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joshsjipple · 2 months

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Baby, It's Cold Outside pt 1

JAKE KISZKA X FEMALE READER

Word Count: 4.1k

WARNINGS: 18+ graphic sexual content, angst (kinda an enemies to lovers), talk of blood, injury, pain from said injury, unprotected sex (cmon guys), praise kink, oral sex (f/m/rec), rough fingering, language, slaps like once, p in v, dom and sub (can go both ways), fluff etc etc.

‿︵‿︵୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ - - ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧‿︵‿︵

Spending Christmas in the freezing cold was not ideal, but then again, neither was being involved in a skiing accident. Could you even call it that? It was a pathetic story, really. You’ve never been one for sports or anything that required you to move at top speed while having to maintain balance, so when your mom asked you to ski with everyone today, you were dumbfounded. It was fun for a while–watching your parents attempt to take on the slopes. That feeling didn’t last long because sooner or later, you were reminded you didn’t come alone on this trip.

Your mother and Karen were best friends throughout high school and stayed in touch through adulthood. At least twice a year, both of your families would leave town together and embark on an adventure. You’d hoped they’d stop inviting you, or atleast stop inviting Karen’s kids, after you all graduated. That didn’t happen. In fact, it only made them extend the trip so they would have more time to spend more time with their grown kids.

Josh zooms by you, a high pitched inaudible scream leaving his mouth as he does so. You giggle and playfully roll your eyes. You never had a problem with Josh, besides the fact he could get a bit talkative. He was kind, patient, and fun; the exact opposite of his twin brother, Jake. He, on the other hand, was snarky, rude, and dead silent. You’d tried to give him a chance for a few years, but he’d just end up ignoring your friendly gestures. Eventually, you stopped trying. You thought that was the end of it, but boy were you wrong.

From that point on, Jake made it his lifelong goal to poke and prod at you. He knew what ticked you off by now and he put that to use the whole week you spent together. No one else heard it, but they all noticed the mean stares you’d give each other at the dinner table. Everyone seemed to stay out of it for the most part, sweeping it under the rug for the time being. Josh knew, but only because he was the one person you could stand on your trips.

Now, perched on the top of a snow-covered hill, you stare down it. Josh’s long gone, joining the rest of the crew down at the bottom and of course, leaving you and Jake at the top. He slides in next to you, his sticks jabbing into the ground to help hold him in place. He’s wearing a giant coat with fur lining the hood, his face barely visible. Giant goggles sit on his nose, making his eyes unnoticeable. You look over at him, trying to figure out if he’s going or if you are.

“Are you just going to stand up here with your jaw dropped?” he asks cooly, causing you to roll your eyes.

“Yes, actually. I was thinking about grabbing a flag and claiming it.” you reply plainly.

Jake doesn’t respond, but he moves a step closer to you. “See that treeline?” he points to your right. “There’s a gap right there. Take it as a shortcut and surprise them from behind.”

You roll your eyes, shifting from side to side. “Yeah right.”

“Too scared?” he says in a baby voice, close enough to your ear that you could feel his breath if it weren’t for your ten layers of clothes.

“What? No!” you growl defensively, pushing him away from you.

“Prove it.” he bites.

Rolling your eyes, you push off the hill. Feeding off of Jake’s words, you lean left and you gradually slip through the path he was talking about. You hear him shout from behind you, but figuring it’s just him cheering, you continue. Over time, you pick up speed. You’re steadily moving down the path that seems to be getting narrower with every tree you pass. You hear another frantic shout and when you look to your left, you see Jake on the main path. He’s leaning to the left, desperately crawling to you. He shouts something, his fingers pointing to you. When you turn to see what has his attention, you’re too late.

A giant tree had grown right down the middle of the path. You scream as you cascade through the thick branches. Losing your footing, you begin to tumble, your body banging against the wood. From the force, your coat is ripped open, allowing a sharp branch to tear into the side of your torso. You scream, feeling the hot blood already trickling down your stomach. Once you’re past the tree, you roll a few more times before abruptly coming to a stop. Luckily, it snowed the night before so your landing is awfully comfortable.

You lay there for a moment, trying to wrap your mind around what just happened. Lifting your head, you note that if you hadn’t been exactly where you were, you’d probably never be able to walk again. You hear a muffled voice, and when you see Jake moving towards you, your stomach begins to sting. Your hand immediately addresses the wound and you hiss through gritted teeth. Jake falls to your side, his hands frantically moving in the air as he tries to decide what to do.

“Are you okay?” he asks, a bit of concern in his voice.

“Jesus, do I look okay?” you growl.

He opens his mouth to speak but gets distracted by the voices of your families approaching. In record timing, your mother is by your side, cradling your head. Everyone’s talking around you and when your eyes find Josh, his eyebrows are drawn together.

“Does anything else hurt?” your mother asks, her eyes wide.

“No, I’m fine.” you say. “It’s just a scratch.”

You’re right. It’s not like there’s a gaping hole in your abdomen, just a large scrape. Your face has some as well, and it stings when your mother cups your cheeks. As your parents discuss, you notice Josh and Jake talking just loud enough for you to hear.

“I literally just said to tell her to stay away from that path.” Josh scolds his brother.

“I know.” Jake replies through pursed lips.

“Someone needs to take her back up to the cabin.” Karen says from a few feet away.

“Jake will.” Josh says with a wide grin. “Isn’t that right?” Jake responds by shooting daggers at him, but reluctantly shakes his head in agreement.

“No. I will.” your mom says.

“Mom, you were having fun…” your voice trails off. “I’m sure Jake can make sure I get back okay.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. You nod and squeeze her hand. “Alright.”

She backs away from you and helps you to your feet. Your legs are sore and your body undeniably needs a reset, but you’re not paralyzed. You rest on your mother until Jake’s prepared enough to drag you up the hill. When she hands you over like a prized possession, you’re sure to put all of your weight on Jake. He curses under his breath and then waves your mother off.

“This may be a bad time to mention it, but I love your perfume.” Jake says with a friendly smile.

“I heard you and Josh talking. And I’m not wearing any perfume.” you breathe loudly.

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it. Since when do you ever listen to me?” he defends himself as he begins to haul you up the hill.

“Doesn’t matter! Why would you tell me to do it?”

“Well at least you didn’t die.” he chirps.

“Shut up.”

———————

By the time the two of you reach the cabin, you’re both sweating. Jake collapses as soon as he steps up the stairs. You roll your eyes and step over him, your hand holding your clothes to stop the bleeding from your wound. Seen as your coats almost ripped to shreds, it takes you only a few minutes to strip into a single layer. Your shirt is torn at the seams, so you toss it in the trash can as you pad down the hallway to your room.

Removing all your clothes, you examine the wound. It’s still fresh and blood oozes from out of it. Your head spins as you stare, your stomach queasy. Deciding you can’t take anymore, you resort to the last wanted option.

“Jake!” you shout loud enough he can hear it from outside. After a few moments you hear the door open and shut. “Grab the first aid kit and come here.”

In a few minutes, the handle on your door turns and Jake stumbles in. Your hand is pressed against the wound, your jaw clenched tightly. Jake’s steps falter as his eyes scan over you. His eyes smolder with intensity and widen slightly. Swallowing loudly, he runs his hand over the back of his head. You stare at him in confusion until you realize you’re in nothing but a bra and underwear.

“Are you just going to stand there and watch?” you snap.

“Y-you want me to help you with that?” he over enunciates the last word, making your eyes roll.

“You did this Jake, not me.” you sneer and narrow your eyes. He blinks rapidly for a second, his eyes glued to the ground. “Jake. I’m gonna bleed out.”

“Sorry.” he mumbles, taking a seat next to you and opening the kit. “What do I need?”

“I think I should rinse the blood off first.” you say, hissing as you touch the scrape. “Wanna start the bath?”

Jake groans, but disappears to start the water. A few minutes later he returns and helps you to your feet. You take tentative steps, your head spinning. Once you reach the bathroom, you toy with the clasp of your bra. Jake shoots away from you, turning so he’s facing the wall.

“Oh grow up Jake.” you complain, cheeks as red as a tomato.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he remarks.

You remove your clothes and dip your leg into the water. As you slide the rest of the way in, your foot slips and you begin to fall. Jake’s hands grab your under arms and he gently lures you into the warm water. As soon as you’re submerged he steps away and once again, faces the wall.

“That was a quick save, are you sure you weren’t watching?” you joke, enjoying how nervous he is.

“Nothing worth looking at.” he lets out a deep breath and turns to face the door.

“Really? Because Jake junior seems to disagree.”

“Call me when you’re done.” he yells from the hallway, making you laugh to yourself.

You spend the next eight minutes carefully scrubbing your wound. You pay a bit of attention to the ones on your arms and face, cleaning them so they won’t get infected. When you’re clean enough, you yell for Jake to return. When he doesn’t return in a few minutes, you curse and grab a towel. On your feet again, your legs tremble and you’re nauseous again. Stepping out of the tub, your knee gives out just enough to have you clinging onto the edge of the railing.

“Jacob Kiszka!” you yell again, eyes watering from the pressure on your wound.

“Jesus.” he says, grabbing your waist and helping you up straight. “I was coming.”

You smack his chest and push him off of you. When you’re all wrapped up in your towel, Jake helps you back to the room. He waits outside as you find underwear and a bra, and you smile to yourself when he peaks in every once in a while to ‘make sure you’re okay.’ You directed him to soak a gauze pad in saline solution, and when he returns, you’re waiting for him on your bed. His arm extends to you in an attempt to hand you the cloth.

“No. I can’t look at it, I’ll be sick.” you tell him. “Just dab the area.”

He does as he’s told, his weight sinking the edge of the bed. His fingers carefully apply the cloth to your wound and you shudder under his touch. With a sheen of sweat on your face and tight muscles, you focus on Jake. His hands are skilled and callused from the many years he’s been playing guitar. His tongue sticks out from between his two lips, just enough for you to see. The hand that isn’t on your wound, sits on the mattress, brushing against your waist. You’re glad you have the excuse of an injury to hide your unsteady breathing.

“That should be fine, thanks.” you push his hand away. “Grab the gauze and tape.”

Standing to your feet again, you move in front of him. His legs spread open as you slip between them, your cheeks burn intensely. Placing gauze on your wound, you have Jake tape you up. His hands are gentle as they apply the tape across your body. His hands press it down, careful not to apply too much pressure that it will hurt any other scratches. He’s still seated as he works, and you spin so he can apply more on the front for support. Your hands are above your head holding your hair out of his face. He’s almost eye level with your bra, and you watch him do his best not to look. When he’s finished, he clears his throat and pats his legs.

Neither of you move.

His chocolate brown eyes stare up at you, raking over your collarbone and shoulders. He licks his lips as you remove your hands from your hair, allowing it to fan out over your shoulders. His eyes engulf your body, absorbing your skin like he wants to drown in you.

“Gonna apologize yet, Jakey?” you ask, running a finger along his jawline.

“In your dreams.” he scoffs, eyes still bleeding into yours.

“Not exactly what I imagine you doing in my dreams but it’ll suffice.”

You watch his lips part as he stands to his feet, grabbing your shoulders to move you so you’re in front of the bed. Hands gripping your shoulders, he lowers you to the ground. He’s firm, but still wary of your wound.

“Undo my belt.” he directs, thumbs stroking your chin.

“W-what?” you shudder. “My stomach-”

“You don’t suck dick with your stomach, do you?” he asks. When you don’t answer, he smirks and taps your shoulder. “Come on now.”

Without another word, you hastily undo his belt, tossing it to the side. Once his pants are unbuttoned, you pull them to his knees. You stare at him hard in his boxers, your mouth watering. In one swift tug, he’s free and bouncing in front of you. Your hand reaches for him, but he smacks it away and grabs a fistful of hair.

“Tongue.” he demands. You stick it out, flattening it so the tip of him can slide in. He hits the muscle a few times before sliding himself down your throat. You watch his eyes squeeze shut, chest heaving. He pulls out and removes his shirt, leaving the top of him bare. “Tap twice if you want to stop.”

Without giving you time to respond, he shoves himself down your throat. You gag immediately, your chest heaving. He snaps in and out of you, hands tucked into your hair. You concentrate on breathing as he fucks your face. Drool falls from the corner of your mouth and onto the floor, coating your knees. You watch Jake through teary eyes, his head thrown back and mouth wide open.

“That’s my good girl. Your mouth is so much better at this than comebacks.” he groans, his cock twitching in your mouth. Your throat burns as tears stream down your face. “Fuck, gonna cum.”

A few seconds later, he released himself, coating the back of your throat. You gag viciously as you swallow him, his dick still stuffed down your throat. After he’s done, but pulls himself out of your mouth, leaving you gasping for air. Surprisingly, you’ve forgotten all about your injury.

After a minute of you collecting yourself, Jake grabs your arms and helps you to your feet. Your legs are wobbly from the uncomfortable kneeling position so you lean into his body. He holds you, hands working at the clasp of your bra. You help him, pulling the clothing off your chest entirely. He hums at the sight of you before cupping your cheeks in his hands.

His thumb traces your lips and then wipes tears away from your eyes. You breathe loudly, still gathering yourself. His hands caress your jaw and then move to the back of your neck before trailing down the skin of your back. He’s mindful of where it hurts, and maps it out in his head to remember.

A minute later, your eyes are finally able to find his. He smirks at you and the corner of your mouth twitches upwards. Hands wrapped around your head, thumb resting by your ear, he tugs you into a kiss. It’s soft at first as he tastes himself on your tongue, but slowly gets more heated. Your tongues dance, small whimpers exchanging between the two of you. You pull back to gasp for air, but Jake leans farther in, eyes closed with wet lips parted. You swallow his lips again, sinking into his touch. He trails warm, wet kisses across your chin and nibbles on your neck hard enough to leave a mark. You smile as he kisses across your collar bones and in the space between your aching breasts.

His hand settles on the small of your back while the other begins to push you onto the bed. He watches your facial expressions for any signs of pain, but the only pain you’re paying attention to is the throbbing between your legs. Once you’re fully flattened, he takes one of your breasts into his mouth, the other being occupied by one of his rough hands. He toys with your hardened nipples, swirling his tongue skillfully over the peak of it. He switches, repeating the same actions a few times before capturing your lips in another desperate kiss.

“Jake, I can’t have sex like this.” you admit through heated kisses.

“We won’t. Just let me make this whole thing up to you, okay?” he breathes against your cheek, his fingers messing with the hem of your panties.

“Okay.” you give him permission and he slides down your body.

He kisses your stomach, hands fluttering over your skin. You shiver under his touch, your arousal pooling between your legs. When he reaches your heat, he plants a firm kiss on your clothed pussy, eyes never breaking away from yours. You moan, jaw hanging open. He slips the fabric off of your legs before spreading your thighs with his hand. Hovering above you, he stares into your core.

“Oh she’s pretty.” he licks his lips before laying flat on his stomach. Your heart thumps as you watch his finger drag through your folds. When your hips thrust up, he slips his hands under you and pulls you closer to his mouth. “Watch me.”

You position yourself on your elbows, watching his tongue dig into you. You pull back, a moan falling from your lips. He keeps his grip tight, pulling you back into his mouth. He absorbs you, sucking and twirling his tongue across your bundle of nerves. You’re sweating, breathing heavy as you snake your hands through his chestnut brown locks.

“Fuck, yes.” you whimper. “Feels so good, Jake.”

He pulls back, removing his hands from your ass. You begin to throw a fit, but he pauses that thought when he slides a digit into your entrance. Your eyes immediately roll in the back of your head.

“Keep talking.” he directs. “And don’t move. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” he flashes you a smile that you ignore.

His single finger moves in and out of you at a steady pace, but you’re aching for more. “Add another.” you tell him. He obliges quickly, adding a second finger into the mix.

You arch your back at the feeling, his eyes laser focused on your reaction. Placing the palm of his hand on your lower abdomen, he holds you down against the sheets to keep you from moving. Then, his fingers pick up their pace, curling ferociously inside of you. A bunch of lude, pornographic sounds leave your mouth as you tremble around him.

“Fuck yes, Jake! Feels so good, baby. Don’t stop.” you beg.

The sound of his fingers working into you creates a wet sound through the whole cabin. Desperate to see his face right now, your eyes shoot open and find it. He’s sweating, tongue protruding from his lips like they were when he dabbed your wound earlier. He’s watching his fingers fuck you, encouraging himself quietly.

“Gonna come for me, sweetheart?” he asks. “Come on, pretty girl. Let it go.”

Your legs shake violently as your whole body explodes. Stars flash through your black eyelids, as your body releases. You’re withered underneath him, his name sounding like a prayer from your lips. It takes you a few moments to come out of it, but when you do, Jake’s fingers are in his mouth, sucking your arousal off of his digits. Crawling over you, he places each arm on either side of his head.

“Want a taste? You taste like honey.” he says, grabbing your lips. Your tongue swirls in his mouth, tasting your cum along with his saliva. Your fingers tug at his long hair, body arching against him. He pulls away quickly. “Woah there.”

“Jake it doesn’t hurt.” you tell him. He just stares at you with a raised eyebrow. “Jake! I need you to fuck me right now. I can’t feel it, please.”

“You’re gonna hate me tomorrow.” he groans, parting your legs and lining himself up.

“I hate you right now.” you hiss as he slips into you. Your hands claw at his back as he swiftly moves in and out of you. You curse his name, begging for more.

“What an odd thing to say when my cock is buried in your tight cunt.” he kisses the crown of your head. “God, like fucking velvet baby.”

“Fuck it, Jake. Fuck me like you hate me.” you plead.

“Whatever you want, baby.”

He begins to pound into you, his strokes deep and rough. You cry his name as your skin slaps together, filling the room. One of your hands pulls at the roots of his hair, making him moan into your shoulder. Your other once, digs into his back. Your fingernails dig into his skin, hard enough to draw blood, but he doesn’t complain. His thrusts grow sloppy and his breaths are loud and aggressive.

“You gonna cum for me, Jake?” you ask in a sweet voice.

“You’re the one squeezing me. God, feels so fucking good.” he cries, reaching a hand between your two bodies.

You gasp as his fingers make contact with your clit and begin to rub tight circles into it. You buck from under him, legs trembling as your orgasm rips through you. Jake keeps fucking you until you’re coming down from your high. Quickly, he removes himself from you and positions himself on your stomach.

“You look so pretty when you cum. Even prettier when you moan my name like that.” he grunts, fisting himself.

“Cum for me, be a good boy.” you urge him on. His eyebrows draw together as he shoots his ropes of cum across your stomach. You watch his mouth fall open, eyes clamped shut. “Yeah, baby.” you say as he finishes.

He sits back on his heels, eyes on the ceiling as he breathes. You watch him, taking the time to admire the sheen of sweat across his body. He reaches a hand down and you take it. Carefully, you sit up and he pulls you into his arms. You both sit there in each other’s grasp, your breathing lulling the both of you. His cheek is resting on your head, yours glued to his chest. His hands rub your back, massaging it gently with his callused hands. After a few more moments, you pull away and lay on your back. He joins you, wrapping his arm under your neck for you to use as a pillow.

“Are you okay?” he asks after a moment.

“Yeah. Doesn’t even hurt.” you tell him, lying a bit.

“At least when you walk funny tomorrow they won’t think anything of it.” you both share a laugh. “I’m really sorry, by the way. What I did was shitty and inexcusable.”

“Oh well.” you pat his chest. “At least now I know to never trust you again.”

“Hey.” he says, offendedly.

“You’re gonna have to make it up to me.” you say, a finger tracing his jaw.

“How?” he questions.

“I have a few ideas in mind.”

#greta van fleet #jake kiszka smut #josh kiszka smut #greta van fleet smut #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #josh gvf #josh kiszka fic #sam kiszka gvf #jake kiszka fic #jake gvf #gvf smut #gvf

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performativezippers · 2 months

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here's some random writing advice that i've found helpful, in no order, that i reserve the right to add to at any time:

no one says everything they're thinking. in dialogue, less is more. people don't speak in paragraphs, they speak in sentences, especially when they're not telling a story. let the dialogue be brief, and use interiority (thoughts) to show the reader all the things they aren't saying.

use physical cues to help the POV character understand what the non-POV character is thinking/feeling/not saying/lying about. For example, if we're in Jane's POV while Maura is talking, and Maura says "I'm fine," Jane can notice that her eyes are darting around like she's anxious, or she's crossed and uncrossed her arms, almost like she's nervous. there's no need to say MAURA SEEMS NERVOUS, let the reader get it from what Jane's picking up.

let the reader be curious—don't info dump—but don't frustrate them by giving so little that they don't know what's going on. this is a very very fine line sometimes, and betas can be really helpful for pointing it out until you've gotten the feel for it.

Use paragraph breaks, for the love of god.

Only italicize things that really and truly cannot be explained any other way. "What are you doing here?" for example doesn't need any italics. If you can't get the reader to understand what you mean without the italics, then, sure, use them. but SPARINGLY. use body language, interiority, other words, and dialogue tags (shouts, yells, whispers, cries, she says as her voice cracks) to get the reader what they need.

"What are you doing here?" could be "what on earth are you doing here?" (aka, i have no fucking idea why you're here, my dude)

"What are you doing here?" could be "i told you to stay out of this, lucy! what are you doing here?" (aka, lucy you specifically should not be here)

"What are you doing here?" could be "jesus, you scared the shit out of me! I thought you were at the front! what are you doing here?" (aka, i'm not surprised to see you, but i'm surprised to see you HERE what the fuck)

Don't head hop. Know who's POV you're in and STAY IN IT until the chapter break, scene change that's clearly indicated by ***, whatever. if this is challenge, try writing in first person to get in the habit of only knowing what your POV character knows. There is, of course, 3rd person omniscient narration, but it's really fucking hard to pull off and honestly I recommend staying away from it entirely. Most things you'll read are written in first or close 3rd, and that's not an accident.

Let your characters move around in space. let them notice the things around them.

If Kate walks into a room, i'll probably list what she sees in order of importance, unless it's a big reveal. i'll add voice to that so you'll know i did it on purpose.

in order of appearance: "the body lies in the middle of the big, wide room. the ceiling must be twenty feet up, and there are plenty of windows, the way the light catches the falling dust mites looks more like a church than a crime scene."

with reveal/voice: "Kate bursts into the room and immediately skids to a stop. it's too bright, all white walls and high windows. it looks like the kind of room you'd put a WeWork in, or maybe a super expensive soulcycle. normally Kate would be itching for a paint roller and some blueprints, but today she ignores the terrible architectural choices, choosing to focus instead on the dead body congealing in a puddle of dark brown blood in the middle of the floor."

try to have an internal plot/obstacle (alex can't be honest with maggie about their relationship because she hasn't told her that her sister is superhero) and external plot/obstacle (there is a serial killer targeting aliens in national city, and all three women are on his radar). Best practice is for them to intersect and create layered, complex problems (maggie can't understand why alex is so fucking freaked out about this serial killer in the first act; yes, crime is bad, but like, it's their job? why won't alex TALK to her? where does she keep running off to in secret? does alex even actually want to be with her??)

Everything should have: tension, stakes, obstacles. Try not to make all of that hinge on a misunderstanding or one person being too chicken to confess their feelings. that gets boring and frustrating for the reader.

If you need to make a calendar, make one. If you need a cast list, write one. keep yourself on track.

introduce new original characters slowly. give them one name (first and last is usually not necessary at the start). give us one or two things to remember about them. Jenna is the producer of the tv show. Jenna is mean. the next time she comes back, call her "jenna the producer." then the next time you can hint to her role, like "jenna has her big clipboard and is shouting at everyone to get the fucking cameras ready." if jenna doesn't come back again, don't name her. be kind to your readers who forget things, and help them out by limiting the named cast to people who need to be named. if they don't show up until halfway through, don't introduce them until halfway through. for fanfic, obviously this is easier because we know everyone, but still, please. only have the people in the scene who need to be there. huge scenes with 5-8+ characters present are a MESS.

if your character has two best friends who fill the same role, cut one. streamline so i as the reader have less to keep track of.

banter can be fun to write, but dialogue without movement, choreography, internal thoughts, lies, physical cues, and plot movement gets really boring to read. if a scene is skippable, ask yourself what would make it essential, and add that.

every conversation should do at least two things. things can be:

move the plot forward

deepen, change, or complexify an existing relationship

create tension (plot, romance, etc)

explore stakes

attempt to get over the obstacle

FOR EXAMPLE: Helena and Myka almost kissing when they shouldn't because Helena is with Some Dude? yes! that's romantic tension and attempting to get over the obstacle (some dude). Myka rambling to claudia about almost kissing helena for 3 pages: no! That does nothing on this list. the event already happened, and a long debrief about it isn't interesting to the reader. Let Myka ruminate while she's doing one of the other things. and by ruminate, i mean KEEP A LIGHT TOUCH HERE, ruminating is very very easy to make boring and maudlin. trust your reader; be subtle about it.

#writing advice #on writing #writing fiction #writing original fiction #writing fanfiction

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bullet-prooflove · 10 months

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Fucked Up: Alexander 'Tig' Trager x Reader (NSFW)

Tagging: @callsignartemis @the-person-in-the-circle @@kmc1989 @mortal--soul @yourwinchesterbros @buddinglinguist @spookyboogyuniverse @nessamc @anime-weeb-4-life @redpoodlern @ravencrow83 @nu1freakshow @the-wandering-lunatic @oureternalbond @lexondeck @keyweegirlie @theplacewhereallthedemonsgo @poppyrose33 @belovedbastardremus @trublu2u @thebaileybugle @spngingerbread21 @@jp1019

It’s in the middle of the night that Tig lays awake and has those thoughts, the ones where he thinks he’s going to fuck this whole thing up. It’s usually on the evenings that you aren’t taking up residence in his bed. When he’s with you he’s lost in the moment, he’s living life and he’s happy.

It’s when you’re not here that he starts to doubt himself. He thinks of all the things he’s done over the years, the blood, the violence, the really fucked up shit…

And then he thinks about you, this brilliant beacon of light that seems to warm the very depths of his soul.

“We’re made for one another.” You tell him as your thumb chases over the stubble that lines his cheeks.

In those moments he believes you. He’s never met another person so attuned to him, who can read his body language as if they were reading his thoughts. He knows you never judge him, that you understand him on a level that other people can’t. You are the only person he has told about his father, about what that animal did to him and how he put him down once he’d been discharged from the Marines. He wants you to understand he’s fucked up, that he’s always been fucked up and that he will always be fucked up.

“I’m a little fucked up too,” You remind him and yea, maybe you are, and he’s ok with that and because of you he’s trying to learn to be ok with that himself.

He knows where this all stems from, his sense of self worth is tied up in the services he provides to other men. He’s never stepped back to think about what he wants. He’s never considered his own needs, simply drowning them out with drink, drugs and pussy. He’s been no one’s priority and everyone’s errand boy.

Until he met you.

And then everything changed, because you make him feel like he matters, that’s he’s the most important person in your life.

When he hears your key in the lock, he feels relief because you’re coming home to him. He gets it in his own head sometimes that you’ll change your mind, that you won’t want to be around anymore and the thought of that kills him. He listens to the tell-tale signs of your presence. Your keys clattering on the kitchen table, the word ‘fuck’ as you kick the chair by accident, the same way you do every night. He smiles to himself as he listens to your attempts to not to wake him.

The truth is he can never fall asleep until he knows your home, safe and sound. Even if you’re not sleeping over, you make sure to text him when you get back to you place, which is becoming less and less frequent these days. You spent more time at his than in your apartment and he’s been wondering about making that more permanent.

You try to be stealthy as you open the bedroom door but it creaks. He hears each layer of your clothing being stripped from your body and it gives him a semi, thinking about you getting undressed. He’s always fucking hard for you. He just has to look at you and he can feel himself stirring. When you climb into bed alongside him, he opens his eyes and sees you, this messy little being that brightens up his life.

“Move in with me.” He says as he wraps his arm around your body and draws you close. You’re wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts and he can’t think of anything more perfect right now than just being here with you.

“Ask me in the morning.” You murmur as you press your forehead to his, your thumb chasing over the line of his jaw. “I want you to mean it, I don’t want it to be because of your night thoughts.”

“Darlin, it’s not, I promise.” He tells you as his lips brush over yours, he shifts his weight guiding you onto your back, his body covering yours. “I want you to make this your home.”

Your head tips back into the pillow as his hips slot between your thighs. You can feel how hard he is through the fabric of his boxers, he draws your hands up above your head, pinning them in place with one hand. There’s an excitement in your eyes, it burns so fucking bright. He smiles because his baby, she makes him work for it.

“Is this how you’re planning to persuade me?” You ask him as his fingertips hook your panties and draw them down your thighs.

“It depends how much you need persuading.” He whispers into your ear.

Fuck, your soaked for him already. He bundles your panties up in his fist, feeling your arousal on his fingertips before tossing them off the bed.

“More than just the tip.” You tease as he notches his cock at your entrance. He flattens his hips against yours preventing you from taking him any deeper.

“Say yes and I’ll give you anything you want darlin.” He whispers with that feral smile of his. “Anything at all.”

You arch your hips, but he presses down pinning you to the mattress. Fuck you are making this difficult, he can practically feel you clenching around the tip of his cock, it’s taking every single ounce of his self-control not to give you what you want, what you both want.

“Tig…” You breathe, meeting his eyes.

He sees that wildness in you, that beautiful recklessness that comes with falling in love with a madman like him.

“Yes.” You tell him. “I want to move in together.”

Love Tig? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

#tig soa #tig trager fanfic #tiggy #tig trager x reader #tig trager #alexander trager #alexander trager soa #alexander trager x you #alexander trager x reader

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anyon-else · 1 year

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Let the Games Begin (The Hunger Games pt. 5) | The games begin, and the tributes begin to realize that the arena may take them out before they can reach the Cornucopia. Kurogiri clearly wanted to put on a good show when he planned this year’s games. – spotify playlist | read on ao3

Pairings | Hawks | Keigo Takami x Reader + Dabi | Touya Todoroki, Shouto Todoroki, Aizawa Shouta, Ibara Shiozaki, Mei Hatsume, Itsuka Kendo

Warnings | angst, hurt/comfort, descriptions of violence, descriptions of injuries, weapons, suicidal ideation, religious themes, minor character death, discussion of themes present in The Hunger Games trilogy

Word count | 4k

Author’s note | Let me know if you guys like this chapter! I wasn’t too sure how to end it, but we’re getting some confrontations in the next chapter! I’m excited for the next few chapters. Please leave feedback if you’d like, I always love getting y’all’s comments!

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You were thirteen the first time you met Dabi. You had accidentally run into Shouto in your distraction to get home before curfew, knocking both of you to the ground. Shouto hit his head against the pavement below from the impact, and at eight years old, that was enough of an injury to warrant tears. His cries were soft, and almost too quiet to hear, but Dabi knew his brother’s crying well enough by then that he saw past Shouto’s attempt to duck behind his bangs and stay as quiet as possible. Dabi crouched behind his brother and felt where his head had hit the concrete, staring at his hand when it came back coated in a thin layer of bright red blood. At the sight of it, Shouto’s eyes widened, and his cries became quieter, replaced with quick, deep gasps that left little room for any air intake.

Dabi was bigger than you, and one year older, and the most important thing you learned after meeting him was that he cared more about his brother than he did about anyone or anything else.

He grabbed your shirt with one hand and pulled you to your feet, glaring down at you with more contempt than you’d ever seen in a fourteen-year-old. His burn scars stretched with the muscles of his face, morphing around his furious features. You flinched away from the intensity of his stare.

“Did you do that on purpose?” he asked, and you shook your head.

“It’s okay, Touya. It was an accident,” Shouto insisted, but Dabi still threw you over his shoulder and carried you past his brother and into an alley lined with trash bins. He peeked into one of the fuller ones, then dumped you into it and closed the lid before you could jump out. You struggled to open it for almost ten minutes until you realized that he was sitting on it, and it was only when you’d stopped pleading with him to let you out that something above you shifted and you were able to open the lid. Both Dabi and Shouto were gone when you peeked over the edge, so you rolled out of the bin, picked bits of trash off of your clothes, and walked home.

Two months later, you and Keigo were caught outside of District Eight’s perimeters after curfew. The peacekeepers were more watchful that year following the incident with Toga. They chased after you when you started racing towards the abandoned market, shouting and cursing at you as you sprinted between tables and pillars. You ended up hiding in a small bathroom stall meant for venders, chest-to-chest as you heaved and shushed one another between giggles while listening for the peacekeepers.

Small spaces had never bothered you. Confinement was usually just an inconvenience.

Now, it meant something else entirely.

You and Aizawa were watching one another carefully, him for signs of distress, and you for something to distract yourself. The glass tube that would take you into the arena was open in the front, and it had only been a few seconds since you’d stepped into it. Your fists were clenched around the loose, thick fabric of your pants, and you knew you looked just as worried as you felt.

“Don’t panic now,” Aizawa ordered, startling you from your thoughts, “you haven’t even started yet. You need to clear your head before you get up there.”

“Right,” you exhaled slowly, “okay. Talk to me about something, then.”

Aizawa looked slightly less inconvenienced than he usually would at a request like this, and it only took a moment for him to take a step closer. He leaned against the glass next to you and rapped his knuckles against it.

“When I had my games, these were metal.”

“What?”

“Mhm. They closed us in before we went up, and it was pitch black for about five minutes before we started moving. It was supposed to give the audience a look at our genuine reaction to the arena.”

You pictured a younger Aizawa, trapped in a metal tube with no sense of what was happening outside of the suffocating space. It sounded like torture.

“If Keigo dies in the arena, you can’t let it break you.”

You stared at Aizawa. His eyes were concrete, solid and sure and resolved. You wished people would stop saying that to you. You felt like they were anticipating Keigo’s death. Like it was inevitable. Even Dabi had asked you not to give up. Of all people, you wished Dabi put more faith in Keigo.

“I’ll get him out.”

“Anything can happen in there,” Aizawa bit back. “Anything, Y/N. There is every possibility that he will not make it. There’s every possibility that you won’t either. But whatever happens, you have to fight. Do you really think he would want you to die with him?”

“Don’t tell me what he would want,” you spit, “and don’t tell me that I won’t be able to save him from this.”

“I’m your mentor. My job is to tell you things that you don’t want to hear.”

His voice was kind, kinder than you’d ever heard it, and it made you pause. You gave him a small nod of acknowledgement.

“It’ll be alright. Just keep your head up.”

“You make it seem easy,” you muttered. Don’t lie to me, you wanted to say.

Aizawa took a step back when the door shifted. You fought the urge to pound against the glass once it closed you in. The space wasn’t big enough for you to spread your arms. You shut your eyes, picturing yourself in a big, open field. When you opened them, Aizawa had stepped back. He gave you one final nod before you started to move.

You were rising fast –– faster than you’d anticipated. Your hands involuntarily pressed against the glass as Aizawa disappeared from your view. You wanted to go back. You wanted to go home. You didn’t want to die. Fuck. Fuck.

Your chest was heaving when you entered the arena. You took in a deep breath, watching with wide eyes as the thirty second countdown began. Between you and the Cornucopia was a sheet of ice, spanning the entirety of the space between the platforms and the center of the arena.

“Oh, shit,” you muttered, breath catching in your throat as you took in the landscape.

It was a city of ruins. Everything was covered in a thick layer of snow, and towering over the rest of the arena were half-destroyed buildings covered in muddy ice. They looked like they had been sitting like this for years. You wondered if it had even been a week since the Capitol completed it.

You jumped when a loud crack sounded from the opposite end of the arena. One of the still-standing buildings began to crumble, and you watched with wide eyes as it came crashing to the ground. The other tributes were all looking around with similar expressions of shock; this wasn’t what any of you had expected. You’d seen the city arena a few years ago, and Aizawa had warned you that it might be a colder climate, but combining two already difficult arenas was rare. This was Kurogiri’s debut as gamemaker, and he was already making a name for himself.

You couldn’t see Keigo. He must have been on the opposite side of the Cornucopia. Numbly, you remembered one of Aizawa’s insights.

Everything that they do is purposeful. Never assume that anything is a coincidence.

“Three. Two. One.”

Day one of the 74th Annual Hunger Games

The cannon sounded, a crack in the silence of the arena, and then everything went quiet. Your head was pounding, ears closed off from the chaos breaking out the moment the countdown ended. You watched as the tributes raced across the ice, grabbing the first weapon they could get their hands on and turning on whoever was closest. You backed away from the bloodshed, stepping on the ice carefully. The shoes you’d been given were cleated at the bottom; short metal spicks dug into the ice and kept you from slipping. You winced when the blonde –– Bakugo, your spinning mind supplied –– kicked his spiked shoe into someone’s face, knocking them over with a snarl.

Your feet began moving on their own. Someone to your right threw a knife into the back of a retreating tribute. They fell to their knees, slumping onto their stomach almost in slow motion.

You broke into a sprint, pushing yourself off of the platform and racing towards the now still body. You slid across the ice on your knees to reach the knife before its previous owner did. You didn’t have time to think, not with Hatsume racing towards you, another knife clutched in her hand. You grasped the handle of the first knife, finally recognizing Kendo as the now dead body beneath you. Bile rose in your throat as you pulled the knife from the body easily. You turned away from the open wound and hunched over your weapon, ignoring the sick feeling in your stomach as blood stained the ice. Hatsume was almost on you now, knife raised high over her head.

You used Kendo’s body as leverage, spinning yourself on the ice and using the momentum to launch the knife towards her. It hit its mark just before she could bring her own down. She howled as it lodged into her shoulder, dropping her knife and collapsing to her knees.

There was no time to think. No time to feel guilty. No time to wonder if the wound would get infected and kill her. No time to do anything but grab her discarded knife, pull the other from her shoulder, and scramble to your feet. Your hand slipped, and you barely caught yourself with the hand holding the knives. Your knuckles burned as they hit the solid sheet of ice, but you dug your cleats into it and launched yourself from the Cornucopia. Ahead, the ice dissolved into slush and eventually became a layer of snow covering the rubble of the city. You stumbled over the watery ice, the cold shocking you as your feet sank into the freezing water.

“Y/N!”

Your brain was muddled. You felt like something inside you had deflated, leaving you breathless and full of nothing but empty space. The voice was faint, and your ears were still ringing, but you lifted your head and one of the two knives you’d collected towards the new voice.

Keigo.

He was right in front of you. He was right there, wide eyed and ushering you towards him from behind one of the crumbling buildings. You glanced behind you at Hatsume, who hadn’t looked up at Keigo’s call of your name, before pulling yourself from the lake and racing over the snow. Keigo’s arms were held in front of him, smile wide despite the chaos surrounding you.

“I found you,” he laughed, holding your face between his palms, already frozen from the cold.

“Yeah,” you nodded, gripping his hands, “you found me.”

By the time the sun set, you and Keigo had settled into a building that had at least some protection from the snow. The roof was half-collapsed, and only one corner of the small space was dry.

“We can’t start a fire,” Keigo sighed, pacing between the two still-standing walls of the structure. “Tomorrow, we can go back to the Cornucopia. There should be some kind of pack with a blanket. At least something we can use to warm up.”

“Right,” you wondered if Aizawa was doing what he said he’d do and helping and Keigo get sponsors. If he was successful, you might be receiving something like that sooner rather than later.

You leaned your head back against the concrete, eyes skyward. There were plenty of stars, too many to be possible in the light-polluted Capitol.

“Have you ever seen stars like that?”

Keigo glanced up through the small opening in the roof. It seemed almost unimaginable. The sky looked like something out of a painting, splattered with the bright, white lights. You’d heard stories of nights where the stars lit up the sky, but you’d only seen scattered stars in your district, and your days in the Capitol had only shown you a darkened sky.

“No,” he muttered. You wondered if these stars only existed in the arena. It felt darkly humorous. Kurogiri was either attempting a small kindness, or he was crueler than you’d given him credit for.

“Stars can only be seen in the lower districts.”

The voice came from the opposite corner of the small space, and the speaker was hidden in the shadows cast by the broken walls. You stood from your position against the highest wall of the structure, reaching behind you for your blood-crusted knife.

“Who are you?” Keigo raised his voice. In his hand was the knife that you’d used against Hatsume, clutched at his side as he approached the stranger carefully. You caught as glimpse of green hair, long and spread out into the faint glow of moonlight. You wanted to kick yourself for not noticing it before.

“Shiozaki?” you asked, careful as you stepped up to Keigo’s side. You’d studied the twenty-two other tributes carefully, and with a clear head you probably would have been able to recognize her voice from the number of times you’d watched the interviews. The girl’s long green hair certainly made a statement, but it contrasted her toned-down demeanor and advocation of peace rather than violence.

“The stars were once very beautiful,” she continued. Your eyes began to adjust to the darkness of the far corner the farther you moved into it, and the outline of the girl became clearer. She was sitting with her legs spread tucked under her. Snow dusted her hair, but the cold didn’t seem to bother her. She was twisting a piece of grass between her fingers where it was peeking through the snow, careful not to pull it from the ground. Wrapped around her right palm was a Kyoketsu-shoge. The knife was thrown to the side, but she was gripping the rope like a lifeline, body tense despite her distraction from you and Keigo.

“When I was young, my grandparents told me of a time when they could see stars like that in District Eleven. Now, there are days when we barely see stars at all. The Capitol polluted everything, and now all of that natural beauty has disappeared.”

The hand that was twisting the grass between her fingers froze, and she suddenly glared at you and Keigo fiercely. Gone was the girl from the interviews who clutched a bundle of flowers to her chest, asking the audience to think about their bloodlust and look to God. Gone was the girl whose character you thought you’d understood to be simple. This was someone entirely different. Beneath those words was a girl ready to break.

Before you could react, the knife at the end of Shiozaki’s weapon shot towards Keigo’s hand, knocking the knife into the snow. She pulled you into the shadows in your distraction and pressed you against the wall she’d been leaning on. She tugged the rope forward and caught the knife with remarkable coordination, then held it to your throat. Her movement quieted Keigo, whose knife was covered by the thick layer of snow that it had fallen into. He had clenched his bleeding hand into a fist, but you still saw blood staining the white powder.

“What do you believe in?” she muttered, digging the knife into the skin of your neck. You felt a trickle of blood come from the split she’d created, and fought not to shrink away from it, “do you believe in God?”

“What?” you grit, wincing when the knife shifted. She inched it away from the wound, giving you the space to take in a deep breath.

“You’re lost,” she shook her head, “you won’t survive this. The faithless never survive.”

“If there was a god, we wouldn’t be here,” you breathed, still wary of the knife just inches from your neck, “and if there’s a Heaven, we’re not going to get there.”

“You can still get there,” the smile that spread over her lips unsettled you. “You don’t have to take any lives. Let the Heavens take you before your soul is poisoned.”

It seemed hypocritical, considering the knife she was still threatening you with.

“You’re asking me to die?” you smiled, “are you going to finish the job?”

She scowled, pushing you away with unexpected force and dropping the knife with a shaking hand. Her face broke into something agonized, and she turned away from you towards the concrete wall.

“Are you okay?” Keigo grabbed your face, and you felt the sticky blood on his palm where Shiozaki had cut him.

“I’m fine,” you shook your head, bringing a hand to your throat. The cut was shallow, but the bleeding likely wouldn’t stop until you were able to put pressure on it and wrap it with something. This wasn’t the ideal opportunity to start dressing wounds.

“Our father, may your name be sanctified; and may your kingdom be blessed. May your will be done in Heaven and on Earth, and give our bread always.”

Shiozaki had fallen to her knees, hands clasped together as she muttered to herself. You began to approach her with Keigo at your side, but froze when you heard a familiar crack in the ground below you. It was the same sound you’d heard just before the building had come crashing to the ground during the countdown, but now it was much louder. It was coming from right under your feet.

“Run,” you looked back at Keigo with wide eyes. “The building is coming down. Run! Shiozaki!”

The girl hadn’t stirred at the noise, nor had she moved when the already crumbling building began to shake. You looked up as a large slab of concrete hit the ground just behind her. Still, she didn’t move.

The sounds of destruction ceased just as the Capitol’s symbol was projected over the stars. Music surrounded you as faces and districts flashed across the screen one by one, showing the tributes who had fallen on the first day. You looked back at Shiozaki with wide eyes, stepping forward behind Keigo as the building seemed to momentarily stabilize. Shiozaki had her head bowed to the floor now, listening as the last of ten canons sounded.

“Shiozaki,” Keigo called, looking between her and the rubble, “what are you doing?”

“Praying,” her voice was quiet, “for my fallen brothers and sisters.”

When the building began to fall again, you saw the second that Keigo made the decision to run back in. You remembered all of the people he’d taken care of in your district. All of the people that he watched over and kept safe. He had always been kind to a fault, sometimes at his own expense.

But he wasn’t going to make it. Not this time.

The wall came down in front of him just as you knocked him to the side, wrapping your arms around his torso and pulling him away from the destruction. Shiozaki could decide her own fate. You wouldn’t let her decide Keigo’s too.

He landed on top of you with a grunt, sitting up and looking back with wide eyes. You met them for a split second before you heard Shiozaki raise raise her voice so that you could hear her over the sound of the building collapsing. She was standing now, hands lifted and and face tilted towards the sky. You could see the light of the moon reflecting off of the tears on her cheeks.

When she looked towards you and Keigo, you felt frozen with the snow.

“May God watch over you both,” she smiled, “and may you escape with your lives.”

The building collapsed, one final canon sounded, and all that it left behind was dust and silence.

You watched as the debris settled over the rubble. Blood was still leaking from the cut in your neck, feeling like cold water on your skin, but you felt a million miles from your body. You shivered, bringing a hand to the wound to feel the damage.

“We need to find somewhere else to sleep,” you finally turned to Keigo. He stared at you, brows pulling together as his eyes fell to your neck.

“You’re hurt,” he took a step forward, reaching towards you with his injured hand. You smiled, stopping it before it could reach your neck. You turned it over to display the long, still-bleeding cut on his palm.

“You too,” you shook your head.

You glanced back at the building once more, briefly wondering if she could be alive under there. You turned with finality, trudging through the snow with a loose grip on Keigo’s uninjured hand.

Part of you wished you were in that building with her. Part of you didn’t want to wake up in the morning. The games generally lasted a little over two weeks. It had been one day, and you felt like all the fight you thought you would have had left you. Watching the games on a screen really didn’t do them justice; back home, you were able to convince yourself that it wasn’t real. That it was just a sick joke that the Capitol orchestrated.

You wondered if you would ever get the image of her final moments out of your head.

You and Keigo didn’t talk much as you continued on through the maze of the buildings. He seemed just as shocked as you felt, but you were reassured by his hand holding tight to yours that he was still with you. That he didn’t blame you for interfering.

But you knew that wouldn’t stop him from blaming himself.

You’d settled in another, more stable looking structure for the night. You both knew you’d need to sleep to be able to defend yourself against the twelve tributes left in the arena, but every time you closed your eyes, you saw Shiozaki letting herself die. You saw her eyes, wide and crazed and terrified as she asked you to die with her. Instead, she died alone and terrified, her death decided by people who used her as a spectacle.

You kept thinking about what more you could have done. If things went the way you wanted them to, she would have died anyways. Really, you should’ve been relieved.

That’s why they do this, you shook your head, trying to rid yourself of those thoughts, to turn us against one another. To isolate us and make us believe that we’re enemies.

Keigo was working mechanically, ripping the sleeve of his undershirt and tying it around your neck. It had taken long enough for you to find a semi-stable shelter for the night that the blood had crusted over the wound, but you felt it open again when Keigo cleaned it. He murmured out apologies as he worked, quick and efficient with practiced hands.

When he finished, you took his hand and repeated his actions. He watched you work with heavy eyelids, resting his chin on the arm he had draped over his knees.

“I wasn’t looking at the tributes who died today,” you leaned into Keigo’s side shivering against the cold wind blowing through the cracks in the wall. “Do you think–”

“No,” Keigo’s voice was firm. “Shouto’s strong. He’s okay.”

Neither of you wanted to acknowledge that your survival meant Shouto’s death. You didn’t want to think about coming home to Dabi with the weight of his brother’s death on your shoulders.

You drifted off plagued with thoughts of Shouto, possibly already dead and abandoned in the Cornucopia. Once asleep, you dreamed of Keigo being crushed with Shiozaki, leaving you alone in this Hell.

#hawks #hawks x reader #hawks x you #hawks x y/n #hawks imagine #keigo takami #keigo takami x reader #keigo takami x you #keigo takami x y/n #keigo takami imagine #mha #mha x reader #mha x you #mha x y/n #mha imagine #my hero academia #thg #emwrites

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raaorqtpbpdy · 1 year

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The One

For the Phic Phight prompts: Soulmate Au where after your soulmate dies, you can only see in black and white. As in you see normal colors until they die and then only in black and white for the rest of your life, so you only ever know if you had a soulmate once it's too late. Except Character A's (up to you who you want it to be) soulmate is Danny. While Danny is in Phantom form, character A's vision is in black and white, but returns to normal color when Danny is Fenton. Character A is going crazy trying to find their soulmate who keeps dying and getting resurrected. (from @ghostboidanny) and Wes is the first one to find out Danny's secret. No One Knows AU. (from @murphy-kitt)

Chapter 2: Bathed in Green Light

AO3 Link

[Warning for death mentions and graphic descriptions of pain (the portal accident)]

This was by far the worst moment of Danny's life.

He'd been stupid to hang around in his parents lab. Stupid to go into the portal. Stupid to touch anything. He'd never thought a decision made out of boredom, made because he was lonely and had nothing to do with both of his friends busy for the day, would have such disastrous consequences. He hadn't expected that thoughtlessly putting his hand against the wall in the dark hole which was supposed to be a ghost portal, would result in the worst moment of Danny's entire life... and quite possibly the last.

He could feel the electricity coursing through his veins, pumping millions of volts under his skin. His bones were being fried into brittle black powder. His blood evaporated in his arteries. His eyes practically popped right out of his skull, his organs melted. Then a shock of something ice-cold soaking him through, shredding him to pieces on jagged fractals.

It felt as if he was being torn apart molecule by molecule.

Toxic, radioactive green flooded in.

For what felt like forever, it dominated all of his senses. No scent, no sound, no taste. He could feel nothing and see nothing, except for that horrible, headache-inducing green.

He blacked out.

When he came to, he was on the floor of his parents' lab. Miraculously, he felt fine, until he tried to get to his feet, and realized he didn't have any. He floated up, so freaked out he wasn't even breathing and yet, he also wasn't running out of breath.

A glance in the nearest reflective surface showed him a very different sight than he was familiar with. His once-black hair was snow white, and his eyes that same, sickening green that had been his whole world for an instant and an eternity at once. His white Fenton jumpsuit had turned black, his skin was a pallid gray.

He'd changed, somehow.

The portal had changed him.

It had twisted, and altered, and rearranged his atoms until he wasn't human anymore.

All Danny's life, he'd heard his parents ranting and raving about ghosts, but he hadn't believed a word of it since he was six years old. Never in a million years could he have imagined that he would become one.

Alone in his parents' basement lab at fourteen years old, Danny Fenton had died.

A few minutes later, while he was still freaking out about being a ghost, the door at the top of the stairs slammed open, and in an instant of unparalleled fear, something incredible happened. A white glow passed over Danny, a bubbling, fizzing line of light against his body like a layer of skin was dissolving right off of him, and he dropped to the ground, looking just as human as he'd ever been.

"Dann-o, are you down here?" his father's booming voice asked. "Jazz said she heard screaming?"

"Yeah I... I was just looking at the portal," he said. "It shocked me when it turned on, but I'm okay now." His father's heavy footsteps stopped halfway down the stairs.

"It turned on?" he repeated, then he thundered gleefully down the rest of the way to see, like a kid on Christmas morning. "How? What happened?"

"Oh, I don't know," Danny lied, rubbing his left arm awkwardly. His left had been the hand against the wall, and he could still feel the phantom stings of electricity buzzing under his skin. "Maybe it just needed some time to warm up?"

"Maddie!" Jack bellowed upstairs. His voice no doubt carrying easily into the house, and probably all the way down the street as well. "The Fenton Portal is working!"

It was mere seconds before the clattering of his mother's boots could be heard clamoring down the basement stairs as well. "What do you mean it's working?" she demanded, though she was clearly thrilled to hear it. "How can it be working?"

"Danny here says it just needed some time to warm up!" Jack said, clapping his son on the back. The contact set Danny's raw nerves on fire, but he was quick to mask his pained grimace with a forced grin. "Says it gave him a shock when it turned on though. You're not hurt, are you, Danny boy?"

"Uh... no," Danny said, though it was the biggest lie he'd ever told. As soon as he'd turned human again, the pain came back, muted and faraway, but still there, and agonizing when anything when anything touched him. "No, I'm fine. Just some bad static, I think."

"Are you sure?" his mother asked with a sympathetic frown, but he nodded, fake smile still plastered on his face. "Well, if it's not serious...."

"It's not," Danny assured her promptly. "I'm just excited that the portal works now, I'm happy for you. But uh, I'm gonna, you know, go upstairs and leave you two to your work, cool? Cool." He started out of the basement, feeling with every step as though he was walking barefoot on shattered glass and gritting his teeth to keep from wincing as he ascended the stairs.

"I don't understand," he heard Maddie say behind him. "The prototype activated right away... I mean, it didn't function as intended, but it activated."

"Well, this one's bigger!" Jack responded, as though that explained everything.

Danny didn't hear anything more as he kept going until he reached his room on the second floor, where he lied down on his bed and tried not to move at all until the pain slowly but surely started to ebb away. When it had subsided enough for him to think, Danny considered what he should do.

Honestly, he didn't have the slightest idea. He didn't even really know what had happened to him. One second he was a ghost, and the next, human again. If he could switch back and forth, he had no idea how to do it, and if he was really dead and just somehow disguised himself as a human, he wasn't about to tell him parents that; they'd have a breakdown. And Jazz... Jazz was always going on about how it was her job as the older sibling to protect him. How would she feel if she found out about this? Not good. That much was certain.

And what about Sam and Tucker? He should tell them, at the very least, shouldn't he? Although... on second thought, maybe not. Tucker was always saying how dangerous their lab was and would never let Danny hear the end of it if he found out about the accident, and Sam, goth though she may be, got squeamish about death when it was more than just a word in her poetry. She didn't even eat meat. If she found out Danny had sort of died, she'd have a conniption.

For now, it was best to keep it a secret, at least until he figured out how to break it to them gently.

He was so not looking forward to school tomorrow. Maybe he could fake sick or ask his parents for the day off as a reward, since he was the one who got the portal working and all.

In the end, his parents were so busy running tests on their newly functioning portal that Danny didn't even need to make an excuse. He just stayed in bed, in the pajamas he'd eventually recovered enough to change into, and they never noticed that he cut school at all. If the school called them, they'd probably even ignore it in lieu of sample collecting and data checking.

At around 3:20 in the afternoon, Danny felt a chill and his breath misted in front of him as if the temperature had suddenly dropped a good thirty degrees. Something green and glowing flew up through the floor into Danny's room. Danny knew that color all too well, though it was weird to see it on an octopus, far, far away from any place an octopus would logically be. It flew at Danny, and he threw his hands up defensively, squeezing his eyes shut.

When he opened them, he saw white gloves in front of his face, and a translucent green barrier between him and the ghost.

There was no time to think as he wrestled with the octopus in his bedroom, so he let instinct takeover. Green light shot out of his fingertips, making the octopus recoil. He grabbed the creature and dragged them both through the floor and through the floor again. He stunned the thing by zapping it with electricity and tossed it through the ghost portal and then... Danny decided instincts were a terrifying thing.

His parents backs had been turned to the whole time while they examined some kind of samples. They hadn't seen a thing. Danny flew back up through the ceiling, back to his room, closed his eyes, and willed himself to become human again. It wasn't until he felt his heart start to beat rapidly in his chest that he realized it had worked and he sighed with relief.

Crawling back into bed, he wrapped himself up in his blankets, and tried to magically erase everything that had happened the previous day the same way he'd transformed mere moments ago. Unfortunately, his will alone wasn't strong enough to do that, and it didn't work the second time.

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#phic phight #phic phight 2023 #fic #The One #dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #angst #no one knows au #Jack fenton #maddie fenton #things i wrote

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gallant-basilisk · 1 year

Text

"Impactful accident"

Just a small drabble, nothing specific :)

[...]

"Mina, what did you do?" Momo asked the girl with concern as she stepped up to her. The girl whipped her head around, her pink skin noticeably redder around her teary eyes than normal. "...I didn't mean to...... It was an accident— I'm sorry, please!" She pleaded, her eyes erratically jumping between Momo and the girl hiding behind her. Momo raised an arm, separating the two, although there was only pity in her expression, she still didn't let Mina approach her.....

You.

"Y/N.." A meek voice, unrecognizable without its usual cheery and confident vibe escaped the girl's throat.

You took a step to the left and hesitantly brushed some strands of hair from your face— although the bandages still blocked your vision, effectively nullifying the action—, glaring at her through the small gaps made for you to see through.

You're mad, that's clear. You know that. Momo knows that. Mina knows that. But neither of the two can offer you a solution. Neither of them can help cool down your sizzling thoughts and boiling blood, all demanding compensation. It was only fair. It would only be fair. And it's so infuriating to know you'll never receive it. Not even because of a mistake you made. But one that wasn't yours, it was Mina's. It is Mina's fault. So why do you have to be the one to suffer the consequences?

You pull your hands into fists, your well-kept nails — although short — managing to puncture the thin skin and drawing blood. You spare a glance to your side, head pointed towards Mina and rigidly still — Momo's looking at your face, well, what she can see with the thick layers of bandages concealing it, so you know she hasn't yet noticed the thin lines of blood traveling down your hands, collecting into one big patch at the bottom and quietly pooling on the floor beside your legs.

It helped, a little bit. The small stinging in your palms offered some sort of 'breath of relief' though every glance towards the pink girl relit the fire inside you. Her pitiful, sad expression never once made you question the validity of your anger,— even though you admit she did kind of look like a kicked dog. It didn't matter.

Whether what she did was intentional or not does not matter right now.

"Mina, please. Y/N won't say anything..." Momo asked quietly, afraid of setting you off or scaring her. "I..." She gulped, gaze flicking between you and her, "I asked the girls if they wanted to spar with me, and—and you weren't here, I don' (k)now where you, where you were, but not, you were not here an—and——" "Mina!" Momo put her hand on her shoulder and wiped stray tears from her eyes with her other hand. "Calm down, take a deep.breath and don't rush." She flashed a reassuring smile, then took a step back as she waited patiently for Mina to continue.

Mina took a deep breath, a way bigger one than Momo meant, and released it in a long exhale. She repeated this for a few more times, then after a final sigh she looked into the ravenette's eyes.

"I wanted to practice with someone this morning— like I said, you weren't here, but I asked everyone else— but only Y/N agreed——" "Oh, no.." Momo mumbled under her breath, her eyes immediately snapping to you. The pity in how she looked at you was anything but comforting. "... So, we went outside to spar and, well I——I was hasty, I didn't wait for her to get ready........." She falls silent and looks down, her body trembling slightly.

"Mina..!" Momo pulled her into a tight embrace, murmuring small words of reassurence as she rocked her side-to-side.

"It won't heal!" You shout suddenly at the two, lost in their own worlds where Mina's the victim and you didn't exist, apparently. They froze, slowly looking at you in silence. "You fucked me up!" "Y/N, calm down, please." Momo pleaded, truly meaning nothing else with her words, yet it didn't change the end result. Also, how does she not realise telling an angry person to calm down isn't gonna have the effect she wants. "CALM DOWN?! MINA FUCKED UP MY FACE!! MY LIFE!" You glare at the two, though you can no longer tell what kind of expression they're making as your vision blurs. Your bandages absorb most of your tears, but it really doesn't change how miserable you feel. How miserable you are.

"Momo, what the hell??" You turn to the girl, her form only appearing as smaller-bigger puddles of colours in your eyes. Your voice loses stability, power and it's becoming increasingly difficult to speak or breathe properly. It's so difficult to stop crying, to be calm when you feel like your whole life's falling apart. Even when it's not, in the present, you can't see it.

You're sad, or angry, maybe tired... You can't really tell which anymore, but a turmoil of emotions is blooming inside you and it just pisses you off how you're unable to do anything.

[...]

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #bnha fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #mha fanfiction #bnha angst #poor attempt at angst

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wkemeup · 3 years

Text

The Offer

summary: Zemo offers to sell the Winter Soldier in exchange for information. pairing: bucky x reader word count: 3k warnings: vaguely implied unwanted sexual contact a/n: this is based around the Madripoor scene in TFATWS ep 3, particularly Zemo’s suggestion of “he will do anything you want.”

“You must maintain your cover,” Zemo’s voice rang in your ear, drowning out the heavy bass of loudspeakers from the club down the hall. “If you break character, they will know... and they will kill us.”

You held your breath; arms folded tight across your chest, nails digging into the exposed skin on your biceps. It did little to ease the strain within your muscle as you watched Bucky standing guard at the edge of the room, his eyes overcast in a cold, emotionless haze. Ready for command. Empty of the needs and desire that made him human. Portraying the shadow from his past he was so desperate to escape.

Slowly, you shifted your weight on heels sharp enough to pierce skin. The clothes Zemo had dressed you in were unforgiving, exposing every dip and curve on your body, though you supposed that was his intention. You were meant assume the role of a wealthy arms dealer known only as Lilith, a woman whose reputation for the bedrooms of Madripoor outweighed even that of the weapons at her disposal. An affinity for the finer things in life, Zemo had snickered to himself. Sex, drugs, and power.

Bucky’s eyes shifted to the floor near your feet. You could tell he was watching you from his peripherals though his expression remained vacant. It was shocking to see him like this again, worse that he seemed to fall back into the role of the Winter Soldier so easily – like he’d never truly believed he could put his past to rest at all.

Zemo paced at the center of the room, discussing terms while Selby lounged on the couch. Her brazen comfort in a room of powerful agents on the dark market told you she had more leverage than any of you anticipated. You felt for the slight weight of the gun strapped at your thigh, keeping careful watch of the guards stationed just outside the door. The four of you were easily outnumbered and outgunned, even with Bucky throwing himself back to the Winter Soldier.

Sam caught your eye across the room, his face stern enough to communicate his uncertainty. He didn’t trust Zemo anymore than you did. The man was responsible for dozens of deaths, including the King of Wakanda, and he’d done the Avengers no favors by planting a seed of war between the most powerful people on the planet. You tried not to follow Sam's gaze when his eyes flickered to Bucky, a softening in his brow to see months of progress virtually erased within seconds.

“What’s the offer?” Selby’s voice broke through the haze. You hadn’t realized how focused you’d been on Bucky until you began to notice the music thumping through the walls and the scent of stale beer lining the floors – a disorienting state amongst precious stole artifacts and original paintings.

Zemo stood from his chair, crossing the room. He picked up a relic from the center table, admiring the shiny copper edges as he tossed it in the air. It nearly slipped from his grip and he shuttered out an apologetic wince at Selby before placing it back on the table. You rolled your eyes.

Adjusting the fur lined collar of his jacket, Zemo circled the edges of the room. He came to a pause over Bucky’s shoulder, gaze slowly trailing down his frame, tracing over the lines on Bucky's face as if he were studying for imperfections. A sinister smirk curled at his lips before he turned back to Selby.

“Tell us what you know about the super soldier serum,” Zemo bargained, waiting for her interest to peak before he continued. She shifted in her seat; a brow raised. His lips curved in a devious grin enough to make your stomach twist. “And we’ll give you him. Along with the code words to control him, of course.”

Bucky didn’t so much as flinch, his stare maintaining the same emptiness you saw the day on the bridge when he’d been muzzled by his captors and made to be a weapon. Nothing in his expression gave way to whatever was going through his mind and part of you wondered if he’d allowed himself so far into this role again, that he’d embraced the cold arms of the numbness it carried. It was easier than allowing himself to feel any of the rage that was rapidly boiling under your skin, you supposed.

But then, Zemo’s knuckles grazed at Bucky’s cheek. Lingering over unshaven stubble, a shadow along his jaw. A delicate touch though it seemed to burn as if steam could rise from the contact alone.

Zemo turned, grinning at Selby. “He will do anything you want.”

It was so impossibly subtle, you weren’t sure anyone else had noticed, but Bucky’s jaw clenched. The muscle shifted the shadows on his face, his breathing coming to a stop as his chest no longer carried the steady rise and fall under layers of leather and Kevlar. Zemo’s hand moved along Bucky’s jaw, fingers dangerously close to his lips, and you felt for the outline of the gun strapped to your thigh.

"Anything?" Selby inquired. Her tone was even though her eyes widened just enough, the dark of her pupils expanding as she glanced over Bucky's frame.

"When he is properly activated, the Soldier is incredibly–" Zemo paused, tapping the edge of Bucky's chin, "–eager to please. There's nothing else inside that brain of his except his mission. What that mission is, is entirely up to whoever recites the triggers."

“Fascinating,” Selby grinned as she slowly stood from her perch.

You followed her stride with every agonizing step towards Bucky. Just as she crossed in front of The Smiling Tiger, Sam’s gaze met yours. He narrowed his eyes, the slight shake in his head barely noticeable. He must have seen you reach for your gun – an instinct to protect Bucky from the demons of his past, a tangible weapon you hadn't been able to use against the monsters in his sleep. It took every ounce of your strength to relax away from the comforting metal.

You watched as Selby’s eyes roamed over Bucky – hungry, and like a vulture, she licked her lips. As she began to circle his frame, gaze trailing down from his shoulders, to his thighs, down to his feet, never once daring to meet his eyes, you found yourself inching closer. Bucky’s hand curled into a fist so tight his nails broke skin in his right hand, blood prickling at his palm. And still—his expression remained stoic, unfeeling. A paralyzing thought crossed your mind and you questioned if this dance was a familiar one – the art of being sold to another human being.

Selby paused as she faced him; examining the features on his face as if he were something other than human – a prize to be won, a possession to own, a trophy to show off.

“And he’s still in working condition? After all these years?” she inquired toward Zemo, standing so dangerously close to Bucky. His stare focused straight ahead, far beyond the wall across the room as if he could burn holes into the plaster.

"He's quite impressive," Selby murmured. Slowly, her hand reached towards his face.

Your grip was around her wrist before anyone realized you’d crossed the room. She flinched, startled by the vice-like hold wrapped around her wrist and a pained sort of whine escaped. She flexed her fingers and still, you held your ground.

“Is there a problem, Lilith?” Selby smirked, curiosity glaring as her eyes flickered between you and Bucky. You said nothing and yet, her lips parted in understanding. “Oh, I see. You control him. Don’t you, dear? He belongs to you.”

You tasted bile on your tongue – the very thought of owning Bucky as if his agency was not even in question made you sick to your stomach. Your grip tightened on Selby’s wrist and you would have broken it clean in two if you had the strength for it. But one look at Zemo and the cautious gaze upon his face, and you forced yourself to swallow back the venom in your mouth. You didn’t allow the disgust to touch your features or the shame to burn hot into your neck. Lilith would not be fazed by the selling of a weapon—even if that weapon were a man with heart so heavy, so full and so kind, he could hardly carry its burden on his own.

“Make your deal, Selby,” you hissed in an accident belonging to the weapons dealer you portrayed, “then, you can play with your toy. Until we have our intel, hands off the product.”

You released Selby’s wrist and she stepped back a few paces. She slid her left hand over the red marks forming over her skim, gingerly massaging at the area and still – the grin did not falter from her cheeks. Impressed, intrigued. She seemed inclined to ask you more about your bond to the Winter Soldier when you stepped in front of Bucky, blocking her view as she unabashedly stared down her hopeful new possession. Sam and Zemo exchanged a glance, though their expressions did not carry the weight their eyes did.

Behind you, you could hear Bucky exhale a heavy a breath, could practically feel as his fists released to be out of the woman’s eye line. It was short lived, of course, as all things in Madripoor were. A gunshot pierced through the window and lodged itself into Selby’s head.

***

You woke with a sudden start, the sticky smell of stale beer still on your skin as you jolted up on an unfamiliar bed. The room was vaguely a blur thanks to the pounding ache in the back of your head, but you could see enough to know it was not a place you recognized. To your left, the bed was untouched; sheets perfectly pressed as if they’d never been laid in at all. Glancing down, you saw you were still wearing the dress from the club, makeup smeared over your face and onto the pillows. You brushed at your cheeks to remove the mascara stains.

At the end of the bed, laid a fresh pair of clothes. Blue jeans and a black pullover. You sighed, pressing a hand over the soft fabric and bringing it to your face. It smelled of lavender and vanilla – fresh and inviting compared to the sweaty stale air of the night club.

The night before was mostly a blur. You didn’t remember much after Selby was killed; only Bucky’s hands on your waist, pulling you back towards the door as you tried to locate the shooter. You’d kicked off your heels and sprinted next to him in your bare feet – a man who could challenge the speed of moving vehicles and he was running in line with you and Sam while gunshots reined from every direction. Self-preservation was not a concept in Bucky’s vocabulary.

Your feet were bloodied by the time you caught your breath again and within the impossibly small moment you took to pause, an assailant had knocked you out from behind. Cold darkness. Instantaneously. After that, you could only catch vague memories of Bucky lifting you into his arms and Sharon Carter’s voice. But you hadn’t seen Sharon in years. Not since the aftermath of Vienna. The theory didn’t make much sense.

You felt along the dresser for your gun, only to find it empty. With a tired groan, you swung your legs over the edge of the bed, hoping you could find Bucky or Sam before you found trouble. Your feet were wrapped in bandages carrying a slight pink color on the soles – courteous of Zemo’s ridiculous heels you’d left behind the chaos and the mile worth of pavement you’d run barefoot on.

The chill of the hardwood floors was a relief on the undersides of your feet, but you hadn’t accounted for the dizziness from your concussion to take over once you stood. The room went dark and you began to sway, trying to feel for the bed behind you, when suddenly you hard footsteps rushing into the room.

“Hey, hey, what are you doing out of bed?” Bucky’s arms wrapped at your waist, holding you steady. He guided you back to the bed, helping you to sit on the edge as you regained your vision. He sat down beside you, keeping a hand on your arm to help ground you as you focused on the permanence of the room, the sturdiness of solid ground.

“What happened?” you sighed, pressing your palms to your eyes. Your head was still ringing from the blow you took the night before. When you finally allowed yourself to adjust to the sunlight in the room, you turned to face Bucky. He was dressed in a plan black t-shirt and jeans; his Winter Soldier attire hung in the corner of the room.

“Sharon happened,” Bucky chuckled with a short shake of his head. You thought you might be surprised at his answer, and somehow, you weren’t at all. Bucky softened, his fingers brushing at the hem of your dress. “You should change into something more comfortable. Sharon left some clothes for you but um... you were pretty out of it last night and I didn’t want to... um...”

“Thank you, Bucky.” You smiled at him as you placed your hand on top of his. You squeezed at his fingers, curling under his palm against your thigh. For a moment, you nearly lost yourself in the sunlit reflection of blue within his eyes – the delicate intricacies of a complex man. So impossibly sweet and kind in the daylight; cold as stone in the night under the guise of the Winter Soldier.

Bucky helped you to stand, giving you time to adjust to the sting of healing wounds on the soles of your feet. He turned his back to give you privacy, though he kept close enough that you could grab hold of his shoulder for support. He pushed the clothes down the bed for you to reach easily.

Slowly, ignoring the ache in your body, you slid the zipper down your spine, letting the dress fall to a heap at your feet. You tried not to notice how Bucky’s shoulders tightened at the sound, his stance a little less balanced at the fallen fabric. Gingerly, you dressed yourself in the jeans and pullover Sharon had provided for you, trying to stifle a wince as you shifted on your feet. Bucky’s head tilted at your whimper, his instinct fighting to turn to you, to help you, but he held himself still.

When you were done, you reached for the necklace at your bedside, one you hadn’t worn on the mission but you carried it with you wherever you went – the last token you had of a distant life before the Avengers. Sam had kept it in his pocket in Madripoor.

“Would you mind?” you called softly, tapping a hand against Bucky’s shoulder. He turned cautiously, almost timid in his movements, and you smiled at him as he held his hand out. The delicate gold chain dropped into his palm – a beautiful contrast to the black metal, in mirror to the detailing work along his shoulder.

Before you could turn your back to him, Bucky stepped closer. He held each side of the necklace in his hands and brought them around the back of your neck. This close, you could smell the bar soap he’d used that morning, you could see the lines of scruff along his jaw he hadn’t been able to shave.

When he clasped the chain, he stepped back slowly, but only enough to admire his work. He brushed your hair away from your collar, a ghosted smile on his lips at he touched the pendent at the center. This wonderful, beautiful man who learned to find comfort in touch again, who sought you out when it felt impossible to reclaim that part of him. Memory of the night before etched into your mind and you swallowed back the lump in your throat.

“Bucky?”

He smiled a little wider, focused on tracing his fingers along your jaw, brushing away your hair. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to talk about last night?”

Bucky paused, his touch upon you skin turning near to stone before he pulled away. The smile he’d worn slowly faded from his lips, the cold rush of reality piercing through the tender moment, and you hated yourself for being the cause of such pain. Bucky sighed, sinking down onto the bed, his hands gripped tight to the edge of the mattress.

“Not sure there’s much to say, doll,” Bucky exhaled.

You sat beside him, close enough for your thigh to brush in line with his. He looked down at the little space between you, his eyes fluttered closed at the contact – the grounding sensation of welcomed touch.

“You're not him anymore, Bucky,” you said softly, setting your hand over his own. “No one is ever going to control you or... or own you again, okay? They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to... not anymore. You’re free. You know that, don’t you?”

Bucky nodded, though it was slow, almost aching. He squeezed at your hand, pushing out a pained smile as he looked at you. “I do.”

You reached towards him with your free hand, cupping the side of his cheek where Zemo had touched him the night before. You traced your thumb over his jaw line, tingling over the short hairs on his skin. So beautiful and lovely after decades suffering under the hands of cruel men.

“You know I’d kill anyone who tried, right?”

Bucky chuckled at that and you were grateful to see the lines by his eyes again, the smile pushing bright into his cheeks. “Yeah, sweetheart. I know that, too.”

He leaned forward a pressed a kiss to your temple. Short and lingering and not nearly long enough. But it was welcomed and warm and enough.

—

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi account ✨

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes imagine #tfatws #tfatws spoilers

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

Note

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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jade-parcels · 3 years

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The bunnies’ other jobs!

From my bunny cafe au

((I am so peeved :((( I had this all written out!! And I deleted it by accident!! Darnnnnn!!!))

Anon asked “You mentioned that some of the bunnies have day jobs so do they all have jobs outside the cafe or just a few?” (Something along these lines…again…I deleted it by accident 😔)

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Diluc/‘Angel’

After his father got bored with the wine industry, he passed the whole company off to Diluc on his 18th birthday in order to shift his focus to mining. Diluc found himself swamped with all kinds of business decisions while just barely being an adult. He expanded the company and hired some very trustworthy people to handle things for him so he could finish college

When the business was given to him, Diluc and Kaeya had an explosive fight over it. Kaeya felt like he deserved to have some say in what happens to the business, he’s still a part of the family! But Diluc refused to let him in on any decisions so Kaeya packed his bags and left (not before cussing him out in front of their father, staff and business partners). He was just in a silly, goofy mood. They’re fine now, not on the best terms but they do chat and meet up for lunch on occasion.

He is filthy rich, he couldn’t spend all of his all of his money if he tried, so he doesn’t really need the job at the cafe! Kaeya got him the job because he knew his brother was stuck in a weird, antisocial funk and needed some fun in his life

Diluc loves this job, he has a great time, but it isn’t his main job. His priority will always be the family business!! If he has to quit his job at the cafe, he would in a heartbeat

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Kaeya

Kaeya was going to go into the police academy but was scouted out by a modeling agency. They had seen him at Ragnvindr company events and thought ‘well damn’ so they gave him a pretty generous deal

Kaeya makes a good living off of modeling, the tips and paycheck from the cafe. He rakes in cash pretty quickly just cause he knows how to get it. That, and his dad sends him checks every other month as well. Kaeya thinks of it as ‘I’m sorry’ money. He isn’t wrong

He doesn’t travel much for modeling, which he doesn’t mind, so he kinda just hangs around the city with a lot of free time on his hands between photo shoots. That’s why he got this job at the cafe! It gives him something to do and it’s fun as hell ;)

Albedo

Bedo is one busy bunny. He finished college early and is getting his masters degree online. He works most days at the cafe and on the weekends, he tutors other college students in bio/chem/science related subjects

(He was actually Xiao’s tutor back when he was failing chemistry!! Xiao is very thankful for Albedo’s help!!)

His dream is to become a biochemist, he’s always been interested in cells and what makes up living beings. So having a career in that field would make him the happiest man alive

His mother and sister live outside the city in a more rural area so he spends a lot of time FaceTiming the two of them! Klee is always so excited to hear about Albedo’s experiments or the people he’s met while working in such a bustling, fun city :)

Zhongli

Zhongli is a simple man! He’s a bunny waiter and an artist

He creates intricate pieces based on folklore from different cultures, focusing mostly on dragons. His favorite medium is paint, he loves painting on glass and layering the panes in order to create a 3D piece

He sells his works to galleries, shops and anyone who wants them! As long as they appreciate the story behind the artwork. Sadly…He undersells his work. He could def be making more money but he just does not desire money or material goods the way others may

So he got his job at the cafe in order to help out his dear friend Ningguang, not for money, he only planned on working there for a month or two until she got more bunnies but…he ended up really loving the people he works with :’) he looks forward to working with them now and texts/calls them outside of work to meet up for lunch or bowling (such an old man thing to do omfg)

Dainsleif/‘Sweetie’

Dain was a bouncer at another bar before leaving to come to Celestia’s! He’s good friends with Beidou, they belong to the same motorcycle club so when she was talking to him about the lack of security at the cafe/bar, he stepped in to help out

Little did he know…he’d actually become a bunny…And like it

This is his full time job now, he doesn’t have another for the time being. While he is a bunny at the cafe, he still keeps an eye out for any threats to his coworkers and has access to the offices upstairs (Ningguang’s office and the security office)

When he isn’t waiting tables, he’s upstairs in a tank top and sweatpants keeping an eye on the security cameras and talking to the other security guards through their ear pieces

Ajax

Ajax is a student who doesn’t really have much time on his hands

He mows lawns in the summer and he’s quit his job as a cashier to come work at the cafe! He mostly works night shifts his cause he’s still going to school aaaaaand he’s on his college’s swim team! He’s about to graduate so he works close with his coach to help train the others on the team

He doesn’t really want his family knowing that he skips around in a skimpy bunny outfit and fucking customers most nights but I mean…They’re bound to find out if they see him in pictures people post

Xiao/‘Tofu’

Xiao is an art student!! He wants to be a tattoo artist :)

He’s already got one sleeve of tattoos, it’s unfinished but you can’t really tell just by looking. When he isn’t at the cafe, he’s either in class or shadowing Ganyu, his best friend and tattoo artist. Their art styles greatly differ, she focuses her craft on cutesy, colored tattoos, but she is skilled. And Xiao looks up to her

Xiao admires Zhongli too, they met at the cafe and when Zhongli found out Xiao wants to be a tattoo artist he told him that once he’s licensed, he wants to get a tattoo from him :’)

Baizhu/‘Honey’

Baizhu is a (mostly) full time pharmacist, hence why he isn’t usually at the cafe

He also has a niece, Qiqi, who he babysits often. He loves her very much so he has no problem watching her! Baizhu will even bring her to the pharmacy with him when he’s swamped with work. In the break room, he has a play kitchen, coloring books and a bunch of puzzles to keep Qiqi occupied while he works :)

When he’s not at work, he’s at home resting. He has chronic pain flare ups in his back and shoulders that can make life miserable :( he has plenty of good days that outweigh the bad! And as a pharmacist, he has access to any medicine he needs to make his life easier!

Dottore(Alain)/‘Doc’

Alain’s an oral surgeon who’s a little bit….too into his job

He isn’t phased by blood or gore so he’s easily able to conduct procedures that would make other squeamish. He’ll pull teeth, put in dental implants, remove rotten tissue, any of that without even flinching

Outside of that, he works at the cafe. He wears a mask in order to avoid being recognized even though at his job as a surgeon, he’s usually wearing a medical mask anyways. It’s just a precaution

This has nothing to do with his career but he used to be a tap dancer and actor so he’d join in on local theatre shows! He helped build sets when he wasn’t rehearsing. He doesn’t have time for that anymore (which kinda makes him sadddd) but he has all kinds of theatre playlists on his phone and in his car that he’ll sing along to

Scaramouche/‘Boss’

Scara’s job at the cafe is his main job! His side job is something you may not expect from such a grump

He works at an animal shelter! In fact, he brings cats home to train so they have an increased chance of being adopted. Someone is more likely to adopt a potty trained, socialized cat than a feral cat who doesn’t know what a litter box is. So Scara brings them to his apartment for some one-on-one socializing, training and cuddling

One time he offhandedly mentioned working at an animal shelter while he was working at the cafe and sure enough, three separate customers from the cafe came by to adopt!!! Only one actually took an animal home but he was still surprised that those people had listened to him and cared enough to come by

Scara is a jerk most of the time but when he’s at home…by himself…With a lil kitten sleeping in his lap while he plays games on his PC…Yeah, he softens up a bit

So as you can see, we have a very diverse group working at the cafe! They’ve all learned a lot from each other, come to appreciate each other’s friendship and come to help each other out when one of their coworkers is in need or upset.

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redpandaramblings · 3 years

Text

A Matter of Admiration Alpha Gang Orca x Omega f!Reader

Hello Hello! Here is my very VERY late submission for the SFW portion of Spudcorner's Valentine Blood and Chocolate Collab. This was meant to be a two page drabble. 13 pages later it's a bit more than that. Regardless, I do hope you enjoy!

Sequel/Epilogue Here

Content Warnings- Omegaverse, SFW, Insecurities, Misunderstandings, Pining, Fluff, Lots of food mentioned, Kugo being very down on himself, very minor mention of blood and stitches needed.

“Really? Again?”

The large alpha seemed to shrink under your judgemental glare.

“I am sorry, Y/N. The fight got intense and it slipped off. Someone must have stepped on it.”

You sighed heavily, your gaze turning to the workbench where the shattered remains of your creation sat. This was your seventh attempt at outfitting Gang Orca with a communicator headset. It was dangerous for him to keep fishing for a handheld during the heat of battle. Unfortunately, his lack of outer ear made keeping a headset on him difficult. Shaking your head, you gave a small smile.

“Not your fault, Sakamata. We knew this was going to be tricky. Though at this rate I’m tempted to just glue a headset on you and call it a day.”

Kugo snorted, his posture relaxing. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I hate to see your hard work go to waste.”

“It’s not a waste if I learn something from it. This one lasted a couple weeks of normal patrol work, so that’s an improvement. We just need to figure out what was different about this fight. So, sit. Talk.”

Kugo shook his head with an amused huff. He admitted he had been slightly dubious when you had first come to his agency. He’d encountered many hero support workers claiming to specialize in mutation quirks that seemed to be looking for lab rats for their creations. However, you always listened to what he said, and made suggestions that would actually make his job easier. You made sure your support items not only were functional, but comfortable at well. If the few years you had worked for him, he was pleased to say you had become good friends.

“I can’t right now, Y/N. I need to get cleaned up, then complete my report before I forget the details. I’ll come back first thing tomorrow.” You frowned, tapping your foot. Kugo fought to keep a neutral expression. You’d never forgive him if you knew how much he enjoyed your expressions when you were annoyed.

“Alright. Fine. First thing tomorrow. But make sure you get some rest tonight, you’ve been working too hard lately!”

Sakamata waved a hand in answer as he walked out the workshop door. He’d try to follow your request, but a hero’s work is never done.

~~~~~

Gang Orca shuffled through the door to his agency with an aura of gloom about him. In the past five days, he had broken five more communicators, gotten into several serious fights, and had allowed a villain to escape. And that was just his work life. Some of his friends had set him up for a speed dating session. He didn’t blame them for trying, but it ended exactly how he knew it would. Most of the omegas who had been present were scared of him, and those that weren’t were clearly only interested in his pro hero paycheck. Kugo trudged toward his office, his thoughts gloomy. A man with a quirk like his would never have a normal courtship. It hurt sometimes. How nice it would be to come home to a sweet smelling omega. What wouldn’t he give to home filled with pups, and laughter and love? He sighed softly as he swung his door open. Such a life was not meant for him, so no point in even dreaming. On autopilot, he hung his coat on the coat rack, and turned to set his briefcase on his desk. However, the desk was already occupied. Kugo tilted his head as he stared at the object resting on his desk. It appeared to be a large bento box, wrapped in a rather feminine handkerchief, patterned with some sort of flowers. Kugo set his briefcase down on a chair before coming closer to investigate. Gingerly, he untied the knot, setting the cloth aside as he looked at the contents curiously.

First and most obviously, was the strawberry shaped sticky note attached to the top. “You looked like you had been having a rough week. I hope this can make it better!” The writing was… painstakingly cute. The “i”s were dotted with little hearts. Each letter having just a little bit of flourish, while still being legible.

Kugo hummed quietly to himself. Clearly this had been left on his desk by mistake. A bit awkward, considering his name was on the door, but there was no other explanation. He drummed his fingers on the desk as he considered his options. He could take a guess at who the bento was for. There were several popular alpha heroes working for him that got their share of gifts from admirers. The soft omegan scent coming from the handkerchief that had wrapped the bento was a solid clue the gift was likely meant for one of them. But really, there was no way to tell for sure who it was supposed to end up with, and he really didn’t want the hard work to go to waste. Yes. Best thing would be to eat the bento, and place the box in the break room with a note inside the box apologizing.

His course of action decided, Kugo opened the bento, quietly sucking a breath as he saw what was inside. There were sausages cut to look like little octopi. A large slab of teriyaki salmon. Rice balls shaped like teddy bear heads, complete with little seaweed faces. He tried to tamp down his delight at seeing over half of the bento was dedicated to tamagoyaki. While he lived up to his stereotype of loving fish, the egg dish was a secret favorite of his; something his mother had made for him whenever he had a bad day when he was growing up. The second layer of the bento had even more. Rice, vegetables, and surprisingly a small but adorable piece of cake. Kugo put the bento back together with a small smile on his face. Perhaps it wasn’t meant for him, but it had been a long time since he had been able to enjoy something like this- cute and homemade, clearly filled with a great deal of care. He couldn’t quite feel guilty as he looked forward to lunch. He could pretend, just this once, that a sweet smelling omega had put so much care into something for him.

~~~~~~

Later that day, when most of the day team had left, Kugo made his way to the common break room. He carefully cleaned out the bento box in the sink, setting it to the side to dry. He folded the handkerchief it had came in, and placed it next to the box before sighing. He was in the process of scribbling a brief apology note when he heard a cough. He glanced up to see y/n leaning against the doorway.

“You okay, chief? Thought your shift ended an hour ago.”

Kugo nodded as he placed his note on top of the handkerchief. “Yes, just had a few things I needed to wrap up. What about you? I know you were supposed to be done several hours ago now.”

You fidgeted, embarrassed, shrugging your shoulders as you glanced away. “Had an idea for how to improve a few items and, well, you know how I get when I have a project. But what have you got there? You never struck me as the homemade lunch type.”

It was Kugo’s turn to look uncomfortable as he shuffled from foot to foot. “It was left on my desk this morning by mistake. I had no way of knowing who it was actually meant for, and I didn’t want it going to waste, so I ate it.”

You frowned as you walked into the room, opening cupboards and starting to retrieve things to make tea. You held a mug up toward Kugo in a silent question, grabbing a second one when he nodded. You were quiet for a few moments, going through the motions. After a while you asked “How are you so sure it wasn’t for you?”

Kugo snorted, leaning back against the counter and gesturing at himself. “Omegas aren’t exactly lined up around the block. I don’t place high on the ‘heroes that look most like villains’ list every year for no reason. Some unfortunate omega got confused about whose office was whose. It’s a shame I couldn’t give it to whoever it was meant for, it was a beautifully crafted bento.” Kugo doesn’t mention the note. Kugo especially doesn’t mention the note had found its way into his desk drawer to save as a memory of how nice it had been to receive the bento, even if it was an accident.

You laughed, passing him a steaming cup of tea, made just how he liked. “Sakamata, don’t talk down about yourself like that. You’re big, strong, and prime alpha material. You’re one of the top heroes! And even more importantly, you’re a gentle kind man that any omega would be lucky to have. I’d bet good money that that bento absolutely was made just for you.”

“A nice thought, but I doubt it. You’ll see. In a few days I bet a bento will make its way to who it was meant for.”

~~~~~~

Kugo stood stock still in the doorway to his office. Sitting on his desk was another cloth wrapped package. Once was a mistake, clearly. But two days in a row? Why on Earth was there another bento on his desk? He approached the desk and slide the bento to him. He untied the scented fabric with care. A cat shaped note greeted him.

“I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear before, Sakamata. I wanted to make this for you because I admire you so much. I’m not always great at saying my feelings, so I hope my cooking says enough.”

This was… for him. The bentos… were for him? He sat in his chair, leaning his head against his hands as he regarded the innocent looking lunch. If it wasn’t a mistake, then what could it be? Probably a fortune hunting omega trying to get in his good graces, if he went off his past experience. Though usually those types of omegas were more likely to offer favors of a different sort. Kugo winced as another thought occurred to him. There was a good chance this omega pitied him. Ugly, intimidating, unmatable. Someone had seen him and decided he needed looking after because clearly he’d never get someone on his own. Yes. That had to be it. He should leave the bento in the break room and end this farce as soon as possible.

His mind made up, Kugo picked up the bundle to do exactly that. The subtle smell of the contents hit his sensitive nose, causing him to salivate. Tempura? Definitely egg. Well, it would be a shame to not even look inside to make sure.

Clearly just as much care had gone into this one as the last one. The rice balls were shaped like little cat heads, to match the note. An assortment of tempura seemed to be the main dish, cute cat shaped food picks stuck in some of them. There were even paw print shaped gummy candies for the dessert. Every inch of the lunch was absolutely adorable. And it was all done for him. There was no way Kugo could let it go to waste. It hurt to know it was a gift given out of pity, but maybe, just for a while, he could pretend there was someone out there who loved him like this. The omega would grow tired of this eventually. Until then, he’d let himself enjoy this.

~~~~~

It was surprising how easily this had become routine. Every day when Kugo walked into his office, there was a new bento waiting for him. And every day he’d unwrap the bento, indulging a brief moment in the cutely patterned handkerchiefs. Every bento was unique and cute. They seemed to show a good understanding of his tastes and preferences. It was a pleasant break on the quiet days and a welcome comfort on the rough days. Each day there was a sweet written note that Kugo gently stored in his desk drawer. It was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

~~~~~~~

Kugo hated attending charity events. It wasn’t the charities, he always supported good causes. It wasn’t the dressing up, or the fancy atmosphere. It was the people. While a few of his friends were around somewhere, there were many many others who didn’t know him well. Others who were intimidated by his appearance. Others who apparently had no idea just how sharp his hearing was.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe Gang Orca is here.”

“I know! Well, I suppose he is a hero. Allegedly, anyway.”

“Did he come with anyone?”

“Of course not. I mean ew. Look at him. Can you imagine cosying up to that at the end of the day?”

“I know! And those teeth! If he tried to bond someone, he’d take their head clean off!”

“As if anyone would want to bond with that.”

“I don’t know. He’s in the top ten pretty often. He has to be loaded, right?”

“Would have to be a lot for me to even consider it.”

“It could be all the money and I still wouldn’t!”

“Oh don’t say that! Poor bastard can’t help he’s unmatable.”

Kugo walked away from the refreshment table as he tried to tune out the unkind comments and mocking laughter. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. He knew full well what he looked like. He had had enough failed courting attempts to know exactly what omegas thought of him. But it still stung. Stung more than usual, actually. The daily bentos with their scented cloths and cute little notes had almost made him forget. The only omegas who were interested either pitied him, or wanted his money. He could never forget that.

~~~~~

What he could forget, apparently, was that the number two pro hero was scheduled to be at his office the morning after the charity gala. Kugo stifled a sigh when he saw the red winged hero waiting outside his agency’s door. Of course he’d have to deal with this on a day when he wasn’t in the best of moods. “Orca! My man, good to see you again!”

Kugo nodded as he held the door open. “Hawks.”

“Didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the party last night. You know how it is. Go to one of those things when you're single, and you get swarmed.”

Kugo gave a non committal grunt. No, he didn’t know. He just wanted this morning to be over with. He perked up slightly as he saw you hurrying down the hallway toward them. Hawks gave a low whistle. “Who's the babe?” Kugo half growled. “That is Miss Y/N. The support item engineer you allegedly came here to see. You will be respectful and refrain from flirting with my staff.”

Keigo held up his hands and laughed. “Hey now big guy, don’t mean any offense. Just saying you’re lucky to get to work with that every day.”

Kugo jerked his head in an abbreviated nod. You slowed down your quick walk as you got closer, not wanting to interrupt the heroes’s conversation. Kugo waved you closer. You smiled at him so brightly as you joined the group. Yes. He was lucky to work with a friend such as you. Kugo’s nerves started to cool a bit as he introduced you and the three of you began to make your way to his office. Hawk’s casual questions were more inquisitive than flirty, and Kugo knew from long experience just how much you enjoyed being able to talk in depth about your work. He was smiling by the time he opened the door to his office, ushering the two or you in. Hawk’s next words hit him like a bucket of cold water to the face.

“Dang! Either you got one hell of a cafeteria service at this agency, or Gang Orca has himself quite an admirer. Delivered right to your desk, pretty bold, man! That’s exactly why I keep my door locked. There’s only so much lunch a man can eat, am I right?”

The bento. He had forgotten about the stupid bento. There it sat, as always. The handkerchief was especially cute today, some sort of pattern with teddy bears hugging and kissing. Any other day, the sight would have calmed him. Any other day he would have sat down and quickly poked through to see what surprises lay inside that day, would have read the note meant just for him with a smile.

But today was different. Others were in his office. The number two hero, handsome and popular. His support engineer, pretty enough to probably have plenty of suitors of her own. And then there was him. Large. Scary. Consistently told he looks like a villain. Has never had a relationship that wasn’t pitying or profiteering. Kugo remembered the whispered remarks from the party. Usually he’d be able to brush off Hawks’s commentary. But today…

Kugo snarled, his scent agitated as he swept his arm across the desk, knocking the bento roughly into the trash. “They are a nuisance that need to cease! I’m so tired of some desperate piting omega shoving their unwanted, unneeded efforts at me! Enough is enough!” At the end his voice was raised to a shout. He was dimly aware of his nails digging deeply into his palms. Kugo leaned on the desk, breathing deeply as he tried to calm himself. He could hear the others shuffling behind him awkwardly.

“Come on,” You murmured and lightly tugged on Keigo’s sleeve. “How about I show you my lab and take some measurements before we get started.”

“Yeah. Um. Yeah.” Keigo allowed you to lead him away. You softly closed the door behind you. Kugo remained, hunched and breathing raggedly. It took him several minutes to calm down. It took him a few minutes beyond that to gather the nerve to make the trek down to the support lab. He slipped into the room as inconspicously as a man with his fram could manage. You were taking measurements off of Keigo and muttering to yourself as you tapped out notes on your tablet. Keigo noticed Kugo’s entrance and greeted him cautiously. “You good?” Kugo nodded. “I… apologize. It’s been a rather trying week, but I should have composed myself better.”

Keigo waved him off. “No worries, man, no worries. Y/n was just telling me she thinks that she’ll be able to rig up something for me that would help slow my fall in situations where my wings get damaged.”

You hummed an affirmative, taking a few more measurements before you started describing your process. Kugo couldn’t help but notice you didn’t look his way. You looked at the ground, at your tablet, at Keigo, but you were clearly avoiding Kugo’s gaze. He mentally winced as he settled onto an out of the way stool. It was rare for him to have that kind of emotional outburst. It probably could be heard even from outside his office. He’d make sure to apologize to you better when he got the chance. But for now, it was looking like it would be a long, awkward day. Goodie.

~~~~~

Kugo growled under his breath the next morning when he saw the cloth wrapped bundle sitting on his desk. Yesterday’s embarrassment was still fresh in his mind as he stalked forward. His thick fingers quickly untied the surprisingly unpatterned piece of fabric. There, under the cloth, on top of the box, was a note as there always was. Kugo’s anger was cooled by confusion when he saw it, however. The paper was a plain yellow post-it note. Instead of the painstakingly cute handwriting with the heart dotted “i’s, there was a clearly hasty scrawl.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to annoy you. This will be the last one.”

Kugo frowned, shifting in his seat. Clearly the bento maker had heard about his outburst from yesterday. That was… unfortunate. But perhaps for the best, since he had no way of directly telling them to cease their nonsense. Unconsciously, his hand balled up the handkerchief and as he had been doing for a while, he scented it.

The cloth had a slight smell of salt to it. Tears, Kugo realized uncomfortably. The smell of tears slightly diluted the normal soothing smell of whoever had carefully packaged these bentos. He had little appetite as he looked over what was there. Tempura. Salmon. Vegetables. A large portion of tamagoyaki. But the part that caused an uncomfortable weight to settle in his chest was the little red box, filled with slightly clumsy, clearly homemade chocolates. Kugo closed his eyes, sighing as he set the box to the side to wait for lunch. This was good. This was what he wanted, to be left alone instead of some kind hearted omega taking pity on him. He had lived a long time without homemade bentos and little notes. He certainly didn’t want the small offering of chocolates. When lunchtime came, he certainly didn’t linger over the food longer than usual, savoring each bite. He tried to tell himself that this was for the best. That this was what he wanted. He refused to think about why he tucked the handkerchief and the box of chocolates into his desk drawer instead of leaving them in the break room as usual.

The next day as Kugo opened his office door, he looked toward his desk out of habit; searching for the lunch that had been left. His chest gave an uncomfortable lurch when he found the desk was bare. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. This was fine. This was what he wanted. The sooner he forgot about all this nonsense, the sooner things would return to normal. He settled into his chair and began sifting through the paperwork he had to deal with. No better way to take his mind off his troubling thoughts and distract the whine of his inner alpha. He was certain. Things would be back to normal soon.

Two weeks later, Kugo listlessly picked at the limp lettuce of the poor excuse of a salad that he had picked up at a convenience store. He sighed, putting the lid back on the barely touched meal resolving to throw it away when he next passed a garbage can. He didn’t like to admit it, but he missed the carefully planned meals. Wondering what cute surprise was going to be next. It was nice that someone thought he might enjoy seeing animal shaped onigiri and cheesecake flavored kit kats. His alpha whimpered when he thought about the contented omega scent that gently perfumed every handkerchief, except the last. But just as the note had said, he had received nothing since that last bento. His thoughts remained gloomy as he entered the agency, quickly making his way into his office, locking the door behind him. He knew better than to hope as he looked towards his desk. Bare, once again. Sighing heavily, he slumped into his chair. He gently pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. Carefully nestled into it was the cleaned, empty bento box from the last meal, the small box of dwindling homemade chocolates, and that last precious handkerchief.

Kugo carefully removed the handkerchief. He brought the cloth to his nose, inhaling deeply. Stabbing pain shot through him as he realized the scent was barely there anymore. The faint scent of tears almost completely overpowering the last lingering trace of distressed omega. His hands clutched the fabric tightly, squeezing until he realized the stress he was putting on the fabric. He quickly placed it on the desk and tried in vain to smooth out the wrinkles. After a minute of fussing, he gently refolded it and placed it back in the drawer. Kugo stared at the contents, unblinking before slowly sliding the drawer closed. It was almost gone. Everything was almost gone. And he didn’t know how to get it back.

With a low growl, Kugo pushed himself up. Today was a rare day where he hoped for trouble on his patrol. A fight would certainly take his mind off things, and just maybe calm the whining alpha that echoed throughout his entire being.

~~~~

He really needed to be careful what he wished for. Kugo winced as he limped toward the support lab. He had gotten a fight alright. He had gotten three fights, a twisted ankle, and a once again smashed communication headset. It wasn’t his fault that he had gotten thrown backwards into a rather solid concrete wall. Y/N was going to kill him.

Kugo pushed the lab door open, stepping inside. His forehead creased in worry. The lab felt off. Wrong in a way he couldn’t immediately place a finger finger on. Well, he’d have to think about it later, he decided as he made his way to where you were sitting. You were at your workbench, tapping your pen on the table and staring at nothing when he settled down on the stool next to you. You glanced over as Kugo sat down, did a double take and let out a small noise of surprise.

“Sakamata! What happened to you?”

The large man shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “The usual. Villain didn’t behave exactly how I thought, and I paid for not being vigilant enough. Nothing too bad. Twisted ankle and roughed up a little. Unfortunately though…”

Sheepishly as a scolded schoolboy, Kugo pulled the shattered remains of his latest communicator out of his pocket and placed them on the workbench.

“Kugo!”

He couldn’t help but smile. He loved the times when you got worked up enough to call him by his first name. He watched as you gingerly sifted through the sad shattered remains.

“What did you do, hit it with a rock?!”

“Concrete wall, actually.”

You stilled before turning to look at Kugo, sharp and suspicious. “And I assume you were wearing it at the time?”

Kugo had the decency to look embarrassed as he nodded. Suddenly he was being fussed over, gentle hands touching his face and turning his head this way and that. An exclamation and curse left you when you found a large, sluggishly bleeding gash on the back of Kugo’s head.

“You! You Alpha!” You huffed as you started digging through the pockets of your lab coat. Kugo got a brief glimpse of colored fabric before the handkerchief was softly dabbing at his wound. Kugo hissed, only half listening as the scolding continued about how knot headed alphas needed to learn to go to the medical ward first before worrying about stupid replacable tech. He was brought back to the present when a hand, so much smaller than his own, grabbed his hand. You easily maneuvered him so that Kugo was now firmly holding the handkerchief over the cut. You hummed, satisfied for now.

“Now Sakamata, please hold that there until you can get medical to look at it. Doubt a hard headed man like you has a concussion, but might need stitches. I’m not exactly an expert. Don’t worry about the headset. I should be able to get a new one to you before my replacement takes over. And if not, I’ll be leaving some blueprints behind anyway.”

What?

“Replacement?”

You stilled, looking away from him. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I just… I never found the right time to tell you.” You fidgeted, rubbing your thumb over your knuckles. “I’m going to be going to America soon. I’ve gotten a good offer to work with a few heroes over there that need someone specialized in mutation supports. It would do a lot to boost my career…”

Kugo reached out, grabbing your hand, and stopping your nervous motions. He tried to find words in his stalling brain. “This is really sudden, Y/N.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” You wouldn’t meet his gaze.

He gently shook his head, giving your hand a squeeze. “Not scolding you. Just, is everything alright? Is something going on?”

You pulled away, digging your hands into your hair with a sigh. “You know me too well.”

Kugo gave half a smile. “I would hope so. I like to think we’re friends. Is there anything I can do? Are you in trouble in some way?”

You shook your head. “No. No, nothing like that. It’s kind of embarrassing. Just… A courtship that really didn’t turn out well. And I just… I could really use some time away to get my head back on straight. Eagle Pride’s office has mentioned wanting me to go over and collaborate with them for a while, and what better time than now?” Your laugh sounded bitter.

Kugo sat silent and stunned. He hadn’t known you were courting. Being courted? Honestly, he wasn’t even sure of your dynamic. If you weren’t beta, then you certainly hid your scent well. He cleared his throat before speaking hesitantly.

“I certainly won’t stop you if you truly wish to go. It is an excellent opportunity. Might be a step in having your own support company if you wish. And if not, you’re always welcome here, Y/n. You must know that.”

You give a small smile, finally looking him in the eye. His chest tightened when he saw tears there. “I know, Kugo. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. You’re a good friend for putting up with me.”

“There’s no putting up with. I enjoy your company, always.” Kugo reached out slowly, but you turned away and wiped your eyes with your sleeve. He frowned, placing his hand back in his lap. “And you sure you’re alright, Y/N? No one is threatening you, are they? Someone unsafe taken an interest in you?”

You snorted, “Nothing like that. And people think I’m the dramatic one. No. I just got rejected is all. I miscalculated. Thought they were interested, but they made it very clear they aren’t.”

“Then they’re an idiot.” The words escaped Kugo before he even realized what he was going to say. But it was true, he was sure. You were beautiful, kind, smart. Anyone would be beyond lucky to hold your interest. On the rare days he allowed himself to dream, he often thought he’d love to have someone like you as a mate. Someone who knew him well and cared for him as much as he cared for them. He felt pains in his chest and his eyes widened as realization hit him in the face like a wet mackerel. Oh. He was jealous. He was jealous of whoever it was that y/n had tried to court. And he was angry. Furious that some fool had rejected her. Hurt her. But he was glad she was still here. Yet she was going to leave. Going to leave him here alone. His thoughts swirled and tumbled, and he swayed slightly in his seat. And hand on his shoulder stilled him and he looked up into your concerned eyes.

“Hey, you’re not looking too good. You really should get to medical. Do you need me to help you?”

“No. No. I can make it down a few hallways, thank you though.”

Kugo stood, and tried to give back the cloth he had been pressing to his head. You pushed it back, gently scolding him. “I said leave it there until someone can look at it. If you insist on returning a silly old rag, you can wash it and give it back later.”

Kugo nodded and mumbled out a goodbye. He had a lot to think about as he slowly made his way to medical. So. He liked you. The more he thought about it, the clearer it seemed to him. He’d liked you for a while. Things were always easy with you. But now, you’re leaving. He couldn’t stop you, and wouldn’t even if he could. You clearly felt like you needed to go.

He was still ruminating on his thoughts as the doctor ushered him to a bed. He was poked and prodded. Kugo managed to mumble out what must have been coherent answers. In the end, he did end up needing a few stitches. And just like that, he found himself fixed up and back in his office. He snorted a laugh at the absurdity. How can a day like this somehow manage to be just another day? Kugo sat in his chair and twisted the cloth in his hands absently. He brought it to his nose and sniffed out of habit. Oh course, the scent of his own blood was the most dominant. But underneath that was the usual calming scent of omega. His shoulders relaxed as the tension ran out of him. He pulled that cloth away, idly looking at the pattern. It was cute. Floral. Reminded him of the cloth that the first bento had been…

Wait.

He hastily brought the handkerchief to his nose again. There was no mistaking it. He knew that smell. He had missed that smell for weeks. It was faint. But it absolutely was there. Omega, soft and sweet. Not any omega. His omega. His bento maker. His y/n.

Y/n.

Y/n who had seen him toss her courting gift in the trash, who thought he had completely rejected her, and who was moving to America.

Kugo was on his feet in an instant. He’d never made the trip to the support lab that quickly before. You jumped when the door flew open, hitting so harshly that the doorknob dented the wall.

“Sakamata! What?”

He dropped to his knees before you, arms wrapped tight around your waist and his head pressing against your stomach.

“Kugo?” You asked softly, hesitantly stroking along his fin. “Kugo, what’s wrong?”

“You’re the best thing life has ever given me. Please don’t leave. Please.”

You made a soft, wounded sound. You kneeled slowly, and took his face in your hands. Kugo leaned into your touch like a man who had been starved of affection his whole life. You stroked your thumbs over his cheeks.

“Kugo, I’m going to need you to speak plainly, so I’m sure I don’t misunderstand. What’s going on?”

His large hands came up, taking both your hands in his.

“I’m an idiot.”

You snorted and tilted your head, confused. He met your gaze as he continued.

“I’m an idiot and I love you.”

You inhaled sharply, looking at him in disbelief. He pulled the crumpled, bloodstained handkerchief from his pocket.

“I’m an idiot because I love you and yet I never even noticed that you loved me too. You showed me every day. You knew I like eggs just as much as fish. You cared enough to make them cute. You gave me extra sweets on days when I was working a double shift. I loved every bento you made me. I have every note saved. And I might be an idiot, but I’d be an even bigger idiot if I let you go without saying something. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, and I love you and please don’t go.”

“Kugo.” You smiled sadly. “I’m sorry. I already promised I’d go.”

Kugo inhaled a shaky breath, his eyes lowering to the floor.

“But,” you used your hands to lift his chin. His gaze snapped back to yours. “It’s just for six months. Six months, and then I’ll be right back here. With you.”

“With me?”

“Mmhmm.” You gave his nose a quick peck. “Always. You’re the best man I know. I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world for me.”

Kugo groaned and pulled you close, burying his face in your neck. From here, although it was very faint, he could smell your soothing scent. “You can’t say things like that and then tell me I can’t have you here for six months!”

You chuckled as you hugged him close. “Well, we have two weeks before I leave. We have a little time. And once I’m back? We’ll have all the time in the world.”

“Even that won’t be enough time to spend with you.”

“Dork.”

He hummed his agreement. “But it’s true. Eternity would be enough time to spend with you.” Before you could protest, he pulled you in for a gentle, but determined kiss.

#gang orca #gang orca x reader #kugo x reader #kugo sakamata #kugo sakamata x reader #Alpha gang orca #Alpha kugo #omegaverse #bnha omegaverse #reader insert #bnha reader insert #female reader #omega reader #omegaverse reader insert #collab piece

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legends-of-apex · 3 years

Note

Can I get prompt 12 with ghostrider from the fluff list💀🔥 thx

Of course you can!!! This is a long one lol, here you go ☺️

Prompt 12. “Can I kiss you?”

Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider x Reader (fluff)

Rating: T (mild suggestiveness, injury detail)

Word count: 3,000

Summary: You’re a SHIELD agent tasked with going on an undercover operation with Robbie. Things very quickly spiral out of control and you have to resort to desperate measures to keep cover.

Flicking a switch on the vast navigation console littered with all kinds of buttons and levers, you turned the mic of your comms on, “Quinjet now on autopilot. We’ll be back at base within the hour.”

“Copy that. Don’t have too much fun on your way home.” Came Daisy’s voice in your ear and you shook your head at her antics before turning off your comms for the journey ahead.

You ducked out of the cockpit and headed towards Robbie. He sat, car keys flipping in his hands as he stared off into space. You dumped the bag of medical supplies at his feet and handed him a tissue.

“It’s okay really, give it a couple hours and it’s all good.” He sat with his legs open, bouncing one knee as he sat but you saw the way he winced when he moved too much. He was trying to play it cool, like he hadn’t been shot.

You couldn’t help but smile just a little. What he thought you were asking him to do with the tissue you had no idea, “It’s for the lipstick,” you confirmed, and he let his fingers ghost over his lips seeing the slight pink residue that it left on his fingertips.

“Come on, let’s take a look at that bullet wound,” you said as you snapped on a pair of rubber gloves.

Accelerated healing or not, he still had a bullet lodged in his chest.

That was your lipstick you’d transferred onto his lips less than an hour before and he’d almost entirely forgotten you’d even been wearing lipstick when you kissed. Which was strange given how much the colour caught his eye when first he’d seen it earlier that day before leaving for the mission. But he’d be the first to admit that he could get used to wiping it from his face.

He looked down at the crumpled tissue in his palm and saw that pigment peppering the stark white, eyes unfocused as he thought about the kiss. How your lips felt so nice against his.

He thought about how you still wore that same lipstick right now. And even if it was a little smudged he’d have loved nothing more than to taste it again. He liked seeing you with lipstick on, a sight that hadn’t graced his eyes until today. But he liked it even more when it was smudged, knowing that was because of him.

You got it bad, Reyes.

You crossed your arms over your chest and sighed, waiting for him to snap out of his daze and help address the problem at hand. When he didn’t after a few seconds, worry seeped into your pores. Just how much blood had he lost?

“Robbie?” You called his name softly, almost tasting the sound on your tongue, “You feeling okay? Apart from you know…” the bullet lodged in his chest? A seemingly mild inconvenience to him right now.

He blinked as if shaking some stray thought from his head and apologised before shrugging off his leather jacket and grabbing the hem of his shirt, bunching up the material so you could see the wound on his chest.

Your breath caught. Just not for the reasons it should’ve.

“See?” He asked, and to be fair the wound was healing but the skin was still torn and the bullet was definitely still in there.

You pressed a gloved finger on either side of the wound, “It still hurts?” You asked, trying to see how far in there the bullet was lodged.

“Like hell, but it’ll be healed by morning once I get it out.”

“Sure, let's do it.” You pulled down the seat beside him and slid right in it.

“You don't have to do that-” you cut him off before he could finish.

“You took a fucking bullet for me, Reyes! The least I can do is get it out of you.” You didn’t mean to snap at him, truly you didn’t but seeing someone getting shot for you has a way of shortening tempers, “Sorry, I’m just trying not to freak out right now.”

The mission was a disaster. But at least you managed to retrieve the files you were sent to find, even if they were now stained with Robbie’s blood. And his blood. His blood was everywhere. On his shirt, his chest. Even your palms beneath the rubber gloves.

He took your hand where it rested limply in your lap and gave it a soft squeeze. The look on his face was one of concern, a line drawn between his eyebrows. He didn’t say anything, he never was any good with using his words. But he hoped his actions told you precisely what he wanted to say: It’s alright, you’re okay, I’ll be okay.

He was comforting you. He was the one who’d been shot and he was comforting you.

He arched his brow, silently asking if you were alright and you let out a breath, his warm touch comforting and you remembered then just what you came back here to do, “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

And his stomach lept.

You helped him out of his shirt, carefully tugging it over his head so he wouldn’t have to aggravate the hole in his chest even further. The material now lay in his lap and his chest was once again bared to you. You tried not to let yourself get distracted, truly you did. But he made it very, very hard. His skin was smooth and sweeping. His chest broad and firm.

You dared not look any lower than that, not when you were about to be pulling a bullet out of him.

“So, we gonna talk about it?” He asked as you sterilised some tweezers, eyes catching yours for just a second.

“You mean you getting shot for no reason?” You asked, knowing damn well that wasn’t at all what he was referring to.

“No reason? Chica, I’d much rather be in pain for a few hours than you be dead.” He looked up at you again briefly, frowning at the thought, “But nah, I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about that kiss.”

You swallowed. Hard.

Almost hoping he’d forgotten just so you didn’t have to have some kind of terribly awkward conversation. You dabbed away some of the excess blood from his chest, noticing how he winced slightly at the cold of the alcohol wipe on his inhumanly warm skin, “What is there to talk about? It was just for the mission.”

Oh that was one massive lie and he saw straight through it.

“Was it?” He asked, “Cause you could’ve fooled me.”

Why you were landed with quite possibly the least stealthy of all the team for a stealth mission you had no idea. Instead they sent you with an untrained, unkillable man who’d never been on a mission of any kind before in his life. And he’d just taken a bullet to the chest for you.

That wasn’t quite true. You knew exactly why he was sent on this mission with you. He wasn’t known to anyone outside of his neighbourhood or SHIELD. You were both the least likely or the team to be recognised on an undercover op mixing with civilians.

Yet here you were, running for your lives.

You ran along the hallway, turning right where Daisy in your ear told you to go. As you rounded a corner you felt yourself being shoved forward and before you knew it you were in a closet of some kind, Robbie at your back.

“They were gaining on us, the Rider sensed them coming.”

You nodded, exhaling a breath. Now there were people on either side of that hallway and you were stuck in the middle of them in a closet. With Robbie.

You flung your head back when you sighed, the back of your head colliding with his chest. “Sorry,” you mumbled, not realising how close he was to you. It was a small closet to be fair.

“What do we do?” He asked, his voice a half whisper and sounding even raspier than usual. A detail you absolutely did not need to notice under such sure circumstances.

“The only thing we can do,” you swallowed thickly, “Wait it out.”

You turned around, trying to get a better look around to see if there was anything of note in there that you could use to put pressure on his wound. There was nothing. Just boxes of files and a few bottles of bleach. So you did the only thing you could think of and tried to tear the hem of your dress. But the layers were thick and there was no obvious seam.

“You’ve got enhanced strength right?” You asked, taking the bottom of your dress in your hand and holding it out towards him, “Tear it off.”

“What?” He asked, the whites of his eyes catching the light that streamed in from the hallway.

“Just the underskirt!” So he did, taking the material between his hands and splitting it like it was paper. The perks of being possessed by a demon, you supposed. He got a decent chunk of your underskirt ripped off completely, the back of his hand grazing your thigh as he did. And you knew it was an accident. Of course it was. But god, did you wish it wasn’t.

He handed you the torn material and you folded it quickly before pressing it to his chest, blood already soaking it through. It was warm beneath your fingertips.

“Guys, they’re closing in on your location.” Daisy's voice came through your comms, “You better think of a good reason to be there, fast!”

“Shit…” you cursed under your breath, trying to think but it was hard to with your close proximity to Robbie and the stress of the situation. You couldn’t go out guns blazing. It was too public a setting. You had to keep cover but how?

“Can I kiss you?” He asked.

Your eyes widened, looking up to him in disbelief. It took a second to realise why he thought that was a good idea then it clicked. It was a solid plan. There was a party going on a few rooms over so the two of you could just be a pair of very horny stragglers hiding in a storage closet for some privacy. It was an undercover operation after all, that’s why you wore a dress in the first place.

So you kissed him. Your hands pressed up against his chest as you did. And he let out something resembling a moan at the gesture, posture relaxing as he reciprocated.

Finally. Fucking finally. Weeks of stolen glances and flirting came to a head. Only this was for the mission, it wasn’t real. The release of tension never came, it only built up even more.

But he kissed good. A hand on your cheek cradling it so gently that you could’ve mistaken this for the thousandth time he’d held it. And his lips were so soft. So warm. So very, very warm. He moved against you with such a tenderness, a benevolence like nothing you’d never felt and if it wasn’t for the boots approaching outside you would have let yourself thoroughly melt into his arms. He held you close, the arm around your waist sat gently, just barely ghosting over your form.

You were both getting so caught up in each other that when the door opened and light washed over you, you barely had to pretend to be startled at all.

“Um, excuse me? What are you doing here?”

Thankfully there was no flicker of recognition on the guard’s face. No accusations falling from his mouth . The only one they’d gotten a good look at was Robbie and he’d had his head on fire at the time, the demon’s reaction to him getting shot in the chest when he stepped in front of you as you rummaged through files. You couldn’t make a scene, so against the demon's usual way of doing things, you had convinced him to run.

“Oh we’re so sorry! We were just trying to find somewhere to be alone, you know.” You joked. You made a good show of it too. The collar of Robbie’s jacket gripped firmly between your hands and your dress disheveled like he’d been trying to tug it off. Some of your lipstick was even smeared across his mouth.

The guard sighed and lowered his torch, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” You both agreed, all too happy to oblige him when he suddenly stopped you, an arm shooting out to block the doorway, “Just one thing before you go.”

You could feel Robbie’s grip tightening on your waist, his body tensed and ready to strike. You kept your hands on his chest to make sure the jacket stayed open and hid the distinctive white lines they might have noticed from the previous encounter. Your palm rested directly over the bulletwound he’d sustained just in case.

“Sure!” You answered, happy that Robbie was letting you do all the talking given how on edge he was. This was his first undercover rodeo, you supposed.

“Have you seen a…guy with a flaming head?” The guard huffed and shook his head, realising how crazy it was now that he said it aloud, “Nevermind, just get outta here.”

And so you did, your heels in one hand and Robbie’s hand in the other as you quickly shuffled out of the storage cupboard and past the guards that hunted for you.

Cover: maintained. All it cost was a bullet to the chest and a kiss.

“What do you want me to say?” You asked, catching his eyes for just a second too long.

“Whatever you’d like to say.” He shrugged and then immediately regretted it given the tweezers currently embedded in his chest.

“You kiss good.” You blurted out. There was absolutely no point in denying it. He was a good kisser, a great one even. But maybe that was just hormones talking. The flirting between two of you was getting to the point of borderline hilarity before the mission. Even Coulson had noticed.

He chuckled, “I do, huh? You too.” He smiled then, a faint but genuine smile. And you could’ve sworn that the faintest tinge of red covered his cheeks.

“Yeah, of course you do. No need to be modest, I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of practice.” He looked at you like you were joking, “What? You’re a good looking guy. There’s no way you haven’t had practice.”

“I haven’t. That was my first in a long time actually.”

“Yeah? How long?” You asked. At this point you were keeping him talking to make sure he wasn’t tense or focusing on you pulling the bullet out of his chest, but you were also just a little bit interested in the answer.

“Since before I left high school. If that even counts.” You looked at him shocked and he laughed a little, “Yeah, turns out having a demon inside you doesn’t exactly make it easy to meet people. What about you?”

“Since working at SHIELD? No, none at all. Not really any time for relationships, especially not with civilians.” You finally had a good grip on the slug and slowly tugged it towards you. Robbie winced and groaned in pain so you took his hand and let him squeeze out some of the tension.

“Almost…done!” You slapped the bullet into a metal dish and immediately pressed some gauze to the wound, applying pressure to it to stop the blood from leaking so much.

His hand came to cover yours as he blinked away the pain. Rubbing his shoulder you looked to him for any signs he might faint, “You good?” You asked and he nodded, eyes locking with yours. You kept your hand on his chest and he kept his covering yours, his gaze never faltering until you looked away to rummage in your bag for some painkillers.

“There some rule about fraternising with fellow agents or something?” He asked and you caught on to his meaning immediately.

“Not that I know of, why?” You asked, dropping two pills in his hand.

“Cause I wanna know how much trouble I’m in when I ask if I can kiss you again.”

He popped the pills between his teeth, grabbing a bottle of water to down them with. His eyes never left yours as he did it, glinting with mischief. And you couldn’t help but watch his Adam's apple move so smoothly as he swallowed.

“Oh baby, you’re about to be in all kinds of trouble. Just not with SHIELD.” He liked the sound of that. It was written on his face clear as day as his eyes darkened, “And you can kiss me whenever you like…Just not here,” you jabbed your thumb towards the lense mounted on the wall of the quinjet, red light blinking and all, “Cameras. And the rest of the team can probably hear us too.”

The last thing you needed was a live stream of the two of you making out on a monitor at HQ.

“Oh, we can. Loud and clear.“ Came Coulson’s voice over the intercom. You could practically hear the smile in his voice as he said it.

“Another time then?” He asked with a grin, honestly delighted in the fact that you considered kissing him again at all.

But god did he want you, he wanted you so badly and you knew it. He knew you knew it.

And oh, how fun it was to tease him. To dangle the proverbial carrot right in front of his nose. You wanted him too but it was even more fun making him wait and so beyond worth it to see the way his jaw clenched.

“Another time,” you confirmed

Tagging: @icy-spicy @spring-soldier @theamalgamateplaywright (the horny for ghost rider squad ☺️)

#robbie reyes x reader #robbie reyes #ghost rider x reader #ghost rider #agents of shield #aos #my writing #fic

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rubykgrant · 3 years

Text

RVB characters (harmlessly) pranking each other-

Tucker puts dozens of tiny toy cars in Wash’s bad, so when Wash finally has a chance to GET SOME SLEEP, he pulls back the covers and... sees the bane of his existence

Doc re-arranges everything in the kitchen just SLIGHTLY; the spoons are where the forks go, the plates are where the tupperware goes, ect

Grif puts blue-tinted sunglasses on Sarge while he sleeps, so when he wakes up he sees THE SIN COLOR

Simmons messes with everybody’s phone settings, so now whenever they get a call/text, it plays an annoying pop song (he also put on a timer so it plays the song every hour), and then he somehow hid the icon for the settings, so they can’t fix it

Lopez asked for help with some maintenance with his arm from Carolina, and he hid a ketchup packet in his elbow, so she was shocked when it seemed like he started BLEEDING when she stuck a screwdriver in there

Donut put glitter in all their shampoo bottles

Caboose had to think about it for a while... and then he stuck googly-eyes on the toilet... so now it LOOKS AT YOU

Wash got a bunch of boxes from bakeries and pastry shops... then put broccoli in them, and just left them sitting around, waiting for Grif to scream in frustration

Kai hides a layer of bubble-wrap in Locus’s jacket; she literally cut open the inner-lining, put the bubble-wrap inside, then sewed it up. He didn’t notice until he lifted and arm up to grab something and... POP-POP-POP-POP-POP

Tex squeezed a bunch of toothpaste into Donut’s shoes... also, it was HIS toothpaste

Church found a little plastic Halloween spider, stuck inside a lampshade in Donut’s room, so when he turns on the light it looks like a SPIDER IS THERE

Grif replaced a bar of soap his sister had in the bathroom with a block of cheese he sculpted to be the same shape (she couldn’t see the colors, so wasn’t suspicious the pale purple soap was now yellow... he also sprayed the cheese with lavender air-freshener so it would smell the same, the froze it for a while so it wouldn’t feel too soft)

Locus went invisible, and kept moving around stuff Simmons had on his desk when he wasn’t looking (messing up the pencils, putting papers out of order, ect. it drove him CRAZY)

Caboose also switched the salt and sugar... but that might have just been an accident

Church very carefully painted a hyper-realistic 100 dollar bill on the side-walk, then waited for Tex to walk by and lose her mind first with excitement... then confusion... then RAGE

Sarge replaces all the water in the bottles in the fridge with VINEGAR

Simmons finally gets really GOOD at speaking Spanish... and then he pretends that he can’t hear Lopez. He gets the other to play along, so for nearly two hours they all went “What? Are you trying to tell us something?”, and then Lopez finally writes down some words for them... and Simmons goes “Sorry, I only speak Spanish, I can’t read it”

Kai took a bunch of red nail-polish (Donut helped her pick it out), and made a fake blood hand-print on Doc’s window while he slept so he would see it when he woke up (“AAAAHHHHH!”), and found a place that prints joke newspapers, and left one for him that had the head-line ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE (at that point he knew it was fake, because who delivers newspapers in the zombie apocalypse?)

Lopez found a helmet that looked like his head, tied a bunch of balloons to it, and then watched everybody run around outside trying to get “him” down

Tucker and Carolina walked up to Church holding hands and told him that they’re dating now. The prank didn’t last long because Church’s eyes went out of focus and he started making the horrible internet-dial-up noise, and they had to to tell him it was a JOKE

#hahaha #red vs blue #rvb

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writingquestionsanswered · 3 years

Text

Tattoo Shop AU - a quick, practical guide for writers

Guest Post by lebanon-hangover

lebanon-hangover said: this is based on my personal experience with the industry only, so depending on the era and country you are portraying, it may not be 100% accurate for your setting.

Hygiene

It may not be obvious at first glance, but most tattooists are clean freaks. We work with human blood every day, and we get clients from all ages, ethnic and social economic backgrounds, with all sorts of medical conditions.

We usually mop frequently, bleach the sinks, wipe down everything, and use cling film or bags to wrap everything. I mean fucking everything. We also scrub in, and sanitise the area on the person we work on.

Needles are collected in a sharps bin, and handled very carefully. Medical waste goes in yellow bags, and both are collected by a professional service.

Used ink caps may look full, but the ink gets diluted by blood. Like you dip the inky needle into the person, but you also dip the person’s blood into your ink. These are medical waste too.

Cleaning up must be done promptly after the session. Bin everything disposable, put things through the ultrasonic and the autoclave, and sanitise the area. We may take machines apart, but more for maintenance than cleaning, sometimes we swap parts in them too.

We have two sinks, one for hand washing, one for cleaning.

All inks and needles have use by dates.

The internal dynamics of a studio

Depending on the country, some tattoo shops tend to have ties to biker gangs, and some of those internal dynamics and unwritten rules are often present.

There’s a pecking order and it’s dead serious. Basically the longer you’ve been in a shop, the higher ‘rank’ you are, you get the better positioned stations, first pick of walk-ins, etc (Unless the client is asking for someone by name). Regardless of your actual experience in the industry, like if you move into your old apprentice’s shop, they are still senior to you. If the owner or their partner is an artist, obviously they are on top of the chain by default.

We are self employed, but we have a boss. You are only making money if you are working, but you still have set work hours.

We get paid by the clients, and we pay the studio a cut. In return, there are some items provided by them, and some we buy for ourselves. Usually the chairs, tattoo beds, gloves, cleaning products, clip cord covers, masks, aprons, ink caps, vaseline, green soap, and some basic ink is provided by the shop. We buy our own machines, arm rests, stations, pedals, power supplies, clipcords, tips and grips, needles, special colours, stencil fluid…these are a personal preference, and often depend on the artists’ style.

We totally ask to try out each other’s equipment sometimes, or ask for a certain type of needle if we ran out.

The receptionist is usually just one of us, maybe a piercer, but it also can be a hired person in top studios.

The apprentice in the traditional system is often mistreated, and they have to pay for their education, have to be there multiple days a week and don’t make any money. It’s kind of like a tear them down, build them back up again thing to see if they are really serious about the job. Times are slowly changing, but 99% of them will always need a second job. Most of them are working as bar staff.

When you open a new studio, you must visit all the existing local ones and introduce yourself, otherwise you may get a brick through the window. Otherwise there’s not much beef among individual artists, they are often friends, go to conventions together and party after, etc.

The Artists

Tattooing is a fairly physical job, stretching skin is very important. We have to also keep our clients safely still, so we often use positions to pin them down a bit. Sometimes you hit a reflex point on the foot or under a knee, and you don’t want to get kicked. Sometimes you have to pull away super fast, cos they are sneezing, yawning or giggling.

Most tattooists drink a lot of coffee, tea or energy drinks.

Some people are all rounders, some have specific styles, but we recognise each other’s art styles. Sometimes we delegate work to each other, if we think our coworkers style fits the concept better. For example if there’s a person who does script well, we give them those projects.

We don’t like when people come in with designs from other artists. Art theft is frowned upon, and we work best with our own drawings.

Most apprentices practice on their own legs, and sometimes we tattoo each other when it’s quiet. Most people have cover ups, or bad pieces from their early days. The artists’ own tattoos sometimes are in a different style than what they do, but we like to collect ink from friends or colleagues we admire.

In the first 1-2 years one is an apprentice, then junior artist. At 5-8 years of tattooing, you have earned your stripes and are considered an experienced artist.

Conventions are really fun, but can be stressful. You can make good money working at one, and sometimes get awarded for it too. We can also spend a lot at a convention.

Sometimes we poke our fingers by accident, and it’s a scary thing. Good case scenario is just some random dots on your fingers. Let’s not go into the bad case scenario.

We do guest spots sometimes, just to meet new clients, and change it up a bit.

We spend a lot of time drawing up things, and designs are meant to fall on specific muscles, stretch with the skin a certain way, so they are tailored to the body proportions of the client. A good tattoo is also an optical illusion, complimenting the body shape.

Social media presence is like a second job, you need good photos, and you need to market yourself.

Tattoo ink does not wash out, so some stains are inevitable when pouring it out. Those ink bottles get stuck so easily, and we wrestle them a lot. We try to avoid it, but wearing all dark colours is a thing for a reason.

The Clients

Tattooists need to have a good ‘bedside manners’ too. We get nervous or self conscious people, and we are told personal things during long sessions. For example scar coverups and memorial pieces can be very emotional.

We have pretty good poker faces and first aid trainings. People can faint, get shaky, throw up, some have seizures, have b.o., get sweaty, etc the same way as at a blood donation event? It’s no big deal really. We sit them down, give them some water and some sugar, and re-book them if necessary. Most artists keep some wet wipes, mouth wash, deodorant, sweets, maybe even some clean clothes at work, just in case.

If someone comes in with a wild idea for a jobstopper, we would sit down and have a long talk. If they haven’t got many tattoos, we usually try to stir them towards more safe choices, offering them creative ideas. It’s like those jedi mind tricks sometimes.

If someone is undecided, we show them our own hand drawn flash sheets. Once its gone, its gone tho, we don’t use the designs twice.

Pinterest is full of photoshopped fake tattoos, some that won’t even work as real ink. Many people also touch up their work digitally on photos, so some clients have really unrealistic expectations.

We can totally tell if someone is intoxicated or hangover. It thins the blood, and they bleed out the ink, and it’s super annoying. if it’s bad, they will be sent home and rebooked.

Some folks are self conscious about body hair, their size, stretch marks and scars. Chances are, we have seen similar, and we aren’t bothered by it, because it’s work. Surgery scars, scars from accidents, self harm scars, burns, we see it all the time. We shave some really hairy dudes all the time girl, your legs are fine. Seriously. If something makes tattooing you dangerous we will tell you.

Fit, muscular people are harder to tattoo because they are really firm. Its a workout for us.

Everyone gets midnight messages about the aftercare from nervous clients, and drunken booty calls about getting inked right at this second. We have copy paste replies…

We get creeps sometimes. Stalking, weird conversations, tmi info dumps etc.

Other things to include (for fun, or for plot reasons)

We sometimes have those “oh fuck” moments. We all do, but mistakes can be fixed, and we play it cool.

Tattooing takes time. Usually 30 minutes to multiple sessions though years and years.

Healing tattoos takes about 2-4ish weeks, and your characters shouldn’t go roll around in dirt, sunbathe, swim, pick at the scabs. Nasty infections, and messed up tattoos would be the results.

If you have a strong immune system, and you get a lot of work done in one sitting, you may get a brief bit of a temperature. It’s normal, and will go away.

Its a lot easier to get seriously drunk after getting a tattoo. Be careful.

We sometimes draw on each other for practice with our marker pens.

Tattoos are inside the skin, not on top of it. Imagine a low opacity, skin toned layer over the ink, adding to the healed tattoos’ colour. Please stop making your characters skin fully transparent.

Heavy blackwork and palms are done in multiple sessions.

You can’t cover up moles, because if they develop skin cancer, the dermatologist can’t see the signs.

There’s a stereotype about piercers having blacked out sleeves.

Stencil fluid looks just like cum.

You get that annoying itch on your face when you scrubbed in, put on gloves and finally ready to go.

Some artists have a strong preference for coil or rotary machines, and they bicker about it a lot. Coils are louder, more punchy, and more traditional, perfect for lineart. They can be customised, and they last forever. They are also called glorified doorbells by people who prefer rotaries. Rotary machines are smoother, lighter, and often use needles that are pulled back into the cartridges for safety. They are better for shading and delicate line work. Older tattooists often say they are dildo or butt plug shaped, overly delicate and are for “soft millennials” only.

Every artist owns like 5 to 20 machines, and they have specific machine builders they are loyal to.

The “which cable is broken and cutting out” guessing game. Clip cords and pedal cables get worn out easily, and that results in your machine running really jerky.

Walk-in always show up 10 minutes before closing.

We often look quite silly at work. Sleeves rolled up, folks use all sorts of plastic ppe, headlamps, and we tie up our hair. Add couple of purple smears from carbon paper, and we aren’t scary at all.

#writing guide #writing tips #writing advice #writer's guide #writeblr #writing community #writing #writing help #submission

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imaginethebeautifulworld · 3 years

Note

Hello there! Which country/ countries do you think would love a s/o who is into cottage core? What about dark academia? Ooh! What about some aesthetics that you like??

Hello, Lovely~!

I regret to say that when I first started working on this ask, I was only going to delve a little bit into each of your questions, but my heart insisted on expanding each answer for you, and... Well...

I'll be dividing this into two different posts, as everything together is far too long to put into a single answer. ^_^;

In general, I don't think the Nations would be particularly attracted to someone for their aesthetic per say. In order to approach this, I instead tried to picture which of the Nations would likely mesh best with said aesthetics, and a few scenarios were born.

First up is Dark Academia, which kind of veers a bit more into the gothic/horror vibes than I was anticipating, but came to absolutely love as I went along.

Hope you enjoy!

Dark Academia:

Austria

Roderich has always been a perfectionist, often spends hours practising each day.

He's often finding inspiration for his compositions in seemingly the most mundane moments, has ruined many a journal and napkin with his frantic, sporadic writing, scribbling away in shorthand with almost a manic zeal.

You never fault him for it; he breathes music, each inhale and exhale just another crescendo and decrescendo in an ever-changing, uncharted symphony.

Recently however, he's lost his footing, loses his sense of direction even in his favourite concert halls.

You often catch him falling asleep at the piano, rehearsing long into the night, the calluses on his fingertips broken and crusted with dried blood.

The room is always a mess now; spilled ink coats crumpled, scattered music sheets, wax from the candelabra has melted down and solidified on the runner, one of the chairs has been broken in what you pray was an accident.

In the passing, fleeting, yearning moments when he steps away from it all, those rare moments when you coax him to eat and drink, to bathe, to sleep-

He rambles almost incoherently about the perfect symphony- frenetically, feverishly- pleads with you to help him, to ground him, to rid him of the thrice-damned refrain.

He is haunted- nay, plagued- by the song, obsessively begins to rewrite over-and-over again, cursing himself, cursing his limitations.

It kills you to see him in such a state, a witness to the near discordant harmony of anguish and ambition.

You ache to stop him, to ensure this spectre never haunts another living soul.

But you've heard it yourself, just enough to know you can't stop him.

It took only a few, hypnotic measures for you to succumb to its spell, to this dangerous, intoxicating melody that will do anything to be heard.

Belarus

Natalya is hiding something from you, something that has her constantly looking over her shoulder, has her more guarded than ever before.

You knew from the very start that she keeps secrets, knows things that you can never know- and frankly never want to know.

She drew you in with her layers, a softness buried deep, hidden behind a sharp tongue, guarded by a sharper blade.

At first glance, there is no gentleness to be found, no weaknesses to perceive.

She is quick.

And sharp.

And lethal.

Yet you knew, as you know now, there is far more to her than meets the eye, a quiet kindness and vulnerability that can only be earned with time and patience.

She used to reveal that to you, so often in fact that you had forgotten what that brusqueness even looked like.

To see her resorting to her old habits alarms you, terrifies you, has you glancing over your own shoulders even while running your usual errands.

She sneaks out a lot more these days, slipping away into darkened alleyways, disappearing into the fog and the night.

You follow her, aching for answers only she can provide, only finding more questions with every step.

A sense of urgency and desperation creeps across your skin as you walk faster, and faster, and even faster still.

You have to know.

You have to know what secrets she's hiding, why she's hiding.

In this one instance, you can't let her go on her own, can't risk her shouldering this burden of knowledge alone.

You have to help her; you have to know the truth.

She leaves behind codes written on wrappers of her favourite biscuits, messages and warnings alluding to something she's anxious that you keep out of.

Her fears only fuel your curiosity, and it isn't long until you're breaking into her safe, pouring through half-burned file folders and unmarked floppy discs.

You'll find the truth here somewhere, just as you're sure you'll figure out where she's disappeared to for the past nine days.

You continue your search for answers- both hers and your own- and know they're following you now, just as they followed her.

This is a dangerous game, and the more you learn, the deadlier it becomes.

But she's counting on you, wherever she is.

You will not rest until you find her and- together- finally expose the truth.

England

Arthur teaches you the power of words, a lesson you learn too late.

He lures you in with a bashful smile- always such soft smiles- and the perfect words.

He weaves them with practised ease and expert care, wields them as weapons only whenever truly necessary.

He always knows exactly the right words to say to you, never once stutters or second guesses, always speaks with a soft confidence that is just as beguiling and bewitching as his smile.

He introduces you to older and older texts, pages yellowed from age, the little sunlight entering the room scarcely offering enough visibility to make out each letter, to identify the source of the musty, metallic scent mingling with the dust and ancient leather.

When realisation finally strikes its fatal blow, you nearly drop the book in your alarm, its tawny sienna script striking you violently with nausea.

You frantically rush for the door, only half-aware of the creeping ivy, of the growing mist, focused only on your flight.

You're so close to escape before he's stopping you, crafting the perfect cage with a soft voice, gently luring you back in again-

Again and again as he has always done before.

Always such pretty words, always that soft, knowing smile.

You never think to question his isolation, never think to ask why he only meets you in empty corridors or forgotten rooms, never think to learn why no one else seems aware of him.

Every doubt that does come to mind, any question that arises beyond your obsessive, frantic studying-

Everything fades from thought with just the right words, whispered oh-so-gently.

It's only when you happen across an old, nearly forgotten legend that you begin to pull apart the deception, expose the hidden layers, read between the lines, and finally comprehend the gravity of your circumstance.

Words have power, he has told you- warned you- countless times.

He has always used such pretty words, such perfect words-

Words meant to charm and bind you.

Madagascar

Sakina talks in her sleep, during those few nights when your schedules sync up.

You're used to her long, odd work hours, and have long grown accustomed to her dedication to the Lab.

But she's been... off, lately.

There's a restlessness in her tapping fingers, a sense of apprehension and tension hanging around her as she pours over old reports, haunted eyes constantly drawn back to the shore.

So little of it makes sense; you've learnt enough through your time together to vaguely understand the abstracts from the dozens of articles littering her study, but you don't understand the chaotic mess of half-finished formulas and unfamiliar symbols covering her whiteboard, nor do you see the correlation to the dozens of newspaper clippings she has taped sporadically about the room.

She's taken to reciting equations in her sleep now, constantly has nightmares about... It.

She's sleeping less-and-less, has exhausted your coffee stockpiles, repeatedly begs and warns you to stay out of the water.

You're desperate to understand what is stealing her away from you, desperate for answers, desperate to save her from whatever precipice her research has led her to.

She's so lost to her research that she scarcely notices your presence over her shoulder, never seems to notice when her desk is rearranged from your own reading.

Slowly, you are starting to understand her frantic scribbles, are starting to understand the connection between all the journals that, once, seemed to have no correlation whatsoever.

You have your suspicions, you have your doubts.

Yet you can't argue with the years of evidence, can't argue the facts right in front of you.

You desperately try to convince yourself that you're wrong, that she's wrong.

But the more you learn, the more certain you are of the truth, the more you begin to dread the very thing she's been studying all along.

Thanks for the request, Lovely! I hope you enjoyed, and keep an eye out for some cottagecore soon~

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acourtofsnakes · 3 years

Text

Cabur - Rogue, Chapter 6| The Mandalorian x Force Sensitive! Reader (f)

Summary: A few weeks have passed and after landing on a small planet to collect a bounty, you and Mando decide to take a little trip to the market to stock up on some things. Nothing will come up here.. right?

Warnings: Angsty angsty annnnngst, (Sorry, I don’t mean to be so horrible to dear reader), Swearing (mild), brief mentions of death, touching on the same things as chapter 4 but not as heavy but I’ll still add the trigger warnings ♥︎ These chapters will get lighter, I promise,

Not beta read, I wanted to get this one out because I love it so apologies for any mistakes, I’ll be going in to edit a little later

Trigger warnings: Anxiety, horrible thoughts/insults, triggering comments maybe, thoughts of not being able to cope.

Words: About 6210

AN: Okay, okay, so, I was listening to my Rogue playlist on Spotify (link coming soon) and a certain song came on that just fuelled this chapter. SO, I highly recommend listening to Leave A Light On by Tom Walker if you want the vibes for this chapter. Just… honestly, please do it (I may have had tears)

As always, credit to whoever owns the gif. I usually find them on Google or Pinterest, so message me if it’s yours ♥︎

Rogue Taglist: @snipskixandbeskar @weirdowithnobeardo @the-bottom-of-the-abyss

Mando’a translation: Cabur - Protector or Guardian

A few weeks had passed since that night you saved the Mandalorian’s life, since he threw away the bounty puck to keep you safe.

You’d stayed that night grounded, and then when Mando was able to get up in the morning, he flew you off of that dump of a planet.

He didn’t ask anymore but how you had managed to save him. Whether he knew you were lying or not, he hadn’t pushed it, choosing instead to respect you. Kind of like how you respected him and his Creed.

You’d fallen into a sort of routine around the Razor Crest, without either of you realising it. Mando would fly the ship, and you could be found seeing to Grogu and Duru, or tidying things up. Sometimes you would clean the weapons in the cabinet, making sure they stayed in pristine condition.

Now and then, Mando would head out to get a bounty and when he got back, he would let you help patch him up. You never saw his bare skin, respected that. You would look away or close your eyes, pointing out the best things to use or how to administer them. The man was good at first aid, but his answer to everything was to shove the cauteriser on it. So, when you had been passing through some shops one day, you had stocked up on medical supplies, even found a shop selling the same herbs and plants that your mother had taught you about.

You’d even been on a few of the hunts with him.

Of course, you had argued first. When you’d asked him about it one day on the way out of Nevarro, Mando had simply said no.

Which had immediately riled you. You were not a girl who liked that word. You despised that word.

Which is how you’d spent the whole night and next two days bickering, over the question of your safety. When he lost that front, (“Seriously, Mando? I’m a fugitive. And after all, I’ve got a big, strong Mandalorian to protect me”) the Mandalorian had moved on to your lack of thinking before throwing yourself into the firefight.

He lost that one too.

(“Says the man who stole back a child surrounded by Stormtroopers.”

“You’re not coming. End of.”

“Did you want me to bring your pulse rifle over?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“You’re right. Pulse rifle and an extra blaster.”

“I hate you, you know that?”

“Sure you do, Lori. I’ll see you at the ramp.”)

That nickname had slipped out by accident, and he’d regarded you, for a long time. He’d gone still, and you almost swore you heard a hitch of breath through his helmet and then he just nodded and murmured softly, “See you down there.”

There had been a lot of little moments like that but they were so fleeting that you were almost convinced you’d imagined it. You were imagining a lot of things lately.

Sometimes, when you were walking through forests or towns, you thought you spotted something lingering at the edges of your vision.

A tall figure, cloaked in a hood that was embroidered in either silver or gold, depending on the light.

You’d even asked Mando about it a few times, but he hadn’t seen anything so you simply put it down to a trick of the light or sleeplessness, nightmares still plaguing you now and then.

Regardless of the nightmares and your vision playing tricks on you, you were doing… okay. You were warm, safe, had a comfy place to sleep. You had things to keep you busy, things that weren’t hunting for food or a good spot to hunker down in for the night.

Duru was happy too, having become fast friends with Grogu and the two of them ran rings around you and the Mandalorian. Well, mainly Mando, which you found hilarious because he was such an exasperated dad with them both.

It was a rare reprieve from your life, letting you slow down and… live. Rather than survive.

“I do not talk in my sleep.”

“Yes, you do!! Sometimes, I think you’re awake but you’re just having a fully-fledged conversation with your blanket.”

“Oh, shut up. I know I don’t talk in my sleep, tin can. You were probably just having dreams about me again.” You examined the fruit in front of you, then handed over a few credits to the kind vendor, slipping the fruit in your bag.

The sound of fabric hitting the floor sounded from behind you, and you turned to see that the Mandalorian had dropped the bag you’d made him carry. “I do NOT have dreams about you!” He stooped to pick up the bag, then rose to see you standing with your hands on your hips, eyebrow raised and that damn smirk on your lips.

“Mmhm, is that why you always have to pull something over your lap when I wake you up?”

He stared at you, and you had the very correct feeling that he was looking at you in mild shock, too caught out to come up with his usual cocky response. “I -you.. That’s completely..”

You burst out laughing, rolling your eyes at him and then dropping him a wink, “Come get me when you’ve thought of a response, Lori.” You turned and carried on walking through the market.

The two of you had stopped off on a nearby trading planet, to gather supplies. Mando had recently secured a bounty with your help and it had paid well, giving you enough extra credits to stock up and treat yourselves. Grogu was already half-way through a packet of blue macarons, which would no doubt come back to bite you both later when he was pelting through the ship whilst you tried to catch him. And it would be your fault because you had taken one look at those big ears and eyes, determined not to break but when the little womp rat had cooed at you… Of course, he had gotten his own way.

It felt good, to wander a market and not be scrounging for things under the cover of a hooded cloak. You still had one on, you couldn’t bear to part with this item, the most beautiful piece of clothing you had ever had. You just didn’t have the hood up disguising you.

A gift, from Mando.

The first time you went out with him after the puck was destroyed, Mandalorian had insisted you wear yours. However, it had been covered in his blood from his injury, and you couldn’t get it out, no matter how hard you had tried. It hadn’t bothered you that much, though you were.. not sad as such, but it felt a little strange because it had been one of your few possessions for so long. But, maybe it was a symbol. That things had changed, and that was in the past.

A couple of days later, you had just walked into the cockpit when you noticed there was a package on your seat. When you picked it up, it was squishy, bound in a sort of thick papery material and tied with a length of string.

You’d glanced at the Mandalorian, who was watching you, the picture of calm but his hands had been fiddling with something on his belt, a shockingly nervous gesture you weren’t used to.

That simple, uncertain gesture had risen your pulse and you unwrapped the package, trying not to show how your hands were shaking at the first gift you’d received since being a child.

A gift from the Mandalorian.

Pulling away the paper had revealed a mass of fabric, a blue so deep it was almost the same colour as the night sky. You’d lifted it out and it had unfolded and revealed itself to be a new cloak. The material was soft, thick enough to keep out a biting chill. You’d made a noise of awe and surprise, but had immediately fallen in love with it, pulling it on. It fell to about the middle of your calves and secured at the base of your neck with a small silver clasp.

The inside was lined with a thin layer of heat-reflective material, and when you’d run a hand over it, Mando had finally broken his silence, “I noticed you were always cold, even if you had layers on so I.. wanted to make sure you weren’t cold anymore..”

You swore you could almost feel the heat creeping up his neck, and that softened you. He was nervous about giving you this cloak, like he didn’t know how you would take it.

You had smiled at him, a soft smile that made your eyes glitter like the surrounding stars and placed a hand on his knee lightly, “Thank you, Lori. I adore it, I truly do.” Then you’d spent the next minutes admiring it, putting the hood up and realising it shielded your face in shadow.

So, naturally, you had moved around the cockpit and upper level like a phantom, pretending to be a shadow in the night.

You’d even earned yourself a laugh from the great wall of beskar that was fast becoming your friend. It was only a soft chuckle, just picked up by the vocoder, but all the same, it had lit something within you.

It still echoed in your ears now.

A few moments later, the Mandalorian was back at your side, Grogu in his little bag and Duru walking next to him. “The point still stands. I thought I might finally get some silence at night, but you talk just as much.” His raspy voice had a softened edge, one of teasing and you might even have heard the hints of a smile playing at his lips.

You turned to look at him over your shoulder, “You love it when I talk. I have to talk to you, otherwise I’d be worried you had turned to stone. You’re so quiet sometimes.” You stopped at a stall, admiring the fabrics here – not to buy, just to look at the different things in a place you had never seen before.

The Mandalorian made a soft noise, “No, sweetheart, that’s just called quiet time. You might want to try it sometime.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but something behind Mando caught your eye. Rising up on tiptoe, you peered over his shoulder… but there was nothing there. Weird. You could have sworn you saw someone wearing a hood just… watching you.

You shrugged, assuming you had imagined it like before and then looked back to the man before you, “I can be quiet. I just choose to fill your hours with my wonderful voice.” You flashed him a grin, eyes dancing.

A voice cut across before Mando could talk to you, “You.” It was a snarl, tinged with recognition that wasn’t exactly the most positive. It was bitter, aggressive and almost… pained.

Mando turned quickly, his hand flying toward the blaster on his hip, instinct overriding him. His movement allowed you to see who had just interrupted the conversation.

A lady stood there, with curly magenta hair twisted up into a braid. She had tattoos along her neck, and her eyes were a shocking green. She was breathing quickly, staring at you with such disdain that it made your neck prickle.

How did you know this woman? You’d never been to this planet before.

You blinked, holding up your hands as a surrender gesture, “Uh… I’m sorry but I don’t know you. I think you must have me confused with someone else…”

The lady shook her head fiercely, making the whisps of her hair that had escaped bounce wildly. “No. I do not have you confused. I would know you anywhere.” Her eyes were wild with fury, pinning you to the ground with just a stare.

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t know who you are. Maybe you could tell me your name?” You extended a hand, trying to diffuse this situation and help the woman understand that you aren’t who she thinks.

She flinched back from your reach, even though she was still a good few feet away. “How dare you. You don’t even know who I am?” She made a noise of disgust, looking you up and down in such a way that you were surprised the skin didn’t flay from your bones, “Typical. I don’t know why I’m surprised. She was probably just another tool to you, wasn’t she? Another person to use and discard like trash.”

You blinked, your hands dropping to your sides. Your skin began to tighten, your blood turning a little frosty. You looked to the side, seeing a few people start to stop and watch this altercation happen.

The Mandalorian seemed to pick up on this at the same time as you. He turned more toward the lady, his hand still within reach of his blaster, “Why don’t we take this somewhere more private?”

The woman barely even looked at him, “Don’t get involved in this, Mandalorian. You’re just as bad as she is. At least to do what you do, you have to have respect and creed. You have morals, no matter how murky they are.” She jabbed a finger at you, “Unlike this savage monster.”

Your breathing immediately shallowed, getting a little unsteady as she spat out that word, that hateful word that followed you around and hounded at your feet. “I’m sorry? For whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry if it’s hurt you. I didn’t mean it, truly-”

She laughed, a cold and cruel laugh, but her eyes were slowly turning glassy with tears. She took a few steps closer, “You don’t even remember her name, do you? Shall I remind you? Help you distinguish her from your kill list?”

You didn’t fail to notice the way the Mandalorian’s stance shifted. His body tightened and he stood closer, shielding you slightly with one of those ridiculously broad shoulders. He was going on the defensive, feeling the situation start to spiral.

The woman barely spared him another glance, “3 years ago, you showed up on Trask. You stumbled around the market for a few days, bleeding from a wound in your leg and you passed out.”

Realisation was beginning to filter through you. It sparked in your mind and you remembered a dark street and rain, your leg heavy and cumbersome beneath you. It had burned like fire and when you went down, you couldn’t get back up again.

The woman was still talking, “Someone picked you up, took you to their home. My sister. She was there for work, and saw you lying in the street, like some kind of dumped animal. She nursed you back to health, gave you somewhere to stay.” She could see it as it began back to you, “You took her aid, her comfort and then, there was a warning put out in the village. There had been a high-risk fugitive spotted in the village. Anyone with information was to come forward immediately.”

Your hands curled into fists, your chest shuddering as guilt and darkness began to swirl within you, “Stop.”

She chose not to hear your quiet plea, “I was supposed to meet her. But she sent me a comms message. She would meet me, but she would have someone else with her. Someone who she couldn’t tell me over a comms message. Someone in trouble. People said this girl was dangerous, to be handed over with no hesitation but she didn’t see that. No, she said this girl was terrified, that she just wanted to live.” She tilted her head, walking closer again, “But the next day, this special little girl was gone. And then the Imperials came.” Her voice shook, her expression unreadable.

You shook your head mutely, not wanting to hear this, memories flooding your brain.

“Someone had tipped them off that my sister was harbouring a fugitive. They tore through her home, destroyed it and dragged her in for questioning. They demanded she tell them, beat her when she denied it. She never gave it up.”

The woman was right in front of the Mandalorian now, who extended his arm out, ‘That’s close enough.”

Nausea roiled your stomach, and you weren’t sure if you were going to pass out or throw up. There were too many eyes on you, too many people watching as this woman revealed you bit by bit.

The woman lowered her voice, deadly soft and it shook, but carried in the silent square, “My sister was murdered because of you. Because of what you are.”

Mando froze, his head tilting back to look at you slightly. You still hadn’t told him.

She wasn’t done. “They told me a few weeks ago that you’d been captured by a Mandalorian. I wept with relief that day, because I knew the Mandalorian wouldn’t fail. You’d be taken to whoever wanted you, and you would finally repent for every single sin you’ve ever committed. Your life is littered with them. My sister, my beloved sister is dead because of you. A killer. A beast. Your hands are stained red, girl, and they will always be stained red. I admit, I’m disappointed that you slithered into his head with your poison too but you will kill him too and then… You deserve everything that will ever come to you. And more.” The woman was breathing almost as quickly as you, her eyes glinting in sick delight at the pain she was causing you.

My sister is dead because of you.

A beast.

Her words mingled with that seductively dark voice in your mind and you gasped for a breath, knives feeling like they were digging into your lungs. Your eyes darted around, noted the strangers looking at you with horror and that shared disgust. A father pushed his daughter behind his legs as he caught your stare, hissing at you.

A flinch ran down your body and without a second thought, you turned tail and bolted. The sunlight was too bright, obscuring your vision harshly and making you stumble every now and then.

You were distantly aware of a male’s shout, then a harsh thumb and the Mandalorian’s voice snarling, “Stay down.” He stopped to check your pursuer was down and then he was running after you. “Hey, wait.”

You ignored him, boots pounding into the dust as you ran through the market, needing to get out of this place, get away from her and the memories. Where the hell was the ship? It was right here a minute ago. I haven’t gone the wrong way. This is the way we came.

You could still hear Mando behind you, knew he was hot on your heels. “Drop it, Mando.” You led him around people and stalls, knowing if wanted to be in front of you, he would be. He was letting you flee, stopping anyone coming after you.

Dodging around a crate of fruit, you almost sobbed. There it was, the Crest, gleaming in the sunlight. You slowed down as you reached it, stopping a little way away to let the ramp come down, let you inside to sanctuary.

Nothing happened.

Bastard.

You took a breath, trying to get past the tightness in your lungs, “Let me in.”

“No. Not until you tell me what’s going on.” His voice was firm, arrogant, in a way like he knew best and you’d listen to him.

~“A killer. A beast. Your hands are stained red.”~

Your hands curled into fists at your sides, staring at the Crest, at where the ramp was tucked in tight. Your heart was pounding, not from the run, but from the realisation that no matter where you went, there would always be someone you had touched with that curse. “No. I’m not telling you anything. I don’t owe you anything.”

He laughed behind you, but it was a cool laugh, nothing humorous in it, “I’m not saying you owe me anything, princess. But some woman just cornered you in the street and spat abuse at you. I thought I would be prying you off of her, not chasing after you.”

A wolf. No. A beast.

You spun round, eyebrow raised, “Because I’m some wild animal that would rather fight than talk my way out of a situation?”

If he had no helmet, you would have seen him blink, “No, I’m not saying that. But, well. You have to admit it, don’t you?”

Something was beginning to prickle up the back of your neck, his words threatening to cut a little close, “Admit what?” Venom laced your tone and you tensed, as if bracing for a punch.

The Mandalorian walked closer, oozing confidence like he somehow knew you better than you knew yourself, “You don’t really think, do you? You never calculate the risks of a fight. You just jump straight in with no regard for your own safety. I mean, when I came for you on Sorgan, anyone smart would have seen a Mandalorian and run.” He wasn’t saying it in an arrogant way, he was saying it as fact. And he was right. A Mandalorian appeared on the street and you turned around and crossed to the other side. You didn’t engage him a fight and flirt with him.

A cold laugh rocked though you and you tilted your head, “Anyone smart? So you’re calling me stupid now? Is that it? Beast or stupid?” You took a few steps closer to him, ignoring the villagers milling around that had started to look, having heard the fight in the centre of the market. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t calculate risks. You think I’ve had time to calculate risks in my life? I don’t have time to sit with my little notepad in my ship and jot down the pro’s and con’s of engaging in battle. I didn’t have the luxury of being trained like you.”

Bitter astonishment filled the Mandalorian’s voice, his own body going rigid, “The luxury of training?! You think I chose to become a Mandalorian? That I woke up one morning and skipped along to Mandalorian school?” His voice rose, the rough rasp turning to stone with every word.

You observed him with a steely gaze, something in you needing to push him away, to protect yourself before he got too close. So, you aimed for what you knew would work, his Creed. Your eyebrows rose, looking him up and down as you leaned your weight on one leg, “You’re telling me you weren’t born with that thing already stuck on your head?” Spiteful sarcasm dripped from your voice and you pointed up at his helmet.

The Mandalorian let out a snarl that no doubt usually sent normal people running. He stalked toward you with predatory grace, a hunter toward his prey. “Don’t you dare.” Like he read in your eyes where you were going with this.

Ugly triumph filtered though you as you stood your ground, not afraid of him, “It’s all the same with you Mandalorians, isn’t it. You have all your training, don your shiny armour and suddenly you’re better than anyone. That helmet goes on, you don’t have to face the consequences of what you’ve done. No one knows who you are, so you don’t need to take the blame.” These words were spiteful, beyond cruel and you hated yourself more and more for each one, but he was starting to get into the cracks, starting to see you. You couldn’t see him die.

Mando was right in front of you now, towering above you with all his broad-shouldered posture, frustration roiling off of him in waves. “You think I don’t feel remorse for what I’ve done?” His voice was so low, barely leashed.

You nearly purred, tasting the promise of a fight, even if it did twist a knife into your heart. “I’ve never seen it.” You tilted your head back to look up at him, letting every ounce of spoilt, cruel brattiness melt into your expression.

A soft growl rumbled through the helmet, so muted you barely heard it in the noises of the market behind him.

Yes. Yes.

And then he relaxed, his shoulders eased and his hands uncurled.

What? No – Disappointment, maybe even shock registered on your expression. You’d been sure, so sure that aiming for his beloved Creed would get him to fight you. Why hadn’t it worked?

Mando shook his head, the sunlight bouncing off of the shiny metal, “No. I’m not doing this with you. You can’t push me away, no matter how hard you try. You don’t mean anything that you just said, I can see it in your eyes.” He pressed a button on his vambrace, and the ramp opened behind you.

He saw you.

That dark beast was starting to awaken, its ears pricking up. You needed to get out of here, away from him, away from this, now. You just shook your head, turning around and walking up the ramp, watching Duru as she ran ahead of you.

Footsteps sounded from behind you as the Mandalorian followed you. He took Grogu from his little pouch, popping him on a cargo crate and Duru immediately jumped up next to him. “Don’t walk away from me. I’m trying to help you, but you keep shutting me out. Why did that woman say those things about you?” His gloved hand enveloped your wrist, his grip not tight or authoritative, but it began to break something in you.

“Let me go, Mando. I mean it.” You let ice creep into your tone, trying to disguise the cracking inside you, the darkness that was beginning to stir and whisper.

And the damn tin can saw it all. Your back was to him, but he still fucking knew, “Please… You know I would never judge you for it, for whatever you did to make her say that.”

Excuse me?

Anger flared through you now, igniting into a blaze and you snarled, “Whatever I did?!” You didn’t give him time to respond, not before you swung around, using his grip on your wrist for leverage. You had spent enough time around him now to become familiar with the plates of his armour, so you knew you aimed correctly when your fist connected with the side of his ribs between the front and back plates.

He grunted, jolting a little but he still didn’t let go. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant-” His voice had softened and, in your rage and hurt, you mistook the pleading tone for a condescending one.

Before he could finish, you punched him again, harder, “Don’t. Don’t try to start spewing excuses at me. I knew perfectly well what you meant. You thought that she had been hurt by me. That I killed her sister with my own hands. Probably slit her throat and bathed in her blood.”

“No, no, I didn’t. If you would just listen to me and stop shouting, please-“

Your foot connected with his shin, making him stumble backwards. You followed after him, “You didn’t even stop to think that maybe, for once, I didn’t actually do anything. But no. Like always, you looked at me and saw the worst. You assumed that I was a monster.” You chopped down at his inner elbow this time, causing him to let go of you in reflex.

Mando tilted his head, his voice coming out sharper this time, “I assumed?” He laughed, the bastard laughed, “What else am I supposed to do, sweetheart? You’ve been on this ship for nearly a month now and I still don’t know anything about you. So yes, I was wrong for assuming, but can you blame me?”

Your eyes flashed and you were on him again, “So it’s my fault that you thought I was a monster? You’d met me for all of two seconds on Sorgan and started whispering in my ear like honey, that death followed me wherever I went. There was a bounty over my head and that’s all you saw.”

Mando went still, his shoulders tightened, and his voice came out lower, “You’re still bringing that up? I told you that you weren’t my bounty anymore.”

Before you could answer him, that velvety voice inside your head started to whisper in your ear, “Oh no, oh my sweet darling. He sees you. The real you. He knows you’re a monster.”

You shook your head sharply, lifted your eyes back to the Mandalorian’s stupid face. Helmet. Visor. Whatever. “I’m not your bounty but you believed that woman. So say it.”

His confusion was palpable, “Say what?”

You took a step forward and your chest butted up against his, “Say it! Say that I’m a monster. A murderer. I kill everything I come near.” You laughed, coldly, the words coming out with your voice but in your head, they were being repeated in that cruel, silken whisper. “You regret it, don’t you? Throwing away my puck. You wish you’d kept it, then you could get rid of me, be free of what I’ve done, why I’m being hunted.” Those steel bands were still wrapped round you, crushing you, swallowing you whole again.

Something broke in him, his composure as the anger rose again and he leaned down to you, “Stop.” The command was a growl and he lifted a finger, pointing at you, “You’re a fucking hypocrite.”

Yes. Yes, fight back, fight me. Tell me what I know I am.

You raised your eyebrows, smirking at his finger and then back up at him but your expression was bitter, “Am I? Why’s that, Mando?” You tilted your head and practically purred, “Tell me.”

The tension in the room was tight, the air almost crackling around you with this outburst of emotion, the threads of your entwined lives pulling taut.

The light bounced off of the plates on his shoulders, betraying his slightly ragged breathing, “You just screamed at me for assuming the worst about you, yet you did just that to me. How can I want to be free of you, when I don’t even know who you are.” He lifted his hands to your shoulders, to try and calm you down, to push you away maybe.

The smirk began to slip from your face, “Does it matter who I am?”

His grip tightened, “Of course it does. Because you’re not a bad person. Let me help you, please. Just tell me something. Anything.” His voice turned pleading, and he lifted a hand from your shoulder, like he was going to cup your cheek.

You’re not a bad person.

Fire blazed within you again, protective and destructive. This was too close. He was getting too close. You had to stop it, now. You had to get away.

You reached up, grabbing his wrist and using the element of surprise to slam him against the wall behind him, pinning his wrist there and then your blade was at his neck, dull light glinting off of it, “Back off. You can’t help me. I’m not some broken doll to add to your ragtag collection.” Your own breathing was ragged, coming in sharp pants as the room started to spin.

The Mandalorian flinched, like you’d hit a nerve and his free hand moved. Bingo.

Yes, you thought, almost begged, Punch me. Fight me, please.

But he didn’t. He just curled his fingers around your wrist and pushed you away, dislodging your knife and knocking you back a few steps. Like you were weak.

You couldn’t do this, he was starting to slip through the cracks that were forming in you. He was looking at you, seeing you. He always had, from the moment you were nothing but hunter and prey, he knew exactly how to get through your intricately woven net of silver-tongued quips and cocky arrogance.

No.

Your voice cracked, echoes of the dark beast’s laughter in your ears “No! Stop pushing me away, stop taking it. Fight me!!” You surged for him again, your hands curling into fists, slamming against the beskar plates again and again.

You didn’t care that it hurt, that it made pain explode across your knuckles.

You liked it, you liked the pain. Deserved that and so much more.

And the Mandalorian… just stood there. He shook his head, just slightly, “No.” He stood there as you hammered your fists against his chest, even when you started to kick him. Just watched as your eyes became glassier, your punches harder but less accurate.

Why wasn’t he fighting you?

Your hazy mind began to overwork, searching for something, anything to provoke him, “Why? You don’t want to fight a girl? Too proud are you?” You slammed your knee into his, pulled at the armour plates, honed your pain and fury into him but he just absorbed it. “You’re as weak as I am, you’re running too. You’re the hypocrite, Mandalorian, not me.” Your words were stilted, made no sense as you spat out words as cruel as you could, just needing to provoke him.

Nothing did. Nothing. There was no noise in the cargo hold but the sounds of the people outside, beeping, the dull thud of your fists, your spiteful words and your own ragged breathing.

And the whispering in your head that had turned into a full-on symphony of bitter taunts and sniping truths. It rose with memories, flashes of your dead parents, the battered bodies of those that had tried to help you, people who had been caught in the cross-hairs of your life. Innocent people that had turned into nothing more than collateral damage.

Blood had started to smear on the beskar, your knuckles splitting open with the repeated impact. You could hear Duru meowing, Grogu gurgling in worry but you didn’t care.

The beast and its army rose, tasting the scent of blood and bringing you visions of the future, of the Mandalorian, dead on the ground. The blood from your fists turned into his own, painting the ground red. Duru, fur soaked in scarlet and Grogu, his tiny little body broken on the floor in a pool.

And above them, you stood, soaked in the blood of these three. Relishing in the pain and torture that you had caused. You could taste their blood.

The room began to spin further, the whispering detonated into a roar and it unleashed a heavy roiling cloud within you. It choked you, squeezed fists around your lungs, clouded your eyes and snuck into your head. It whispered to you, such cruel taunts, sucking out the deepest, most vile thoughts you had about yourself and spat them back out, combined with these visions of the future. It leeched the energy out of you and with a choked sob, your knees gave way.

Duru let out a yowl of concern, springing off of the cargo box.

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be confident, or strong. I can’t be brave and cocky, I can’t keep throwing myself into every fight, I can’t run anymore. I can’t do this. I can’t-

And then a pair arms caught you.

Mando caught you. He didn’t haul you up against him. He didn’t try and pull you up.

No, he sunk to the floor with you, supporting your weight in his own body, leaning against the wall and letting you collapse against him.

You froze, your body stiffened as he did. This… people didn’t touch you like this. They didn’t put their arms around you unless they were trying to drag you somewhere.

You hadn’t been hugged since you were a child, and yet here you were. The Mandalorian was holding you, but loosely.

Waiting, for your consent. For you to be okay with this.

And as his gloved hand brushed your back, such a tender warmth broke through you, caressed your pain and you couldn’t resist. You sunk into him, the last saps of energy leaving you as tears flooded your cheeks. The armour was hard, digging into you a little bit, but the feeling of just being held was more than enough.

He wrapped his arms around you, coaxing you against his chest. His legs were either side of you, one stretched out on the floor and the other resting up to support your back. Distantly, you were aware of four clawed feet padding over your lap, Duru settling into the space between you and Mando’s arm.

The armour disguised the frantic beating of his heart, your tears and shaking of your body held the trembling of his own hands, but he didn’t mention it. Didn’t mention the fact that this was the first time he had held someone like this that wasn’t the kid… since he was a child himself. He was just as starved of touch as you, even more so because he had no skin-to-skin contact either. He could feel your warmth through the fabric of his clothes that weren’t covered, could feel the weight of you leaning into him.

He didn’t speak, just held you in the dimness of the cargo hold, keeping you together as you fell apart, kept the promise of death away, just as you had done for him.

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#the mandalorian x force sensitive! reader #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin x force sensitive! reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #reader insert #star wars #the mandalorian #pedro pascal #grogu

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