and drew his knees up to his chest. How could he articulate being on the wrong side of a gun, when the man behind it was his father? How could he describe the madness and fear in his hero’s eyes? Losing his sight, losing the rest of his family, losing his home in one fell swoop--

“I always say,” he managed, ignoring the tears on his cheeks, “that the ship didn't take him, he took him. That’s a damn lie. The ship took him. The ship took him, and he just finished the job for it. And I’m fucking terrified that if those shitbags out there in the prairie don’t get you, the fear will.”

Wind rattled the house siding. He rubbed stubbornly at his face, willing himself to stop, willing her to stop looking at him. She didn't. Instead she rose and crept to his side, settling down in front of his knees.

“Ah, Kitten,” he forced, “I’m not looking too cool right now.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she demurred, wiping his face with her fingertips. She smelled like lavender oils. “I wouldn’t say that at all.”

He lowered his face into her hand and shut his eye, letting the scent waft over him. Away went the lingering taste of gunpowder. Away went the vision of what little remained of his father. All that was left was her--her and the creaking floorboards and the soft rush of air outside. She danced the other hand through his hair and despite himself, he moaned soft appreciation.

“We’re going to stop it.” It wasn’t a statement, but a declaration. Her voice almost echoed in the space. “We’re going to do it. There won’t be anyone else taken by the fear--not you, not me, no one. No more.”

---

He donned his lucky gloves the next day and zipped his jacket up to the hilt. She was waiting for him outside the shop when he pulled up. Wordlessly, Masamune offered her the Polaroid.

“It has a strap,” he indicated. She raised a brow at him.

“It’s bright orange. I can see that.”

Shit. He’d sounded just like Hideyoshi then, hadn’t he? Covering for it, Masamune grinned. “Just thought I’d point it out before Ieyasu kills me. Ready?”

She exhaled and pulled back her braids. “As I can be. Move up.”

The sun was setting in the distance, a golden globe radiating across the plains. In his travels, he’d never seen a more beautiful sunset. Out in the east, the eerie fallout glow caused too much fog and polluted rain to really enjoy it. In the south, the land was too barren to risk being out during the daytime. But here? Oh, he relished having her clutch him tight as the wind whistled around them.

“We’re gonna follow around the trail they marked,” Masamune shouted back to her, “They said it shows up around nightfall. You ready?”

She just lifted her thumb in assent.

The grasses bent sideways, flaming orange in the sunlight. And then--

“Holy shit!” She shouted.

Masamune chanced a glance back in a mirror and his blood ran icy cold. There it was. Behind them and moving fast, the ghost ship sailed silently over the grasses.

“Hold on!” He commanded, kicking the engine into the next gear. “And get those photos!”

“On it!”

Not even the new muffler could stifle the roar of the motorcycle. The prairie transformed into a yellow blur, air deafening him. Even then the ship pulled alongside them. Its perfect mast soared overhead, no colors flying, just its sheer surface coloring the whole landscape green. The bare timber sides grew closer and closer as it edged toward the road.

This was it. This was the moment. If death awaited them, it came now. Masamune held his breath and tried to urge the motorcycle faster, but it wasn’t enough. The ghost merged and came level, holding steady mere inches from them.

It won’t hurt anyone else.

In a moment of insane bravery, Masamune thrust his hand out and plunged it into the side. It wasn’t cold or solid, but just--nothing. He waved his palm back and forth. Only air greeted his fingertips. He flapped his arm.

“What are you doing!?” She shouted.

“Fuck you, ghost boat!” He bellowed. “You ain’t shit!”

“You’re insane!” But her laughter was unmistakable. “I can’t get a good shot if you keep doing that--”

Courage flooded him like hot water. “Then try it like this!”

Without warning, Masamune veered sharply to the side, bringing the whole motorcycle inside the ship. She screamed and clutched at him. All he could do was laugh--laugh at the terror he’d held on to for years, laugh at the impassive thing that had taken so much from him--and let it out into the world they tore through. It didn't shift in its course. And at last--at last, when he was certain holding onto the speed would hurt the bike, he slowed and let it overtake them, sailing on. They puttered to a halt and watched it move into the distance.

“Oh my god!” She staggered off the bike, shaking her limbs. “Oh my god!”

Masamune leaped off the bike. “First things first; are you okay?”

“Y--I think so!” Her staccato laugh echoed all the fluttering in his stomach. “I can’t believe we just did that--I can’t believe you just did that--”

“It isn’t shit,” he affirmed, breathless with energy. “It can’t touch us. It isn’t going to ever again. You’re right.”

Oh god, when she smiled like that, it almost took all the breath he’d gathered back up and crushed it out of his lungs again. And she was so beautiful, with her braids cascading down her shoulders and her dark eyes crinkled in the twilight sun, all the stars that hadn’t yet started glowing reflected there, and--

“Come here,” he commanded.

She took one step forward. That was enough. He closed the distance between them and crushed her body against his, pressing a fierce kiss to her mouth. She gasped; he pulled back only a second before she tugged him back in by the jacket.

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed.

“Yes, ma’am,” he teased, and hitched her up under her thighs. She obligingly wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him back in, her mouth lighting-spark hot. Everything he had ever seen and done fell away. What else could compare to this? What else could compare to her?

He’d spent his life running, and he’d never managed to leave her behind.

“I think I love you,” he breathed against her. She just grinned.

“I know you do.”