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crinkled-emotions · 10 months

Note

OK ok ok ok I'm TRYING to remain calm over the puppy (lol not working)

It can me a prompt idea. I don't know if you're taking on requests still.....

Bradley's childhood dog that Mav had kept over the years passes away a couple of months after the mission and him and Mav making up so B did get some time with him. (Yeah the dog was a very good healthy boy that lived to about 20😅) And then I'm thinking maybe Hangster vibes, Jake buys him this puppy to cheer him up 😭😭🥰🥰

Quick little one while I work on the Slider fic from March (I know, I'm crying about it too, I am in the process of getting some shit sorted and I kept getting writer's block)

Funny story, my childhood dog was a mutt and he actually lived until he was seventeen. He survived being lost in Melbourne, a fight with a bulldog (which he actually won?) and being run over by a tractor. His name was Jack and I miss him sm but now I have Boss who is the biggest shithead ever (see: video of him yowling and then getting zoomies)

Brisket is... potentially the cutest puppy I've ever seen (I'm only saying that because I didn't know my dog until he was 6 months old lmao, I may continue to be biased) and I feel like he matches the shithead energy (affectionate) Glen has deep down... anyway! On to the fic!

CW: the passing of a beloved pet

"Holy shit, Jet's still here?!"

Bradley dumped his duffel bag on the floor and barrelled over to the dog asleep on Maverick's kitchen floor, gently kneeling and extending his hand first just in case the dog didn't recognise him. Instead of getting a growl or maybe even a head lift, the dog lazily thumped his tail and stretched out.

"Jet is nearly sixteen, his hearing is pretty much gone and before I left he walked into my leg."

Maverick's own luggage hit the floor and he made his way over, pressing a kiss to Rooster's hair and then heading for the kitchen. Jet's ears pricked up and he was gone in seconds, trotting off to follow Maverick in hopes of some kitchen scraps. Rooster trailed after him, taking a seat at the island and accepting the cheese sandwich passed to him. He pretended not to see the spare piece "dropped" to the floor where Jet was sitting at his godfather's feet.

"I didn't think he was still alive," Bradley murmured between bites of sandwich. Maverick hummed, reaching down to give the older dog a pat.

"Well, I'd say he knew you'd come home when you were ready, and he wanted to see that."

Maverick then glanced up at Rooster, and rounded the corner to hug him.

"Glad you're home, kid," he murmured.

"Thanks for letting me back in, Mav."

As per usual, Jake was wearing his usual shit-eating grin when Bradley got home, sitting on their couch with a book, the football on in the background and a beer in his lap. Peak Seresin behaviour.

"Hey, baby. How was Mav?"

"Uh, good, my dog from right before I left is still alive."

"Jet?"

Jake tossed the book to the coffee table, carefully putting his beer down to extend his arms to his boyfriend. They kissed and then Bradley flopped down beside him, taking the beer for himself.

"Yeah, did I ever tell you the story of Jet?"

"Getting childhood stories from you is like pulling teeth, Roos," Jake replied. That got him a glare, followed by an eye roll and then Bradley leaned into his side.

"So, my mom, she died when I was fifteen, right? And I wasn't coping all that hot. Mav was getting called away on deployments because he can't follow the rules and I think he worried that me staying with Ice all the time was displacing... so one night he comes home after work with this puppy. It pissed everywhere and I'm pretty sure he chewed at least three pairs of Mav's boots, but Jet was what I needed when talking to people or even thinking of going to a therapist would be enough to send me into a panic attack."

"I didn't know you were that anxious," Jake murmured, reaching over to push his fingers through Bradley's curls.

"I'm not; it was the grief and I was constantly moving between Mav's, Ice's, even Penny's, once, when Mav and Ice were in the shit together."

"I can't even imagine- wait... the Ice? As in Iceman?"

"Yes, Jake. Keep up, babe."

Sitting in Maverick's kitchen, there was silence. Jake, Bradley and Maverick were all in various positions, but Jake had a hand on his boyfriend's shoulder and Maverick was waiting for what he was thinking was going to be another fight.

"Was it quick?" Bradley asked quietly. Maverick nodded, eyes on the floor. Despite knowing he wasn't in trouble, the worst feeling in the world was Bradley being upset with him and Bradley was giving off those vibes.

"He went in his sleep, the vet said. It was age, he wasn't in pain."

"I need him," Bradley murmured. Jake rubbed between his shoulders, sighing as he turned to Maverick.

"Have you already buried him?"

"I was waiting for you two to get here."

Jet was gone. After sixteen years, he was gone. Bradley was staring at the island counter, brows furrowed, and he finally glanced up at Mav.

"Let's just do it now, what's another one to bury?"

"Roo-"

"-Bradley-"

He held up a hand, effectively stopping his boyfriend and godfather.

"No, let's just do it."

It had been a couple of months, and whilst he'd given Bradley some time to grieve, Jake was getting the itch to get him a little surprise... no, not the sexy surprise, hEY- get your head out of the gutter! Before Bradley found out Jet was still alive they'd been talking about getting a pet once they'd moved in together properly. Jake had been more or less living at Bradley's for almost a year, so when his lease came up for renewal he didn't hesitate to cancel it at Bradley's insistence that he move in for real. Jake was surprised at how much Jet's passing had affected his boyfriend, but he understood the underhanded grieving of his mother all over again that was associated with the pet. He didn't want to overstep, but- well. It just so happened a local shelter was having an adoption drive over the weekend while Bradley went to an event with Maverick for TOPGUN. Perfect timing, if you ask him.

"B, you home?"

"Here."

Bradley waved from the desk in the living area, huffing at the computer in front of him. He was working through some documents by the look on his face, and Jake cleared his throat as he knelt on the ground to put the item in his arms down.

"I, uh, went to the store."

"What, did you forget cheese again? You know how I feel about cheese."

"Yeah, I also know how your stomach feels about cheese. Admit you're lactose intolerant already."

Bradley closed the laptop and wheeled around before Jake was even slightly ready and immediately his eyebrows shot up.

"The store, huh?"

"I never said which store," Jake grinned. He glanced up at Bradley, sending him a cautious smile.

"This little guy doesn't have a name, and he's not to replace Jet, but I felt like the house had been a little too quiet lately- oof! Oh, okay, this is nice. Hey, can you hug the puppy too? I think he'd like that."

Bradley pulled away from Jake's shoulder to give him a kiss, and then knelt by the tiny puppy yapping at their feet.

"Hey, hey, shhhhhh..."

The dog darted around his feet before Bradley carefully caught him and lifted him to his chest, grimacing at the wet licks on his neck.

"The first time Mav ever picked up Jet, the dog pissed all down his shirt," he murmured, laughing to himself. Jake snorted, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek.

"Do you want to give him a name?"

"What do you think?"

"Well, you named Jet after your love for the air, so..."

Jake beamed.

"Oh, I think I know the perfect name."

"Oh my god, look at you! Hi Roo- gimme the puppy, holy shit!"

Phoenix darted around Rooster's offer of a hug when he opened the door, taking the puppy from his arms and giving kisses to his nose. The puppy yapped and his tail was wagging a million miles an hour at the excitement.

"B! Is that the dog again?"

Jake came down the stairs, rounding the corner to look for the puppy.

"Hey, Tooster! C'mere, dude!"

The puppy barker from Phoenix's arms. She couldn't help the way she gaped between her best friend and Hangman, before she smirked.

"Jake, you didn't."

"I did, but I'd like some clarification on what exactly I did."

"Rooster and Tooster?"

"He goes by Toaster a majority of the time, he burns energy and farts all the damn time so the house is full of hot air."

Phoenix stifled a snort, and then buried her face into the puppy's fur to stop laughing. Jake and Bradley exchanged a look, and then Bradley smacked his ass on his way to the kitchen.

"He loves cheese, and naps, and doing zoomies around Jake's feet in the kitchen."

"Ha, Roos, he's you."

"I'm not allowed to discuss the resemblance, I get sex-iled," Jake grumbled.

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redrobin-detective · 3 years

Text

Delayed Mourning

Going Angst Day 5: Death

_________________________________________

It was 3pm when there was a knock on Maddie Fenton’s door. She huffed and set down the meal she’d been working on. Of course the one day she had time to pre-plan a nice meal from her family was the day she’d get interrupted.

“Yes? May I help you?” Maddie asked, opening the door. She had expected a salesman. Possibly even a neighbor coming to complain, again, about the noise or the smells that came from Fentonworks. Instead she found a small woman who couldn’t have been much taller than 5 ft with dark brown hair tied up in a tight bun. She was wearing a sharp white shirt and suit jacket with a matching white skirt.

“Mrs. Fenton, hello,” the woman gave a polite little head nod. “I’m from the the Government Institute of Interdimensional Warfare though I hear the locals like to call us the Guys in White.” She said with a knowing smiling, “of course, as you know, it’s not only the guys who are interested in ghosts. May I come in?”

“Oh yes, hello,” Maddie blinked, opening the door to let the agent in. The petite woman stepped inside, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor. Her small frame, her oversized glasses and soft nature seemed so at odds with the meatheads Maddie usually found in the GIW. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Perhaps,” the agent demurred. “It’s more there was something I wanted to inform you of. If you’re not too busy, may we sit down and talk? Your husband and children are not home.” Maddie thought that last statement was a bit odd, framed as a statement of fact rather than an inquiry but moved on.

“Yes, Jack’s out of town visiting a relative and my kids won’t be back for a little while,” Maddie said. “Let me just finish putting this roast together, I’m almost done. Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”

“No, thank you,” The woman said quietly. “And please, continue while you’re doing. Let me give you a little bit of background.” The agent adjusted her large glasses with her tiny hands. “Let me introduce myself, you may call me Agent S. I work primarily out of Washington for the Institute but sometimes I am deployed on site for... special cases. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, your town is very special.”

“Now, as you may have noticed, I am not particularly built like the normal Institute agents you have probably come across. That is because I do not work in the field but behind the scene in Investigations. My job is study the history and happenings of hauntings and spectral entities.”

“Oh that sounds fascinating,” Maddie beamed as she finished with her final preps and put the roast in the over. She looked over her shoulder at Agent S while she washed her hands. “Jack and I dabble a bit in history and folklore but we’re more versed in the hard sciences of ghosts.”

“Yes, I’ve read some of your papers, you and your husband truly are the frontrunners in the field,” Agent S nodded. Maddie preened at the praise and sat down, delighted to have a sophisticated conversation with someone in her field who she wasn’t married to. If more of those GIW agents were like Agent S then Maddie would get along a lot better with them. “So, Maddie, may I call you Maddie? What date and time did your portal start working?”

“It was August 28th,” Maddie said proudly. “It didn’t work at first when we first plugged it in. I’m afraid I don’t have an exact time it started up as we weren’t here. Jack was convinced one of the electrical conduction pieces wasn’t fully connected and was preventing ectoplasmic distribution. We ended up driving 4 hours to Springfield and back for some specialty parts only to find the portal working when we returned.”

“I can help you there,” Agent S said with a soft smile reaching into her white briefcase and pulling out several thick folders. She laid them out gently on the table and Maddie was unnerved by some of the information: schematics of Fentonworks, past and present financial records, transcripts of public statements. Her shoulders tensed when she saw Jazz and Danny’s names on some of the files. “Toll camera captured your vehicle on the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway at exactly 1:26pm on August 28th. We can confirm you and your husband’s vehicle traveled to Springfield and back via video feeds and credit card statements at 10:45pm that same day and were therefore out of the city all day.”

Maddie suddenly felt very trapped by the woman’s sharp grey eyes as she plucked a piece of paper and pressed it towards Maddie.

“At 3:18pm, the majority of the residential power in town went out for a period of 2 and a half hours. The cause was determined to be from a massive power surge that blew out the transformer. You may recall being blamed for this outage given your history with previous outages but the news that you were out of town settled that argument. However, I was not convinced.” She pulled out another piece of paper and Maddie bristled to see it was a Casper High attendance sheet.

“Your daughter, Jasmine was at her final summer cram session which ran from 2pm until 5pm. I spoke to her tutors and she never left the whole time and, in fact, stayed late to help a fellow student work through her study materials. But what about your son?” Agent S asked with with a curious smile but her eyes belied the fact that she had her own answers.

“How dare you spy on my family, on my children,” Maddie hissed, crumpling one of the papers in her fist. “Get out of my house, I will sue the pants off of your organization for this invasion of privacy! Get out!”

“Now Maddie, don’t you want to know how your son started up your Portal?” Agent S asked coyly, that drew Maddie up short. Danny? No, he couldn’t have possibly. He had no interest in their work, in fact, now that she thought about it, Danny had been sick that day. Agent S pulled out a set of blueprints for the Fenton Portal. Some small component inside the Portal was circled.

“You left at approximately 1pm and your daughter presumably left not long after. Phone records indicate Daniel called both Tucker Foley and Samantha Manson. Your neighbor, Mrs. Benson, saw them coming into your house not long after but before the 3pm power outage which I was able to triangulate did in fact originate from your home.” Agent S tapped the circled part of the inner portal mechanisms. “Now did you happen to push the on button in the Portal before plugging it in?”

“On button?” Maddie asked with a dry mouth, overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown her way. All she could think about was how Danny hadn’t seemed sick when they’d left that afternoon but had looked awful when they returned. Would he have really gone downstairs and messed with the Portal? Had he gotten hurt? Been contaminated down there? Images of Vlad’s sickly visage after his accident flowed through her head. She should have paid more attention but she’d been so excited about the Portal working...

“It’s right here in the blueprints you submitted to the patent office, buried under dozens of other hardware bits. Its small, such a little thing compared to all the moving parts required to open up a dimensional portal. Daniel was a bright boy, his middle school records prove it. A bright mind, friends to impress, no parents around to chastise him... I think you can see where I’m going with this.”

“No, no,” Maddie said, burying her hands in her hair. “No, I’m not. You’re saying -what? - that my teenage son turned on the Portal when we were gone? No, my Danny wouldn’t lie to me about that... Why wouldn’t he say anything?”

“I don’t blame him for not mentioned in because, if my hunch is correct, he was inside the Portal when it turned on, killing him instantly,” Agent S said with a carefully neutral face. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I’m afraid this haunting has gone on long enough.”

“My child is alive!” Maddie screeched, standing up in her chair. “Danny is alive and healthy and he is not a ghost!”

“I will admit the evidence of how he died is circumstantial but the fact that Danny Fenton is deceased is not.” Maddie fell back into her chair as he legs gave out underneath her.

She watched the agent put paper after paper in front of her and detailed all sorts of data about her son that Maddie, who lived in the same house as him, had missed. Unusually high ectosignatures picked up by GIW (and their own) detectors, Danny being spotted in some form before most ghost attacks, faked signatures of hers getting him out of nurses’ visits. Maddie barely felt alive herself as she stared at a red light camera photo of her baby sitting atop a light post late, late at night. His eyes were a toxic green color.

“I know this must be distressing as a mother but your child never left that basement, never attended high school and will never achieve his dream of working for NASA.” Agent S said with carefully measured sympathy as she gathered up her papers and put them back in her case. “But you are a brilliant scientist, unlike your husband, you should be able to look past your emotions and see that your child is gone and the ghost he left behind is dangerous.”

“My husband?” Maddie asked blankly, running a finger down Danny’s unnatural photograph.

“I approached Jack two days ago, mistakenly believing he would be the most understanding of you both. He refused to believe the evidence and was, in fact, going to warn your son’s ghost that we planned on taking him. He is safe but he presently being held at one of our facilities until the capture is complete.” Maddie should feel outraged at her husband’s kidnapping but all she could think about was the fact that her son was dead, dead, dead, killed by her own invention over a year ago and she never noticed. How could she not have noticed?

“Daniel’s ghost is extraordinary, not only able to pass as human so accurately for so long but immensely powerful. We need to make sure he doesn’t harm anyone else. Think of his friends who are probably being forced to aid him and keep his death quiet. Think of your husband, your daughter, living in the same house as a dangerous ghost.” Agent S dropped some of her professionalism and plucked the photo of Danny out of Maddie’s hands and replaced it with her own tiny hand.

“I know this is impossible thing to ask but I must do it anyway, will you help me capture what remains of Danny? There is a chance with his charade exposed, he will be able to move on and so will you. You have been wronged, Maddie. You have been denied the right to process and grieve your child by his own ghost. But a delayed mourning is better than none. Danny’s death is a tragedy but please don’t let it become someone else’s.”

“Maybe he’s not-” Maddie’s breath hitched, “he’s never shown any signs of aggression. Jasmine spoke of benevolent spirits... maybe-” Agent S sighed roughly and retracted her hand to grab another photo from her case. Maddie was surprised when she held up a picture of Phantom.

“Ignore the glow,” Agent S instructed. “Change his white hair to black, his green eyes to blue. Think of how often Phantom is spotted in your neighborhood, around Casper High. Remember how he always has his hands on your technology,” the agent frowned. “Think of how he grins when he sees you, like he knows something you don’t. Like it all just a big joke you’re not a part of.” Maddie felt like she’d been slapped.

“Your son is dead,” Agent S said more forcefully, throwing the picture of Phantom next to the spooky one of Danny. “And his ghost has taken his place, taunting you, stealing energy from your family, from the portal that killed him. Phantom’s power is increasing too rapidly and soon we won’t be able to contain him. It’s why I was brought in to identify his haunt so that he could be stopped before anyone else died.”

“I will state this plainly, I am giving you the chance to participate in putting your child to rest but you are not required for this operation. If you refuse, you will be confined with your husband until Phantom is taken down. Do not let this monster with your son’s face trick you any more. So I ask again, Maddie Fenton, will you help us stop Phantom from making a mockery of your son’s memory?”

XxX

“Mom! Jazz! I’m home!” Danny announced, kicking off his shoes and grabbing a paper out of his backpack as he walked into the kitchen with a grin. “And I have a present! Jazz’s tutoring paid off, look at this A I got on my history test! Well A- but a solid A-!”

“Oh... that’s great,” Mom muttered quietly. She was sitting at the kitchen table, not cooking or tinkering with some gadget. Just sitting there quietly, twiddling her thumbs and not looking at him.

“Is everyone okay?” Danny asked, dropping his bag on the floor and walking over to his mother. “I saw Jazz at school but is Dad okay?”

“No, everything is not okay,” she said turning and looking at him with tear-filled eyes. “Someone died, someone I love dearly and I’m not ready to let them go,” she sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “But they've been gone for a long time, even if I’m just hearing about it now. I’m upset but it’s better to know and be grieve than to go on in ignorance, living a lie.”

Danny was about to ask who had died when something was jammed into his neck and he was shocked within an inch of his half life. His body spasmed to escape but his mother was gripping his arm to hold him in place. He transformed unconsciously but that only made it worse. He fell to the floor, ectoplasm leaking off his form as he could barely hold himself together.

“Mom,” he croaked, reaching for her despite everything. She stomped on his hand which was practically goo from such a vicious, destabilizing ectoplasmic shock.

“Don’t you ever call me that,” she hissed through angry tears. “I didn’t want to believe it but the proof is right in front of me you horrible, selfish ghost.” She kicked him in the side and half of him ended up on her boot. “How dare you, how dare you impersonate my son! How dare you string me along all this time, make me look like a fool who had to told that her own child was dead! I bet you just laughed and laughed at our stupid, human ignorance of what your were!”

“‘lease,” he begged through the ectoplasm in his mouth. “I’m still your....”

“My son is dead and he has been for a while,” Mom said, throwing the ecto-taser away from her. Danny vaguely heard the door being kicked in and in his rapidly diminishing vision, he saw black boots and white suits. “With you gone, I can finally come to terms with it and not be tormented by an inadequate replacement.” She turned her back to him. “Get that filth out of my house, I never want to see it again.”

“Of course,” a quiet feminine voice said as his goopy arms were restrained with ghost proof cuffs. “I know this is hard, Maddie but you made the right choice for your family and Danny’s memory. Jack will returned to you within the hour. I spoke to my superiors, for your cooperation, the Institute will take care of declaring Danny dead as well as covering costs for your boy to be laid to rest, the first step in moving on.”

“No, the first step will be removing that duplicitous monster from my home. It’s stolen enough of my baby’s life. Now please leave, I have - I have a funeral to plan.”

#going angst week 2021 #*jazz hands* I uh finally contributed #this is another interesting thing that just sorta happened #I was actually rereading and writing more for Side Effects when I realized that someone could follow the paper trail of the accident #which led me to a tiny lil GIW Investigator who blew Dannys secret wide open #which *then* led me to the tragedy of Maddie learning of her child's 'death' second hand but over a year after a fact #there's something about delayed tragedy... thinking everythings ok only to learn it hasn't been for a while #Love Mads but btw her an Jack shes the one who seems the more likely to take offense to her son's ghost haunting his own life #to keep playing along and pretending to be alive #him secretly being Phantom was the final straw #Both pretending to be Danny then *teasing* her when he saw her as a ghost #(obviously thats not the case but Maddie believes was Made To Believe it was)#Oh I wanted to strange Agent S this whole time typing #the blatant.... manipulation #Maddie may feel free to grieve now but her child's torment was only beginning #haha good times see ya

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thefactsofthematter · 3 years

Note

hi bestie <3 you said send in some requests, so i'm suggesting:

javid with, "it's not okay! you're not fine!"?

i hope you have a good day !!!

hi bestie <333 i had so much fun with this, i haven't done a short little fic in ages!! here's a 2.7k javid fic - a college au and a classic (emotional) hurt/comfort type deal, heavy on the comfort ;)

"Wanna come for dinner at my parents' house tonight?"

Davey is laying on Jack's couch after his last class of the day, since Jack's apartment is just off campus, and it's a ridiculously convenient place to go nap after a long day of school. He honestly spends more time here than at his own apartment that he shares with his sister, a short train ride away.

"I'd love to," Jack replies, his gaze still glued to his computer screen, "but I totally forgot I have an art history paper due at midnight, analyzing a painting, and I haven't started. It needs to be ten pages, and I don't even have an outline. I'm gonna sit here and write until my eyeballs fall out."

Davey laughs softly.

"That sucks. Do you at least have some research done?"

Jack turns to him with completely dead eyes.

"Not a single academic source."

Davey glances at the clock. Jack has seven hours to pull this off, which is doable, but... intense. It would've been a lot easier to spread it out over a few afternoons, and it'll be a painful squeeze to get ten comprehensible pages of writing done tonight. Jack can write decently fast, but his spelling and grammar are atrocious, so he'll have to factor in editing time too. Davey is not envious of these circumstances in the slightest.

"Shit. Good luck. That sounds awful, but I'm rooting for you. What's your prof's late assignment policy?"

Jack, entirely beaten down, leans forward to rest his forehead on his keyboard.

"He won't accept them past the due date without a good reason... which I don't have. I'm just an idiot and forgot to put it in my planner— thank god Romeo texted me today to ask if I was done."

Davey pushes himself up and walks over to where Jack is sitting at his little dining table, under the constantly-flickering fluorescent bulb. He wraps his arms around Jack's shoulders and kisses the back of his neck.

"You got this. I'll come back here after dinner and bring you leftovers, okay? My mom's gonna be sad you couldn't make it, so she'll totally pack up a plate for you."

"You don't have to come all the way here," Jack sighs. "Your place is closer to your parents, and this is out of your way— you have work in the morning anyways, so you should go home and go to bed. I'll be fine, I'll probably write faster alone anyways."

Davey kisses him again, this time leaning around to plant one on his cheek.

"If you're sure." Jack's plan is probably the smart move, since Davey's shifts at his stupid coffee shop job start ridiculously early, and coming here would mean staying up with Jack until he finishes, probably distracting him. "In that case, I'll see you tomorrow after work, and I'll bring the food then... keep me posted about the paper, text me when you finish. And make sure you eat something."

Jack turns back to look at him with a strained, stressed attempt at a smile.

"For sure. Go have a nice time with your family, and tell everyone I say hi."

"Aba, you're doing it wrong. You have to use your left arm."

It's getting late in the evening, dinner has been eaten, and Les is trying to coordinate the family to make a TikTok with him. It's not exactly going well.

"My left or your left?"

"It doesn't matter, we have the same left!"

Davey has thankfully been placed in the back row, both because he's tall and lanky, and because he's so uncoordinated that Mom used to make you wear one of those leash backpacks as a kid to keep you from wandering into traffic... which is true, but Davey isn't sure why Les even knows about that. He certainly wasn't around yet when that was the case, so he probably heard it from Sarah.

While Les tries once again to explain how this little dance is supposed to work, Davey's phone starts to buzz in his pocket. It's probably a spam call, but he's not particularly invested in the dance lesson so he pulls it out to check.

Incoming call: cowboy babyy 💖🤠

Davey frowns. Jack never calls him. It's always texts or voice memos, since he's got some kind of weird aversion to talking on the phone. If he's calling, it must be important.

"Hi babe," he says, pressing his phone to his ear and walking off to his old bedroom to get some quiet, while Les shouts at him in the background for not taking this seriously. "How's the homework going?"

Jack is quiet for a second too long as Davey toes the door shut.

"...Not great. I'm really frustrated." He pauses and sniffles a little, sounding almost like he's holding back tears. "I don't know why I called you while you're having a good time with your family, though. I shouldn't be bugging you."

"Hey," Davey breathes, "you're not bugging me at all, sweetheart. Is the paper not going well?"

"I just... I'm so bad at writing, and I don't know what I'm talking about, and I have no idea how I'm gonna get this done in time." His voice is shaking, and it's breaking Davey's heart a little. "I'm being dramatic, though. I just need to keep working on it."

Davey sits down on the edge of what's now a guest bed, his old outer space-themed comforter replaced with something more neutral.

"You're not dramatic, it's okay to be upset. Do you want me to come over and help?"

Jack's breath hitches softly, and it confirms that he's almost definitely crying.

"You don't have to, you're busy with your folks. I'm sorry for calling." He shudders a little as he must try to take a deep breath. "It's okay... I'm fine."

Davey sighs, almost exasperated with Jack's self-sacrificial sense of pride. He'll never ask for anything for himself, not wanting anyone to go out of their way for him, even when he seems to be having a panic attack of sorts.

"It's not okay; you're clearly not fine, Jackie," he replies. "We already ate, and I'm not busy. If you want me to come over, I'll be there... do you?"

Jack is quiet for a moment again, taking a deep, shaky breath.

"Yeah. I do."

Davey nods, though Jack can't see him.

"Okay. I want you to take a little break from writing until I get there, alright? Change into your pyjamas and have a glass of water. Try to relax a little."

"Okay... thanks Davey."

The call ends, and Davey rejoins his family while tucking his phone away in his pocket.

"I have to go." He kisses his mother on the head as he walks by. "Thanks for dinner, Ima."

"Is everything okay?" she asks, catching him gently by the elbow before he can get too far.

"Yeah..." he sighs. "Jack's just having a hard time with homework, I'm gonna go help him out."

His father ruffles his hair and gives him a quick hug.

"You're a good boy, David. Take him those leftovers— your mother's cooking can fix anything."

"For sure. I'll see you guys next weekend, and I'll try to bring Jack along then."

He waves goodbye to Sarah and Les, grabs the dish of food, and then sets off on a speed-walk to the nearest subway station.

Jack is sitting on the couch when he arrives, his knees pulled to his chest, looking very soft and cozy in pyjama pants and one of Davey's old hoodies from some baseball tournament. He's staring into space, and he hardly even moves to acknowledge Davey's presence when he walks in.

"Hey darling." Davey leaves the dish of food on the counter and crouches down in front of Jack to try and catch his eye-line. He carefully takes Jack's hands in his own. "Hanging in there?"

Jack finally looks at him and nods, but as he blinks, more tears slip out and roll down his cheeks.

"I'm only done two pages," he mumbles, practically whispering. "I don't know why it's so hard, but I just can't do it."

"Oh, Jackie..." Davey reaches up to wipe Jack's tears, cupping his face gently with both hands. "Hey, you still have three hours, right?" Jack nods. "That's lots of time. We're gonna figure this out... let's just sit here and calm down a little first. It's gonna be okay."

He climbs up onto the couch to pull Jack into a hug, and the moment he's settled, Jack wraps his arms around him and breaks, sobbing into his shoulder. Davey cards his fingers through his hair and rubs his back; he's never seen Jack this distraught, especially not over homework. There's a good chance the problem runs a lot deeper, and stressing over an assignment was simply the last straw.

"You're alright," Davey continues, since talking is what he does best, even in moments like this. Jack is shaking with the force of his tears, breathing so hard Davey worries he might hyperventilate. "Listen, it's just one assignment, my love... if you get a bad grade, or if we don't finish in time, we can deal with that. We'll hand in whatever we finish tonight, so at least you won't get a zero. Worst case scenario, you retake this class in the spring... even that doesn't sound so bad, does it? I know you could handle it, if that's what happens."

Jack nods a little, but his tears don't stop.

"I'm so tired of being stupid," he hiccups, after a long while. "I keep getting distracted, and I can't word things right, and I spell everything wrong, and- and maybe I should just drop out, because I'm clearly not meant to be doing this."

"Baby..." Davey sighs, giving him a gentle kiss on the temple. "You're so intelligent, Jack. You're almost done your degree— after this term, you've only got one year left, and it's not like you do poorly in your classes, is it? Even when it's something hard for you, like writing, you always do well when you put in the work. What did you get on your sociology paper a couple weeks ago?"

"Ninety percent," Jack mumbles, muffled by the way he's speaking into Davey's shoulder. "But I spent so long on it, and you edited it for me. I'm gonna fail this one. I can't do it in one night, and I can't write papers without your help."

"Well, I'm here to help now, aren't I?" He rests his hand midway through brushing it through Jack's hair and scratches his scalp gently, which makes Jack shiver and laugh quietly through his tears. "Right? And you can write, darling— all I do is fix up the spelling and grammar for you. The ideas and words are all you, just like when you give presentations and knock it out of the park every time. I sure can't do that."

Jack finally looks up at him.

"Yes you can. You get nervous beforehand, but when you do a presentation, it's always really good."

Davey smiles at him, now that they're actually looking at each other.

"It's hard for me, though. Just like writing is for you— but with lots of effort, you're really good at it. See my point?"

Slowly, a small smile spreads across Jack's teary-eyed face, and he nods. Davey feels rather accomplished with this development.

"I guess so." He wipes at his eyes and sighs. "Sorry about this. I'm such a mess."

"No apologies. I don't blame you for getting overwhelmed— you're in a tough spot here." He pulls Jack in for a quick kiss, which they both smile into. "I brought you dinner. Go heat it up when you're ready; I'll look over what you've written so far and see if I can come up with some more ideas to add on. We're gonna work together on it, okay? What painting did you choose?"

"The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio," Jack sighs, looking almost forlornly at his computer on the table. "I have a lot to say about it, and lots of good stuff in my notes, but I just can't put it into paragraphs and sentences that make sense."

Davey nods, watching Jack as he stands up to go put the leftovers from Davey's family in the microwave.

"Well, I don't know anything about paintings, but if you talk me through it, I can help you put the actual paper together." He pauses as an idea dawns on him. "I'm gonna email your professor and ask about an extension— it might be a shot in the dark, but we should at least try. The worst he can do is say no."

"Sure," Jack replies from the kitchen, his voice still shaky. "He's a total hardass, though. Fingers crossed for a miracle."

Davey sits at the table, opens up Jack's email, and starts a draft.

Hi Professor Diaz,

Apologies for the short notice, but I'm wondering if it would be possible to have an extension on the analysis assignment, even if it's just by a few hours. I unfortunately mixed up some due dates in my planner, and I thought I had an extra week for this assignment; I only realized the mistake today, so I'm currently scrambling to get it done in time.

Would it be at all possible to turn it in a few hours late, just to have a bit more time to finish it up? I would really appreciate any amount of time you're willing to give me.

Thank you in advance for your understanding, Jack Kelly

He shrugs, sends it, and sincerely hopes a little professionalism and a decent (if slightly fabricated to make Jack look less forgetful) excuse will go a long way.

It's quarter to eleven, the paper is now five-and-a-half pages long, and Jack isn't crying anymore. He's in the zone, talking aloud about the painting while Davey helps him get his vague ideas into concrete sentences, and they're on track to have at least seven or eight pages by the time midnight rolls around— it might not get full marks, but it'll be better than nothing.

Jack's computer dings with the sound of a new email while they're taking a two-minute break— something they've interspersed every half hour, since Jack's focus is best in shorter bouts. He's in the middle of walking laps around the apartment to get his energy out and annoy his downstairs neighbours, but he scrambles back to the computer at the noise.

"We got a reply!" he shouts.

Davey is over on the couch, and he watches Jack's face closely as he opens the email. So far, so good... and then he slumps down in his chair in a show of what could either be defeat or relief. Davey can't quite tell, so he jumps up to go read it for himself.

Sure. Email it by 11:59pm tomorrow.

Sent from my iPhone

"Yes!" Davey shouts, grabbing Jack by the shoulders. "I told you it was worth a shot!"

Jack laughs, and then reaches up to pull Davey down for a kiss.

"You're the best, Jacobs. A fucking lifesaver." He rubs at his eyes, and then pushes his computer away, across the table. "I'll deal with this tomorrow. Let's just go to bed— you still have to be up early."

Right. Davey has a dreaded Saturday morning opening shift tomorrow— they open at five, and he has to be there well in advance to get set up, so he's got no chance at getting more than a few hours of sleep. He's going to be dead on his feet in the morning, probably fuck up a few coffee orders, but it'll be worth it to have helped Jack through tonight.

Poor Jack seems completely exhausted— as anyone would be after crying so hard earlier— so collapsing into bed after washing up quickly is an utter relief. Davey, despite being tall and long-limbed, greatly enjoys being the little spoon and Jack is happy to indulge him, so they curl into the familiar position.

"Thank you for everything tonight," Jack whispers, practically into Davey's ear. "I love you so much."

Davey smiles as his eyes fall shut, and he kisses Jack's knuckles softly, where his arm is wrapped around him.

"Any time, darling. I love you too."

#both my current projects are slow burns so an established relationship fic feels good #hope u enjoyed it!!!#javid #jack kelly #davey jacobs #newsies fic #my writing

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avenging-criminal-bones · 3 years

Text

After All This Time || Chapter Four

Aaron Hotchner x Reader

Word Count: 2128

CHAPTER WARNINGS: hehe i don't wanna spoil it, but angst, language, case talk, the usual

A/N: This is the longest chapter so far, and honestly it took less time than some of the other ones. I got really into it.

TAGLIST:

@kingofthetwats @wanniiieeee @uwu-sebastianstan @piggyinthesea @yoshigguk @thatisthemagic @errorcosplay67 @ivebeenthinkingboutu @big-galaxy-chaos @rynfoxsleeps @phoenixsnape1 @mojofun @pachiibatt @enjoymyloves @thenewnormalforensicator @word-scribbless @zezezena @chelseyjoyce @ellyhotchner @lora21

AS ALWAYS, Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!!

* * * * *

Halfway to the drive you remember to ask, "So who are we interviewing at the school?"

"James O'Malley, who is the principal, and Margaret Solokowski, one of three first grade teachers." His response is automated as he looks to the right out the window.

Your mind drifted back to the case from when you were only nine. It was the reason you wanted to be involved with S.W.A.T or the FBI.

Your brother was playing in a sand pit at the local playground when you turned around to go buy the two of you some ice cream cones from the truck driving slowly past.

There was a priest with a group of nuns walking through the park, discussing something about the "Lord's Will". You didn't believe in any of that stuff then, so you rolled your eyes and told the nice man what ice creams you wanted.

"There you go, kiddie."

"Thank you!"

Spinning on your heel, you licked your own ice cream as you went to get back to Joey, your brother.

Something was wrong though. When you looked, he wasn't there anymore. He had been playing with a group of three kids, and none of them were there anymore. Turning back around you remember the Priest had been driving away with the nuns. You saw the two other childrens' mothers crying and talking, flailing their arms wildly at each other.

"Joey? Joey where are you," you wandered around the play set for a minute and started crying when you couldn't find him.

Wandering up to one of the adults scattered through the play area, a mother with a small baby in her arms, and said, "Can-" a sniffle before, "Can I borrow your phone? I need to call my mom."

"Of course, honey," she shuffled the little girl to her other hip and grabbed the phone from her other pocket. "Here you go sweetie. Is there anything else you need?"

"No. Uh, thank you. I'll bring it right back."

Taking a few steps away you called your mother's house number, suddenly grateful for the pressure she had put on you from a young age to remember her house number and her cell number.

"Mom-"

Hey, honey,- what? What's going on?"

"Mom, I can't find Joey. He's not here. I just walked ten steps to get our ice cream and he's- I can't find him, mom. And the other two kids were gone too. I don't know what to do, he's gone. Mom-"

"Honey?"

"I can't find-"

"Y/N!" You finally stop rambling and quiet down enough to hear your mom's voice and your own heartbeat. "We'll find him, okay? Tell whoever's phone this is what happened, and then wait there for me okay? Ask the lady you borrowed this from to call the police and help you explain what happened and I'll be right over there okay? It will take me five minutes, okay?"

"Okay. I love you."

"I love you too, Peanut."

Hanging up the phone you do as she told you and explained your situation to the kind woman with the baby. She agreed to help you call the police, even though the other parents had probably already done it.

"Are you okay, Y/N?"

"Y/N? Hey. Y/N! You missed the turn..."

You snap out of your flashback and look around you at the road.

"What?"

Hotch let out and annoyed puff of air and pointed to the road that you were about to drive past. "That's our turn. You know, to get to the school. That's right there."

Mumbling under your breath you turn the signal on and slam the breaks after seeing there was no one behind you. You smirk to yourself when you see that the man in the passenger seat had to throw his arm out so as not to hit the dashboard.

"Agent, if you do not drive this vehicle with care, I will personally revoke your privilege of driving on the clock," he threatens as he adjusts the lapels on his suit jacket.

You ignore him and park in front of the school, getting out and straightening your own blazer.

"You let me do the talking, L/N." He declares as he brushes past you, not bothering to hold the door on his way.

Murmuring under your breath, you follow him in.

Almost immediately, you are stopped by someone from campus security and flash your badges in reply. The guard simply nods and sends you through, pointing to the principal's office.

"Mr. O'Malley? I'm SSA Aaron Hothcner, and this is Agent L/N. We are here from the BAU in Quantico investigating the homicides that I'm sure you've heard about. I was wondering if we could ask you a few questions about the victims; they were all students here." Hotch's air of professionalism was back full force rather than his childish antics only five minutes ago.

O'Malley shakes his head slightly, a red tint coming to his ears as his eyes scan the clock. "Actually, I don't have the time right now. I have another meeting coming up shortly-"

"Sir, your meeting isn't for another fifteen minutes," the secretary states before turning back to you and Hotch, "Surely that's enough time for you and your partner to ask him a few questions?" The young woman looks at you when she speaks, her eyes silently pleading. She must know something as well.

"No, Anne. I really don't have time for that-"

"Hotchner, if you want to talk to Mr. O'Malley, maybe I could ask," you pause, reading her desk tag, "Ms. Brink a few questions?"

She nods her head eagerly, and as much as Hotch wanted to argue, he has seen her desperate look as well and would have suggested splitting up if you hadn't.

"I was just about to say that. Mr. O'Malley is there somewhere we could go that's a bit more private?" Hotch questions, signaling behind him, "If that's a break room that would be perfect."

O'Malley nods, standing up. He walks towards the door, opening it as he turns back to look at the you and Hotch. There's a glint of something in his eyes and-

And he's running.

"Go! Hotch, go, go, GO!" Before you even finish urging him to chase the principal he's running after the man. "Anne, if you know anything suspicious about James O'Malley you need to tell me, and you need to tell me now."

Tears well in the younger woman's eyes as she nods, fists bunching in the skirt of her peach colored dress. "He, uh. He has made- you know. S-sexual advances on a few young girls. He did the same to me, b-but when he d-did it to me he said he would kill the next girl that w-was in here if I told..." Anne breaks into sobs as she hangs her head low.

"Anne, listen to me. None of this is your fault. You were only trying to protect these girls and yourself. This has been extremely helpful, thank you, Ms. Brink." Gently you reach over and squeeze her hand, sliding a box of tissues towards her before quickly slipping out of the office.

Pulling your phone out of your pocket, you call Garcia.

"BAU Sperm Donation: You jack 'em, we pack 'em. How can I help you my pretty?"

You don't have time to laugh, though you so badly wanted to. "Pen, I need to to pull everything you can find about James O'Malley. He's the-"

"School principle of Opportunity Elementary. He's 37 years old, comes from a highly religious background- Papa Bear was a Priest. He- oh boy. Oh no. This is not good." You hear computer keys clacking on the other end before you prompt her to keep speaking.

"Yeah, Pen? What's not good?"

"This guy," she clicks her tongue, "And his entire recent history when you deep-dive in my Fancy Google. This guy is on review for child molestation and rape charges."

You slam your fist against the nearby wall and curse lowly, "Do you have any large property in his name? Anything big enough to have some sort of shrine, or altar? Also, with enough room to... oh God... cleanly chop off a-"

"Ah! AH! Stop! I get it. I'm looking."

After a moment she sighs, "Bingo! 142 Walnut St. right outside of the town that the school is in. Twelve minutes and forty-three seconds from your current location. I'll ping the directions to you and notify the rest of the team. They are slightly further away, so you and your partner should get there first. Hurry, Y/N, he might have another kid there."

"Bye, Pen." You hang up and start running to the SUV, surprised to see Hotch there, already waiting in the passenger seat. You wonder why he hadn't sat on the other side and remember about the key in your pocket.

Getting in, you slam the door, not bothering to buckle and say, "Take my phone and pull up the directions from Pen. That's where our guy is going, she think he has another child based on video footage from this morning's video feed of the back entrance of his office."

Hotch surprisingly doesn't argue, instead doing exactly as he was told while you sped in the direction you had come from before.

Withing ten minutes you had made it to the house, not saying a word to Hotch as your mind ran through all of the possibilities of what you'd find. This was your first child case since you moved to the BAU and honestly you weren't handling it very well.

When you made it to the barn, you snatched your gun from your holster and kept it aimed towards the ground. Motioning to Hotch you signal that he should go left and you will go right.

Clearly, he didn't like you making all the calls, but he was so upset about losing the guy the first time around that he didn't have it in him to command you down.

Beginning your move-in, you start to circle the barn just how you had told Hotch and kept your gun up as you crept towards the final turn to the back of the barn. Out of the corner of your eye you see the rest of the team start to jog over to the barn from the forest behind the bar, they must have decided to use a different entrance as hopes to catch O'Malley off guard.

Taking a moment to steel yourself you keep your back against the side of the barn before spinning in a quick step to raise your gun again and aim at the final possibility of where he could be-

But it was just Hotchner.

"L/N, he must be inside, turn back the way you came and we'll go in together." His voice is stern as you nod in compliance and turn around, raising your gun as you see a little boy. With a gun trained on him...

It's Joey. Joey is there dead in front of the church, a big cross burned into his chest... his five year old body.

That's all you see, just like that day so many years ago. That's all you see, so you jump forward in front of him and you-

Fall. You fall. And you can't tell why.

Blood, there's blood under you. Who's hurt?

"Y/N! Oh my God, Y/N!" Anything between your name being said the first and second time is lost in your fuzzy ears.

You don't realize why the voice is yelling at you until you feel the burning, fire-like pain, radiating up your left side.

After a moment, you feel hands on your shoulders, one of them moving to slap you in the face a few times to get your eyes to open, which they did.

"Hey, you need to stay awake. Okay? Y/N! Open your eyes. Look at me." Emily transfers her hands to your hip, pressing down on the wound there roughly. Your body instinctively crunches up to get away from the new, uncomfortable pain, but Emily presses down on your chest, keeping you to the floor.

You try to mumble something, but the second your mouth opens, it's as if you completely lost your voice.

"Shh, Y/N, you're going to be okay, you just need to keep your eyes open okay?

"What the hell, Aaron?! You were standing right there, man, why didn't you go to her?! She was fucking shot and you just stood there! You're our leader, start fucking acting like one!" You can't pick out all the words, but you can tell that it's Derek's voice and you smirk to yourself.

The last thing you heard before passing out was Derek ripping into Hotchner like you'd been waiting to for months.

#aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #mutlichapter #hotch #hotch x reader #angst #fluff #whump #aatt #after all this time masterlist #chapter four

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chilling-seavey · 3 years

Text

Seasons Change (d.s.) - Cover Me Up

A/N Before I actually start writing this new story, I decided to write this blurb as a sort of pre-prologue. The events in this blurb do directly affect the events in the full story but you do not need to read this in order to read the main fic. Also, please follow the link in bio to add yourself to the taglist for this universe if you wish (unless you selected ‘tag for everything’!)

Summary: Daniel doesn’t want to leave his wife’s bedside. Not when she needs him most.

Warnings: This blurb deals with terminal illnesses, death of loved ones, grief etc.

Title inspired by Cover Me Up by Morgan Wallen

November 15, 2019

The house was quiet. It was usual now to find the silence that rested over the floorboards somewhat peaceful in the air of the small rural town. It was peaceful but it carried the weight of a thousand tonnes over the beams of the roof and the joists of the walls. In a sense, the peaceful quiet was almost suffocating.

With a six-year-old boy, an aspiring hockey player with rambunctious little personality in his small body, it was hard to find moments of quiet. But it felt like over previous month and a half, quiet was the only option. Even the little boy knew this well.

He would come home from school on the bright yellow school bus and run down the long dirt driveway to the white paneled farmhouse near the centre of the property, small Jack Russel Terrier running right beside him the whole way. His backpack bouncing over the material of his navy blue jacket and the tread of his sneakers on the thin gravel seemed to be the only sound in the tiny town.

Despite his obvious eager intent to run home at top speed, he would stop at the garden and pick one of the few flowers remaining before taking the front steps cautiously. He would then stop at the front door and take a breath before reaching for the handle and stepping inside. Daniel, who had been watching the clock like every weekday in the afternoon, was already at the front door when his son came home. He made sure the dog was inside before closing the door behind them and he helped his son to take his backpack off for him.

“How was school, spud?” Daniel asked quietly.

Everything was quiet.

“Good.”

Was always the response; quickly followed by a hopeful,

“How’s Mama?”

“Resting. You can go say hello if you like. Wash your hands first.” Daniel took his son’s jacket and shoes and then watched him hurry up the straight flight of stairs to the second floor. The six-year-old turned right at the top into the main bathroom and he heard the tap turn on.

With the school things tucked away in the front closet, Daniel headed back upstairs too and stepped into the master bedroom to the left of the stairs right behind his son.

“There’s my boy.” a soft voice greeted from the queen size bed just around the corner from the door as the little one climbed up onto the soft mattress.

Daniel leaned on the corner of the wall and watched the mother greet her son with the best smile she could offer him. Marigold was always like that; always smiling. She was rested back against a few down filled pillows under the cream coloured quilt and brushed her son’s messy brown hair out of his eyes.

“How was school, my darling boy?” she asked him like she did every weekday afternoon.

“Good.”

Was always the response. He held out the flower to her with his mother’s same smile.

“I picked you a flower, Mama.”

“Well, aren’t you as sweet as sugar?” Marigold tisked with a smile and took it from him to give it a little sniff. “Just like your Daddy, aren’t you, Lennox Blake?”

Six-year-old Lennox was just as in love with his mother as his father was and every time he looked at her, little hearts nearly floated in his light blue eyes.

“Are you better, Mama?” Lennox asked, like every day.

Marigold held his face in her hand that wasn’t taken by the small flower, “Not yet, sweet boy. I think I need some more of your magical hugs to see if that will help.”

Lennox grinned and nodded, shifting closer quickly.

“Gently, spud.” Daniel reminded softly from where he stood watching.

“He’s okay.” Marigold assured her husband softly, welcoming her son’s small body on top of hers with a smile and a slightly strained sigh. She twirled her fingers through his messy hair and kissed the top of his head, “I missed you so much today.”

Daniel walked around to her side of the bed and picked up her still-filled water glass before leaning down to kiss her dry lips, “Want me to put your pretty flower in a vase for you?”

Lennox smiled proudly at the offer and Marigold agreed with a small smile, holding out the small flower to her husband to take downstairs. With two hands free, she could hold her little boy more securely now and drew those little patterns over his back that he always liked, watching her melancholy husband leave to put the flower in a little glass of water for her and to start dinner preparation, petting the cat sleeping on the end of the bed on his way past.

Marigold didn’t know what she would have done if she didn’t have Daniel. She was a young woman of twenty-seven, in love with her high school sweetheart, and happened to be served the worst of life in the prior month and a half. Despite her diagnosis, he didn’t falter for a moment; he tended to her day in and day out as she got sicker and still treated her just as sweetly as he had on their very first date. She was the love of his life. What else was he supposed to do?

With Lennox upstairs telling Marigold all about his day, Daniel hurried around the kitchen to make dinner. He decided on a simple vegetable soup – something easy…he hated being too far from Marigold for too long – and set the three bowls on a tray with the flower in a glass of water with them. He set the tray on the top of the dresser in the master bedroom and helped to get Lennox sitting up in the middle of the bed with a pillow helping to prop him up before he passed him the half-filled bowl and a spoon.

“What do you say?” Marigold whispered.

Lennox smiled cheekily up at his father, “Thank you, Daddy.”

“You’re very welcome, spud.” Daniel replied with a half smile.

He took his own bowl off the tray and set it to the side so he could bring the last one over to his wife. She glanced up at him silently as he set the tray over her lap. Their eyes lingered on each other’s for a moment as if they were having a silent conversation just the two of them as their son ate quietly beside them.

“Still not hungry?” Daniel asked ever so quietly.

Marigold shook her head gently.

Daniel hesitated for a moment but nodded and exchanged a kiss for the tray back. He set it on the dresser and set his own bowl beside the other before joining his little family on the bed. He wasn’t hungry either.

With Lennox eating contently between his parents, they watched him peacefully, Daniel’s arm draped around him and his fingers twirling the end of Marigold’s long hair through his fingers. They raised their little boy with the best manners so being able to eat in a bed and not at a table was quite exciting for Lennox. To the six-year-old, his mother simply had a cold and needed to stay in bed until she got better. He still saw the smiles she gave him and the warmth of her hugs and even though the house was quieter than it once was, he was sure it would be lively again.

After dinner, Daniel got Lennox bathed and dressed into pyjamas and sat him on the floor of the master bedroom to watch some TV before bed. With the boy distracted, Daniel tended to his wife; shifting the pillows behind her to have her resting down a bit more and felt her forehead for any sign of a fever. He picked up the chapstick from the bedside table and popped off the cap to apply a layer or two to her dry lips. Marigold watched him quietly, his furrowed brows and solemn blue eyes and careful steady hand that traced her familiar lips.

“You’re going to give yourself wrinkles, my sweet.” Marigold whispered with an ever so light chuckle, reaching up a dainty hand to smooth the creases between his eyebrows. “Don’t want to age that pretty face of yours too soon now.”

Daniel only stared at her for a moment, still leaned in close from having applied her well used chapstick and he offered a weak shrug and a dull, “Doesn’t matter.”

“Daniel.” Marigold sighed quietly.

“I’m sorry.” Daniel mumbled, bowing his head for a moment. He leaned in again, kissing her lips twice and then her nose once and her cheek before standing up straight and put the chapstick away. She smiled faintly at him and reached up a careful hand to dust over the thin material of his white button-up that was rolled to the elbows. It was open and he had a white tank top on underneath tucked into black jeans. She liked him like that; casual and effortlessly handsome.

The TV played on quietly in the background and Lennox sat on the rug with the family dog sleeping his head on his lap. The six-year-old adored the pup…he truly was this boy’s best friend. Marigold smiled lovingly across the room at her unaware boy, his brown hair plastered wet over his head and he sat slouched slightly on the floor as he watched his evening show. Daniel brought the dishes downstairs and tidied up the kitchen a little before returning to his family and switched off the TV.

“Daaad.” Lennox whined.

“Come on….story time with Mommy.” Daniel said softly, picking up the puppy from his lap so his son could climb back on the bed.

Lennox crawled up next to her and plopped himself down and pulled the quilt over his small legs. Marigold smiled and tucked her arm around her son so he was cuddled right up close to her side. With the hand that wasn’t holding the dog, Daniel passed over their favourite storybook to read – well, at least Marigold’s favourite. She bought it within the first month she found out she was pregnant, far too excited, and I Love You Forever sat front and center on the bookshelf in the nursery for all of Lennox’s young life. She had read it to him so much the spine was creased and a few pages a couple rips along the edges but they didn’t mind.

Daniel sat down with them and the dog curled himself up beside the cat the end of the bed while the family of three cuddled up together for a bedtime story. Marigold read quietly, her voice fading as the story came to an end and she coughed lightly as she closed the book gently. Lennox smiled up at her.

“One more?” he asked sweetly.

“No, no. It’s bedtime, sweet boy.” Marigold chuckled, pressing a kiss to his head.

Lennox nodded obediently.

She smiled gently at him and pet her hand over his damp hair, “I love you.”

“I love you this much!” Lennox threw out his arms wide, almost hitting Daniel in the face.

Marigold laughed weakly at their son and took his small hand in hers to pull him close and he cuddled up against her chest. She looked down at him and his tired blue eyes that were already starting to close from just being in her arms. She brushed her finger along his chubby cheek and gave it a little squish, “I love you more than all the flowers in the garden…and all the buggies in the fields…and all the leaves on the trees…”

With the little boy fading in his mother’s arms, it was time for bed. Marigold gave her son one last good night kiss to his soft cheek.

“Sweet dreams, my darling boy.”

Daniel scooped him up and Lennox gave her a sleepy wave from his father’s shoulder before he was carried down the hall to bed, the puppy rushing after them. His nightlight was switched on and Daniel made sure to tuck him nice and secure under his quilt like every night and the dog was left on his small pillow under the window. The book was placed back on the shelf and Daniel brought over Lennox’s favourite stuffed bear to cuddle with and tucked it in his arms.

He crouched down at his son’s bedside and brushed his large hand over Lennox’s small head, keeping his hair back from his face. Lennox blinked sleepily at him, cuddled up with his teddy bear.

“I love you.” the little boy yawned.

“I love you, spud.” Daniel whispered. He leaned in to kiss his head before standing up, “Sweet dreams.”

The door was shut behind him and Daniel lingered in the hallway for a moment. The window at the end of the hall sent streaks of moonlight over the hardwood and Daniel hadn’t even realized the sun had set. Days were blending into each other, hours were passing by too quickly, and Daniel felt like his life was dwindling right before his eyes. He could try to catch it – try to reach out and grasp what time he had left but it was inevitable. It was terminal.

Daniel returned to the master bedroom and closed the door behind him as to not wake his son. It wasn’t like there was going to be much noise at all in the silent house but it was habit. Marigold smiled tiredly at him from their bed and he walked around to her side to pet a hand through her hair. She leaned into his touch.

“Do you want a bath, sunshine?” Daniel asked softly.

Marigold just blinked tiredly up at him, her cheek resting heavily in the palm of his hand, “No, thank you.”

“Can I wash your face at least?”

“If you insist.”

Daniel stepped into the ensuite and ran a sink of lukewarm water to dampen a facecloth. He returned to her bedside and sat down with her to wipe her face gently with the cloth to help her feel somewhat put together. He usually helped her bathe every second day – every day if she was feeling up for it – and changed the sheets as often as he could to keep her fresh and comfortable. He was a good man.

Marigold’s face was wiped clean the best it could be by her husband’s gentle hand. He sat back from her and she rested her hand on his arm.

“Thank you.”

Daniel set his hand over hers, “What else can I get you, sunshine?”

Marigold thought for a moment and she sighed, “I think have to pee.”

Daniel nodded and stood up from the side of the bed to drop the facecloth back in the ensuite. He gently peeled back the quilt and the sheets and made sure her nightgown was down around her knees before sliding his hands around her back and helped to sit her up. She clung onto him weakly and he slowly shifted her legs off the side of the bed.

“Can you stand?” Daniel asked softly.

“Think so.” Marigold whispered. She held onto his arms as he helped to ease her up out of bed.

When she was standing, mostly using him to lean on as he held her up, Daniel noticed the wet patch in the bed.

His pause had her sighing, “It happened again?”

“Yeah.” Daniel said. “I’ll change the sheets.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Mari.” Daniel pulled over the usual wooden chair to her bedside and helped to ease her into it. It was one from the kitchen table but over the prior month or so it found its usual home in the corner of the master bedroom, only usually used by Daniel to sit with his wife as often as he could. With her sitting, he shooed the cat off the bed and worked quickly to strip the bed and change the padding on the mattress that was recommended by the doctors. He grabbed the extra sheets from the linen closet in the hallway and worked quickly to remake the bed for her.

Marigold watched him, her brows furrowed lightly as if in thought. She spoke quietly, “Is Lennox home from school yet?”

Daniel didn’t look up as he tucked the corner of the sheets under the mattress and answered his wife softly, “Yeah. He’s already in bed.”

Marigold nodded weakly.

When the bed was remade, he took an extra nightgown and pair of comfortable underwear from the dresser drawer for her and set them on the bed so he could change her out of her damp clothes. She raised her arms the best she could and Daniel shimmied her nightgown over her head and dropped it to the floor before carefully easing her out of her soiled underwear. They stayed silent as he re-dressed her and Marigold clung onto him as he shifted her hips to get her underwear up her legs and as he pulled her fresh white nightgown over her head and made sure her hair was out of the neckline. He pressed his palm to her forehead to feel her temperature. She seemed fine.

Daniel held her arms in his hands and eased her up out of the wooden chair. They stood chest to chest, Marigold having to look up at him slightly, and they just stared at each other for a moment. Illness seemed to age her from her twenty-six years, but she was still the same sweet young woman Daniel fell in love with across the high school gymnasium. He raised one hand to her cheek and brushed his thumb over her skin.

“Will you dance with me, Mari?” he asked ever so softly, caressing her cheek with the back of his finger.

“Dance with you?” she chuckled tiredly. “I can try.”

Daniel smiled lightly and led her around from the side of the bed to the center of their room, making sure she took each step carefully. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and opened the music app to select their song. The gentle guitar melody filled the room and Daniel set the phone on the fireplace mantle to give him two hands free. Despite her pain, Marigold was smiling at him, letting him raise her arms to his shoulders and he wrapped his right around her waist to help hold her up.

“You okay?” he whispered behind the introductory music.

She nodded and she pursed out her lips to get him to dip down and kiss her. As the lyrics started, she rested her tired head on his shoulder and let him lead, rocking them back and forth slowly in place in the middle of their bedroom by moonlight. She was almost limp in his arms although she tried her best to move with him, her bare feet shuffling slightly underneath her as they swayed.

So girl, leave your boots by the bed,

We ain't leaving this room

'Til someone needs medical help

Or the magnolias bloom

It's cold in this house and I ain't going out to chop wood

So cover me up and know you're enough

To use me for good

They danced often; usually Marigold would insist and drag Daniel away from whatever he was doing to have a quick dance in the kitchen or in the garden whenever the music from the radio hit her. Daniel wasn’t much of a dancer but there was something about Marigold’s contagious dimpled grin that always convinced him.

She truly was his sunshine, always dancing or singing or smiling whenever she could…the light of his life. Her spark was in their son too with her same smile and ability to pull Daniel from his shell. Lennox was the perfect mix of both of them and it broke their hearts that trying for a second baby was the beginning of the end. They had years worth of plans; things to do and places to visit and songs to dance to. They were each other’s person…just with not enough time.

Marigold’s hands tightened on the back of Daniel’s shirt, eyes falling closed as she let the music move them slowly around the rug of their room. He held her up, one arm around her waist and the other petting her hair as he let his breaths fall calmly against her neck, listening to the gentle song and the words that spoke too close to his heart.

Daniel whispered them to her, “But home was a dream, one that I'd never seen, 'til you came along”

So girl, hang your dress out to dry

We ain't leaving this room

'Til Percy Priest breaks open wide

And the river runs through

And carries this house on its stones

Like a piece of driftwood

So cover me up and know you're enough

To use me for good

“Dani.”

He paused their dancing for a moment as the quiet music played on from the mantle and glanced down at his wife, “What is it, Mari?”

“I’m…” she struggled to take a breath, “I’m really tired.”

“Okay, sunshine, I got you.” Daniel whispered and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He crouched down ever so slightly to lift her up in his arms, carrying her slowly back to bed as she kept her hands around his neck.

You knew it was serious when Marigold asked to stop dancing.

He laid her in bed as the song played on in the background and tucked the blankets up around her. He pressed a hand to her forehead and then to her cheek when he found her a little cold.

“Do you want the fire on?”

“Yes please.” Marigold whispered, blinking tiredly up at him. “And a sweater?”

Daniel let the song play through as he knelt down in front of the fireplace across the rom and took a few pieces of chopped wood from the basket next to it to light a fire. With a match lit and tossed in, the kindling caught flame easily and soon the room was filling with comfortable heat and a warm glow. Daniel returned to his wife’s bedside with one of his hoodies in hand and helped slide her arms into it and tucked it around her thin body before he sat himself down in the wooden chair as the song ended and the room fell back into perfect silence.

Marigold’s smaller and frailer hands fit into both of Daniel’s larger ones with ease and he rubbed his thumbs over her dry skin, his fingers callused from years of farm work, hockey practice, and guitar. His skin was rough but all too familiar and Marigold smiled weakly up at him from where she laid in bed. The moonlight that shone brighter through their bedroom window at the back of the house illuminated her thin face with the warm light of her bedside table lamp and Daniel stared at her silently. Their nights consisted of that now; lingering eye contact and hand holding, as if they hadn’t had enough of each other over the last eight years.

Her hair didn’t shimmer beautiful blonde like it used to, in fact, her whole appearance felt faded. It almost was as if she was from an old movie, drowned out in sepia and black and white until her tones and shades were as plain as the cream coloured sheets she laid in. The pillows were covered in tangled waves of her long hair and Daniel brushed the strands from her face with a gentle touch before raising her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Marigold’s dry lips fought to smile slightly at him and she ran her finger over his wedding ring that was set on his left hand.

“What are you smiling at?” Daniel asked softly.

“You.” she answered with ease. “My sweet Daniel.”

He kissed her hand again, letting his lips linger there a moment longer before resting his cheek down. Her fingers were cold against his flushed face and he just held her there to try and keep her warm, staring up at her.

“I love you.” Daniel whispered.

“I love you so much.” Marigold breathed.

She inhaled a little, struggling to catch her breath for a moment, and Daniel kissed her fingers one by one before resting them against his cheek again. They didn’t speak for a moment, just staring at each other with nothing but heartache adoration. It was as if they both knew.

Marigold weakly traced the shape of Daniel’s hands as he simply kept his eyes on her pale face, humming the tune to their song. Each line and callous over his skin was home to her touch, the veins on the back of his hand and the ring on his finger were part of her too. Daniel swore Marigold lived in him since they had their first kiss in the back of his pickup truck all those years ago. She was a part of his body, his heart, and his soul.

He sat with her as the minutes ticked by and the moon rose higher in the dark night sky, carefully watching each of her shallow shuttering inhales and rocky exhales. His soft voice filled their bedroom, singing to her quietly through the night. Midnight came and went and Daniel didn’t move from the chair at her bedside, his heart racing in his chest and his voice quivering slightly as he sang to her. His head rested down on her stomach and she weakly brushed her fingers through his sun-kissed brown hair. He could hear her heartbeat with his ear pressed to her body and it was slow and faint. His lyrics faltered for a moment and he sat up from her again.

“Marigold.” Daniel breathed.

She licked her dry lips and her cold hand fell into his, offering him a weak, “What is it, my sweet?”

“Mari…I…” Daniel’s blue eyes brimmed with tears but he didn’t dare let a single one fall.

Not when she was laying in front of him with death on her shoulder.

Daniel took a deep breath, “I…I don’t know what to do.”

Marigold nodded gently, her own light eyes brimming with tears, and she linked her pinky with his, “I know.”

He rested his elbows on his knees and held her hand in his against his lips, “I love you so much.”

“I’ve loved you enough for five lifetimes.” Marigold whispered.

He waited with her. He sat at her bedside and held her hands and sang to her quietly and let the minutes tick by, only praying for more. More moments to see her smile, more seconds to hear her laugh, more minutes to feel the soil softened texture of her skin. Time was slipping from him. Time was a landslide and he watched the world fade from the bright eyes of the love of his life day by day. He could hold onto her as tightly as he could but there was no mercy to be spared. His one true love was dying. And there was nothing he could do to save her.

Her breathing was starting to rattle slightly and her chest shuttered with each inhale. Daniel sang to her quietly, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear and caressed her cheek before holding both her hands in his. Marigold had tears in her eyes and she trembled sightly, not tearing her eyes from her husband.

“I got you.” Daniel whispered, shuffling closer to her bedside so she could feel more of his presence. “I’m right here.”

He held her hands and sang their song quietly to her as her breathing slowed and she grew weaker. The fire crackled soothingly from across the room and the moon shone brightly through the window overlooking the star sprinkled garden.

It was quarter to three am when Marigold’s chest fell still.

Daniel’s whispered singing faded out as his eyes dropped to her hand falling limp in his. He looked back up at her face, her eyes half closed and focused on him but unmoving.

“Mari?” Daniel breathed, giving her hand a little squeeze.

She was unresponsive.

“M-Marigold?” his voice broke.

The house was quiet. Far more quiet than Daniel was used to.

Daniel’s next breath ached his chest, burned his throat, and broke his heart. He lifted up Marigold’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her cold skin. At least they had their last dance.

He swallowed back his tears desperately, trying to convince himself that it was expected and he had the last month and a half to prepare…but how can you truly prepare to become a widow? Daniel pulled his phone from his pocket as he stood up from the chair and stood by the window overlooking the darkened gardens of their acreage as he dialled the funeral home as told. It was closed at barely 3am so Daniel left a message. When the line beeped, he couldn’t find his words for a moment.

Saying it out loud made it real.

“Hi this is Daniel…Daniel Seavey…it’s around 3am…” he checked the time, “2:49am…and…I was told to call when my wife…when…when my wife…”

Daniel looked back towards the bed and forced himself to breathe before focussing back out the window into the darkness.

“…when she passed.” Daniel swallowed thickly and bowed his head. “Give me a call when you open and come to…retrieve her…I’ll…I’ll meet you at the door. Thanks.”

Daniel hung up and slid his phone back in his pocket and leaned his forehead against the cool window with a trembling sigh. He had promised Marigold many times since her diagnosis that he would be brave for her and no shut down but holy shit he felt like his heart was shattering right out of his chest. He took a moment to breathe, to try and keep his emotions at bay which wasn’t easy especially being sleep deprived and exhausted, but forced himself to face the bed again. Marigold laid still.

Daniel walked over and tucked her arms under the blankets and brushed her long hair out of her face. She looked like she was sleeping if it wasn’t for the pale complexion of her face and the cool touch of her skin.

The house was perfectly quiet as Daniel stepped out into the hallway and took the stairs slowly but surly. He fed the cat and started the laundry and busied himself in the silence that rang in his ears. He felt like he was dreaming, floating, gliding around the house as he turned off the lights and locked the front door but left the porch light on for the funeral directors to arrive after sunrise.

Daniel found himself in the doorway of his son’s room, watching the six-year-old sleep soundly and peacefully, unbothered by the world. He had thought about it for the last month or so; how he was going to tell Lennox that his mother died and was never coming back. That would be one of the hardest things Daniel would ever have to do in his life.

With Lennox left sleeping, Daniel closed the door again and returned to his own room. He smothered the fire and closed the curtains and busied himself with getting changed into his pyjamas. He only really made it halfway: sliding on a pair of plaid lounge pants and shrugging off his button up before his body physically couldn’t hold back anymore. His sudden sob startled him and Daniel pressed a hand to his mouth to keep from possibly waking his son in the next room.

He turned off the bedroom lights and climbed into bed through his blurring tears and shuffled up close to his wife. She was cold and limp but he was heartbroken and all he wanted to do was hold her one last time. So Daniel curled his arm around her waist and nuzzled his face in her neck to try and encompass himself in the familiarity of her. His tears dripped down his cheeks and into the soft fabric of his hoodie that she still wore and he clung onto the material and cried until he was sure he was drowning in his tears.

With his son asleep peacefully nearby, Daniel forced himself into silence; weeping and whimpering through strangled gasps that he smothered into the shoulder of his sweater, wrapped around his wife. He knew it wasn’t his fault and that there was nothing he could have done differently to save her, but he still cried out a pathetic, “I’m sorry” into her neck, stroking her hair and almost hoping to will her back to life.

The farmhouse was quiet, their property was quiet, and the entire small town of Lincoln seemed to be perfectly silent as the minutes ticked by, the hours blended into each other, and Daniel cried the orange sun above the horizon. The small yellow marigold flower sat wilted in the cup on the nightstand.

Seasons Change Taglist: @jonahlovescoffee @stuffofseaveyy @randomlimelightxxx @hiya-its-amber @hopinglimelight @midnightpsychic @sbrewer21

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#🌼#daniel seavey #why dont we #why dont we fanfic #why dont we imagines #daniel seavey fanfic #daniel seavey imagines #writing

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new2fivesauce · 2 years

Text

The Hell Tour - 1. One Way Ticket

Kristi caught her reflection in the mirror as she took slow, deep breaths. She looked down at her hands, her fingernails were bitten into nubs and her Fairy Plum purple nail polish was chipped on all of them. Her hands were still shaking, but not as bad as five minutes ago.

"God, you're such a wimp." she chastised herself. "You can do this."

She closed her eyes, this time giving herself a mini peptalk in her head before she opened them and stared hard at her reflection. She nodded at herself and turned around to face her bed.

Her bed wasn't made and there was an array of clothes laying on top, but even from across the room, Kristi's hazel-green eyes could see the manilla envelope sticking out like a sore thumb between her pillows and a stuffed Jack Skellington. She strode across her room in three easy steps and grabbed the envelope. She opened it for the millionth time and looked inside.

Yup, that airplane ticket was real. And yup, it had her name on it. She shut her eyes quickly and threw the envelope back on her bed. How was this even possible? Who put her up to this? Who sent her photography to this guy? Who told him about her? The only person she could think of with these sort of connections was her dad, but she didn't think his connections were THAT good. She bit her lip and ran her teeth across it gently as she pulled her phone from her pocket.

She had to toughen up and just do it now. He had to know. There was no way she was going to do this without his knowledge first. She didn't know why she felt that she needed his approval anyway, but they were never... well, in nice terms, sociable.

Since they were children, he always made her feel like an outsider even in their family. He had rejected in every way and this was something that she desperately wanted and needed to do. She needed the income. She needed the experience. She wanted this life.

Her thumb hung over her phone's touchscreen, waiting. Her brain kept stopping her. With another deep breath and with shut eyes, she pressed his name and put the phone to her ear.

She held her breath, cheeks puffed out, as the phone rang. It rang once, twice, three times. She didn't know if he had her number. Her dad always, for emergency reasons, gave her his number every time he changed it. She didn't know why Dad bothered with it, but in this instance she was kind of glad she had it.

"Hello?" his tenor voice finally answered the phone. Kristi swallowed hard, her voice stuck in her throat. There was a lot of background noise: loud music, beers clinking, rowdy voices. She assumed he was at a bar or just hanging with his friends. "Hello?" His voice came through again and Kristi snapped out her thoughts.

She had to say something quick and something he would recognize instantly. She was sure at this point that he didn't know who was calling.

"Hey, Bostwick." She found herself saying. Her hand flew to her mouth wanting to stop her words but it was too late.

There was a loud crash on his end.

"Kristi?" He replied, this time in a hushed tone. The phone suddenly sounded muffled and she heard him say that he was stepping outside. WIthin seconds, the connection was clear again and there was no more noise. It was silent on the line for a moment before he spoke again. "Kris, is this you?" he asked.

Kristi sighed into the phone. "Yeah... It's me."

"I- uh- what- Shit..." He cursed. "What do you want?" His surprised voice changed to harsh and mean. This was the tone she had become accustomed to. This was the Kellin she knew.

"I'm sorry, Kellin." She apologized quickly unknowingly. "Umm... Dad gave me your number and uhh..." she struggled to find the words. She began to pace the length of her room.

"Spit it out." he growled into the phone. Kristi winced at his voice. It'd been far too long since she'd talked to him. She had almost forgotten what he sounded like. The way he talked to her was very unlike the way he sang and talked to his fans.

"I got this new job and I was calling to tell you about it because--"

"What do I care if you have a new job or not?" He interrupted her. "I have better things to do than hear about this, so if you don't mind…"

"I GOT A JOB AS A PHOTOGRAPHER ON THE WORLD TOUR!" She quickly blurted out, cutting him short. There was another silent pause and Kristi could only imagine smoke coming out of his ears or him clenching his fists and gritting his teeth like she knew he did when he got angry.

"What?!" he exclaimed. "How is that-- What the fuck–! Explain."

"I-I don't know. Someone sent in my photographs to the tour managers and next thing I know is I'm getting this phone call about offering my services and I'd be getting paid. I thought it was a hoax, but then I went to a couple of meetings for the tour and met the other photographers. Today I got a plane ticket in the mail and an information packet. I didn't know what the World Tour was until I looked it up and well... yeah. I'm sorry, Kellin. I can decline though. I have two days to give them my final answer."

Kellin didn't respond. Kristi took this opportunity to keep talking.

"Look, this job will help me out a lot. I promise I'd stay out of your hair. I won't even mention what we are to each other. I don't even have to ride a tour bus. I can take my own car. All I'll be there to do is snap some pics of each band at each date and then it's over. But if you really don't want me there--"

"Do whatever the fuck you want." Kellin mumbled into the phone and then there was pure silence.

He had hung up on her.

She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it blankly for a few moments. What just happened? She scratched her head and debated calling him back, but didn't. His final words kept ringing in her ears.

Her eyes wandered to where she tossed the envelope on her bed. Her mind was made up. She tossed her phone next to the envelope and headed to her closet.

"See you on fuckin' tour, brother." she huffed as she pulled her luggage out the closet.

#pierce the veil #sleeping with sirens #ptv #sws #vic fuentes #mike fuentes #jaime preciado #tony perry #kellin quinn #the world tour #the hell tour

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karlnapity · 3 years

Text

we spent two years together, i thought in made her better.

(tws: death, violence, panic attacks)

jack manifold loses his last life on december sixteenth, and he crawls out of hell on the same day.

he has never stood down. he’s a stubborn bastard and he knows that, and he knows that standing against fucking technoblade is a bad idea, and he doesn’t care, because he won’t let him destroy his home.

technoblade looks him in the eye, laughs in his face, and drives an axe down the center of his skull.

he doesn’t quite register dying, doesn’t quite register the feeling of falling to the ground.

he does register pain. he does register overwhelming panic. he comes to laying on the ground, blood stuck to his scalp and in his eyes, rubble scratching his back.

he keens in pain, sits up slowly. he rubs his eyes, resting his head in his hands. he thinks, dimly, that everything seems dulled. explosions and screams in the background, the feeling of his hands on his face, the chill in the air. he can hardly feel any of it. he edges himself behind a large piece of rubble, safe from the conflict for now.

panic courses through his veins. what happened?

he grasps at his arms, curling in on himself. everything feels wrong. everything feels wrong.

his breath quickens as he grows hysterical. tears start to fall as he hiccups, and as they trickle down his face he can barely even feel them.

and then it stops.

his hand flies to his throat. he tries to start breathing again, but as the seconds pass he finds he doesn’t even need it.

oh god, he’s dead. he’s really fucking dead. is he a ghost?

“oh god,” he chokes, curling in even further into himself.

“hello?” someone else’s voice calls. he doesn’t bother sitting up.

“jack?” the voice continues, then, “oh fuck, jack!”

someone touches his arm, and he craves the contact. he can still hardly feel it, but he leans into it, arms wrapping around him and holding him so tight it would probably hurt, before.

“i’m so glad you’re ok,” they whisper. who is it? whose voice is that?

“niki.” his voice sounds raspy, contaminated from smoke and tnt and death.

“yes, yes, i’m here,” she chokes, and he can tell, faintly, that she’s crying. “you’re ok.”

he nods into her shoulder. he wants it to be true, but it can’t be. he can barely hear her over the ringing in his ears.

“i thought you were dead, i’ve been looking for you. how long have you been back here? didn’t you hear me calling for you?”

he almost snorts. what can he say?

her hand moves from his shoulders, cupping around the back of his head. she massages a thumb over the nape of his neck where she used to when he got upset. her thumb brushes over dried blood and he can feel it flake off.

her hand stills. “jack, you’re so cold. are you ok?”

he coughs. “i’m sorry, niki.”

he pulls back, looks her in the face. her eyes are sad.

“jack, please tell me what happened. what’s going on?”

“i died,” he breathes. a shiver runs through him as the realization hits him like a ton of bricks. oh god, he fucking died. he grasps for purchase on her arms, grounding himself as best he can. she grips him back.

a combination of confusion and horror fills her face. “you didn’t have any lives left, how…”

he shakes his head. a hysterical laugh bubbles from his chest. “i don’t fucking know, niki, i don’t fucking know.”

she cups his face then pulls him into a tight hug. “you’re gonna be ok, jack. we’re gonna be ok.”

it’s a hard thing, adjusting to death.

for one, he’s constantly cold. not only his temperature, but also his skin. it’s cold, clammy like a corpse. niki says it feels weird, but he can’t exactly tell. he piles on layers, spends as much time as he can in front of the fire and trying to warm the constant chill in his core, but it doesn’t work.

he doesn’t breathe anymore. occasionally he’ll hiccup or gasp, as if his brain is trying to kickstart his body again, and he’ll sit in silence for a few minutes while nothing but pure panic floods his brain, telling him something is deeply wrong. the first time it happens, tubbo slams on his back thinking he’d choked, and jack devolves into a vicious panic attack before tubbo even has a chance to realize.

he doesn’t need to eat, and he physically can’t sleep. he didn’t realize how much people slept, before, and now he finds himself sitting on the snowchester porch in the early morning and realizing how lonely the world is.

he can hardly feel much of anything, and he can hear even less. his vision’s gone a bit fuzzy, too. it feels like his senses have started closing in on himself, and it’s terrifying.

the others have adapted, and he’s thankful. if niki comes up behind him, she’ll grab his arm hard, and tubbo will usually pinch him or slap the back of his head so he knows he’s there.

he’s decided not to tell tubbo. the kid doesn’t deserve that. he doesn’t need to know, long as jack doesn’t start falling apart like some sort of zombie. he’s pretty sure tubbo just thinks he’s traumatized, or that he’s lost some of his hearing from explosions like tubbo has.

and, well, he’s not exactly wrong.

it’s niki who starts it. they’re sitting around the fireplace, jack as close as he can get to try to get rid of the chill, and she says,

“you know, when you think about it, it’s all kind of tommy’s fault.”

resentment has been festering since tommy killed him, so he’s not exactly shocked, just curious. “what d’you mean?”

“he’s caused so much trouble on the server, and now he’s just gotten away with it.” niki sounds angry, and when she sounds angry it’s never good, so he turns to look her in the eye. she’s practically shaking. “he needs to suffer for it like we did.”

when he was alive, he woke up from nightmares almost every night of drowning in lava, of burning while tommy laughed and sneered and laughed, and now it only solidifies. he hates him.

it’s tommy’s fault he’s dead. if tommy hadn’t killed him, he wouldn’t be dead now.

niki stumbles to her feet and falls to her knees in front of him, pulling him into a desperate hug.

he’s not sure if he can cry anymore, but the feeling’s there all the time as he clings to niki, grasping tightly to her shirt, and she pulls his head to her shoulder, curls around him protectively.

they stay there for a long time. every once in a while, niki will murmur an assurance. after long enough the words mutate, transform into something nasty, slimy.

“he’ll pay for this.”

the nukes are divisive. jack doesn’t want tubbo to get hurt. niki doesn’t want jack to get hurt. they both want tommy to get hurt.

he’s not sure when it changed into “kill him.” he’s not sure when it turned from a want to yell, to hit, to wanting to destroy him with nukes, but the anger is fire deep in his chest, the only thing he can feel, and he wants it to continue burning.

niki says she doesn’t want jack to get hurt.

“it’s not like i can get more dead,” he sneers. he doesn’t want to hurt her. he wants to hurt everyone.

tubbo can tell there’s something wrong. he can tell it in the way he rests his hand on jack’s back, even when he can’t feel it, in the way he stays up late and gets up early to spend time with him.

he comes up behind him, early one morning, and wraps his arms around jack’s chest. he buries his head in jack’s back and squeezes him tight. jack jumps at first, but soon relaxes into the content.

he can’t hear tubbo’s sobs, as quiet as they are, but he can almost feel the shaking of his shoulders.

“what’s wrong?” he asks, hesitant in case he’s reading it wrong. tubbo could be laughing, for all his addled senses can tell, but he deep down he knows. he can barely hear tubbo’s reply.

“i’m worried something is going to happen to you.”

something has already happened, he wants to yell. you just missed it.

he knows, faintly, that it’s not tubbo’s fault. tubbo doesn’t know, because he’s never told him, but he wants someone to focus on him, for once. he wants someone to realize, without him telling them. he wants someone to pay attention.

tubbo’s not that person. tubbo has friends, and a nation or two, and a history that extends beyond ‘stay alive.’

he pulls away, gently, promises something or other about him being fine, and goes back to planning destruction.

their plan doesn’t work. tommy shows up only thirty seconds late, while the crater is still smoking.

jack can’t help but feel like the universe is working against him.

niki is fuming. she’s shaking in anger, standing at the edge of the crater and staring at it, and jack goes to put his hand on her shoulder. she pulls away.

niki comes to join him on the porch that night. he doesn’t know she’s there until she says,

“why do you spend so much time out here?”

he doesn’t know how to explain that it’s comforting, being out in the cold, alone when he knows everyone is safe inside. he’s become a sentry almost accidentally, taking care of the only two people in the world he still cares about. he doesn’t know how to explain how comforting and devastating it is, and he doesn’t know how to explain that the cold calms him, so he just shrugs. she always understands him, anyways, or so he hopes.

she doesn’t stay outside for long.

he wonders, sometimes, if he’s doing something wrong. tommy and tubbo are still friends, somehow, even after everything. jack doesn’t know how to ask if tommy’s ever apologized. tubbo’s always had a heart too painfully big, so he kind of doubts it.

tommy’s never apologized to him. he’s not sure if he’d ever accept it.

he watches puffy and niki get pulled apart, and cringes a bit more each time niki comes home crying. he doesn’t know how to ask her if she still thinks they’re in the right.

he can tell she’s not sure either. maybe none of them are.

puffy approaches him one day. it’s her first time visiting snowchester, and her white first gleams in the sunlight reflecting off the snow. he’s at his usual post, and he gives her a half-hearted wave as he sees her.

she returns it, but her face is grim. she comes to stand beside him.

“i know what you’re trying to do,” she says, quietly, and he has to strain to hear her. he pretends he didn’t all the same.

“sorry. hearing loss.”

she gives him a look, but raises her voice all the same. “niki says it’s a bit more than that.”

he balks, stumbles back a few feet on the wood of the porch and almost his balance. puffy reaches out and steadies him. “pardon?”

“i’m sorry about what happened to you, jack,” she starts. he can’t tell what emotions he’s feeling, but it’s overwhelming. he tries to think of something to say, but she continues before he can force the words out.

her hand on his wrist twists, and he tries to pull it away when he realizes she’s searching for his pulse. she holds on, then her face tightens and she yanks him into a hug.

they’ve had hardly more than two conversations, but he feels safe in her embrace. he holds on tight, and she runs a hand through his short-shaven hair.

“i know you’re hurting,” she says, and he knows he’s made a mistake.

jack finds tommy back near l’manburg. it took him a couple more weeks to even gather up the courage, but eventually he spoke to niki.

he tries not to think about the conversation.

tommy seems surprised to see him, but they settle at the edge of the crater.

tommy looks better than the last time he saw him. he tries not to be jealous.

“i think i owe you an apology,” he says. tommy balks.

“what? i owe you an apology,” he comes back with. “i fucking killed you!”

“i tried to kill you too,” he starts, but tommy cuts him off.

“it was kinda deserved. can we just agree not to anymore?” he sticks out his hand.

jack smiles.

snowchester seems warmer, that night.

#personal #dsmp #dream smp #jack manifold #niki nihachu #tommyinnit #tubbo #captain puffy #mcyt #l'manburg #l'manberg #l'manhole #lmanburg #lmanberg #manburg #manberg

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bekaroth-reads · 3 years

Text

Viktor Vector x V

V sat in the chair trying desperately to avoid any sort of eye-contact with the ripperdoc that was digging through the small medical supply drawer next to them. Neither of them was talking to each to each other at the moment; the silence was only broken by the sounds of the assorted supplies rustling in the drawer and the hum of the many monitors in the background, many of which showed different aspects of V's vitals. After what seemed like an eternity, Viktor finally said something. "I want you to head home and take it easy after this. No excitement for a few days; no more dangerous outings for a while." There was a scolding tone to his voice that V did not appreciate.

"It isn't that bad. I just got in a bit of a scuffle." V huffed almost like a teen that was busted for smoking behind a school. "No, what you got," Viktor paused his thought as he started to patch up a cut on their arm, "was your ass handed to ya." V scrunched their nose not only at the burning from the anti-septic touching the wound but at the admonishment they just got as well. They didn't respond though; not wanting to put the effort into arguing and knowing that they really couldn't. There was another bout of silence between the two of them as he finished his task. He sat the tools he was using in a metal pan on top of the drawer before giving a heavy sigh. "What were you thinking taking such a dangerous gig by yourself? And, knowing that wearhouse would be full of scavengers too?" V rolled their eyes at his question. "Eh, they were just a bunch of gonks. Nothing I couldn't handle." This response caused Viktor to snort back a bitter laugh and glare at them. "There was defiantly one gonk in this situation and it was any of them! You're lucky that you got out of there with all your chrome still in your body!"

V glared back at him in turn. "Alright, Viktor! Why are you coming for my throat like this?" Vik heaved another heavy sigh as he closed the door on the drawer a bit harder than he meant to. "Look, I don't mean to be a mother hen. But, I hate to see you all banged up like this. 'Specially when it's because you're bein' reckless. We both know you're smarter than that." The two of them stared at each other for a tense moment, silently finishing their argument with frustrated glances. Vik knew that V wouldn't budge and they knew the exact same thing about him. When they had both accepted this fact they finally moved on.

"I really care about you, kid. Ya know that right?" V gave a defeated sigh at Viktor's question that was so full of raw emotion that they couldn't help but admit that they were being a jerk. "Yeah, I do. I'm sorry for being such a jack-ass." They offer apologetically as they lean fully back on to the chair. "Hey, you've had a tough day. Just don't go making it a habit." He tried to lighten the mood by teasing them a bit. Vik gave the screens one more glance over before started pushing them out of the way. "Anything still bothering you that I haven't checked yet?" V gave a groan and shifted in the chair. "Nothin' major. Hands still hurt a bit from having to take some swings when I ran out of ammo." Mentioning the burning in their knuckles seemed to make it flare up more. "Well, not much I can do for that other than the pain killers I gave ya."

After thinking for a moment a smile tugged ever-so-slightly at the corners of his mouth as a great idea suddenly popped into his mind. "Ya know... There is one more thing I could try. Somethin' I learned before I even became a doctor. Bit of a long shot, but it just might work." At this point, V was achy all over and willing to try just about anything that Viktor suggested. They shrugged their shoulders and mused, "Sure. If you think it'll help." At this Vik took their hand into his and moved it closer to his face to inspect it. He gently ran his thumb over their finger and they figured he was going to do pop their knuckles or something of the like. They almost passed out when he took their hand even closer to his face and placed a gentle kiss on it. "There. That make it feel any better?" V stammered over all the words that they wanted to say, but nothing cohesive came of their endeavor. Vik gave a chuckle that sat deep in his chest and V swore they could feel it reverberate in theirs. "Seriously, though. Is there anything else I can do for you while you're here?"

By this point, the initial shock of the situation had started to wear off and V saw an opportunity they were not about to pass up. "Actually," V started slowly as they were still trying to work out exactly how they were going to go about it without being too incredibly forward and ruining things, "My arm kinda hurts too. Not too bad, but might need to be checked out." Viktor quirked a brow, but the devious smile on his face told that he didn't actually mind. "Right here?" He questioned as he kissed their arm right above their elbow. "A bit closer to the shoulder." V corrected. Viktor hummed in acknowledgment before kissing a trail up their entire arm making them practically melt into the chair from just how gentle he was.

"Any other trouble areas?" Vik asked almost expectantly. V decided to take a chance. "Got hit on the lip pretty good and-" Before they could even finish Vik had already started to kiss them fervently; a gesture they happily returned. He pulled away a bit too soon for V's liking, but they were sympathetic when they saw him straightened in his chair with a groan and a series of pops. "Sorry, back can't take that angle for too long." He huffed as his back cracked once more. V moved themselves to sit on the edge of the chair. "Do I need to call a doctor for you, old-timer?" They teased him and he tried to give them a stern yet secretly playful look. "Watch it there, small fry." V chuckled and leaned in closer to him to kiss him again. "Say," Vik pulled away to look them in the eyes, "how about we move this somewhere a bit more private?" V rested their hand on his forearm, "Viktor Vektor!" they pretended to scold and leaned close to him and whispered, "Now, I thought you said no excitement for awhile." He pulled them off their chair and onto his lap causing his chair to slide back and spin around a bit. "Well, maybe some excitement is alright." He purred against their lips before passionately kissing them again; both of them grinning the entire time.

#viktor vektor x v #viktor vektor #cyberpunk 2077 v #v x viktor #v x viktor vektor

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penguinwithitsarseonfire · 3 years

Text

I Was too Scared to Jump In

Part 3 | See the Full Series Here

Pairing: 13th Doctor x Reader

Word Count: 4,953

Warnings: None

Summary: After Jack notices some stolen glances from across the console room, he decides to ask the Doctor about her feelings for you. It results in a bump in the head and some hot chocolate in the dead of night. (This is technically a sequel to Mosaic Broken Hearts but can be read as a standalone)

A/N: I was in a bit of a slump for this series because I did not plan this far ahead, and then that trailer came out and I was like huh. right then. and then this happened. Enjoy??? I scrapped using pronouns for this one because they’re still weird to write, so let me know if any dialogue is clunky!! Much love everyone ❤️✨

The Doctor hadn’t planned for a quiet day in the TARDIS, it had just sort of… happened.

She was doing some basic maintenance in the console room; a service on the brakes and acceleration, and was lost in her own world of wires, motor grease, and the buzz of her sonic.

She was somewhat aware of you, Yaz, and Ryan sitting by the steps, playing a game of Jenga. There were periodic moments when something would topple, the three of you would cry out, and the Doctor would know a round had finished. Jack was sitting on the steps above them, casually talking with Graham – well, that’s what the Doctor assumed, she wasn’t paying attention, and she wasn’t one to eavesdrop. That would be rude.

The secondary connecting wire to the clutch sparked, and the Doctor gazed it down with narrowed eyes. No matter what she did, it just didn’t seem to want to do what she wanted.

She poked her head out from the console and pulled her mask off so she could see her friends better.

She had been right, there you were, with Ryan and Yaz, playing Jenga. She eyed Jack and Graham, who, as she had suspected, were idly watching the game and chatting among themselves. The Doctor zeroed in on Jack. He knew the TARDIS operating system, in the past, he’d helped her out on more than one occasion.

Jack was watching the three of you as he spoke to Graham. He cocked his head to the side as he watched Ryan, as if trying to discern the tactics Ryan was using.

In the game, it was your turn, and you eyed the tower with immense concentration, shaking Ryan off when he tried to psyche you out. The Doctor watched you for a moment, your fingers danced over a middle piece high up in the tower, and your prodded at it experimentally. The piece budged, and you gently dislodged it. You took it out and placed it on top of the tower, before poking your tongue out at Ryan.

The Doctor wanted to join in, she wanted to run over and ask how you were all going, how you were going. She wanted to soak up as much of your time as she could, try to shatter some of those absurd boundaries she had finally worked out she had.

But she was doing maintenance work, and if she left it, she’d forget what she had been doing

Jacks eyes locked on to the Doctor’s, and he gave her a small, cocky, smirk. He nodded down to the three of you, then back to the Doctor, who could only roll her eyes. She knew what he was insinuating, what he had kept suggesting ever since he had sauntered onto her ship.

It wasn’t even that she didn’t want to admit it, she had long made her peace that she loved you, at this point, it was as innate to the Doctor as breathing. But Jack made teasing suggestions, as if the Doctor’s feelings were common knowledge, and she wasn’t ready for it to be common knowledge yet-

She wasn’t ready for you to know it yet.

“Jack, could you come down here a mo’?” She asked, pointedly ignoring his expression as he not-so-subtly wagged his eyebrows whilst nodding over to you. “You’ve got experience with this.”

Jack raised a surprised eyebrow but didn’t complain. He patted Graham on the knee and stood up, sidestepping the three of you on the floor.

You looked up away from the game for a moment, shooting the Doctor a small smile. The Doctor tried – and, admittedly, probably failed, to hide her blush. It was one of those smiles that the Doctor saw you give to monuments, to the birthing of civilisations, to the majesty of the stars, and, to be given that smile too? It was amazing.

She smiled back – probably an awkward amalgamation which more likely resembled a sneer than a smile, but you seemed to brighten to it. The Doctor wasn’t good at emotions, or expressing them when she really meant them.

Jack cleared his throat, which was how the Doctor realised he was crouched down beside her. “What’s up Doc?”

The Doctor hummed, tearing her eyes away from you, over to him. He was giving her a knowing smirk and the Doctor almost rolled her eyes again. She gestured to the wire, which was still letting of haywire sparks. “It’s for the gears,” she explained. “It’s not wanting to stitch itself back together-“

“Have you tried sonic compulsion?” Jack asked.

The Doctor hummed. “That was the first thing I did,” she waved her sonic in the air. “But there’s no give. So I-”

“What about engineers tape?” Jack suggested, and he poked the wire experimentally. It sparked and he hissed, sticking his finger in his mouth. “We could then go to the Medusa Cascade and get some proper supplies.”

The Doctor sighed. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to land whilst she’s like this,” the Doctor said. “Which was why I was thinking-”

“Have you tried asking the wire on a date?”

“-If you hold it down then,” the Doctor did a double take. “What – no. Why would I..?” Her eyes flickered to you, who was talking animatedly with Graham whilst Yaz took her turn in Jenga.

“No reason,” Jack gave her a shit eating grin and he sat down cross legged beside her. “What did you want to try?”

The Doctor huffed, and pulled down her goggles. “I need you to hold the wire and the artron accelerator, you know where that is.”

Jack hummed, and shimmied himself so he was lying on his stomach, arms outstretched so he could hold the two respective items.

“Hopefully with the artron accelerator stabilised, the secondary connecting wire to the clutch should finally give,” she gritted out the final words as she stuck her sonic at it, putting in all her energy into repairing the wire.

It began mending, tendrils from the base of the wire reached out to its counterpart, and the Doctor watched as the wire began to stitch itself together.

There was a beat, a moment where the only thing the Doctor could hear was the whir of her sonic, and the repair of the wire.

Then Jack said, very softly. “So, Y/N.”

The Doctor screwed up her face slightly, but remained concentrated on what she was doing. “What about Y/N?”

Jack was silent for a long moment, long enough for the Doctor to believe that he had dropped it. The wire continued to stich itself together, and the Doctor watched as the little sparks turned into energy that spurred it along.

Jack then spoke. “When’re you going to tap that?”

The Doctor tapped her sonic against the wire, purposely misunderstanding him. She hummed speculatively. “I don’t think that did much help.”

Jack scoffed. “Alright then, play that game. You knew exactly what I meant.”

The Doctor eyed him disapprovingly, which probably didn’t come across because of – well, because of the massive goggles hiding her eyes. “It’s derogatory.”

“Ah, this is the sort of banter I missed,” Jack gave her a cheeky grin. “Like the good old days, talking about a plucky young human you’re in love with and everything.”

The Doctor chewed her lip at that, turning away from him and pooling all her attention on the wire. In the background she heard you cry out triumphantly. A small, pleased smile ghosted across her face at the sound. She was glad you were happy.

Jack sighed. “Okay, so I see that approach isn’t working. I’ll do what Graham suggested then.”

The Doctor turned to Jack suddenly. “What Graham suggested? What do you mean – does he know?”

Jack’s defeated look grew into a grin as triumphant as the one the Doctor assumed you were currently wearing. The Doctor deflated, instantly realising what he had done. He said one, single word. “Gotcha.”

The Doctor ground her teeth and turned back to the wire, furious that her old friend knew her so well, that he had so easily managed to trick her into revealing – however subtly, her feelings for you. She wasn’t ready for her fam to know, which, by extension of Jack being here, automatically included him.

So what if the Doctors eyes lingered on you a little bit longer than the others, or that she looked for your approval more often, or that her hands ghosted over your person whenever she was allowed the opportunity. It wasn’t of any consequence to any of you, not yet.

The Doctor wanted to hold her love for you close to her, let herself work it out, work out what she needed from this, from you. She couldn’t do anything until she worked that out, it wouldn’t be fair to her, and it would be completely cruel to you. You deserved better than that.

No, the Doctor wanted to go in completely prepped, completely ready.

So Jack? Saying these things? Doing these things?

It was throwing the Doctor out into a loop.

“Aw Doc, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jack said, and he nudged her shoulder. “I’m sorry okay, I’m just teasing.”

The Doctor gave him an unconvinced look, but the drama was probably lost. Again – the goggles.

Jack sighed. “All I’m saying,” he said, his tone measured, like he was talking down a scared wild animal. “Is that it’s clear Y/N loves you back, is all.”

The Doctor’s mind went haywire. That you loved her back. Out of all her fretting, all her worrying, she hadn’t even gotten to the part where you could return her feelings. She had predicted, once she realised all the kinks and details so she could actually do right by you, that she would… woo you.

But you loved her back?

The Doctor stumbled backwards, knocking her head against the console. She winced, throwing her hand to her head as her screwdriver clattered to the floor. She could hear a ringing in her ears, and her vision went spotty. The rest of the world swayed around her, and she tried to concentrate on it, find something she could pinpoint to ground her.

Her body was doing… a thing. She couldn’t articulate it. It was a shock thing, wasn’t it?

“Woah Doctor,” Jack cried, and there were suddenly hands on her shoulders, and then another on her jaw. The hand there felt safe, like a grounding presence. The Doctor felt herself latching onto it.

Jack spoke, but the words were lost to her. Something about being okay.. and her goggles? Surely that wasn’t right.

“Oh Doctor,” there was a second voice in the distance, but the Doctor’s mind was rattled. She couldn’t place it straight away, her mind still working through what Jack had said.

Then, like clockwork, her brain puzzled it together.

“Are you okay, here – wait, can I take off the goggles?”

The Doctor pulled her goggles off above her head, and blinked against the sudden light. Jack was hovering above her, his face pulled into concern. His voice swam in her ears.

“That was a bit of a nasty bump, Doc. You okay?”

There was another face above Jack’s, floating against the warm glow of the crystals. The Doctor forced her eyes to focus. It was you.

“Oh,” she said. “Hi Y/N. Fancy seeing you here.”

You snorted, but your face was pulled into worry. “Yeah, you too,” you were crouched down beside Jack, and the Doctor realised that the hand on her jaw was yours. She had been leaning into it, and the Doctor tried not to freeze up as she realised. It would most definitely set off the wrong idea.

She slowly detangled herself from you and Jack, and eyed the wire. She groaned, scrunching her face in protest. It had fallen apart during the Doctors… incident, and she would need to start all over again.

“Doctor,” by your tone, it sounded like you were repeating yourself. “Are you okay? That was really sudden.”

The Doctor stared back at you. You reminded her of a European renaissance painting, all glowey and ethereal, like you had wandered straight out of a Caravaggio painting. She waited another moment for her brain to reboot, focusing on the way your eyes shone in the low light.

She rubbed against the spot on her head that she had bumped, it was low, near to where her head met her neck, and she cursed that that was the part of her brain she had been using to focus on her conversation with Jack.

“I bumped against the part of my brain that was focusing on something difficult,” she said. “And the shock knocked all my systems out for a moment. That’s all, I’m fine now,” and then, as an aside. “I should reshuffle which part of my brain focuses on what. I’ve got three brain stems, might as well use ‘em.”

She ducked down to retrieve her screwdriver, and felt the hot white feeling of awkwardness creep up on her. How embarrassing! She’d temporarily passed out because she had been talking about you with Jack and had accidently knocked herself on the head.

“Hang on,” she heard a third voice, Ryan – and had everyone come over? “What do you mean three brain stems? You’ve got three brain stems?”

The Doctor popped back up, grateful for the distraction. “I can separate the hemispheres in my brain,” she said, and Graham pulled a face that could only be described as his ‘what’ face. “Means I can multitask.”

“That’s mad,” Ryan breathed out. “That’s like, proper alien.”

“Well the Doctor is an alien,” Yaz said, absorbing the information just as easily and quickly as she always did. “Makes sense that she’s got different biology beyond the two hearts thing.”

“Are you okay though?” You asked again. “That was a bit scary.”

“Came out of nowhere,” Ryan agreed.

The Doctor scratched behind her ear, and scrunched up her face. She was embarrassed. You were sitting right there, you face full of concern, and she’d done the Time Lord equivalent of tripping up the stairs. “Yeah, peachy. It happens more often than you’d think. Normally there isn’t an audience though.”

Jack’s face grew in understanding. “Oh,” he breathed. “Is this like Thornian-”

“Exactly,” The Doctor said loudly, because she did not need her fam to hear that particular story. She didn’t need you to hear that particular story. “Like I said,” she turned back to the rest of her friends. “I’m just a clutz.”

You screwed up your face, unconvinced. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

The Doctor nodded dumbly, her hearts skipping a beat or two. The Doctor wanted to reach out and touch you, to memorise the lines your face made as you pulled it into various shapes. “Yes. I promise.”

Later, when the rest of the fam had gone to bed, Jack sat opposite her in the TARDIS kitchen, laughing at her.

The Doctor glared at her microwave, which had short circuited and exploded because she had forgotten that, of all things, you couldn’t put metal in them. It was basic, fundamental science, physics 101, the stuff they teach school children, and all the other anecdotes Jack was currently rattling off.

“I’m happy to boil some milk on the stove,” Jack said once he had finished laughing. “It’ll take a bit longer, but we’ll still get our hot chocolate.”

The Doctor waved towards the stove, inviting Jack to go ahead.

“How is everything in here?” Jack asked, as he started rummaging through cupboards to find a pot. “Same as when I last saw it? Minus the fresh paint, that is.”

“Dunno,” the Doctor said. “I don’t really use the kitchen. Take out’s easier.”

Jack made a little ‘aha’ moment when he found a pot. “Normally is,” he replied, and he placed the pot rather delicately onto the stove. He turned it on and poured the milk into the pot. “Do you have chocolate, or just the powdered stuff?”

“Pretty sure I’ve only got the powdered stuff,” she replied, but she stood and began rummaging through the pantry. In the back of one of the shelves, behind mounds of dry pasta and biscuits from the town called Christmas, sat an old chocolate powder container. There was a fine sheen of dust on it, and the Doctor wiped it off. She eyed the use by date, and her heart clenched. 2008.

Donna must have been the one who put it here.

She gripped her free hand against the shelf. There it was again, that awful, reeling sense of heartbreak, coming back full force when she thought of anyone she had once loved. It settled quicker than it once did, becoming the dull throb that normally only sat in the back of her mind.

“It’s a couple centuries old,” she said, returning to Jack and sticking the powder to his side. “But it should still be alright,” she grinned at him, but he only frowned at her.

“You do that a lot,” he commented, and he stirred the milk so it wouldn’t stick to the pot.

The Doctor chewed on her lip for a moment. She was scared to ask, scared that Jack would reveal something too intimate, see too far into her soul, something he was so good at doing. It wasn’t fair, really.

Still though, she asked. “Do what?”

“You smile,” he said. “But it doesn’t really seem like you want to.”

The Doctor slumped into her seat. He hit the nail there.

“You did it earlier today,” he continued, and the Doctor winced. “Back when you hit your head – which, pretty dramatic, even by your standards.”

The Doctor screwed up her nose. “It wasn’t like I was acting.”

“Oh no,” Jack said. “I know that. Of all people, you know I know that. I’m just saying, we were talking about, or well, rather, not talking about a certain someone, and then you bumped your head by the exact part of your brain having those thoughts? Causing the spasms?” Jack gave her another shit eating grin. “I don’t know Doctor, perhaps it’s telling you something.”

The Doctor puffed out a strand of her that had fallen into her face. “I think it’s telling you to stop talking.”

“Is every face of yours like this? Or is it just because of me?” Jack asked, but he was still grinning.

Her past face, the face that had met Jack, would probably have had a witty answer. In hindsight, the Doctor could have seen that face, with its big ears and smart mouth, saying ‘It’s all just for you’, but this face, her current one, with her blonde hair and affinity for rainbows, didn’t have a clue.

“I don’t know Jack,” she groaned, and rubbed a hand down her face. “Maybe? I’m not good at talking in this face.”

Jack snorted. “Yeah, you made that obvious when you decided to hit your head rather than talk about your feelings.”

“I didn’t choose to do that,” The Doctor protested. “It just happened.”

“Hey, hey, I know,” Jack defended. “I’m just saying, lucky coincidence.” He stirred the milk again, and the Doctor watched it froth and bubble. “Do you want to talk about it now?”

The Doctor considered it for a moment. She knew that she was the only one who could work out what she needed, if she would actually be good for you – if you actually loved her back.

But talking… talking was important, she needed to get better at it, she knew she did.

So she sighed, and went to the cupboard that she was pretty sure stored some mugs. She stood on her tip toes, cursing the height of everything around her, and managed to grasp two mugs. They were plain, and the Doctor was grateful for that, she didn’t want to find anything else that held memories.

“Yeah,” she said, and she placed the mugs on the bench next to the hot chocolate powder. “I think I probably should.”

Jack gave her a delighted, if surprised, smile. “Yeah? Oh I love that. Doctor, I think that’s character growth.”

She gave him a small, wry, smile. “Well, I did tell you I upgraded.”

The milk bubbled and Jack took the pot off of the heat. He carefully poured it into the two mugs, and the Doctor distributed a generous helping of powder into each one, stirring vigorously.

“So,” Jack said. “Y/N.”

“Y/N.”

“How long’s that been going on for?”

The Doctor hummed, contemplating the question. “Are you asking when I realised it was love? Because that wasn’t too long ago, but honestly, I think I’ve always loved Y/N.”

“You’re not scared of the word ‘love’,” Jack noticed, and he took a sip of his hot chocolate. “That’s new.”

The Doctor snorted. “No, I am. It’s just… well, it feels right. Nothing else does, but loving Y/N? Yeah, that feels right.”

Jack nodded and began walking out of the kitchen, the Doctor followed. They meandered through the hallways of the TARDIS, with her softly thrumming beside them. Jack brushed his hand against the wall, a small smile on his face. “I’ve missed this,” he said, and his voice sounded full of wonder. “It’s been so long.”

“It has,” the Doctor agreed, and she took a small sip of her hot chocolate. It was warm, and there was a slight hint of peppermint in it. It was nice.

The TARDIS was feeling kind tonight, because she easily lead them to the console room. The Doctor had parked over Kasterbos V, a star that was just being born. According to the Doctor’s calculations, it would end up becoming this star systems sun, but she had never travelled here before, so she didn’t quite know for sure.

They sat on the threshold of the TARDIS, dangling their legs into deep space, and watched the burning, bright fires of the tiny star dance and throw themselves into the air, slowly forming a giant which would warm billions for the millennia to come.

“So, Y/N,” Jack said, and the Doctor sighed. She had almost forgotten what they had been talking about.

Almost. You took up too much of her thoughts to forget it completely.

The Doctor hummed, offering Jack a moment to continue.

“If ‘love’ is the right word,” he drummed his fingers against the mug, as if trying to work out how to say what he was thinking, or, rather, knowing him, if he should say what he was thinking. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

“You don’t know I haven’t said anything.”

“I’ve seen how Y/N looks at you,” Jack countered. “Doesn’t know anything.”

The Doctor let out a breath. Jack was right, of course. You didn’t know how the Doctor felt, she’d been doing her hardest to make sure you wouldn’t know.

“It’s complicated,” the Doctor said, after a moment. “There’s a lot to consider.”

“Ah,” Jack said, and he took another sip of his hot chocolate, a small smile of satisfaction forming. “So you’re stalling.”

The Doctor spluttered. “What? I am not.”

“You are,” Jack repeated. “I’ve seen you do this before, and we all know how that ended.”

The Doctor huffed, ignoring the pang in her hearts at the mention of her, that wonderful girl from another life, another century. “This is different.”

“Of course it’s different,” Jack agreed. “Rose and Y/N aren’t the same person,”

The Doctor tried to protest, it was so jarring hearing a name from so many lifetimes ago. Sometimes she forgot just how long ago she had met Jack, and how old the two of them were now.

“You’re going to love them in different ways,” Jack continued. “Hell, I bet you still love Rose,” the Doctor gawked, but Jack ignored her. “Just like you still love Martha, and Donna, and me, as well as how you love Graham, Yaz, and Ryan today,” he said it in the most matter-of-fact way, as if this was a fundamental truth. “That doesn’t make your love for any of us any less, or your love for Y/N any less.”

The Doctor worried her bottom lip slightly, and she stared out at the star. She refused to make eye contact with Jack, no one had ever said something like that before, she hadn’t even said it to herself.

It was true though.

“Sometimes,” Jack spoke again, and his voice was softer. “I think you just get so immersed in that great big head of yours that you lose yourself in all the what-ifs, and you don’t see what’s right in front of you.”

“I know what’s right in front of me Jack-”

“Then why won’t you say anything?” Jack questioned. “Why don’t you march right up to Y/N and say exactly how you feel?”

The Doctor flailed. “Because Jack! I-”

What could she say? That she was terrified that she wasn’t right for you, that she would only hurt her, and then, eventually, when you were gone, it would only crush her? That she couldn’t be what you needed, that she couldn’t fashion herself into someone that you could be in a relationship with?

The Doctor waved a hand in the air, and saw Jacks pained face staring back at her. She slowly sat her hand back down, ghosting it over her mug.

“I just said my inner monologue out loud,” she said slowly. “Didn’t I.”

“Jeez Doc,” Jack ran a hand over his face, and it was all the confirmation the Doctor needed that she had said everything out loud. “When was the last time you were in a relationship?”

The Doctor puffed out indigently. “I’ll have you know I was married for several centuries.”

Jack let out an amused sound. “I know,” he said, and he rubbed over a spot on his wrist. “She bought my vortex manipulator.”

The Doctor gasped, and her fascination over learning this new information, for a moment, let her forget the heartbreak that came with thinking about River. “That’s where she got it.”

“Uh huh,” Jack took a sip of his hot chocolate. “But that doesn’t count, it not like that relationship was exactly linear.”

The pang came in, that dull throb that reminded her of why she had River’s picture on that old desk of hers, why the Doctor still kept that diary near her in her bedroom. “That’s true.”

The pain subsided, as she knew it would. The Doctor had been mourning River since she had met her. By now that loss was like an old friend.

“Let me give you some advice then,” Jack said. “Something that’ll shatter your worldview.”

The Doctor raised a sceptical eyebrow. “There’s not a lot that can do that.”

“Listen to me Doc, no one knows what they’re doing. No one goes into a relationship knowing exactly what they need, knowing exactly what they can do for their partner, or knowing the end result – and, y’know what? No one should know.

“Relationships are hard work, they’re about compromise, they’re about a give and take, and, through it all, you need to understand that your partner isn’t perfect, and they’re going to make mistakes. Just like you will too. You balance each-others best qualities, and your worst qualities.

“The point of relationships is that you care about one another to do what’s right. Sometimes what’s right is to make it work, to help one another and support one another. Sometimes what’s right is to let the other go.

“But I don’t think you should let Y/N go before you’ve even tried. That’s not like you Doc, I didn’t even know it was in your vocabulary.”

“What,” The Doctor said, focusing on the last thing Jack said so she could try to process the rest of it. “Try is definitely in my vocabulary. It’s my M.O, my middle name, if you will. The Try Doctor – no, wait,” she scrunched up her face. “That makes it sound like my first name, oh-”

“Then try, Doctor,” Jack said. “C’mon man, what’s holding you back?”

The Doctor froze mid-speech.

What’s holding you back?

The Doctor thought about your smile, soft and warm in the orange glow of the TARDIS’ crystals, a smile that seemed to be reserved just for her.

“I’m scared,” she spoke in a small voice. “I’m scared of how much I need Y/N. I’m scared of what I’ll do when I lose-”

There was a hand on her knee, and the Doctor realised she had curled in on herself – when had that happened? She forced her body to relax, and went back to dangling her legs out of the TARDIS.

Jack looked at her, truly looked at her, like he did when he had first decided to split apart from her, so many years ago, when they first fought daleks together. “We all are, Doctor,” he gave her a small smile. “What is it you always say, about fear? It’s a superpower isn’t it? Keeps you alive.”

“I’m not worried about being alive right now.”

“No,” Jack agreed. “But that doesn’t make you fear bad. It tells you that you care, that you want it to work out with Y/N. That’s a good thing.”

The Doctor looked at Jack, almost desperately. “What do I do then?”

Jack smiled at her, as if the answer were clear as day. “You do what you always do Doc, you take a leap of faith.”

A leap of faith?

Could she do that?. For you, she reckoned she could do just about anything. Which was the terrifying thing.

But maybe Jack was right. A give and take, a compromise, a balancing act.

A leap of faith?

The Doctor hardened her resolve. For you?

She could do that.

Tag List: @fictionalhoomanofnowhere @dreamer7black @fabulouspotatosister

#the doctor x reader #thirteenth doctor imagine #13th doctor x reader #thirteenth doctor x reader #13th doctor #Doctor Who #DW

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the-queen-of-fools · 3 years

Text

Coffee & Cowboys

Chapter 4

— — —

Word count: 1331 Pairing: Jack ‘Agent Whiskey’ Daniels x English f!Reader (no y/n, no descriptions) Rating: Mature (For language and themes. Might become explicit at some point) Warnings: Swearing; slow burn; angst; mentions of death; post-movie; AU, fix-it fic. A/N: Slow burn. No plan, but I think it’ll update about once a week.

— — —

You stand, and begin to pace a little next to your bed. “Okay, Cowboy. So, you’re not dead, great. But we gotta wake you up which seems slightly more difficult because you’re not here…” You stop suddenly, and turn back to the not-ghost on your bed. “Actually, where would you be? New York?” “Kentucky. That’s where Statesman’s main office is.” He replies quickly, still looking at your laptop screen. “Why would your work move you to be near them if you’re in a coma?” He looks back at you, eyebrows raised, “…insurance?” He doesn’t seem exactly confident in his reply, but you can’t think of any better reasons than that. “…Okay? So you’re in Kentucky, and here… Can you think about your body and see if you can get to there?” “Darlin’ I can’t leave the house without you. What makes you think I can get to fuckin’ Kentucky?” “Just try, please?” You pout. “It’s… just another experiment? It might help?” “Okay, English, fine.” He shuts his eyes, squeezes them tight, and concentrates. You watch him open one of his eyes, shut it, and try again. He opens them again, and sighs when he sees you’re still in front of him. “Nothin’.” You shrug a shoulder, “okay, Cowboy, thanks for trying anyway…” You’re trying to figure out the next move. If Cowboy can’t will himself back into his body, then does that mean you misinterpreted the reply? Is he actually dead, and they just didn’t want to give out that information over email? If he is alive though, in a coma, in Kentucky, then what? You sigh, yet again, at the predicament. “What if… I email again? Try to get them to tell me a specific person to contact, and then find out what exactly is your situation? Try to find your doctor, get a prognosis, see if they can try to wake you up?” “Doubt they’d do that darlin’, privacy and all that.” “Well, what do you suggest then?” You snap back, frustration getting at you. “I don’t know.” “Well, neither do I.”

Time passes, more episodes of the show play, partially to themselves. Jack shakes his head, and mumbles quietly, “I think… I think there was a fight.” You look at him, replying “what?” in a matching volume. “The Poppy thing, the English business connections. There was a fight, maybe?” Your mouth opens and closes at him, at his thought process. You ask gently, hesitantly, “Do you think… Could they have put you in a coma?” “Maybe. Wouldn’t be surprised if they killed me.” He almost whispers the last part, holding back something from you. You still don’t understand why he wouldn’t be fully transparent with you, but you decide not to push - at least he’s telling you more. “Over bourbon?” You almost chuckle at the thought of the cutthroat world of liquor production. “Well, let’s just say whiskey isn’t the only business I conduct, okay darlin’?” You sigh again. “Fine. We’ll just put a pin in that for now. The email seems to suggest you’re not dead, so let’s just hold on to that for now, okay? You’re not dead, you’re ‘currently employed’, possibly in Kentucky.” You try to comfort him with a smile, even though it’s possible you’re just grasping at straws here. “I could email the Kentucky branch? Or phone? What’s the time difference?” You pull your laptop to you again, opening up a tab and searching for the current time in Kentucky. He shakes his head, and waves his hand near you to get your attention. “No, darlin’. It’s too late now. You need to eat anyway…” He repositions his hat on his head, “you workin’ tomorrow?” “I can call in sick, it’s no worry.” “Appreciate it, darlin’. Guess I’ll leave you to it.” And he does. You barely see him again that evening, just like the previous one.

…

You did call in sick to work the next day, just like you said you would. Cowboy Jack was grateful to not be alone with his thoughts for the entire day, and he told you as much, though in a more roundabout way. Then again, from what you could tell, he doesn’t sleep a wink so he’s unfortunately stuck with them for the entire night anyway… After feigning being under the weather to your roommate as she left, you’re settled back on the sofa with the not-ghost next to you, laptop ready to go. Once you figure out what to do, that is. You’re looking through the Stateman website, hoping inspiration will strike, so you can track down the right email address or phone number for someone helpful in Kentucky, when Jack suddenly speaks. “New plan. Ginger.” “Is that a person, or my newest nickname?” You ask him, still looking at the screen. “We work together. She’s the smartest person I know.” You don’t hesitate. “Give me her number.”

Once you get through, you explain everything as clearly as you can, reassured by the cowboy that she wouldn’t hang up on you. Ginger’s tone was one of confusion and curiosity when she asked a few questions throughout your ramble. Luckily, Jack had given you her direct number, you can’t imagine having to explain to any switchboard operators why you should be put through to her office. It was pretty early in the morning, but she was surprisingly alert, and open minded about what you told her. Not that her believing you would help, really. What can someone who works in a distillery do to help figure this all out? Ginger tells you that she wants to talk to her boss, and you can hear her walking, the noises of the elevator in the background. She asks for you to wait a moment, her conversation with a man still faintly coming through the receiver. You put the call onto speaker so that Jack can hear too and respond if needed (albeit via you). Ginger asks a few more questions, little things to start, things you’ve already covered: what does he remember last, does he remember anything about the last 8 months, can he leave? And then slightly weirder things, about Poppy and some men named Harry and Eggsy. You assume the English connections Cowboy mentioned, based on the tone of his voice when he replies. The ones that he thought would be capable of killing him, you guess. When you say this to Ginger, her tone also changes ever so slightly. It’s tighter, more restricted, like she’s trying to figure stuff out before she actually speak to you. “Um, Jack said that they could have been capable of doing this? And he’s being a bit evasive about what he was last doing when this may have happened.” Cowboy frowns at you when you say this, trying to stop you already. “Care to enlighten me a little?” Jack doesn’t stop talking, and Ginger begins to answer, which becomes very confusing very quickly. You can’t tell what either of them are saying in the end, although you’d put money on it that they’re both saying something along the lines of ‘you don’t need to know.’

“Can both of you stop, I have no idea what either of you are saying.” You tell them both, and they do so without protest. The boss speaks instead. “I think it’ll be best for you to come here. It’ll be easier to deal with all this in person. Tell us your address and we’ll send a car. Pack a bag.” “But, what about my life? I have a job to go to.” “Don’t worry about that, we’ll sort everything out.” You realise that you aren’t really getting a choice about this, so after you give your address, the call ends. You look back at Jack, who doesn’t seem pleased at the prospect of going to Kentucky either, before trying to figure out what just happened. “What the fuck Cowboy? You don’t work for a distillery company, do you?”

#Coffee & Cowboys fic #Martha writes #agent whiskey #agent whiskey x reader #agent whiskey x you #kingsman 2 #kingsman: the golden circle

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livesincerely · 4 years

Note

write a fluff piece about Davey finding all the sketches Jack has drawn of him!!!! that’s so adorable!!

I guess I did say to remind me....

00000

Davey is quiet as he flips through the assortment of pages. Or maybe stunned silent is a better way of putting it.

Some of the drawings are outlines, vague sketches with just enough detail to be identifiable. Others are fully-worked: entire pages of careful texture and shading.

They’re all of him.

There’s one of him from the other day, where he’d gotten caught in a storm and came back to the Lodging House sopping wet, his clothes dripping and his hair curling up at the ends from the rain. There’s another of him on his building’s fire escape, hands curled around the railing and head tilted towards the stars. There’s a series of drawings that are just of his eyes, all done in various shades of blue and in a couple of different mediums, which are the only bursts of color so far. Davey asleep at the table in the mess hall, head pillowed in his arms, a pencil starting to slip from his fingers. Davey sitting on the corner of Jack’s desk at Pulitzer’s, looking over his latest political cartoon. Davey with the other Newsies, their bodies drawn in hazy silhouette, or of him on various street corners, hawking newspapers to faceless passerby.

A few of the scenes depicted are things Davey recognizes, distinct instances that he can place in his memory. Others are more nebulous, ordinary moments in an ordinary life. He turns to a new page, this time finding a sketch of him reading an unlabeled novel, curled up in the corner of one of the dorm beds. Davey frowns, a little perplexed. Although it’s beautiful, as all of Jack’s artwork is, he can’t begin to imagine what inspired Jack to draw this particular scene. He’s not even really doing anything in it⁠—it’s just Davey being Davey.

He turns another page and his breath catches in his throat.

It’s a drawing of him⁠, caught mid-laugh with his head thrown back⁠, the morning sun shining brightly behind him and a slew of crisscrossing lines in the background⁠. Davey recognizes it as a moment from a couple weeks ago, when he and Jack had made the trek across the Brooklyn Bridge for a meeting with Spot.

Davey traces a finger gently along the broad strokes of charcoal. Jack had remembered this moment, had kept the image in his mind until he’d had a chance to commit it to paper, then rendered it in astounding detail. And Davey’s no artist, but even he can tell that this drawing must have taken Jack hours. Days even.

“This is what you think of me?” The question falls out of his mouth, so unexpected that not even Davey had realized he was about to ask it. “This is how you see me?”

“Whaddya mean?” Jack responds, arms crossed over his chest, his voice a little gruff in his unease. “‘S how you look.”

“Jack…” Davey trails off helplessly, shaking his head, then starts flipping through the pages again.

It’s wash of ink and charcoal and lead⁠, the occasional flash of blue, but all of him. Davey pauses on a particular sketch⁠—a drawing of him from the shoulders up with his eyes rendered in vivid color.

Colored pencils are expensive. Paint even more so. Davey imagines Jack in an art shop, pictures him hunting through the rows of supplies for just the right shade of blue with that same sort of determination that lead him to start up a strike… Davey’s heart starts pounding in his ears.

“These are beautiful,” Davey whispers hoarsely. “The way you’ve drawn me… you’ve made me look beautiful.”

Jack’s eyes dart here and there. Davey gets the sense that he’s looking for the ‘right’ way to respond to this statement.

“....I don’t hafta make you look beautiful, Davey,” Jack eventually says, scrubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “You already are⁠—I just draw what I see.”

00000

@61-flaming-sour-cherry-scones

#newsies #javid #jack kelly #davey jacobs #*ask #*editor's note #*the writing desk #i can already tell that this is getting its own one shot #like how i wrote more than diplomacy in two days instead of working on my current wips #rip to completing the letterman jacket fic #guess thats gonna have to wait mamas got a new muse

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harley-style · 4 years

Note

If you still want to do the hijack short prompts: finding a new dragon?

[I know I said I wanted ‘short prompts’ BUT THIS ENDED UP SUPER LONG, SO HAVE A ONE-SHOT INSTEAD.]

It was supposed to be a romantic flight. Hiccup had spent a week preparing for this. Just him and Jack (and Toothless, but his dragon knew how to make himself scarce) and the starry night sky, the world at their fingertips.

He'd made sure everything on Berk was settled ahead of time.

He'd made his dad promise to handle the incoming problems for just a day. He'd done it for 14 years, what's one more day, right?

And he made sure the Dragon Riders were all occupied, courtesy of Astrid and Snotlout. That had been a surprise. He'd never expected his cousin to fully support him on this endeavor, but Snotlout had showcased a surprising amount of maturity.

("He's been snapping worse and worse lately, Astrid! I don't want Hiccup to snap at me next, he might send me back to the Dark Deep and you KNOW I hate going there alone!"

"Oh for Freyja's sake Snotlout, will you shut up and help me ensure Hiccup and Jack finally have some alone time together?”)

So it was the perfect set up. He wasn't busy, Toothless could take him anywhere (so could Jack, but there was something special about flying on dragon-back that Hiccup wanted to share with his intended) and Hiccup had scoped out the most perfect location to just sit back and enjoy themselves.

Of course, plans don't always survive first contact.

It was just his luck that there was a dragon that had made its home on the colder than average island Hiccup had been planning to take Jack to.

And what was worse, even Toothless made a valiant effort to ignore the wailing cries. Hiccup had tried to convince Jack that he'd get everyone to check it out tomorrow, but he'd been pinned with a rather harsh look from the winter spirit, who then promptly unwrapped his arms around Hiccup's waist and purposely fell from the saddle.

Which in turn led to this.

"Aren't you precious," Jack cooed uncharacteristically, cradling the newborn dragon in his arms, the snow dragon mewling back and further curling up in the spirit's arms.

Resigned, Hiccup took out his notebook and began taking notes about the dragon cub they'd found. It looked strikingly similar to Toothless, but it was colored like a glacier of ice, its scales looking like frost had made itself home on the dragon's body.

The wing-tips, tail, and extra fins at the start of the tail were sharper than a typical Night Fury, as well.

One of the reasons Hiccup even pegged it as similar to a Night Fury was due to the damning feline behavior it was currently showcasing to his beloved.

"Maybe you aren't the last of your kind after all, huh bud?" Hiccup caressed Toothless' scales, eliciting a warbling noise in response. Hiccup watched as Jack fawned over the Tiny Tooth, playing with its claws and nuzzling its scales in delight.

Jack was really good with children. Even dragon children, it seemed.

And that knowledge....it DID things, to Hiccup.

Jack just looked so soft when handling kids. He might've looked like a troublemaker to most, but Hiccup knew that underneath all that bratty exterior lay a kind and compassionate soul who loved children just as much as Hiccup loved dragons.

He didn't realize he'd stopped writing in his notebook until Toothless nudged him gently with a questioning grumble.

"Hics, there something you wanna say?" Jack teased, peeking at him slyly from behind a curtain of white hair. He'd evidently caught on to the fact that Hiccup had been dumbly staring at the spirit for more than a few moments.

But Hiccup was nothing if not quick on his feet. Foot. Foot and metal prosthetic.

"Oh, nothing much, just waiting on you," he replied, grabbing hold of Jack's waist and pulling him against his chest. Gently, of course, he didn't want to startle the little one. "You're quite taken on him."

"Her," Jack quietly corrected, seeing the dragon in his arms peek curiously at the Viking, but not having enough bravery to leave the spirit's arms. The little dragon burrowed further into Jack's arms once Toothless crawled closer to the couple, curious about the young dragon as well.

"Huh. You can tell?" Hiccup asked, leaning his head against Jack's tuft of white locks. He absolutely loved the height difference between them now that he'd grown into his age. Call it a small petty payback from when Jack used to use his own head as an armrest.

Besides, if he wasn't getting his ideal date, the least he could do was shower his Snowflake with affection.

Jack nodded, staring up at him fondly, knowing exactly what Hiccup was doing, and not giving him any malice from it. That was another thing Hiccup loved about Jack. He clearly loved jokes, played them all the time, and when the joke was turned on him, he was a good sport about it. As long as the joke didn't touch sensitive topics, Jack saw the humor in everything.

"Her kind's a part of my domain..." Jack said, leaning more into Hiccup's hold. "Ice and snow. I don't know how. I can just tell."

"So I see," Hiccup carefully held his free arm out to the dragon, letting it come to him. "Do you want to keep her?" They watched as the ice dragon slowly sniffed at Hiccup's hand, and began to warily nuzzle into it, trusting the human more and more once she saw that Hiccup would not hurt her.

"Can I?" Jack asked, chuckling as the dragon barked curiously at Toothless, fear and caution all but blown to the wind now. Toothless happily warbled and nosed his new friend, yelping when a tiny ice blast hit his face.

Hiccup shrugged. "Sure. What are you gonna name her, though?" There was certainly plenty of room on Dragon's Edge. And Jack was more of a free spirit who hung around Berk merely because his boyfriend lived there. It was never a question about space.

"Elsa," Jack said, smile on his lips. Hiccup recognized the look. It was one of Jack's secret smiles, one that said 'I find it funny, but I know none of you get it and I'm going to sit here basking in the irony of it all.'

It was one of Jack's most common looks. Hiccup knew why the look existed, but his friends and village did not. He had to admit though, it was pretty funny seeing his friends try and fail to figure out why Jack had that particular look about him at oddly specific points.

"Am I getting context or what?" Hiccup nudged Jack.

Jack laughed merrily. "Oh, its not anything big. Just a really, really infamous...story from back home."

Hiccup rose a skeptical eyebrow. "How infamous are we talking here?" It was always fun, gathering bits and pieces of where Jack came from, slowly piecing together a puzzle about Jack's background.

Jack had to turn away and bit his lips from laughing too hard. By this point the newly dubbed Elsa had jumped out of the spirit's arms and was playing with Toothless in some sort of contrived dragon game.

"I'll tell you about it...later," Jack decided, once he finally managed to get his laughter in check. He was clutching his staff tightly, another hand covering his mouth. Hiccup shrugged and opened up his notebook again, seeing as Toothless was inadvertently giving him more information about what Elsa's kind was like.

After a few minutes, Jack spoke up again. "Hiccs?"

Hiccup hummed in response, motioning for Jack to continue.

"I'm really sorry this date thing didn't go the way you were planning it to...I know you wanted it to be only about us."

Hiccup abruptly stopped writing and turned to look at Jack, who wasn't looking at him and hanging his head in shame.

"It's fine, Jack," Hiccup tried to reassure, but Jack made a frustrated noise and held up a hand.

"I'm going to stop you right there dragon boy. Let me finish." Jack rubbed his forehead. "I know how much effort you put into making sure nothing would distract us today, okay? You were busier than ever these past few days." He turned towards Hiccup, leaning against his staff once they were face-to-face.

"I mean...that is true," Hiccup agreed carefully. He'd never lie to Jack.

Jack laughed wryly. "I just had to go ruin that, didn't I?"

Hiccup's brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Jack pointed his staff at the two dragons. "I couldn't ignore that, Hiccup. You've been looking forward to this date all week and I had to brush it all aside the moment I see a dragon."

Hiccup...gets it, he does, but it would be a bit hypocritical of him to truly be upset at Jack if it were the case. "You don't seem to mind when I do it," Hiccup says.

Jack rolled his eyes. "That's because those dates were all instigated by me, babe. And very impromptu. I fully expect you to veer off-course when there's a new dragon around, you fire-breathing nerd."

"I understand you're speaking words, but I don't understand what they mean," Hiccup snarked in reply.

"Don't be a jerk. Anyway, my dates are clearly spontaneous, very prone to distractions. I don't mind that. But I do feel bad when my boyfriend went through all the effort of planning our perfect little date, only to get detoured by a dragon who, by all accounts, isn't in danger or dying," Jack sighed and looked away.

He only looks back at Hiccup because the viking cups a hand around his cheek and turns the spirit's head towards him. "Look," Hiccup said. "I know I acted a little annoyed when you wanted to check this out, back then."

Jack grimaced but nodded.

"And I appreciate that you actually noticed, and I accept your apology, however long-winded the explanation may have taken for me to get it." Jack snorted at that.

"But," Hiccup lifted his other hand to cup Jack's other cheek. "In the long run, it doesn't matter. Jack, I love you. I love you a lot. And as long as you're with me, and I'm with you, I honestly don't care what we're doing. I just want to do it with you by my side. That's all I could really want."

"You big sap," Jack teased, warmth in his eyes. Frost dusted his cheeks, and the only reason Hiccup knew was because he was still holding Jack's face in his hands. "Are you going to kiss me, or what?"

"It was on the agenda," Hiccup cheekily replied, glad that the doubt and guilt plaguing his boyfriend's mind was finally clear.

Jack let himself get pulled in by Hiccup's arm, until they were pressed against each other. Jack circled his arms around Hiccup's neck, and leaned in.

A few meters away, Toothless began herding Elsa further from the two, knowing they would be fully occupied by each other for a while.

For a very long while.

The things he did for his human.

[A/N: Where’s the tag system why isn’t it here? Anyway thank you for the prompt! It was sitting in my inbox for a few days but I had some motivation today so I figured I could write this. It was supposed to be short, but...clearly my hands have other ideas. For the other prompts I received a while back, maybe send me an ask about it? Thanks.

Also, more notes about this HiJack AU:

-Jack’s definitely from the events of ROTG. He’s not ‘stuck’ in the era of vikings, per se, but he can definitely travel to and fro. Because reasons.

-Hiccup knows Jack’s from a distant future. He just doesn’t know what’s IN the distant future and doesn’t care much about it unless it directly relates to Jack.

-None of the others but Toothless knows about Jack’s situation. Jack’s a little shit that leads them on and has them guessing. Astrid has stopped trying to attack Jack about it when she realizes Hiccup knows what Jack is hiding. That’s apparently good enough for her to trust Jack.

-This happens roughly before the second movie. I mean, duh. But it happens after RTTE.

-If you don’t know what dragon I used, it’s called the Ice Fury, a fan-made dragon in the HTTYD fanon wiki. Takes a bit of searching to actually find it, but I found a good pic of what I imagine it to look like:

-just imagine a baby form of that, thanks.

-Yes I did indeed name her after Frozen’s Elsa. Fight me.

-I’m of the personal headcanon that not all Night Furies, subspecies or otherwise, are extinct. In this AU, they aren’t. They’re just a lot more south than the Vikings are used to. They’re rather north-bound, aren’t they?

-I honestly don’t know why I put so much thought into a one-shot that isn’t going to be continued in any way. If you want to take inspiration from this AU, go ahead, I don’t mind. Just be sure to credit the appropriate sources. Including me.

#hijack #frostcup #hiccup horrendous haddock iii #jack frost #hiccup x jack #httyd #rotg #how to train your dragon #rise of the guardians #one shot #date #fanfic #fic #au

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deliciouspeachpirate · 3 years

Note

fluff- 1 or 18 for javid? i love your writing !

A/N Thank you so much, you are so sweet! And thank you for requesting! This is probably not quite what you had in mind, but I’m pretty happy with it! I did a modified version of the “Is that my shirt?” “You mean our shirt?” prompt. This is absolutely entirely fluff. I hope you like it! Have a great night/day everyone, and thank you for reading! Requests are still open if anyone has anything they want to see! <3

"Jack come on, you've been working for hours, its late."

"I just gotta finish this bit tonight Dave, Medda wants this done by the end of the week." Jack added a few strokes to his painting, pulling back to see if it looked the way he wanted. "She has a new show and she really wants this to be ready for it."

"Jack its almost done anyway, leave it for tonight and you can come work on it tomorrow!"

Jack only hummed in response, eyebrows furrowing as he brought his brush back to work on the finer details. The painting was gorgeous. It showed the city from high above, looking out towards the Brooklyn Bridge, with the sun setting in the background. Davey always loved Jack's art, but he liked Jack's sunsets most of all. The colors were always so vibrant, blending together to create something so realistic and yet too beautiful to be found anywhere that Davey knew of. He always felt like he could see Jack in them. The brightness of the reds, oranges, and yellows always seemed so playful yet kind and welcoming, just like Jack was. And underneath that were the pinks and purples that reminded him of the softer, more emotional side of Jack that normally only ever showed itself during late night conversations in the penthouse or when someone was upset. It was bright and rambunctious and playful, and the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It held a sort of mystery or puzzle that Davey couldn't help but be drawn to whenever he looked at it.

He smiled as his thoughts kept drifting around Jack. He couldn't believe that this boy was his boyfriend. Even though they had been dating for a few months now, he still got butterflies in his stomach every time Jack looked at him with his eyes all soft or when he laughed at something. Hell, being around Jack at all gave him butterflies. Not the kind you get when you are nervous anymore, but the kind when you get when you wake up and realize that its your birthday or when you see your best friend after a long time. Being with Jack made him feel beautiful and safe and warm and like there was nothing in the world that he couldn't take on. He mind slipped further and further into a happy daze and his eyes drooped shut as he dreamed about his love.

"-ave, Dave, DAVEY"

Davey jumped, causing Jack's hand to fall from his shoulder. He hadn't realized that he had fallen asleep while waiting for Jack. Unfortunately, he knocked over one of Jack's cans of paint water that was on the table that he had been leaning on next to him and it spilled all over his vest, soaking through to the undershirt he had on under it. He and Jack jumped up and quickly moved to try and dry the table and floor off before it could damage anything else.

"You alright there, Dave?"

Davey sighed exasperatedly, fumbling to move the chair out of the way. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that Jack. How long was I asleep?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders with a little grin, "Don't ya worry bout it, Dave. I have no idea how long you were asleep, you was just quiet for a bit an' when I looked over your head was in your hand an' you were droolin out the side of your mouth."

"Jack! Come on, really?" Davey wiped the corner of his mouth, hoping to not make an even bigger fool of himself.

"Ay relax, sweetheart, ya looked cute," Davey ducked his head and smiled shyly at that. "Now come on, ya gotta get outa your shirt, its all wet."

Jack moved to unbutton it for him before Davey had a chance to, causing him to blush profusely. Of course Jack had seen him without a shirt on before, its not like the two of them hadn't done anything in the three months they'd actually been together, but he was more ready for it then and normal had his mind on...other things. Jack noticed the pink flush across his cheeks and chuckled at him before motioning for Davey to put his arms so he could take of his shirt entirely.

"Aight now, I should have an extra shirt over there," he gestured vaguely to the supply closet on the other side of the room, "go put it on 'for ya get too cold."

Davey thanked him and Jack smiled in return before turning around to put away his paints. Davey jogged over to the closet and opened it. Upon rummaging around a bit, he saw a shirt he was pretty sure he remembered wearing during the last union meeting over in Brooklyn. Chuckling and rolling his eyes at his thieving boyfriend, Davey quickly slipped the dry shirt over his head, buttoning his vest over it.

"Oh Jack!"

Jack looked up at a smirking Davey standing with his arms crossed about a foot away.

"Yes Davey, my love?" he smiled back at him, raising an eyebrow.

Davey wrapped his arms around Jack, pulling him closer to his chest.

"Is there a reason you had my shirt in the closet?"

"Your shirt, don't you mean our shirt? Since apparently that's what it is at this point, huh?"

Davey started twisting Jack's hair between his fingers, smiling down at his cheeky grin.

"Jack, you idiot, no. This is my shirt. Remember, I wore it to Brooklyn the other day?"

Jack started laughing outright at that, startling Davey and causing his eyebrows to knit in confusion.

"Davey, hun, that's MY shirt!" Jack managed to get his explanation out through his chuckles. "You stayed over the night before and put it on instead of your own that morning, I just didn't stop you!"

Davey cocked his head, hardly remembering the rush out the door that morning much less what he had been thinking when he got dressed.

"I'm not so sure about that, Jackie."

"Love, that's what happened," Jack laughed again, "Trust me, the boys wouldn't stop teasin me about it all day. That's my shirt!"

"Okay I guess I have to believe you, but I don't remember that at all, I swear this looks like my shirt," Davey sighed.

Jack put his head against Davey's chest and chuckled again before leaning up to place a quick kiss on his lips.

"Aight Dave, lemme put my brushes away an then I'm walking ya home, meet me at the stage door, hm?" Jack squeezed Davey's hands quickly before stepping back from him and finishing up his cleaning.

A few minutes later, Jack opened the door for Davey as the two of them stepped out into the cool night air. Jack took Davey's hand gently, smiling up at him as he did. Their lips met and they exchanged soft, sweet kisses in between quiet giggles as they walked down the dark street in silence. The kiss lasted a little longer once they reached the building where the Jacob's apartment was. They both whispered their goodnights and Davey jogged up the steps to the door.

"Ay Dave!"

He turned around and raised an eyebrow when he saw the genuine smile on Jack's face rather than the famous Kelly smirk.

"What do you want now, Mr. Kelly? You've already kept me out late."

"Keep the shirt, it looks better on you anyway."

With that and one last kiss blown in Davey's direction, Jack Kelly slid back down the streets of Manhattan and into the darkness. Davey grinned and opened the door, letting the warm light from inside wash over him. Yep, he was in love with that boy.

#newsies #newsies fanfiction #javid #jack kelly #davey jacobs #requested #i hope you guys liked this!#I had fun with this #its just all fluff #i love these boys

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writingwithadinosaur · 4 years

Text

“Under the Knife” - Part 3

My Masterlist - Here

Story Masterlist - Here

My Tag List - Here

Hannibal Lecter x Reader, Will Graham x Sister!Reader

Word Count: 1,700-ish

Key: Chunks of text in italics are (Y/N)’s thoughts. Y/N = Your Name, H/C = Your Hair Color, E/C = Your Eye Color

Warnings: Talk of Murder, Talk of Crime Scenes, Talk of Murder Victims, Cursing

Summary: You are Will Graham’s sister who works with him at the FBI. When you get offered a job promotion, life starts to change. Some changes for the better; Some for the worst.

Tag List: @fruitloopzzz @theeactress @melconnor2007 @ashenfallsof @geeksareunique @all-by-myself98 @sj-thefan @fuck-your-bad-vibes-dude @ntlmundy

Author’s Note: This is my first Hannibal piece and I am proud of it. There aren’t too many stories for Hannibal, so I figured I would add to the collection. This does take place in some happy medium where they are all alive and work together. Sort of a happier season 1 era.

This is beta-read by @theeactress, but please let me know if there is something that we missed or that we should look at again!

If you would like to be tagged in any of my future pieces, check out my tag list above and let me know! And as always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

- DreaSaurusREX

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

“As most of you know, this is (Y/N) Graham, she will be our profiler for this case.”

“Oh good. Another Graham.” Beverly commented over her clipboard, writing down something involving the case probably. Jack gave her a chastising glance and she held her hands up in defense.

“(Y/N) this is Beverly Katz, Brian Zeller, and Jimmy Price.” Jack introduced you very quickly to the science-ier part of the team very quickly before jumping right into work. “So, tell us what you got so far, (Y/N).”

You opened your small notebook and began summarizing your notes from last night’s reading.

“Alright. So far I’ve been able to see three patterns: the ways they were killed, the time frame, and the fact that all of the victims that were dismembered were doctors. The strongest thing I can think of is that this killer was wronged by doctors in some way. I’m not sure if it's a doctor in the general term or if there is some specific way that ties these three doctors, and our killer, together. That was something I was going to work on today.

The way that the bodies are taken apart is very particular. From what I could tell from the photos in the files, all of the cuts seemed to be straight lines all the way through. Which means that this guy’s gotta have access not only to the tools that can do this sort of stuff, but also whatever drug he got in their system to make them lay still while he... worked. So I’m assuming the murder weapon is nothing with a jagged blade or saw-like teeth until we get to the bone. Do we have any reports on striation patterns or anything that could help us with what was used?”

“It’s like you said, the cuts were almost completely straight lines, even through to the bone. The only things we could think of were surgical tools.” Zeller spoke up. “The skin and muscles were cut similarly to how a surgeon would with a scalpel. But the bone is where it gets tricky. You can’t cut like this through bone with just a scalpel.”

“Unless you have plenty of time and you're very persistent.” Beverly joked; you were the only one that slightly exhaled a laugh through your nose at her quip.

“Alright, so the killer has a medical background.” Jack tossed into the air. You nodded.

“Possibly. But why would a doctor be going after other doctors?”

“Maybe they’re taking all his patients?” Beverly shot out. You just nodded and looked back at your notes to see where you left off.

“The uh.. The most concerning thing is the time frame. They were all killed two weeks part from each other. Dr. Everet was almost 6 weeks ago, Dr. Chaseten almost 4, and Dr. Loriet about 2.”

“Which means we could have another dead doctor within the week.” Jack solemnly spoke as he realized the gravity of the situation. “Alright, you three keep looking over everything to see if we missed something. (Y/N), start working on possible correlations between the victims and the killer. Let’s get this son of a bitch.”

And that’s how the next two days went. Researching, thinking, and trying to get into a mindset that you weren’t totally sure of yet.

You had checked in with Will like you promised and said that you were fine but you were going to be very busy for at least the next few days. Hannibal had called you after your first day and could hear the slight exhaustion in your voice. He asked you to have lunch with him tomorrow and you very quickly agreed.

But the next day, you spent more time than you thought flipping through the databases to try to find any correlation between Everet, Chasten, and Loriet. The three of them never worked in the same hospital, clinic, or even the same city. Their wives didn’t know each other. Their neighbors didn’t know each other. They didn’t have any sort of communication with each other. They were all different types of doctors. Everet and Loriet went to the same med school, but they graduated 3 years apart.

So what the fuck am I missing?

You kept looking back over the crime scene photos. You couldn’t understand why the doctors were mutilated and positioned so intricately, but the others were cast aside. The focus has to be on the doctors. They must have done something to ‘wrong’ the killer. So what the hell did all three of you do to make someone want to murder?

Your train of thought was interrupted by a knock at your office door. You let out a slightly aggravated sigh.

“Jack, I told you I will let you know when I-- Oh! Hannibal! Hi!” You looked up from your computer screen to find Hannibal standing in the doorway with a bag in his hand.

“Should I come back later?”

“No! No. Come on in. I probably should take a break. I feel like I’m going in circles anyways.” You looked at your watch and saw it was almost 3:30 PM. The last time you looked at the clock, it was 10:30 AM. “And I missed our lunch meeting.” You put your head in your hands and groaned in annoyance with yourself. “I am so sorry, Hannibal. I--”

“No need for apologies, my dear. I figured Jack had put a lot on your plate, so I thought I would bring lunch to you.” Hannibal made his way into your office and shut the door behind him.

“You really didn’t have to.”

“When was the last time you ate, (Y/N)?” Hannibal questioned you, looking you dead in the eye after he sat down in one of your office chairs.

You weren’t entirely sure. You started to speak but then stopped yourself, really trying to remember when you ate last. I know I had ½ of my breakfast at 7:30 this morning. Did I have my granola bar? Does coffee count as a meal?

“The fact that you have to think about when your last meal was, is a bit concerning. But nonetheless, I am more than happy to remedy that. ” He smiled one of his rare but small smiles and began unpacking whatever culinary art he brought. You tried to condense some of your piles of papers and folders so you had enough room to put food down.

Hannibal had brought a home-cooked meal for the two of you to enjoy. A ginger salad with fresh pan-seared scallops and even some infused water that he had marinating in his fridge overnight. This was so much better than the PB&J you had packed.

As you began to dig in, Hannibal couldn’t help but look at some of the crime scene photos and your notes.

“So what are we calling this killer?”

“‘The Virginia Scalpel.’” You said with slight annoyance. “He has a medical background and is within a reasonable distance from all of the vics. Yet, we have no idea who he is.”

“Does the killer have to be a medical professional? Maybe they just have very steady hands.”

“True. But there is almost no way that a regular guy could cut through muscle and bone that cleanly without surgical tools or the knowledge of how to use them. Not to mention the fact that he would have some serious explaining to do on how he got the succinylcholine or whatever paralyzer he plans to use next.” You rub your eyes gently, feeling the strain from the computer screen hitting you. Hannibal could feel the stress radiating off of you.

“Do you want to talk about this case?”

“Not really. But I’m not sure what else to talk about. This has been my life for the last 3 days, the killer could strike again any day now, and I still don’t know why these three doctors were targeted or who will be next!”

You started to fidget with your ring unconsciously and a bit aggressively, a sign to Hannibal that your anxiety was starting to catch up. Despite the physical signs that you needed a break, you continued to glance over an open file near you while you took another bite of food. He leaned forward in his seat a bit as he closed the file that you had been rereading for what he assumed to be at least the tenth time.

“(Y/N), you need to breathe.” You just nodded and closed your eyes to try to help your deep breaths relax you faster. “How about we go for a walk? Get the blood flowing.”

“I would love to. But I feel like I can’t afford that break right now.” You shook your head slightly as you reached down for a stack of papers you had bundled and put on the floor earlier. You didn’t see him get up, but Hannibal was standing, adjusting his jacket before holding a hand out to you.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” You looked from his hand to his face before standing up, shrugging. A small walk around the building wouldn’t hurt, right?

Before your hand could land in his, your phone rang and you felt your heart sink, dreading what could be waiting for you on the other end of the line. Both you and Hannibal looked down at your phone and saw the caller ID: “Jack Crawford.” You took a deep inhale and hit the answer button.

“I really hope you’re calling just to bug me to work faster, Jack…” You tried your best to control your voice. You looked up and Hannibal was watching, trying to listen in and gauge how you were going to react.

“Afraid not. There’s another Scalpel vic. I’m texting you the address. Drop whatever you're doing and get down here.” Jack hung up before you could say anything, leaving you in a bit of shock.

Dammit! What the hell am I missing?! Someone else is dead--Another doctor is dead because I don’t have any answers yet. How can--

“(Y/N)?” Hannibal’s hand on your arm broke your stream of internal chastising before it could get too bad, but you did unintentionally jump at the contact. He instantly raised his hands up and let you process for a moment. “There’s another one, isn’t there?”

You just nod. A second later, your phone flashed a message from Jack with an address.

“Guess my ‘walk’ is going to be to a crime scene.” You try to joke despite feeling a tinge of guilt spreading through you. Hannibal tried to walk you to your car but you kindly denied him. You wanted to be alone as you prepared yourself for your first real crime scene.

#hannibal #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal fandom #hannibal imagine #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter / reader

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artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

My Favourite (Gigi x Nicky) - Mina

A/N: Im sorry it’s been so many queues! The next fic I write is gonna be reallly long and good and yes so I did this in the meantime. Definitely not my best work but I hope you enjoy it anyway :>

Gigi and Nicky have silently competed over the title of Arcelia’s favourite aunt for months now, until they coincidentally have to babysit her at the same time.

Gigi Goode was a reasonable woman. She was reasonable enough through her childhood that her parents declared that she was a gifted child, even though all she did was study and be a good kid in general. She was reasonable enough in high school that she managed to enter the most prestigious University in the country, and secured the valedictorian title since she went into her first class. And of course, Gigi was nothing sort of an unreasonable woman so she made connections everywhere - work, organizations, charity, so on. What mattered was that she made connections to smooth her life. A reasonable woman needed a best friend, someone to call when she felt down or felt giddy, and for her, the best friend came in the form of Jackie Cox. Tall, had an IQ of 148, liked to read psychological books for fun, and most importantly, she had dimples. The Persian was perfect as a best friend, Gigi adored that woman, aspired to be like her, even. She was successful, beautiful, and had a good sense of humor even though people around them didn’t find it funny.

The brunette had found a reasonable job with a more than reasonable pay, finally could afford the apartment she had aspired to live in since she was a mere high school freshman, and because she was a very reasonable woman, Gigi had planned to hit the club and maybe make out with a guy or girl – she wasn’t picky – because tonight was Friday night and she had made it through a very tough day at work. Some asshole didn’t turn in their report on time and left Gigi reeling because everything had to be delayed. That was fine. It had passed and everything was fine so she was allowed to treat herself to a nice make-out session.

At least until Jackie had called her and asked for her help. “We really can’t miss tonight’s banquet,” she said hurriedly, and Gigi had heard a child crying faintly in the background. “We can’t bring Arcelia because the invitation says no children allowed – “

“And why is that, by the way?” The brunette asked, putting down the tight red dress she was going to wear realising that she wouldn’t be having a make-out session tonight. “Isn’t it your own company?”

Jackie sighed into the phone, Gigi could practically hear the frown on her face. “I know. It’s – it’s ridiculous but Jan’s brother was supposed to go with her but he’s suddenly down with the flu and She refused to go alone. You know how it is.” she sounded so agitated that the brunette couldn’t help but felt pity for her.

“Is Arcie crying?”

“Yeah,” The Persian woman sounded so tired, and Gigi thanked God profusely that she didn’t have a child yet. “She kind of senses that we’re going to go somewhere? She’s definitely handful.”

The brunette hummed, finally settled on a pretty black sweater after rummaging her closet. “You love her anyway.” She chuckled, fumbling through her purse to find her set of keys.

“Of course. I wouldn’t trade her even for the quietest kid. She – “ Jackie hesitated, “She said she wants a sibling, you know?”

“A sibling?” She had to swallow down her laugh, Jackie could hardly keep track of her wife, let alone two children.

“Yep,” the older woman simpered, “we aren’t ready, not so soon after adopting. We’re still adjusting to the life of parenthood, you know.”

“I know.”

Gigi was in the elevator when Jackie asked timidly, “You’re coming, right?” She could hear the worry in her voice, the sound of Arcelia squealing echoing through the microphone.

“Yeah, of course,” she replied, “Be there in 10.”

“Thanks, Gigi.”

She was behind the wheel less than five minutes later. She truly didn’t mind that he had to babysit Arcie on a Friday night when she was supposed to be hitting on people at the club, Gigi adored that kid. It was starting to get repetitive, anyway, ordering a drink, chatting up the bartender, buying a drink for the most attractive person in the room, dancing, kissing, groping, and then the sweaty and sticky situation she would end up into by the end of the night. Perhaps it wouldn’t be repetitive if she had someone to take care of, someone who cared about her just as much as Gigi cared about them. But so far, she hadn’t found one. The people she went to dates with rarely got a ticket into the second date, because she would find them too boring, too daring, too pessimistic, too enthusiastic, and she was a reasonable woman who needed a reasonable partner, so she shrugged them off her shoulders and went home without looking back. Maybe baby sitting her friends kids gave her a sense of commitment, or maybe she just liked watching Arcelia smile.

She was reasonable. Very reasonable, in fact, that she grinned when Jackie opened her door with a distressed demeanor 10 minutes later. “Hey Jack. Where’s the baby?”

“Inside..” She answered, chewing on her. Gigi arched her eyebrow. “Hey, I’m going to apologize to you. You’ll forgive me, right?”

The younger woman tilted her head. “Are you not going to the banquet?”

If it was true, it was truly not a big deal for Gigi. Sure, she hadn’t gone to the club because of this but after thinking about it, she would rather soak in the bath up rather than going to a sweaty and sticky place. She had bought a book last week, too, so maybe he could catch up on her reading. Probably not.

Jackie sighed. “We’re still going. But,”

“Spill it. It’s okay.”

The other grimaced, and Gigi started to feel something stirring in her stomach. Definitely not something good. “Jan didn’t know I already called you to babysit,” she started, “so she texted Nicky to come over and she’s already inside with Arcie.”

Oh. Oh.

Gigi didn’t know what to do with the information.

Nicolette Doll, Jan’s best friend and by extension Jackie’s friend, a tall, thin French woman with golden blonde hair and a stupid accent. Gigi didn’t like her, and Nicky certainly didn’t like Gigi much either. They’d met many times, might’ve even been friends a couple years ago perhaps, and she couldn’t pinpoint when exactly they began to despise each other but the animosity was certainly there. Nicky was a bitch, controlling, ambitious and strikingly similar to herself, which the brunette hated her for. The only time they willingly interacted was when Arcie was involved, silently competing over the esteemed title of ‘Arcelia’s favourite aunt’.

Gigi was the favorite aunt because she bought her favourite chocolate milk last week, obviously. Nicky tried her best, she supposed, she wore daisy perfume and did funny voices for the characters in picture books, made macarons for fun, but of course the brunette was much more likeable or else she wouldn’t have been in the running for so long, and what Gigi wouldn’t give to knock her gigantic ego down a few pegs.

She snorted. She wasn’t going to let Nicky snatch up her hard-earned position. Gigi was Arcelia’s favorite aunt and God help her if she ever lost to Nicky fucking Doll. “Cool.” She replied, leaning casually against the doorframe. “I’m still going to babysit her.”

Jackie frowned, eyes clearly expressing her hesitation towards the idea. Gigi couldn’t blame her, really, because the last time they babysat together Arcie had cried so much that Jan had refused to talk to either of them for a week. But that was then, this was now and the brunette was sure that they could handle each other just fine.

“Don’t stress too much about it, Jack,” she grinned reassuringly. “Where’s my favourite niece?”

“She’s your only niece.” The Persian woman replied dryly, opening the door behind her and allowing Gigi to step through.

Their apartment was warm, a more modern place combined with little family touches that made it feel homey and safe. Normally Gigi would’ve thrown herself over the couch, maybe opened the fridge to check that the couple was still capable of buying food, but when she glanced at the love seat where Nicky sat covering her eyes delicately with her fingers and counting down from ten in that stupid French accent, Gigi didn’t even attempt to conceal her scowl.

“Hey Gigi, it’s been so long!” Jan beamed from the kitchen, a tiny dark haired child hugging her leg as she struggled to tie up her dress one handed “Someone’s been very excited to see you.”

“Hi honey,” Gigi beamed, grabbing Arcelia’s attention as she came running over to her instantly with a squeal. “and here’s my favorite niece in the world! How are you doing, sweetie? I haven’t seen you in a week and look at how much you’ve grown.”

The child giggled, gently tugging on the brunette’s hand. “Aunty Gigi, play with me! Dolly’s counting to ten while we hide my new teddy!”

Arcelia pointed to a tuft of brown fur sticking out from between some cushions, the tag of what Gigi knew to be a very expensive toy shop poking out as well. Shit, Nicky was pulling out the big guns. Fine, two could play it that game.

“She’s going to grow up spoiled,” Jan complained at the gesture, even though her wife was practically dragging her out the door. “You always buy her things. Why don’t you just have your own children?”

“It’s no fun,” Nicky spoke for the first time, eyes still covered by well manicured fingers. “My own kid requires me actually taking care of them. With Arcie, you two do the taking care and I can do the spoiling.”

The blonde huffed. “Whatever,” then, she kneeled down to speak to her daughter who was still hugging Gigi. “Hey baby, Mommy and Mom are going out now, okay? Be good with your aunts.”

Arcelia grinned, sticking out her tongue playfully.

Jackie bent down to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Bedtime’s at 9, kiddo. ‘Ahbak. Don’t throw a tantrum when your aunties tell you to go to sleep.”

“I won’t” The child nodded determinedly, hands on her hips. Gigi laughed painfully, she knew from years of babysitting experience that was most definitely a lie.

“Be careful, okay?” Jackie looked back towards the two woman, lip again pulled nervously between her teeth. “Call me if anything goes wrong. And remember that she’s not allowed chocolate after seven. I’ll be re-“

“We’ll be fine Jackie, go to the fancy banquet or whatever.” Gigi rolled her eyes, shooing her out of the door and pulling Arcelia close to her side. “It’s not like we would ever fight in front of her” she scoffed, shooting Nicky a piercing glance.

“Merdé, of course not. You Americans worry so much.” The French woman remarked. She peaked through the gaps between her fingers with narrowed eyes “Arcie, I hope you hid Jeromeo well because I’m getting hungry!” She growled, stomping her feet against the hardwood. Of course Nicky had somehow made the kid name her bear fucking Jeromeo.

Arcelia shrilled, sprinting to go hide behind the kitchen countertop. “You’ll never find him!” she yelled triumphantly, dark brown hair peaking just slightly overtop the marble. “Not over my dead body!”

“We’ll see about that, petite fille. If I don’t find him, I’ll have to eat you instead!” Nicky grinned, jumping up off of the couch and almost comically pausing when she saw Gigi standing awkwardly to the side, fiddling with the hem of her sweater. “Oh yeah, hi Gigi.” The French woman smirked, eyes bright and taunting while tiny strands of hair fell out of her loose ponytail to frame her face.

Right now, it was white blond, cut short to brisk the tops of her shoulders. Gigi could picture herself running her fingers among the strands, hands grazing her scalp and tugging softly. She scoffed to herself, no way in hell was she going to be running her fingers through Nicky’s hair anytime soon. Why would she even want to.

The other looked up, grin tensing into an offended frown. “Are you making fun of me?” She raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms.

Gigi faulted, flinching at the angry tone. “Wh – how? I didn’t even insult you.”

The blonde didn’t stutter, tilting her head. “You scoffed. You think I didn’t hear you?”

Gigi scoffed again, just to prove that she could. She looked over at Arcelia, who had forgotten about whatever chasing game her and Nicky were going to play in favour whispering something to Jeromeo, petting his soft head carefully.

She studied the stuffed animals detailed embroidery, tan fur resembling the French woman’s own hair. “You bought her that?” Gigi asked nonchalantly, mind running through ideas of how she could top it. A toy boat, maybe? Some nice clothes?

“Yeah,” Nicky answered, looking caught off guard. “She actually declared me as the aunt of the week moments before you arrived.”

Gigi scowled, watching as Arcie swung the teddy around fondly in her arms. “Oh please. I’ll have the title by next week tops.”

“You really think I would let you do that?”The shorter woman asked sagely, raising a challenging brow. “I am her favorite aunt ever, so no matter wh-“

“I am her favorite aunt ever times a thousand, you fuck – “

“Fuck!” Arcelia giggled against her wrist, looking up at the two older women with a grin. Gigi gaped, staring down at her with horror and frantically waving her hands in front of the Persian child to will her to stop. Arcie only said it louder, smiling innocently while chanting the curse word around the living room like a nursery rhyme.

Nicky cackled, clapping her hands at Gigi’s misfortune. “Have fun explaining that, Miss Goode.”

She was fucked.

***

“Do you want coffee?” Nicky asked, pursing her lips and gesturing to the kettle sitting on top of the marble counter. Gigi looked up from the couch, smoothing down the layers of blankets and pillows while Arcelia fiddled happily on the living room rug.

The brunette glanced up, blinking, “Can you make me a hot chocolate?”

The older woman snorted. “I was generous enough by offering you a cup of coffee.” Still, she reached for the mason jar full of cocoa powder and carefully sifted it into a mug.

Gigi shrugged, pulling her gaze away from Nicky’s hands (dainty, elegant hands) back to the television. “It’s for Arcie, though.”

The Blonde tilted her head, narrowing her eyes, “You don’t want some?”

“No,” The shorter woman scrunched up her nose, “I need something stronger than hot chocolate.”

“What, like a drink?”

She hummed. “Yeah, can’t drink it with the little one present, though.” Arcelia looked up with a bright smile, cheeks puffing out like a squirrel. Gigi pulled her close, ruffling her dark hair.

Nicky sat down on the sofa after, setting the mug down carefully on the table and taking a sip of her own coffee. “What movie is this?” She asked as the intro music played, running her eyes critically at the screen.

“Frozen. You know, Elsa, Anna, all the magic shit.”

“Shit!” Arcelia giggled quietly, to enamoured with the movie to really pay attention. Gigi groaned, bringing a hand to her head in frustration.

The blonde laughed, throwing her head back, “Jan’s gonna be fuming if she finds out all the words you’ve taught her.”

“Yeah,” she replied with a sigh, picking at the edge of the couch cushions, “At least I’m your favourite Aunt, right Arcie?”

Nicky clicked her tongue, “No way. I’m her favorite aunt, I won this week fair and square.”

“Fine,” The brunette sighed in defeat, rolling her eyes, “But we’ll see about next week. She obviously is gonna pick me.”

Nicky smirked, “You think so? I’d like to see you try.”

The blonde focused her attention back to the movie, not giving Gigi a second glance. The younger woman tried to do the same, but every few minutes she couldn’t help but gaze conspicuously in Nicky’s direction, eyes roaming the others features appreciatively. Gigi told herself it was because the French woman happened to have white blond hair, a very distracting color in the dimly lit room. Yes. Gigi was sure. Nicky Doll’s only attractive body part was her white blond hair. Soft, golden, white blonde hair.

Why was she thinking about Nicky Dolls attractive body anyway? Gigi shook her head, she was just tired because she had had a long day and needed something to relax and Nicky was right there, eyes narrowing in disdain because some character in Frozen did something stupid, lips pursed and bitten a diluted red.

“Why,” The blonde started exasperatedly, startling Gigi out of her thoughts, “does Elsa have to isolate herself in a fucking room?”

“Language,” The shorter woman chastised, glancing down at Arcelia who was slumped over her lap, eyes sleepy and unseeing. “She didn’t want to hurt her sister.”

“Oh s'il te plait, she already has gloves,” Nicky pointed out with a frown, leaning back against the sofa.

“It’s still dangerous.”

The blonde puckered her lips again, ready to complain but clearly thought better, instead running a hand through the child’s hair gently and leaning down to face her, “Hey, sweetheart, do you want a hot chocolate?”

Arcelia shook her head tiredly, eyes unmoving from the screen, so Gigi sighed and tried to enjoy the movie for her sake, even though she had seen in hundred of times before.

At least until Nicky complained again.

“Anna is the stupidest character I’ve seen, and I’ve seen plenty of stupid characters.”

“She’s not stupid!”

The blonde snorted into her coffee. “Falling in love with a man she met on the same day? Stupid, if you ask me.”

Gigi shrugged. “We don’t know about that, really. Don’t you believe love at first sight?”

“I don’t,” Nicky answered curtly. “Love at first sight means you only look at the person’s appearance, right? It means you fall for a person because of their looks, and not their personality.”

“So are you saying,” The brunette laughed a little, “that you’re willing to date anybody as long as they have a great personality?”

Nicky groaned, looking back at the movie. “I’m still shallow enough to prefer good looking woman, Gigi. And I don’t just fuck anybody. I’m not like you.”

She laughed again, leaning her head back against the sofa. “I actually wanted to get laid tonight.” Gigi reminisced, remembering the leather jacket she had left at home. She would’ve looked ravishing in that.

“I don’t need to know that, you dummy.”

Gigi didn’t answer, instead looking down to check on Arcelia, who was already sleeping. It was rather an odd position to fall asleep in, head resting on Gigi’s thigh while her legs tangled in between Nicky’s.

“She’s sleeping,” murmured the French woman quietly.

“No shit.”

“Should we take her to her bed?”

“Yeah,” she replied, “She’ll get cranky if she’s in that position too long.”

Nicky scooped the child up into her arms easily, hand brushing slightly against Gigi’s side. The blonde nodded, signalling to the younger to wait while she put the kid to bed. Gigi didn’t have to be told twice, her mind was reeling. She didn’t understand how she was feeling, heart racing although she couldn’t pin point why. Maybe it had all started when Nicky had touched her thigh, but she’d never felt so romanised by it…ever. Repulsed, sure. But this was an entirely new reaction and it bothered her, so so much.

Nicky wasn’t ugly. She was really attractive and even if the brunette didn’t like her, she had to acknowledge that. Nicky was so attractive, she looked like a model straight out of a fashion magazine that Gigi might’ve fawned over when she was younger and fuck did that make her head spin. Her lips were pretty as well. They looked soft. Gigi wondered if they felt as soft as they looked.

She was fucked. Especially when she realized just how much she wanted to kiss the older woman and melt into her embrace. She was extremely fucked, especially when said woman was in the other room and was coming back to sit next to her to continue watching the movie. With nothing separating them now.

“So,” Nicky announced once the child was taken care of, sitting elegantly back down on the lounge, “You believe in love at first sight, then?”

“Not really. But countless people fell in love at the first sight, so who am I to squash the theory?” Gigi shrugged, eyes burning holes into the television scream to avoid Nicky’s piercing gaze.

The blonde clicked her tongue. “There’s no theory,” she mused, “it’s just statements after statements and people can lie, you know.”

Gigi hummed, “But will we ever know?”

“No.” She shrugged. “I didn’t believe in love until recently, actually.”

Her heart stung at the hint behind those words, shoulders slumping in disappointKent although she didn’t really know why, “Did you finally find a girlfriend? Gee, took you a while.”

Nicky chuckled, picking at her cuticles with a sigh. “No, still single as ever.”

“Oh,” Gigi immediately relaxed, “Well, that makes two of us I guess.”

She knew she had stepped into personal territory, but Nicky didn’t seem to mind. “I want to find someone but I’ve been so busy with work, you know? And dating apps don’t really work for anyone, so..”

“Why are you telling me this? Ew.” Gigi stuck out her tongue, scrunching her nose up in disgust.

“Why?” The French woman raised an eyebrow, “You jealous?”

The brunette scoffed, but it didn’t sound as convincing as it should’ve. “No. Why would I be?”

“I don’t know,” the other replied, “maybe because you have a crush on me?”

Oh god.

Shit shit shit. “I don’t.”

“Gigi,”

The brunette didn’t move.

“Cherì,”

Gigi hesitantly looked up, the French nickname sounding warm in her ears. It felt weird, and yet familiar at the same time. Her breathing hitched when Nicky held her shoulders, expression unreadable and satire.

“You do, don’t you?”

Gigi still didn’t move, still staring at the taller woman in disbelief. She herself had only come to realize that fact just now, but how could Nicky –

Oh. It made sense now. “What am I thinking right now?” She asked breathily, eyes wide in terror.

Nicky looked dumbfounded, emotionless facade faultering. “What?”

“Answer me. What am I thinking right now?” There was no better explanation as to why Nicky was able to guess his feelings right away, plus that stupid French accent certainly added to the witchy aesthetic. Nicky was a fucking mind reader. Gigi was sure of it.

“How am I supposed to know?”

“I don’t know, by reading my mind?” She reiterated, waving her hands to encourage her to continue.

“Why the fuck would I be able to read minds?”

“You tell me!”

“No,” Nicky snapped, “I don’t read minds. You’re just an open book.”

“But,” Gigi narrowed her eyes, “You were able to deduce this five minutes after I realised it?”

The French woman’s jaw dropped wide open, eyes once again widening. “You mean to tell me you realized that you like me five minutes ago?”

“Yeah.”

“And before that?”

“I hated your guts.”

“I hated your guts too, by the way.”

Gigi smirked, lifting her chin, “Past tense”

The blonde rolled her eyes, “Can I kiss you?” She sounded depraved, fingers twitching on top of Gigi’s shoulders.

“What?! Why?!” The brunette jolted, recoiling backward.

The other woman sighed deeply, looking like she was contemplating her choice. Maybe she would’ve taken back the words but it was rather late for that. “That means I like you, you dumbass. And I know you like me back, you’ve been hinting at it for months and I was waiting for you to finally crack.

Gigi stared at Nicky in disbelief, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t give you any hints. What are you talking about?”

“You asked me to put sun screen on your back even though it was the middle of winter?”

“That’s a completely valid ask, you perv!”

“Okay, what about all the times you’ve laughed at my jokes.”

“Maybe I hated you but if you’re funny I’m still going to laugh.”

“When you winked at me during brunch”

“Crystal punched me seconds before that.”

“When you go to the vegetable section with me at the grocery store.”

“Because Arcie likes vegetables?”

Nicky groaned, face red in embarrassment. “I’m so humiliated right now, damn it.”

The brunette laughed, hesitantly wrapping her arms around Nicky’s waist. “No, don’t be. I still like you back, remember?”

The taller woman looked up and stared at Gigi with an open mouth, as though waiting for her to take it back. “Wait, you meant it?”

“Of course,” Gigi snorted. “Enemies to lovers, or whatever.”

They were silent for a moment, just basking in each other’s presence. Gigi’s eyes traced every line of Nicky’s face, wondering what would it feel like if she touched it.

“Can I kiss you?” The blonde asked quietly, rolling her eyes while Gigi giggled at the words.

It was a very sweet kiss.

And because Gigi was a very reasonable woman, she kissed Nicky back

#rpdr fanfiction #gigi goode #nicky doll #gigi x nicky #jankie #lesbian au #fluff #enemies to lovers #mina #concrit welcome #submission #s12

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