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kdream-factory · 2 years

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ENHYPEN Vampire! | Their crush not liking vampires

[WARNINGS: not proofread, gn!reader, mentions of being an outcast]

Just some fluff. These reactions play in an AU where vampires do exist and (some) people actually know about them. I hope there is no confusion with this. Also please request! I really wanna write more ~ Niwi

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Heeseung:

Poor boy overheard you and your friends having a conversation in class about wether vampires or werewolfs are better and while all of you agreed on werewolves being better, you in particular voiced your hatred towards vampires, them being dead, cold, dangerous and “Honestly we all just want a warm huggable ball of floof. Plus they are more likely to be a very lovable person, more intimate and even if they have flaws, those do not outweight vampires flaws at all... being a vampire is one big flaw in my opinion”. Heeseungs heart would be so so broken... He would be the type to make sure to stay in a healthy distance but that results in a mistake. Would take on a stalker like behavior and watch you everywhere you go from afar, would take things from you and return them to you because ‘you had lost them’. That would be his attempt on getting close to you and even if you and him would build up a friendship or something deeper over time, he would make it his biggest mission to seem as normal as he could to not raise any suspicion.

Jay:

It would piss him off so much he took it so personal. It would chew on his ego a lot to the point of his self-esteem dropping dangerously low. Good at hiding it but everytime he sees you in the neighbourhood or when your parents would meet and him and you would have to come with them, he would be very rude towards you. Not intentionally tho. When he realised this would just be adding to the thoughts you had about vampires he’d do a 180 flip and suddenly be all fake nice to you, it would make you doubtful against him just that you couldn’t figure out what’s up with him. The whole situation between the two of you would just end up in so much pent up frustration, he’d pin you against the wall and whisper into your ear how much he wants you but you’re like a forbidden fruit to him but then you decide to kiss him. I’m also very sure that his behavior would have given it away to you that something was very odd with him.

Jake:

You told your best friend Jake about a new romance book you had recently started reading about humans and werewolves while then lovey dovey talking about how you wanted exactly that. When Jake asked you why you don’t try reading vampire and human love stories you started rambling about how vampires are so toxic in relationships and very overrated and how you would’ve chosen Jacob instead of Edward bla bla bla... Would be annoyed about you believing those stereotypes of vampires. For some reason he felt less loved by you and thats as bad as burning in the sun forever... Jake would change everything about him. He would make sure he had rosy cheeks, warmer clothes, would let his hair grow a bit for you to touch him like he’d be a dog, would file his teeth and literally went as far as going out more often to walk with you in the sun only in resulting him getting the sunburn of his life which you then took care of. This would also be what would give him away. Would have to let down his facade when you asked him about what was wrong while you were busy treating his skin. He’s very ashamed when you scold him for believing you would hate him because he is a vampire.

Sunghoon:

The thing with Sunghoon is that he totally understood why you hated vampires so much. You were once bitten by one who trapped you when you where on your way home to suck out your blood and let you die but instead someone found you and rushed you to the ER. You were traumatized by it, everyone in your class knew about this incident which made everyone stiff when the topic of vampires arose, especially you. Sinve then, Sunghoon was furious and kept his eye on you. He wanted to protect you so bad. One day you and him were alone in the classroom and when he approached you you backed away. He would raise his hands in defeat, walking slowly towards you while talking calmy and most importantly honest about what intentions he had. Would be very straightforward with telling you he wants to protect you and show you that not all vampires are bad. He looked into your glassy eyes and somehow he was able to give you that feeling of comfort. When you didn’t say anything he backed away and let you run off. He wrote you that night to tell you to think about his offer. When asking why he would wanna do al this for you he would confess and thats what made you go soft for him. A vampire being able to have feelings.

Jungwon:

“Oh come on Jungwon dogs over bats all the way! I’ll let you have the point that some bats do look very cute but honestly speaking they’re just... just- ARGH I don’t know I just don’t like those things. They’re just as bad as vampires. No wonder they get compared!”. Jungwons face was decorated with his famous gaze of disbelieve and pure shock. He was so ready to get out a presentation on why bats are not at all like vampires and why batman is the only thing comparable to bats but instead just asked you hypothetical questions. “What if I was a vampire? What would you do? Would you try to kill me?” “Well, would you bite me? Then yes. I’d grab the next thing I could ram into your heart”. Now his mouth was hanging wide open. “WHY on earth would I bite you? You’re my best friend! Do you really think I wouldn’t be able to control myself around you? Seriously I have been around you for long enough and I have witnessed all your periods from miles away, even without any distance and I didn’t go in some kind of ‘blood-mode’ you like to call it. And what the fuck is that idea about vampires changing forms into bats to be able to fly??? I think thats so stupid and-”. Bro needed a few minutes to realise you were now the one with the shocked expression. Lots and lots of arguing but he’d be very vocal about his feelings of you not liking vampires while also having to explain what he meant with all that complaining and that kinda disrespectful comment about mentioning your period.

Sunoo:

Sunoo was always trying to act cute around you, calling himself your little vampire, not being very secretive about him being what he was. You never gave him any reactions tho and when he got all naggy about it you just had to tell him you didn’t find vampires cute and always felt a disliking for them. He was aggrieved and all pouty. Very clingy and lots of complaining about how you didn’t love him. You tried lifting up his mood, always telling him that wasn’t true and that he is a very lovable best friend. Eventually you asked him why he is so obsessed with ‘being’ a vampire and you accepting it? He wouldn’t talk tho. You’d have to coax him into telling you the reason, calling him cute names, hugging him and giving him head pats, giving him compliments. He’d just say stuff you would understand even less like “If I wanna mary you you have to like vampires or we can’t be together forever :(... I want you to be my vampire too”. You somehow connected the dots and were able to understand he had a crush on you but the whole vampire thing wouldn’t touch the surface of truth. After all, getting closer to him due to his crush on you would make you take on small habits of his, stuff like going on walks when in its late. and you also warmed up to this whole ‘I’m your cute little vampire’ thingy because indeed Sunoo is cute. When Sunoo noticed that would give him even more butteflies.

Niki:

Oh his story was a sad one. Every kid in the neighbourhood never spoke to him because he was ‘weird’. But you always gave him a smile just before your mother decided to make you change sides to not interact with him. Your childhood friends were no different. Everytime you and your friends were playing together at the playground and he was there too your friends would start calling him names, excluding him from any game, telling you rumors about him being a vampire and then he just stood there watching you all play together while all he wanted was to join too. Thats how you grew up, believing your neighbour was the weird vampire kid who got even more quiet when both of you got into middle school. It was just the way it was. You played along sometimes, thinking you truely believed you hated him because he was a vampire. It just never really made sense to you. When you started distancing yourself from those people to finally build your own identity you also got just a tiny bit closer to Niki and step by step understood him as a person. It was hard winning his trust but somehow it just happened and you two had fallen in love for each other, you once being one of he famous ones who was a little too nice to the weird kid. It was still hard for Niki and it took its time for him to tell you the truth about really being a vampire but when you told him you had a feeling he was different but that ‘different’ never really drew you away if others didn’t drag you. Truely one of those stories of the popular student falling in love with the misfit.

#ENHYPEN #ENHYPEN AU #ENHYPEN reaction #ENHYPEN reactions #Heeseung #Jay #Jake #Sunghoon #Jungwon #Sunoo #Niki #ENHYPEN Vampire #Vampire #ENHYPEN x Reader

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ka-tamingoftheshrew-ba · 3 years

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A quick little cheat sheet for people writing Daredevil fanfic: by a law student

Okay, so I’ve been in my daredevil renaissance era and thus have been reading a lot of daredevil fanfic as of late. However, the the fault of nobody at all, I’ve noticed some common inaccuracies about law school and the practice of law and thought I would throw together a little guide so you don’t have to do any research on some of the basics! Also, you don’t have to use this if you don’t want to, I just wanted to make a little guide for those who wish to incorporate these elements into their works !!

1. Law school in the states is enrolled in after completing a bachelor’s degree!

Okay so this one might seem obvious to people who live in America, but I know the study of law isn’t universal so I thought I would break it down. To enroll in law school, you must complete at least a bachelor’s level degree. These are four year(traditionally tracked) programs. To go to law school, you do not need to get a certain type of bachelor’s degree, you just have to have one. For example, my bachelor’s degree is in philosophy. Others that are common are Political Science, History, English, and Criminal Justice. However, there is no requirement to get a certain type of bachelors. I know people who studied biology or physics that are not enrolled in law school. Note that pre-law is not a bachelor’s degree but rather is either a minor or a concentration. I, for example, have an undergraduate minor in pre-law.

2. Law school is a three year program but can be completed in two years on an AJD (accelerated Jurisprudence Doctorate track).

Again, this might seem like common sense to people who live in America, but it isn’t the same everywhere in the world. To enroll in a JD program you need to achieve a certain GPA in undergrad and achieve a certain grade on the LSAT. The years are referred to as 1L, 2L, and 3L. The LSAT is a test comprised of Logical Reasoning (Arguments), Analytical Reasoning (Logic Games- don’t be fooled these games are NOT fun), Reading Comprehension, and a Writing Sample (which is not scored). The range of scores you can get is between 120-180.The average score achieved is around 150. The median at Columbia law is 172 (which is RIDICULOUSLY high) as it is ranked #4 in the nation. This means it is a T14 law school right up there with Yale and Harvard.

3. The breakdown of law school courses.

During 1L, you’re taking required courses and are placed into them. You do not get to pick these classes. Here are the 1L classes at Columbia (based off of 2021-22)(note that I do not go to Columbia law and found this on their website):

Fall

- Legal Methods 1- (where you learn how to read cases and write briefs/memos.)

- Legal Practice Workshop 1 (I have no clue what this is lmao we did NOT have this at my school)

- Civil Procedure (you basically learn about how and where to file civil cases, standing, venue, as well as the rules to brining a case in civil court)

- a pairing of one of these (whatever you don’t take in the fall you take in the sprint)

Contracts & Property,

Contracts & Torts,

Constitutional Law & Torts,

Constitutional Law & Propery

Spring:

- Legal Methods II

- Legal Practice Workshop II

- Foundation Year Moot Court (basically oral argument class I would assume)

- Criminal Law

- Combo if the Courses from Fall that you did not take in Fall

- A L1 elective

4. Internships.

Most students during the summer will apply for internships to try on different types of law. This both builds their resumes and allows them to shop around and see what type of law they might want to practice. While you can concentrate in certain areas of law, many people find what they want to do through their internships and end up practicing where they can find a job within that interest.

5. Grading.

Law school grades on a curve. While this might seem like a good thing or a bad thing (depending on personal feelings regarding curves) it is required by the schools and sometimes the bar association.

6. Having your JD ≠ practicing law

Okay so this one’s a little less intuitive. To practice law, you need to graduate from law school with a JD AND pass the bar exam. The bar exam is usually taken summer after 3L and is what allows you to practice law. That is all I’m going to say about the bar because it’s currently my #2 stressor (behind figuring out how tf I’m going to pay my rent rn lmao).

7. Misc terms:

Judgment NOT judgement

Counsel not Council

Civil suit- for liability/$$. Plaintiff/Defense. Liable/not liable verdicts.

Criminal suit- for alleged criminal acts . Prosecution(the state)/ Defense. Guilty/not guilty verdicts.

Hearsay- is admissible if it falls under a exception (there are MANY exception to hearsay)

Circumstantial evidence- A big portion of the evidence provided in court. Circumstantial evidence is not bad!!

Preponderance of the evidence- over 50% (burden of proof in most civil cases)

Beyond a reasonable doubt- this chart shows it more than I can explain (used in criminal cases). Prosecutions burden of proof!

8. How lawyers do legal research.

Those books you see in the background of lawyers on tv: for show. Yeah, most lawyers use one of two databases to do legal research. Either WestLaw or LexisNexis (Lexis for short). Most law schools provide students with subscriptions to either one or both of these databases where you can keyword search relevant terms or cases and find what you are looking for. I prefer Lexis but have used both and they pretty much give the same results. Working at a firm means that you are often given access to one or another so you better be comfortable with both!

9. The state courts in New York.

Okay so state court is different from federal court. You learn about where to file in civil procedure your first year of law school. You only file in federal under specific circumstances so it is likely that the case at hand you want to write about will take place in state court. The New York system is especially weird seeing as one of their courts of original jurisdiction (where you would file) is called their Supreme Court. In most states (like Pennsylvania for example, their Supreme Court is the highest court in the state and does not hold original jurisdiction.) This system is so OUTSIDE my personal wheelhouse that I’m going to link a chart that sort of helps but if it doesn’t I’m so sorry.

10. Justice Marshall.

I’ve seen it referenced many times in fic (to the point I’m unsure whether or not it is canon) that Matt’s favorite Supreme Court (of the US) justice is Justice Marshall. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there are two different Justice Marshalls. From context clues I believe people are referring to Justice Thurgood Marshall and not Chief Justice John Marshall. Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights activist who was on the court between 1967 and 1991. He was also the first African American to be appointed to the SCOTUS. His work prior to the court was fighting Jim Crow laws and was best known prior to being on the court as the litigant who argued to desegregate in Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice John Marshall was the fourth Chief Justice on the SCOTUS and held that position from 1801-1835. He is best known for being one of the most influential justices regarding the power the Supreme Court holds by infusing the idea of judicial review into the practice of judges on the court. He, however, was not a great person. While being “opposed” to slavery he did in fact “own” enslaved people for most of his life. He also wrote three very problematic opinions regarding Native Americans while on the bench dubbed the “Marshall Trilogy.” Take with that what you will. Basically Thurgood >>>>>> John by a longshot.

11. The M’Naughten rule.

If this one seems familiar, it’s because it was mentioned in season 2 of daredevil on Netflix regarding the Frank Castle case. It is better known as the insanity defense. Here’s the kicker, though. New York does not use the M’Naughten rule. It’s such a small thing but since 1965 New York uses New York Penal Law 40.15. I am unable to give legal advice in any capacity since I’m in law school but a quick google will dispel what the differences are if you want to get into more depth.

12. Most cases settle.

When we think of the practice of law, we often think about big movie court scenes, the formality of a judge sitting on the bench, a array of different people sitting as jurors assessing the verdict of a case in front of them. And this does happen, but it’s not the norm. No, more often than not a civil case is settled outside of the court room. Most times, someone charged with a crime will take a plea bargain outside of the courtroom, confessing their guilt for a better sentence. A lot of what lawyers do is building the best case for their client and abiding by their wishes regarding whether or not they want to settle/take a plea. Court fees are a reality, and the stress of court is a whole other whirlwind of emotions and stress that a lot of people would rather not go through. A lawyer is there to assist and explain whether a settlement/plea offer is a good or bad thing given the totality of the circumstances. But ultimately, it is the decision of the client to either go forward or to call it before going to court. About only 5% of criminal cases, for example, will go to trial.

13. Lawyers are not infallible.

Take it from someone who is surrounded by people in the legal profession everything day, lawyers are literally just people. They aren’t all knowing, they aren’t perfect, they aren’t all vindictive (although some can be). They joke around, curse, learn new things, and mess up. I’m serious about the cursing thing, people in the legal profession are some of the most foul mouthed people I’ve ever met (myself included). But that’s besides the point, the point I’m really trying to make is that media glamorizes the job and makes lawyers seem either like gods or the devil reincarnate (lol devil haha get it), but in truth they’re really just people. They aren’t perfect but most really are trying.

I think this is all I can think of off of the top of my head atm! I hope this little guide helps anyone who wants to use it :) Like I said, this is a guide meant to help fanfic writers if they want to add in little elements of the legal field! But also this is by no means me saying “you don’t understand the law and it shows and therefore isn’t good writing.” I just thought this would be a fun little thing to put together and something I would appreciate if I didn’t already know this stuff! The legal field is really inaccessible and that’s a tragedy if we’re being honest. Also final note: I am unable yo give legal advice as I am currently enrolled in law school. Nothing here is me giving advice about the law or any real life situations and is only meant to be a guide for fiction writers! Please feel free to ask me about things that might confuse you but please please do not ask for unsolicited advice. I am very liberal with the block button and will block. I’ve put too much money into where I am not to jeapordize my career so please please respect this boundary. That being said, feel free to inquire about jargon or ask for resources on where to find more information. Also NY Lawyers/Law Students you are more versed in practicing in NY than I am so feel free to make amendments/corrections if I’ve messed something up. I hope this helps <3

#daredevil #matt murdock #fanfiction #marvel

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hereforhalstead · 3 years

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“I’m all yours” Part 2

*Gif not mine, credits to the owner*

• Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader

• Requested: Yes.

• Warnings: angst/Swearing/adult themes/unloving relationship/mentions of mental abuse

• Summary: Part 2 to “I’m all yours” as requested! You can find Part 1 here.

• Words: 6138

• A/N : Thanks so much for all the great feedback on it and for your continued support - hope you enjoy and that it lives up to part 1! Got the inspo from watching ‘Workin Moms’ on Netflix, highly recommend.. also as before, I do not condone cheating or the treatment of any relationship like this. My inbox is always open if you want to talk and I know it's very hard but remember you're worthy and you deserve the best. Please do not hesitate to let me know if anything in this is too close to the mark as that’s the last thing I want (i might be reading too deep into this but want to be sure I’ve made myself clear

***

“Jay. I need you in here with me” Voight swings the door open, forcing Jay to release you from his tight grasp and turn his back to you as if he didn’t have you pinned to the wall whispering into your ear a few seconds ago.

“Am I interuppting something here?” his gruff voice questions to which you shake your head “Right well come on Halstead, you’re with me” Voight exits the room, allowing you to finally release the smirk you’d been witholding. Jay turns back to you, running a hand along his jawline as he chuckles but you can still see the hunger behind his eyes as he winks “To be continued”.

You take a moment to yourself, running your hand through your hair before allowing yourself to lean your back against the wall to take the weight off. It all seemed to happen so fast that you could barely recollect the situaion but all you knew was you hadn’t felt this way in a very long time. That passion building, waiting for the other to lean in first, the way your skin burns when he touches you and the rate your heart is beating even after he’s no longer here was enough to solidify how bad you wanted him and even better, he wanted you more.

You watch through the one sided glass as Jay and Voight enter the room, Jay now looking as stern as ever, a complete 180 from the man who was just stood before you. He bores his eyes down onto the suspect and you feel your stomach flip at the mere sight of the way he leans his hands down on the desk and towers over the man, finding yourself instinctively chewing at your bottom lip and consumed by thoughts you shouldn't be having at your place of work about your partner.

You continue to watch, time flying by as you sit back and watch Jay do what he does best but despite how well he can calm Voight down it wasn’t working. Voight was loosing it which was spurring the suspect on to act more of an idiot by the minute, clearly getting some form of pleasure of out of he was getting under Voight’s skin.

“Sarge, can we step outside a moment?” Jay interupts Voight who currently had the suspect by the collar of his shirt, his eyes dart to Jay and then back to the man who was laughing in his face. You actually felt for the guy, not knowing what he was letting himself in for but also not being jealous of the pair of them currently trying to interrogate him but clearly failing. Voight shoves the suspect back into the chair and storms out of the room to be shortly followed by Jay, you watch as the man seems to stare directly at you and even though you know he can’t see you, you still feel the chills run down your spine at the emptiness behind his eyes and the slight smile he has on his lips.

You hear Voight and Jay exchanging heated words just outside the door and you flinch when the door to the room you were in swings open “Y/N, you’re up” Voight orders and you instantly feel sick that you would have to face the suspect who clearly had no means of confessing. Normally you’d stand up for yourself but the way Voight held his fists at his sides and the vein throbbing in his neck it was hardly the situation to argue so you did as you were told. Voight takes your place observing and you exit the room to be met by Jay leaning back against the wall, passing you the file as you approach him “you got this?” he asks with a slightly raised brow, you nod and try to ignore the hand he places on your lower back to usher you into the room with a hushed chuckle “you’re the only one I can rely on these days”.

You didn’t have the most experience when it came to interviews so whenever you were in this room you felt on edge, let alone when you know Voight is burning his eyes into your back and watching like a hawk, but something about Jay being by your side made it that tiniest bit easier. You begin to probe the suspect who was now slouching back in his chair, clearly also at ease by the lack of Voight’s presence and you sat across from him instead. You felt ill at the way he was looking at you and the way Jay’s muscles were tightening as he glared at the suspect didn’t go unnoticed either. “Aren’t you a pretty little thing” he comments with a grossly inapropriate smile and you scoff “Don’t look at her, look at me” Jay extends his arm across the desk to get his attention but it doesn’t work so he’s on his feet and leaning over the suspect in seconds “Lose the grin, or I will lose it for you”.

You cough to break the tension, already predicting Voight would crash through the door at any moment to stop the interview but luckily there was no sign. You continued your questioning and it was clear neither of you could get through to him “I can’t be asked to sit here and let you waste my time” you sigh, standing from your seat and grabbing the file to exit “leaving so soon, pretty girl? that’s a shame” he comments and you shake your head with a pity laugh. “Where you’re going, you’ll be the pretty girl” you comment, smile spread as his face drops and you see Jay cover a smirk with his hand “she’s not wrong” he shrugs his shoulders, also standing from his seat to join you in leaving the room “enjoy your time in there buddy” he pats him on the shoulder as he passes “you’re gonna need it”.

You walk down the corridor with Jay, still laughing between yourselves but a sudden silence when Voight appears before you “What the hell was that?” he barks as you stand wide eyed but luckily Jay speaks for you “he’ll confess Sarge, we just need to let him sit” he reassures but Voight wasn’t satisfied “we don’t have time to let him sit Jay, you’re all gonna swan off to this party tonight so we need to get him by then” he demands “What like you’ve always got them to confess the first time?” he comments under his breath and Voight see’s red.

“I think you need to remember who you’re talking to Detective” he presses his finger into Jay’s chest and you step in “Sarge, you just gotta trust us. We know what we’re doing” you can see he is slightly taken back by the way you defend Jay but he isn’t shocked “just get it done” he groans before storming back into his office to leave you and Jay alone again. "thanks” Jay mumbles, frustration laced through his whisper, you lay your hand on his back and you notice him slightly relax under your touch as you offer him a reassuring smile and a shrug of your shoulder “always”.

***

Tonight was some big police annual gala and usually you were buzzing for it but tonight just wasn’t the night for it. You and Jay had spent hours trying to break down the walls of the suspect only for it to get you no where, you felt defeated and tensions were running high. It fell to Voight and Olinsky to eventually crack him but after some of their ‘persuasion’ of course.. This left you feeling not as guilty for not getting to him as they clearly used different methods to you and Jay so were incomparable in terms of techniques.

Even when you had a spare minute to yourself you find yourself replaying what happened with Jay in the observation room, the way he had you pinned and the hunger you could see and feel in the way he grabbed you set something off inside you. You’d barely been alone with him since then due to the busyness of the case but the occasional glances and minor touches as you passed his desk was making the tension unbareable but you still couldn’t ignore the pit in the bottom of your stomach. You still had somewhat of a boyfriend, even if he was a piece of shit who didn’t make you feel wanted, he was still your boyfriend and to your annoyance it wasn’t sitting right with you.

Jay was everything you needed and you knew he could give you everything you wanted and so much so that it scared you. He was perfect in your eyes and you felt as though you didn’t deserve him, you’d never be able to tell him this as you knew he wouldn’t stand for it but you couldn’t help the way you felt. You were so defeated that you felt as though you deserved a trashy relationship and weren’t good enough to be with someone like Jay. This made you feel worse as no matter how much you desired him you still couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt.

You tried to rack your brain to think of the last time your boyfriend Mike had made you feel half as good as Jay does but you couldn’t even think of anything close. You were trying so hard to give him an inch of self worth but there was nothing, he hadn’t made you feel wanted or even like he loved you yet you still felt bad for showing interest in Jay. You’d have to put your feelings for your partner to one side and no matter how impossible it seemed you’d try to convince yourself he wasn’t for you.

You’d managed to escape the district without anyone seeing you and by anyone you meant Jay. Unlocking your car and dumping your bag into the back, you jump when you see Jay standing there as you slam the truck down in frustration “You trying to kill me?” you hit his shoulder as you pass but he doesn’t move, instead his eyes scan as you slightly graze him to try and get to the passenger side “You’re just gonna leave without saying anything?” you could feel your heart pull at the hurt behind his words, the concern sweeping across his brows and the way he held his hands together like he did when he was nervous. “I need to get ready for tonight” you fake smile but he wasn’t buying it.

“So you’re going back to him?” he kicks a stone on the ground and you follow his gaze as he looks back up at you “I don’t have a choice Jay” you plead, causing him to cup your cheeks in his hands to force you to look at him “Of course you have a choice Y/N. You always have a choice” he reassures but you stand in silence, unsure how to respond “If you’re scared of him, I’ll come back with you or hell I’ll go and collect your stuff for you and you can stay with me for a bit” he runs his thumb gently across your cheek and for that split second you can’t hold back your desires as you find yourself leaning into him.

You manage to catch yourself and put your hands against his chest to stop “It was a mistake Jay, I’m sorry for leading you on but it’s not gonna happen”.

You pull yourself away from him and open the passenger door to get inside before he has a chance to pull you back “ That’s bullshit and you know it Y/N” he leans against your door, speaking through your car window but you keep your eyes focused on turning the key to start the engine before mumbling “I’m sorry” and driving away.

You look into your mirror, watching as Jay stands there defeated with his hands hung low and his head dipped “You’re a fucking idiot Y/N” you curse yourself before taking another look in the mirror to see Jay was gone.

***

You flicked through the dresses in your wardrobe, really not being in the mood for the party was in a strange was urging you to put more effort in to hope it would lift your spirits. You’d poured yourself a few glasses of your favourite mixer and had some music playing in the background to assist in your motivation. Of course you were home alone, what else is new..

You were used to coming home to an empty apartment, after moving in with Mike after just a few dates there was always such excitement to return from work to see him lounging on the sofa and ready to engulf you in his arms but that didn’t last long. He would be out until late, without even so much of a text message which would leave you sitting around waiting before eventually giving up in the small hours of the morning to retire to bed alone. You found it funny at this point, the classic ‘gotta laugh or you’ll cry’ really was how you dealt with it and you thought that was for the best.

You’d stumbled upon a little satin black dress that you’d bought for your birthday last year but due to staying late at work you never got the chance to wear it so it would be perfect for tonight. After a little touch of make up and keeping your hair simple you stopped to examine yourself in the mirror and for the first time in a while you were surprsingly pleased at who was looking back at you. You’d hardly bothered with your appearance anymore, going out to a party was a rareity so it always did seem to take you back a bit when you looked like this and you were feeling good.

After taking another sip of your drink your mind started to wander, Jay creeping up behind you and snaking his arms round your waist as you admire yourself. His lips pressing into your neck as he whispers into your ear of how good you look and how lucky he is to have you sent the chills down your spine. You’d wrap your hands around Jay’s forearms as he trails his lips along your shoulder, lifting your hair to the other side to allow him access to your exposed skin as he nips lightly at the corner to make you giggle.

You were so lost in your thoughts that when the door slammed you almost dropped your drink in fright, you quickly downed the remainder before heading out of the bedroom and into the main open place space. Running your hands over your dress to smooth out any creases you look up to see Mike ripping the tie from around his neck and shoving it onto the counter. You stand in the doorway, waiting to see if he notices you and gives you the attention you now so desperately crave, even if it wasn’t from him.

Instead, he heads for the kitchen and pours himself a drink, takes the glass and slumps on the sofa without so much as a second look at you. You clear your throat to get him to look up but still nothing. With your hands on your hips you strut over to stand in front of the TV so he had no choice but to see you blocking his view. He takes a sip from the glass and shrugs, still trying to look round you to see the pointless comedy show that was playing on the screen “going somewhere?” he questions, eyes still averted from you. You lean into your hip and raise your brows down at him “It’s the gala? You’re meant to be my plus one?”. He takes another sip with a shake of his head “Don’t know what you’re talking about”.

This is the first time you’ve spoken in hours and he already has that look of grimace on his face, looking straight through you as if you’re not even there. Luckily, the liquid courage had made it easier to deal with as you let his words bounce off you, the thoughts of Jay quickly making their way back into your mind. How his jaw would drop if he walked through the door and you greeted him like this, infact even if you were in joggers and a sweater he would still tell you how gorgeous you looked. He’d wrap you in his arms, running his fingertips up and down your sides as he admired his girl standing in front of him with the confidence that no matter how many guys drooled over her she would still go back to him. You wanted to be that girl.

“Just change your shirt, we’re leaving in 5 minutes” you demand, heading into the kitchen yourself to grab yourself another drink as you had a feeling you’d be needing it. You hear him grumble something as he clambers from the sofa and drags himself into the bedroom, a part of you shocked he actually did as he was asked but the other part regretting reminding him as the thought of spending the night alone with Jay was sounding all the more tempting.

A few moments go by and you’re sitting at the table waiting for him, legs swinging with your head resting on your hand as your mind is clouded with the thoughts of the all too familiar detective. Was he going to be wearing a suit? Would he need help choosing a shirt and tie combo? You’d sit on the bed as he’d groan into the mirror when he couldn’t work out which one looked better. Turning to you to ask for your opinion as you tie the best looking one round his neck, feeling his breath on your lips as he glares intently down at you. His hands finding their way to your hips as you button the top few buttons of his shirt up before hooking his collar back over the tie. Feeling him watching you’re every move as his grasp on you tightens, sitting back down onto the bed to pull you onto his lap. You swing your legs over each of his as he leans back and pulls you on top of him, his arms keeping you on him as you try to escape as you tease about how you were going to be late-

“How’s this?” a voice interrupts your thoughts, looking up to see Mike in a fresh white shirt tucked into black jeans “No tie?” you ask, slightly dissapointed but he scoffs “It’s not that fancy, don’t know why you’re so dressed up” he comments, feeling the all too normal pit in your stomach as you brush it off “lets go then so we can get this over with”.

From the moment you arrived you felt on edge, you hadn’t seen Jay yet and you couldn’t ignore the way your heart dropped at the thought of him not being there. Deep down he was the only reason you’d dressed up, the motivation for you to be there and the only thing you could look forward to was seeing him but still no sign. You were stood at the bar, watching as Mike eyed up every girl that passed like they were piece of meat and it made you feel sick.

You stood chatting with Kim who was soon joined by Adam, draping his arm round her waist as they stood opposite you to make conversation. You could feel Mike wasn’t paying attention and had even taken a seat at one of the bar stools so he wasn’t even part of the conversation. You couldn’t help the thoguhts drift back into your mind, how you knew if you were with Jay he would proudly have his arm round you when you were at an event or even have his hand protecvitely resting on your lower back to let you know he was still there as a form comfort. He’d whisper in how he can’t wait to get you alone, making you giggle as his breath hits your ear to make the hairs on your neck stand on edge. He’d love to tell people how you met at work but always knew there was something more, others would comment on how smitten he was with you and how he looked at you with those doting eyes like you were his whole world and he wanted everyone to know.

Kim hits your arm in laughter to bring you out of your thoughts but Adam was looking like he could murder. Glaring at Mike like he wanted to lay into him, scoffing at the disrespect and the poor way he was treating his friend. You slightly dreaded how Jay would react and honestly hoped they wouldn’t see each other but it was too late.

You were chatting away, in efforts to try and distract Adam from the way Mike was behaving when you saw him appear through the crowd from over Adam’s shoulder. It was like a cliche movie, you zoned into him like he was the only one in the room, Kim’s words fading into the background as you could almost hear the laughter falling from his lips as he engages in conversation. You suddenly felt safe, like you knew nothing would happen to you as long as he was there and you just wanted to be tucked under his arm for the rest of the night but you had to play it cool.

Watching as he heads towards you, drink in one hand with the other stuffed in his pants pocket. The crisp black shirt that was paired with a black tie finished it off, that man could look good in anything but seeing him in all black flicked a switch inside you and gave you that all too familiar feeling of the craving you had for him. His eyes widened when he saw you standing there, roaming your body and admiring every inch before Adam nudged him to get his attention “Bro, you didn’t look at me like that” he acted hurt, his hands on his heart as he pleaded “I just want Halstead to look at me like he looks at Y/N. Is that too much to ask?” he pretends to wipe a tear as you roll your eyes “Look like that in a dress and I’ll think about it” Jay comments, still with his gaze on you as you feel the heat rise to your cheeks “You look alright too I guess” you tease but this is when Mike decides he finally wants to join in.

“You must be Jack” he extends his hand out to Jay who looks at him with a laughter in disgust “It’s Jay” he grimaces a smile and you try to hide yours by taking another sip of your drink. Mike drops his hand as Jay doesn’t meet his gesture as Kim breaks the silence “Who wants another drink?” she asks and you raise your empty glass “You’ve had enough, don’t want you making a fool of yourself” Mike mocks, expecting others to laugh at his comment but no one does.

You notice Jay’s fists clench at his sides and if Adam didn’t look happy before, he certaintly doesn’t now. Kim places a hand to his arm to calm him down and you only wish you could do the same to Jay but instead you watch as he eyes Mike, only imagining the thoughts that were going through his head as his nostrils flare. “I’m gonna head to the bathroom” Mike announces before excusing himself, leaving you stood in silence as Kim hands you another drink with that familiar sympathetic smile “I’m gonna kill him” Adam scoffs and Jay hums in agreement “You’re telling me”.

It had been a while since Mike left your side, you’d barely noticed until Kim commented on how long he had been. You took a quick scan of the room but couldn’t see him anywhere and it’s like the feeling in your gut was trying to tell you something as you find yourself heading towards the bathroom before you can think. You march your way through the people, ignoring the calls from behind you and too focused on what you knew you were about to see. You slam the stall doors open one by one but he wasn’t there, a sigh of relief as you didn’t want to catch him out at one of your work parties was soon ruined as you hear a moan coming from down the hall. You storm towards the noises, blocking them out as you get closer and turn the corner to see Mike holding an unfamiliar girl up against the wall with her dress hiked up around her waist.

You can’t move. As much as you want to scream and run, it’s like your feet are glued to the floor and you can’t move an inch. Instead you stand and watch them all over each other, him with a dare you say smile on his face as their lips intertwine. A sudden noise from behind you forces him to look in your direction, doing the quickest double take when he see’s you standing there but he still didn’t stop. Instead he dug his head further into her shoulder with every thrust, stopping to look up at you with an evil glint in his eye as he clearly enjoyed the fact you’d caught him and wanted you to watch.

You finally come to your senses and headed back to the bar, no urgency in your walk, anger in your head or even tears in your eyes as you kept your head high and acted as if nothing has happened. As you approach you see the heads turn to you with concern “Where the hell were you?” Kim questions with a hushed tone “Did you find him?”. You shake your head “Want me and Jay to go and look for him?” Adam suggests and you chuckle “If I want to find a body in the river tomorrow, I’ll give you a shout”.

You down your drink in one as Adam and Kim resume their conversation, Jay brings himself over to you and rests his hand on your lower back as he leans into you “You wanna get some fresh air?” he asks and you nod “like you wouldn’t believe”. He keeps his hand pressed into your back as he guides you out of the room and towards the exit into the majestic grounds of the hall. You can’t help but constantly look through the faces to try and spot Mike but there was no sign, probably still with that girl in the bathrooms or even better he’s taken her home to the apartment you shared and was fucking her into your bedspread.

As soon as the fresh air hits you it feels like a sigh of relief, it was just you and Jay with no one else around, a complete contrast from the noisy crowded party and you wouldn’t want it any other way. There was a side to you that wanted to blurt it all out, knowing Jay would storm in there and lay into Mike was something you really wanted to see. The anger rising in his body as he clenches his fists, the vein in his neck popping as you confess or the desperation in his eyes as he asks you to tell him where he is, but there was the other side that wanted to keep it bottled up.

You knew the second option was wrong as it would just be another plan of self destruction and there was no way you could go back to that apartment tonight. There was only one person you knew you wanted to leave with and that same person was now the only one standing before you.

‘Fuck it’ you thought to yourself and there it was, the moment you built up the courage to push your lips onto his. His arms clung at your waist from the sudden contact, pulling you into him but soon retracting when he realised what was happening “What’s going on? You sa-” he began but you leant in to try and cut him off but he wasn’t having it. His hand was still pressed into your back so you were inches apart, his eyes flicking between your lips and back up to your eyes but he was trying to control himself and make sure it was what you wanted. Normally this would make your legs weak at how sweet and considerate you knew he was but you needed him, you longed for him, you craved him and now you had the fear he didn’t want you.

“You said you didn’t want this?” he questions with a huff “I was lying” you smile “I want you. You know I want you Jay” you yet again lean into him but he puts his hands on your waist firmly to keep you apart “Has something happened?”. Without words he already knows, the way your breath hitches and you harshly swallow was enough to set off the rage in him “Did he do something to you?” you can see his temper rising while trying to stay calm for you “Did he hurt you Y/N?”.

The panic sets in as you see his anger grow “I swear to god Y/N, if he laid a single finger on you”. You instinctively put your hand to his cheek to ground him “Jay he hasn’t touched me” you reassure, wording it carefully to not say ‘he hasn’t hurt me’ as after what you’ve just seen that would take a certain person to not be hurt. He relaxes ever so slightly under your touch and confession but he was still rigid, the frustration running through his body as he tries to scan your face for answers but you’re giving him nothing.

“Can we just forget him?” you try to push past it, moving your hand down his chest and fiddling with one of the buttons “Or do you not want me?” the crack in your voice kills him, there shouldnt be a shadow of doubt in your mind about how bad he wants you, he’s needed you for so long that he should be taking you to be his right now but there was something stopping him.

“Of course I want you Y/N, are you kidding?” he grips at your waist to further cement his words “I want you so fucking bad that you’re all I can think about” he groans as you pull him closer to you by his shirt collar and just as your lips are about to meet you hear that all too familiar voice call out for you from inside the party. Your head snaps round so fast you’re surpsied you didn’t pull a muscle and the grip on Jay’s collar tells him you dont want to see Mike.

He switches the position so he was closest to the door, his body shielding you as you cower behind him as he was the only one he could trust to protect you and be the one between you and Mike.

Mike spots you through the door, clutching onto Jays shirt like your life depended on it but not in a way through fear. You weren’t scared of him as you knew nothing would happen to you as long as Jay was there but it was through a nervousness as you just wanted to forget the situation ever happened and just cut ties but he clearly wasn’t feeling the same way. He points his finger to you as he storms through the open doors, cursing yourself for having left them open as he may not have though to look out if they were closed.

“Turn around and head back inside” Jay warns, keeping one hand behind his back and ensuring you stayed there “Get away from my girlfriend buddy” Mike scoffs which amuses Jay as he smirks “Sorry that’s my fault for not being clear. Turn around. Head home and stay the fuck away from her”.

You step around Jay but he still keeps an arm on you which you’re more that grateful for “Was she good?” you ask, confidence rising knowing he could no longer bilittle you how he pleased “What?” he questions and you roll your eyes “How was she? Tight enough for you?” you notice Jay straighten up beside you, clearly realizing what’s happened and increasing his anger and determination to end the man standing in front of him.

You place a hand to Jay’s upper arm and squeeze lightly in reassurance. “Go home, I’ll send for my stuff” you scorn but Mike doesn’t move “I don’t know if you heard her but she said go home” Jay takes a step towards him and as much as you trust Jay and know how he acts, this is the first time you’ve questioned if he will be able to stop himself. “You really don’t want me to tell you again” Jay threatens, Mike matches Jay’s step and closes the gap between them when you interject and stand between the pair with a hand on each of their chests.

Looking up to see the fear in Mike’s eyes but the anger and darkness behind Jay’s “Go. Home” you instruct to Mike who pauses for a second to look down at you and then back up to Jay “You’re lucky she’s here otherwise you wouldn’t live to see another day” Jay smirks, putting an emphasis on every word he spits out at Mike.

The three of you stand in silence, watching as Mike and Jay stare at each other was laughable. Mike didn’t stand a single chance again Jay on a normal day let alone now, he was full of rage and needed an outlet so you feel a sigh of relief when Mike takes a step back and turns to head back inside “If I hear you’ve even breathed near her. I promise it will be the last breath you ever take” Jay calls out to him, his lips puling in an evil smile to which you hit him on the chest. His expression soon changes when he looks down at you and you feel your heart skip a beat, the vengeance in his eyes that told you the inner battle to control himself was getting impossible to ignore.

“I’m sorry” he blurts out, the least of what you were expecting him to say, the softness as he reaches to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear and continuing to trace your jawline with his fingertips. You loop your arms around his neck, leaving one to pull him closer to you as his arms find their way back to your hips with an urgency “I don’t want your sorry” you comment, his thumb runs along your bottom lip as he lightly tugs on the corner at the roughness of his skin “I want you”.

He didn’t need telling twice, his grip on your waist pulled you onto him. Your legs wrapping round his waist as he steaded you against the wall, rocking his hips into yours as his lips made their way along your collarbone to lightly nip at the skin causing you to yelp “I’m going to show you how you deserve to be treated” he moaned into the crook of your neck with another light blow to the now damp skin from his lips “and we both know, it will be only me that can show you that”.

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checkingoutforheroes · 3 years

Text

B.A.B.Y PROTOCOL.

Part 1.

Avengers x fem!reader

Pt. 2

Genre: Minor angst, more fluff.

Warning: Language! (cursing here & there)

Words: 1746

Synopsis: This takes place in Avengers: Age of Ultron. When The Avengers were at the rock bottom, Nick Fury and advised by Maria Hill, to initiate the B.A.B.Y Protocol.

Main MASTERLIST

The Avengers gather in the lab after one of an ugly half made robot command a few of the Legionaries to attack them. Currently they are finding out about what or who attacked them. Some of them cleaning their wounds and Thor going out to track the Legionaries. Bruce the only one who starts first. “All of our work is gone. Ultron cleared out every research that we do. He uses internet as an escape route.” Natasha turns and lean her body to a table to say what she’s found. “He’s been in everything. Fails, surveillances. Probably know about us more than we know about each other.”

Holding his right wounded arm, Rhody said “He’s in the internet, he’s in your files. What if he decides to access to something a little more exciting?” By that, Maria has thought something. “Nuclear code.” Natasha looking at them “Nukes? He said he wanted us dead.” Steve interrupt her “He didn’t say dead. He said extinct.” “He said he killed somebody.” Clint said but Maria ask back. “But no one else in the building.” Their conversations cut by Tony. “Yes there was.” He displays JARVIS damaged simulator form and all went silent except Bruce, he checks on JARVIS.

Thor come in angry and straight to choke Tony. Being choke, Tony try talk to Thor “Come one. Use your words buddy.” Thor lift him up a few inch above the floor. “I have more than enough words with you Stark.” Steve walks closer, breaking them. “Thor. The Legionaries?” Thor update them about the Legionaries have the scepter and they have to retrieve it again. For the first time after the attack, Dr. Chow speaks. “You build this program. Why he’s trying to kill us?” Tony just laugh at that question and Bruce disagree. “Tony, this might not be the time to-“ Tony cut his sentences. “Really?! Bruce. We didn’t create a murder bot. Remember New York?” Everyone move their head down facing the floor remembering that event and Tony continue. “A hostile army of aliens charging through a hole in space. We’re standing 300 feet below it. We’re The Avengers. We can bust arms dealer all day but that up there, that’s, that’s the endgame. How do you guys planning on beating that?” Steve looking at him “Together.” “We’ll lose.” Tony say and Steve still with his answer “And we’ll do that together too.” He looks at everyone and gives the order. “Thor’s right. Ultron trying to draw us out. We start tonight. Do whatever you can to find him. The world is a big place, make it smaller.” Maria stand from her chair. “I’ll escort Dr. Chow to airport. I’ll see you guys in the afternoon.” They all nods and both of them walks out of the lab.

Next morning.

A young girl wearing her café’s uniform walking with a headphone on her head. While walking, she notices a guy snatches a bag from a lady. That lady screaming asking for help while her baby crying to see her mother in terror from across the street. You bring down your headphone and chase that guy. Thanks for your training, you almost keep up that guy until he stuck in an ally, nowhere to go.

“You wanna give me the bag or I’ll take it from you?” You said. Looks like he’s stuck.

“Fast legs.” He said.

“I had trained before.”

“I’m not a bad guy.”

“Well, good guys don’t snatch a bag from people especially in front of their baby! You gave me the wrong impression though. Now, give me the bag and go.”

“I’d like to see you take it.” “You asked for it dude.” You move forward and fight him hand to hand combat. Actually, you are a bit surprise by his technique. He’s not so bad but you have been train by a professional back in the academy.

You’ve been caught one day and some guy wear uniform took you somewhere. You thought it was a juvenile school because you are just 15 that time. Turns out it was S.H.I.E.L.D. They gave you test by test and found out that you good at combat and a little bit good at common sense. After you graduated, work job by job. Gang to gang. Mob to mob. You can’t do that kind of job anymore. You want to be good and yes, you did stop working with the dark. You washed your hands and works at Donut Do It. It’s not your vibe but it is fine for your fresh start. After you slap that guy, you hear a woman voice call your name that has been long unspoken by anyone including you.

“Baby.” A woman called.

“Normal people doesn’t know that name.” You said while choking that guy.

She said “Maybe because you’re not a normal girl.”

“What do you want Maria?” You ask that woman.

You immediately know who he is. Fury. “Oh God, not you too. Okay, for the record, honestly, I haven’t commit any crime that violated the laws.”

“You.” A deep voice man said.

You can hear Maria smirk when she asks you “Are you sure about that?” “…today. You didn’t let me finish. I didn’t commit any crime, today.” You said. Fury tell you to let that guy go and you look at that guy “You’re with them?” He tries to answer even you’re still choking him. “Y.. YE.. Yes!” You release him and slap him real hard right across his face. “That’s for wasting my time. Fuck off.”

Fury look disbelievingly at you. “Was that necessary?” You look back at him “What? Caressing lightly on his soft cheek?” Maria interject “That’s the opposite of what you did.” You try again just to tease her. “Okay. I, tap his soft cheek?” Maria raise an eyebrow at you “Try again.” You surrender. “Fine. I just 180-degree angle slapped him. He’s a trained agent for God sake. He’ll be fine.” You turn around about to walk back to your work place and Fury stop you.

“And where do you think you’re going young lady?” He asks you.

You turning back. “ Work. Turns out I have a job now papa bear. Thanks for the recommendation letter though. Now, will you excuse me, I have go to work. Hope to never see you two again. Babai.” Again, Fury stops you. “You are not going to that Donut Do It.” You tilt your head to him. “I told you I work there and I’m going. If you two want donut, you know where to find it. Mention my name and you’ll get 30% discounts.” Maria’s face changes when she talks this time. “This is serious and urgent, Baby.”

“We are gathering as many as best agents that we have, and you are one of the best, Baby. Come with us and we’ll brief you.” Fury said and you stop him from saying any further. “Look, I’m gonna stop you right here papa Bear. That is where you are wrong. Aren’t you guys seen my record? I know what good is but I’m far away from good. There is still red blood stain painted on my hands that I could never leave. Even if I wash it thousands time, it won’t come off. What makes you think I’ll do it?” You feel your left chest aching but you ignore it.

Maria answers you. “Because everyone deserves a chance to be and do good. To start over. Yes, you can’t wash that much blood on our hands but this is the chance for you to do something good in your life. A do-over. You actually do something good after the academy. Take out those mobsters down, those gangs. You went inside to get the intel and you burn them to the ground and made those cities safe. Then, you just proof us again just now by caught that robber.”

You huff and look down on your feet. “You set that up.”

Maria look at you. “But you didn’t know that. Yes, Baby. We’ve seen your record. Detail. You are far away from where you are before the academy. Or after. I mean you did killed people.” You crunch your eyebrows at her “Hey!” Fury turn to talk. “Help us this time. After that, it’s all up to you. We are no longer bugging you. You are no longer in our record. I’m not wasting my time coming here if we don’t need you.” “I thought you miss me.” Fury huff and talk to Maria “I’ll wait in the car.”

“He never begging. That kind of begging, what he did. Is it that bad?” I ask Maria and she nod with worry face. “Earth level threat. That’s all I can say right now. Come with us to tower and we tell you more.” You let out a long sigh. “Me? Out of all agents, me?” Maria walk closer to you. “Please Baby.” You’re now messing with her. “It Earth level threat and you want a baby to involve? What kind of adult are you? Put a cute baby in danger like that. Unbelievable.” She smiles more than earlier. “The kind of person that will make sure there will be chicken drumets and spaghetti carbonara every day for your meal.” You silently look at her and playfully sigh and she knows you better. “Caramel pudding and fluffy pillow too.” The ache in your chest getting hard to ignore now. You ask Maria some time and turn back from her. You bending, breathing like your doctor teach you and massage your chest a little. Must be from running earlier.

“Hey, are you okay?” Maria ask, worry if you are sick, but yes you are sick.

“Yeah. Just shock. Did you say fluffy pillow? You ask her, not wanting to let her know first. They need your help, that’s what you are going to do. Help as much as you can. She let out a giggles and wrap her arm around your neck. “Yeah, you are coming with us, like it or not.” You both walk toward their car where Fury is waiting. “How many pillow though?”

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Thank you for spending your time reading this. Feel free to reblog or ask me anything, thank you in advance!

Part 2 is coming!!

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liquid-luck-00 · 4 years

Text

When Two Coffee Addicts Unite

Part 1

@maribatmarch-2k21 Day 8: Texting

Ao3 *** Part 2

Okay so this can either be a continuation of Internet Friends or the beginning of something new. But if you want to read this as a continuation of Internet friends then you should know:

The police department is almost as bad as Damocles when dealing with powerful figures. They take the video and audio footage and simply put it in the file. Because at the time Lila still had most or in fact all of the class under her thumb, they all supported Lila’s claim that it was an accident. Lila claims that a sudden dizzy spell struck her, and she fell forwards towards Marinette. And as Mari was already on the edge of the balcony it was an accident. The fact that the file sat in the police department until well after any claim could be valid it wasn’t looked into more. Mari, her friends, and Tim did have backups of the footage, complete records for every interaction with the police, and recorded calls and interactions when dealing with the police. But as they didn’t want to involve the embassy as this would become an international affair they didn’t bother with the case.

That said the police don’t bother with the Miracle Court to avoid work. However, with the Mayor, Medical responders, and the Fire Department all aid the heroes, the police only do the bare minimum.

Marinette’s class has begun to watch Lila, but they didn’t look into her lies because except for this incident it’s just she said she said with occasional ‘injuries’ on Lila. Most of them are wary of Lila but they aren’t converted to Marinette’s side, but there is an increased tolerance between them.

~~~~~~~~~~

Marinette had just sat back at her seat after eating lunch, while the classroom was still empty. There was still half an hour left. Alix, Kim, Nino, Sabrina, and Max walked in as she sat down.

"Marinette you got the time?" Alix called out. They were on somewhat okay terms since Lila’s claims were a total 180 from the Marinette that they have known for forever.

"30 minutes left." she announced looking of her phone and in turn her missed messages.

Tim:

Mari

Nettie

Marin

Bean

Bug

Marinette

Marinette:

What's wrong.

Tim:

I have back to back meetings starting in 3 hrs. until 5.

and

Marinette:

Let me guess haven't slept.

Tim:

Exactly

Help me please

Marinette:

How many reports can you send me?

Tim:

Quite a few

Marinette:

Send me what you can.

Review the rest.

Take a nap!

And I'll be a little voice during your meeting.

Tim:

Thanks, I owe you Bean.

Marinette:

I'II hold you to that.

Tim:

Sent

Marinette:

Just make sure you wake up.

Tim:

I make no promises.

On second thought I don't want to find out how you are mad

She made it through the 15 minutes of class because Lila was akumatized. Lila had burst into the class followed by Alya, Nino, and Adrien. She claimed Mari cornered her in the bathroom and beat her a few minutes ago, showing everyone the 'bruises' on her arms. Chloe handed something to Sabrina who walked up to Lila.

"Oh, you poor thing," Sabrina consoled, Lila only whimpered. "Here this has a salve that helps bruises." She gently took Lila's wrist and wiped a 'bruise' which disappeared instantly.

"That's amazing what is it called?" Alya commented. "I should get some for Nora."

"Make-up remover." Sabrina and Chloe spoke together.

"Besides." Alix butt in. "Marinette's been here the past half hour and hasn't left."

"What?! How do you know?" Lila cried.

"Cause we've been here the whole time with her." Sabrina commented.

Marinette for her part didn't know or hear the conversation around her.

"Marinette. Marinette. Earth to Marinette," Kim shouted.

"Present!" She jolted practically standing. "Wait," she looked around, "class hasn't started."

"What are you hyper fixated on?" Adrien asked innocently.

"Just some reports, don't think you'd like them too much Kit-Kat."

"Fair," he shrugged sitting next to her. "So how were you in two places at once?"

"I can't," her head tilted to the side confusion clear on her face.

"So, if Mari hasn't left, can't be in two places at once, and your 'bruises' came off with make-up remover. How do you explain that Lila?" Adrien around, the class slowly draining their conclusions. However, Marinette spoke up. "She lied, obviously..." she stated having gone back to the reports.

"Um you said that out loud, Cake Pop, and loud at that."

"Huh?" sure enough when she looked around some were shock still, others typed furiously into their phones.

That was when Mrs. Bustier walked in, fifteen minutes late to the class. Which was also when the bandy contained restraint ended. Lila was akumatized, school let out, and the rest of her night went smoothly.

Tim woke up, and with her help survived his meetings. Some while on patrol she would constantly mute and unmute herself. Luckily, it wasn't more than twice, and they didn't run into anyone. Chat didn’t ask questions, figured it out since she was pouring over Wayne documents earlier. Tim would call her back after the private meetings and ended around 10.

At around 11 Tim text her back.

Tim:

Thanks Bug you saved me today.

Marinette:

No problem Draco

You owe me though.

Tim:

I remember.

Go to bed it's like midnight over there!

Marinette:

Yeah Yeah

Tim:

Ooh

Congratulations 2x!

Marinette:

What???

Please explain.

Tim

Timothy

Timothy Drake-Wayne answer me.

Dragon please

Ugh fine I'll sleep.

Which is what she did when he wouldn’t answer her.

She woke up the next morning to two emails from W. E.. The first was for a collaboration between W.E. and MDC for a show featuring Wayne Tech accessories and their new climate fabrics. She immediately responded and accepted. The second was that her class was one of two to be accepted as transfer students to Gotham Academy and intern slots at WE, she forwarded that to her teacher and the school.

Marinette:

You Gremlin

Tim:

Like I said congrats

Oh, I need you to give me three names.

Marinette:

What for?

Her mind was racing at the possibilities.

Tim:

You'll find out.

Marinette:

What’s the other school?

Tim:

Some Prep school in the UK.

Marinette:

Give me a Sec.

She opened another contact and typed.

Marinette:

Hey, did you get a spot in the Wayne/GA internship?

Mystery:

Yes.

Why?

Marinette:

Tell the others we are hitting Gotham with style.

Mystery:

Very well.

Mari then sent three names to him and smiled. This was going to be fun.

~~~~~~~~~~

Permanent Taglist: @itsmeevie01 @adrestar @miraculouspenta @vixen-uchiha

#maribat #dc x mlb #mlb x dc #dc x miraculous #miraculous x dc #ml marinette #tim drake #platonic timari #timari #adrien agreste #lila salt #maribatmarch2021

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youwerenevermeanttofeelalone · 3 years

Text

Strangers | Joaquín Torres

✦ pairing — Joaquín Torres x female!Plus Size Reader

✦ word count — 5.8k (I’m sorry, I don’t have much self-control left)

✦ loosely based on the song Strangers by Mallory Merk

✦ request — I’d like to ask for something where Bucky and the reader are roommates but she’s younger (Joaquin’s age) and one day Sam and Joaquin are there for whatever reason and that’s how Joaquin and Reader meet and they get along (and flirt obv) and Bucky is like a protective older brother and Sam vouches for him but Bucky doesn’t loosen up until Joaquin saves reader from danger or does something nice for her

✦ warnings — angst, awkwardness, Bucky acting like a jealous brother, mentions of beverages and food, light depictions of anxious worry, fluff.

════════════════════════

Bucky and you were in the middle of discussing whether you should adopt a cat or not when a rhythmic knock on the door interrupted the urgent conversation.

“Are you expecting someone?” he asked, eager to go back to the pressing matter at hand.

“You know I am not. I didn’t order anything either...”

Bucky sighed. “I’ll check.”

“No!” You stood up abruptly from the couch. “You’ll scare whoever is behind the door off like you scared our poor neighbor.”

“Can you let that one go?”

“Nope,” you replied as you crossed the small living room.

You would never. The lady still tried to hide from him when she saw him down the hallway which was hilarious because it wasn’t due to the fact that he had famously been The Winter Soldier but because he grumpily opened the door when she needed a favor and closed it on her face.

As you opened the door, you found two attractive men standing in the doorway.

“Is Barnes here?”

“Oh, God. What did he do now?”

“I didn’t do anything!” he exclaimed in your ear, making you jump.

“Jesus, Bucky.”

“Sorry.” He then acknowledged one of the men in front of you, the one who had asked for him, “What’s wrong, Sam?”

“Can we come in?”

Both Bucky and you moved out of the way so the pair of handsome men could come inside.

“So you’re the roommate?” Sam asked.

“I am.”

“And you don’t think he’s the most annoying person you’ve ever met?”

“No. Should I?”

“Hey!”

“I’m joking, I’m joking.”

“I’m Sam Wilson,” your interrogator introduced himself properly. “And this is Joaquín Torres.”

“Nice to meet you.” You smiled at Sam, then at Joaquín who smiled back.

Bucky cleared his throat.

Sam looked tense as he ominously said, “We need your help.”

“Give us some privacy, sweetheart,” Bucky told you.

You retreated to your bedroom, wondering what the secrecy could be about. You knew who Bucky was, what we had done, and everything in between.

And sure, some people thought you were crazy for being his roommate, but you weren’t scared of him. You trusted him and cared about him. In the few months you had gotten to know him he had become an important person in your life, one of your best friends.

His visitors didn’t stay for too long. You hadn’t even gotten comfortable on your bed after having put on a tv show to have something on the background when you heard the front door close.

A couple of minutes later, Bucky knocked on your door and opened it just enough to ask if he could come in.

He sat on your bed, fixing his eyes on your desk.

”So...” you broke the silence, “should I be worried?”

“No.”

“Bucky. Look at me.”

He turned to the side, fully facing you. “What?”

“You don’t have to hide things from me or coddle me.”

“I know. But it’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” he assured you.

“Promise?”

“Promise.” He gave you a small smile. “Now, about that cat...”

════════════════════════

After a long week of work, you found yourself relieved to have the apartment just for you. Bucky was a lovely roommate, you just wanted an alone moment.

Saturdays were usually the day you had the apartment for yourself, Bucky had a strict routine until something extraordinary happened and you were comfortable with adapting to it.

To your luck, somebody knocked on the door. You hoped it was somebody looking for the neighbor or something because you weren’t in the mood for people.

Your mood, however, did a 180 as soon as you opened the door.

Joaquín gave you a small smile. “Good evening, (Name).”

Why did he have to come by when you were in sweats and an old t-shirt?! You smiled at him. “Hi.”

“Is Bucky home?”

“No. But he should be back in a couple of hours.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll wait for him outside.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” you asked. A part of you wanted to be polite, the other wanted to chat for a little bit. “I just started a batch.”

“Uh—“ Joaquín cleared his throat. “I would really like that.”

You motioned for him to come in. His eyes fixed on you as he did, but for some reason, you didn’t feel uncomfortable. There seemed to be no malice in his eyes.

“Free day?” he made small talk.

“Yeah. I actually don’t work on weekends.”

He shifted in order to face you and asked more about your job. You hoped it wasn’t part of his small talk anymore.

As the conversation progressed, you were sure it had been. His gaze remained on you whether he was speaking or listening, interest never wavering as he found more things to ask about you.

His eyes were such a peculiarity and you couldn’t understand why. Brown eyes were common, you had seen them thousands of times.

“I think the coffee’s ready,” he murmured.

“Right!” You abashedly stood up, smoothing your t-shirt as though it really mattered anymore.

“Do you need help?”

You shook your head. “I’ve got it.”

Glancing at him as you poured the beverages, you saw him staring at you too. Either you weren’t being subtle and were making him uncomfortable or he wasn’t being subtle either. Both options were terrifying.

You walked slowly towards the living room and put both cups down. “Sugar?”

“Please.”

As you went back to the kitchen, you checked the state of your hair on the microwave. Deciding there was nothing you could do to it, you left it as it was and took the container of sugar in your grasp along with a teaspoon.

You placed the sugar container on the table. “Cream?”

“No, thank you.”

Joaquín sweetened his coffee as you sat down next to him once again.

“You don’t like it with cream either?”

“No. I only remember to buy it for Bucky.”

Giving you his entire attention back, Joaquín lifted both eyebrows. “He takes his coffee with cream?”

“Oh, yeah.” You nodded enthusiastically. “I was as shocked as you are.”

“My grandma loved coffee with milk. She added so much that I don’t think it was coffee anymore.”

“Did you ever try it?”

“I didn’t. Well, maybe as a kid?” He tilted his head as he tried to remember. “I would prepare her coffee all the time...”

“That’s so sweet.”

He took a sip of coffee. So did you. For a moment both of you remained silent, and although it wasn’t uncomfortable you found yourself wanting to ask more about him.

You were out of practice in terms of social interaction. It was terrifying to admit, but the fear only made it truer. The blip changed and ruined lives, and while you were getting back on your feet, you still found yourself socially and emotionally stunted at times.

Joaquín didn’t seem to mind the silence. You wondered if he sought it.

Peacefulness and silence didn’t last. The front door opened unexpectedly and Bucky’s heavy steps cut the harmony of Joaquín’s and your breathing.

“I didn’t know you would be coming over,” Bucky grumbled.

Joaquín jumped off his seat. He took the file in his grasp and handed it to Bucky. “Sam wanted me to give you this.”

Humming, Bucky opened the folder. He gave the contents a quick read, then closed it again. “Well, you gave it to me already.”

“Right. Uhmmm...” Joaquín turned to the side and lightly bowed. “Thank you for the coffee, (Name).”

“Anytime,” you said, voice too enthusiastic even for your liking.

Joaquín gave you another smile before leaving the apartment, causing your face to flush.

You attempted to entertain yourself by washing the cups, but you still couldn’t believe you had spoken like a teenager with a crush.

Bucky leaned onto the wall. “I saw the way you were looking at Torres.”

“With my eyes?” you teased.

“With too much enthusiasm.”

“He’s cute,” you admitted as you twisted to look at him.

“Nope, not happening.”

“Not happening what?” Feigning innocence never worked with him, but you still liked trying. However, his glare told you this wasn’t the time to be playful. “Bucky, come on, I just admired the view. It’s not like I’m planning on running after him to ask him to marry me.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Do you believe me capable of asking somebody I barely know to marry me?” As soon as the question left your mouth, you added, “You know what? Don’t answer that.”

“He gave you the same eyes you were giving him,” Bucky said grumpily.

“He did?”

“Can you be serious for a moment?”

“Oh, Buck, I’m being more than serious.”

He rolled his eyes. “Is this my first time seeing you with a crush?”

“Do you find it charming?”

“You weren’t this cocky with him.”

“Were you eavesdropping?!”

“I thought you had another type of company. Wanted to make sure it was safe to come in.”

“That’s such a bad excuse.”

“Not as bad as your flirting.”

“Just because you used to be a good flirt doesn’t mean you still are. Be humble, Barnes.”

“I’m still better than you.”

You stuck your tongue out. “I’ll become the best flirt in the world. You’ll see.”

“Absolutely not. And Torres is off limits!”

“Awww, do you want him for yourself? Can I have Sam then?”

“You don’t even know him!”

“Sam or Joaquín?”

“Joaquín,” he grumbled.

“Whose fault is that? I couldn’t even get his number because you had to show authority or whatever macho bullshit is clouding your judgment.”

“My judgment isn’t clouded.”

“You need to get laid so I can get laid.”

“What’s wrong with taking things slow? The last date I went on was a disaster.”

“Nothing,” you assured him. “I just think you need to de-stress, have some clarity and see I just have a mild crush.”

“Mild?”

“Yeah. I was kinda intense in high school.” You feigned a shudder. “Dark times.”

“What about college?”

“We don’t talk about that. I had terrible taste.”

“See?”

You tried another approach, “We’re acting like children and I’m pretty sure we are adults. I pay taxes, dude, I can have a crush on whoever I want.”

“Of course. You’re a big girl.”

You could tell he was only going with your flow. But you would take it.

════════════════════════

Bucky sat in front of Sam. Brows furrowed as he went through the same file Joaquín had given him a few days ago.

He didn’t like the idea of going after anybody. He had left violence to the side already. Did this count as ruining it all so soon?

Glancing at Sam, who was expectantly watching him, Bucky sighed. “What about (Name)? What should I tell her?”

“I could send Torres—“

“NO.”

“Barnes,” Sam sighed, “you know we can trust him.”

“For this type of stuff. Not with (Name). You didn’t see the way he was looking at her the last time.”

“He might have a crush,” Sam conceded, “but you’re acting like he wants to murder her.”

“He might,” Bucky said without really meaning it.

Sam crossed his arms. “Do you like her or something?”

“Not like that,” Bucky replied, almost offended. “She’s like a sister to me, Sam. I care about her, I want to protect her.”

“By not letting her see people?”

“You don’t get it.”

“No, I do. And I know damn well this isn’t the right way to do it.”

Bucky scowled, yet knowing Sam wanted to say something else, remained quiet.

“Think about this. You’re worried something will happen to her while we do this, and I’m telling you Torres could keep her safe but you’re being childish because you think you should act like a jealous brother.”

“What if he breaks her heart? Huh? What then? She likes him!”

“He’s nice, of course she likes him! You should be glad he likes her too, dumbass.”

“She’s not ready to date people.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

Bucky shifted in his seat. “I’m not trying to be a dick, Sam. She’s been through hell.”

“Something might not even happen between them, you’re jumping to conclusions way too quickly.” Sam then added, “Unless both are into fast dating in which case things would be fine too.”

“You don’t know that. He could hurt her.”

“You already managed to run a background check on him and—“

Bucky interrupted, “How do you know?”

Sam nonchalantly shrugged. “I’d do the same.”

Bucky hung his head, staring down at the file on the small table. “Can I beat him up if he does something he shouldn’t?”

“He won’t.”

“But can I?”

“Will you shut up if I say yes?”

“Maybe.”

Sam withdrew his phone, tapped the screen a couple of times and brought the device to his ear. “Torres. Are you busy?”

Bucky huffed through his nose and then went back to read the file for the hundredth time.

════════════════════════

The forecast that morning had forced you to carry an umbrella and a jacket that you ultimately had to shed. It rarely rained around your workplace; you couldn’t say the same about your apartment.

You weren’t sure what type of natural phenomenon was at play —or fault, really— but you were not happy about it.

Hoping you hadn’t forgotten to close your bedroom window, you quietly wished your coworkers a good night and made your way towards the exit.

You found a face you seemed to see everywhere. Mostly due to your daydreams, but who could blame you apart from Bucky?

Joaquín slid his right hand off his pocket and waved at you.

Waving back, you approached him. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t home so I contacted Sam so he could ask where you could be and Bucky said you worked here so I came here.”

You couldn’t hide your smile upon hearing his convoluted explanation. “I imagined as much. What I meant with my question is why are you here?”

“Oh! I’m making sure you get home safe.”

You frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But we don’t want to take any risks.”

You didn’t know who was we exactly although you could assume he was talking about Bucky. And about himself. The realization made your stomach flip.

“Are we walking?”

“I drove here,” he explained, hesitating to make the first move towards his car.

You gave the first step forward, getting slightly closer to him. A whiff of his cologne hit you and just like that it was gone. He started walking too.

“Had a nice day?”

“It wasn’t too bad. How about you?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

You wanted to oh so badly ask what his ordinary was. Fuck, it was like you were having a crush for the first time all over again.

“So... are you staying at mine or...?”

“I’ll sleep here in the car.”

“There’s a couch right there. Kinda comfy if you ask me...”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“Please, you’ll be there because of me, it’s the least I can do.”

“It’s no problem,” he hurried to assure you.

The streets looked different from the car. Bigger. You were so used to public transport, to see people from afar — to perceive everything from the perspective of somebody trapped in a box that had been created to make things easier for them.

You didn’t feel small per se, yet people looked bigger too. It was as though you had forgotten that people outside of your bubble existed.

Friends were almost nonexistent in a world that still was trying to recover from a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The people you considered friends kept their distance from you and each other because they didn’t have other choice. Work, school for those privileged enough, debt, grief... all those things got in the way. And perhaps it was better that way for now. Everybody needed to heal.

An empty hallway greeted you. It wasn’t too late, but your neighbors kept mostly to themselves. Bucky preferred it that way.

You pushed the door open after unlocking the two locks, allowing Joaquín to get in first.

He shed his dripping jacket, bashfully hanging it on the coat hanger.

“Can I offer you anything to drink or eat?” you asked, placing your belongings next to the couch.

“Whatever you’ll be having.”

You tugged the fridge door open. “Are you allergic to anything?”

“Not that I know of.” He approached you, leaning on the kitchen bar. “Surprise me?”

“Oh, yeah, I will. With a visit to the ER.”

“Hey, it’d be a surprise nonetheless.”

You giggled and took a glance at him. The ghost of a smile crept into his face before he started laughing too.

“You don’t have a boyfriend that would get mad at me for staying here, do you?”

You chuckled. “No.”

“Are you even into guys?”

��I am.”

“That’s good.” Realizing he had sounded too happy, he added, “I mean... it would also be good if you weren’t, obviously.”

“I get what you meant.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, it’s cool.”

“Cool.”

Neither of you stopped smiling. You only moved when the fridge’s door alarm interrupted.

You ended up ordering takeout and talking to him past midnight.

But not every night was lighthearted. Such a thing was true to life and to this particular week.

Joaquín was a good distraction before and after work, but the moment the time to say goodnight arrived, worry heaved on your entire body.

You tiptoed your way towards the kitchen, desperate for a glass of water. Hoping the stream of water wouldn’t make too much noise, you filled the glass and stood in the middle of the kitchen, slowly drinking it.

“Can’t sleep?”

You jumped, splashing water onto you and in consequence the floor. A couple of days or so weren’t enough for you to be completely used to Joaquín’s voice. Albeit nice, it was still new.

He turned the light on. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

You clumsily placed the glass on the counter. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Sleep was elusive, something you had assumed was in the past. Insomnia had been your loyal friend throughout the blip, then grief joined.

Bucky was the closest thing you had to a family now. What if you had to grieve him too?

As though he had been reading your mind, Joaquín softly said, “He’ll be okay.”

“You sound so sure...”

“He’s strong and skilled. Sam is too.”

“I’m scared,” you confessed. “I don’t wanna be all alone again.”

He placed his hand on your shoulder. It almost burned you. “You won’t be.”

You pursed your lips. You had heard that one many times before.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just... you know...” You started laughing instead of truly explaining yourself.

But you didn’t need to explain anything. “It’s okay, everything will be okay.”

You laughed again, louder this time, nodding because what else could you say? That you couldn’t believe him if you wanted to?

He looked at you with worry. “Do you have any tea?”

You nodded once more, unable to speak as you continue laughing and pointing to the top cupboard.

“I’ll fix you a cup.”

Crying out of laughter, you sat at the small table, leaning on your forearms as you tried to watch him — the tears didn’t allow you to truly assess the damage.

Said tears worried you. The last time you had properly cried seemed to have been too long ago to be healthy.

Then again, not many people were in a healthy position as of now.

Before you could even realize what was going on, Joaquín softly set a cup on the table. “Sorry for not adding sugar, I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

Embarrassed due to the fact that you couldn’t stop laughing, you avoided his eyes and wrapped your fingers around the cup. “Thank you,” you mumbled.

“Hey,” he said softly, “it’s no problem, okay?”

You hummed, inhaling the scent of the tea before taking a small sip.

He made you company as you drank the hot beverage at your own pace. In complete silence, trying to hide from you that he was playing with his fingers under the table.

“Better?”

“I think so.”

“Do you need anything else?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have work tomorrow...”

How could you forget? You stood up with the cup in your grasp and went into the kitchen to wash it.

“I can wake you up for work if you want,” he offered.

“My alarm is loud enough.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said as if he was just remembering, “I’ve heard it.”

You huffed a laugh. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Before he could turn around, you called for him, “Joaquín?”

“Yes?”

“Would you keep me company until I fall asleep?”

“Of course.”

It felt strange to have somebody that wasn’t Bucky in your bedroom. Joaquín curiously eyed the room while you got comfortable in the bed — his eyes eventually landed on you.

He gripped your desk chair and took it out.

Before he would sit down, you told him, “You can sit on the bed if you prefer. That chair ruined my back.”

Considering the offer, he approached the bed, slowly as he looked at you in case you changed your mind.

You patted the empty space. “I don’t bite.”

Tentatively sitting down, he asked, “Why haven’t you changed the chair?”

“I like the color.”

He softly laughed. “It’s pretty,” he agreed. “Looks nice with your decoration.”

“Thank you.”

His hand brushed your forearm as the two of you shifted at the same time. Your face heated up, and now you wondered if his palm contrasted the softness of the back of his hand.

Joaquín cleared his throat. “Try to sleep,” he whispered, “I’ll be here.”

You took a deep breath before closing your eyes. Focusing on trying to remember what you had been thinking before falling asleep the last time you got some rest, you got lost in your own head.

The door creaked as it was pushed open. Bucky opened his mouth.

Joaquín brought his index finger to his closed lips, signaling for Bucky to not make a sound.

Joaquín looked down at your form, still fast asleep. Your head was on his shoulder, face semi-buried in his t-shirt.

Bucky watched as Joaquín softly removed your head from his shoulder, delicately making it rest onto the pillow — he then left the bed in silence and tucked you into the covers before leaving the room.

”Everything in order?”

Bucky grumbled in affirmation. “What was that?”

“She was worried about you. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Nothing else?”

Joaquín shook his head, hoping he was managing to mask his disappointment.

Bucky hummed. “Thank you, Joaquín. For everything.”

“It was no problem.”

Joaquín collected his few belongings in a minute, taking a glance at the ajar door that separated your bedroom from the lounge area.

“Bucky...”

“Mmh?”

“Could you text me when she wakes up or if she needs anything?”

Bucky stood silent for a few seconds. Seconds that for Joaquín felt like hours. “I will. Go home.”

════════════════════════

Having Bucky back at home was relieving. Except for the fact that he looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to spill it.

“Is there anything you want to say?” you yelled from the couch.

He stopped chopping carrots to lift his head. “Did you get Torres’s number?”

Turning the TV off, you pushed yourself to a sitting position and eventually left the couch.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Have you called him?”

“I sent him a meme.” You extended your hand, taking a piece of carrot. “He laughed and sent one back.”

“I assumed you would have asked for his hand in marriage by the time I would be back.”

“Ha ha, you’re so funny.”

Bucky snorted. You munched on your cube of carrot.

“Maybe you’re reading too much into it. He’s genuinely nice, you know? People can be friends regardless of gender.”

“What happened to wanting to get laid?”

“I doubt it’s mutual.”

“He likes you and you like him. That’s practically the definition of mutualism.”

“You said he was off-limits,” you accused.

“He isn’t anymore.”

“I didn’t get the memo.”

“Don’t get grumpy with me.”

“I’m not grumpy.” You pouted. “But what if he doesn’t like me that way? He’s a really nice person, maybe that’s it.”

“Oh my God,” Bucky exhaled, shaking his head. “You’re impossible.”

You whined, “Buuuuuuuuucky. Don’t be mean.”

“Don’t act obtuse then.”

“I haven’t dated anybody in years. I don’t know how to do it. He’s fun to talk to, don’t get me wrong — I’m the problem.” You sighed dramatically. “We should throw a pity party for me,” you sarcastically said.

“Why do you think I’m making lasagna?”

“I honestly thought Sam was coming over for dinner.”

Bucky blushed due to his inability to be subtle which was the most shocking thing you had learned about him.

Truth to be told, Bucky’s words stayed in your mind for days. You continued casually texting Joaquín, not sure if you should ask him out or let it go.

You wanted to, and it wouldn’t be the first time you had made the first move — that didn’t bother you. What bothered you was the mere idea of asking him out too soon.

Seeing your phone light up with Joaquín’s name and a message attached to it genuinely improved your day every single time.

It was so hard not to be in his orbit when apart from being handsome he was so nice and easy to talk to.

You liked him, you really did. You also liked that things didn’t feel awkward with him when you knew they would’ve been unbearable with somebody else. It was liberating.

Are you home?

Nope.

If you were looking for Bucky, he’s out on a date.

I know. But I’m not here to see him.

You’re there?

Yeah. I’ve been here for a few minutes now.

I’m having drinks with my coworkers. Two of them are celebrating their birthday. I can ditch if you need anything.

I wanted to see you.

I also wanted to ask...

Are you busy next Saturday?

Your heart skipped a beat. I’m not.

Eyes glued to the three dots that signaled he was typing, you finished your drink in a single swig.

Would you go out with me?

You can pick wherever we go, I don’t mind.

I would love to!

Was the exclamation mark too much?

Fuck, you felt like a teenager again.

And I don’t mind if you pick.

Why don’t we make that decision later?

Sounds good to me.

Sorry for making you wait outside for nothing.

I’m the one who appeared unannounced, but it’s okay. I got almost everything I wanted.

You’re making not ditching really hard right now.

Good to know I’m doing something right.

But you should hang out with your coworkers.

And be careful. If you remember, text me when you get home.

It was stupidly hard not to be smitten by him.

════════════════════════

“For the millionth time, you look fine.”

You glared at Bucky.

“He’s right,” Sam assured you from the couch. “You look fine, and it’s just a casual date. You’ll be okay.”

“Just a casual date?” you asked in a high pitch that surprised the three of you.

“He’s seen you in the morning already,” Bucky reminded you, lifting his eyebrows. “I don’t understand why you’re so nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” you defended yourself. “I’ve had these jeans for literal years and I’m scared I’m gonna rip them.”

“Take a jacket or coat with you just in case.” Sam offered the solution immediately.

You did as Sam suggested and carried your favorite jacket over your forearm.

In contrast to what you saw every morning, there wasn’t a single familiar face in the subway. As you checked the time to make sure you wouldn’t be late, you saw that one of your other friends had wished you good luck on your date.

The fact that somebody apart from Bucky —and Sam— openly wanted you to succeed at something outside of work improved your mood. You had lied to Bucky earlier regarding being nervous, less due to embarrassment, and more because you didn’t want to admit you were scared of still not knowing how to handle things when they went wrong.

Rejection was easier to take in comparison to the way things crumble after they seem to be going well. Rejection is quick, it eventually passes — regret and what-ifs potentially stay forever. You had the scars to prove it.

You had to walk a couple of blocks from the station to the place you would meet Joaquín at. The area was new to you, colorful and lively from what looked to be brand new businesses.

Upon arriving at the diner, you understood why Joaquín had chosen that place. It wasn’t crowded by any means, but it looked far from empty. It was the perfect middle ground for a first date.

Such observation didn’t ease up your nerves, yet giddiness couldn’t stop itself from bubbling up.

“Oh!” he exclaimed from behind you. “I was about to text you.”

You turned around. “I just got here.”

Joaquín silently stared at you, taking a shaky breath and bobbing his head open and closed.

He settled for a short compliment, easier to say than the jumbled mess of euphoric reactions he internalized, “You look great.”

“I—“ You weren’t expecting that. “Thank you. You look really nice.”

You might have been selling it short, he looked as handsome as ever and more — but you didn’t want to sound intense or say too much and scare him off.

He looked down for a moment, trying to fight the warmth crawling up his skin. “Thank you,” he said quietly before looking up once again.

His bashfulness was a good sign, it would be less awkward if both of you felt the same way about the prospect of a first date.

“I found this place by mistake a few weeks ago,” he told you as he opened the door for you. “Their coffee is great.”

He let you choose the table, arguing that it was your first there and he wanted you to have the best experience. You appreciated his effort.

Bucky and Sam mentioned you could come across as being uncomfortable around others, he must’ve been under the same impression.

In all fairness, it was less about being uncomfortable and more about being scared of oversharing.

“Are you a big coffee guy?”

“Kind of. I’m used to instant coffee even though I don’t like it so I try a different one every time I can.”

“I have a coworker who is obsessed with that stuff.” You chuckled. “But they drink it cold.”

Joaquín huffed a laugh. “It might taste better like that.”

The conversation deviated from mindless small talk to work, and then to your interests — it was refreshing to know you shared a few and even more so to find he was open to giving things he didn’t know a try.

After eating, the two of you decided to take a walk just so you could talk some more.

Your hand brushed his by mistake. Joaquín looked down. He pressed the back of his hand against yours, momentarily pushing his fingers between yours.

“Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

He pulled away then slid his hand under yours. Clasping his palm against yours, he stared at your face in search of your reaction. “How about that?”

“Also yes.”

He smiled. “Good thing I listened to Sam when he said I wasn’t imagining things and you were into me too.”

“You know, I almost made the first move.”

“What stopped you?”

You shrugged. “Maybe I would have drunkenly asked you out if you hadn’t beat me to it.”

He hummed yet made no further comment.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I do, I do!”

“Buuuuuuut?”

“It took us a while to exchange phone numbers. Imagine if it had taken us the same to go out?”

“Oh God, we would be stuck third-wheeling Sam and Bucky.”

“I’m so sorry you have no escape from that,” he joked.

“I just hope they never have sex when I’m in the apartment or I will need therapy I can’t afford.”

He lightly squeezed your hand. “I’ll rescue you, don’t worry.”

It was your turn to smile. “I’ll take that as a sign that I’ll be seeing you again.”

“As long as you don’t see it as a threat...”

You giggled. “I would never.”

According to the blog posts you read online, guys seemed to like it when the other person assured them they had a good time with them. You hoped he had gotten the hint.

In case he hadn’t, you said, “There was this coffee shop near my childhood home that I used to love... They had the best chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted and the coffee was delicious too. I heard it reopened...”

“We should go there next time.”

“Sounds good. I haven’t visited the neighborhood in a while.”

“Any reason in particular?”

“I don’t know anybody around there anymore.”

It was getting late and you knew your time together would be over. At least for tonight.

He walked you toward the subway station, swinging your intertwined hands. The conversation didn’t seem to end, he could thread on any topic and you would’ve listened to him until his voice was hoarse and his throat dry.

You couldn’t leave without properly telling him what a great time you had. It was too soon to know what would happen, you weren’t naive, but you also really fucking liked him.

“I had a great time,” you reassured him. “Thank you.”

“Me too. I hope it repeats soon.”

You did too. All those nerves had thankfully paid off.

He scratched the back of his head with his free hand. “I’m sorry if I’m being too forward, but... can I kiss you?”

“You’re not being too forward.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

Joaquín licked his bottom lip and cupped your cheek with a hand. His other one tightly held yours, giving you time. You wetted your lips too. Then he leaned in and kissed you.

You basked in the kiss’s bliss. Short, sweet, perfect in every single aspect. The kind of human contact you had longed for years and had been too scared to look for.

His eyes were on you as you opened your own — shining with a happy glint.

“You’re even prettier from up-close,” he commented lowly, hand still on your face.

Your gaze fell to his wrist for a second. Then you held his. “I could say the same to you.”

“Thank God.” He giggled.

“You said you needed to wake up early tomorrow...” you said, much to your own dismay. You didn’t want to be selfish.

“I’ll wait for your train to get here.”

And so he did, and you almost cursed the stupid giant can when it arrived.

You reluctantly let go of his hand. “Text me when you get home just so I know you arrived safely, yeah?”

He nodded. “Promise.”

“Goodnight.”

He kissed your cheek. “Goodnight.”

#joaquin torres x reader #joaquin torres x plus size reader #joaquin torres

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yellowocaballero · 3 years

Text

Percy Jackson meets a Landlord, a Tax Accountant, and a Tree Growing in Brooklyn

“Golduck, use hydro pump!” Percy whispered. He moved Golduck so he hit Batman on the chest, and then hit Batman a few more times for good measure. “Die, landlord!”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?”

Percy almost fell out of his chair.

He twisted his torso around, looking behind him with wide eyes. But the only person there was a white girl, no older than him. She was wearing a really severe expression to match her tight little blonde ponytail, and she was carrying a clipboard in both hands. There was a piece of string tacked to the clipboard, with a pen tied around one end. She looked like she asked the school librarian if she could help shelve books.

Percy decided instantly that she hated him, so he decided to hate her back.

“Aren’t you a little young to be doing your taxes?” Percy sneered. “Buzz off.”

That made her mad. The girl’s angelic little chubby face twisted in rage, and her grip on the clipboard turned threatening. “I’m accounting the chores! And I could do taxes if I wanted!”

“Yeah?” Percy asked, unimpressed. “Name one tax.”

“Sales tax,” the girl said instantly.

Damn. She got that one.

Short fic that I am considering extending into a much, much longer fic. Thank you Ami for the translation of the card (I would definitely translate it yourself, it’s important). The entire backstory and premise of the AU isn’t immediately apparent, but if I extend the fic it’ll be more explained (spoiler: Luke Castellan, age 14, said fuck Olympus and moved all of Camp Half-Blood into Brooklyn to live in a child-run utopia). I haven’t reread Percy Jackson since I was 10, I barely remember anything that happens or any of the characters, so don’t expect much - but aren’t the best children’s novels the children’s novels that live in our head, anyway?

Rest under the cut.

2005

180 Olive Apartments was a dump. Batman said so.

Batman felt very strongly about this, and as a result Percy did too. It was not Percy’s own, private, personal opinion. Batman informed Percy that the apartment complex was shabby, gross, not in Staten island, and smelled weird. Batman made a very convincing argument that they should live in Staten Island instead, which Percy had done his best to relay to Mom. Mom hadn’t been impressed.

“This is the best place for us, Percy,” Mom had said, with that pinched look on her face. It was the ‘Percy’s Making My Life Really Hard’ face. Percy had been seeing that face a lot lately. “Let’s just try to make this work, please?”

There was no ‘best place’ for them, and Percy and Batman knew that. But that was another thing Mom didn’t want to hear.

So Percy had suffered in stoic silence as Mom dragged him out of the motel, made him miss the new episode of Pokemon, and forced him to ride the subway forty minutes into smelly Brooklyn so he could sit in this smelly chair outside of some smelly office in a smelly apartment. From inside the office, Percy could hear the faint rise and fall of voices: Mom’s, light and lyrical and very polite to people who were not Percy; and some landlord guy. His voice was really light and high too, but he was probably a real jerk.

Percy was so bored he could die. He sat up on his knees, turning around so he could prop his elbows against the dusty windowsill with grimy frosted glass. He plopped Batman down on the dirty windowsill, smearing his chipped feet through the tracks of dust. Parkour. He unzipped his pocket and grabbed his slightly dusty Golduck rubber toy, putting it in front of Batman. Golduck was from McDonald’s, so it had a bad attitude.

Percy waggled Batman. You have a bad attitude, Golduck. You can’t live in my house anymore, because you get water all over the tile and you make the wood go bad.

Golduck jiggled when Percy shook him. It wasn’t Golduck’s fault that the water went everywhere! Water just goes places sometimes. Golduck was a water type, so water followed him around and got into wood and made the wood go bad and made other people mad at him. It’s not Golduck’s fault, so don’t make him move!

I don’t want to hear it, Batman said. I’m going to make you live in a crummy motel and make your Mom go on a lot of boring websites looking for new places to live. The motel’s bananas are going to taste weird. Mom’s going to cry a lot. And it’ll be all your fault because you’re a bad kid.

“Golduck, use hydro pump!” Percy whispered. He moved Golduck so he hit Batman on the chest, and then hit Batman a few more times for good measure. “Die, landlord!”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?”

Percy almost fell out of his chair.

Percy decided instantly that she hated him, so he decided to hate her back.

“Aren’t you a little young to be doing your taxes?” Percy sneered. “Buzz off.”

That made her mad. The girl’s angelic little chubby face twisted in rage, and her grip on the clipboard turned threatening. “I’m accounting the chores! And I could do taxes if I wanted!”

“Yeah?” Percy asked, unimpressed. “Name one tax.”

“Sales tax,” the girl said instantly.

Damn. She got that one. Percy just rolled his eyes instead, sitting back down on his seat and stuffing his toys in his cargo pocket. He couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed, even if he knew that he wasn’t too old to play with Batman and Golduck. What did tax accountants know, anyway.

The girl sniffed, and made a show of inspecting the grimy windowsill and carefully making a note on her clipboard. Her pen had a pom-pom at the end. Percy bet she made hearts over the top of her ‘i’s.

“Nick’s been slacking,” the girl muttered threateningly. “I’m surrounded by incompetents.”

“Why is it Nick’s job to clean the leasing office?” Percy asked, unimpressed. “Don’t you have a janitor for that?” Was Nick the janitor? If this pinched-face little girl was harassing cleaning staff then Percy was going to file a complaint.

But the girl just looked surprised, as if the idea of having a janitor was foreign and strange. “No janitor would even make it through the doors.” But then her eyes narrowed, as if a thought just occurred to her. “Wait. How did you…”

However Percy did what, he would never know. The door to the leasing office cracked open, and Percy scrambled off his seat in excitement. The girl stood stiffly at attention, clipboard on her hip, as Mom stepped out of the office. She looked very tired, but weirdly relieved.

There was a man right behind her, just as white and blonde as the girl. Percy wasn’t surprised: he could pick out a real ‘daughter-of-the-manager’ type right away. The man didn’t look like every other landlord Percy had ever seen - no moustache, for one - and he didn’t look old enough for the part anyway. He wasn’t old, but he definitely wasn’t an elementary schooler. He had a broad, honest face, but he was too muscular and strong looking and landlordey to be trustworthy.

Percy decided the weird landlord, with a mop of yellow hair like golden thread and a scary eyebrow with one long scar cutting straight through, was twenty five years old. Clearly the result of nepotism in the landlord industry.

Mom smiled when she saw Percy, who quickly pasted on his most innocent expression. Her eyes caught on the girl, who was glaring daggers at him. The landlord’s eyes caught on Percy’s own wrinkled nose. “Percy, good! Are you making friends?”

It was not an innocent question. It was a ‘please don’t ruin this for me too, Percy’ question. It was a ‘I’m very tired and I need you not to make things hard’ question. Percy was well acquainted with them. But maybe the girl was too, because when the landlord looked at the girl she also abruptly quailed. “I hope you’re being a good host, Annabeth.”

The unfortunately named Annabeth and Percy glanced at each other in silent and instant understanding.

“Yeah, Annabeth’s really fun!” Percy said instantly. He was not going to ruin this for Mom again. Or, at least, he would try to hold off ruining it for her as long as possible. Even if this stupid apartment wasn’t in Staten island. “She was telling me about -”

“Taxes!” Annabeth said smoothly, a much better liar than Percy. “And Percy was telling me about Batman.”

They both looked very cute and very low matinence on command, the perfect picture of children who did not make their moms live in motels.

Percy was rewarded when Mom smiled in relief. She put a hand on Percy’s shoulder, squeezing tightly. “I’m so glad. Percy, this is Mr. Castellan. Why don’t you say hi?”

“Hi Mr. Castellan,” Percy said obediently. “My name’s Percy Jackson, I’m in third grade.”

The landlord smiled at him with closed and tight lips, but it was Annabeth who spoke in interest. “Percy like Percival, King Arthur’s knight who searched for the Holy Grail?”

Uh, whatever? “Percy like the Greek hero Perseus,” Percy said shortly. “But I’m not Greek. My Grandma was from Guadalajara.”

Annabeth’s eyes widened. She glanced at the landlord, whose expression was impossible to read. “Are you sure?”

“I know where my own grandmother is from!”

“She didn’t say that you didn’t, sweetie,” Mom said, and Percy guiltily shut up. “Percy, why don’t you and Mr. Castellan talk in his office for a little while? I have to fill out some paperwork, and I think you two have a lot to talk about.”

Percy looked up at her with wide eyes. Mom never left him alone with strangers. And paperwork already? “Are we moving in today?”

“You two talk for a bit,” Mom said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”

When Percy was pushed into Mr. Castellan’s office it felt more like he was a Roman Christian being tossed into the lion’s den in punishment for heresy. And when Mom settled him into an uncomfortable and weird-smelling chair in front of the teetering desk and kissed him on the temple before leaving the office, he abruptly felt like he had jumped into Grandma’s book of Bible Stories.

Mr. Landlord’s office was as dirty and run-down as the rest of the complex. The big box AC rattled with clinks and whirrs as it shuddered against the sticky summer heat, and the landlord’s desk was covered in thick stacks of paper and chewed-up pencils. When he sat back down behind the stained wood, the chair seemed just a little too big for him. He sunk strangely in it, the vinyl flaking off and floating into the ground. There were a lot of crayon drawings taped to the wall, and there was a light dusting of crumpled post-it notes on the ground.

Mr. Landlord tried to smile at Percy. Tried being the operative word: when he smiled it was too thin and without teeth, more pained than reassuring. It didn’t reach his watery blue eyes.

Percy hunched on the rickety chair. This guy set off every alarm bell he had, which was plenty. And no, it wasn’t just because he was a guy, Ms. Brown. For added security and self defense, Percy casually slid a capped ballpoint pen on the old desk in front of him into his sleeve. Batman was always prepared, and Percy was too. He can hack up any creepy guy and protect Mom any day of the week.

The landlord smiled wider, even worse. “Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name’s Luke Castellan, and I’m the supervisor here. Running into Annabeth first thing’s pretty bad luck, huh?” At Percy’s unimpressed eyebrow, he quickly added, “Annabeth keeps the whole place running, really. She’s...pretty convinced that this complex rests on her eight year old back, so she’s a little stressed out all the time. If she gets frustrated at you, don’t take it personally, okay?”

So she does help shelve books. Percy was a keen judge of character. “Why does she do it? You can’t make her be the superintendent. That’s child labor.”

Luke Castellan stared at Percy unblinkingly. He blinked about as often as a snake, but five times as quickly: as if he didn’t want to let you out of his sight for even a second. Finally, he said, “I’m fifteen.”

Percy gave Mr. Luke the stink-eye, clearly communicating that he did not trust even fifteen year olds (who were high schoolers, and even less trustworthy than adult-adults) as far as he could throw them. Especially fifteen year olds like Luke: who were too tall, with too-mature eyes and a particularly unhappy expression. Percy communicated perfectly that there was nothing trustworthy about this family of juvenile landlords, but he was just too polite to say so.

But that just made Mr. Luke sigh, as if he was tired instead of angry. “Annabeth’s my...ward, I guess. I just look after her. But she doesn’t like being looked after, so she makes up for it by looking after everyone else. I’m not saying I do a good job.”

He’s a landlord and he has a ward? Percy finally perked up. “So you’re like Batman?”

Mr. Luke stared at him unblinkingly, before finally saying, “Yes, except Batman doesn’t have superpowers.”

Percy had the sense he was being made fun of. “You don’t have super powers,” he accused, crossing his arms. “Nobody has super powers.”

Mr. Luke smiled, wan and weak. “Not even you, Percy?”

Percy froze.

Five seconds too late, Percy made himself laugh stupidly. People were quick to believe that Percy was stupid, and sometimes Percy helped them think that. It got him out of trouble sometimes - not always, but enough that it was useful. “If I had superpowers, I’d run super fast everywhere just like the Flash!”

But Mr. Luke just hummed, and flipped through some of the papers in a folder in front of him. Percy abruptly began sweating. Mom had given him those papers. They were records. This was like every time a principal had drawn up ‘proof’ against him in a court of law. “Your mom said that you both had to move out of your Queens apartment because it flooded.”

“I didn’t unscrew the taps,” Percy said reflexively. “They just came loose! I didn’t even touch them! I didn’t touch the boiler either!”

“The boiler?” Mr. Luke flipped back a few pages. “Oh, right. Your school.”

Percy slouched in his seat and folded his arms across his chest, stewing. He always sounded guiltiest when he denied it. He should go back to playing dumb. Pretend that he had no idea what water was. He had gotten away with it when he was six during that one birthday party at the aquarium, but something about being a third grader meant that people expected that you have basic observational skills.

It was stupid. There was no way to win. If he said that he didn’t do it then he sounded guilty. If he tried to point out how it was impossible for him to break the boiler and destroy the gym or whatever, using facts and logic and a rhetorical argument like the Youtube videos taught him, then they just told him he was making excuses. Sometimes Percy had the impression that everybody just wanted him to supervillain cackle like the Joker and brag about how terrible he was. Maybe he’d give that a shot once he entered middle school. It seemed like an evil teenage thing to do.

Percy Jackson was a liar, a thief, a cheat, a menace, and a bad kid. There was nothing more to be: not for someone like Percy.

But Mr. Luke didn’t threaten him, or give him ‘one last chance’ or anything. He just leaned forward, hands folded on the desk. His thumb was worrying at a small starburst scar on his hand, betraying a strange nervousness.

“Percy, can I talk to you man-to-man?”

Percy, who did not like men, squinted at Mr. Luke suspiciously. “Why.”

“Because this isn’t a topic for a kid. It’s a topic that...kills children, and turns them into little adults. I wish I didn’t have to broach it with you. But I think that you haven’t been a kid for a long time, Percy, and I don’t want to insult you by pretending otherwise.” Mr. Luke frowned, and Percy found himself involuntarily straightening. What was he talking about? “You were right. There was no way for you to have flooded your apartment, much less twice. There was no way for you to ruin your gym, or damage that aquarium. Much less...everything else in your file. No kid is that much of a miniature hurricane when he isn’t even trying. It sucks. It’s not your fault. And now your Mom’s credit score is so bad that she can’t afford another apartment. If it wasn’t for the fact that she saw our really generous listing in the paper, she would have had to move you two away from her home.”

She was thinking of moving them both to New Jersey. Percy’s lips tightened, and he knew that Mr. Luke saw it.

“This is an apartment building that provides shelter to a lot of special cases, just like you. It’s...full of kids who break things when they don’t mean to. Kids with a parent couldn’t handle them, or who couldn’t protect them. We have a lot of ways to keep families like yours safe, and to give you a home.”

Percy stared at Mr. Luke. He seemed deadly serious, as serious as anybody had ever been to Percy, despite the crazy stuff he was saying. Safe? Safe from what?

Safe from those weird, giant dogs that chased Percy and tore off half his jeans? Safe from that old lady in the deli with the slobbering bag and beady eyes? Safe from broken water pipes, from ruined floors and busted walls, from Percy himself?

Finally, all Percy could think to ask was, “How do you know that I’m a special case?”

“Because not just anyone could see that listing,” Mr. Luke said. “And - uh, no offense - but you are one of the most obviously inhuman children I’ve met in my life.”

Percy’s jaw dropped in complete, unadulterated rage, and without even stopping to think through his actions he withdrew the ballpoint pen from his pocket. He uncapped it, fully intending on doing something dramatically yet harmlessly violent with it, but he didn’t get the chance.

The ballpoint pen turned into a gleaming bronze and silver sword. Percy screamed. Percy fell out of his chair. Percy did not get the opportunity to look cool and dangerous at all.

****

And now Percy had Greek god stuff to worry about!

Didn’t Percy have enough problems? He couldn’t stay in a school, they couldn’t keep an apartment, their new landlord didn’t blink enough, and now he was the kid of a Greek god? Apparently he had been spending his entire life running from monsters and he just hadn’t noticed? That explained the stupid scary dog!

Percy knew much more about Greek gods than the average kid, since Mom was a huge fan. Yeah, Mom! Apparently you were a big fan! Jesus, Mom!

What’s this dumb stuff about Poseidon! That had freaked out Mr. Luke, and made him ask a lot of questions like ‘are you sure’ and ‘there’s a lot of minor gods who like to pass themself off as someone more impressive to mortals’. Then Annabeth, who had been listening at the door like a sneak and who ran in all heroically when he almost accidentally stabbed Mr. Luke, freaked out and called his mom a liar. His mom!

Then Percy tried to stab her with his new sword. Mom made Percy apologize for trying to stab Annabeth. Mr. Luke made Annabeth apologize for insulting Percy’s mother. Percy was beginning to worry that he and Annabeth may be mortal enemies.

Mr. Luke had tried explaining a bunch of stuff about monsters and ‘the Sight’ and why Percy’s life was terrible to him, but Percy already knew his life was terrible and he wasn’t interested. Percy ended up furiously swinging his new sword at a tree outside as Mom signed a bunch of forms and talked with Mr. Luke some more, but she hustled him home pretty quickly afterwards.

Percy didn’t give the sword back. Mr. Luke, wisely, did not ask for it back.

Mom kept on making a face on the subway back to the motel like she had been waiting her entire life for Percy to ask all of these questions, and she was preparing herself for it. She kept on glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, watching Percy kick his feet against the hard plastic seat. It was obvious. But Percy didn’t have anything to say to her. They spent the rest of the day in silence, just focusing on packing up and getting everything ready to move. Jacksons were practical, Mom said.

Jacksons were practical. Percy was practical, too. It was only in the deep pits of night, as Percy lay in bed holding up his sword and watching it reflect the soft lamplight above the creaky wooden table where Mom was doing work, that he asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The sword was really cool. It was pure bronze, with the middle gleaming pure silver. There was some Greek writing inscribed down the center that Percy had no idea how to read, although he had spent an hour scouring the internet looking for a translation. The handle was tough white cord, stiff and starchy but fraying a little at the edges.

Mr. Luke said it was named something, but Percy forgot what it was. He had been a bit busy almost impaling the guy.

Mom’s fingers froze over the keyboard. Her back was turned to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but her spine was stiff and rigid.

Finally, after a long silence, she said, “I didn’t want you to think that there was anything different about you.”

“So what?” Percy asked, his eyes pricking rebelliously. Stupid water. “You let me think that I was a bad person who ruined your life?”

“Percy, no!” Mom turned around, expression crumpled. The dim light showed the heavy bags under Mom’s eyes in sharp relief. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, baby. None of this is your fault, you understand? That’s what this business with your father means: that none of it was your fault. That’s all it means.”

If that was true, Percy thought, then why couldn’t she have told him before?

But Percy was afraid that if he said that, then he would start crying, and Percy was way too old to cry. Only weak little babies cried.

“I’m sorry my dad’s a loser who ruined your life, Mom,” Percy said.

“Percy…”

But Percy refused to answer her, putting his sword down next to him and pretending to go to sleep. He kept it next to him in bed all night, gripping its hilt tight, and the firm and cool pressure of the steel in his hand soothed him when the thought of a father didn’t.

***

They moved in the next day.

The next day! Percy was livid. He barely had any time to pack up his toys into his backpack, and Mom didn’t even have time to help him back up his blue Spider-man suitcase. He had to do it all by himself, and then Mom came in and told him he was folding everything up wrong and that he had to redo it. If she had so many problems with it, she should have helped him and gave him more than one day to move out of their dumb motel!

When people moved on TV there were always moving vans and buff dudes in baseball caps. But Percy was much better at moving then any of those idiots: all it took was a suitcase (of clothes and toiletries and stuff) and a backpack (of toys and school supplies and stuff).

Percy’s backpack had the Power Rangers on it, in glossy plastic. Its contents were always the same, through every move: Batman, Golduck, Bulbasaur, Blue Eyes White Dragon, Raphael, a stegosaurus with a missing tail named Hedward, and a little book full of pictures of him and his mom and some cards and stuff. There was a picture of him and Grandma in the apartment in Staten Island that he lived in until he was six, and a 5th birthday card she had given him six months before she died. Written inside, in her looping and faded script, was a sentence Percy had read over and over and over again. ‘Tu angel de la guarda trabaja horas extra por tí. Así que acuérdate de decirle gracias ¿Sí, mi niño?'’

Percy was inclined to agree with her. God should pay his guardian angel overtime. That, or pay one to go to Olympus and collect child support.

The image was funny to Percy - the idea of his angel with her wings and halos showing up at Poseidon’s door and tapping her watch as she held out her hat. It was so funny, it was the first thing he told Mr. Luke when they met him at the gates to the apartment complex. Mom was huffing behind him with her two suitcases, while Percy was busy juggling his own backpack, suitcase, and sword.

Mr. Luke looked alarmed to see the both of them, although Mom had called ahead and arranged to meet him here. Worse, Annabeth was next to him, still holding a clipboard. She didn’t look alarmed, just mad.

“Did you bring Riptide onto public transportation?” Annabeth squawked. “You have no sense of discretion!”

Was Riptide the name of the sword? Whatever. Percy would have named it Hurricane. “I know words you don’t know too, you don’t have to brag,” Percy said flatly.

“Yeah, the gods are filthy little child support evaders,” Mr. Luke said easily, instantly endearing himself to Percy. Mom rolled her eyes as she put her suitcases down, but she was clearly fighting a smile. “Don’t worry, I dragged them to court. Sued them for all they’re worth.”

“How on earth did you do that?” Mom asked, interested.

“Trickery and rhetoric,” Annabeth said proudly.

“Swords,” Mr. Luke said.

“What did you squeeze them for?” Percy asked, excited.

Mr. Luke winked. And he still didn’t ask for his sword back. Maybe he wasn’t all bad.

The apartment complex itself wasn’t nearly as big as a lot of Brooklyn complexes, looking more like the little apartment complexes in Queens that Percy was used to. It was three separate three-story buildings arranged in a square, with one side holding the small leasing office and a parking lot. It was open-air, with the apartment doors opening directly outside. There was a really big courtyard in the center, and despite himself Percy got a little excited.

It was awesome. There was a huge, sprawling tree right in the center of the courtyard. It was gigantic, bigger than any tree Percy had ever seen in his life. It seemed like it didn’t even belong in New York, like it was a transplant from the California Redwoods or Canada or something. Its leaves were waving in a nonexistent breeze, and something about it just seemed so magical and otherworldly to Percy.

But that was only half of the awesome things. The other awesome thing was that there were kids everywhere.

The tree provided shade to a couple scattered gangs of kids, sitting around and laughing. There was a rusty set of monkey bars, which some kids were playing on, and there was a big dirt rectangle where other kids were hitting each other on the head with wooden plastic swords. There were groups of girls eating lunch, and a gang of boys playing soccer in the corner that made Percy immediately want to jump in and play too. Percy dominated at soccer.

“The East and South buildings are where we all live,” Annabeth informed Mom. “The West building is where the training rooms and storage rooms and administrative rooms - that’s my office - and everything is. It also has guest units for the local spirits that like to visit. We just had ten Bacchae stay for a week. They were backpacking to Woodstock. We have very good inter-community relationships here.”

“That’s amazing,” Mom said faintly. Mr. Luke was smiling faintly, eyes fixed on the big tree. Percy found himself staring at Mr. Luke, watching with interest the soft but firm pride in his eyes. “Luke said that this property’s safe from…”

She glanced at Percy quickly, cutting herself off. But Annabeth just huffed.

“I almost got eaten by monsters twenty times when I was seven,” Annabeth informed Mom imperiously. “We’re not babies. Connor Stoll says if you’re old enough to get eaten by monsters then you’re old enough to know that they exist.”

Percy decided immediately that he liked Connor Stoll, and maybe even Annabeth too.

“The tree protects us,” Luke said. “Wherever the tree is, we’re safe. Not even the gods date step foot beyond the leasing office here.”

“Because of the tree?” Mom asked.

Luke smiled - sharp, piercing, and strange. “Sure, let’s say that.”

But Mom just frowned. She looked over the courtyard of kids - some of whom were already starting to whisper and stare. Annabeth waved at a gaggle of identically blonde children, and for the first time Percy wondered who she was the daughter of. Probably the bossiest god. Maybe Athena. Or, like, Hephaestus. Definitely Hephaestus.

“You said that there’s nobody over eighteen here,” Mom said to Luke. “Luke, there’s a six year old on those monkey bars.”

“If you’re under thirteen, you live with someone over thirteen,” Luke said to her. Annabeth was still frowning in disapproval at Percy’s sword. He stuck his tongue out at her. “Two people to a unit, we try to pair the oldest with the youngest. Lucy lives with Henrique, he’s seventeen. It’s the best we can do.”

“Surely there has to be someone…?”

“Adults have never helped us. They never will.” Luke looked away sharply. “We’ve been in Brooklyn a year. You’re the first adult who’s made her way here. Most other parents with a kid as powerful as Percy would have -”

He cut himself off sharply, glancing at Percy, and Percy scowled up at him. He thought that Luke was being honest. Maybe he was just another old guy afraid to say what everybody else knew.

“I’ll help Ms. Jackson settle in,” Annabeth said suddenly. She held out her hands to Percy, who reflexively hugged his luggage to his chest. “You guys are in unit 5. It’s on the bottom floor. If you flood it, then we can fix it okay. Give me your luggage, I’ll put it in your unit.”

Percy stared at her, overwhelmed with that simple signal of care. No threats about if he flooded it, no warnings or sickly sweet faux-concern. Just understanding, and acceptance.

He silently gave her his bags.

She seemed surprised when she felt how light they were. Percy shrugged awkwardly at her face, crossing his arms tightly around her chest. “Don’t touch my stuff, okay?”

“Sure,” Annabeth said, before pausing a beat. “We have a TV in our place. #1. Do you want to come over tonight and watch Winx Club?”

“Yeah,” Percy said, overwhelmed. “Sure.”

Mr. Luke put a hand on Percy’s back as Annabeth guided Mom to a corner unit. Percy couldn’t help but notice that the door to the unit was already propped open. Wait - there were people going in and out!

There was a tall, buff teenager, carrying two chairs underneath each arm. There was another group of three teenage girls, carrying a table between them. Two other younger kids were carrying boxes and laughing. They were bringing everything into the unit, and other younger kids were running in and out with cleaning supplies.

From a distance, Percy saw Mom stop in her tracks. Annabeth tugged at her shirt and got her to bend down, whispering something in her ear. A boy with sandy brown hair ran up, taking Mom’s suitcases from her and bringing them into the unit.

“Your Mom mentioned that you were missing some furniture,” Mr. Luke said. “The Hermes and Aphrodite kids all pitched in to get your home looking like a home. I hope you’ll like it.”

Percy clutched his sword to his chest, speechless.

Mr. Luke smiled down at him, that same wan and weak smile, and put a hand on his back. He gently pushed Percy forward, towards the tree. “Come with me for a minute?”

They silently approached the sprawling, ancient tree. As they came closer, Percy could see that its bark was gnarled and knotted, with perfect handholds for climbing and perfect boughs for resting in the summer sun. He could already see a few kids resting in high boughs, taking a nap in the humid and sticky sun.

“Percy, I’d like to introduce you to someone.” Mr. Luke’s voice was quiet, like he was in church. He looked up at the tree, peering far into the leaves as if he was trying to find something hidden within them. “This is Thalia. Thalia, this is Percy. He’s the newest member of the family. He’s also your cousin.”

Cousin? Percy looked up at Mr. Luke, eyes wide. “I’m related to a tree?”

Tilted up at the tree, Percy couldn’t see Mr. Luke’s expression. Maybe that was on purpose. “Thalia’s a kid, just like us. Daughter of Zeus. I used to think that she was the closest thing to an adult I knew, but...I’m as old as she is, now. I guess one day soon I’ll be older than she ever got to be.”

Oh. The tree was, like, from the ashes of some dead girl. Awkward. Percy stared at the thick and arching roots of the tree, feeling weird.

“Thalia, please protect Percy. I can already tell that he’s going to grow up to be very strong and brave. Please help us make sure that Percy never has to be strong. That he’s never brave. I can already tell he’s going to need a lot of your help.” He looked down at Percy for the first time, and for the first time Percy could see just a little warmth in those icy blue eyes. “You’re going to have to work overtime for him. So make sure to say thank you, Percy. Okay?”

“Thank you, Thalia,” Percy said obediently. He bowed awkwardly, uncertain what to do. The sword scraped awkwardly against his thigh. “Thanks for letting me into your home.”

“Welcome home, Percy,” Mr. Luke said, and for the first time Percy almost believed it.

#pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson #annabeth chase #luke castellan #pjo fanfic #percy jackson fanfic #I'm bouncing between a lot of different projects right now and trying to decide which one to dedicate time to #I promise I DID take a break and I will CONTINUE TO DO SO because work's been exhausting #but sometimes that means just writing low-effort self-indulgent stuff #anyway my friend had to sit down and explain the worldbuilding of pjo to me and I was like WOW THATS FUCKED so I wrote this #I also dislike some of the ways that pjo handled percy's backstory so that's being addressed #my writing #I FORGOT THE CUT LOL

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dilfbane · 3 years

Text

Your Weeping(Your Need For His Touch)

Summary: When things go south on a mission, you have to confront more than just the sketchy town, cartoon villains, and one-bed hotel room you’re forced to share with Loki. You have to come to terms with not only the consequences of being captured, but also the God of Mischief’s feelings for you - Because for all that he might be an asshole, sometimes, he really does have a heart. Written for the Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words 6k Follower Writing Challenge by @startrekkingaroundasgard

Pairing: Loki/(Female)Reader

Warnings: Descriptions of injuries and medical treatment, as well as discussions of the inevitable mindset around sacrificing oneself for the mission that I feel like being part of the Avengers would entail. Also swearing, because at its core, this story started out as a bit of a crack! fic.

Word Count: 7.8k.

A/N: So apparently when I have mental breakdowns they result in me writing crack-fic that takes a 180 veer into angst and fluff for absolutely no reason. For the sake of the crack-fic, in this timeline Loki was forced to help the Avengers take down bad guys directly after the end of the first Avengers movie, so… Is that a confusing plot hole I didn’t know how to account for except by making this AU? Maybe. Did I do it anyway?…. Yeah. This really was meant to be a crack-fic about Loki and the reader confessing their feelings set in the bizarre world of meme culture, I didn’t realize there were going to be feels in it until it was three in the morning and all of a sudden this happened. That being said, your girl went there, so enjoy!

“Oh, shit,” You say, as you take in the grimy hotel room. The walls all smeared in what looks like dried blood, the putrid smell of rotten eggs, a crack-screened television with a fine dusting of some suspiciously white powder. And, of course, “There’s one bed.”

“Hmm?” Asks Loki, turning towards you, briefly, from unpacking. He had dumped his suitcase(Magically plucked out of a chaotic liminal space) unceremoniously on the bed’s scratching, pilling coverlet without so much as a second glance at the rest of the room. And why do you need a suitcase, anyways?? You wonder. It isn’t like we’re planning to be here that long. In fact, you hoped with every fiber of your being that you’d be here for as little time as possible, because this town might actually be the sketchiest place you’ve ever seen in your life; no small feat, for a bona-fide member of S.H.I.E.L.D.

You’ve kicked alien ass on a mutated purple Mongolian death-worm three thousand feet over New York City. You’ve run reconnaissance to rescue debatably-magical items sequestered away in an ancient cave labyrinth plastered in paintings and untranslatable runes, gunfire and what could only be described as the baying of hellhounds in the near distance. You’ve fist-fought a gigantic hive-mind robot in a field of artificially sentient feral steel suits - You’ve even survived Tony’s parties.

Yet none of those scenarios hold a candle to this fucking town.

And Loki, the asshat, seems utterly, competently - no, maniacally - unfazed.

“There’s one bed,” You repeat, into the air.

“Ah,” Says Loki, straightening.

“You don’t see that problem with that?!”

“Should I?” He asks you, walking across the room in long, graceful strides to stand in front of you. He wears the same expression he always wears, amused and indifferent, but this time with the addition of a single, elegantly-arched eyebrow. You drop your head, refusing to meet his somewhat-curious gaze. It physically hurts, how attractive Loki is. Not for the first time, you curse whatever god decided that you and him would once again be mission partners - in this case, you belatedly realize, and choke back a thick laugh, said god is, unsurprisingly, Thor.

If you survive this, you make a note to beat his head in with Mjolnir. As it is, you are here in this room with Loki, with perhaps twenty IPP agents and a reckless poisoner dogging your every move, and there’s a high chance that you won’t live long enough to navigate whatever the hell sleeping with your crush-who-has-murdered-men. Ok, so ‘murdered men’ isn’t entirely accurate. More like ‘caused the murder of men inadvertently through his schemes’. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, right now.

And what about Loki? He is still staring you down, like you’re some wind up toy moments away from going off. Funny, that, you think. If ever there were a time to not have a mental breakdown, it would be here, with him. You’ve crossed a lot of moral lines in your life, but you will be damned if you let Loki Laufeysson see you cry. Loki is graceful. Composed. Sarcastic. Lithe. Rolls his eyes at almost every statement that comes out of somebody’s mouth. But he is, also, beautiful. Shockingly comforting, in his own nihilistic way. You don’t know what it says about you that you find comfort in statements like, Try not to die, you know that I hate funerals. Part of you - most of you - doesn’t want to. But it gives you strength, somehow, to shrug off the day and ground your flailing mind in evading Loki’s calculated manipulation. I won’t show you my weakness, you think to yourself. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

“No,” You tell him - too quickly, he’ll pick up on that - “You’re right, you shouldn’t. It’s fine. We have - a lot to deal with, is all.”

Loki nods, seemingly accepting your answer, but his eyes are still narrowed, watching you like he’s calling your bluff. You talk right past that look - have to, to keep yourself sane, to not think about the one bed that looms large over this entire conversation. It doesn’t even look like a comfortable bed.

“We have two days,” You say, to stop yourself thinking of it. And, also, to talk your way through your disarmingly disjointed thoughts. Loki nods. It would really help if you said something, you think. Swallow the thought, hot and thick, down your throat. What’s the point of a mission partner if you can’t even soundboard off them? “The Pink Cobra could strike anyone, anytime. The IPP is planning something in New York - “

“Isn’t everyone, these days, planning something in New York?”

He sounds regretful, and for half a second you want to offer him the reassurance that his very presence offers you. But you are sure he doesn’t know what he does to you - with his words, with the sidelong glances that you’ve felt linger on your form far too long in the heat of a fight. If you didn’t know any better, you would say Loki worries about you.

“We have to shut him down,” You say. Focus on the Pink Cobra, because honestly, that’s easier. “Find out where he manufactures. Not get poisoned,” You add, at the end.

“Yes,” Loki says, tone dripping with sarcasm, “We should certainly try not to get ourselves killed. Failing that, I suppose, we can at least request that no one in H.Y.D.R.A gets autopsy access.”

“Loki?” You ask. Rhetorically. “You’re not helping.”

He smirks at you, then. He knows.

“What do you propose that we do then?” He asks, taking a step towards you, getting so close that you can feel his hot breath. “About the Pink Cobra?”

“Find him.” You say, fumbling, blush rising high on your cheeks.

Tonight?

One bed?

You are screwed.

***

When you were a kid - think really little, Capri Sun pouches and still believing that true love wasn’t complicated - your father told you that every story needed a good supervillain. You aren’t sure if the Pink Cobra counts as a good supervillain, but he’s the least confusing one that you have to deal with - and, as far as villains go, a fine enough challenge to face. He’s like a madman out of some high fantasy novel, with dark eyes and a sable-sewn cloak and a penchant for poisoning. He is adept in all the arts of the woman’s murder; he has a keen grasp on the side-effects of arsenic and camphor and tansy and cyanide and strychnine. He’s been found to have dropped crystal phials filled with belladonna and ricin while fleeing a scene. If all else fails, he’s more than practiced with daggers.

In other words, he’s the kind of villain that none of you, with your flying suits and telekinesis and super-strength, are anywhere near prepared to waylay.

The plan, as far as team Avengers is concerned, is easy:

You and Loki. This town, where the webs of his manufacturing production and the few glimpses of information that Thor has totally legally excavated out of his captured minions has led to. Two days until some undefined grand attack bears down on the city you live in. Two days to find the Pink Cobra and kill him. The more time passes with no headway, the more you think that this is an impossible task, but you know what Tony would say. We have our best minds on it.

The thing is, you aren’t sure that that’s true. The minds that have been set to this task are you and the God of Lies. It’s hardly the best they could have come up with, considering your track records. Actually, you take that back - Loki was a good choice for this mission, because, not three hours after arriving in this hellhole of a city, he seems to have somehow developed the ability to read minds. More specifically, yours. And that could prove stunningly useful.

The scene, as it stands: Loki, sprawled across the lumpy bed, three pairs of crisp white shirts, a plaid scarf, and a full set of Asgardian battle armor neatly hung in the mothball-infested closet, flicking through channels on the grain, cracked television with an apathetic expression and one arm thrown haphazardly over bent leg. Propped up in such a way that he could jump or spin or parry at a moment’s notice, yet perfectly, devastatingly languid, leafing through Nick Fury’s dossier on the Pink Cobra. He looks at you like a god, you think, and then remember. He is one.

You, on the floor, because on top of all the other things this hotel doesn’t have, like two beds, there isn’t anything even resembling a desk, shifting through a glowing, holographed file archive from headquarters that barely runs on your severely outdated laptop. It’s a point of pride to you, keeping the laptop - not because it’s good, but because it’s survived five years of being an Avenger, which is something not even all the Avengers can claim to have done. You’re also fairly certain that Tony’s attempts to update the firmware had infested it with some sort of renegade virus. Elevated above your screen, the files are split into two groups, the sum total of everything that you know about both of the groups that are avidly trying to kill you.

There’s the wealth of information containing the Pink Cobra’s poisoning sprees, but those aren’t the files that interest you, and you know that Loki’s not much interested in them either. That honor falls to the fanatics at the IPP, the Imminently Predictable Psyops organization, which you know even less about than you do about the Pink Cobra, chief among which the fact that they need a new name. Imminently Predictable Psyops?, Tony had said, when you’d finally apprehended one of their proxies. What do they think this is? Some type of ARG?

What you’ve gleaned, from months worth of studying the network, is that they operate as a sort of cringe-oriented death cult intent on ‘reshaping the universe through meme agents’. They’d been on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar for a long time - upwards of a year - before anyone at team base learned they existed - which, you can almost hear Loki saying, was a failure in the extreme. Currently, it was your job to obsessively worry over whether they were going to send ‘meme agents’ to bust through the door of your seedy hotel room and off you both. You hated - truly loathed - how casually Loki was taking it all.

He’s acting like nothing was wrong with this situation, when, in fact, you’re ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that this night will end up with one or both of you dead. It is, to say the least, disconcerting.

Kill switch, the holograph files read. Cross-referential Neil Cicierega acoustic weaponry. Your mind sees the words, but doesn’t comprehend them, and you run a hand up to rub at your bleary eyes with annoyance. You risk a glance upwards; on the bed, Loki scans page after page after page with disinterested nonchalance, punctuating the flipping over of each document with a noncommittal hum; as if to say, I understand you. As it to say, This could be worse. You try to slip into that mindset. Certainly, things could be worse.

Actually, though? Not really.

Because, for all the world, the holo-file in front of you just said ‘Pepe The Frog Chaos Banking Laser Initiative’.

“What the fuck does that even mean?!”

“Sorry?”

You whip your head around. Loki, raising an eyebrow. Damn that - perfect - eyebrow.

“Sorry,” You echo back at him, rubbing your eyes again, perversely glad for the break, even if it is this awkward. “I … said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Marginally,” He tells you. “Yes.”

“Sorry,” You - well, it’s not a whine, not exactly. You’re tired, and there’s no way you’re going to sleep tonight, so you feel like your tone’s justified. “I didn’t mean to do that. I think I’m just - this is. Completely nonsensical.”

“Show me?” He asks, and you snort. He could totally just look up, but -

“Do you have a P.h.d in memes?” You ask him, and, before he can answer, “Because unless you have a P.h.d in memes, I don’t think you’ll be able to help.”

“You’d be surprised,” Loki says. Vaults over the bed with the speed and grace of a panther, filling the air with a cringing wheeze as the rusty springs bend underneath him, and landing in front of the holo-file, pushing you aside slightly to get a better view. When his fingers brush against your side, cool and firm, you flinch.

“Tired,” You offer, when he shoots you a momentarily concerned look. “Just. Need to sleep, later, I think.”

But Loki is already scanning the file, and when he looks up, not five seconds later, you want to hit somebody. Preferably, you think, him.

“I would assume,” Loki says, “That they’re using time travel in order to obtain and store monetary value by way of a Pepe-the-frog inspired laser array.”

“Oh,” You say. You blink once. Blink twice. Still have no idea what that means. “Right.”

“Do you not know your memes, love?” He asks you, smirking. And oh, if you don’t feel things.

“I don’t go on the internet, much,” You tell him. “Too busy, you know, trying not to get killed.”

Loki shrugs. Sidles away from the file. The groan and squeak of those springs tells you he’s back on the bed, giving you some well-needed space, but you can’t bring yourself to look.

“You can sleep,” He says, “If you want.”

“Ha!” You yelp/choke/embarrassingly bleat out into the room’s stale silence. Underneath the rotten eggs, you catch a whiff of bong-water. “No.”

“There’s a bed,” Loki says, cocking his head pointedly and patting the lumpy covers.

“Yeah, that’s - kind of the problem.”

“Why?” He asks you.

“You - really?”

“I was only asking,” Says Loki, re-focusing his attention on whichever Pink Cobra document’s next in the folder. “If you aren’t comfortable telling me - I merely thought, seeing as you were tired, you might take this opportunity to rest.”

“Yeah,” You tell him, “Of course, that’s - nice of you.”

It comes out stilted. Patently off. If he notices, he doesn’t say.

“Are you going to - um. Do you need help, with the rest? The ones I have seem kind of hopeless. I mean,” You say, when he doesn’t look up, “I don’t think that we have to worry about getting demolished by trans-dimensional Agarthian wormholes.”

“Of course not,”” Loki says, scoffing and incredulous, gaze, you are sure, on his page. “If they wanted to kill us, they’d send someone with a gun.”

In reality, it’s several someones.

***

“You jinxed it,” Is the first thing you tell him, when the men leave you. They’ve thrown you into a one-room warehouse, rickety shelves stacked with cartoonish tubs of green goop and mildewing boxes filled with grenades and machine guns and what appears, at second-glance, to be twelve-fingered latex gloves. You’re tied wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle, and your throat feels uncharacteristically parched. Fear, you tell yourself. Apprehension. “Can’t you just - use your seidr to magic us out of this?”

If you could see him - which you can’t, because you’ve been tied back to back - you’d swear that Loki was glaring.

“Do you - do you have a plan?” You ask, after a moment.

“I’m working on it,” He says.

“That’s all?” You say. “We were dragged out of our drug-dealer’s hotel room by a bunch of robed men with guns and the only thing you have to say is ‘I’m working on it?’”

“I’d get it done faster,” Says Loki, “If you wouldn’t interrupt me.”

“Ok,” You tell him, “No interrupting you. Got it. That’s - Alright.”

Unfortunately, not interrupting him is easier said than done, because without the sound of your voice, you are left to your thoughts.

The men had broken in nearly immediately after Loki’s glib, sardonic retort to your worries, shooting the glass out of the room’s already half-smashed-in window and kicking the door in simultaneously. A bit much, isn’t it?, Loki’d asked, and you had wanted to smack yourself on the forehead. Really not the time, you had hissed, but Loki hadn’t seemed to hear you. Do you do this with everyone they send you to assassinate?, he had asked, instead. The men had been dressed in long, billowing cloaks of bright red, embroidered with orange snakes framing a picture of Beaker from the muppets with early 2000’s emo hair. Chaotic meme agents, you had thought to yourself. So that’s what they’re supposed to look like.

You hadn’t picked up, until now, on the snakes.

“They’re working together,” You say, when you can’t stand the playback of Loki being disarmed after spinning and tossing his silver daggers at the men, of the men kneeing him in the balls and twisting your arms behind your back, holding a gun to your head to stop you from trying to fight. Waking up in the back of a van that smelled like microwaved fish. Being tossed like garbage onto the floor of the warehouse, painted in bruises and cuts from the small pieces of glass that had dug their way into your skin. “The IPP and the Pink Cobra.”

“Obviously,” Loki says. Sharply.

“Did Tony not -“

“Stark,” Loki practically growls, and, ok, you’re not losing it but that did make you jump in your skin, “Is an idiot. He wouldn’t know how to connect the dots if they were presented to him in a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode.”

“That’s - You had that on Asgard?” You ask him, momentarily distracted. You wish that you could see Loki’s face, and are very glad that you can’t.

“That isn’t the point,” Loki says.

“I know,” You tell him. You’re scared that your voice is trembling. Scared that he can tell, even though he’s not facing you, how badly your fingers are shaking. Scared that he knows your worst, biggest secret -

That, despite being an Avenger, you are anxious. That, despite him being Loki, despite him being here, and wonderfully, infuriatingly himself, he cannot help you, this time.

You are going to die, covered in cuts and abrasions, on the floor of a meme network’s headquarters, at three a.m in the morning. They are going to come in with umbrellas that shoot poison darts or the ex-presidents Point Break masks and mow you down, and Loki has no fucking plan. You feel the ropes tighten where they’re knotted, itchy and fierce, and you have to fight to keep yourself from whining in terror and nerves. Whining isn’t what Loki needs right now. Whining’s not going to save you.

What is going to save you, you try and remind yourself, is Loki. If you can shut up. If you can let him decipher what needs to be done. If he can figure out some way to do it before the blowtorch-wielding robed vigilantes or some disincarnate meme god comes back and draws their electronically-sharpened fingernails across your throat hard enough to split skin and sinew, send waves of blood down the front of your shirt like a river of sweet, thick red honey and toss your corpse in a ditch by a highway and -

“Y/N?” It is foggy, barely-heard. Posh. “Y/N!” Louder, this time. There are fingers on your wrist, bent backwards to grip you. Squeezing, insistent and there. “Breathe.”

Fuck, you think. You’d started to hyperventilate. To shake, with a full-body tremor that forecasts a great, unstoppable wave of sobbing panic. And Loki had noticed. “I need you to trust me,” He says. “Trust me to get us out of this. Can you do that for me, darling?”

He has never called you darling before, but God how you’ve wanted him to. You feel like you’re being stabbed in the heart - because there is no way he means it, no way that this is anything other than a desperate and cruel attempt to get you to calm down. Something that belies how obvious you are. How needy you are. How pathetic. And yet -

And yet, he doesn’t say it meanly. He speaks like he cares about you, and in the face of your impending death, you want to think Loki cares. You’d let him say anything, do anything to you, right now. More than that, though, more than any of that - as you think back to meeting him, to your blossoming late-night friendship and twitchy banter and the quiet moments you’ve shared with him in-between battles -

“I trust you, Loki,” You tell him, and feel your breath quiet in you. Feel yourself growing still and calm with the certainty that Loki will do as he’s said.

That you will survive this.

That -

“Good,” Loki says. Not relieved, but determined. Leaving you no room to argue.

“So what do we do?” You ask him.

“Nothing,” Says Loki, and you can hear his wide grin.

“Nothing?” You ask him, gawking.

“Nothing,” Says Loki. He gives your hand a tight squeeze.

And then the Pink Cobra walks in.

***

This will end badly, you think. It’s about the only thing that you can think, preoccupied as you are with -

It might be easier not to -

Fuck.

The thing is - and you really do try not to move, not to groan, not to scream - the thing is, you thought that when Loki said he had a plan, that said plan wouldn’t involve you being collateral damage for a LARP-er who’d most likely broken out of an asylum. I wish that we could be back in that shitty one-bed hotel room, you think to yourself, and - alright, not the best timing, but it rips a laugh out of you, spiraling and unhinged, before you feel the Pink Cobra, resplendent in coral cloak and villainous swagger, slug you one in the jaw. It hurts worse than you’d thought it would - you’ve never really gotten injured on missions, you’re usually good at talking yourself out of things, which is why the Avengers keep you around. You can speak any language, as long as you’ve heard it once, and your customary daily awkwardness can shift into persuasion like flicking a light-switch on.

Usually, though, you had an opportunity to speak, and weren’t rendered speechless by -

Loki, if you’re being honest. How much you want to kiss him. How much of an asshole he is. Trust me, he’d asked you. Can you do that for me? The Pink Cobra’s grip is sharp and bruising on your side; he’s slipped his fingers up your shirt and is pressing the point on your side that threatens to make your knees buckle, making bile rise up in your throat, driving you wild with the aching need to flee. He has one hand clasped over your mouth, now that you’ve quieted, and you can feel something - pain, and a pill - pressed snugly into his palm. He will force it down you, you know, if Loki so much as sighs wrong.

You’ll never trust him again.

You wish that you knew what the time was. If you end up dying at 4:20, you’re going to throw fists with somebody in hell.

You wish, also, for aspirin. Avengers training has left you woefully unprepared for the reality of getting punched in the face. You can already feel your jaw starting to swell, taste an egregious amount of blood. You’re pretty sure that the force of the blow knocked a tooth out.

What strikes fear into you, though - a fear somehow deeper than the absolutely bone-chilling, blood-curdling knowledge of what the Pink Cobra might do to you - is the look you’d seen on Loki’s face in the seconds after he’d grabbed you, before it fell into practiced, amused apathy. He’d gone white, and his eyes had blown wide. His fingers had spasmed with anger.

He’d looked as scared as you feel.

And you have no idea why.

It isn’t like you’re anyone special. Not any more than the rest of the team. Less so than most of them. You aren’t a god, like Loki and Thor are. You don’t have stealth-assassin training, like Bucky, or super-strength like Steve. You can’t seamlessly pilot mechanical suits over the New York skyline like Tony, or use a crossbow like Clint, or beat thirty people in single-hand combat like Nat, or change into a nitro-fueled rage machine like Bruce.

You can’t do anything, much.

Except, apparently, die.

You squeeze your eyes shut, not letting yourself look at him. You won’t let Loki’s disinterested face be the last thing that you see. It makes the Pink Cobra’s words all the worse, when he speaks. His voice is dark and sick and timbered, and you feel maggots crawling over your skin as he slots you closer to his body, tightening his already painful grip on you so that you can’t move even an inch away from his tensed, coiled muscles.

“So,” He says, “You are superheroes? How long did it take me, to apprehend you? Ah - three and a half hours? Tell your boss-man, do better next time.”

“I’ll pass it along,” Loki says. His voice sounds different. You can’t place why. Still won’t look.

“You won’t,” The Pink Cobra says. You can feel his shoulders rise, then fall. Feel him smirk. You love Loki’s smirk - secretly delight in drawing it from him, sometimes - but the Pink Cobra’s only fills you with yet more terror. You’ve pursed your lips tightly shut against the intrusion of his hand, but when Loki speaks he forces your bruised, bleeding jaw open and shoves the pill into your mouth. The pain of your injury tears through you like white lightning and you thrash, trying to escape. A keening sound claws its way out of you, fevered and anguished, and you feel your hands, still bound up in ropes, trying in vain to push off and away. The man behind you sighs, and then aims a swift kick at the back of your knees, which sends you down before you can so much as yelp. Your knees hit the floor, and he’s holding you by your hair now, twisting it so hard that you’re almost sure he’ll scalp you. He’s pulled something - too big to be be a knife, some kind of shortsword?! - Out from beneath his cloak, and is pressing it up against the column of your throat. You feel the weight of the capsule between your teeth heavily now, and realize what it means in the split-second before the Pink Cobra bends and whispers, Your choice; stale and rancid into the shell of your ear.

Next, he addresses Loki.

“You’ll be wanting to know what our plan is,” He says. Our, you think. We were right. “Hmm? I know how you people are. Always wanting to know. Tell me this, Mischief Man. What will I get, if I tell you? What price are you willing to pay?”

You know what this is. You know it like the ache in your heart when Loki brushes you off. Like the safety you feel in his arms. You open your eyes. Take in Loki’s face - he’s trying to hide, but you know, you know how he feels. You know what he’s going to choose.

And you know that you can’t let him choose it.

“You’ll let her go,” Loki asks, “If we let you leave here?”

“The thing could be managed.”

No, you think. No, Loki, don’t! Whatever the Pink Cobra’s going to do, whatever the IPP’s planning, knowing’s worth more than your life.

“One thing I want to know,” Loki says. He’s twirling a knife of his own, a slim silver number he keeps on him at all times, and you feel the blade on your own throat start to dig in - not enough to draw blood, but enough for you to feel it. The threat of it. The promise of it, and the coldness of the gleaming metal. “You and the IPP? How does it fit?”

“You want information from me?” The Pink Cobra asks. Lets his blade bite you, just barely, and the strength it takes for you not to scream is more strength then you’d known you possess.

“Yes,” Says Loki. “It’s not like I’m asking for much.”

He meets your gaze. You meet his. You hope that he cannot read it. His eyes are so worried, so desperate, you nearly break down.

“I suppose,” The Pink Cobra says, “That you’ve earned it. Getting here - getting this far - it must have been no easy task. Fine. There is no Imminently Predictable Psyops organization. They were a - what do you call it? Red herring? A scent of blood for the shark.”

“You fabricated them,” Loki says. “Why would you fabricate them?”

He is losing his composure, you can tell. You will never be ready for this. He will never be ready for this. You hope that he will forgive you, and you know that he never will, and you swallow the pill in your mouth.

“Because it was fun,” The Pink Cobra says.

And then your body knows pain.

***

“He didn’t think I would do it,” You say. Your mouth feels thick, clotted with blood and shock, and your body is one raw, gaping wound, but the giddy feeling of victory has begun to course through your veins. Pure, unfiltered adrenaline. You had waited for the moment of death to come, and it hadn’t. The pill is fake, your mind had screamed. But there’d been one thing left, that might work. You had breathed as slowly as you possibly could, forced every muscle of your scared, writhing body into single-minded limpness, rolled your eyes backwards into your head, drew one last breath in, and fallen. Twitched, for a few seconds, like a rag-doll. Then made yourself still.

Loki had slit the Pink Cobra ear to ear, beaten him within an inch of his life as he bled out, screaming like a man deranged. He’d left him a wet, bloody mess on the floor, and the blood had run down the not-quite-steady plane of it, pooling around you and mixing with the blood from your jaw, from the evening’s earlier glass cuts, from the deep, burning stab wound the Cobra had got on your arm.

You breathe, and your body knows pain.

You look at Loki, and your body knows pain.

He is shaking. Visibly shaking. His hands are clenched into fists at his side, and he looks as pale as bleached bones. His eyes are shot red - he had sobbed, when you fell, and a howl had torn through his body. You don’t know what to do, what it means, what the hell even to say to him. His cheeks are tear-stained, his breaths ragged.

You blink, and your body feels pain.

“We won,” You croak out. “Loki, we won.” It hurts worse than anything you’ve ever felt in your life. “I think he broke one of my ribs.”

You don’t mean to say that last part, but you do, and you are the one crying now, because it feels like he probably has, and you can barely even stay awake through this pain. It feels like the Hulk is pulling you limb from limb. Like all of those nightmares you’ve had where Loki decided to leave you - to go back to Asgard, and never speak to you again.

Stupid, you think. He won’t, again. Not after this.

Loki still hasn’t spoken. He’s looking at you, and his eyes are wild. Desperately, jaggedly roaming your body. His fists twitch with every new part of your body they land on.

“That bad, huh - Oh, fuck.”

And just like that, the tension leaves Loki’s body. The dam that had held him firmly in place is broken, and he’s running towards you with none of his usual grace. Dropping down by your side. He hoists you, and you hiss, and the tears won’t stop coming, so you bury your face in his shirt, nose pressed at the crisply ironed collar. Don’t care that it’s bleeding, because Loki’s here now. Holding you. Keeping you real. He’s got one hand stroking your hair and his touch feels right, nothing like the Pink Cobra’s, and he’s whispering: You brave, precious, idiot, how dare you, how dare you throw your life away like that?!

“It worked,” You exhale - it’s the most you can manage. You would laugh, if it wouldn’t shred you to pieces. Loki cradles you fiercely, hands grasping at the sweat-and-blood soaked fabric of your shirt, running over you as if he doesn’t believe you’re alive. “It - hurts,” You get out. Barely. “Loki, it - I can’t -“

“Don’t,” He tells you. His voice has gone brittle, choked with thorns. “Don’t talk. Don’t - Don’t ever do that again. Do you hear me? You will never do that again.”

If I need to, I will, you think. And you wonder if that’s why you’re here. Wonder if that’s why you’re strong. You wonder, and hurt, and believe. Feel the strength of him, clutching you like you’re the only thing in the world, taking in greedy lungfuls of your weeping, your need for his touch.

You can’t talk, anymore. It hurts too badly. But you surge, upwards, up into where he’s holding the back of your head, pressing your forehead into the dark, warm space under his jaw that smells like smoke and peppermint. Loki is taller than you are - you fit right into the curve of his neck, and his long curls curtain you in a bubble of warmth and content.

“Promise,” You say, but it comes out unintelligible, and Loki’s hands are running, so gently, over your skin.

“What was your plan?” You ask him, forcing it out of your body.

“Hush,” Loki says, “Later.”

There might not be any later, you think. Not like this.

***

In the hotel room, an ocean of scattered pages and ceiling mold and blessed privacy, you balance, cross-legged, on the bed. The wind blows wet and cold from an earlier rain through the busted out window. You have managed this out of sheer stubborn-ness, because it is the most that Loki allowed you to do. You’d passed out, twice, on the journey back - he had magicked you there, though it had taken a considerable amount of effort that you weren’t sure you really deserved - and had immediately propped you up on the pillows and stooped to ruffle through his suitcase, emerging not long after with binding tape, cat-gut thread, and a needle so sharp you could feel it slicing your flesh. You had opened your mouth to protest, but Loki had silenced you with a glare that could fell Director Fury. So you had gone quiet, and caved, letting him kneel over you on the distinctly lumpy mattress and begin inspecting your wounds. It had taken a few tries and a Please to convince him to let you sit on your own, and it hurt much more than the manner in which he’d arranged you. You were starting to, slightly, regret it.

“You don’t have to do this,” You say, pulling it from bleeding lips. He shushes you with a harsh, stern tut. “You’re not my mother,” You tell him.

“You could have died,” Loki says. There’s a snarling undercurrent to it that you can’t even start dissecting. “What were you thinking?” He asks. It is easier, though still painful, for you to answer him - he had used nearly half of his Thor-limited magic reserve to perform a basic stasis spell on your injuries, but the spell wouldn’t last forever. You’ll need stitches, he’d said, choking it out like he was the hurt one when he’d seen the number the Cobra’s blade had done to your arm.

“I’ve had worse,” You say, grinning weakly.

“Are you lying to me?” He asks you, with the tone of someone who’s distinctly not in the mood for joking.

“I thought,” You say. Steel yourself. “I thought you weren’t going to do what needed to be done. So I - Did it myself.”

“What needed to be done.” Loki says, enunciating every word.

“We couldn’t let him walk away,” You say, meeting his eyes. Emerald, clouded with fury. You don’t let yourself flinch from that anger. You don’t let yourself run from your choice. “You know what he would have done.”

“I don’t,” Loki says. “I know nothing. I know - I know that you think that your life means so little I wouldn’t care if you were gone. That I could - Live, without you.”

That’s… different.

“And I know,” Loki continues, “That I told you to trust me, and I meant it.”

“I do,” You say. There is no hesitation. “I trust you - Loki. Of course I trust you. It’s not - it wasn’t -“

“Stop talking,” He snaps. Gentles, when you jerk your head away, blink back a fresh wave of tears. “You need rest,” He says. “And - This is. This is going to hurt.”

You nod.

“Best get it over with, then.”

“You should keep your eyes closed,” He says.

“No! I want - I need to look.” You bring your eyes up to your arm, which he’s settled onto bed’s chewed, scratchy quilt without you realizing, but Loki tilts your head up with a barely-there graze of his fingers, achingly gentle to avoid aggravating your swollen jaw. He holds your gaze for a long time. Doesn’t look mad, anymore.

“Are you sure?” He asks you. Like all of this could be over with, if you wanted.

“How bad it could it be?” You ask back.

The injury is horrendous. You’d thought - honest-to-God, you’d thought the pain was terrible, but you weren’t ready for what your arm has become. The line of the wound runs in a craggy jigsaw from just under your shoulder to the tip of your elbow. Small wonder you can’t move it, can barely think through it at all.

“Y/N?” Loki asks, “Are you -“

“Fine,” You say. Blink, and your body knows pain. Try not to let how scared you are show, when you look back up at Loki. The Pink Cobra’s dead. You shouldn’t be scared, anymore. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?”

Loki sighs. Long and low and sad.

“Will I have to - “

“Bite,” Loki says, and shoves something - the sleeve of his shirt, crusted in blood which you realize, sickeningly, is yours - into your mouth. “It’ll help.”

It doesn’t, but he holds your hand through it, hushing you through the pain with furrowed eyebrows, thread and needle flying deftly through skin, air, skin again. His fingers move precisely, deliberate, quick, and when, on one stitch, you audibly whimper, he pauses to lean down and press a soft, utterly unexpected kiss to your hairline. You are unable to fully express how much it means to you, so you do the next best thing and kiss him yourself, pressing him back once he’s finished the last of his stitches and breathing all the the words you can’t say into him. You press every fear and gratitude and lingering nerve into the warmth of his lips, wending your fingers through his dark hair despite the pangs of agony still thrumming through every inch of your body. Your face hurts, but the kiss is all you’ve ever needed and more, and Loki is so, so gentle with you, pulling away with creased eyebrows and a look of genuine concern.

“I wanted to,” You tell him, mustering all of your strength. “It didn’t hurt.”

“Stop,” He tells you, voice cracking, “Stop lying.”

“I’m not,” You say. “I wanted to, Loki, I did.”

“And you wanted to -“

“No.” You are vehement about it, for a broken-ribbed, broken-jawed, freshly-stitched person coming off the high of his teeth and his tongue. “Not that, I swear, never that.”

“Why did you do it, then?” Loki asks. He has steepled his fingers under his chin, and his narrowed eyes pierce through you to the soul. You couldn’t lie to this man, you think, if your life depended on it.

You know that you have to tell him, this time. Really tell him. You don’t.

“”Why didn’t you use your magic?”

“You know why,” He says, and you do. You’d remembered it as the white pill turned to white powder in your gums, as the Pink Cobra’s knife had carved its way into your flesh. Thor had put a set limit on it, as condition of Loki’s release - Proof, he had said, We can trust you. Loki had thought to save it for later, that you wouldn’t need him right then. He had thought you’d talk them out, to safety.

You’d failed him.

“You didn’t,” He tells you, voice raw. He goes to grip your chin, to force you to listen to him, but with a glance and ill-concealed wince at your purpled jaw he thinks better of it. “You think that you failed me? You let yourself be - be beaten and stabbed - just so people you’ve never met in your life wouldn’t die, and you call that a failure?” He runs a hand through his hair. Bites back a snarl. Drops your arm. “I need you to listen to me,” Loki says, “Very, very carefully. You’re going to tell me why now, love. And then we’re going to fix it.”

You raise an eyebrow. Worse than he does, you’re aware.

“Sleep,” He amends, with a pointed look at the bed underneath you, “And then we’re going to fix it.”

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, “And I feel like I just got run over by a truck.”

Loki huffs, a puff of warm air that you feel, from how close he still is. A grin twitches at the edge of his lips. It sets off sparks inside you.

“I thought -“ You say. Shake your head, and restart. “You would have let the Pink Cobra attack. You would have let him just walk away, and I couldn’t just - let that happen.”

“Enlightening.”

“No,” You tell him, “I mean it. I couldn’t - I’m not - I’m not worth more than anyone else. We’re the Avengers. It’s our job to save people, Loki.”

He’s regarding you carefully, eyes still narrowed, all vestiges of softness gone from his face. When he opens his mouth, it’s to close it. Form thoughts. Discard them. Exhale.

“My mother once told me,” He finally says, “That I would never know what it meant to be human until I found the person who made me want to bleed the world dry. Take all of its’ suffering, all of its’ cruelty, and leech it out of the very fabric of time, just to keep that person from anguish, from harm.”

“I don’t -“

He holds a hand up. You still.

“She never said they would infuriate me,” Loki says. “She never said they would make me laugh, or smile, or question my sanity on a regular basis. She never said that they’d try and get themselves killed, and that I’d have to watch, and that I would feel like my heart was being ripped from my body and torn to a bloody pulp; that I would make the sky rain blood and fire at the sight of it alone. But she was right about one thing - Many things, but also this. She told me that it wouldn’t matter. That I would - love you - anyway.”

“You don’t,” You say, not daring to hope. It’s an automatic retort.

“Foolish girl,” Loki chides, and you blink back fresh, stinging tears. How long have you wanted to hear Loki say that to you? How many sneaky looks have you stolen in the heat of your missions, just to see his smart mind and tricky magic at work? How many nights have you sat up together, sequestered from your insomnia in a bubble of hard-earned banter and peppermint tea, fighting the tight, coiling urge to push aside your steaming mugs and pull him into your needing?

He could not - he can’t - feel the same.

“Loki,” You say, stumbling over the words, “You can’t - This is - This is me we’re talking about.”

“Is there anyone else here,” Loki asks you, “That I could be talking about?” He seems nonchalant, now, as if this - this cruel fucking joke, when you already feel you’re on fire - is merely a fact of his life. “We’re going to leave this excuse of a town, and get you - proper care. Fix it. Because I will not, on my honor, watch you suffer in pain. But first, you’re going to sleep.”

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, and feel your resolve as it shatters. You cling to the statement like it’s the last remnant of the girl you were and the woman that you’ll never be, “And the shower doesn’t work. And I’m covered in blood.”

But when you look at Loki, his eyes twinkle, mischievous.

“Will you stay with me?,” You ask him, biting your lip.

“You astound me,” He tells you, and rolls his eyes, and it feels - it feels normal. Good. A tender heat unfurls in your heart like orchid petals in the sun, numbing the persistent ache in your ribcage. “To even think that I would do anything else.”

Later, you will ask him why. Why do you love me?, you will ask, and Loki will hum, low in his throat, curled around you just like this first night; your back pressed into his chest, your legs tangled up hopelessly, his fingers tracing nonsense patterns onto your spine in the dawn-light’s syrupy gold. Because, he will tell you, trailing a line of soft kisses up the scar on your arm - an ugly thing, but it functions, mostly, and only ever seems to hurt on the days when he isn’t there - I was given no choice.

But if you’d had one?”, You will ask, and spin around, propping yourself on your elbow.

You tempt me, He’ll tell you, baring his sharp teeth. Shouldn’t you know better than that?

You will lie there, next to each other, not needing a single word. Because you will know. Because he will have told you, a thousand times, a thousand ways, exactly how he feels about you.

Tonight, though, isn’t that night. It takes a moment to get settled in his hold, and the rain spits and drums against what glass remains in your window, slicking the carpet with dark, greasy splotches. It figures, you think, that even the rain in this city has the smell and the texture of oil. You feel like a bag of bones, stretched too thin. But safe, in his arms, in a way that you’ve never felt, before now. Loki is with you, you realize. Wrapped around you like a traveler’s cloak, the comforting weight of a slim, balanced blade at your side in a fight. He is cool, around your afraid. Warm, where his clever fingers whine and needle their way through your skin to your heart.

“I hate you,” You tell him, “You know that?”

Loki laughs, a deep, rumbling purr.

“Go to sleep.”

#picture1000wordswc #pic 4 #loki/reader #female reader #crack #so much crack #just a lot of references to bad memes and cringe movies that turns into all the angst #because for some reason i’m like this #guess which character from another popular franchise i based my crack villain off #soundtrack to this was 800 percent mouth moods #in all seriousness though huge congrats to @startrekkingaroundasgard #you deserve all the love #unfortunately i showed my love by writing insane crack fic but HEY #loki is in it so hopefully that makes up for the c r i n g e

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danny-chase · 3 years

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Comics I’ve read, so I can actually keep track of things, don’t assume it’s good if it’s on here - aka this isn’t a list of recommendations, but do feel free to ask about any of the titles on here

Edit: A lot of these need warnings before you read if you don’t want to be surprised by racism, sexism, rape, child abuse, suicidal ideation, etc., etc. before reading, i didn’t include specific warnings in this, because it’s been a while since i read many of them, please ask before reading things you’re unsure about 💀, i’ll start adding warnings from what i remember

Team Books:

- JLA/Titans (1998)

- New Teen Titans (1980)

----pedophilia (not addressed as such), Gar sexually harasses woman sm, Terry Long - my detested (prof dating a student), racism and so much more

- The New Titans (1984) (until Dick left the team)

----rape (which isn’t addressed as such) and slut shaming, to avoid skip over issues with mirage, multiple major character deaths, there’s also bad dad Bruce kicking Dick out a few times, Terry Long - my detested

- Young Justice (1998)

----the writing around Anita is racist

- The Titans (1999)

---- a weird arc where they thought a character was autistic but turns out there was a man in her head idk what to even tag that as

- JLA: The Obsidian Age (2002)

----been too long for me to remember but i think someone said it’s racist

- Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day (2003)

---- major character deaths

- Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files (2003)

- Teen Titans: Year One (2008)

- Outsiders (2003)

- The Return of Donna Troy

---- brainwashed mentors hitting their sidekicks

- Titans (2008) (until Dick left the team)

- Young Justice (2011) - have also watched the show (all 3 seasons)

- Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011)

---- Roy and Kory’s characterizations are obliterated by new 52

- Convergence: The Titans (2015)

- Convergence: The New Teen Titans (2015)

- Titans Hunt New 52 (2015)

----ugly as heck art

- Titans Rebirth (2016)

- Batman & The Outsiders (2018)

- Titans: Titans Together (2020)

- Titans: Titans United (2021) (ongoing)

Nightwing Titles:

- Nightwing (1995)

- Nightwing (1996)

----rape (again not being addressed as such) to avoid skip over issues with Tarantula and Liu, and copoganda (Dixon’s run it’s been a while but prolly has more bad takes), Bruce hits Dick in the Officer Down crossover, also uh Devin destroys Dick’s life, mischaracterizes Babs, and his entire city is nuked (i’m literally not exaggerating), passive suicide attempt, Bruce’s F- parenting

- Nightwing: The Target (2001)

- Nightwing (2011)

----domestic abuse (Bruce to Dick), skip Nightwing #30

- Grayson (2014)

----old lady being a creeper, Dick being examined naked, girls thirsting after him, Bruce’s F+ parenting (leaves Dick stranded in the middle of the mission), sibling on sibling violence

- Nightwing (2016) (up to Ric sorry i can’t do it guys, i do check in on tt stuff to rag on it)

Robin Titles:

----warnings for Dixon’s weird beliefs of how the world works (Steph’s pregnancy arc, Tim yells at an alcoholic roommate an he’s cured, ‘boys will look’, girls kissing Tim without permission is fine apparently), major character death, sexism everywhere, Tim's personality taking a 180 after the one year later event

- Robin (1991) Volumes I and II

- Robin (1993)

- Robin: Year One (2000)

----Neglectful Bruce, enabler Alfred RIP Dick Grayson’s childhood

- Batman and Robin (2009)

----obliterates Talia’s characterization

- Red Robin (ongoing)

----I've read the first four issues ngl it kinda sucks imo

- Batman and Robin (2011)

----Bruce is literally a terrible parent for the first part of the run, regresses Damian’s character development from the 2009 run, sibling on sibling violence

- Batman & Robin Eternal (2015)

----obliterates Cass's character

- Super Sons (2017)

Batgirl Titles:

- Batgirl (2000)

----disability is magically cured, Bruce is a shotgun dad, gets Cass high to fight him to “talk to her in a way she can understand” i classify it as abuse, but absolutely a must-read despite this, made me love Cass

- Batgirl (2009)

----pushes Cass out of the role for *checks note* absolutely no reason, but is enjoyable all the same and made me really like Steph

- Batgirls (2021)

----I read the first issue and will not be continuing because it sucks ass

Birds of Prey

- Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey (1995) #1

- Birds of Prey: Revolution (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: Wolves (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: Batgirl (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: The Ravens (1998) #1

- Birds of Prey (1998) - ongoing

Batman Titles:

- Birds of Prey: Batgirl (1997) #1

- Birds of Prey: Ravens (1998) #1

- Batman: A Death in the Family (1988)

----major character death

- Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (1989)

- The Long Halloween (1996)

- Dark Victory (2011)

- Batman: Legacy (1996)

- Bruce Wayne Murderer/Fugitive (2002)

----Bruce Wayne C+ parenting, physical fight between Bruce and Dick

- Batman: War Games (2004)

----major character death, sexism

- All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (2005)

----terrible, child abuse, r-word used, don’t read

- Batman: Battle for the Cowl (2009)

----Jason as a villain idk skip if you don't like him being an antagonist, sibling on sibling violence

- Batman: Streets of Gotham (2009) (up to #12)

- Batman: Batman & Son (2010)

----probably also obliterates Talia (haven't read it in forever), siblings on sibling violence

- The Black Mirror (2010)

- Batman: Gates of Gotham (2011)

- Batman (1940) #687-707 (aka Dick!bats era)

- Batman (2011) #1-17

----Bruce punches Dick in the face in one of the first issues

- Batman Eternal (2014)

----Barbara x Jason, i hate that pairing (idk for sure it's been a while)

- Detective Comics Rebirth (2016) #934-981 (plus Night of the Monster Men crossover) and #983-987

- All-Star Batman Rebirth (2016)

- Batman & The Signal (2018)

Assorted:

- Joker’s Last Laugh (2001)

----hee hee major character death but it’s a good thing <3

- Heroes in Crisis (2018)

----tries to de-stigmatize mental health by making a depressed person a killer, basically don’t read this it was horrid, i hate it, it’s stupid and bad

- Impulse (1995) - literally just the first 3 issues but it’s great

- Tempest (1996)

----sad, made me sad, but also you should read it because Garth <3

- Future State: Wonder Woman (2021) - just the first issue so far

- Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang. Kill Tour (2021) - just the first issue, have watched the show

- Some Dark Nights Metal stuff that i don’t really understand what was happening uh Bat is door 👍 very cool 👍

- Scooby-Doo Team-Up (ongoing)

- Huntress: Cry for Blood

#if you got recs let me know i'll work on it but there's like 3 other things i'm trying to get through *sobs*#i may have a pattern of setting down a comic when i know something i don't like is coming up and moving to another run...#it uhhh has been a while since i read a lot of these and i don't remember everything so if you wanna talk about one i may need to reread #so it might take some time XD #and fanon has warped my perception of characters as well so if i say something wrong call me out #LMAO If you look at something and go WHY TF WOULD YOU READ IT - it's because i don't usually look for recommendations before reading #and wasn't really part of fanon until after i read some stuff #so uh. whoops.#and yes before anyone asks i am in fact obsessed with reading Dick Grayson content and i will put down a book if he leaves #i'm working on it OKAY #aghhhh i need to get back to impulse but my desire to read all things batfam is too strong

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early2000smovieimagines · 4 years

Text

Jasper Hale having a crush on you would include~

(Sorry about my horrible quality gif)(requested by anonymous)

(Sorry it’s long but I feel like there would be a lot of buildup and a few different stages when Jasper has a crush. Also, don’t be afraid to send in certain scenarios you’d like to see after I’ve written something, like “jasper having a crush on X type of character”. I never mind<3)

- If you thought Edward was bad with dealing with his emotions just you wait until you see Jasper. You know, Jasper Hale... Jasper uncomfortable around all humans Hale... Jasper internally screaming at all times Hale. Oh boy, this poor lad.

- Undoubtedly you meet Jasper while attending Forks High School. You don’t actually talk to each other until about a quarter through the year even though the two of you are in the same history class.

- The instant Jasper sees you walk into class he can tell that there’s something different about you. He spends half the class staring at you and trying not to splinter the wood of his desk with his fingers as he tries to distract himself from how appetizing you smell.

- You notice only half of his staring which you chalk up to him spacing out even though it feels like he’s legitimately burning holes in the side of your head; although you do find him nearly running out of the classroom at the sound of the bell a little odd.

- Jasper immediately told the others about you after he saw you for the first time so expect some looks whenever you’re around the Cullens.

- For the first quarter of the year Jasper spends his time avoiding you as best as he can. It’s not too difficult though considering you don’t really have a reason to interact. He still sucks at it but he tries.

- He tends to gravitate towards you against his own will, wanting to be around you as much as possible but feeling the need to stay away. You’ll turn around at your locker to find him across the hall only for him to quickly walk away when he sees you’ve spotted him. Or he’ll be a few yards away from you everytime you’re walking to class.

- Part of his borderline stalking is his overbearing need to protect you and even though he feels like he’s the biggest danger of all he can’t help but want to be there in case something happens. After all, isn’t he also the best equipped to save you?

- He seriously weirds you out sometimes because you genuinely think he’s plotting your death with the way he just stares at you and seems to be everywhere you turn. Yet as much as he weirds you out you can’t help but feel drawn to him.

- Now Jasper can tell you’re attracted to him; not only can he hear your heartbeat but he can also read your emotions so if he has any kind of affect on you he’ll know. But it’s not the fear of rejection that’s his problem, it’s the fact that you’re human and he isn’t very confident in his ability to control himself.

- He would have continued his slightly alarming behavior (and you would have kept on believing he for some reason hated you) if it hadn’t been for your teacher assigning you as partners for a class project... during your civil war unit.

- You sat down across from him as the class regrouped and could immediately tell that something was wrong... well besides you being there.

“Is everything alright?” You asked him hesitantly as he stared at the teachers notes on the board.

- His eyes snapped onto you and you heard him speak for the first time as he let out an oddly calm sounding rant of a lifetime on how everything your teacher just said was completely bullshit.

“You see him, it’s all fake. Everyone hated him, he had four girls trailing behind him at every turn thinking they were gonna get a ring on their finger when in reality he already had a wife and three kids. And god the man could barely shoot-”

- His eyes alternated between being locked on the board to being locked on you and his own moving hands. You helplessly sat there, nodding along whenever he looked at you to confirm you were still following and feeling sort of flustered at his southern accent, info dumping and handsome face.

- The only reason he stopped when he did was because the bell rang and the class began to file out. He looked at the clock, gave you a smirk and told you he’d “see you around” before he left the room. From then on he started to approach you more often.

- Once Jasper realizes he’s can handle being around you things get a lot better. It’s like he does a full 180. All of a sudden he’s greeting you (making all your friends jealous), practically escorting you to class, being the first person to offer you help whenever you need, and voluntarily partnering up with you in class. You think you might just be the only person in Forks who has Jasper Hales phone number.

- He always insists on carrying your things for you whenever he walks you to class.

- Sometimes he shocks you with just how charming he can be. So ...charismatic, sometimes you feel like he could convince you to do anything with just a single glance.

- You get quite a lot of teasing compliments and praise all paired with an adoring smirk.

- He learns pretty easily what he does that makes you flustered and tries to do it more often. Anything from smirking and trying to make his accent more pronounced to changing the things he talks to you about.

- He’s not a big talker but he’s a good listener and he wants to hear all about you and your life. You’ve never met someone more interested in your boring day to day occurrences.

- He tries to make you happier whenever he senses that you’re upset. You think it’s just being around him that changes your mood but it’s obviously a little more than that.

- Whenever you’re spending time together outside of school he makes sure it’s somewhere private but with a lot of open space. He doesn’t want to tempt himself by locking the both of you in a room together. The more time you spend together the more comfortable he is being alone with you.

- It would be incredibly hard for him to stay away from you after growing accustomed to being around you. Hunting trips and necessary “camping trips” would be borderline agonizing. He’d annoy his siblings with all his worrying.

- You always catch him looking at you, sometimes it seems like his eyes never leave your face.

- Half the school thinks the two of you are dating and he can’t help but smile whenever he hears those kind of rumors in passing.

- The beginning of your romance is slow burning. You remain friends who are ambiguously attracted to one another for a while before he starts to slowly make his move.

- When you’re walking you’ll notice his icy hand brushing against yours, sometimes being agonizingly close to holding your own.

- He’d often brush your hair away from your face whenever it fell and got in the way of him seeing you.

- Whenever you talk to another guy you can be assured that he’s listening...and usually watching. He’d be on edge until you’d return to his side where he’d be able to sift through your emotions to see if you’re alright and what the possible reason for that conversation was.

- He would definitely act subtly possessive over you especially when he’s close to actually asking you out. Keeping his hand on your shoulder, interlocking your pinkies, offering you his arm, insisting on sitting with you at lunch and driving you to and from school.

- It’s probably a few months after getting to know each other that he finally asks you out. For a long time you think he’s just a sweet slightly awkward history nerd but over time you start to get suspicious. Not to mention the fact that he can’t stand to keep such a big secret away from you for so long; so one day he asks if the two of you can talk.

- Chances are that he’s already sure that you’re his mate thanks; to Alice, so he feels the need to confess. He takes you to a secluded place in the woods where he tells you everything and proves that he isn’t crazy.

- You take it surprisingly well and tell him that you’ll never tell a soul. After which he tells you that there’s something else that he needs to confess and the two of you share your first kiss.

- Ever since then the two of you were inseparable and absolutely, completely in love.

#jasper hale #twilight headcanons #twilight imagine #twilight #jasper hale imagine #jasper hale headcanons #jasper hale headcanon #twilight vampires

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markftmingi · 4 years

Text

sit down! - part one

sit down! masterlist

summary: the king of south korea hires you personally to become the prince’s personal bodyguard after he receives death threats but still continues to life his life dangerously.

pairing: prince!badboy!jaehyun x bodyguard!badass!reader

warning(s): mentions of smoking/drug use, gang activity, and some other crime stuff, swearing, jaehyun’s an asshole tbh.

a/n: this was almost a yugyeom story on wattpad over a year ago (excuse any typos pls) but i’ve been in my jaehyun feels recently. i also really want to make this a social media au🥴. also this is my basic “y/n” kind of story but like “y/n”’s gang code name is siren, cause like you lead men to their deaths, get it?

you took a deep breath before knocking on your boss's office door. his right hand woman, joy, opened the door with a smile.

"miss siren, he's been expecting you," she bowed politely.

you bowed back, "you can call me by my real name you know... i've known you for most of my life."

joy blushed slightly but before she could say another word, your boss interrupted.

"she was instructed to call you miss siren and she will do as such,” he ordered as you sat in the chair across from him.

"whatever you say, yuta," you said mockingly, "what's my job now?"

"you were hired by someone to keep his son out of trouble. his son has a pretty bad record: fighting, smoking, drug use, gang activity, sleeping around frequently, and the list goes on. your job is to make sure that he never does anything like this again... he has a major reputation to manage. he'll be disowned if he doesn't."

"okay... and how am i going to do that?" you questioned.

"you'll be living with him, watching his every move. he lives in seoul palace in south korea." he said sliding the case files over to you.

you raised an eyebrow, "seoul palace? who is he? the prince?"

yuta let out a small laugh, "yes, actually."

you held back the urge to scoff. what kind of prince doesn't respect his father –the king– enough to listen to what he says? especially if it's for his own good. if he keeps up the recklessness, he'll be dead by 25.

"a prince... needs me... to babysit him so that he doesn't get into anymore trouble?" you said slowly to make sure that yuta wasn't losing his mind.

he gave you a hard look, "a prince with a really rich king father that's willing to pay us 500,000,000 yen to babysit him so that he doesn't get into anymore trouble. the prince has been receiving death threats too and he just continues the recklessness.”

500,000,000 yen? that’s nearly 5 million dollars... you could do a lot with that kind of money. you could retire with that kind of money.

"okay, deal."

"great because i already had joy pack your bags and call the jet to south korea. your flight departs in less than an hour." yuta smiled brightly as your face dropped.

although he wasn’t family, yuta was all you had left. he was more of a relative than your boss. it was his father’s company before he took over. his father raised you to obey every single word that came out of his mouth and keep your guard up at all times. sometimes yuta could overstep his boundaries but hey, at least you were getting paid and weren’t an orphan anymore.

you sighed before standing up, taking the files with you. joy followed you out of the office and into her car.

"miss siren, the jet takes off in..," she glanced at her phone, "roughly 40 minutes."

you nodded, "you packed everything i needed?"

"i got most of your clothes, toothbrush and other necessities, your laptops and chargers, and your favorite weapons. the usual things i pack." joy explained as she drives.

you nodded once more before opening your client's file.

name: jung jaehyun (sometimes goes by yoonoh)

nationality: korean

birthday: february 14, 1997

zodiac sign: aquarius

height: 180 cm (5’11")

weight: 63kg (138 lbs)

blood type: A

hobbies: piano, basketball

languages: korean, english, and some japanese

as you continued to read his file, you couldn't help but to want to laugh. the way yuta talked about jaehyun made him sound like public enemy number one. he seemed like a normal man... until you got to his police reports:

seven charges of aggravated assault, four charges of drug possession, two DUIs, and three charges of theft. all of which was pardoned because he was the prince. you didn’t get why the prince himself would do anything of these things. jaehyun could have anything he wanted at anytime but he was acting out.

"he's handsome." joy smirked slightly as she pulled up to the airport.

you looked back up at his picture. she wasn't lying. jaehyun was gorgeous. definitely has the looks of a prince. she laughed once she caught you staring at the picture.

"true, but not happening."

"i'm just saying, y/n - i mean siren. he's handsome, you're beautiful. i saw his friends' profiles too. they all looked like pieces of heaven. something is bound to happen." she said teasingly.

you rolled your eyes as you got out the car, "no romance, no relations. besides he's a prince. he probably acts like he has a stick up his ass."

“you act like you have a stick up your ass too sometimes. maybe he can take it out for you,” joy laughed as you slammed the car door shut and walked away. the jet ride from osaka international airport to seoul, south korea was only about two hours, so you took the time to rest up for what awaits you.

_______________________________________________________

when you got off the jet in seoul, you weren’t expecting four men to pick you up from the airport. nor were you expecting to be riding in a limo. you usually didn't talk much when you were working but this awkward silence was killing you and you think the other men knew it too.

"so how long have you been working under mr. nakamoto?" the man on your right questioned, trying to break the ice.

"majority my life basically."

he turned to you with wide eyes, "how?"

"well, it's the family business. i’m not blood family but they adopted me in. from the time you're able to walk, you're trained to fight. you don't actually work serious jobs until you go through all the training."

"when did you get your first serious job?"

"i had just turned eleven,” you stated.

the man didn't say anything after that and you were relieved. you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding as you all drove to a gate. as if expecting you, the gate slowly opened. you’d been to korea on other jobs before but you never saw this palace before. the building was tall and stretched for yards. it was surrounded by various ponds and small gardens. guards with guns were in a line at the front door. you adjusted your backpack straps as you walked through the main door. the palace was rather modern looking from the old architecture on the outside. it looked like it could house hundreds of people. when the door shut behind you, two women and two men rushed to greet you.

"welcome back, mr. kim!" they all chorused as they bowed slightly.

"staff. this is siren, don’t ask for her real name. she's head of security over jaehyun along with johnny and taeyong. she'll be living here for awhile. treat her with respect." the man you spoke to in the car explained. guess he was addressed as mr. kim.

"yes, mr. kim. welcome, miss siren." they chorused and bowed once again.

do they practice being in synchronization like that?

"uh, thanks." you mumbled, adjusting your bag straps again.

you heard a door open, followed by seven men jogging down the stairs. all seven pairs of eyes locked on you.

"oh don't tell me she's the one who's going to be keeping jaehyun out of trouble," one of them said as a smile grew on his face.

five out of the seven started laughing. something you didn’t take lightly. you didn’t like being laughed at or taken as a joke.

"i'm trained in eight styles of fighting, i have a perfect aim with the gun on my hip, and a few other skills that you'll quickly find out if you laugh at me again." you said calmly.

that shut all of them up. mr. kim gasped, sending an elbow into your side. you didn't flinch at all.

"this is siren and yes, she'll be assisting johnny and taeyong in keeping jaehyun out of trouble which includes limiting the visits of the four of you. siren, this is jung jaehyun, the prince of this kingdom. these are his friends – dong sicheng, prince of china. huang xuxi, prince of hong kong. wong kunhang, prince of macau. chittaphon leechaiyapornkul, one of the princes of thailand. they may be princes but only sicheng acts like it." mr. kim said, giving them a fake smile.

one of the seven came up to you, "i'm sorry for kunhang's comment earlier, i'm johnny– the head of security, and that’s taeyong, other head of security. you can call him ty though." johnny introduced himself and taeyong, holding out his hand.

you shook his hand shortly. joy was right about his friends... they all looked amazing, especially the one locking hands with you. mr. kim looked between you and johnny with a shocked expression and you didn’t know why.

i made a mental note of each of their appearances so i could remember their names quickly. one of the most important things about being on a job was to take note of everyone around your client.

"i'm jaehyun, the one you'll be keeping out of trouble,” jaehyun said copying mr. kim's words.

they both glared at each other. the tension in the room was almost sickening.

"we're gonna go." taeyong announced before ushering the remaining boys to another part of the house.

"bye, siren!" sicheng smiled brightly.

i waved goodbye as they walked away.

"well, you got your wish, doyoung. i got a babysitter now and you ran my friends off again. you happy?"

"very happy."

"good, so get the fuck out." jaehyun said angrily.

you didn't know that much about the royal family but you were shocked. princes were supposed to be respectful or at least act like it. yet you could hear how much hatred jaehyun had in his voice.

mr. kim, doyoung as jaehyun called him, scoffed but looked at you, "siren, be careful. he's a tricky one," he stated before leaving.

you turned to look at jaehyun who was already staring at you.

"johnny really respects you."

you shrugged, "a lot of people do. what's your point?"

"he likes you for some reason and i don't know why and its bothering me."

"you're a big boy. you'll get over it."

jaehyun smirked, "yeah, i'm a big boy alright."

you rolled your eyes and walked past him. had to walk yourself into that pun, didn't you? you felt his eyes on your ass as he followed you up the long spiraled stairs.

"tenth door on the right is your room. next room over is my bedroom in case you get lonely."

ignoring him once again, you walked into your new room. it was huge: a king-sized bed with black silk sheets, dresser, nightstand with a flatscreen TV positioned on the wall. you took out your laptops and phones to charge them.

"why do you have two laptops and two phones?" jaehyun asked, reaching to pick one of the laptops up.

however, you grabbed him by the wrist before he even got the chance.

"don't touch anything that doesn't belong to you... that's rule number one. don't ask me anything business related or too personal. my job isn't to befriend you. my job is to keep you out of trouble, got it?" you asked angrily, “good, don’t make me tell you again.”

"you're so fucking sexy when you're angry." jaehyun whispered, staring at the grip you had on his wrist.

you rolled your eyes and let go of him, “it’s my job to keep you alive and out of trouble. why are you already making it hard for me?"

"didn’t they tell you how bad i was, baby?"

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insufferablelust · 4 years

Text

THE ARTIST AND HIS MUSE (vi)

okay but that gif sent me to blazing hell, anyways! this is the 6th installment to the series! i hope you enjoy! it’s kinda a filler chapter to make straighten the plot line, thank you for reading! MASTERLIST for earlier chapter.

WARNINGS : Dom!Spencer x Sub!Reader, no actual smut, allusions to sex and pre-BDSM talk, traumatic past, Huge Build up (sorry loves), Cheesy fluffs.

I would also like to say that, some aspects of this story is not consistent with the actual series, i make some changes to fit the plot lines better. Full credit to the creators and directors of the series though.

—————

{ love is a world of it’s own, that lives in the heart not in the head. -Diana & Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds }

————

I love you

I love you.

————

The next morning, had me smiling. It was the longest sleep i’ve gotten in awhile and one that doesn’t have nightmares, all because he’s here. Spencer’s here, i shuddered as i felt his arms tightened around my waist and his legs tangled with mine. It felt so good just to know that we’re both safe and sound inside each other’s embrace, even if it’s temporary.

I listened to his breathing for awhile, he sounded so calm, there’s nothing i wouldn’t do to ease all of his worries and soothe the very thing that had him overthinking everything. His mind is a complicated place, he said so to me one time that “You never know what its like to be the prisoner of your own mind.” he didn’t know then that i’m still trying to get out of mine.

I bit my lip hard, as the memories from last night flooded back, i used to promised myself to not say any of my past to anyone, but now Spencer knows and i’m terrified that something will happen to him. Bad things tend to occur when they know the real me, and i won’t let anything happen to Spencer.

I shake away my bad thoughts and move on to the more exciting time of the night, god— i could still feel the way he touched me, the way he whispered so cruelly yet so lovingly. It was different from the first time we had sex, he was gentle whereas that time he was rough, dominant. I love both Reid’s, and yet i just can’t seem to get the thought out of my head, “How did he know that much about Dominance and Submissive play?” It’s not just common knowledge on how to perfectly bound someone or edge someone right? according to your experience, His techniques were as sophisticated as someone who had years of BDSM training.

“I could’ve sworn that dream was real.” Spencer’s morning voice pulled me out of my thoughts, i turned my head to see him before flashing him a smile and giggled. “Penny for your dreams then?”I muttered jokingly which he told me that it involved me and him, i stifled my laugh as i hid my face on his neck, immediately feeling the immense calmness radiated from his scent alone.

“Remember that one time, on the picasso signature case?” He mumbled sleepily against my hair, “how could i not remember? that case is the one that changes everything.” I looked up to him then, ran my fingers through his hair.

“I remembered just how flushed you are, i always liked you since the beginning, i just.. i just don’t know how your reaction would be so i kept it a secret.” He paused to look down at me, tucking my hair behind my ear, then continue,

“But then i started noticing little.. changes in your behavior, so i observed you for weeks which i know is creepy but hey.. i was practically in love with you at that point, you got anxious a lot around me which you hid it really well but then that one time during a case you just completely went flushed and your pupils were dilated, your breathing labored— which convinced my theory.” He explained, with eyebrows raised and a smirk itching to appear on his godforsaken lustful lips.

“Mmm, which is what Dr.Reid?” I batted my eyelash up at him, not knowing where my sudden burst of confidence appeared from but not caring either. “That you feel the same way about me, if not romantically, then at least sexually.” There it is, his lips curved up at one side— i was about to answer but beat me to it- leaned against my ear and whispered, “Stop with the act or i’ll spank your ass purple.”

“Oh Spencer, you’re saying it like it’s something i wouldn’t love.” I scoffed as i sit up on the bed, then straddled his hips. My respond lit up something inside him, something primal that i can see it in his eyes, his demeanor changed 180 which sent thrill to my skin.

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”

“I think i am, and so are you.”

“Oh i am pet, It’s fascinating how much you think you have control when it’s been showed clearly on who’s in charge, by the marks on your skin, and the burning sensation between your legs.” It felt like he poured all the molten lava on top of me to leave me burning, the way he said all of that turned me on beyond belief.

“You forget that i’m in control of you, and by so i can take away the things you ‘love’, when we talk about our relationship later, i’ll make sure spanking won’t be in the list of punishments— since you’re such a needy masochist.” I can’t help but to whine at his words, only to confirm all he said is true, true to every damn detail.

“S-Sorry sir and yes we need to talk about it..” I was so flustered i couldn’t think of anything else but that, i knew if i asked for him to touch me now he would just laughed, so maybe i can try to get back in his good mercy.

“There you go, you have manners after all. We’ll talk about it over breakfast, go and shower, i’ll make french toast.” He make sure to kiss my lips before patting my bum as a signal that I need to get up, which i happily did so. “Oh and sweetheart?”

“Yes, sir?”

“If i find you touching whats mine, Expect to be denied with ruined orgasms for a week.”

—————

The smell of french toast cooking hit my nose on the perfect Sunday morning as i stepped out of the bathroom, quickly drying myself off then went to my closet to pick out an outfit that was both comfy but also would make Spencer goes crazy. I smiled as i saw a vintage dress i’ve owned since college, it was a Sabrina type dress that stopped right above my cleavage, showing plenty of skin from there up to my neck.

I put on the dress quickly, decided not to apply any make up, and comb my hair to let it fall freely. I stand in front of the mirror to see how i looked, the sight made me shiver, the marks he had given me last night littered all over the exposed skin of my neck down to my collarbones, I bit my lips at the thought of bearing more of his mark as a way to show everyone that he owns me. Body and soul.

After a good 5 minutes, i snapped out of my thoughts and head downstairs right to where Spence is plating the french toast. “Go sit on the table. I’m almost done” He ordered, so i sit down, waiting for him to finally see me, my knees bounced against the table as i waited in anticipation.

“Y/N stop being anxious, your knees keeps—“ He demanded, only to be cut off when he saw me. He stopped dead at his track, holding both plates in each hand, his eyes widened a little as his breathing got labored at the sight of me, Spencer bit his lip hard taking a deep breath, before placing your plates in front of me, and his plate opposite of mine.

As you thought he was about to sit, he strolled to my side, hands immediately gripped my jaw and pulled me out of my seat— his hand are so tight around my jaw, i’m sure it’ll bruise, good. I took in the state of him, like i could see the red in his eyes as his were burning holes through my skull.

Then his grip moved lower to my neck, grasped it softly, not enough for it to bruise but enough to give me a warning. “You have no idea how much i want to put a nice collar on your neck, and bend you over this desk right now.” He whispered roughly, his other fingers trailed against my lips side to side.

I opened my mouth so he can pushed them in, letting me suckle on them as he chuckled “We’ll talk first, we have a lot to talk about. But since you’re pretty adamant on teasing my like this, if you agree to be mine later after we establish how this is going to work— best believe i’m going to ruin you.” My knees buckled at his proposition, Doesn’t he realized that i’m already his? He owns me the moment i let him open me up inside out.

“Bribing me already Dr.Reid?”

“Oh baby, i’ll make sure you’ll earn your lesson.”

—————

You moaned the second you tasted that sinful french toast, god isn’t Spencer supposed to be terrible at cooking? then how come this tastes like literal heaven? the perfectness oozes out of this fine looking toast dripping with hon—

“You’re really testing me now, Y/N.” He intertwined his fingers around each other before putting them in front of him, the manner suggest proper intimidation, clearly it worked for you. You replied with a whisper “Sorry sir, it’s really good.”

“Before we start to discuss our relationship, i’ll allow you to ask me questions about anything and everything that’s been going on. You gave me closure yesterday, and i shall give you closure too.” You kept eye contact as you wonder what to ask, which one of the thousands of questions in-your head that you were going to ask.

“Y/N?”

“How um how’d you find out about me? my past?” You nervously asked, this is something important to you, if Spencer truly found out then sooner or later you’ll have to face the consequences of everyone finding out too, probably even deeper than what’s Spencer been digging.

“I had my suspicions for awhile, when you first joined, you looked way too trained to be 25. No one is that trained unless they have basic skillset, everyone were suspicious too but decided to not question anything. But like i said,” His eyes were sharp, and you can feel the goosebumps rises at the sound of his tone. God he always managed to make you nervous.

“You intrigued me. So i did some digging of my own, asked Garcia to hand me your file, to my surprise before the age of 14 Y/N Bones never existed, Your surrogate father is smart, but he still leaves crumb Y/N. I’m just surprised the bureau didn’t question it when you joined,” He paused as he clench and unclench his jaw, the sight alone made me squirm in my seat, i’m not sure if i’m even listening at this point.

“So i searched deeper, even asked one of my friends Elle to do a deep background search about you so that it’s not someone on the team, and we both found out that you.. breezed your way through the psych eval that you have an astounding result. Your records are squeaky clean yet, there are pictures of you when you were 17 so we generate how you might’ve looked like when you were 10 to 15 years old and then we found...”

“The missing kid from a mob murder house in Italy, last seen by the chauffeur that was killed moments after he talked to the police, the poor guy was new— he never been briefed on what happened when something like that occurred.” You finished his statement as you looked down, your eyes closed momentarily as you tried to process that this man knows everything about you and now your secrets will be revealed to the world.

“Y/N, listen to me,” You’re that good at controlling your face whenever someone confronted you, thats why you’re able to breezed through your basic psych eval like a magnet. “Let me see you, not the walls you’ve put up.” Then when he said that, you felt like you never really knew yourself, all these years, you’ve put up a persona that was strong enough to handle everything even if you chipped away apart of your psyche every time something traumatic happened.

“This is me, Spence.. It’s who i want to be..”

“No, it’s killing you. All your life you’ve been directed, told what to do, controlled. But then you gained some sort of control when you finally was able to get free from your surrogate father, yet you don’t like it right out of the start so you keep up because that’s what kept you survive, get you inside the bureau so you won’t legally be touched once your father died, am i correct?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you tried everything to give up control again, you joined the club right?” That made you red in an instant, How the hell did he managed to know so much about you? you’ve tried your damn hardest to be discreet about it, event as far as going to the club thats far from where you lived.

“I-I, Spencer this is too much information..” You trailed as you bit your lips at the thought of him knowing the inside and out of you like you’re one of his book, part of you were glad that you don’t have to keep everything to yourself anymore, that you don’t have to worry about control— you want to relinquish control, and he’s the only one that has made you feel comfortable when you give him all of you, and you don’t want it to stop. But you two are coworkers, FBI agents in the same field nonetheless there’s no way Hotch would agree to anything you propose.

“I know it is, Y/N. But you don’t have to go through it all alone now okay? i’m here, i know and thats good.”

“What do i have to do? Tell Hotch the truth about my past?” You chewed your lower lips as you think about all the possibilities that could happen, one being the most obvious which includes you being investigated and then fired. Or there’s one where the FBI would uncover Mr.Bones’s ties to Italian mob, which means you put all of them in danger. Then there’s one—

“Stop it, stop thinking for a second, and stop biting your goddamn lips, i swear.” He took you by surprise as he went over to your side and place you on top of the table in front of him before sitting down on your seat himself. “I-I’m sorry, i just.. don’t know what to do.. i don’t want to resign or get fired, i love this job, you’re all my family.”

He took my hand in his, and hold it tight before pressing a kiss on each fingertips, “You’re way too valuable of an agent to get fired and Hotch knows that, love. The worst thing that can happen is they’ll investigate and you’ll be forced to tell them what happened and how it went from there. Y/N you have no absolute ties with them, you were a victim.”

“You don’t know how powerful they are, the reason why i wanted to be apart of this job is to go after them Spence, and i’m getting nowhere close to even find any trace of them.”

“As much of a genius as you are, combining 8 heads instead of one will have a different outcome.” He joked, which makes you chuckled as you sighed and nods “Can i think about it first?”

“Of course, but do know that they’ll find out whether you tell them or not. And it’s better if it’s coming from you, not genius detective work of Garcia.” He sternly remind you, as you nod, and smile at him, muttering a small “okay..”

“Now, do you have any other question?” He pulled you closer, his hand practically grasping your bum cheeks, making you blush. “I-um..” you stopped as the words you were about to let out got stuck on your throat.

“Y/N, when you’re being asked, speak up clearly.” He scolds, which made your heart twisting in an uncomfortable way, showing how much you hate it when he gets disappointed at you. “I’m sorry, it’s just.. um— how did you know so much aboutsubmissionanddominance?” You rushed the last bit as you close your eyes in embarrassment, He made you feel so timid.

“What was that, baby? Didn’t quite hear the last bit?” He muses with a wonderful smirk formed on his ridiculously handsome face which makes you want to roll your eyes but decided otherwise since you don’t wanna get punishment this early.

“Submission and Dominance, Sir.” He play his game, and so you will play yours, only fair right? oh he thought so, his lips quirked in amusement before chuckling,

“How do you think i found out about that club you joined hm?” Your brows furrowed in confusion as you try to click things inside your head before you came to a realization...

“Spencer... are you— are you?”

He’s a goddamn member isn’t he?

“3 years, Princess.”

You’re fucked, Once again.

————//————

TBC! i know it’s short, like i said it’s only a filler chapter, since i have plenty of blurbs req, i’ll prioritize them first. So if you sent your reqs already, please be patient, they’re all coming soon!

tell me what you think on comment or send me a message, Tag list is open just let me know if you want in! thank you!

( @blancastans @spencerwaltergubler @slutforthegubes @n1ghtsh4d3-67 @babybloomer @liaabsurd @midnightsubmissives @addie5264 @maybankslut @secretpickleprofessordean )

#insufferableblurb #dom!spencer #criminal minds smut #spencer reid smut #spencer x reader #taahm #criminal minds imagines #spencer reid blurb #spencer reid fluff

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