#turns out i get to pack up my computer at 7 in the morning instead of the night before. because that makes sense

[bonetrousledbones]

you startled him :(

[section-chief-prentiss]

Part Two: Bigger than the Whole Sky

PART ONE

Note: Thank you so much for the love on part 1! I hadn’t anticipated writing a part 2, but thank you to everyone who suggested it; I ended up having a great time writing this, and I hope you enjoy it!

Summary: 7 months after leaving her life behind to go into hiding, Emily reunites with Aaron.

Word Count: 2287

Ao3

Emily never knew 7 months could feel like an eternity. 

Each day spent in Paris felt slower than the last, especially as she didn’t know when she’d see her love again. 

The only reprieve was her weekly online Scrabble matches with CheetoBreath, a username JJ adopted to protect her identity. Emily went with SergiosMom, another thing she missed while she was away—her beloved cat. 

After a few weeks, Emily knew she was getting worse at hiding her bad attitude, and it was coming out in the word choices she played. So, one week, when she found JackAttack waiting for her instead of CheetoBreath, her heart stopped. “Jack Attack” was a loving phrase Hotch coined and used each time Jack sprinted into their room in the morning to wake them up. 

The website they played Scrabble on didn’t have a chatting feature, which was why JJ chose it, for her protection, Emily knew, but all she wanted to do was confirm it was Aaron. 

The first word he played, “Honey,” was all the confirmation she needed. Aaron’s nickname for her. Emily broke down into tears at her computer, never having missed him more than in this moment, while also savoring this limited interaction they were allowed to have.

She waited to collect the letters she needed so she could spell out a message of her own. After a few turns, her opportunity arose to use her nickname for him: “Love.” 

It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was what they had. And Emily vowed in that moment to repay JJ however she could once she was home to thank her for taking this risk.

One day, just over 7 months after leaving her friends—her family—behind, she woke in the middle of the night to a phone call. 

The number that lit up her phone screen wasn’t one she recognized, but the new phone she’d been given with her changed identity didn’t have any of her previous contacts. Something in her told her to answer, despite her exhaustion, and she lifted the phone to her cheek.

“Hello?” She murmured.

“Emily,” a deep voice replied. 

The sound was like a jolt to her system—it was one she hadn’t heard in months, but one she’d never let herself forget. She bolted up in bed.

“Aaron?” her voice cracked.

“We need you. Declan’s in danger.”

Emily was out of bed and on her feet in a flash. “Did Ian find him?”

“Sort of, it’s a long story. We have Ian in custody, but we need you.”

Emily grabbed her duffle bag from her closet—one she’d kept packed with essentials since moving into her Paris apartment, in case she needed to flee in a hurry.

“I’m on my way.”

“We have you booked on the 7 am flight out of Paris; can you get everything together by then?”

“Oh, love,” Emily smiled. “I’m already packed.”

“The ticket is in your email. We’ll see you soon,” he paused. “And Emily?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you more,” she breathed, hanging up before he could argue. 

***

Emily knew she should sleep on the flight, to make up for the sleep she hadn’t gotten the night before. But she couldn’t relax, knowing Aaron would be waiting at the airport to take her back to the BAU. They’d have to separate once they returned to the office so Aaron could debrief the team and reveal that she was alive, but she was itching for those few minutes of alone time on the drive between the airport and the office.

When the plane landed, Emily had to fight her instincts to keep herself from elbowing past the passengers slowly grabbing their carry-ons from the overhead bins and barreling her way off the plane. 

Her fingers impatiently tapped the seat while she waited. An elderly lady sitting next to her smiled.

“Meeting someone special?” 

All Emily could do was nod. 

She ducked out of the way, gesturing for Emily to go past. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you,” Emily said on her way past, slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder and running as fast as her legs would take her.

Not caring about the judgmental looks she received, she sprinted through the airport and out to where Aaron would be waiting to pick her up. Naturally, he stood right outside the doors he claimed he’d be at, a rare smile on his face, standing next to one of the BAU’s infamous black SUVs.

“Aaron,” she sobbed, throwing her duffle bag to the ground and wrapping her arms around him. She took a deep breath, familiarizing herself with his usual cologne. 

He smelled like home.

“I promised I’d bring you home to us,” Aaron said into her ear.

His words brought back the memory of being in the hospital all those months ago, Aaron vowing that their separation wouldn’t be for long. She’d clung to those words every day since. 

It wasn’t until she pulled away that she took in his unusual appearance—the unkempt hair, the outgrown facial hair, the gray t-shirt underneath a blue button-down, the sleeves of which were rolled up to his elbows.

“This is a new look for you,” she mused, raising an eyebrow.

Aaron ran a hand through his already messy hair. “I have a lot to fill you in on. But it’ll have to wait. Are you ready to see the team?”

Emily’s stomach churned. It was a reunion she was eagerly anticipating and dreading in equal measure. She didn’t know how to anticipate their reactions.

But despite it all, she nodded. “Let’s go.” 

***

When they reached the BAU, Aaron headed up first to meet with the rest of the team. Emily stalled in the car for a few minutes, anxiously fidgeting with her hair and outfit until she got a text from Aaron with the go-ahead.

She slung her purse over her shoulder and headed for the elevator.

Everything at the BAU felt the same, but different. On the surface, everything looked as it did when she left. But she knew there were months worth of memories that had taken place in her absence. Would she ever be able to catch up?

She swallowed her nerves; there would be time for that later. For now, she needed to focus on Declan. 

Emily lingered outside the round-table room, careful to stay out of anyone’s eyeline, but close enough to hear the conversation happening just a few feet away.

Her heart swelled at the sight of her friends, even if it was just their backs. She knew she missed them, but she hadn’t realized how much until she was this close to reuniting with them.

“Everything alright?” Morgan asked, every bit the stubborn man she’d remembered. Despite Aaron telling everyone to take a seat, Morgan maintained his standing position. 

Aaron crossed his arms. “7 months ago, I made a decision that affected this team.”

Emily held her breath.

“As you all know, Emily had lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle. But the doctors were able to stabilize her.”

Emily ran a hand down the scar on her abdomen, a permanent reminder of what she had endured and survived. Her heart ached with the other reminder it gave her—of the baby she hadn’t known she was pregnant with and had lost that day.

“And she was airlifted from Boston to Bethesda under covert exfiltration.”

Penelope lifted her head toward Aaron. Emily could read her shock even from her distant position.

“Her identity was strictly need-to-know. And she stayed there until she was well enough to travel. She was reassigned to Paris, where she was given several new identities, none of which we had access to, for her security.” 

Aaron’s voice was even, calm. But Emily could read the pain interlacing it—the pain of their long separation.

Morgan took a staggered step back, and Penelope’s jaw dropped.

“She’s alive?” Penelope breathed.

“But we buried her,” Spencer mused.

“As I said, I take full responsibility for the decision. If anyone has any issues, they should be directed toward me,” Aaron continued.

“Any issues?” Morgan said. “Yeah, I got issues.”

Emily cringed but knew this was her cue. She took slow steps from the hallway toward the round-table room. She felt every face turn to her, her heels clanking with each step was the only sound in the room, but she could only look at Morgan—at her former partner. 

“Oh, my god,” Penelope said softly, through her tears.

In an instant, the room was on its feet. Spencer reached Emily first, and she almost staggered under the weight he threw at her. She rubbed his back, heart aching for the boy who had already lost so much, on top of which, he’d had to live 7 months thinking his friend was dead. 

“I’m so sorry—I really am,” Emily said, pulling away from Spencer and taking Penelope’s hand, who was staring at her with a wonderstruck expression. “Not a day went by that I didn’t want to…”

Emily broke off when she made eye contact with Morgan. Took in his heartbroken, pained expression. She took a slow step toward him. “Really, I… You didn’t deserve that. And I’m so sorry.” 

Carefully, Emily reached out to wrap Morgan in her embrace. For a moment, she was afraid he was just going to stand there, rigid, but eventually, he thawed enough to place a hesitant arm around her, and she had to fight back tears of relief.

They would be okay. Eventually.

Emily felt Aaron watching her from across the room, but she couldn’t look at him. She knew she’d only fall apart.

She needed to focus. 

“There’s so much I want to tell you guys,” she said. “And I will. I promise. But right now I really need to know what’s going on with Declan.” 

***

By the time the case was over, Emily was mentally and physically exhausted. It was a long day, and she hadn’t slept for almost 48 hours. All she wanted was to go home and fall asleep under the same roof as Aaron and Jack.

She could sleep peacefully, now that Ian was dead and Declan protected. A luxury she hadn’t had in almost a year. 

But when they pulled up to their home, Aaron asked Emily to wait for a moment in the car. She was too exhausted to question it, so she nodded, resting her head back against the seat and taking a moment to close her eyes.

The next thing she knew, she was being gently shaken awake. Her eyes flew open, and she turned to find Aaron standing outside her car door.

“Sorry, love. You can come in now.”

“How long was I out?” She asked, feeling dazed.

“Just a couple of minutes,” he assured her, offering her a hand.

On the other side of their car, Jess was pulling out of the driveway in her familiar sedan. Jess raised a hand in a wave before driving out of sight.

“Oh, I didn’t know Jess was here; I should’ve said hello…”

Aaron smiled. “It’s okay, honey; she was just dropping off Jack. You’ll get a chance to talk later.” 

“Jack,” her heart skipped a beat. How much had he grown while she was gone? What had she missed?

Hotch slung Emily’s bag over his shoulder, leading her through the front door by her hand. 

As soon as they were inside, Emily marveled at how nothing in the house had changed—everything was exactly as it had been 7 months ago. She didn’t know if Aaron had done that on purpose, but it brought her peace—this rare sense of normalcy.

“I know you’re tired,” Aaron said, setting her bag down. “But I was hoping we could play one game of Scrabble before bed.”

Emily smiled. “I suppose I can stay awake long enough for that.”

They made their way to the dining room table, where a board was already set out and waiting. Emily frowned as they approached, spotting letters on the board.

“It looks like someone already started a game,” she teased. 

It wasn’t until she was right in front of the table that she noticed it was also covered in rose petals. And it wasn’t a random game that had been started—there was a message for her, spelled out in tiles.

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

Emily’s hands flew to her mouth in surprise, glancing to Aaron for confirmation. He was grinning from ear to ear, and behind him, Jack snuck into the room, holding a ring box open, revealing a silver band with a teardrop stone. 

“Will you marry my daddy, Emmy?” He asked.

His little voice opened the floodgates of the emotions she’d kept carefully guarded for 7 months, and she burst into tears, throwing her arms around the little boy. 

“Of course, I will,” she said, kissing Jack on the cheek.

She gently took the ring box from the boy and handed it to Aaron.

“Yes,” she said to him. “Yes.”

He gingerly collected the ring, setting the box aside on the table, and placed the ring on her finger. Then, she threw her arms around her beloved—her fiance—and kissed him.

When they parted, Aaron was still smiling. “I never want to spend a day apart from you again.”

“Agreed,” she said, kissing him again.

“I’d marry you tomorrow if I could.” 

“Why can’t you?” she asked.

“You should have the wedding you deserve,” he frowned.

Emily shook her head. “Any wedding to you is the wedding I deserve. Let’s elope. Tomorrow. We can bring the team; maybe it’ll melt some of the ice between us.”

Aaron smiled. “Whatever you want.”

Emily sighed, never feeling more content than in this moment. “I could get used to that.”

[bacchicly]

List time...but surprise today is actually a good day! I just need to get things outta my head to make sure I get my timing right...

Ok so I just put a pork roast in for dinner and it is currently searing at 4:25.... Turn down to 350 in 13 mins.. (likely around the time I post this)

Veggies gonna be:

- canned cream corn (heat 5 mins before serving)

- apple sauce made with the apples I am roasting with the pork (fish out and smash - possibly add more apple - out when I take out the roast to rest)

- baked carrots and parsnips (5 start prep)

Personal To Do List (listed in order of priority)

Install new latch on cupboard under sink

Clean up/ practice demo I am doing tomorrow at work

Pack for prompt departure in the morning to work for presentation in the morning

Pack for trip I am taking later this week (this is shocking I am a throw things madly in a plastic bag madly before I leave person - which I hate)

Work clothing; IT; meds; toiletries; jewelry; makeup?; find damn sunglasses and things I need to drop off at head office

Further (spend an hour more?) on my new budget tracking spreadsheet - after trying other people's solutions and failing...I am trying attempt #4567923 to get on top of family finances. This time I am prioritising a blended bi-weekly/monthly approach that I sort of do naturally. I am also building it around my actual payweek schedule. And have "coded" it to analyse based on those patterns.... I.e. what happens when it is a 3 payweek month versus a 2 payweek month? What are 1st paycheck of the month expenses vs end of the month? We'll see if this time actually helps for awhile. Sigh. I suck at all of this. Oh well if nothing else...when you talk about working/middle/academic/artist class people funneling their money back into the economy instead of saving...and how important that can be... Well let's just say I see myself in that picture...and I am torn about how I feel about it. Money is a huge source of shame for me.

Re-attach eye patches on Stringbean - take photos and share

Ok so here's the timeline based on all that...I am only putting in the musts and then I am going to come back and fill in what I achieve:

It's 3pm (as I type) and I've turned down the oven:

1 am - sleep - alarm set for 7 am

Key time points working backwards:

1 am / 2 am... Who is counting

10ish - kid to sleep

11:30ish - husband home

Got kid to sleep by 10:20... Then tackled more work. Got it done eventually. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

6:30 - latest time to serve dinner

9:15 - drive to hockey & home

Helped with purple hair washing; but also did some work work. Didn't have to drive... Husband got ride.

8:00 to 9:00 - kid bath, jammies & reading

Fed people at 6:45...before that tried to do some work work but my computer needed charging so I did more on the family budget.

6:20 - call folks to wash hands, plate, choose documentary for dinner, cats in "cat jail" (we keep them out of the dinning area for fancier meals since they have terrible table manners)

6:15 - heat corn

6:00 - take out meat to rest and tackle applesauce

5:15 - carrots and parsnips in oven

Put parsnips & carrots in oven early. Now I have an hour to do some work. I wish I had an office.

5:00 - start carrot and parsnip prep

Work through personal to do list for 2.5 hours

Finished doing the latch...but I had to use armature wire to create a custom latch for the one side...apparently I should have bought a bigger latch.

3:20 - post my list

2:45 - write list

[australiablog]

21/7

Slept in today as well, it’s probably the antibiotics making me sleep so well. But I clearly need it, even though I feel much better already. I sat with Andrew’s mum having a coffee and toast. She bought a biscoff spread especially for me, which is so sweet. Andrew joined us after a bit and we all sat around chatting. While Andrew was having a shower I packed my bags and was pretty happy I got everything to fit. My hiking boots are in the doctor who bag while I’m wearing my new Uggs, because no way in hell I will the boots fit in my bag. I couldn’t pack up everything because i hadn’t brushed my teeth yet and Andrew was taking a very long time in the bathroom. He’s very particular about his hair, I have no room to judge since when I was in my 20s I wouldn’t leave the house either without perfect hair. Now I just don’t care anymore. People will stare no matter what my hair looks like, after having basically all the colors of the rainbow as a hair colour you kinda stop caring about the stares. His dad found it extremely funny and told Andrew to get out so I could brush my teeth. We wanted to grab lunch before we got the train and while we were waiting I told Andrew it was kinda stupid he would come to Melbourne with me, we didn’t rush this morning and the train takes about two hours and a half so it would basically be nothing sitting on a train for Andrew. The original train time was now pushed back so we could take it easy and spend some more time together. We went to a mall closeby and to a Kmart. This is such a funny store, it’s basically an everything store. From clothes, to books, to work out stuff and home decor. We wandered a bit and went into the book aisle, I told Andrew this was a dangerous thing for me to do. And of course I saw a book I wanted, how could I not. It was a green Loki book with gold horns on it and the side of the pages were gold too. The book looks even to be very interesting as well, but I would have bought it even if it was shit. It was only 12$ and way too pretty to not take with me. I don’t even care I’ll have to carry it home. Saying goodbye was less fun, but all good things must end. The train was fine I just read the entire way, I got to flinders st and took the tram to the hotel. Turns out I would have been far better of getting to southern cross and walking the 250m instead of taking the tram for 6 stops but anyway. When I got to the hotel he didn’t have me booked for the night, the computer problems caused a lot of problems. So I arranged one at that time and he did some magic so I wouldn’t have to move rooms after the one night. This hotel is really swanky, it’s got a very vintage Hollywood type of style. The room was very luxurious as well, it even had a walk in wardrobe to the bathroom. I was fairly hungry and had about 2 hours untill the play so I went to the hotel restaurant. They had a sort of puff pastry pizza thing that also had beetroot and apricots on it. It was not something I would have combined but it really worked!!! I looked up the tram while I ate and I had a pink line going all the way to were I needed to be. My stop was Batman park, which I found an hilarious name. The stops along the way were amusing too, especially if you are a Pirates of the Caribbean fan. They had an Elisabeth st stop, swan st after that and … stop. His majesty theatre in London is truly spectacular and I was kind of expecting the Melbourne one to be as well, but it was a bit of a let down. It was still pretty but not in the way the Londen one is. I had a pretty good seat, the beauty about being solo and not really caring where you sit. It was the third upper balcony on the third row seat 5. I had a perfect line of sight on the stage and was very happy with it. When the show began I was kind of surprised they were all singing and talking in an American accent, it really threw me since I was expecting it to be Australian.

[umichenginabroad]

Work < Life balance

The first week of classes: check! I can't believe I've only been in Madrid for two weeks now- it feels like a month or more. I'm still getting used to the different style of classes here in Madrid, and it has been a bit unsettling. 

i have to 'dress up' for class now- no daily sweats :(

My day at UM consists of waking up and going to the gym, then doing work from morning until 11-12 at night amidst meetings, discussions, and online lectures. In contrast, I haven't done a piece of homework here yet. The first week of classes was pretty much just introductions to the teachers and the material, versus UM, where we jump right in and have assignments due by the end of the first week. 

Also, as a Computer Science major, I'm used to watching my lectures online at my leisure and haven't consistently attended an in-person class in a while. Here, we are all expected to sit quietly and engage without computers. My UM classes are instead mainly large lecture style where people tend to concurrently work on their computers. 

I'm not sure what I think of the work-life balance so far. Ideally, having more time on my hands sounds great, but I like to constantly be busy and have a packed schedule. So relaxing has kind of been?? hard??

I also realized that this is the first semester in my college career that I haven't been in a project-heavy coding class. Or any coding class. And honestly? It's throwing me off. I especially don't want to be out of practice for my summer internship. Luckily I'm an EECS 281 and 370 private tutor, which I expect to pick up in a couple weeks (after people get their grades back from the first project haha). 

A brief overview of my classes:

Spanish Culture: Amazing, stunning, purr, love. Our professor is the sweetest woman ever, and the class focuses on getting to know Madrid and various landmarks, history, and food. I'm beyond excited about this class.

Engineering Statistics: Pretty standard statistics class… Neither excited nor am I dreading this class. 

Introduction to Circuits: My latest class from 7-9 and 6-8 pm. Luckily I have a bunch of friends in this class, but the time is killer.

Spanish A2: Not sure if I should be at this level since we already only have to speak in Spanish, and I haven't taken Spanish since elementary school. But I'm still very excited to learn, and our professor is super dynamic and engaging. 

Other notable events from the week:

Got tonsillitis! Had to figure out university health services which turned out to be a breeze. Feeling so much better now!

Friends from UM came this weekend from London! It was really great to see some old friends since I realized I had felt a bit homesick. 

Did a tapas crawl down the famous tapas street and was not let down by the food, except maybe the cold tomato soup, which I'm not the biggest fan of. 

friends from UM!

That's all for this week! Excited to share more in the future. Bye for now!

Rania Uppal

Computer Science

UP Comillas- Madrid, Spain

[marvelgurl]

Seb’s Party

Paring: Sebastian Stan X Reader

Word Count: 1560

Warning: Fluff (Lots)

A/n: So Sebastian’s Birthday was a couple of days ago. I wanted to write something. I would have had this out on time if my computer was working properly. that’s why it’s late.

Tumblr Masterlist

As always Feedback is more than welcome. The Good and The Bad. I really helps me.

Want to be tagged in my upcoming work? Let me know Here

Today is Sebastian’s 39th birthday and you already know he’s a little freaked out about it. It is one year closer to 40 and he wasn’t ready for that. Knowing that you wanted to make this birthday special for him. You called a bunch of his friends to send you a clip of them saying happy birthday to him, then you were going to put it into a video for him to show at his surprise party tonight.

You were currently in the kitchen texting people to get a solid number on the number of people that were going to be at your apartment. You were also trying to keep this from Sebastian, but you didn’t notice him walk in to see you texting like a mad woman.

“Babe, what are you doing it is 7 o’clock in the morning?” You finally looked over at him. He looked at you with one hand on his hip while the other tried to rub the sleep from his eye.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I wake you when I got up?” Turned off your phone screen and placed it on the counter.

“No, but when I woke up and you were gone, I got a little worried.” He had walked over to you pulling you into a hug.

“I’m sorry. Come on, lets get you back in bed.” You grabbed his hands and started walking backwards to the bedroom.

“What about you?” He looked at you with furrowed eyebrows.

“Well, being the person that I am. I’m going to bring you breakfast in bed.”

“Why?”

“Are you being serious right now?” You cocked your eyebrow at him. Then he shrugged his shoulders at you. “It’s your birthday Seb.”

“Oh, ok since it’s my birthday.” He put his hand on your cheek. “I say WE are going back to bed and when I decide it is a reasonable hour, we will get up and go to breakfast.”

Before you could rebuttal, he pulled you into a kiss. When he broke the kiss, he picked you up and brought you back to bed. He didn’t want to leave until it was almost 11, so instead of breakfast, you were getting brunch.

While you guys were out, Scarlett and Elizabeth were at your apartment decorating for tonight. You absolutely love those girls to death. You had gotten close to them ever since you met them on the Marvel set.

You were able to keep Seb occupied for a few hours before he wanted to come back home. You texted the girls to let them know that you were on your way back. They got back to you quickly saying everything is ready and everyone was here.

You made sure to let him go inside first. He walked over and hung his keys on the hook. Just as he was taking off his shoes, the lights flipped on causing him to jump and hit his head on the hooks.

“SURPRISE!!!” Everyone shouted at him, not realizing that he hit his head.

“Seb! Are you okay?” You had dropped everything you were holding to attend to Sebastian. You gently moved your hand to his head, and you felt a small bump. “Oh, there is a bump. Come on let’s get you an aspirin and a cold pack.”

“Y/n. Hunny, I’m fine.” He grabbed your hand and pulled it down. Looking at you in the eyes, with a big grin on his face.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He turned to see everyone staring at the two of you. “What are you guys doing here?”

Everyone laughed, then slowly made their way to check on him and say happy birthday. After a while you had everyone gather in the living room to watch the little video that you put together.

There were videos from many of his family, the Marvel family, and longtime friends. You walked up to Sebastian, wrapping one of your arms around his waist. He instinctually pulled you close to him. You reached your other arm around so that you were hugging him. You stayed like this, just watching the video and listening to him laugh and talk to the Tv.

The next person to pop up on the screen was his mother. You had reached out to Georgeta, you wanted to make sure she is apart of this. He misses her so much and you knew this would make him happy. When her face popped up on the screen, you tensed up slightly but once you saw his face light up you relaxed. He leaned over to whisper into your ear.

“You called my mom?”

“I did.” You had a huge grin on your face, while you just looked up at him.

“How did you…?”

“Well, I have been learning Romanian, well trying. So, I was able to have a short conversation with her. I explained what I was doing, and we were able to video chat, and I recorded her part.”

“You are amazing. Thank you.” He grabbed your face and gave you another kiss, before listening to his mom’s portion.

“Sebastian, la multi ani fiul meu. Imi lipsesti atat de mult. Sper să ai o zi grozavă. Am fost fericit că mi s-a cerut să mă despart de asta pentru tine. Ai noroc să ai pe cineva care să includă familia ta. Bine, voi pleca acum. La revedere, Te iubesc Sebastian.

(Sebastian, Happy birthday my son. I miss you so much. I hope you have a great day. I was happy to be asked to be apart of this for you. You are luck to have someone that will include your family. Okay I will go now. Goodbye, I love you Sebastian.)

Then it was your part of the video was about to come up. You had become nervous all of a sudden. You turned in his body trying to hide your face. He let out a chuckle as he wrapped both of his arms around you and rested his chin on top of yours.

“Sebby.” You looked at the camera with a big smile on your face. “You turned 39 today. Wow… I’m dating such an old man. I’m kidding… kinda. I know you are a little freaked out about turning 40 next year but I don’t want you to focus on that. I want you to focus on today. I remember when we first met each other on the set of The Covenant, 16 years ago. You were this shy 23-year-old. It feels so long ago, but I have loved every second of it. Enjoy the rest of your party.  I love you so so much Sebastian.” You blew a kiss at the camera before it went black.

Sebastian pulled you in front of him, he moving one of his hands to your face.

“How did I get so lucky?” The grin on his face caused you to smile.

“I can say the same thing about you.” He shook his head, ever so slightly.

“No sweetheart, I am the lucky on in this relationship. You have done so much for me. I can’t even begin to express or explain how much you mean to me. You have been there through a lot of my difficult times. I don’t even know if I would have gotten past them without you.” You could see that he was on the verge of tears.

“Seb.”

“I was going to do this later but now seem like a better time to do this.”

He let go of you, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a box. Then he slowly got down onto one knee. Your hand instantly went to your mouth. You could hear people gasping. You looked over to see everyone smiling. You glanced over at Anthony to see him giving you two thumbs up, causing you to giggle before turning back to Sebastian.

“Y/n Y/mn Y/ln You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Y/n, I can’t imagine my life without you. Will you make my life even more complete by marrying me?”

“Yes!”

He slipped the finger onto your hand, then quickly stood up pulling you into a kiss. This one was different than the others, it felt like the kiss to begin the rest of your life. It was absolutely amazing. Only breaking when you hear a familiar voice over everyone else.

“It’s about damn time! She has only been waiting forever.”

You look over to see Anthony coming over to the two of you. He pulled you into a hug. Sebastian into a hug before moving to you.

“Congratulation guys. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks man.”

“Thank you, Anthony.”

Once the party was over, it finally felt like you were able to breath. The excitement was still coursing through your body. You were cleaning up when Sebastian came up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” You turned in his arms.

“For everything. For the party. For being here for me. For the last 16 years. For making me happy.” He grabbed your hand and gently kissing the back of it.  “For saying yes. There are so many things, I could list them for the rest of our lives.”

“I love you Seb.” You pulled him down into a loving kiss.

“I love you Y/n.”

Till The End Of The Line (Everything) Tags:

@amelia-song-pond 

@sebsbrokentoe

@sleutherclaw​

@cherthegoddess​

[ey8508]

Helm

Rumors and Secrets: Victor | 李泽言  

[ He always knew how to insert each screw where it should be. ]

Note:

R&S for this card (CG above)

Chapter SPOILERS up to Season 2: Chapter 14-17 (read at your own risk)

Contains 5 chapters

Translation isn’t 100% accurate (or include grammar errors)

Every part for LZ’s dialogue would be in “this setting”

Do not repost to any other site (reblog is fine)

Chapter 1 Page 1 -Caerus, there is an investigation task for you. - Target name? - Guozi is a newcomer who organized the audit. Her relevant information is in the attachment. - Once received, when do you want it? - Before next Wednesday. - with such little time, the salary has to be increased by 20%. After the dialogue on the screen was stagnant for a while, the other side only replied a word: OK. Page 2 Duan Junjie put down his phone and was about to continue to look at the acquisition contract in front of him when he was suddenly patted on the shoulder. The colleague smiled and asked him: "Lawyer Duan, our department is going to have a dinner on Sunday. Would you like to come together?" "Sorry, there is something on the weekend, I can't come." Duan Junjie shook his head. The man's face was a bit unpleased: "Last time you also said that when something happened, why didn't you stay active with everyone? Eating a meal is also a way of communicate feelings." Page 3 "Forget it, I have been in Huarui for so long, and I haven't seen lawyer Duan participate in the department team building!" The female colleague opposite Duan Junjie smiled and replied, "I would rather offend the high-level staff and never work overtime. You still want to occupy his weekend, don't even think about it." The colleague left angrily, but Duan Junjie kept his head buried in work without commenting on the evaluation of him by the people around him. At exactly six o'clock, he sent the compiled attachments of the acquisition contract to the mailbox of the president's office, ready to pack his things and get off work, when the computer suddenly received a notification. Page 4 Is President Li so optimistic about the contract?  Although he knows that the person in charge of the Huarui Group is extremely efficient, the time limit is too ridiculous.  He clicked on the message and found that it was an anonymous email with a bunch of garbled characters. Duan Junjie frowned. This string of garbled codes was in disorder, but he soon discovered that it was an e-mail with two layers of special encryption, and the secret key was only available to members of BLACK SWAN.  After deciphering the garbled code, he found that it was a sentence and a "S" symbol with a thicker style at the end. Come to the conference room of BLACK SWAN headquarters. Page 5 Duan Junjie read this sentence silently, and frowned. The other party does not use the B.S. communication channel, but uses an anonymous IP to send it. Obviously, it wants to bypass the surveillance of some people in the organization. After the establishment of the BS board of directors, the original Twelve members did not easily surrender to the BOSS. They were secretly engaged in a few small actions, although Duan Junjie is just a crew responsible for intelligence, because of the nature of the work, someone from Twelve has either hinted or tempted him, They secretly made a few small moves. Although Duan Junjie was just a screw responsible for intelligence, because of the nature of the work, there was also TW elve.  Duan Junjie refused either by suggesting or tempting him but Duan Junjie refused. And now... Duan Junjie looked at this email and realized something vaguely. Page 6 He glanced at the time, and now he is leaving to meet the sender of the email. It should be too late to get home at eight o'clock and cook cat food for Amo. Although he was mentally prepared, when he opened the door and saw the man sitting across the long table, Duan Junjie still couldn't help but blurt out: "Mr. Li" The man opposite the long table did not erect the barrier to cover his face. He wore a suit with a straight back and a calm expression, no different from sitting in the office of the president of Huarui Building. Duan Junjie paused, then changed his words, "BOSS." Page 7 Li Zeyan pushed the document in front of him, "I know that your superior has just sent you a task, push that task, and do this first". "Push it." Duan Junjie took the file, "Does it mean that I don't have to keep in contact with him again?" Li Zeyan did not speak. His silence indicates his answer. Duan Junjie fixed his glasses and read the document roughly: "When do you want it?" "Before next Wednesday. Is it difficult?" Page 8 "It's not difficult, but it will take up a lot of my rest time. And I see that this part of the document is just a lead, and the things that need to be explore later are much larger than these papers." He emphasized, "This will be a long work, BOSS." "State your salary expectations." Duan Junjie seriously considered his mortgage and car loan: "Fourteen salary." "Sixteen salary." Li Zeyan looked at him directly, "correspondingly, you have to get back information worth this value." Chapter 2 Page 1 Duan Junjie’s life is very regular. He gets up at 8 in the morning and makes a cat meal for Amo. Then he takes the subway that arrives at 8:27, leaves the station at 8:47, and walks for five minutes to Huarui building, go to the cafeteria to get an egg, two buns, and a cup of soy milk. Sometimes, according to the mood of the day, he changes it to milk, and make sure to turn on the computer at nine o'clock and start working. He is just a screw built in the Huarui Group, as long as he is firm and wedged in where he should be on time everything should be fine. It’s just that there are accidents occasionally in a regular life, such as today. Page 2 At 8:51, when Duan Junjie was about to walk to the door of Huarui building, his footsteps suddenly stopped because a fallen leaf was hanging in front of him for five seconds. An Evolver has used their ability. Duan Junjie quickly reacted. He looked around, cars, pedestrians, even the giant screen advertisements that flickered forever in the distance stopped. In the world of silence, the sound of leather shoes stepping on the ground seemed so clear. Page 3 Duan Junjie saw Li Zeyan appear from the other end of the intersection, walked calmly to the middle of the road, came straight to a car and bent down.  When he got up again, there was a tabby cat in his arms. When Li Zeyan hold the cat and stepped onto the sidewalk, time began to flow again.  The noise reappeared in the city in an instant, the cars and the crowd were intertwined, and no one noticed the small change just now. Li Zeyan stepped forward, suddenly as if he noticed, that he turned his head to look at Duan Junjie not far away. "Mr. Li." Duan Junjie greeted him and walked over. Page 4 Li Zeyan nodded, took the cat to a safe place and put it down.  The little cat was shocked and still seemed to be reluctant to leave Li Zeyan. After stepping on Li Zeyan's hand back and forth, it turned around and jumped into the bushes of flowers. Duan Junjie looked at the back of the cat, and inexplicably thought of his own Amo: "It has a labelled ear and it is a sterile cat." "The cats in this area have been neutered." Li Zeyan replied. These two sentences have no beginning and end, but the atmosphere is calm. Duan Junjie continued: "I didn't expect you to be a cat lover." Page 5 Knowing that all the cats in this area have been neutered and willing to use EVOL to save a cat, it really does not fit Duan Junjie’s impression of Li Zeyan. "It's just a matter of effort." Li Zeyan took off the cat's fur on his cuffs. "If it is not careful, it will not be saved every time." As soon as the voice fell, a thin mist gathered in Li Zeyan's always firm eyes, and his expression became a little dumbfounded as if something had touched his mind. Page 6 Duan Junjie saw Li Zeyan with this expression for the first time, but he intuitively felt that he shouldn't ask more. So he took a step back, "Then I will go first, and the yesterday's document will be sent to you before a quarter past ten in the morning." At 8:57, Duan Junjie arrived at the Huarui cafeteria. Today he bought one less egg because he wants to save time and punch in on time.

Chapter 3 Page 1 Whether as Caerus or Lawyer Duan, he has been very busy this time.  Huarui's acquisition plan has advanced to a critical stage, and the investigation of the "small syringe" has also fallen into a bottleneck. Even Duan Junjie, who has no commercial sense, knows that this kind of medicine that can enhance Evol can create huge benefits that can change the world.  He once suspected that Li Zeyan’s reason for being particularly concerned about "small syringes" was the instinct of capitalists to seek profit, but if they were chasing profits, they should put this unstable pharmaceutical package on the market as soon as possible, instead of letting him investigate  The "black hand" behind the shadow of the "Syringe" incident. "Lawyer Duan, we'll be going first." Page 2 "Okay, bye." Colleagues picked up their bags and said goodbye to him. When they walked to the door, they could still hear a faint sentence floating over there: "Lawyer Duan also works overtime. It's really rare." The sky gradually darkened, and the neon lights of the city outside the floor-to-ceiling windows lit up for the first time.  Duan Junjie was the only one left in the huge office. No breathing could be heard in the silent environment, only the monotonous keyboard percussion sounded in the ups and downs! A sharp alarm interrupted Duan Junjie's work. He quickly opened the alarm interface and found that the source of the alarm was actually for Li Zeyan's office of the president! Page 3 "The sound pulse in the office fluctuates abnormally" Duan Junjie whispered while looking at the screen, "someone went there?" It’s not surprising that Li Zeyan would be watched. Duan Junjie was surprised that someone dared to do something in Li Zeyan’s office. He immediately sent an encrypted signal to Li Zeyan to get the other party out of the office immediately. However, after a long time, Li Zeyan on the camera  still motionless.  Immediately he saw a girl pushing open the door of the office, still holding some documents in her hand. The boss of Huarui Investment’s gazed at the film and television company, also a member of BLACK SWAN, Miss NOX. "That's it, there wasn't anything major?" Page 4 Seeing this scene, Duan Junjie breathed a sigh of relief.  It also reflects that the time for NOX to report on official business is the anti-tracking time given to him by Li Zeyan, and he must be worthy of the sixteen salary that Li Zeyan gave him. An hour later, Duan Junjie stood in front of Li Zeyan's office and knocked on the door three times. "Come in" Duan Junjie walked in, first closed the door carefully, and operated the small anti-eavesdropping device in his hand a few times and installed it on the door.  Then he turned around and said straightforwardly: "Boss, it's done." Page 5 "Tell me." "The source of the eavesdropping was traced to a tea room in Xicheng District. This is the background check of the tea room owner and the personnel he has been in close contact with recently." Duan Junjie operated a few times on his mobile phone, and the corresponding intelligence content popped up on Li Zeyan's computer.  , "A few people have contact with the small syringe".  The person who installed the eavesdropping has also been found. It was the cleaner who cleaned your office yesterday. According to the monitoring comparison, they were not from Huarui, but they should have sent someone in disguise.  People have been arranged to go to the Dingsha Tea Room, and they can act at any time. Page 6 "Understood" Li Zeyan's tone was always faint, his expression calm, it was not like he had experienced a tense eavesdropping crisis one after another, or for this man, he had experienced countless things. Things that are unimaginable even by Duan Junjie's thoughts. More dangerous than this, more knife-pointed. The scene of life and death on the front line. He scanned the page for a few times, pressed the button, and said: "Go to the next stage." Page 7 The meaning of entering the next stage is that he does not need to care about how those eavesdroppers will be dealt with.  Duan Junjie nodded knowingly: "I understand." Li Zeyan's gaze cast through the floor-to-ceiling windows, to the distant ground, as if he was talking to Duan Junjie, or he was saying to the invisible opponent: "The line has been laid long enough." Page 8 Duan Junjie lowered his head: "I will continue to report to you if there is a new situation." He turned to leave the office, and suddenly wrinkled his nose before leaving. A faintly sweet smell that he did not know where it came from, on the tip of his nose, it was like the caramel scent he would smell when he passed the dessert shop downstairs. This type of scent should not appear in Li Zeyan's office. It might be an illusion, Duan Junjie thought.

Chapter 4 Page 1 Unknowingly, it was the end of the year again. At this time, the center of the topic in the tea room of my colleagues will be more and more to rely on a lottery draw in the main link of the Huarui annual meeting. "Last year based on the report someone in the department next door got paid for a month of paid travel and wine!" "I want to pick a camera. Maybe the equipment is configured, and my photography skills will also improve." "Lawyer Duan, what prize do you want to win?" "The Sunshine Award." Duan Junjie replied. Everyone went silent. Page 2 Duan Junjie thinks this topic is meaningless, and he doesn't think he has the luck to win a lottery. Excessive surprises are often accompanied by huge risks. He is greedy for peace and stability, and does not want to give life too many twists and turns. It's better to go home and cook an extra meal for the cat when you have the time. Huarui’s annual meeting has always been very lively. In addition to the people at the headquarters, some cooperating companies will also come to socialize. The police, like the boss of the film and television company of the company, will not be absent every year. Page 3 After the last eavesdropping incident, probably out of affirmation of his work ability, Li Zeyan handed him more tasks. As a result, he came into contact with this woman who had an unusual relationship with the BOSS. Although he exchanged information online, the other party did not know his identity in reality. He glanced at the energetic girl, and then turned away, not intending to say hello to her as Huarui's lawyer. Page 4 What Duan Junjie didn't expect was that he won the second prize at this annual meeting. The moment his name appeared on the big screen, his colleagues seemed to be more excited than him. These guys who usually claim to be the elites of the law surrounded him laughing and making noise, and they said that they should be invited to share the joy, "You're from our department. Duan Junjie you finally won this year's prize! " Duan Junjie was so upset by them that he simply slipped out of the annual meeting with an excuse.  He had just gotten in the car and was about to start, and suddenly two figures flashed in the corner of his eyes who shouldn’t be there at this time. Page 5 Li Zeyan and NOX walked to the garage side by side, and the two seemed to be talking about something.  Duan Junjie thought it might not be an official business, because the girl’s face had the brilliant smile that she have on her age. She carried a bag of vegetables in one hand and gestured twice with the other. Li Zeyan’s eyebrows were still the same. It's cold, but there is a slight arc in the corner of his mouth, and if Duan Junjie is right, is this BS BOSS carrying a bag of cat litter in his hand? It's the same cat litter as Amo. Duan Junjie raised his eyebrows, he felt as if he had discovered something extraordinary. Page 6 So Duan Junjie asked questions unrelated to work for the first time in the work email when he went to work the next day. Why is the poster of the Huarui Annual Meeting is a Siamese? Li Zeyan quickly answered him. That is my cat, it is a Ragdoll. Chapter 5 Page 1 Affected by the public opinion of "Huarui's malicious acquisition of pharmaceutical companies", the atmosphere in the company has recently become much sluggish than before. The pantry is no longer full of laughter and gossip, but turned into quiet discussions and sighs. "When I went to drink coffee across the street today, the clerk saw my badge and said that he would not accept it. He won't even talk to me afterwards" "Hmph, he didn't accept it?, you should complain to him at that time, not only complain, but also wear a Huarui badge every day to buy as a Huarui employee, it is never a shame!" "Yes, I should do that" Page 2 Duan Junjie was stunned and stopped for a while, and the colleague in the pantry had already noticed him: "Lawyer Duan." Duan Junjie nodded at them and poured the remaining water from the glass into the sink.  A female colleague smiled and greeted: "Lawyer Duan, how is Amo at home?" "It's ok, Amo has not been losing weight recently." "By the way, we have recently established a Huarui cat-related group. Lawyer Duan are interested in joining?" a female colleague asked him with a smile, "Occasionally I can see President Li's cat too, Pudding!" "Thank you, I'll think about it." Page 3 After bidding farewell to his colleagues, Duan Junjie set off for the BS building. One or two minutes before, he sent a message from the special communication channel of B.S. saying that an emergency meeting would be held. Before coming to the meeting room, he habitually knocked on the door three times, and after getting permission from Li Zeyan, he walked in. "BOSS" "The next phase of the plan can start." "Understood, I will arrange manpower." Page 4 Li Zeyan ordered him to do the next thing as usual, until a silver-haired man suddenly broke in and interrupted Duan Junjie's bargaining over the length of overtime. The two talked in private. Before the silver-haired man glanced coldly on him, Duan Junjie turned around and left the meeting room. Only doing what should be done, not listening to what should not be heard, this is the work principle he has always believed in. Page 5 Duan Junjie feels that his current life is very good. Both Huarui and BLACK SWAN are huge and sophisticated machines, requiring countless from 'attorney Duan' and 'Caerus' as screws to maintain their operation. The man at the helm who directs the operation is Li Zeyan. Screws can get stuck occasionally and can be replaced, but Li Zeyan make no mistakes, let alone replace any mistakes, the consequences are fatal once it appears. Perhaps in terms of risk, following Li Zeyan is already the biggest gamble in Duan Junjie's life. Page 6 His chips were all bet on this man, and he inexplicably believed that Li Zeyan could win, not because of the gorgeous numbers in the Huarui annual report, nor because B.S. continued to grow these crowns and glamorous surfaces under his leadership. It is because the stray cat was rescued, the brand new "small syringe" industry chain, and the badge on the chest of a colleague. The reason lies in these small things. Duan Junjie turned on the phone and opened a chat window before starting the next stage of work. "What is the cat-related group number?"

[allthingsfangirl101]

Camping Surprises–Zac Efron

Wattpad Request by ru_ruva

Work lately has been crazy. I've been working as an assistant for a top editor at a fashion magazine in Beverly Hills for three years. My boss has promised me that once I've worked for her for five years, I'll be promoted to an editing job. Plus, it kind of helps that I'm dating the famous actor, Zac Efron.

Zac and I had been dating for two years under the radar before our secret got out. He had wanted at least one part of his life to be for just him and me. My boss and his fans only found out about us after our anniversary dinner was interrupted by the paparazzi.

When my boss found out, she completely changed her attitude towards me. The next year, she started listening to me in meetings, agreeing with my suggestions, and treating me like a human being. She acted like this new found attitude towards me wasn't because I was on magazine covers with Zac, but she and I both knew she was lying.

Since Zac and I went public with our relationship, we haven't had much time to ourselves. It's been a year since our secret got out and things have only begun to pick up. We can't go out without getting recognized which means we can't even have a meal without being bombarded by fans, reporters, or paparazzi. Sometimes all three.

I walked into our apartment, my shoulders, back, and feet killing me. I tossed my keys into the bowl on the table by the door, dropped my bag onto the floor, kicked off my shoes, and hung up my jacket. I ran my fingers through my hair as I walking into the other room. I plopped onto the couch, the long day weighing me down.

I hadn't noticed I had fallen asleep on the couch until I felt someone tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. I let out a sleepy moan as my eyes fluttered open. I smiled when I saw Zac sitting on the ground in front of me, his face inches from mine.

"Morning," he whispered. I hummed as he continued to run his fingers through my hair. "What time did you get home?"

"A little after 7," I mumbled.

"Seven?" He repeated. "That's later than normal."

"Well," I sighed, "next month's issue is due to the printer by Thursday instead of Friday because of the holiday. Which means this is going to be a late week."

"I'm sorry," he said under his breath. "I hate how hard she works you."

I just shrugged and closed my eyes as I focused on the feeling of Zac playing with my hair.

"What about you?" I mumbled sleepily. "You're home later than usual."

"Yeah," he sighed.

The sound of exhaustion in his voice made me open my eyes. My heart sank when I saw the bags under his eyes. I sat up and pulled him so he was next to me. I smiled as he immediately laid his head on my thigh.

I started playing with his hair, feeling his breathing slow. I grabbed the remote and turned on a random show. We sat like that, not saying anything, and just enjoyed each other's company.

"Do you ever wish our lives were normal?" He asked, breaking the silence. I looked down to see his eyes still closed.

"Actually, no."

He turned his head up towards me and opened his eyes. "Really?" He asked. "You never wish we were different?"

"No," I smiled down at him as I moved some hair out of his face. "Because if we were normal, we wouldn't be who we are. We might not have met and I hate even the idea of that."

Zac reached up and cupped my cheek, pulling me down to him. I smiled as I pressed my lips to his and immediately started moving them in sync. He broke the kiss and sighed.

"I love you," he whispered. "And I'm sorry that things are crazy. I wish I could tell you they were going to slow down, but we both know that isn't going to happen."

                         * * * * *

A couple of days later, I came home to Zac already on the couch. He looked up from his computer when he saw me come in.

"You're home early," I teased as I hung up my keys. He put his laptop on the ottoman and stood up. He walked over to me, grabbed my hand, and led me back to the couch.

"Zac," I said under my breath. "What's going on, babe?"

He didn't say anything as he let go of my hand and grabbed his laptop. I nervously played with my fingers as he pulled something up.

"Babe?" I said, my breath getting caught in my throat. "You're scaring me."

Zac put his laptop on my lap and pointed to the screen. I hesitated before looking at it.

"Beverly Hills Glamp Ground?" I read. "You want to go camping?"

"We need a break," he said, looking down as he grabbed my hand and intertwined our fingers.

"A break?" I stuttered.

"From this world, baby," he sighed, looking back up at me. "I come home every day, exhausted. And I know you do too. I feel like we haven't had any time to ourselves, any time to be alone. So, I want to do something. Something fun. Something just us two."

"And you're idea is camping?" I teased.

"We'd be completely alone out there," he explained. "No bosses, no cell service, no cameras. Just you and me."

"That does sound amazing," I sighed. He grabbed his computer and put it back on the coffee table before reaching over and grabbing my hands, turning me towards him.

"Then let's do it," he said eagerly. "It's a long weekend so neither of us work Monday. You sent in next month's issue today, so your boss won't need you over the weekend. She might not even need you tomorrow. My director is spending the weekend with his family and is even taking tomorrow off."

"I haven't used any of my sick days this year," I mumbled.

"Wait," he said slowly. "Are you saying. . ."

"I can call and get tomorrow off. Then with Monday being a holiday. . ."

I giggled when Zac excitedly leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. I smiled as I grabbed his face and kissed him back. He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against mine.

"Let's go pack."

                         * * * * *

As we pulled up to the camping ground, I noticed another car waiting for us in front of our assigned tent. I looked over at Zac as his brother got out of the other car.

"Dylan's here too?" I asked, trying not to sound disappointed.

"Yeah," Zac said as he got our suitcases out of the back. "He needed a break too and wanted to come."

He looked over at me, his eyes soft. He walked over and wrapped his arms around my waist.

"I'm sorry, baby," he sighed. "But he's in his own tent and promised to do his own thing."

"It's okay," I smiled as I rubbed his chest. I stood on my toes and pressed my lips to his.

"You two lovebirds ready?"

Zac broke the kiss and glared at his brother. I laughed as I grabbed his chin and turned him back to me. "Easy," I whispered.

"I'm sorry," he sighed. "He promised. . ."

"As long as his tent is far away from ours, I don't mind."

The three of us spent the next hour setting up our camping ground. I went to gather firewood as Zac and Dylan got dinner ready. When I got back they were whispering to each other. They jumped when they heard me.

"You guys okay?" I chuckled.

"Yep," Zac said, jumping up and walking over to me. He grabbed the wood from me and pressed a kiss to my cheek.

Dylan and I were cooking dinner when I noticed it was just us two. I looked around, trying to find Zac.

"Where's Zac?"

"He went for a walk," Dylan said, sounding kind of weird.

"It's getting kind of late," I said, not hiding my nerves. "Should we go look for him?"

Dylan checked his watch and bit his bottom lip; something he only did when he was overthinking.

"Let's give him a few more minutes," he decided. "Then we'll go look for him."

I stared at him as he turned back to the fire, trying to hide the look on his face. A few minutes later, I couldn't take it anymore. I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans.

"That's it," I sighed. "I'm going to go look for him. It's getting dark and I don't think he has his flashlight."

"Wait," he said quickly as he grabbed my hand and stopped me. He cleared his throat, instantly letting go of me.

"Zac's a big boy, Y/N. He knows not to go too far from the campsite and to come back before it gets dark."

"But. . ." I stuttered.

"Y/N," he whispered, "Zac and I went camping all the time as kids. He's fine."

I tried to finish getting dinner ready, but I found myself constantly looking towards the path. A few minutes later, I started nervously chewing on my thumbnail.

"Actually," Dylan said, clearing his throat as he checked his watch. "Let's go look for him."

I let out a sigh of relief as Dylan handed me my jacket and grabbed the flashlights. We had only gone maybe half a mile before we could see some lights through the trees. I started to go around the campsite, but Dylan stopped me.

"What are you. . ." I stuttered as he looked over his shoulder at me with a smirk on his face.

I sighed before following him. My breath got stuck in my throat when we got to the clearing. Zac was standing there, in the middle of the meadow, surrounded by lights and flowers. My eyes filled with tears when I noticed the pictures of us scattered around.

I turned to look at Dylan, but he had slipped back through the trees. When I turned back towards Zac, he was right in front of me. He grabbed my hand and led me to the middle of the meadow.

"How did you. . . When did you. . . Why did you. . ."

Zac laughed as I stuttered. "I needed to bring all of this, but I didn't want you to see it. So Dylan brought it in his car and agreed to distract you while I set it up."

"I just. . . Why?" I finally got out, tears beginning to fall. Zac smiled as he reached forward and caught a tear with his thumb.

"This is why," he whispered.

I covered my mouth as he knelt down on one knee. He had tears in his eyes as he pulled a small black box out of his pocket.

"Y/N," he started, his voice gentle. "I love you so much, darling. And I can't imagine spending my life with anyone other than you. I know our jobs keep us busy and they can kind of be frustrating at times, but it's all worth it as long as I get to come home to you. I love waking up to you typing on your computer and coming home to you asleep on the couch. I love that you are always willing to run lines with me, go to premieres and parties with me, drive me to the airport at 2 in the morning. I love that you are on my team. I love you."

Zac took a shaky breath as he opened the box. My eyes widened, tears streaming down my face as I saw the ring he got for me.

"Will you marry me?"

It took me a second to find my voice, but once I did, I giggled out my answer.

"Yes," I said through my tears. "Of course I'll marry you."

Zac smiled as he slipped the ring on my finger and stood up. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he instantly wrapped his arms around my waist, holding me close to his chest. I felt him laugh as he tightened his arms around me.

"I love you," I whispered, not breaking our embrace. "And I can't imagine spending my life with anyone else either."

Zac laughed as he pulled me back into his chest and pressed his lips to mine. We quickly got caught lost in the kiss as we held each other. We broke apart when we heard someone clapping and laughing. We turned around to see Dylan jogging towards us.

I laughed as he pulled me away from Zac, lifted me up, and spun me.

"Dylan," Zac sighed. "Will you please put my fiancé down?"

"Sorry," Dylan chuckled as he put me down. He walked over to his brother and gave him a hug.

"Congratulations," Dylan whispered. He pulled out of the hug and looked over at me. "You got quite the girl."

"Thanks," Zac laughed. "I got lucky."

I walked over and Zac instantly wrapped his arms around me. He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine.

"I'll umm. . . I'll let you two. . . Celebrate," Dylan laughed awkwardly. He was about to walk away but stopped. "I'll send you the pictures I took but you probably won't be able to post them until. . ."

Dylan stopped talking when we broke the kiss and Zac glared at him. "Right. Sorry. Congratulations, you two."

We laughed as he turned on his heel and jogged back to the campsite. I looked back at Zac, biting my bottom lip.

"How long have you planned this?" I asked under my breath.

"Well," he sighed, tightening his arms around my waist. "I've been wanting to propose for the last year but things got so crazy. I realized that this weekend would be the first and only quiet weekend we had together for the next little while. And I couldn't wait any longer. I had to be engaged to you."

I stood on my toes and pressed my lips to his. I felt him smirk as he kissed me back. I broke the kiss and leaned my forehead against his.

"Is Dylan staying the rest of the weekend?" I asked under my breath.

"No," Zac said simply. "He's heading back tonight. Why?"

He saw the knowing look on my face and laughed. I smirked as he tightened his arms around my waist. I sighed before standing on my toes. I didn't press my lips to his yet, teasing him instead.

"Let's head back to camp and celebrate."

[mieohmy]

[𝟽:𝟹𝟽]

𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘤 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘱 :\ 

   The sound of keys clicking filled the room. Occasional sniffs and coughs could be heard, but your brain blocked it all out. It was a long day at the office, and with the holidays coming up, you had way more work than you had liked.

You typed one more sentence before sitting up from your slumped position, stretching your neck and arms. You took the time to glance around. Everyone else seemed focused. Heck, even Haechan was clicking away instead of his usual banter, face never leaving the computer screen.  

After handing your report to Mark with a grimace, you tell him “good luck,” and he gives you a strained laugh before saying he’ll just give it to Jaemin to proofread. You decide to stand up and get some water, wincing as you hear your bones crack. Walking over, you meet Renjun filling up his water bottle at the station. You greet him as he starts talking. “Y/n, I swear I’m gonna sleep for days once we finish this project. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t hear from me after.” You laugh before agreeing. “I know, my eyes are dead from staring at a screen 24/7.” He moves aside as you fill up your bottle, continuing to chat and sip on his water.

You hear him greet someone. “Yo Jeno, did your boss assign you a 3,000-word report too?” You stiffen before slowly turning around to meet him. Jeno immediately locks eyes with you, even though he’s responding to Renjun’s question. Your eyes flick away, deciding to focus on Renjun instead. Renjun shoots you a weird look before walking off and groaning about one last page to do.

You take a sip before deciding to leave to get back to the mountain of documents you desperately need to finish, but once you take two steps forward, Jeno quickly grabs your hand. You immediately tense, head turning to face him. He takes a glance around the room before softly asking, “Have you eaten yet?” You slowly shake your head, looking around to see if anyone saw before taking your hand from his grip. Jeno frowns in disapproval before he says, “You haven’t eaten since eight this morning? Let’s grab food after work alright?” You nod before quickly walking back to your desk, hoping no one witnessed anything.

You sighed as you sat back down at your desk to continue working. You hoped you didn’t seem too cold towards Jeno. It’s not that you were ashamed of your relationship or anything, but dating in the workplace wasn’t the most professional thing, and you took your job seriously. You tried to seem neutral towards him whenever you had to interact with him in the office—hoping no one would catch on,—but Jeno was making it a lot harder to hide.

You two weren’t the most affectionate couple in public, but Jeno’s sweet actions made your heart flutter a lot more than you would admit. He would sneak drinks at your desk with a cute note and pack you snacks in the morning to take to work. (he left in the morning before you because he worked under a different boss that required him to arrive earlier.. and maybe also so no one didn’t suspect anything).

______________________________________________________________

Once you finally get to the last paragraph, you slump back in your chair, exhaling. Glancing around, you realized it was dark outside, and there were only a few people left still in the office. Jeno being one of them. You blink a couple of times before focusing again, only to feel a pair of eyes on you. You grin, knowing he was watching you. You figured he had probably finished already, being the hard worker that he was, and was waiting for you. You reminded yourself to hurry up, feeling your stomach grumble and remembering what Jeno said.

You faintly hear Jisung and Chenle sign off as you type the last sentence, saying goodbye before turning their lights off and walking out. It’s quiet for a moment, and you think you’re the only one left in the room before you hear a chair rolling towards you. You feel a smile growing, knowing who it was already. Quickly packing up, you gather everything before spinning around to face him.

Jeno was sitting in his chair, chin resting on his palm while staring at you. “Missed me that much even though we’re in the same room?” you tease. He doesn’t say anything, just causing a surprised gasp to escape your mouth as he suddenly pulls your chair towards his. His hand comes up to your chin, tilting your chin up as he comes closer. Your eyes instinctively fall shut, waiting. You feel the ghost of his lips on yours before suddenly hearing voices coming closer and getting louder.

You immediately jerk and push Jeno off you, eyes opening to find his shocked face staring back at you, lips slightly puckered still, getting smaller as his chair slowly rolls further and further away.

You can only stare in horror until your attention is moved to the voices again. It was Chenle and Jisung, looking at you and Jeno (who had stopped rolling 10 feet from you) with confused expressions. You blink. “Um- what’s happening?” Chenle looks at you, then at Jeno, before focusing on you again. “Uhh I just left my jacket.. haha... we’ll get going now..” He quickly retrieves his jacket before grabbing Jisung and leaving.

It’s silent for a moment. It takes you a second before you immediately rush over to him, not moving and silent. You can’t read the expression on his face, but he slightly turns so his back is towards you, and you can’t see him. You hesitate for a moment before reaching out to grab his hand. “Jeno...” He quickly moves his hand away. You pout. “Baby... I didn’t mean to.” You hope the nickname worked.

He still doesn’t look at you. You try to turn his chair around, but he stops you. “Are you that ashamed of me? To the point of hiding our relationship like that?” Your eyes widen. “No!! It’s not like that.. you know I love you, but I just don’t think it’s the right time to show it..” You’re finally able to get him to face you. You smile at the cute pout on his face, knowing he was trying to seem angry. You bring your face close to his, attempting to appeal to him. “I’m sorry Jen..”

His eyes avoid yours, but you can see a small smile forming. He lets out a small humph! and turns slightly away from you. You laugh, pressing a kiss to his cheek.  

You squirm. “Come onnn. I’m hungry. Let’s go to that restaurant you wanted to visit a week ago?” Playfully tilting your head at him, you grab his arm and pull him up. Jeno grumbles before reluctantly grabbing his stuff.

As you two make your way down the stairs, you continue to play with him. You hug his arm, whining. “Are you still upset? You know I’ll give you kisses at home, ok??” He mumbles a response, ears red. You can only laugh and intertwine your hands together.

Jeno, being the gentleman he is, opens the door to the exit for you as you giggle from something he said, wrapping his arm around your waist after. You’re about to continue when you hear a “What the fuck?” You and Jeno immediately freeze. You whip your head, and it’s the boys standing in a group to your right. Shit. Why are they still here?! Jeno’s grip on your waist tightens.

Mark and Jisung are just staring at the two of you, mouths open. Jaemin’s frozen, and you think you hear Renjun whisper-shout “I fucking knew it!”

You laugh awkwardly. “What are you guys still doing here??” Haechan slowly speaks. “Waiting for our ride to take us to go eat together?” His eyes kept flicking down to Jeno’s hand still around your waist and back up to you. There’s an awkward pause until Chenle coughs. “So... you two ..?” Jeno only shrugs. “Guess the secret’s out??” he says sheepishly.

Renjun scoffs. “It wasn’t a secret. I could totally tell you liked Y/n. I just didn’t you two were already together.” You shoot Jeno a look before looking back at the group. “Please keep this a secret?? We don’t want everyone at work to know. I want to be professional still,” you plead, eyes wide.

Haechan coughs while muttering, “i think everyone knows,” before Jaemin elbows him. They promise to keep the “secret” before bidding you two farewell. You continue walking with Jeno silently until he speaks up. “Well, that was unexpected.” You sigh before looping your arm through his. “Yeah, it was gonna happen eventually.” He suddenly steals a quick kiss from you before starting to run. You yelp as he pulls you along. “What are you doing??” He only laughs. “Don’t you wanna get to the restaurant before it closes?”

[daisybeewrites]

Academy Blues — Prologue

word count: 1.8k

warnings: not any for this chapter

ship: Dousy, background Fitzsimmons and Philinda

okay y’all.. here it is. the first installment of my first LONG TERM SERIES!!!!!! ahhhh i’m so excited. literally i cant wait to continue this and see where it takes me. i have an idea and a few different planning sheets, but honestly i have no idea where exactly this will end up. i love each and single one of you <3 thank you for reading!! this is also posted on Ao3, and linked in the masterlist.

Daisy hated the sound of the bells at The Academy. Screeching, awful, way too loud, the bells were the bane of her existence. They all wore standard-issue watches from the lab that monitored vitals and gave them reminders, and also told the time, for god’s sake! Fitz had even modified hers so that she could play snake on the tiny watch face! There was no need for the bells to be so excruciatingly disruptive. Though, Daisy guessed, there were many things more tortuous than bells ringing every hour and fifteen minutes.

Daisy slowed to a jog, cutting her morning run short. The bright side to being a third-year was that you chose your schedule, for the most part, and that meant Daisy had a free first period for four out of five days of classes. She usually spent this free period getting an extra hour in at the gym, boxing or sparring with Mack or Bobbi, two fourth years that had reluctantly taken her under their wings, or sleeping in. She reserved sleeping in for especially rough nights where visions of ashes and earthquakes and lightning returned time and time again, no matter how many deep breaths she took or sheep she counted.

But this morning was not one of those mornings. She had been up before sunrise, a little before her usual alarm and silently headed out of her dorm for a run. It was humid this time of year on most Virginia mornings, but never so hot that it made Daisy feel as if she was being smothered. The cooler air chilled her sweaty skin, her chest rising and falling as she jogged up the three flights of steps to the second years’ dorms. Down one long hallway, and she arrived at her room.

Daisy had been given her own room at the start of last year, complete with poly-adaptic-proto-whatever panels, which she had painted a pastel shade of purple, to compliment the greens of her cacti and the dark purples and blacks of everything else in her room. Even May had agreed that the stark white was too ”psych wing” for a bedroom. Daisy was grateful for the space, but considering the panels and the private room were only necessary since...

She shuddered. Grabbing her shower caddy, Daisy set off to the bathroom at the opposite end of the hall, hoping no one else was spending a free first period at the dorms.

Her shoulder-length waves were wet from bouncing against her neck, and starting to become annoying now that the sweat had dried and was starting to itch. Picking the white tiled shower furthest away from the door, Daisy quickly turned the water on, checked the temperature, pulled her sports bra and shorts off and hopped into the shower. Shampoo, condition, soap body, rinse. Checking her watch, Daisy found that she had showered in record time, less than three minutes. After spending another five just enjoying the hot water, she hopped out and changed into her class clothes.

Dark purple leggings, Coulson’s grey vintage SHIELD tee and a pair of white running sneakers she had “borrowed” from Jemma completed her look. Passing the mirrors, Daisy tried not to glance at herself. If her hair was messy or her undereye bags a bit too dark, she didn’t want to know. Instead, she headed back to her room to pack her bag for the day.

SHIELD-issued laptop, extra hard drives and a charger, Advanced CS 3: Ethical Hacking: Theory and Application, Advanced CS 4: Secrets of The Coding Languages, Physics notebook, an essay that was three days late on some boring book about international laws, and her sparring gear were all thrown into the black bag. She gave a second glance at the Russian notebooks Bobbi had loaned to her, promising that she’d learn without taking the class. Oh well, she still had all of this term to start. Plus, would she ever really need more than the dirty words?

One look at the alarm clock that sat on her dark hardwood night table showed that she still had almost forty-five minutes before she had to be in the computer lab. Sitting down on her bed, Daisy ran a hand over the grey blanket May had given her.

Daisy’s relationship with May and Coulson had been something of a problem with other students when she first got here. Some had been okay with the obvious paternal love Coulson showed for Daisy, showing her around and checking up on her, scheduling lunch dates and reminding her of tests. May was more subtle, texting her links to tai chi videos when she noticed Daisy getting too stressed or letting Daisy do her own thing if she saw that she was overwhelmed. Of course, none of the other students knew her family history, what she had gone through just to realize that May and Coulson were more her parents than her biological father and mother could ever be. She would see them later today—May during field training and Coulson in between lectures in the canteen.

Daisy walked over to her window to open her blinds, staring out at the campus she had grown to love. The large brick buildings scattered around acres of the Virginia countryside; green fields meant for physical activities like sparring or obstacle courses, or simply basking in the weather to study or chat; the dorms—red brick and concrete melded together to upgrade and expand the charming style of previously-built homes.

Grabbing a protein bar, Daisy headed to the canteen to make a green smoothie (and maybe snatch a cup of joe before she had to listen to an hour-long lecture on the reason SHIELD must cooperate with the UN’s stupid rules at 7:30 in the morning). Smelling the pines and morning dew surrounding her, she smiled slightly. Maybe this term wouldn’t be so bad.

———————————————————————

Daniel Sousa was a man of honor. He was a man of great strength. Agent Daniel Sousa, previously Officer Daniel Sousa in the US Army, was a man who could fix his damn alarm clock on his own.

Just, not today. Or the day before.

So, Agent Daniel Sousa was now hurrying his way to class at The SHIELD Academy, books in hand and gym bag slung over his shoulders. Catching a glance at himself in the shiny glass doors of the bio-chem building, he groaned. He hadn’t even brushed his hair. And, looking down, he discovered he was wearing two different shoes.

This is the college experience everyone raves about, he thought bitterly. You see, Daniel Sousa had enlisted to the army straight out of high school, forgoing university. He climbed the ranks impressively quickly, earning his place as second-in-command and reconnaissance scout in the 28th Infantry Regiment. Unfortunately, after only four years in the army, Sousa was injured in the field, losing his leg and almost his life.

He came back to the US a war hero, and yet, he felt he wasn't finished. So, when a recruiter named Peggy Carter knocked on his door claiming to be from SHIELD (“Wow, you guys are still a thing?”), he leapt at the chance to continue fighti-...doing good. The Academy wasn’t exactly what he had bargained for, though. Trying to earn his B.A. and training to be an agent at the same time was grueling, but nothing he couldn’t deal with.

No, six different one hour and fifteen minute long classes plus mandatory physical therapy every day wasn’t going to break him. Learning how to be a communications agent and re-starting field training and catching up on general college education was no problem. Pressuring himself to be the best, to break the limits, to get past all his weaknesses was just another miniscule feather to add to the pile.

Unless his stupid alarm clock broke. Then yes, Agent Daniel Sousa would fail, buckle under the weight and be left on the floor to die.

Maybe he was being a bit dramatic.

One bunny-slippered right foot and a sneakered left leg carried him forward, propelled by a quickly chugged orange Celsius and his sheer will not to be late.

Daniel heard the late bell ring out, understanding that, on his first day of class, he would be counted late. It wasn’t like him, not at all. Especially when his first class was a refresher course on field tactics and covert strategy, something in which he was already aces.

He let out a sigh, slowing as he rounded the corner into the comms building. At the Academy, most buildings were grouped into categories: the cafeteria, gym and pool, and student resource building all to the south; the gun range, obstacle course, and specialized gym to the east; bio-chem labs, tech labs, and smaller rooms for lectures to the west; the computer labs and comms buildings right smack in the middle; and dorms to the north.

He swiped a key card with his driver’s license picture and student ID, unlocking the sliding doors that led to the computer labs. It was quicker to short cut through them than to walk around the building to the entrance closest to communications classrooms.

It wasn’t because he knew a certain broody brunette spent her mornings in the lab.

No, it wasn’t, because she wasn’t in her usual seat in the corner, typing away.

He slowly walked through the rows of computers, searching for a familiar black backpack. Nothing was there.

“Hey, Sousa,” an accented female voice called behind him. He whipped around to see who it was, feeling just a twinge of disappointment when Elena, or, as most people knew her, Yo-Yo, was leaning against the door frame. Yo-Yo, a fourth year operations trainee, who was very close with Daisy.

“Hey, Yo-Yo. Good morning,” he called, “I’m running a bit late.”

Elena checked her nails casually, “Way to state the obvious. You were running faster than I could trying to get here before the bell.”

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck and blushed. “Yeah…”

“Daisy’s running late today, too.”

Daniel looked around, pretending that hearing Daisy’s name didn’t make him want to smile. “Oh, of course. She’s usually here early.”

Elena nodded, chuckling a little at his response. She couldn’t tell if he was oblivious or just a bad liar. It was charming, really. “Right. See ya ‘round, Sousa!”

“See ya,” He replied. He thought he heard a quiet ‘Lovable nerds’ coming from the direction she left, but he couldn’t be sure.

And so, with a last look around the computer lab, Daniel set off to arrive late to May’s lecture.

———————————————————————

okay okay,,, what do y’all think?? like/reblog and let me know! it’s the best way to support writers and it only takes a second! stay tuned for more chapters!!

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

I'm in a virtual waiting room, waiting for my neurologist to show up. He's thus far 12 minutes late. All in-person appointments have had him no less than 20 minutes late. Each time. The last virtual appointment? He was almost 30 minutes late.

Why tf do drs insist patients be punctual if they won't show the same courtesy?

Even when I get the first appointment of the day, no patients ahead of me, the drs are always late? I honestly believe that for every minute beyond 10 minutes late should be $50 off the cost of the dr appointment (I'm in the USA).

16 minutes now.

Can you imagine if clinics and hospitals had consequences for this bullshit? We, the patient, gets the appointment cancelled if we're more than 10 minutes late and still have to pay for it? At least, that's been my experience. When i was using public transportation, my arrival time depended on traffic and if the bus driver gave a fuck (they rarely did). I would call if I suspected I'd be even a minute late, and would take a bus that would drop me off at least 30 minutes earlier than the appointment time, check in early, dr notified.

Oh, look, he's 20 minutes late now.

I'm bored and have more packing to do. This is time I could be spending doing useful stuff. Instead, I'm sitting in a very uncomfortable seat and waiting for him to show up. This appointment will be all of maybe 10 minutes. I'm hungry, slept poorly because of anxiety regarding this appointment, and now...ugh.

Seriously, we should have $50 deducted from the bill for every minute late beyond 10 minutes. Maybe even have the dr pay the entire bill.

The last time I had an in-person appointment, I was brought back to the exam room at the appointed time and he was 37 minutes late because he forgot to check his schedule, had his phone and beeper turned off and went out for lunch. I had nothing nice to say to him. It took an hour to get there if traffic was good, which it rarely was. I was first appointment of the day, meaning 8AM, which meant we left at 6:45AM to beat morning traffic on a Monday, arrived at 7:50AM. And he couldn't bother to be responsible? Then he got rude because I made it fucking clear this behavior was unacceptable, rude, insulting, and I was tired af because anxiety permitted me only four hours of sleep.

27 minutes late now.

He wrote "difficult patient" in my record and I saw it when we left. Spoke to the nurse who had escorted me to the exam room, and she removed it from my record.

30 minutes.

I'm fucking pissed. This is a medication renewal. I cannot miss a dose or I WILL DIE from uncontrolled seizures. Yes, epilepsy is terminal if not controlled. I've had to be resuscitated twice in the last 10 years because my seizures are that severe.

32 minutes.

I wanna eat, I wanna finish packing the upstairs and make more progress on the living room, pack up the stuff around my computer, and I can't do any of this until after this fucking appointment.

Why tf do doctors feel so fucking entitled to do this!?! At least call me to say he's running behind and maybe offer to reschedule. Apply the same to in-person appointments. Fucking rude!

34 minutes.

UPDATE: he was 40 minutes late for an appointment that was only 7 fucking minutes.

[abarbaricyalp]

Hi! If you're still taking propmpts. SamBucky, sequel to Push All My Buttons. Established Relationship: Sam comes back home to Bucky after Riley gets shot down during a mission and is a complete mess. Bucky comforts him to his best ability.

Friend. Friend. Friend. Why.

This is a sequel to Push All My Buttons. You don't necessarily need to read it to read this. This one is certainly not the same kind of fic.

CW: Severe suicidal ideation, discussions of grief, loss, and trauma, discussions of suicide

Link in the reblog

Excelsior

Bucky had nine months with Sam and Riley before they shipped out with the wings. He and Sam had been sleeping together for that entire time minus three days and they’d been dating for about two weeks less than that. As Riley had always said, ‘When you know, you know. Even if all you know is that they’re an irritating little shit.’ Which is what he thought both Sam and Bucky were, especially together.

It had been a really good nine months.

They shipped out late afternoon on a Saturday and that was a very bad month.

Bucky wasn’t military and Rhodes had left with the project and taken on his duties again elsewhere. Stark, in his own haze of being left alone, did not fill Bucky in on any developments with the wings, if he was even asking Rhodes.

The only thing Bucky got was the occasional phone call or text, in which Sam could barely talk about anything to do with the wings. Well, those and the program Bucky had on his computer. It was just the monitoring datastream for the jetpacks, essentially a condensed readout of what showed up on the wristlets. BPI and vitals of the wearers, elevation, fuel reserves, GPS, temperatures, difficult to decipher radar readings.

Bucky kept up with the readings religiously. He slept in his office space more often than not and scrolled through the information every morning when he did leave. So he was there at 6PM when the reading came screeching in. It was nearly a year to the day that they’d shipped out. It was a Friday. Bucky was actually packing up to go home and shower for once.

The program lost its mind the same way the wristlets would be. EXO-7 Suit 2 had lost all BPI and dropped elevation until… It hit the ground and went off line.

Bucky was pretty sure he passed out because he opened his eyes and he was on the ground, staring up at the fluorescents. There was almost no way to know for sure which pilot was in which suit. Suit 2, the Redwing suit, was usually Riley’s, but there was nothing to say that Sam hadn’t grabbed it that night. It would be about 2.30 in the morning over there. Mission like that could’ve been last minute. Could’ve taken them right out of bed. They could’ve grabbed whatever was closest. And Sam and Riley shared everything down to toothbrushes.

Bucky could comb through the data from the minutes previous. Try to rationalize out the BPI readings and find patterns, but the point of it being Sam and Riley was that they were similar pilots. Their build, their resting heart rate, the way they jumped into action. It was like watching twins move. Their readings weren’t different enough to prove anything, even if Bucky could make his arms and hands work enough to scroll back.

The other suit was still online. It dove halfway down before stopping as the radar lit up with projectiles. Again and again, like a bird dashing into traffic for another’s dead body, Falcon tried to get down to Redwing against enemy fire.

Bucky snatched his computer from its dock and raced to the elevator. His hands were shaking so badly he hit a few numbers below. The elevator went up to 88 and Bucky jabbed the door close button over and over. 89. 90. 91.

Bucky burst out on floor 92, tried not to think about the fact that just looking at elevator buttons had made him start crying, and ran towards Stark’s workstation.

“Call Rhodes!” he shouted and didn’t give a shit about the tears in his voice. “Call Colonel Rhodes right now.”

Stark sprawled upright, having apparently been asleep, and reached for his phone before narrowing his bleary eyes at Bucky.

“Barnes? What’s going on?” he asked.

Bucky set the computer down on a mess of other electronics. “One of...one of… Fuck!” A sob ripped its way out of his throat and he angrily swiped the heel of his hand across his eyes. “One of the suits went down. Someone...someone…”

“Shit,” Stark said and grabbed the phone again. He scrolled through the data reports and flinched which made Bucky snatch the computer back to look at what he was seeing. It was the radar report for Redwing. A large, explosive projectile had been launched into radar zone just before the suit fell. Bucky dropped the laptop and it landed lid first in a box of papers but didn’t shut so he still saw the WARNING WARNING WARN--

“Rhodey,” Stark said. “Rhodey, what’s going on on that end? No, I said I’d stay out of it if-- I don’t care. I’ve got-- Rhodey don’t you--” He fell silent but Bucky could hear Rhodes speaking on the other end. Stark kept shooting glances at Bucky and flinching like he didn’t have control of his body. “Alright. Thank you. That wasn’t so hard. Yeah. Yeah. No, I won’t tell anyone. No, not even Barnes,” he said. “Yes, especially not Barnes.”

He hung up and then looked at Bucky. “I’m not telling you this. It wasn’t Sam.”

Bucky fell back to the ground, catching himself on his knees this time. His arms were too heavy to pick up and the tears were falling even faster now that he knew Sam was okay. Because if Sam was okay that meant that Riley… That meant that Riley… That meant that Riley was wearing the Redwing suit.

Bucky curled into himself on the floor and screamed until his throat went sore. Stark, bless him, did not try to comfort him. He fell forward enough to press his forehead to the tile and shouted again, banged his fists on the floor and then buried them in his hair instead.

He did not go home.

Stark gave Bucky a cot to keep in his office. Bucky learned to live on it while he stared at the computer screen. That night, Sam had given up on getting to the ground and had to retreat. The suit was taken off and it had been quiet since. That did not stop Bucky from staring at it. One night, it pinged a reading--something like 3 PM their time--and Bucky watched the jetpack get taken up into the air. Higher and higher and higher and higher. Higher than he’d ever meant for them to go. High enough that he started to worry for whoever was wearing it. They were running out of oxygen. It better not have been Sam.

Then the wings retracted and the suit plummeted. Bucky nearly knocked his computer over jumping up. There was nothing in the vital readings to suggest the pilot had lost consciousness or suffered any medical episode. They were just falling. And it wasn’t a mechanical malfunction. The wings had been pulled in.

The pilot was letting themselves fall.

It better not be Sam.

Bucky was really going to watch another one die. He was going to see Sam k*** himself.

The pilot opened their wings ten feet before impact and soared back up, looping around one and then landing heavily on the ground.

The wings came back off.

Sam did it four more times, once each night, before the wings came off and stayed off.

That’s when the GPS started to move.

Two days later, Bucky was at an airport.

It had been slightly more than a week since Riley died. Riley died. Riley died. The words were wrong in Bucky’s head. His tongue rejected them without even trying to say it.

Here’s what Bucky knew about Riley. He knew Sam and Riley had known each other since their first tour. He knew that they took their education leave at the same time, went to the same school, and lived together for the three years it took them to get a degree. He knew Riley knew Sam better than Bucky did. He knew Sam had a sister who loved Riley like another brother. He knew Riley loved Sam like his own brother and Sam loved him back.

He knew that in the nine months he and Sam had been dating, he’d really only give himself six, maybe seven of those because Riley got the rest of the time and half time for the months Bucky did claim. He knew Sam called Riley before he called Bucky when he was upset. He knew Riley was such a good fucking guy and so important to Sam that that didn’t even make Bucky jealous.

He knew that Riley didn’t like coffee unless it had been turned into a sweet drink and had whipped cream on it. He knew Riley was from the middle of nowhere and sometimes talked like an obnoxious parody of a cowboy when he was tired or drunk and definitely when he was both. He knew he was a baker. He knew he liked poetry. He kept books in his army bag.

But even if he didn’t know that and nine months worth of other things, the only thing he needed to know was that Sam loved Riley more than he loved breath in his lungs or wings on his back. He loved Riley to the point of giving up concert tickets because Riley got sick and couldn’t go. He loved Riley enough to listen to bad country music in the car. He loved Riley more than he loved sex, if the number of nights he cut out on dates or netflix and chill to pull Riley out of a bad decision was anything to go by.

Sam loved Riley, Riley loved Sam, and Bucky loved Sam so Bucky loved Riley.

And Riley was dead.

Bucky had paced a hole in the floor waiting on Sam. His flight had been delayed three times already and they were two hours past the first arrival time. Energy and despair and hurt thrummed through his body and Bucky couldn’t dispel it no matter how hard he tried. He’d tried to use the gym at the tower. He’d tried to run it off. He’d tried to eat. Tried to not eat. Tried to sleep. Tried to not sleep.

Okay, that one he didn’t need to try to do. He just didn’t sleep.

It remained, locked around his heart and his head.

Sam was coming back on his own. They apparently hadn’t been stationed with a real unit, so there was no one else to send home. Even if they had been with a real unit, Sam was the only one who needed bereavement. So there was no sea of camo or cropped hair to alert Bucky that Sam was coming.

One second he was alone in his grief, the next second Sam was stepping off the elevator. They met halfway across the floor. Bucky was surprised there wasn’t a noise as they crashed together, arms coming around bodies, faces pressed to shoulders, tears escaping again. Sam wasn't in his fatigues or civvies. There was nothing distinctly airforce about him, so they were just two men losing it in each other’s arms and no one knew the depth of it.

Bucky thought about apologizing but there was nothing to apologize for. There were no words to do so anyway. So he just held onto Sam, one hand coming to the back of his head to hold him close. Sam sobbed once, twice, and then collected himself.

Bucky had no idea how long they stood like that. He could’ve stayed for days longer. The hole in his heart was still very much so there. But the luggage turnstile next to them had turned on and off four times and Bucky really wanted to get home and cry in private.

“Baby, let’s go,” he murmured softly, kissing Sam’s chin and then his cheek. “Let’s get you home.”

“I-I-I need to get to our storage unit. I need to-to sort his things,” Sam hiccuped without lifting his head.

“Later. Not right now. You’re coming home with me, alright?”

Sam nodded and wiped his eyes on Bucky’s shoulder. He lifted his head and actually looked at Bucky for the first time all afternoon.

“Hey,” Bucky breathed, brushing his thumb over Sam’s cheek to catch other tears.

Sam held his wrist and kissed his palm. “Hey.” He leaned down to kiss Bucky, tentative at first and then Bucky remembered that he’d thought it was Sam who’d gone down in Redwing for three minutes. He’d watched Sam free fall hundreds of meters to the sand below over and over. He’d almost lost him so many times. And Bucky crashed into him all over again and Sam pushed back. New tears fell, mingling together against their noses and lips and pressed cheeks.

“I can’t lose you,” Sam breathed into Bucky’s mouth. “Not you too.”

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” Bucky said.

Sam’s mouth slid off of his, anguish on his face again. His forehead leaned against Bucky’s temple. “He’s gone, Buck. I couldn’t even look for…”

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and saw Falcon dashing through enemy fire. “I know, Sam. I know. You tried.”

“Not hard enough. I saw it on the radar before he did. I was going to call out but I…I didn’t, Buck. I didn’t say anything.”

Bucky had nothing to say to that so he wrapped Sam in his arms again. “Let’s go home, Sam. There’s nothing else we can do here. Just breathe for me. Come on.”

Bucky grabbed Sam’s bag and lead him out of the terminal.

Sam slept on the floor, which was fine by Bucky. Something about how beds were too soft. After a week on a cot, Bucky might’ve thought the same thing. So he shoved his coffee table out of the way and threw all the pillows he owned on the floor and laid down several blankets and they slept on the floor.

Sam barely spoke the next day.

He went through the motions of washing dishes after Bucky made breakfast. It was just cereal, so there was little to clean up. He turned on the TV and let it play a documentary about the oceans. It played all day. Over and over. Bucky was pretty certain he could ask Sam anything about it and Sam wouldn’t be able to answer. He ate barely half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. He read a book of poetry on the floor all afternoon. He ate dinner and Bucky washed the plates.

The second day was much the same, but then Sam was agitated. He flipped through shows and got mad when he couldn’t figure out what to watch. He slammed doors when he left rooms. He threw the pillows and blankets on the couch when he lost his phone, which he hadn’t been answering at all anyway. Bucky had left it plugged in on the arm of the couch. They skipped dinner that night and sat on the couch with the TV off and Sam laid in Bucky’s lap and cried again. They fell asleep like that.

The third day, Sam got up and made breakfast. It was cereal again. Bucky put on music. Sam washed the clothes in his bag. Handed Bucky a beautiful leather bracelet he’d picked up when they’d first landed overseas. Gave him another box and managed to say, “For the birthday he missed,” before he dashed to the bathroom and got sick. Bucky left the box on a bookshelf and went to Sam’s side, rubbing his back and massaging his neck. The gift was a jean and sheepswool jacket. They skipped dinner again.

The fourth day, they sat on the floor, staring at the bare couch. Bucky got tired of counting how many buttons had gone missing, so he said, “You have to talk about it.”

Sam choked but didn’t run for the bathroom. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sam, you can’t keep it bottled up. Listen, after I got back from…”

“You wanna talk about things we should talk about: how’d you lose your arm, Bucky?”

“This isn’t about me. And I was just about to tell you that when I got back from my mission, I had to do a shit ton of therapy. And I hated it. And it took me a really long time to start being honest, but once I did, it helped me recover more than getting a new arm did.”

“How’d you lose your arm?”

“I saw him go down. I saw all the readings.”

“That’s not the same thing. I watched my best friend…” Sam gagged again and brought his hands up to his mouth. Tears filled his eyes and Bucky was sure it was a combination of getting sick and being upset. “I watched him die. I don’t know why I even thought I could find a body. I could… Fucking pieces if I’d gotten to the ground. That would’ve been it.” Bucky flinched and Sam zeroed in on it. “That what you wanted to hear, Barnes? Is that what I needed to say to heal myself? My best friend is dead. Maybe his body could be cold before you ask me to fix myself.”

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. “That’s not what I was saying, Sam. Don’t attack me. I’m on your side.”

Sam stood suddenly, swayed on his feet, then found his balance. “I’m going to shower. Please just...give me time to myself right now.”

Bucky dropped his head to the couch.

The fifth day, they were both called into Stark Tower by Rhodes.

It was too early, Bucky thought, to ask Sam to do more debrief. It was too early to ask him to face the world. Bucky had laid on his sister’s couch for two weeks before he could so much as answer the door when he got back.

Sam was in a mood again. Actually, the mood hadn’t ever lessened from the afternoon before. It was back to the silent treatment and if Bucky did push him to say something, he’d be cruel and biting, over descriptive and intentionally mean. Nothing at all like Sam. Or maybe, just like him. This was, after all, Sam at his lowest. How was Bucky to know what that looked like? The only man who could’ve told him was dead.

Bucky had called ahead and had two of the strongest, plainest black coffees waiting in the lobby of Stark Tower for him and Sam. Anything that wouldn’t smell like Riley. They got into the elevator alone and Bucky passed Sam one of the coffees. The doors closed and before Sam could reach over and choose floor 92, Bucky selected 2 - 91.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sam asked. It could’ve been a snarl if the day hadn’t already been so long. If they hadn’t already argued about Bucky wearing the jacket Riley had given him. If Sam hadn’t knocked a glass off the coffee table and shattered it on accident then cut his fingers picking up shards. If Bucky hadn’t slept in his bed like a normal person.

“We have to talk,” Bucky said.

“I don’t...fucking want to talk,” Sam said, trying to double click the floors like something said would unhighlight them. It didn’t. The doors opened on the second floor.

The doors shut. “I saw what you did the days after Riley died.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” Sam snapped, like he hadn’t told Bucky this morning about the blood that had been on his suit when he landed.

“I saw you free fall. Over and over. I watched that, Sam.”

Sam’s jaw steeled and he stared at his reflection in the stainless steel siding. “I free fall all the time. It’s one of the things we learn how to do.”

“Not like that, Wilson. You went into the fucking atmosphere. There’s no telling what the wings would have done at the speeds you were clocking.”

Sam’s mouth remained a straight line.

“You could’ve died,” Bucky said to get it out there.

“Good,” Sam said, ripping off the bandaid.

The doors opened on the fifth floor. “Don’t,” they both said to the woman who tried to step in.

“I’m still here,” Bucky said.

“I know. And I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I felt that way. I’m sorry I still feel that way. I can’t make myself stop.”

Bucky swallowed hard and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Sam...I tried too, alright? You don’t… I haven’t told you the whole story about my discharge and I will one day. This isn’t the day for that. But my story isn’t clean. Not even close. And I tried it too. I thought that’d be a lot simpler than the bullshit I was about to go through. I thought it’d be a justice for the people involved in my story.”

Sam looked at Bucky sharply, eyes red, tears wet on his cheeks.

“It wouldn’t’ve been. So I need you to tell me what’s going on and how we can fix this.”

Slowly, the fight seeped out of Sam’s shoulders. Common ground at last. A shock to his system. A bitter, bitter win for Bucky for the time being. Sam sank down and stared at his coffee cup. “I’ve known Riley for over a decade. More than anyone else in my life who ain’t blood.”

Bucky sat beside him. The elevator stopped on three floors.

“I’ve known him for a third of my life. The first serious third. I think I grew up more with him than anyone I went to school with. I’ve never had to do this on my own. He was always right next to me. I haven’t made a decision without asking him since I decided to sign up.”

“So, poor track record of making your own decisions,” Bucky joked softly.

“I was going to let myself do it,” Sam whispered then. “I wasn’t going to pull the wings back out.” Bucky’s heart went cold and still in his chest before roaring back to life. “I’m sorry you could see the readings. I didn’t know that.”

“I’m not upset I saw it. I’m upset that you felt the need to do it.”

Sam looked over at him. “Sure, but let me ask, what stopped you from following through?”

Bucky stomach twisted painfully. It was his turn to get nauseous. “I didn’t want my sister to find me. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

Sam nodded. “If I know you might be watching those readings, I won’t be able to do it again.”

Bucky nodded and brought the coffee to his lips. It scorched his mouth and throat and he didn’t taste it all but the point wasn’t the taste. The doors opened on the seventeenth floor.

“We’re going up,” Sam said in a quiet voice.

The doors closed.

“He was my friend too,” Bucky said, voice raw. “You can talk to me about him.”

“I know that. I’m just not in the sharing mood right now.”

The doors opened. Closed. Opened. Closed. Opened. Closed.

“I fell off a train,” Bucky said. “I told you my SpecOps mission was in the mountains. I was knocked out of a moving train going around the side of a mountain and I… I’m not really sure how it happened. I might’ve reached out for the cliff face. I might’ve just hit it on the way down. I didn’t have my arm when I woke up on the ground.”

“Well, shit, maybe a bear ate it while you were out.”

“Nah, the doctors said it was too smooth. It was ripped off all at once.”

Sam flinched and then closed his eyes.

“I actually had a little bit left. I dunno, half of my upper arm, maybe. It was removed later. So, I guess it wasn’t that smooth and pretty. You know what I remember most?”

Sam hummed without lifting his head.

“I remember the jacket I was wearing. We’d been undercover when we were called into action. I was wearing a beautiful jacket that I’d picked up somewhere when the mission was still an adventure and not a nightmare. And I remember laying in the snow, looking at all that blood and my missing arm and being upset that my jacket had been ruined.”

Sam snorted and then lost the battle against sobs again. He set the coffee aside and moved over to hug Bucky, crying into his shoulder. Bucky wrapped his arms around Sam and kissed his hair. “We’re gonna get through this, Sam. You’ve just gotta trust me to hold you up. And you’ve gotta trust me to be on your side. I’m not gonna say shit to make you follow the rules or whatever. I’m gonna say shit that helped me, rules be damned.”

“I miss him so much. It’s only been five days. How am I supposed to go seventy more years without him? I’ve called his number a hundred times already and no one ever picks up.”

Bucky rubbed Sam’s back and nodded. “I know, baby. C’mere.” He pulled Sam more into his lap. Sam clutched at his shirt with trembling fingers “I’m gonna be right here. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I feel so fucking alone.”

“You’re not, Sam. I’m right here. I’m with you.”

Sam pressed his face further against Bucky’s neck and Bucky felt his tears, cool and heartbreaking. He didn’t have words. He just kept rubbing his hands over Sam’s back, kissing his temple and his hair and saying, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.” Hoping Sam would hear him through his grief and believe it.

He held him for forty more floors and they cried together. The elevator continued ever upwards. They pushed forward ever onwards.

“I’m right here,” Bucky said as the doors opened on floor 92. Sam nodded against his shoulder and slowly stood up.

Upwards and onwards.

[unnuevosoltransformalarealidad]

Surprise

Title: Surprise Summary: The boys prepared a surprise party for you. Pairing:  Winchester Brothers x Reader, Mary Winchester x Reader Prompt: You think everyone has forgotten your birthday but they surprise you Warnings: Feelings of loneliness, sadness, bad thoughts about the family. Word Count: 1791 This was written for the @firefly-in-darkness‘s 2K Follower Celebration

^

Sam and Dean took you in after rescuing you from a wendigo, you were in pretty bad shape, so they took you back to the bunker, they patched you up, and they made sure to get a full recovery before thinking what you were going to do next. Mary took care of you from the moment Dean put you in the bed. She was the mother you’ve never had, and you were beyond grateful for what they did. She offered you to stay with them, you felt a connection with Mary that you couldn’t say no. You adopted her as your mother and the boys like your brothers. They were your family from the moment they rescued you. And because now, you were living under the same roof as them, Mary and the boys made sure you went to school and had a normal life, plus the hunting, but you were only on research duty. 

You woke up today, remembering when you found a family. One year ago, they found you and you found them. Coincidentally, they found you a week before your birthday, you were just grateful for saving your life. You got out of bed, went to shower, and went to the kitchen to have breakfast with your family.

-Hey guys — you greeted them -Good morning, sweetie — Mary said kissing your forehead -Morning, mom -You have school today, right? — She questioned -Yeah, I have two classes about old mythology and folklore. Pretty boring -It’s boring because you already know that — Sam said -You’ll be fine, sweetheart — Dean said giving you your breakfast -Why did you ask, mom? — you asked confused -The boys are leaving in two hours on a hunt and I have to meet with Bobby — she explained -Do you need my help? -No, don’t worry. I’m not going on a hunt, I’ll be back in a couple of hours — She explained -Besides, Cass and Jack will be here — Dean mentioned -Well, be careful guys, please. Love you — you said and left the kitchen

You went directly to your room to get ready for school. Like you said, you had two old history classes and were boring, so you downloaded a few books from the MoL database to help with the research for your brothers. Once you were ready, you left your room and went to the war to pick up your books.

-You almost ready? — Sam asked -Yeah, I’ve to grab my books and I’m out — you explained Sam and Dean were talking about the case, you caught a few details from what they were talking about, so you had an idea of what it would be, but you needed to do the research first. Your mom came from the hallway almost ready to leave too. -Ok guys, I’m leaving — Mary said -Yeah, me too — you added -We’re leaving in an hour or so — Dean mentioned -Ok kids. You all will let me know when you arrived safely at your destinations -Yes, mom — Sam, Dean, and you said together After that, Mary and you left for the garage.

Your school day was really long, hopefully, you were able to do some research and gave the boys a lead on the case. Of course, you were fed up by Sam for not paying attention during classes. 

YN: You should be thanking me instead of scolding me. I saved you tons of research. Be glad that I’ve set up radar on my computer.

You texted him and went to your car to get back home. When you were inside the car, you noticed that you had a text from Cass

Cass: Y/N, Jack, and I left, we found a possible lead on an angel I’ve been looking for. We are coming back tonight or tomorrow morning. We left your dinner ready in the fridge. YN: Ok, Cass. Thank you for letting me know. please be careful. Love you guys Cass: We love you too.

After exchanging messages with Cass, you drove back to the bunker. You felt something in your chest, you felt alone, you felt loneliness. Your mind started to race with negative thoughts “they don’t want you anymore, they are tired of you, they rather traveling than living with you on the same roof, even the angel despises you”. You did your best to ignore them and kept going with your day. 

While you were having dinner, Mary called you. She told you that she needed to stay with Bobby one more day because something happened. You already knew that Sam and Dean were not coming back in like three days, and now Cass and Jack were gone too. And everyone decided to leave three days before your birthday.

*Mary's POV*

You were trying to locate Y/N but you weren't able to find her, her phone went straight to voicemail, and you were really worried. So, you decided to call the boys, maybe they know something

-Hey mom! — Dean greeted you -Have you heard something about your sister? She’s not picking up her phone -No, Sammy talked with her yesterday because she was doing research while she was at school -I need her help and she is not answering -Did you reach Cass? — Sam asked -Yeah. He left with Jack, said something about an angel thing. She is alone Sam was able to understand what was going on -Crap — Sam exclaimed -What is it? — Dean asked -Her birthday is tomorrow, and nobody is with her. We all know that we cannot let her alone because she gets too depressed, and that’s what we basically did -We have to do something — Dean said -Something like what? — Mary asked -Let’s do a surprise party -She is going to hate you — Sam stated -Probably, but we all need an excuse on why we weren’t with her -Ok. I’ll call Bobby and Charlie for backup, you guys call Cass and go back home tonight.

You were deadly worried about your daughter, so you traced her phone. She was at the campus library. Of course, she will be searching for shelter in books. That night, you asked everyone who was with her through her recovery to meet in a motel, so you could start planning. -Dean, Cass, you boys go and buy food and drinks. Sam, you go and buy her some presents. Charlie, Jack you guys are going to help me decorate the bunker. And you Bobby, are going to help me as well, but I need you to make her do some heavy research, something that takes time for her to find out, so we can get everything ready. Everyone agreed and started to get everything ready.

*Y/N's POV*

It was the day of your birthday and you were alone. All your family was busy and no one remembered you. It was a Thursday, and those days were the longest for you. You started the classes at 7:30 am and ended them at 4 pm.  Your first period went well, you learned two or three things in Latin but nothing new. You were heading to your second period when you got a text from Bobby

BS: Hey sweetheart, I know you’re at school, but I need your help YN: Hi Bobby, what do you need? BS: It’s witchcraft, the old school. I need you to find something on the Necronomicon YN: That’s not a real book, Bobby, we all know that BS: I know, but it seems that a witch is killing people with that book YN: Well, I’ll see what I can find BS: Thanks, sweetheart. Love you

Bobby never mentioned your birthday, it was weird, he was always the first one to congratulate. Well, at least you had something to distract yourself, even if it was with a fictional book. The following classes were long, you had a few things to do, but being able to multitask was a gift for you, so you researched while doing an essay in class.

You left school at 4:30 pm and went directly to the campus library to work. You thought that in an hour maybe, you were going to be coming back home because you didn’t find anything. You were wrong. You’d found a lot, most of the things were fictional, as you expected. 

You didn’t realize how late it was, it was 9:00 pm and you were still in the library researching. Your phone buzzed bringing you back to reality.

MW: Sweety, where are you? It’s late and I haven’t known anything from you in two days.

You thought about answering her, it was your birthday and none of your family members seemed to remember it. You answered it anyways with a quick response

YN: I’m at the library on campus. I’ll pack my stuff and I’ll be there in 30. Sorry

You started to pack your things. You couldn’t believe all the stuff you found from that book. Half an hour later, you were opening the door from the bunker, everything was dark. You turned on the lights and you heard some noise. Instantly you pulled your gun from the back and started to go towards where the noise was coming. The war room was empty, so you headed to the library. The light was dim, you turned in and you heard a massive scream

-Happy Birthday! - Everyone shouted You couldn’t believe it. You lowered your gun and you covered your face -What the hell? — you exclaimed -Happy birthday sweetie — Mary came and hugged you, you put your gun in your back — We’ll talk about that later — she whispered in your ear -But I thought… -You really thought we could forget your birthday, hun? — Charlie said — We needed to make you believe it so we could organize it -Thank you. I wasn’t expecting it. I thought... -We know, N/N and we are sorry about it. — Sam said and hugged you

They gave you a lot of presents, all your friends and family were there. You couldn’t be happier

-Bobby, before I forget, I need to show you what I found in that book -Sweetheart, I asked you to do that, because we needed you out of here after school. There is no witch using that book. It’s not real -Well, according to my research, that’s not entirely true

Everyone laughed at your comment, but when they saw your face, they knew you were serious. There were a lot of things that were uncertain and they needed to be learned. But for now, having a surprise party with your family was everything you needed.

Tag List (It’s open, ask away)

@iguessweallcrazyithinktho | @void-hoechlin | @mrspeacem1nusone | @thevelvetseries | @bitchy-witchy-post-mortem | @caplanbuckybarnes | @caplanreads | @akshi8278 |

[alexthedrummerboy]

first line challenge

tagged by @moony221b and @ruzek-halstead to share the first line from my last 20 works!! 

rules: list the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!), see if there are any patterns, choose your favourite opening line, then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

so my past 20 fics aren’t all jatp so i’m going to do first line from all my jatp fics, then a few from my jatp wips, and if i still have space (which i will), i’ll do the most recent couple fics on my ao3!! 

idk who to tag so i’ll just say if you’re reading this and wanna do it, go ahead!

1. piss off your parents (date me to scare them)

"Shit."

2. i can get by the days just fine (but the nights)

There was only one problem with working the graveyard shift at Covington Coffee Roasters. It wasn't the lack of sleep (Alex was used to that by now) and it wasn't the customers either. He could deal with the occasional stroppy suburban mom - he'd had to live with one for the first 17 years of his life.

3. i need to forget you

The studio is cold when Alex walks in. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, it’s barely five in the morning and everyone is asleep.

4. darkest before the dawn

It starts when he’s seven. He’d invited Bobby over to his house after school to play, not knowing that his dad had come home from work early. They’re sitting at the dining table, drawing with Alex’s new 36 pack of crayons when he hears it.

5. crash into me 

Alex was good at many things.

6. pretty boy

The sound of Willie’s laugh is quickly becoming Alex’s favourite sound in the world. There’s something about the way it bounces and shines - there’s not a creature on earth that could resist that laugh, he thinks.

7. loml

“Julie?”

8. untitled rival soccer teams au (WIP) - honestly this might be my favourite but i think i’m biased ‘cause it’s my newest baby

It was a well-known fact, or rather an indisputable law, that the Los Felix High Phantoms and the Belmont High Tigers did not mix. In fact if Alex were to even suggest something involving the Tigers that didn’t have to do with ‘toilet paper’ and varying degrees of legality, Luke would no doubt throw a temper tantrum. 

9. untitled bobby daddy au (WIP)

None of them expect it - that much is clear. They all just stand there… staring at it, wondering if it’ll just magically go away. 

10. untitled teachers!willex au (WIP)

Alex straightened his tie in the mirror, wrinkling his nose. It was perfectly tied and he knew that; he’d known how to tie a perfect Windsor knot ever since he was nine-years-old (his father had insisted on him learning how to tie his own ties for church every Sunday). His shirt had been washed and ironed two days ago too, out of nervous anticipation. There wasn’t a stain, wrinkle, or stray hair in sight.

the remaining 10 of my most recent fics are glee fdsjkfsdjl so i’ll put them under the cut if anyone wants to read them but if not, have a nice day!!

11. a pinch of salt

The year was 2015. ‘Babs! The Barbra Streisand Musical’ had just opened at the Lunt-Fontanne on Broadway, starring Rachel Berry in the title role as Barbra Streisand. The buzz around the show was unmistakable. Unfortunately for the entire cast, Babs closed after just 32 performances, leaving hundreds wondering… what happened to Rachel Berry? Well folks, we have finally gotten an answer.

12. hold you up

Kurt Hummel was a good cheerleader. No, scratch that, Kurt Hummel was an excellent cheerleader. He was smart and strong and flexible, damn it. He definitely wasn't the type of cheerleader who got so distracted to the point of personal injury.

13. android blaine

I think you're cute, my name is Blaine and I work at the computer store.

14. tangled in the sheets

Blaine is three years old when his big sister Rachel brings home a friend for the first time. Her friend's name is Kurt and he's in Rachel's second grade class with her and he is perfect. Well... as perfect as a three-year-old can comprehend.

15. bd_anderson responded to your question sticker

When the feature gets introduced, Kurt doesn't think much of it. It's a sticker that you can put on your Instagram story, prompting followers to type in a message in the little box that he can read and post. Kurt sees it and forgets about it almost immediately. He doesn't use his story for much other than live-posting about The Bachelor and promoting his new posts.

16. when are you gonna sing for me?

The name 'One Three Hill' has been on the forefront of the music scene since the band's first album in 2015. Their debut single 'Underestimate Me' skyrocketed to number 1 in the pop punk charts, solidifying their place as frontrunners in the competitive and cutthroat music industry. The band's most recent album, 'Clueless', was released in 2018 to wildly positive reviews but since then, fans have been left wanting more. Well, the public was not disappointed.

17. i scraped my knee falling for you

"Mr. Anderson, I-I'm so, so sorry!"

18. coffee flavoured kisses

Kurt Hummel had heard the words 'I'm breaking up with you' three times in his life. All three times, Blaine Anderson was there with a cup of coffee and a kind smile.

19. between the lines

Blaine had never expected his life to turn out this way, working at his parent's book shop instead of performing on a Broadway stage. He didn't particularly mind it, though. His parents paid him alright (nepotism, he thinks) and he got to play his playlist quietly over the speakers most days, so it definitely could've been worse.

20. tug at my heartstrings

He isn’t usually there. That was the first thing Kurt thought when he saw the man playing the violin while walking home after work.

[restmyheadatnightcontent]

speak the language of love (like you know what it means)

 "Have you had any experiences recently that have caused you stress or anxiety?”

 Yennefer snorts.

 “Well, I went from living in a 3000 square foot penthouse flat in Cintra to a hotel room in the middle of nowhere so—”

Geralts eyes widen. “That sounds like it would do it.”

Julian Pankratz, one of the Continent's most famous playboys, always invited to the hottest parties, always seen with the best of the best, is enjoying his lavish life in his huge Cintran apartment when he suddenly gets cut off by his parents and is sent to live in the middle of nowhere.

It might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

(aka the incredibly indulgent schitts creek au that I wrote)

Bloody hell, Jaskier thinks to himself again as he dragged his suitcase through the mud. Well, one of his suitcases. One of his many, many suitcases. Looking at the small army of luggage surrounding him, he might be willing to admit that there may be a small chance he has overpacked and maybe the driver had a right to be annoyed but it’s too late to worry about that now. And what was he supposed to do? Receiving the news that he was suddenly getting kicked out and cut off meant that he wasn’t exactly in his prime packing mindset. Hence, he seems to have packed everything he owns, and who knows when he’s going to be going home.

If he's going to be going home.

Nope. Not thinking about that. He’s saving his breakdown about all this until he has had time to find lots of chocolate and lots of wine. Pushing those thoughts from his mind, he somehow manages to drag himself along with his suitcases towards the front door.

 The Cock & Bull.

The Cock & Bull in Prickwell.

Despite it all, he has to admit the name is funny. He just wishes it wasn’t where he was going to be living for the foreseeable future.

Pushing the door open to the small hotel, he enters what he can only assume is the reception. It’s not a particularly large room and seems to be worse for wear (understatement of the century) but right now its most redeeming quality is its distinct lack of rain.

“Hello, welcome to the Cock and Bull. I’m Yennefer,” the woman behind the desk says tiredly, without looking away from her computer “How can I help you?”

“Hello – hi – I, uh - I believe there’s a reservation for me?” he asks “It should be under Pankratz, Julian Pankratz.”

She types the name into her computer and then frowns “I’ve got nothing down here.”

Shit. “Maybe under Alfred Pankratz?”

“Still not seeing anything.”

“Shit. Right,” he was hoping to keep this information private but without this place he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. “Erm so long story but my Dad kind of owns this place? And, I uh may have been slightly cut off? So my Dad booked me a room here as a punishment. He said forever but I’m pretty sure that was a joke and he’s just trying to teach me a lesson so he probably booked it for like a week or something?”

“Oh, that’s you. I assumed that email was a joke. But yeah, there is a room that I can put you in.”

“Great, so is it like a penthouse suite or-?”

“It’s a single room. Sorry, all our suites are booked up.” She replies with what he thinks may be sarcasm “Here’s your key. It’s room 4, just up the stairs on the right. Breakfast is from half 7 to 10 in the morning. If you need anything else, I’ll be here.” “Right.” He looks at the mountain of luggage behind him “So is there like a concierge or someone to carry my bags?”

“Do we look like the kind of place that has a concierge?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, you’re here maybe you could—"

“I have to watch the desk,” she says simply.

“Well is there a lift or anything?”

“Round the corner, but it’s a bit temperamental. I wouldn’t risk it.”

“Great.”

It takes him an embarrassingly long time and an embarrassing number of trips but eventually he manages to get all his bags up the stairs into the room.

He looks around the room. It’s not the worst place he’s ever stayed, but its close. His bags take up almost fill the room, not that there is much else in it: a small bed, a bedside table, a tiny wardrobe that can barely fit half of suitcase in it, a small TV and the most disgusting wallpaper that he has ever seen.

The one saving grace of the room is the window, or rather the view out the window. Out of the small window, in the distance he can just about make out a sandy beach and the blue of the sea.

A shower. That will make him feel better.

He steps into the tiny cubicle and lets the lukewarm water trickle over him, but instead of making him feel better, the only thing running through his mind is the conversation he had with his parents only a few hours ago.

 “We’re cutting you off, Julian,” his father announced, storming into his bedroom and ripping open the curtains.

 “I’m sorry?” He glanced at the clock and realised he had only been in bed for about 2 hours, having been out all night and stumbling in at 6am. He was not prepared in the least for a visit from his father. At least this time he hadn’t brought anyone home, the last time his father had barged in for a morning lecture they had had to wait awkwardly whilst the model he had spent the night with gathered her clothes and left.          

 “We’re cutting you off,” Alfred repeated, “You’ve been gallivanting around and partying far too much and wasting all my money and I’m sick of it,”

 “Well its on my card so technically its my money!”

 “No it isn’t! It is my money that I earned by working, and I will not have you waste it whoring yourself out all over the place!”

 “I am not ‘whoring myself out’! And you gave that money to me and put it on my card so it’s mine!”

 “I gave it you in the hopes that you would do something worthwhile with it but you’ve just pissed it up the wall, wracking up debts and you’ve turned this family into a laughing stock.”

 “Well, I’m sorry for having a bit of fun! Gods.”

 “Well, the fun is over now. I’ve cancelled all your accounts and I’ve sold your flat, which should just about cover the debts and we’re sending you away—”

 “What do you mean ‘you’re sending me away’? I’m not a fucking child! I’m an adult and you can’t just sell my house and kick me out onto the street like some kind of dog!”

 “I’m not kicking you out. I’ve booked you a room in a hotel.”

 Oh well, that changes things, he had thought. A few nights in the Savoy while he waits for them to calm down won’t be too bad.

 “The car will be here to pick you up in 20 minutes and it will take you to your flat to sort your things before taking you to Kaedwen.”

 “Kaedwen? Why the fuck is it taking me to Kaedwen?”

 “I told you – I’ve booked you a room on a hotel. And you’ll stay there for two months until you’ve sorted yourself out.”

 “But why Kaedwen? Wait – are you sending me to that hotel you bought ages ago for a joke?” His father just nods and Jaskier lets out a manic laugh. “Of course you are. Fine send me off to the middle of fucking nowhere. But why are you selling my flat if I’m only there for 2 months?”

 “Oh, you won’t be coming back. I’m only paying for the room for 2 months, and then it’s up to you,” he says matter-of-factly.

 “But – I – you can’t!”

 “Oh, I think you’ll find I can and I am,” his father says calmly “Ten minutes Julian.”

So he was taken to his flat and given half an hour to pack his belongings whilst the driver – Jon or Jan or Pieter or something – stands and watches on, whilst he frantically he throws all the clothes he can find into a suitcase, grabbing whatever he can. He at least got some help carrying his bags down to the car and throwing them in the back. Then with another glare he was shepherded into the back of the car and they were off and, well here he is.

He steps out the shower and dries himself off with towels that seem to be made from carboard, cursing himself for not packing his ones from his flat. He picks out some dry clothes and makes his way downstairs to reception.

“Do you have towels?”

“Are there not any in your room?”

“If you mean the two sheets of sandpaper that seem to be lying on my bed then yes there are. But I cannot use them.”

“Why not?” “Why not? Did you not hear me say sandpaper?”

“Those towels are perfectly fine”

“If you don’t value your skin then I suppose so.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“My towels?”

“You’ve got your towels.”

“Are you always this rude?”

“Only to people who deserve it.”

“And what I have I done to deserve it? I am in an extremely stressful situation right now, and all I want to do is take a bath, preferably with a toaster, and forget that this whole thing is happening ok?”

Yennefer stares at him, and he prays that she can’t see the desperation that is almost certainly plastered across his entire face.

“Fine, I think I have some new towels in the back. Give me a minute,” she says whilst moving towards what he guesses is the back “I’m only doing this so that you’ll leave me alone.”

She pauses at the door and turns to him, “And because you called me rude. I take that as a compliment.” And with that she’s gone.

Jaskier turns and takes another look at the room he now finds himself in, and what he now realises, with sinking heart, is going to be his new home for a while. It’s a fairly plain room, blank white walls with a few cracks running through the old plaster. There are old beams running along the ceiling and there’s a nice stone fireplace in the corner and on any other day he probably would go so far as to call it nice – a sort of country chic right out of a cute rom-com. But right now the sight of it just makes him angrier.

He is snapped out of his reverie by towels being shoved into his face.

“Here.”

Jaskier takes them and runs his fingers over them. They are still nothing compared to the lovely Egyptian cotton towels that are sitting back in his flat, but they’re better than what he had. They’ll have to do. Standing up from his chair, he suddenly realises how hungry he is.

“Is there somewhere I can get something to eat?”

“There’s a café across the road that’s open all day. There’s the pub as well if you consider an ancient packet of crisps as food.”

“Café it is then.”

read the rest on AO3!

[backtobackbakubabe]

I am the Alpha Now Part 7

Bakugo X Reader 

Words : 3523

Reader is from America and somewhat of a delinquent with an alpha quirk that allows her to turn into a wolf as well as bond with dogs. She is sent to UA to straighten out her attitude. She ends up in a power struggle with none other than our favorite hot head. Words in Italics are words said telepathically

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Nothing could compare to this feeling. You were still tucked into Bakugo’s arms, his warmth radiating from his bare chest into your back. His chin was on top of your head and his arm was wrapped tightly around you. You could stayed like this forever but the sunlight from your window was now directly in your eyes... wait no... that wasn’t right. The sun shouldn't be up while you were in bed.

You opened your eyes and saw the time, “Shit.” You tapped Bakugo’s arm, “Bakugo, wake up. Bakugo... Bakugo!”

His arm tightened, “Hmm?”

You wanted to be annoyed, you really did. But he was just so cute. “Bakugo, we are very, very late. We missed our morning workout and the beginning of class. We are in so much trouble.” Bakugo made no move to get up which surprised you. You mentally went over what day it was to make sure it wasn’t a weekend day.

Nope it’s Wednesday. “Bakugo what gives? We are late we need to get up!” The more you struggled to pull away from him the tighter his hold became.

“Would you fucking relax... we got the day off.” You went to protest but his hand slapped over your mouth, “I talked to Aizawa and we agreed you could use a day to recover.”

You licked his hand expecting him to pull away but instead he nuzzled into your neck and licked from your bare shoulder to just below you ear. A shiver ran down your spine as you squirmed in his grasp. “Two can play at that game pup.”

You wiggled your butt back and pressed it against his growing erection. He quickly let go of you and pushed himself away, “Nope! None of that. Not right now.”

You giggled and rolled over to face him. “And may I ask why not?”

He ran a hand through your messy hair, “Because we have a lot to talk about, and I’m not having sex with you again until we do.”

You stuck your bottom lip out in a pout, “I guess I can’t be mad at that... but I’m not thrilled about it either.”

He ran his thumb over your protruding lip, “What do you say we play hooky today and I take you into town. You haven't really seen much of Japan outside of this shitty school.” Your eyes widened with excitement, “We could consider it a cultural lesson.”

You kissed his cheek, “How in the world did you convince Aizawa to let us... wait... when did you talk to him about us having the day off?” He had been with you ever since the accident yesterday and you didn’t remember any such conversation. “Oh no he didn’t come here did he?”

He rolled his eyes as he rubbed your temple. He could see you were starting to panic, “No I saw him early this morning. I got up and let Mercy out for a run and he was outside on his way to check on you. He asked how you were doing and I said you were still sound asleep so... the rest you already know. We got the day off.”

You sat up and stretched. Wincing just slightly at your sore muscles. It didn’t escape Bakugo's attention. He sat up behind you and started to rub your shoulders, “How are you feeling by the way?”

You bit your lip to keep from smiling, “Did grumpy cat just ask me how I was feeling?”

His hand snaked up your neck and tightened just slightly, “Just answer the question pup...” His thumb rubbed circles behind your ear, a direct contrast to the pressure of the rest of his hand squeezing your throat.

You relaxed into his embrace, “I’d say I’m fine, but I get the feeling you wouldn't believe me.” His lips lightly brushed your shoulder. “I’m sore. But nothing too bad. I didn’t have a recovery girl in the states so believe me when I say I’ve had worse.” The hand on your throat pulled your head to the side to give him access to your neck. Was this way of rewarding you for being honest? For behaving? “I thought we weren’t having sex right now?”

His hand dropped from your neck, “We’re not...” His weight disappeared from behind you. “Now get dressed... something warm.” He was in front of you now looking at Mercy, “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Make sure she actually gets out of bed.”

Mercy barked in confirmation but as soon as Bakugo left he turned to you, “He does know that you’re my alpha right? He knows I can’t make sure you do anything...”

You laughed, “I think he conveniently forgets that I am the alpha here.”

“I think he believes he is the alpha.”

You dragged your sore body over to the closet, “Yeah well he can believe whatever he wants.” You pushed the clothes around until you found the jeans you were looking for. “But at the end of the day he’s the one drooling over me.”

The jeans were very tight and fit you like a glove. You tucked them into a pair of black ankle boots. You looked at your ass in the mirror and you smiled knowing Bakugo would struggle to keep his hands off of it. Now for your shirt. You went back and forth between a cropped sweater and a tank top. He had asked that you dress warmly... were you going to listen.

You held both options up in front of the mirror as you debated on how bratty you wanted to be today. On one hand, he asked you to dress warmly out of practicality. On the other hand he needed to know he didn’t have the right to order you around. You looked into the corner of your mirror and saw a black shirt on the floor beside your bed. It wasn’t yours, so it must have been Bakugo’s. He hadn’t worn it yesterday so it must have been there a while. There were often days in the past month he’d eat dinner in your room while you watched tv. Some of those nights he’d take his shirt off, claiming he was dying of heat stroke. You had just shrugged it off at the time because he did run hotter than most people.

You hung your shirts back up in the closet and picked up the t-shirt. It was a Metallica shirt. You raised it up to your nose and took a deep whiff. Yup... it’s Bakugo’s. You quickly pulled the shirt on and tucked it in to your jeans. Finally you pulled on your favorite fleece lined denim jacket. “Hm... five minutes to spare.”

You put Mercy’s collar on and grabbed a leash just in case and walked out into the hallway. You started to pull your hair into a messy bun when Bakugo left his own room. “Don’t, I like it when your hairs down. You always have it up.”

You paused. You don’t like leaving your hair down because it can get in the way if you need to fight. You shrugged. “I want it up and it’s my hair.”

He strolled over to you and narrowed his eyes at the shirt you were wearing, “I was wondering where that went.” He looked up to you as you continued to pull your hair up, “I really wish you’d leave it down.”

You huffed as you conceded. “Fine. Compromise.” You let your hair back down and ran your fingers through it. You pulled half of it up now and left it in top knot. “Better?”

He nodded, “I can live with that.” He took your hand and led you to the kitchen where he started making a pot of coffee.

You hopped up on the counter and kicked your legs back and forth. “Those damn animals drank all the coffee this morning huh?”

He snorted, “No one here drinks coffee except you.”

You cocked your head to the side, “But you bring me coffee almost every morning.”

He rolled his eyes at you, “Yeah dumbass because I get my ass out of bed in the morning and make it.”

“Oh…”

He handed you a to go cup and put himself between your legs. Placing one hand on each thigh. “So… we’re going to go into town. You need groceries, I’m sick of you eating my food all the time.”

“Hey! You’re the one who keeps giving me your food!”

He rubbed his palms up your thighs, “If I didn’t then you wouldn’t have eaten.” He was so sweet when he was like this. If only he could always be like this. But then again maybe you wouldn’t like him so much if he was…

Bakugo was right. It was a bit colder today than usual. You huddled up next to him as you left campus. Mercy for now was walking next to you without a leash but you knew eventually he’d have to use it. “Can we at least try to do it without a leash… I hate the leash.”

“I know buddy… but these people don’t know you. We don’t want to scare them.”

Bakugo looked at the leash in your head and nodded, “She’s right man. You’re massive. You’d make most people shit their pants. But hey one day you guys will be big time heros and people will know who you are and you’ll never have to wear a leash again.”

Mercy just huffed as he ran ahead while he still had his freedom. You grabbed Bakugo’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I dont know if I’ve ever thanked you for being so cool with him. But I appreciate it and I know he does too.”

He shrugged, “It’s no big deal. I figured he must be going crazy only being able to talk to you all day.”

You smiled and swatted at his chest, “Oh come on I know you’re jealous you don’t get to be in the pack. You don’t have to hide it.”

He smirked, “Oh no... you got me... I secretly wish I could be your little bitch boy.” Mercy growled not liking that comment at all. “Sorry man, no offense. You’re not a bitch... but you also do everything she tells you...” Mercy lunged for Bakugo’s ankles in an attempt to trip him. “HEY! Easy! I said I’m sorry.”

You giggled, “I’d say you deserved that. He’s a little sensitive about our bond and our pack dynamic. It’s such a strong connection that’s almost impossible to explain. We just are. It’s like two computers sharing the same data base. We are always connected. We’re not very good at it yet but sometimes I can even see through his eyes. We are just extensions of each other. So you can understand why he gets upset when people mock it.”

Bakugo nodded as he reached out to pat Mercy’s head, “Yeah my bad dude. I wasn’t trying to make fun of you, I was just making a joke.” He slung an arm around your shoulder, “So how does it work? The whole bonding thing? Did you choose to bond with Mercy or?”

You played with a strand of your hair, “I don’t exactly know actually. When I was little, probably around 6, and started showing signs of my quirk my parents thought it would be good to get me a dog to help me practice. At the time we had no idea about the bonding thing. We just thought I could talk to dogs and shift.”

Mercy was next to you now, he loved hearing this story. “So we went to the shelter and I played with all the puppies. They can’t exactly speak right away you know, it’s something they have to learn. So I was going off more of a gut feeling. There was like this gravitational pull that drove me to the back of the room where there was a very dirty and feisty wolf pup absolutely destroying an old shoe. My parents were horrified at the thought of bringing him home but I just knew. We learned to communicate through our emotions first because that’s what he understood best. He slowly started picking up words and now twelve years later here we are.”

“So you were bonded from the beginning?”

“No, not at all. It actually took a few years and I still don’t know how I did it. I was almost thirteen when it happened. It’s like something just clicked one day and that was that. We’ve been bonded for the better part of the last five years now.”

The market came into view and you could feel your excitement blooming in your chest. This was the first time you had actually left campus on your own. I mean sure Bakugo was there but he hardly counted, he was with you all the tie anyways. He pulled you down aisle after aisle of fresh food. Each time you pointed something out he would say it’s name in Japanese before telling you what it was in English. There were a few things here you had never even seen before. Your favorite part however had to have been when you walked down the “American” aisle at one of the convenient stores.

You were wiping tears from your eyes you were laughing hard, “No wonder you guys think all Americans are fat.” There was an assortment of sugary cereals, pop tarts, candy, and cookies. “We eat more than this junk you know?”

Bakugo laughed, “Yeah like what? McDonalds?”

Your eyes widened, “How dare you? We also eat Wendy’s, taco bell, and Chipotle.” You then proceeded to try to explain to him why in the south you drink your tea iced and with a pound of sugar when you both heard a scream. You both froze as you went into hero mode. Your ears twitched as you tried to find where it was coming from. You could hear a conversation from the front of the store, “Someone is trying to rob the place… the person who screamed was the cashier.”

Bakugo looked at you very impressed, “You can hear all that?”

Your eyes started to glow, “Yeah, I can also hear him threatening to kill her, we need to help.”

Bakugo’s hand gripped tightly on your elbow, “No y/n. Your wolf form is was too fucking big. He’ll see you coming!”

You nodded he was right. You ripped your arm from his grasp and laid on you belly, “So I’ll crawl.”

“What the fu..” You shifted now laying on your stomach in the middle of the aisle, “You stubborn crazy woman.” You wanted him to get on your back but you didn’t know how to tell him that. So you ended up turning your head to him and cutting your eyes back and forth between him and your back.

“What? What do you want? You want me to climb on top of you?” You licked his face which only seemed to piss him off. “Disgusting.” He hopped up anyways and you had to admit it felt very natural him sitting up there.

You stood up to a crouch and slowly made you way to the front of the store. As you got closer the arguing got louder. The poor woman was trying to empty the register with shaky hands but she kept dropping things which just upset the villain. It was then you realized she wasn’t dropping things because she was nervous, she was dropping things because she couldn’t see. She felt around as she looked for the register. That must be the villains quirk. Blindness. You wanted to tell Bakugo but you were too close now to play a game of charades. He leaned down to whisper in your ear, “On three you jump on top of the guy and I’ll get her out of here. Just keep him pinned and don’t try anything stupid.” You nodded back. “One… two… three!”

You leapt out from your hiding sport tackling the man to the ground. You put a paw over his face just in case his quirk was somehow activated by him looking at you like Aizawa’s was. You herd the bell ring as Bakugo got the woman out of the store and to safety. The man beneath you thrashed around trying so hard to free himself. At one point he pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed your shoulder. To you it was the equivalent of getting stung by a bee. Sure it hurt a little, but not enough to get you to budge.

“Shit! Get off of me you overgrown flea bag! GET OFF!”

The bell on the door rang again and this time you could see Mercy running inside with Bakugo. “Is that a knife in your shoulder?” You barked like Mercy did when he was trying to talk to him. He ran a hand over his face, “I literally can’t take you anywhere.”  He looked down at the man who was still struggling, “Here’s how this is going to work. We’ve already called the police. She is going to let you up and when she does you aren’t going to move. If you decide to try and run, I will blow your ass up. I’m the maniac who won the UA school festival a few years back so I think you know I’m being serious.”

The man froze for a bit before going limp. “Mercy don’t look at him. I think his quirk messes with people senses. I don’t know how to tell Bakugo though… any ideas?”

Mercy jumped up and put his paws on Bakugo’s shoulders, “Oi what the fuck? Get down!” Mercy took his paw and rubbing it over his own eye before shaking his head and doing it again. “Okay so you’re obviously trying to tell me something but I don’t know what…”

This was going to take forever. You shifted back to your human form, “He said don’t look him in the e-.” The man punched you in the face and scrambled to get to his feet. “Damnit!” You jumped and grabbed his ankle tripping him yet again. This time he turned to look at you and just like you had predicted. You couldn’t see. “SHIT! Bakugo I can’t see! Don’t look him in the eye!”

A loud explosion rang from outside the store so you assumed Bakugo followed through with his threat. You reached out for Mercy with your mind. You could tell he was outside with Bakugo. You focused really hard, almost sweating with how hard you were pushing your limits and you could finally see again. Except it wasn’t through your eyes, it was through Mercy’s. “Well this is a bit disorienting.”

You had to use your other senses to try and find your way to the door. “Wow! Relax you can’t even see. Do you have a death wish dumbass.”

You scoffed, “I’ll have you know that I can see actually!” “Mercy come over here now I need your help.”

“Oh yeah is that why I just watched you trip over the curb? The police chief already said his quirk doesn’t wear off for like an hour.”

You crossed your arms over your chest in frustration, “I CAN SEE !” Mercy came and sat down next to you, “Hey I’m kinda using your eyes right now. So just try to look out for where I’m going. You’re literally my seeing eye dog.”

Mercy bit the end of his leash and put it in your hand, “You got it! I guess it’s a good thing we have the leash.”

You could now see Bakugo’s skeptical expression as he stared at you. You did your best to match his glare but you had no idea if you were even looking in the right direction. “Alright then…. How many fingers am I holding up?” He held up three.

“THREE!”

He looked between you and Mercy, “You cheated! Mercy told you!”

“NO HE DIDN’T!”

Bakugo walked towards you and put a hand over Mercy’s eyes, “Okay and now?”

You growled, “One?”

“HAH! You can’t see. I knew it.”

As soon as he removed his hands from Mercy’s eyes you took a step forward and slapped his ass. “Oh yeah? Then how did I do that?”

His eyes went back and forth between you and Mercy again, “You’re doing that thing you were talking about… You’re looking through his eyes.”

Your face fell, “So what? I can still see… I don’t want to go home yet. We were having fun!”

Bakugo leaned forward and kissed your forehead, “It only lasts an hour. What do you say we just take a quick break and get something to eat?”

You nodded, “Okay…”

He took your hand that wasn’t holding Mercy’s leash and lead you through the crowd. He led you to a quiet little tea shop, “I know you said you liked your tea cold, which I still think is gross, but this is my favorite place for tea around here. I figured we’d get some tea and have that talk we mentioned this morning.”

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