#and sitting beside the rubble. the way he slumps down and the fucking
Text
I hate HATE that the final song in the HLD soundtrack is called Panacea because Drifter doesn't get his OWN panacea. He's victorious yes but in the end he doesn't get what he needs most. I'm about to ugly cry just thinking about it
#HLD is a game that I love but. oh my god. it hurts so bad dude#like HE DOESN'T GET HIS OWN CURE. HE FUCKING SUCCUMBS TO HIS ILLNESS#SLASH INJURIES AND I JUST. LET HIM LIVE.#DON'T PLAY A SONG REFERENCING A CURE-ALL WITH A MAN DYING ON SCREEN PLEASE 😭 I'm not emotionally strong#enough for that#not art#hyper light drifter#listening to the HLD soundtrack on shuffle and I shit you not if Panacea starts playing I'm going to choke on my own sobs no joke#literally the only like. fictional character death that ever made me THIS emotional was the Hollow Knight#the first few times and then I accidentally desensitized myself to it :') it still hurts lore-wise though#but god Drifter? he makes me hit the floor and WRITHE I become such a massive sob baby#AND FOR A COMPLETELY WORDLESS GAME TOO. dude that is POWERFUL#the BUILDUP TO IT ALL#the climax the sense of dreaded victory because you have a FEELING. you KNOW that something will happen. Drifter limping away#and sitting beside the rubble. the way he slumps down and the fucking#okay yeah. gonna cry brb or good night! one of the two#tw ???
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
hear those bells ring: chapter 2 (a deaf!bakugo x reader fic)
Summary: Reader has to deal with the aftermath of Dynamight exploding through her window and trying to bleed out on her floor.
Pairings: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader; Katsuki Bakugo x You
Rating: M(ature)
Warnings: Blood, descriptions of gore, and adult language.
A/N: Here’s chapter two, hope you enjoy! ~*~*~ No spoilers or anything. This is just a self-indulgent AU fic with aged up characters. Everyone’s in their mid-20s. Fic title is from a song called “Achilles Come Down.”
AO3 Link: Here
Ch 1 Tumblr Link: Here
Chaos. You intellectually knew the word, in several languages in fact, but nothing could have ever prepared you for the reality of it.
Information assaulted your senses in a deluge. The gust of cold air whistling through the broken window, raking icy fingers down your exposed arms. The bright flare of flames, even behind your clenched eyelids. The dissonant, haunting wails of several car alarms, each one just a second out of sync with the next, barely audible over the loud ringing in your ears. The taste of ash, gritty on your tongue as you sucked in heaving, panting breaths. The sharp smell of smoke and something… sweeter. Like caramelizing sugar.
The sweet scent, incongruous with every other heinous detail, seemed to snap you fully back into your body, and your eyes flew open with a gasp.
You were curled up in a tight ball below your now broken window, and you gaped at your ruined apartment. The lights were out, so the only illumination you had to see by were the flames behind you on the street, but it was enough.
It looked like a tornado had torn through your home. The remnants of your window and wall—broken bits of glass, wood, and plaster—covered everything in sight in a fine layer of white dust. Your sewing desk/kitchen table was in splinters, and even with the dancing shadows, you had the distant thought that the dress you’d just finished mending was most definitely ruined.
Then someone shouted outside on the street, and you felt it like a sledgehammer to the skull.
Oh, god. The villain. The heroes.
You scrambled up onto your knees, hissing when shards of glass tore through your sweatpants and bit into your skin. You’d worry about that later. For now, you focused on getting to your feet…
And not falling out of the gaping hole in your apartment wall.
You stumbled back a few steps from the edge, stabilizing yourself on one of your kitchen chairs that seemed to have survived the blast. The smoke was thicker now that you were off the floor, and you coughed and squinted against the hot, irritating air.
The street in front of you was a warzone.
The windows in the building across from you were all blown out, the empty frames like black gaping voids. The building housed a café/tea shop owned by Mr. and Mrs. Yamato, and you felt a small modicum of relief at the knowledge that they didn’t live above the shop like you did with yours. They lived in a neighborhood not too far away, and they wouldn’t be happy when they came to open in the morning, but at least they were safe.
Safe…
“Mr. Takeyoshi!” you gasped as you remembered your neighbor. He’d been standing on the street and nearly attacked by the villain, but a blond hero had pushed the middle-aged man out of the way.
Your eyes scoured the street as you leaned forward as much as you dared, and just as your heart was beginning to clench, you spotted him. Mr. Takeyoshi was sitting on the curb across the street and about four storefronts down, hunched over with his head in his hands. Two heroes stood above him and seemed to be tending to him, and all three of the men looked whole for the most part.
“God.” You exhaled shakily, your heart still stuttering in your chest, and then movement in your peripherals caught your attention.
One hero seemed to possess a water quirk, and she was quickly working to spray down the numerous small fires still flickering up and down the road. As you watched her work, you realized the street wasn’t as badly demolished as you first assumed. It was still pretty wrecked—all of the asphalt was cracked and even just missing in some places—but aside from broken windows, the rest of the shops seemed mostly intact. The worst of the damage was centered just in front of your apartment, and as your gaze flickered over the large crater in front of you, you saw another two heroes dragging a third body out of the pit.
The villain.
The hero with the water quirk paused in spraying down the smoking remains of a car and turned to shout something at the other heroes. You couldn’t hear what she said over the persistent ringing in your hears, and you frowned as you focused your own quirk toward your ears.
In your hopped-up-on-adrenaline state, you didn’t even notice the energy dip, and a moment later, your hearing returned with a loud pop. Thankfully, all of the car alarms seemed to have been cut, so you could hear the heroes pretty well.
“—still alive,” a tall hero in a red and purple suit said. You didn’t recognize him. “He’s pretty beat up, but he’ll make it.”
“Great,” the water quirk hero sighed. “Let him be the cops’ problem now.”
As if on cue, you could hear a siren start up in the distant, slowly moving closer.
The threat was over. The villain was neutralized, the fires put out, and the authorities were on the way.
So… why did you feel so on edge, like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop?
“—fuckin’ Dynamight,” one of the heroes suddenly spat and drew you out of your thoughts.
You frowned in confusion as the words registered. Dynamight… why did that sound familiar?
Then your eyes widened as you remembered the blond hero, literally exploding onto the scene. His face—snarling and illuminated by the white-hot flare of his quirk—flashed in your mind’s eye, and you dropped your gaze back down to the street below.
Dynamight, Japan’s Number Two Hero. You couldn’t believe he had been the one to turn up and save you.
Well, not you specifically. Your neighborhood.
You’d seen the ash-blond on television before. Usually, the media just liked to harp on his crude language or brash attitude, but you’d seen this one story of how he had saved every single person from a collapsed building. A teary blonde gushing about Dynamight rescuing her had gone briefly viral, but the clip that stuck with you was when a reporter asked the pro hero why he decided to go into the unstable building without any reinforcements.
The blond had scowled into the camera, sweat and dirt still streaked across his pale face, his scarlet eyes flashing from beneath his black mask.
“What was I supposed to do?” he scoffed. “Leave them in there and sit with my thumbs up my ass while the fire department takes their sweet fuckin’ time? Don’t ask me stupid questions.”
Of course, the media had another field day with that response, but… something about it struck you as incredibly genuine. Yeah, the pro hero could have phrased it better, but the core of what he was saying was he couldn’t sit back when people were in trouble, no matter the risks.
You had thought that very brave.
And now you’d witnessed his bravery first hand. You weren’t confident—or really self-centered enough—to go down and thank him for what he’d done, but you thought you would just be satisfied with seeing him from afar now that things weren’t so dire.
But, the longer you looked, the more the pit grew in your stomach.
You couldn’t see the blond hero anywhere. He wasn’t with Mr. Takeyoshi, still hunched over on the curb. He wasn’t with the two heroes who were trying to establish a perimeter and keep out the arriving crowd of spectators. And he wasn’t with the other heroes standing watch over the unconscious villain laid out on the sidewalk.
The rest of the heroes seemed to be arriving at the same conclusions as you. You could hear Dynamight’s name being thrown about, and then the heroes were splitting up, taking different sides of the street, peeking into broken windows.
You wrung your hands as you watched them search from your apartment. No one had noticed you standing there yet, and you were just contemplating going downstairs to try and help in some way when a noise caught your attention.
In the grand scheme of things, the noise wasn’t very loud, especially given the shouting on the street and the loud sirens now that the police were arriving on scene.
But since you lived alone, someone coughing in your apartment, someone who wasn’t you, was cause for a little alarm.
You inhaled sharply as you glanced back over your shoulder, every atom of your being standing at attention. The apartment behind you was a study in contrasts, dark shadows and the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles outside. Your eyes fell on the empty spot where your couch used to be located, and then your gaze followed the drag marks that had been carved into your wood floor.
The couch was half embedded in the wall beside your front door, with one of the armrests denting into the plaster and the other pointing toward your gaping window/wall. The sofa’s legs had been broken, so it slumped to the floor at an angle, and some kind of stuffing spilled out of several rips in the cushions.
But your eyes were glued to the leg sticking out over the armrest and the arm thrown over the back of the couch, which was blocking the rest of the… person from view.
Oh, fuck. That was a person.
Your legs reacted before your brain could even process what you should do, but you were at least cognizant enough to pick your way over the worst of the debris. Your thin, rubber-soled slippers would protect you from the small pieces of glass and rubble, but you really didn’t want to step on a nail if you could help it.
Since your apartment was so small, and there weren’t any full pieces of furniture in the way anymore, you crossed the distance in a handful of strides, but you jerked to a stop when you reached the back of the couch.
Your lungs seized up so suddenly they hurt. The smell of caramelized sugar was stronger now, almost overwhelming, and you actually had to grip the back of the sofa for support, your hand right next to Dynamight’s leg.
Because it was Dynamight half-strewn across your broken couch. Even when you first saw the leg, you hadn’t imagined it could be…
But there he was. And he looked surprisingly… human.
His face was lax with unconsciousness, lacking the perpetual scowl or snarl he wore in pictures or on TV. His hair, which looked paler and somehow softer in person, was tinged red along his brow line, where a cut was still trickling sluggishly. He wore a non-descript black hoodie over dark jeans and darker combat boots, but a glint of color and light around his midsection caught your eye.
You frowned and leaned down without thinking, your fingers reaching out to brush… something wet.
“Oh, shit,” you breathed when you lifted your hand to your face and saw, even in the darkness, that the pads of your fingers were red and glistening.
He was bleeding.
You moved a step closer, but then your foot lost purchase, sliding, and when you glanced down, you saw your once white slippers were dark, more wetness seeping in around your toes.
Oh, god. He was bleeding a lot.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” You fumbled for the phone in your pants pocket as you scurried around the opposite end of the couch and dropped to the ground. Glass bit into your knees again, this time deeper, a sharp, brilliant pain, but you ignored it as you tried to turn your phone’s flashlight on. The touch-screen wouldn’t register your finger at first, your blood-slicked skin skimming across the glass, and you could feel a scream building in your throat just before the light flashed on.
If you thought things were bad in the dark, being able to see made it a thousand times worse.
Blood had already pooled around Dynamight, dark and glinting like an oil spill. The sleeve on his left arm had been burned off, and the skin below was pink and raw. It smelled like cooked meat, and the curry you ate what felt like a lifetime ago churned hotly in your gut.
But the burn wasn’t even the worst of it.
A wooden stake, about as wide as three of your fingers, protruded out of the pro hero’s gut by several inches. You thought part of it might have looked like your window frame, but the thought came and went when you noticed the tip of the wooden splinter was dyed red, which meant it must have come through his body.
That had to be where all this blood came from. Was still coming from. God, there was so much of it.
Your eyes shot to the gaping hole in your wall, your voice rising in your throat as you prepared to scream for help, but a sudden gasp nearly made you jump out of your skin.
You whipped back around to find wide, hazy red eyes trained on your face, and the hero’s mouth gaped open as he dragged in a ragged breath.
“Wh—hnng!” he groaned as his body seized, his right hand coming up to clutch at his stomach.
“Don’t!” Your phone clattered to the floor, throwing light, as you lunged forward, and you caught his hand before he could jar the piece of wood lodged inside him. “D-Don’t move, a-and try not to speak.”
The hero panted as he cracked open his eyes and looked at you. Or maybe through you. His gaze wasn’t very focused, and blood from the cut on his brow was still dripping into his right eye.
But the scarlet color of his irises was still striking, even in the dimness of your apartment.
“You’ve… been hurt,” you said as you met his eyes as best you could. You weren’t a doctor or an EMT, but you knew the best way to keep people calm in emergency situations was to let them know what’s happened and reassure them. “There’s a piece of wood inside you, so you can’t move or you might hurt yourself worse. But y-you’ll be okay. I’ll go get—”
“Villain,” Dynamight suddenly spat out, cutting you off and spattering you with a fine mist of blood.
“What?” His voice was rough and guttural, so it took your brain a moment to translate the slurred Japanese. Did he think you were another villain?
The blond hero winced and groaned again, and it wasn’t until he squeezed down on your hand that you realized you were still holding his. His palm was rough and calloused against yours—and warm, so inexplicably warm—but then he dug his nails into your skin, and you gasped.
“Vil… lain?” he rasped again, and you realized it was a question.
“Oh! The villain’s been arrested. You… you beat him.”
Dynamight scowled at you, brow knitting in confusion, and he grunted what sounded like a questioning noise at you.
Then he shifted his head, and you saw the dark stain of blood coming out of his ear.
He must have ruptured his eardrums in the explosion.
You didn’t want to shout and damage his hearing even more, so you squeezed his hand back and smiled in what you hoped was reassurance.
“You won,” you mouthed as clearly as you could. “You won, Dynamight.”
His narrowed eyes widened a little bit with recognition, and you could have sworn the beginnings of a smirk twitched across his lips before his eyes suddenly rolled up into his head. The tension fled his body as he went limp, like a marionette with its strings cut, and your heart lurched up into your throat.
“Dynamight?” you asked, even though you knew he couldn’t hear you with his ears the way they were. “Dynamight?”
You squeezed his fingers, shaking him a little, but his face remained slack.
Dropping his hand, you reached up to flatten one of yours across his chest, the other going up to feel at the underside of his neck. A moment ticked by, two, but you found his pulse, weak and thready beneath your fingertips. His breathing was shallow beneath your other hand, and the knees of your pants were warm and soaked with his blood.
“F-Fuck,” you breathed shakily as you sat back for a moment, your hands limp in your lap.
He was dying. Dynamight… was dying. This was too much blood, and even if you called out to the heroes right now, and they got here in seconds, it was still ten minutes to the nearest hospital.
He didn’t have ten minutes. You didn’t think he had five.
You stared down at the pro hero’s blood-streaked face for half a beat before you made a decision.
Then you were moving. Consequences be damned.
Your hands went to the hem of his hoodie, and you flinched as you pulled it away from his belly with a wet sound. You didn’t want to hurt him, but you also didn’t think he was feeling much of anything now, so you worked the hoodie up and over the stake as best you could before you shoved the fabric the rest of the way up his chest.
The flashing lights from outside played across the dips and valleys of Dynamight’s abs, but your eyes were immediately drawn to the wooden stake. It jutted out between the hero’s belly button and his right hip bone, and every splinter was coated in tacky, crimson blood. More of the viscous liquid bubbled up around the torn skin at the stake’s base, and it trickled across his pale, alabaster abdomen like spilled paint.
You bit your lip as you considered your next move, but then Dynamight’s breath hitched with a wet sound, and you knew you didn’t have time for doubts.
“Okay, steady,” you muttered to yourself as you knelt over the hero’s prone body. Your knees burned, glass digging deeper into the skin by the second, but you shoved away your own pain as you reached out and wrapped both hands around the stake. Splinters tore into your palms, and your heart hammered out a staccato rhythm beneath your sternum.
Then panic started to creep up your spine like a million little spider legs. What if removing the stake only made him worse, killed him faster? What if you killed Japan’s Number Two Hero?
Just as you were about to let go of the stake, Dynamight hacked out a gurgling cough, blood bubbling out of his dry, cracked lips, and you felt the warm spray of it against your collarbone and arms.
The sound rattled something deep inside you, and before you could second guess yourself again, you tightened your grip on the stake and tugged it up and out in one single motion.
Dynamight wheezed once more, but you were already dropping the stake, hands slapping down against his abdomen. Warm blood pulsed through your fingers like pliable clay, and bile rose in the back of your throat before you took a deep breath, closed your eyes, and called upon your quirk.
An instant later, agony like you’ve never experienced slammed into you, ripping a gasp from your lungs. It felt like someone had stuck a white-hot poker through your gut, ignited your insides, and twisted. The pain was so intense, your ears started ringing again, and when you cracked open your eyes, your vision quickly began to tunnel until the only thing you could see was the bare outline of your hands, lined with green, against the hero’s stomach. You gritted your teeth as unconsciousness threatened to pull you under, and you groaned as you shoved as much energy as you could spare into the dying hero.
As your quirk flooded into the blond’s body, you received vague impressions of his injuries healing. It was hard to describe, but it was kind of like you could see flashes of the tissue in your mind as it was stitched back together. First, the jagged hole on his back sealed over, and then your power wormed its way through the hero’s insides, patching up nicked arteries and punctured organs. The pain was still intense, so intense that your already limited vision was blurred by tears, but once you reached the top layers of his abs, you ripped your hands away with a gasp.
You fell back on your ass, more glass and debris digging into your cheeks and the palms of your hands, and you sucked in ragged breaths as you tried to keep from passing out. The hero swam unsteadily before you, both from the tears in your eyes and because the entire apartment was swaying. Saliva pooled in your mouth as nausea clamped down on your stomach, but you focused on the burning in your palms to center yourself. Then you started counting deep breaths, and when you got to thirty, the darkness had receded from the corners of your vision, and the apartment more or less steadied out around you.
You still felt like shit warmed over, like you’d been run over by a car and then dragged for several miles, but the bone-deep exhaustion could be cured with a good night’s sleep. The rest of the nicks and cuts on your body still burned like a million paper cuts, too, but your quirk was down to embers and was of no more use to you.
But was it worth it?
The two feet of distance between you and Dynamight felt like a canyon that stretched for miles, but somehow you found one last burst of strength to drag yourself forward a few inches. Then you held your breath and leaned over the hero’s abdomen, wiping away most of the pooling blood with the hem of his hoodie.
There was still a significant gash carved into his skin, but when you shakily picked up your discarded phone from the floor and directed the light at him, you saw the wound was much shallower, maybe a few centimeters deep. The first few layers of skin were flayed back, but the muscles beneath were intact and healthy looking. A small trickle of blood continued to drip into the valley of the hero’s abs, but instead of a broken fire hydrant, it was just a leaky faucet.
You dragged your tired eyes up Dynamight’s body, and you very quickly realized his breathing was deeper and not as wet sounding. Just to be doubly sure, you reached out and tentatively wrapped your fingers around his left wrist, only absently noticing that the once raw, flayed skin had been partially healed from third degree burns to first.
You had poured more energy into him than you meant to, but it was hard to regret anything when you felt his pulse against your fingertips, strong, steady, and sure.
“Oh, thank you,” you choked out as you closed your eyes, tears stinging in the corners. You didn’t know who you were thanking. You didn’t know if you believed in a “god” in the colloquial sense, but you felt as if the universe had given you a gift just now, and you could be nothing but grateful for it.
You sighed as you slumped a little, and it was like weights were strapped to your eyelids as you struggled to open them and keep them open. You might have actually gone under, succumb to the exhaustion…
If you didn’t catch sight of two crimson eyes staring back at you.
“Fuck,” you gasped as a zap of adrenaline shocked you upright, and your phone clattered to the ground once again.
Dynamight squinted, irises still a little glassy, but unlike last time, his gaze was very much focused on you.
And the weight of it, the intensity, pinned you to the floor.
“Y-You’re awake.” The words tripped off your tongue, chased out by the panic running circles in your brain. Damn it, you hadn’t even had time to come up with a plausible backstory for the pool of blood he was lying in.
The blond hero’s eyes widened a fraction as he stared at you for an immeasurably long moment, and then you remembered with a start that he hadn’t been able to hear you before. This could work in your favor, though. You opened your mouth, ready to pantomime an elaborate story, but his voice—deep and rough, like crunching gravel or an expensive engine turning over—cut you off at the knees.
“And you have eyes,” he said in clipped Japanese, a note of snide derision in his tone.
You blinked in shock—at his attitude, the steadiness of his voice, and the fact he could hear you just fine all the sudden—but he just barreled onward like he had barreled through your window.
“What happened?” he asked. No, demanded. “Who are you?”
“I—”
“And where’s that fuckin’ villain?” he cut you off as his split upper lip curled into a snarl, and his red eyes jumped to the gaping window over your shoulder.
You frowned at him, pursing your lips into a thin line. “Are you going to let me answer?”
A part of your brain was screaming at you, distantly: Are you giving Japan’s Number Two Hero attitude after he saved your life?! You normally weren’t like this. Every inch the people pleaser, you were usually deferential to the point of your own detriment.
But you were still so tired, every inch of you aching, blood still dripping and slick along your exposed skin, and he was the one who decided to be rude first.
Plus, you saved his life, too, thankyouverymuch.
Dynamight actually seemed surprised by your response because his gaze stopped its frantic search of your darkened apartment and settled on you. Those scarlet eyes raked over you quickly, a flick from head to toe, before they met your own.
A beat of silence passed between you, and then his face pulled into a sharp frown.
“Well?” he grunted. “Are you actually going to answer me?”
The nerve of this man. Maybe the media had been right.
“What happened was you decided to practically drop a bomb outside on the street, and then you crashed straight through my window and destroyed my apartment,” you said in a short, clipped tone. “But don’t worry. My couch managed to break your fall, so you’re mostly in one piece. Oh, and you beat the villain, the other heroes are outside handing him off to authorities. Satisfied with my answers?”
You sucked in a deep breath after your little tirade, the blood roaring in your ears. Absently, you patted yourself on the back for the impromptu white lie you’d fed him. The couch did in fact break his fall… and shoved a stake through his gut, but he didn’t need to know that. Fortunately, you had dropped said impaling object behind you in your haste to keep some blood in his body, and you shifted a little now to insure it was blocked from his view. You had healed his life-threatening injury—and his hearing, apparently, though you hadn’t intended that—but he was still covered in scrapes, cuts, and minor burns along his left arm. It was a… plausible amount of wounds, so hopefully your little quirk indiscretion would go unnoticed.
Dynamight was still staring at you in silence, and you began to fidget, on the edge of saying you were going to go flag down another hero, when he finally spoke up again.
“No, I’m not satisfied. You didn’t answer all my damn questions. Who the hell are you?”
A flush of heat infused your cheeks—part anger, part embarrassment for being put on the spot again and being the subject of his intense glare—and you averted your eyes as you mumbled out your name.
“Hah?” he practically shouted as he leaned forward, bringing with him that bewildering scent of burned sugar, but he suddenly stopped with a wince that he quickly turned into a scowl. “Speak up, I hate when people mutter. Just like goddamn Deku.”
The last sentence wasn’t directed at you, but you found his mention of Japan’s Number One Hero intriguing.
You sighed and repeated your name for him, a little louder this time, and he grunted in what seemed like acknowledgment before he started to struggle upright again in the ruins of your couch.
“Don’t move too fast, you’ll start bleeding again,” you chided and scooted closer to stop him from aggravating the injury on his abdomen. You’d healed the worst of it, but it was still an open wound, and he was bound to be sore as hell after smashing through a window/wall.
“M’ fine,” he grumbled as he settled into a slightly more seated position. Then he looked down and noticed his hoodie was still partially rucked up around his arm pits, and his red eyes shot back to you. He studied you for a long moment, but his face was unreadable. “Undressing me while I was unconscious? You’re not one of those damn obsessed fangirls, are ya?”
Your cheeks flared red-hot, but you scowled at the ash-blond hero. “N-No! I—You were bleeding, so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too b-bad. But, uh, the gash isn’t that deep.”
It was a little harder to make more articulate, detailed lies, especially when his blood was still drying on your hands and you could remember the exact feel of his pulse slowing beneath your fingertips.
Dynamight narrowed his scarlet eyes at you, and you knew you weren’t being convincing. Panic started to claw up the back of your throat again. His burning gaze was charring away at your weaknesses, your resolve. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, confessing. You’d saved his life after all. That wasn’t a bad thing.
Then you remembered all the articles you’d looked up one anxiety-filled night, soon after moving here. All the stories about people using their quirks and causing damage. Of people with healing quirks trying to help and only doing more harm. The fines, the charges, and in rare cases, imprisonment.
You didn’t think you’d be locked up, but you couldn’t afford any fines now, and as an immigrant, any mark on your record could get you immediately deported.
Your mouth dried up. You couldn’t be deported, sent back to your parents as a failure again. What’s more, you had people who relied on you here, like Mrs. Kojima. You weren’t a hero, not important by any means, but… you had just found something to give your life a little purpose. A little stability.
No, you couldn’t be discovered. You just couldn’t.
Your newfound resolve stiffened your spine a little, but when you lifted your chin and met those piercing crimson eyes again, your courage—along with your tongue—shriveled inside you.
Fuck, how were you going to lie your way out of this?
Unfortunately, Dynamight didn’t give you any more time to get your story straight.
“Your hands are all fucked up.”
You startled at his rough voice, instinctively flipping your hands palm-side down and tucking them between your legs. Then, when your brain caught up to your body, you cursed yourself.
Could you be any more obvious, any more guilty?
“I, uh, i-it’s nothing,” you stammered, clearing your throat before you continued. “I cut myself on the broken glass from the window, but it’s not serious. Nothing a few bandaids won’t fix, anyway. Maybe some gauze and antiseptic, but definitely not a hospital visit or anything.”
You knew you were babbling but somehow couldn’t stop it, your anxiety just seizing control of your tongue, and you clenched your torn-up hands into fists until the stinging pain centered you a little bit.
Once again, Dynamight studied you in silence, like he was choosing his words carefully.
“Did you nick your damn wrist, too?” he finally asked as his neutral mask twisted into his signature scowl. “Looks like a lot of blood. Don’t be an idiot and bleed out on me. I don’t wanna deal with the fuckin’ paperwork.”
Well, maybe not that carefully.
“I-I’m not bleeding out,” you protested with a frown. “I’m fine.”
“Let me see.”
You blinked. “Excuse me?
The hero stuck out his right hand, palm up, his scowl only deepening. “Let me see your hands.”
Fuck. A drop of icy cold fear slid down your spine. Your hands were indeed “fucked up” like the blond said, but the cuts were all shallow and minor. They would in no way explain how you were coated in blood up past your wrists. None of your injuries would account for that.
And none of his current ones would, either.
“I—” You opened and closed your mouth several times like a gasping fish, and Dynamight’s eyes narrowed on you with what you were sure was suspicion.
And then, like a gift from the heavens, a small but bright beam of light suddenly flooded your apartment from over your shoulder.
“Dynamight?” a male voice shouted.
The blond hero clenched his eyes shut and turned away from the light, and you. “I’m here! Turn that damn light out.”
Said light cut out an instant later, and you seized the opportunity that had just been presented to you.
Quick as a whip, you leaned over and snatched a large swath of dark fabric that you’d seen in the brief moment of illumination, and you reeled it into your lap quickly. The fabric had been a personal project of yours, a gown you’d started on a whim, but that didn’t matter now. Dynamight was still rubbing at his eyes, grumbling about being blinded, so you kicked half of the unfinished garment under and around the base of the ruined couch, effectively covering up the large pool of blood that had congealed under the splintered furniture. Then you reached behind you, grabbed the bloody stake, and shoved it between the folds of fabric.
There. Now, most of the evidence was hidden.
And not a moment too soon, because in the next breath you heard the crunch of glass as the unnamed hero stepped into the apartment behind you.
“Hello?”
“We’re over here,” you called back, struggling to your feet so the hero could see you over the back of the couch.
The hero was silhouetted against your ruined window and the flashing police lights outside, so you couldn’t see much of his face, but you could tell he was tall and broad-shouldered, wrapped in a red and purple suit you didn’t recognize.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” the hero asked in very formal Japanese.
You opened your mouth to reply, but Dynamight cut you off. It seemed to be a habit of his.
“We’re fine,” he grunted, and you turned to see the blond shoving himself to his feet. A gasp caught in your throat, and you made a half-aborted motion to stop him, but his red eyes snapped up and glared at you, freezing you in your tracks. “Aren’t we?”
It took a moment for you to realize the last question was directed at you, and when Dynamight’s lip curled up into a sneer as he accusingly dropped his gaze to your hands, you realized none of your lies had convinced him after all.
“Y-Yes.” The word stumbled out of your mouth without your permission, but you couldn’t seem to tear your eyes off the blond as you felt your world falling in around you for the second time tonight. “We’re fine.”
The hero behind you said something, but it was lost in the static suddenly filling your head.
He knows. He knows. Dynamight knows.
The words cycled through your brain again and again, a broken record. What would he do? Would he tell the other hero? Or take you down to the authorities himself? And what then? Would they arrest you? Give you a few days to pack up and say your goodbyes before your deportation?
Just as you were beginning to spiral, movement caught your attention, and you watched as if from a distance as Dynamight suddenly stepped past you, the scent of burnt sugar stinging your nose as he went. He was talking, and the low rumble of his voice vibrated through your body since he was so close, barely a hair’s breadth away, but he seemed to be talking to the other hero.
Was he confessing your secret already?
You couldn’t seem to turn around, your slippered feet rooted to your debris strewn floor. Even in the dark, you could see the black stain of Dynamight’s blood on your ruined couch cushions, and without thinking, you leaned down, picked up another torn and dirty piece of fabric, and threw it over the stain, blocking it from view.
You didn’t know why you did that. It didn’t matter now. Dynamight knew, and—
“Ma’am?” A hand touched your elbow, and you jumped, whirling around. “Whoa, careful there.”
It was the tall hero in the red and purple suit. He was wearing a partial mask over his eyes, so only the lower half of his face was visible, framed by two pieces of dark hair. He smiled at you, a pleasant, reassuring gesture, but you could only gape at him.
“Are you alright?” he asked you again, a frown replacing his smile. His eyes started to look you over, but you shoved your hands into the pockets of your sweats before he could see them.
It doesn’t matter, you idiot, your brain screamed, but your body was still going through the motions of keeping your secret, twisting your hands in your pockets, trying to rub out the blood.
“I’m fine,” you said again and then realized repeating the same trite phrase probably wasn’t convincing. So, you smiled at the hero, or at least you thought you did. Your face felt strangely stiff and numb, but you flashed your teeth and crinkled your eyes just the same. “Really. I’m just a little… shaken up is all. I have a few cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. The apartment took the worst of the damage, obviously.”
You laughed, a hint of hysteria in your voice, as you gestured to the gaping hole in your wall behind the hero, hoping to get him away from your blood-soaked couch. And, blessedly, he did turn, so you took a few steps past him until you were both facing the broken window.
Then you noticed Dynamight was standing near the hole, very cautiously leaning against the last remaining, exposed stud in the wall, with his hands shoved in the pocket of his hoodie. His body was facing out into the street, but his eyes were still locked on you, the red of them only intensified by the police lights still flashing on the street.
His eyes seemed to say, I know what you did, and all the saliva dried up in your mouth.
“Well, as bad as the damage is to your home, I’m glad you weren’t seriously injured, ma’am,” the hero at your side suddenly said, and you jolted when you realized he was responding to your inane babble from what already felt like hours ago.
“O-Oh, yes.” You smiled again, just as forced and twice as shaky. “I was… very lucky. A-And thank you! For doing your part to s-stop that villain before he hurt anyone or caused even more damage.”
“Yes, well, there was still more damage than I would have preferred,” the hero replied, and you didn’t miss the dirty look he shot Dynamight, who just deepened his scowl because he was still looking at you. “But let’s get you down to the street. The paramedics will look you over, and the authorities will want to take a statement. But don’t worry, they’ll also put you up in a hotel for the night since you obviously can’t stay here.”
He threw the last part of the sentence at Dynamight like a dagger, and the blond finally tore his eyes off you to glare at the other hero.
You waited for the explosive hero to… well, explode, but he only stared down the tall man beside you before he rolled his eyes, glanced at you one last time, and then jumped out the hole in your wall.
“No—” you gasped, stumbling forward like you could stop him, but an instant later, you heard a mini-boom out on the street, followed by Dynamight barking orders at someone.
Oh, yeah. You remembered how the blond had burst through the air while fighting the villain and realized he didn’t just ruin all your hard, illegal healing work by face-planting onto the concrete.
You sighed and suddenly swayed, like the blond leaving had finally cut all of your tense strings. The adrenaline was fading at last, exhaustion leeching through your veins in its place, and you listed into the hero beside you.
“Ma’am?” he asked, a note of concern in his voice.
“Sorry,” you mumbled sleepily, trying and failing to find your balance. “I think… the shock is wearing off. Just… tired.”
“Would it be alright if I carried you down to the street?”
You wanted to protest, say you could take the stairs down to your shop, but your tongue felt sluggish in your mouth, and all you managed was a vaguely affirmative sounding hum.
“Okay, hold on.”
You felt one hand wrap around your shoulders while the other scooped you up around the knees, and usually, you would protest, insecure about your weight, but the hero settled you against his chest with ease. The instant you were off your feet, every muscle in your body went limp, and you were too tired to even be embarrassed when your head flopped against the hero’s collarbone.
You had the vague thought that he didn’t smell like warm sugar, followed by a flash of disappointment, but then the hero was moving, jumping, and you were falling through the air.
Unfortunately, you didn’t get the luxury of passing out.
Once you hit the street, it was all sirens and shouting, flashing lights and flashes of people, so many people.
True to his word, the hero in the red and purple suit carried you over to an ambulance and two waiting paramedics. The American in you panicked, instinctively trying to refuse care because your shop and home were just destroyed, you didn’t have money for an ambulance ride, too.
But as the medics peppered you with rapid fire Japanese questions, you were reminded of where you were, and the bright flashlight shining into your eyes sure woke you up a little.
The next half an hour was a blur. The paramedics tended to the wounds on your palms, knees, and, embarrassingly, ass, but all of the cuts were shallow, and none of them even required stitches. You knew they wouldn’t require stitches anyway, because once you rested up, your quirk would heal you, but you kept your mouth shut and let the medics wrap you in gauze and bandages. You seemed to have rubbed away enough of the blood on your hands that they weren’t suspicious, but it brought you no relief.
While they worked, you watched the heroes and police out of your peripherals. They were still working to seal off the scene and tend to your neighbors, who were gathered further down the block behind some yellow tape. It didn’t look like anyone else had been injured beside you, and for that you were grateful.
But your stomach was still in knots.
More than once, you heard Dynamight’s brash voice bark over the sirens and other voices, and as the paramedics were finishing up the bandages on your hands, a head of ash-blond hair jutted out over the police car closest to you. Unable to stop yourself, your eyes zeroed in on that distinctive hair color, and you saw the explosive hero was speaking—well, yelling—at two police officers.
Your mouth felt suddenly dry despite the multiple cups of water the medics had fed to you. What was Dynamight saying?
As if he could hear your thoughts, red eyes snapped to the side and locked onto yours, and the breath hitched in your chest. That crimson gaze held you trapped, unable to look away, so when the two officers he’d been speaking to suddenly stepped into your field of vision, you gasped.
“Apologies, didn’t mean to startle you, ma’am,” one of the officers said. He was a middle-aged man, balding, with a serious face and a no-nonsense expression. “We just wanted to ask you a few questions, if you feel up to it.”
You swallowed, your throat clicking, and your heart stuttered into a breakneck pace beneath your sternum.
“O-Of course,” you replied, only stumbling a little over your Japanese. You smiled at the officers, but the expression felt stilted, and fear seized you by the throat and squeezed until your breaths were shallow and grating in your ears.
“Thank you.” The balding officer nodded. “My name is Detective Nakahara. I’ve been told you witnessed and were injured in tonight’s attack.”
You thought the injury part was obvious, given your myriad of bandages and the fact you were sitting in the back of an ambulance, but you nodded to confirm anyway since your voice had abandoned you.
This was it. He was going to ask you the damning question, and you were going to tell the truth. Lying to a hero in the heat of the moment had been one thing, but lying to a police officer during an official statement was another thing entirely. It would take one database search for them to confirm your quirk and Dynamight’s story, and then you really would be in trouble. Maybe imprisoned instead of deported. You cursed yourself for not knowing more about the laws that were going to quickly ruin your life.
But… then Nakahara started asking you about the villain and what you saw, and you stuttered out an answer to the best of your ability. You thought this might have been a disarming tactic, to lull you into a false sense of security, but when you got to the part of the story where Dynamight burst through your window, the officer sighed.
“I take it that’s your apartment there?” Detective Nakahara asked as he gestured to the gaping hole.
“Y-Yes.” You nodded. “And I own the shop below.”
Which you now realized looked no better than your apartment. The windows were all blown out, black scorch marks along the door frame, and you didn’t want to even think about the shape of the interior.
“What kind of shop is it?” he followed up, but he sounded more curious than interrogatory.
“Clothing alterations,” you said. “M-My grandparents were a tailor and seamstress. I inherited the shop about a year ago, after they passed.”
“My condolences,” Nakahara murmured with a small dip of his head, and he seemed genuine. “For your grandparents, and your home and business.”
You blinked in surprise at the turn in conversation. “O-Oh, thank you, that’s very kind.”
“Do you have anywhere to go for the night, or were you on the way to the hospital?” he asked as he looked you over.
“No,” you said quickly and then blushed. “I-I mean, my injuries aren’t serious enough for a hospital visit. Just some cuts and scrapes.”
“Alright.” Nakahara nodded. “Is there any family we can call for you? Or take you to?”
“N-No,” you repeated, a little more timidly this time. “My parents… don’t live around here, and I don’t really have any other family.”
“Any friends?” he asked with a furrowed brow.
Your face was red-hot now, and you dropped your eyes to your lap, fiddling with your bandaged fingers. What were you going to say? That you were an introvert, and the only “friends” you had were the old ladies who frequented your shop?
“None that I would want to bother in the middle of the night,” you muttered before you suddenly remembered something. “But, um, one of the heroes said you could maybe take me to a hotel?”
“Of course, we can take you right now, and we’ll also pay for the night,” the detective said.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” you started to protest as you snapped your head up, but the officer held up a hand.
“The city has funds to aid those displaced by villain attacks,” he explained. “The next forty-eight hours are guaranteed, so if I were you, I would use the opportunity to rest.”
Detective Nakahara glanced down at your bandages, and you bit your lips as you nodded.
“Okay, thank you for your help then, sir.” It was all you could think to say.
“You’re welcome.” Nakahara nodded back at you and then reached out to help you out of the ambulance. “If you’ll come this way, we can have an officer collect some things from your apartment, and then we’ll head to the hotel and get you settled.”
The finality in his tone and the idea of a hotel drew you up short. What… was happening? You had thought the detective was going to interrogate you about your quirk, not… chauffeur you to a nice hotel.
The practical part of your brain was screaming for you to let it go, but the words were high-diving off your tongue before you could stop them.
“I-Is that all?”
Detective Nakahara paused and looked at you with a raised eyebrow. “Is what all?”
“I—” Shut up, shut up, shut up! “You didn’t have any more questions for me?”
“No,” the detective said simply. “We have your statement, and it matches the others we’ve obtained.” Here, he frowned and seemed to study you for a moment. “Did you have any other questions for me?”
“I… was just wondering what the next steps are for my apartment and shop,” you blurted out the first thing you could think of. “Will the… city pay for repairs? Do I have to fill out some forms?”
It was an honest question, a real one you had, but your mind was still reeling. He wasn’t going to ask about your quirk? Had… Had Dynamight not said anything?
Nakahara sighed but held a hand out for you to take, and you absently let him help you down from the ambulance. Then he slowly began walking toward one of the police cars, and you had no choice but to follow since you were still holding onto his arm for balance.
“Unfortunately,” the detective started, “the city will not be able to repair your home or business.”
“Why?” you asked with a frown. “I thought you said there were funds.”
“There are,” he said, and when you looked up at him, you noticed his lips were pursed into a thin line. “And, if the villain himself had thrown debris through your window, then the city would compensate you. But, in this situation, Dynamight caused the damaged.”
The detective practically spat the blond hero’s name, and your surprise must have shown on your face because Nakahara quickly cleared his throat and schooled his expression.
“Because of this, his agency will be responsible for repairs, so you will have to contact them,” the officer finished.
Contact them? You had to contact Dynamight’s agency, which meant… fuck. You felt the blood drain from your face, and your expression must have shown your dismay because Nakahara patted your hand that was still looped through his arm
“But you can worry about that tomorrow,” he said. “Let’s get your things and get you to the hotel so you can rest.”
You nodded blankly and let the detective lead you to the open backseat of a police car. Nakahara called another officer over, and the woman asked you questions about where things were in your apartment. You answered numbly, listing out different clothing items and how to get to your bedroom. Then she was gone, and Nakahara stepped away to do something else, so you were suddenly left all alone.
Unbidden, you looked up and searched for that pair of scarlet eyes, that head of ash-blond hair, but the explosive hero was suddenly nowhere to be found.
The crime scene continued to bustle around you, but all the while, two thoughts circled each other in your head, like binary stars stuck in each other’s orbit:
Dynamight didn’t reveal my secret.
But I’m going to have to face him again.
#sorry this update took a hot sec#blame my full time job and depression lmao#bakugo x you#bakugo x reader#katsuki bakugo x reader#katsuki bakugo x you#bakugo katsuki x you#deaf!bakugou#bakugo/reader#bakugo/you#katsuki bakugo#bakugo#bakugo katsuki#katsuki bakugo/you#mha#my writings#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#bnha spoilers#fanfic
202 notes
·
View notes
Text
heaven to you. (m.c)
pairing: michael clifford x reader
genre: smut, fluff, angst (if you squint)
word count: 8.1k
involves: bad boy!michael, college!au, jealous!michael, established relationship, a lot of cursing, oral (m receiving), unprotected sex, daddy kink (really mild), choking, dirty talk, pain kink (slight), size kink, thigh riding, face slapping (consensual), hair pulling, spitting kink, throat fucking, impregnation kink, praise, degredation/name calling, innocence kink, virgin kink (kinda), smoking, mentions of drugs/drinking, maybe more but nothing too big just pretty filthy ngl
summary: your high school classmates come over to michael’s house in hopes of being friends with the famous bad boy on campus. this includes your one-sided high school crush that may not have been so one-sided after all. unfortunately for him, michael is not someone to piss off. fortunately for you, michael’s anger and jealousy isn’t always so bad, at least for you.
part two
+
“Tell me again why we’re going to this guy’s house?” Justin asked his two childhood friends. At least, they were up until high school. Now, as they went to different colleges, they felt more like strangers. But that was part of the reason he took the multi-state trip down to their university: to mend that rift.
“We’ve been telling you man, Michael is the man on campus to be friends with.” Chris punched one of his hands into his other palm for emphasis.
Charlie nodded beside Chris, both standing in front of their front door, ready to go. “He gets into the best parties, gets the hottest chicks and is the most feared guy on campus.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Justin raised his eyebrows.
Chris opened the door, shaking his head. “Yeah, dude. No one messes with him because he’ll beat the shit out of them.”
“He’s done it a few times already.” Charlie added.
“There’s rumors he used to be involved in a gang or something and that’s why he’s like that. Either way though, he gets whatever he wants.”
Justin’s lips curled up a bit in disgust. He came from a wealthy background, wealthy family and wealthy school. Though he never let that get to his head and he never looked down on someone because of it, this stark contrast to his normality was difficult to shrug off.
But he did as he followed both Charlie and Chris out.
Charlie was still raving about ‘Michael’ as they walked out of the cramped dorm room to the unfamiliar winding paths of their university. “I mean, imagine being friends with him. You’ll get all the benefits he gets.”
“I’m sorry, if you aren’t friends with him, how are we going to his house?” Justin trailed behind the two slightly.
Chris looked back, “Turns out his best friend is in my accounting class and he invited us over to play video games. How lucky is that?”
“Yeah, lucky.” Justin looked away. He wasn’t going to admit that as they crossed the street across the student union, the whole concept of meeting someone with a reputation as rough as this Michael character was daunting and just a bit scary. In fact, it didn’t take a genius to look at the three boys all wearing vineyard vines khakis and polos, and know they didn’t mesh well with what he supposed Michael was like.
They didn’t even mesh well with the college neighborhood they were entering. The small houses looked worn and crumbled down and the streets were even worse. The only thing that calmed his nerves was the knowledge that the scariest people on the block were tired college students.
“Have you even talked to him before?” Justin kept asking questions to calm himself down and stop himself from looking around at the neighborhood in disdain.
Charlie shrugged, “I talked to him at a party once, he didn’t say much though.”
Chris smirked, “I walked with him to class once.” He paused. “Well, I was walking with his friend, Ashton? And he joined. But it still felt cool. Everyone was staring and making way for us - well him”
They filled in all the holes in knowledge of Michael. How he never lost a fight (even though he was involved with them often - evidenced by his perpetual bloody knuckles), how he rarely went to class (and when he did, how he sat alone, always), how his fashion consisted of black, chains and more black and finally, how he would go home with a different girl every party (but how that didn’t happen anymore as he had a girlfriend, though her identity to them remained a mystery).
Justin nodded as he listened. But as more and more was added to the infamous Michael, he felt less and less inclined to meet him.
Time, however, to turn back had run out. Because as his friends turned into a rubble pathway leading up to an equally rubble house, he knew he was about to be face to face with the myth, the legend, Michael himself.
The things he would do for his friends. If he didn’t hold such a sentimental place in his heart for the boys he had grown up with, he definitely wouldn’t be there, standing in front of a (turning green) door, waiting for an answer. They were different, it was obvious in high school that they had become different types of men; he valued education, science, and was a romantic at heart while they valued alcohol, parties and were willing to screw anything they found ‘hot’.
But that didn’t deter him from valuing their friendship.
It occurred to him that the only thing his friends had failed to fill him in on was Michael’s appearance. So, when the door opened and a boy slightly shorter than even Chris, the shortest of them (though Justin was 6’5 and Charlie was 6’0 so really, Chris being 5’11 wasn’t that short) and messy brown curls covering his head and forehead, he was shocked to say the least.
But that didn’t last long as Chris dapped him. “Ashton! What’s up man?”
Ashton smiled big and nodded in acknowledgement to the rest of them. “Nothing much bro, took you a while.” But he moved back into the small house, a signal of welcome for them to come in but close the door behind them.
So, as Chris and Charlie followed Ashton in, talking about who knows what, Justin made sure to shut and lock the door before trailing behind.
The house was bigger than he pictured in his mind. The living room and kitchen were divided by only a pillar and the counter. But it was spacious enough to fit a flat screen (granted, it was on the floor) and a black winding couch (granted, it had cracks all over it). The only light came from the kitchen and the tv, which was set to the beginning of the game.
Ashton already sat down on the couch, grabbing a game controller casually from behind him. He was wearing a black t-shirt that had it’s sleeves cut off to the point where you could see his whole side torso through the giant holes. His gray jeans were equally ripped and Justin was sure his shoes would be too, if he were wearing any but just gray socks adorned his feet. He had spiked bracelets on his left wrist. Maybe this was the reason his slightly tanned, innocent face looked strange. His big eyes and friendly smile was a stark juxtaposition to the rest of his body.
Chris looked around as his large figure slumped beside Ashton, “Where’s Michael?”
Ashton didn’t look at him when he answered, “In his room with his girl. He’ll be out soon, I think. That is if they don’t start going at it.”
Charlie laughed as he sat on the other side of Ashton, picking up a controller from the ground. Justin was left to sit awkwardly on the edge of the couch, closest to the kitchen. He felt out of place, just like he suspected and it didn’t help the darkness that surrounded the room, even through the lit kitchen and blue tv screen.
He didn’t get to think much on it, though, because not a few minutes after he sat down, did the bedroom door behind the couch open up. Light streamed into the dimly lit room.
Justin stood. It was a force of habit, really. He was used to standing up whenever someone knew came into the room to introduce himself. But when no one else stood, with Ashton not even bothering to look behind him, he felt awkward. It was too late to sit back down, though.
Charlie and Chris looked back, though, with big grins. “Hey, Michael! What’s up, man?” They said as if they were close friends.
And thus, Justin came face to face with Michael himself. And this time, he looked exactly like what he expected.
Michael was towering, though his height was nearly equal to Justin’s. His shoulders so broad that they nearly filled up the entire doorway of his bedroom. His t-shirt was plain black and so were his jeans, which had three chains adorning them. Two sleeves of tattoos ran down both of his arms to his hands and fingers , one of his hands reading F U C K in big bold letters, with a few peeking out on his neck as well. His black messy hair matched him well and fell onto his forehead.
But through that intimidating appearance, none of those things were what caught Justin’s attention. No, it was Michael’s eyes that did it. Though they were light in color, somehow they still seemed dark. The coldness in them was frightening. There was no hint of warmth, of friendliness, in them. In fact, as Michael held direct eye contact, saying nothing at the still standing Justin, the aggression his eyes held was enough to make Justin take a step back.
It was that step that seemingly broke the trance Michael had put him in. Because just like that, Michael looked away and moved forward into the living room. He nodded in acknowledgement at Chris and Charlie, still silent, before shouldering past Justin to go to the kitchen. He grabbed a bottled beer, opening it with his bare hand on his way back.
Justin was going to sit back himself as he saw Michael head to the couch but was stopped by a second, much smaller figure exiting Michael’s room.
The girl was petite, especially compared to Michael, standing at a proud 5’1. Her straight black hair was parted down the middle and hung perfectly over her shoulders. She wore a dainty white sunflower dress that contrasted beautifully with her olive skin which made her, along with her kind smile and bright brown eyes, look like the epitome of innocence. Quite the distinction from Michael who seemed to personify danger.
She was beautiful.
And she was his good friend.
“Y/N?”
+
Your legs were stationed at each side of Michael’s torso as you straddled him. Your hands were cupping his face and while one of his hands was on your ass while the other was gripping your long hair, pulling just enough for it to be pleasurable.
Your mouths melded into each others deeply and you couldn’t tell which one of you were more desperate for the other. You’d been making out for a while and your body was on fire. You felt like his touch was both burning you and exactly what needed at the same time.
It only took one slow grind of your hips against his that did it for him. He flipped you over so that you landed directly on one of his thighs, the chains of his jeans rattling in the process. His body was flush to yours, you could feel his hardness against you.
You looked up at him with wide innocent eyes, just how you knew he liked it. And you were awarded with a deep groan and a taunting smile before his lips returned to your body, this time to your neck. You moved your head to give him more access and as he got more into it, sucking and biting, you couldn’t stop the moan that escaped. You knew he was going to leave a mark (probably many) because he liked to have something that claimed you as his.
One of his hands wandered to your lower body, traveling under your flimsy dress to flip it over. He gave your ass a swat to command you to move. He didn’t have to tell you twice. Your hips starts moving, slowly at first against his jean-clad thigh. But as the pleasure started to build up at the friction, you began moving faster, desperately, moaning loudly.
Michael watched you silently, a smirk on his face. The only touch was his hands on your hips, guiding your pace and your movements. Otherwise, he just watched you get off on him.
“Did you wear this dress for me?” You nodded desperately against him, wanting nothing more than push against his finger but knew better.
His hand pulled your hair harshly, hard enough that it hurt but that just made you moan louder. “I asked you a question.” He growled, he had begun to move his leg up and down, making everything that much pleasurable.
Fuck. “Y-Yes, all for you, daddy.”
“Good girl.” Was all he said before his lips claimed yours again. His kisses were fervent as he bit and sucked on your bottom lip. Your hips were still moving violently against his thigh and you could feel your climax start to build up. It was almost too hot for you to handle. But you could tell he was going to give you what you wanted soon.
Or he was. A loud banging came from his bedroom door across the room. “They’re here!” Ashton’s voice rang to you from behind the door.
You sighed deeply as you pulled away from Michael and away from your release. Michael groaned and fell, face first, into the mattress. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Maybe later.” You giggled, pushing him up to lay on his back. He looked up at you and a mischievous smile, the one you had grown to love, adorned his face.
“Or we can continue.” His hand was already reaching to your wrist to pull you up to straddle him again but you held back, shaking your head.
“Mikey, you have guests.” But still, you leaned over and pecked his lips quickly.
Michael groaned again, this time out of annoyance. “Fuck them. I don’t even know who they are, they’re Ashton’s friends.”
You smiled at his attitude. Your hand was tracing his neck, following the ink lines. It was a vulnerable position he was in, and something he only ever allowed you to do. When he was with you, it was so easy to forget how different he was with other people. How mean he could be. It was almost comical to see the difference in how he was right then to what he was just a few minutes ago.
“Be nice.” You chastised. “They’re here for you too, don’t bother trying to kid yourself.”
You heard Michael whine, “Come on, baby girl.” He took a hold of your wrist again. As he pushed himself up to a sitting position, he easily towered over you and he used that to his advantage. Pushing you against the wall next to his bed, he cupped one of your cheeks. His hand took up much of that side of your face, “Let me get you off.” His voice was deep with want.
You’d be a liar if you said that you weren’t wet. The way he was looking at you, the way you felt so small in front of him, you wanted to let him do whatever he wanted with you. But as you heard the front door close, you couldn’t. Not only would it be embarrassing because you were never quiet, Michael made sure of that, but it would be impolite.
Michael would never admit it but you both knew the guests were here for him. He was somewhat of a legend throughout the campus, especially among frat boys and wannabes. No matter your disdain for people like that, they came all this way for him.
So you pushed against his chest just slightly, knowing that would be enough for Michael to let you go. And when he sighed and moved away, you got up from his bed and moved to where there was a mirror hanging next to his closet. Your hair was a mess and so was your makeup. You looked fucked out and you were in awe for a moment at how Michael managed to make you this way with just a make out session and a dry hump.
Fixing yourself, you couldn’t help but smile at the pouting boy, still cross armed on his bed. Turning to him, you motioned for him to get up. “Come on Mikey.”
He stood and immediately, you had to crane your neck to look up at his big height. Even his shoulders engulfed your entire figure. Michael knew what he did to you so it wasn’t much a surprise when you felt one of his hands wrap themselves around your neck, the one with his bruised knuckles, but not hard. “After this, you’re mine.”
You think your smile was enough to tell him how excited you were at that prospect.
Michael gave you a weak smile. He didn’t tend to smile much, even when it was just the two of you. In fact, except the fact that he was a lot chattier and warmer with you, he was still always in his head and rarely expressed much emotion outside of bed besides anger, horniness and the rare affection. But you were okay with that. Your emotions were enough for the two of us.
He gave you peck on the lips, “I’ll see you out there.”
You nodded up at him, smiling before going back to fixing your makeup and adjusting your dress. Ashton had a couple of friends over ever now and then. Most, if not all, coming to see Michael. Though, you tried to not be there whenever they came over, Michael seemed to prefer it for you to be with him. To give him something to actually look forward to. He hated meeting new people and he hated their interest in him. He was popular without wanting to be. So you were often there to remedy that and you became the center of his world in those moments. Though, really, that was how you were most of the time you were with him.
Only a few minutes passed after he left the room that you followed him out.
But as soon as you left the room, you stopped when you saw someone standing in the living room, looking at you. In that same instance, you recognized him. Justin. A good friend from high school and an even better human being.
As your name left his mouth you grinned, coming closer to hug him. It had been so long, years, actually. The last you saw him was at your graduation when you swore you’d miss him. And you had. After all, he was the boy that plagued your heart all throughout high school - not that he’d known.
“Justin!” The hug was quick and you had to get on your tip toes to do it. You could tell he was just as surprised to see you. He was smiling wide and his eyebrows were shot high like they did whenever he was interested in something.
But just as soon as you pulled away, the weirdness of the situation seeped in, “What are you doing here?”
Justin blinked as if he, too, just became aware of the weird circumstance you were meeting in. “I, uh” He scratched the back of his head, unsure of how to answer and gestured to the couch. “I came with Chris and Charlie.”
Your brows furrowed further as you glanced at the couch where, sure enough, your high school classmates sat, looking back at you. They waved, slightly confused. You tried to ignore the fact that even Ashton had torn his eyes away from the tv to stare at you two. Which, considering how hard it was to take Ashton away from his video games, was saying something.
All you could think was that you wanted to crawl into a hole. The boys that you always said peaked in high school and made you so upset when they transferred to your university were now at your boyfriend’s house, trying to be his friends. It was truly a worst case scenario.
Excluding Justin. It’d been so long since you saw him, it felt nice to be in his presence again. You appreciated him as a person and the kindness he radiated - even to you, someone so much lower in economic status than him.
“But I thought you went to Washington?” You fiddled with one of your bracelets as you spoke.
Justin nodded, stiffly. “I do, we’re just on Spring Break a few weeks before you so I thought I’d visit.”
You smiled, “You should’ve gotten in touch!”
You think the situation had gotten a hold of him because while he otherwise would be rambling on with questions and stories, Justin had gotten quiet. “But why are you here?”
You blinked. Now you felt uncomfortable. It was as if you finally noticed everyone’s eyes on you, including Michael’s glaring ones. Yeah, this is definitely the last time you were going to be there when someone else was coming over.
Ashton turned back to the tv and scoffed, “Please, she practically lives here.”
Your nose crinkled when you smiled and made your way to Michael, who had taken a seat and motioned you into his lap. You shrugged, looking at your high school classmates. “This is my boyfriend’s house.”
Justin sat down slowly, his eyes just as wide as Chris and Charlie’s. Most people on campus knew you were Michael’s girlfriend. So the shocked reaction had been diminishing. You were almost starting to become used to not seeing it.
Almost.
You don’t really blame them. You are very different. Michael is aggressive, angry and cold while you tended to be bubbly, shy and school-oriented. But that’s what you liked about each other. You just fit so well together. Opposites attract, right?
Ashton spoke up again, knowing Michael would likely not talk the entire reunion if he could help it. “How do you know each other?”
You took one of Michael’s hands in yours, your hand looking almost minature in his large one, and traced the tattoos you loved so much, “We went to high school together.”
Ashton nodded, “Oh the private one?”
Charlie nodded, glancing at Michael before looking at you, “I didn’t know you were dating Michael Clifford.”
You smiled weakly, we’re not friends, that’s why you didn’t know is what you wanted to say.
Michael took a chug of the glass bottled beer in his hands. It was like a silent signal because after, the three boys began playing their game.
You made a grab for the beer but Michael moved it out of your reach, his free hand slapping the side of your thigh in warning.
Your eyes widened. “Michael!” You hissed under your breath. Not in front of everyone. But he just stared at you, unsmiling. The only hint of humor came from his twinkling eyes.
He didn’t like you trying anything he was into: drugs, cigarettes, weed, alcohol. It was all off limits to you and he made sure everyone knew it. It was his way to preserve your innocence, even if dating him made that seem sort of like a paradox. Sometimes, though, it was fun to mess with him even if you were never interested in actually experimenting with the things he did.
“So, Michael…” You were brought out of your own little world by Charlie. “Are you going to Epsilon’s party tonight?”
“No.” Came Michael’s curt reply, his thumb drawing lazy circles on your arm.
Ashton was the one who saved the moment (and Charlie’s feelings) by filling in Michael’s blanks. You think that’s why they were such good friends. “Michael hates parties. He’d rather be here with Y/N and do it like bunnies.”
You weren’t sure if you wanted to die or if you wanted to kill Ashton. Maybe both.
Because as soon as those words left his mouth to your high school classmates - and high school crush - you felt your face heat up. You didn’t have to look to know that Michael was smirking.
You saw Justin blush and look away and for a moment, you felt worse. There was something about feeling completely humiliated in front of someone you hold at such a high regard that does that to you.
Ashton and Chris both exclaimed at something on the tv at the same time your phone chimed. You unlocked it to read the text.
kelly (stats)
hey girl! are you on campus? i’m at the library and wanted to see if you wanted to work on the project.
The project. It was due in a few weeks and while you had finished your portion, the rest of it was definitely not done. You sighed, knowing you’d have to go and lose the rest of your day with Michael.
You felt Michael shift under you, moving up from his slouched position to be able to read your text fully. He kissed your shoulder when he did.
“I’ll be right back.” You whispered to which he nodded. You got up from his lap and moved to the kitchen, moving to call Kelly and sort out the details.
“Hello?”
+
Justin’s eyes followed your movements as you left to the kitchen, though certainly not missing the way Michael’s hollow eyes watched his every move. Michael, sitting slouched, didn’t even stop staring when he took a chug of his beer, the red of his healing bloody knuckles on full display.
Justin definitely understood what made Michael so scary on campus. What he couldn’t understand is why Y/N was with him. Sweet, innocent Y/N. Had you changed so much in three years that this is who you would fall for?
He could feel Michael radiate hostility but Michael remained quiet, simply choosing to observe Justin, which somehow seemed more terrifying.
When you came back into the room, Justin actively tried not to watch you. He kept his eyes on the tv with his only glimpse of you being your bottom half as you walked by him, your dress falling to just below your mid thigh. He couldn’t help but listen to his friend’s chiming voice as you spoke in a lower tone.
“I’m going to go to the library to finish up a project.” He couldn’t hear what Michael answered, if he even answered. But he heard you continue. “No, I might just walk. It’s still light out. I’ll call you when I’m heading back.”
Then, as if the afternoon didn’t already feel surreal enough, he saw you out of the corner of his eye, bend down and plant a kiss to Michael’s lips, one of your hands were on his abdomen, holding you up. It almost felt jarring to witness. Not only to see Michael allowing such a thing but to see the girl that had taken up much of his mind, and heart, in high school willingly put herself in that position with a man like Michael. It had taken him a while this afternoon just to put the pieces together and understand that Y/N was Michael’s girlfriend but to see it laid out in front of him was disturbing nonetheless.
When you straightened up again, you regarded the boys in front of you with the kind smile Justin knew so well. “I’m heading out, nice to see you guys again.” Though you didn’t really sound like you meant it.
Justin didn’t think his next actions through. All he was thinking was that it was an out. An out to leave this house that made him so uncomfortable and an out to not be in the same room as Michael without you to mend the tension.
So he stood up without much thought, “I’ll head out with you.” And as the words left his mouth, he wanted to take them back immediately. They came out wrong. He knew it and so did everyone else in the room, evidenced by the pausing of the video game and the multiple set of eyes on him.
You blinked up at him, processing what he said for a moment before he quickly added, “I mean, I left my phone back at Chris’ room so I was going to leave anyway. I was just thinking I’d give you some company.” That didn’t sound any better either.
But he trudged through the awkwardness of his phrasing by refusing to look at Michael. Justin had a feeling that would make everything a million times worse.
But you didn’t fail him, “Oh, sure.” You smiled warmly, looking back at Michael quickly before moving towards Justin and the door, “We can catch up on the way.”
Chris and Charlie were looking at him with wide eyes as he left, likely cursing him out in their heads for messing up any chance they had at being Michael’s friends. But as he followed his friend back out to the open world, outside of the dark and cramped house, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
+
You looked up at the tall blond boy beside you as you walked down the sidewalk that would lead back to campus. You were still in awe that he was there beside you, walking and talking to you after so long. Well, not so much talking. You think he was still up in his head about the situation.
“So did you really leave something in Chris’ dorm room?” You smiled knowingly up at him.
To which he let out a chuckle and lowered his head sheepishly, “No, I…I just had to get out of there.”
You nodded like you understood, which you did. You talked a lot when we were in high school and you knew his limits, what he was used to. “Yeah, I know that house can be a lot for some people.”
“It’s just cramped.”
You didn’t say it but that kind of bothered you. It wasn’t a mansion and while it wasn’t exactly nice, it was cozy and it felt like home. Michael made it feel like home. But you knew Justin couldn’t see it that way. He was the richest boy in high school, after all. And popular because of it. Though, looking back, you couldn’t think of a time where he had let that get to his head.
“So, you and Michael, huh?” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis and looked over at you. His blue eyes clouding with worry.
Now, it was your turn to chuckle. “Yeah. It’s okay, a lot of people have the same reaction.”
“It’s just different, I guess. Have you heard his reputation at all?”
You got on the bus that would lead straight to the middle of campus at that point and found two seats right next to each other.
You nodded, “I guess. But Michael…Michael’s different from what you think. He can be sweet. You just have to get to know him.” You tried to tame the big loving smile that was threatening to explode at the thought of Michael, the version of him that you knew. You were well aware of how vicious and even cruel he could be, gaining him the rumors that constantly swirled around him and now even you. But he wasn’t like that with you.
“I heard he’s in a gang.” Justin whispered.
Your eyes shot up at him in alarm, “Of course he’s not.” Unfounded rumors like that did bother you, they whittled down all of Michael’s past struggles to be theatrical entertainment for those looking in, not to mentioned demonized him even further for no reason. Though they never really bothered Michael, you had too much respect both for him and for yourself to be okay with them.
“I just don’t think I expected him to be your type.” He explained, trying to diffuse the situation.
“Well he wasn’t, not at first.” You calmed down and instead bit your inner cheek, trying to decide whether you should let him in on your little secret. “Actually, you were my type. I had a huge crush on you in high school…”
“What?-”
“…Don’t worry, I’m over it now.” you quickly added in when you I felt him freeze behind you in surprise. It was embarrassing but it didn’t make much sense keeping it from him anymore.
“I had no idea.” His voice dripped with honesty. He pulled at the collar of his polo shirt.
You shrugged, “I made sure of that. I don’t know, you were just so nice to me even though you were so out of my league. You were rich, popular but so respectful and socially aware. Plus you weren’t a republican.” You laughed before looking down, “And I was the shy scholarship kid.��
It was obvious Justin was trying to think of what to say so you helped him out, “But you know three years of college really changes you. I’m a lot more outspoken now and I found a great boyfriend.”
Justin nodded, still seemingly shocked, “That’s great.” His voice was soft and, as you made eye contact, there was something more in his eyes that you couldn’t read.
But you didn’t have to think of it much because you got to our destination and you both made your way off the bus, onto the campus you loved so much.
“Okay, I guess I’ll see you around?” You were already moving back slowly, desperate to get to the library quickly so you could head back to Michael faster.
Justin nodded, not moving to go to the dorms, “Yeah, I’ll be here for two weeks or so.”
+
You practically skipping when you reached Michael’s house again. The sun had set and part of you were upset at how long it had taken you in the library. But as you opened the door to Michael’s room and saw him laying on his bed, headphones on and wearing a black hoodie with only the tattoos on his hands peeking out, those feelings disappeared and were replaced with much more primal feelings.
Michael, slipping off his headphones gently, seemed to mirror your feelings because just a bending of his index finger in a ‘come here’ motion, was enough to have you closing the door behind you and nearly jumping onto him.
You were smiling but asked before anything else, “Ashton-?” You always felt bad he had to deal with you constantly at each other with only thin walls separating Michael’s room from his.
“He went to that frat party.” Michael muttered, uninterested. His eyes were instead trailing your body, figuring out which way was best to take off your dress.
You were on all fours as you crawled your way to him, stopping when you were in between his spread legs. “You should’ve gone.” Even if you didn’t love parties, they were still a big part of who he was, before dating you he would be at them drinking the night away every other day, and a part of you felt bad for taking them away from him, even if unintentionally.
But still, he couldn’t look like he care less when he reached over and pulled your dress up to uncover your ass, his hands trailing down the curve of you sensually before giving you a small spank that made you jump in surprise. “I have better things to do.”
Now that deserved a reward. Your hand rubbed over the noticeable bulge in his jeans. Michael’s hands undid his belt, the sight of that action almost making you want to moan right then and there. Your hands trailed up to undo the button and zipper. He eagerly pushed his hips up to help you take his jeans and boxers off.
His long and thick length stood out horizontally and you felt your mouth watering already at the thought of taking him in your mouth.
One of his hands took a hold of the gold necklace you were wearing, twisting it and pulling at it to force your face closer to his.“Are you gonna be a good girl for me?”
When you first started having sex, you were shy and inexperienced. Words and talk like that would have had you shaking nervously. And while you would still likely react that way in public, with enough time with Michael and in the privacy of his room, you didn’t even blink when you answered.
“Always.” Your hand wrapped around him before you took his dick into your mouth. Michael groaned immediately and threw his head back, eyes closed. This only proved to spur you on. You took him as deep as you could, stopping only when his tip hit the back of your throat, causing you to gag and pull back.
But the vibrations only seemed to have him moaning louder and led to one of his hands to collect your hair and push himself back into your mouth. “Fuck that’s good, take it.”
You didn’t even notice when he had taken off his shirt and hoodie. His tattoos, which ranged from his fingers to his entire torso and neck were on full display and you felt yourself get wetter at the intricate ink that adorned his beautiful body. It was a contrast to your body that was completely bare of any tattoos.
Up until then, he was still controlled. When you looked up at him with the innocent eyes you knew drove him wild and moan against his length as you bobbed your head, his control snapped. There was something about you looking pure, especially in that angelic-looking white dress, at the same time you were doing something so dirty with him that sent him ablaze. Even more knowing that you were only like that for him.
Immediately, he tightened his grip on your hair with both hands, holding you in place. He thrust up into your mouth at a fast pace, fucking your mouth harshly. His groans increasing in volume. He thrust into your mouth deeply, your nose nearly touching his stomach, and kept himself there. Your throat closed tightly against him.
“Do you like that?” Your jaw hurt and you felt tears in your eyes as he pulled out enough for you to breath, his cock was messy with your spit. Then he continued, thrusting into your awaiting mouth and murmuring dirty nothings under his breath. You wanted to trail your hands down to your pussy to soothe the ache it had for him but you refrained. “Do you like me using your mouth like a dirty fucking slut?”
You moaned involuntarily. You needed him. You could feel yourself soaking through your panties. Michael gave a sharp tug at your hair and pulled you off of him. He tilted your head back painfully to lock his eyes with yours.
“Do you like being used like a toy?” His voice was cold and mean but it was a turn on. You nodded your head submissively and one of his hands reached down to your cheek, giving you a sharp slap. Enough for you to feel the sting and enough for it to feel good. “Open your mouth.”
You did what he said immediately. Your tongue poking out in anticipation. Michael leaned down before spitting into your mouth. You closed your eyes, moaning when you felt another slap at your cheek.
“Dirty whore.” Michael muttered under his breath before pinning you down to his bed, tearing your dress off as soon as hit the mattress and then doing the same to your bra and underwear.
Part of you wondered what had gotten into him. Being rough and kinky in bed isn’t something out of the ordinary for you two but he usually wasn’t like this out of no where. Not that you were complaining.
On all fours, you swayed your ass to him enticingly and looked behind you with a virginal smile, “Fuck me, daddy.” You said innocently.
He didn’t say anything as he flipped you over quickly and ran the head of his dick teasingly along your entrance, slapping it onto your pussy twice. A load moan of his name left your mouth when he finally entered you. He wasted no time in thrusting at a rough pace into you. Your moans were cut off and stuttered at the pleasure.
“Fuck, you’re so tight.” One of Michael’s hands reached up to your throat and pressed tightly. The feeling of his inked hands around your throat amplified the pleasure. Your walls clenched around him. “No matter how many times I fuck you"
You saw his eyes be fixated on your breasts, the way they bounced up and down fully in pace with each of his thrusts. He leaned down and wrapped his warm mouth around one of tits, flicking and twirling his tongue around your nipple.
Your eyes closed involuntarily and your back arched in pleasure as he continued to slam his hips into yours. The only sounds in the room were the sound of skin slapping, your moans and his grunts.
“If only those boys could see you now, their innocent little classmate, so submissive and desperate for my cock, letting me fuck you like my bitch.” Michael’s voice was taunting and you could barely get your mind out of the haze of pleasure to question what he was talking about.
“But they’ll never see you like this. This is the only cock you’ll ever get, your first and your last. No one will ever be able to please you like I can. Do you think that blondie can make you feel this good?” You closed your eyes in pleasure, too far lost to even understand what he was saying, just shaking your head in answer. You were blushing like crazy at his words, which only served to make him thrust faster.
“Look at me.” He hissed and you did just when his thrusts’ vigor increased even more which left you whimpering and writhing underneath him. But still, you opened and kept your eyes on him, your mouth open as moans filtered out of you. “Tell me you’re mine.”
Though your mouth was open, you couldn’t formulate words. But Michael’s hands on your throat pressed harder and his other hand slapped your cheek as a warning, “Tell me.”
“Y-Yours. I’m yours, Mikey. Only yours.” His mouth was on yours in a heated kiss while his pace never faltered as he pistoned in and out of you.
“That’s right.” Michael praised, “Mine.” Then he said something he had never said before. “I’m going to knock you up, get you nice and pregnant. Everyone would know then, that you’re fucking mine.” He almost sounded delirious with the prospect.
He didn’t mean it, he couldn’t mean it. Even if he did, you were on birth control. But you moaned loader just at the thought of his love for you reaching those lengths.
“You want that, little one? Want me to fill your tight little cunt with my cum?”
A chorus of “Yes, yes, yes” left your mouth, you couldn’t speak anymore than just repeating that. The thought of being pregnant with his child and the reminder of just how small you were compared to him was enough to put you on another planet.
“H-Harder.” You were shaking as he complied with your request, his thrusts moving faster and rougher into you. Your arms wrapped themselves around his torso and scratched at his back, desperate for a way to express the nearly overwhelming pleasure you felt. He hissed in pleasure at the pain, his body above you engulfed nearly your entire figure.
“Open” His rough voice commanded and you opened your mouth obediently. Moaning again as he spit into your awaiting tongue once again.
Your throat was starting to be raw with your screaming and begging to come. “Cum for me, princess.”
You clenched your walls as you came around his big cock and that seemed to be the only thing that took for him to release after you.
He released inside you, filling you and leaking out after he pulled out. “Such a good girl.”
He was still coming when he pulled out and ribbons of cum adorned your face, which you graciously accepted. Michael watched your face and groaned to himself when you licked some of his cum off that was at the corner of your mouth and swallowed.
His eyes were closed in pleasure for a moment before he released his grip on your throat. You didn’t doubt the image before of you, blushing and covered in his cum did wonders for his libido.
He cleaned you up but you had a feeling it was just an excuse to be able to give you a passionate kiss. “You did great, baby girl. I love you.”
His praise made your heart swell. “I love you, too.”
Before you knew it, your kiss had gotten much more frenzied and his hand was trailing to your sore entrance. But you stopped before it could lead to a round two.
“I’m sore.” You mumbled before nuzzling into chest. His arms wrapped around your body protectively and kissed the top of your head, gently, so different from how rough he was just a few moments before.
You looked up at him quizzically just to see that he was already looking at you. “So, are you going to tell me what that was about?”
Michael looked genuinely confused, “What do you mean?”
You rolled your eyes, moving up so you were at eye level with him. You ran your fingers through his soft black hair, noting how his eyes fluttered at the sensation. “You know what I mean. What wound you up so bad?”
“Nothing” But at your pointed look, he sighed in defeat and muttered, “Those little rich boys. The tall one, he’s into you and I couldn’t do shit about it.”
You sputtered, “Justin?! No way is he into me.” You shook your head, giggling as you leaned back to lay your head on his shoulder. “Actually, in high school, I was the one into him.”
You probably shouldn’t have said that. You knew it as soon as Michael’s eyes hardened and his body stiffened. “What?”
Shaking your head, you stuttered out, “But I got over that years ago, he’s just a friend.”
But Michael couldn’t let it go, “You liked him and he was in my fucking house? He left with you for fucks sakes Y/N.” He moved as if he was getting up and you placed a hand on his chest to stop him (only doing so because he let you, otherwise his strength would quickly overpower yours). If he were to go after Justin, there would be little you could do to stop him from beating him to a pulp.
You kissed him deeply to calm him down because you saw his eyes start to shut down. They started to look like the same eyes he had in public, the cold, angry ones. And you couldn’t let him go there, not with you.
“We were only with each other for a few minutes, we took the bus.” You reasoned with him.
Michael locked his jaw tightly but he was starting to calm down, “That bitch ass couldn’t even look at me but I was watching him. He kept looking at you like he knew you, like he knew you how I know you.”
He looked at you then, with a mocking smirk. “Like he knew how sweet and moral you are and that you shouldn’t be with your big bad boyfriend. Too bad he didn’t see you begging to have your mouth and pussy filled by your mean boyfriend’s cock. Or that he didn’t know I was the one that took your virginity,” He moaned at the memory, “What do you think he would say if he saw innocent little Y/N like that?”
You didn’t have to be looking at him to see the delight in his bright eyes and sneering smile. It was obvious he enjoyed corrupting you.
You whined at his words, embarrassed, as if you didn’t hear much worse things come out of his mouth when you were underneath him or even when he was in fights with others.
“Are you sure Ashton isn’t home?” You changed the topic.
“He’s out.” Michael repeated, “Why, did you want him to join?”
He was teasing you, you knew he was but you whined again, blushing (something you knew he loved) and shook your head no.
He chuckled, a warm and joking chuckle, “Good, because I’m not sharing you. Remember that.”
Michael settled you in between his legs comfortably, giving you his phone to busy yourself with games or take photos. He kissed the top of your head, that reached just to his chin. Meanwhile, he grabbed a cigarette and a lighter from his nightstand, placing the white stick in his mouth and lighting it. The scent overtook your senses uncomfortably. But you were used to it so you didn’t do much besides raising your hand jokingly, to ask for a puff.
But Michael, who never took those things as a joke, squeezed your thigh. “I don’t want you getting into the shit I’m into.” He said, “I want to keep you pure for me.”
Because as much as he loved corrupting you, he loved your innocence even more.
+
so i think i’m going to make this into a two part series with each part having two stories involved. if that makes sense, let me know what you think!
#5sos#michael clifford smut#5sos smut#michael clifford x reader#michael clifford#bad boy smut#jealous smut#bad boy michael#luke hemmings smut#luke hemmings#calum hood#ashton irwin#calum hood smut#ashton irwin smut#5sos imagines#michael imagine#college au
763 notes
·
View notes
Text
let's save the world
season one, episode four
five hargreeves x reader
summary: after the break in, five comes back with information, and you two go to check it out.
trigger warning: cursing, drinking, a fluffy moment 👉 👈
word count: 2.5k
a/n: damn, already part four O-O. i don’t really have much to say, so, enjoy!
after getting attacked by the commission assassins, you had gone up to five’s room and passed out on the bed, not even taking the time to clean or patch it up. you told yourself that it would be fine for the night, though there was a nagging voice in the back of your head, warning of the possible infection, but you inevitably pushed it away.
your morning wasn’t too great. you were shaken violently to be woken up, and you sat up quickly, hissing and grabbing onto your leg when you felt the pain the coursed through it. looking up at five, you glare at him. “what the fuck?”
“i take it you didn’t find any clues?” he questions, the smallest hint of a smirk on his face as you groan softly. of course he would do this. you knew it meant sitting in that van all day, he actually found something, and he was ready to rub it in.
leaning on your arm to reach for the med kit, you don’t meet his eyes. “no, i didn’t.” you mutter, opening the box and pulling out the supplies to finally patch up your leg. “i assume that you did?”
glancing at him as you doused a clean rag in rubbing alcohol, you raise an eyebrow. “yup.” he grins, and you roll your eyes, pulling your skirt up a bit to pull the make shift tourniquet off and reveal the wound from the glass that so rudely decided to cut through your flesh.
“how did that happen?” five questions, cringing slightly at the sight of the injury that you quickly placed the soaked rag over, biting your lip harshly to hold back the cries of pain from the stinging pain.
once the pain settled, you took a deep breath and looked to him. “long story. people, from the commission, i’m sure of it.” you threw the rag to the side, grabbing the needle and stitching thread, quickly putting it through and getting to suturing the puncture.
he watched as you stitched the wound, staying quiet for a moment, before he decided to speak again. “remember the guy we talked to? at meritech?” he asks, and you nod simply, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, ��well, he’s definitely doing something sketchy. so we need to figure out what.”
you finish the stitches before throwing the needle to the side, looking back to him. “seriously? if this leads to another dead end, i’m going to kill you.” you grab some gauze and quickly wrap it around your leg, sighing softly as you toss everything back into the medical kit.
“i’ll deserve it if i am. but i’m sure of this.” he tells you, standing from the bed beside you and holding out his hand to help you up. it hurt a bit to stand on your leg from the pain, but you had endured worse, so you could suck it up.
-
waiting on the street, you leaned against a building, following five’s gaze and staring at one of the cars that lined the street. “how do you know he’s here?” you question, crossing your arms over your chest.
“i followed him, and when he went into the vet, i figured i had time to get you.” he responds, neither of you risking a glance away from the vehicle. “there he is.” he mutters as the man walks to his car, putting his dog in the backseat and getting in himself. five grabs your hand and the next moment you’re in the car, sitting by the dog.
smiling slightly as you give him a pat, your attention is brought back to the situation when the man turned and jumped at the sight of five right next to him. within a millisecond, a knife is held to his throat. “one chance.” he snaps at him, and you purse your lips, leaning forward in your seat. “you’ve got one chance to tell me what is going on in that lab.”
obviously terrified, since he was held at knife point, the man quickly speaks. “i manufacture prosthetics for fake patients.” his eyes are wide, staring straight into five’s, “i bill the insurance companies then sell them on the black market.”
resting an arm on the head rest of his seat, you lean towards him. “including eyeballs?” you press, and his gaze flickers towards you before back to five.
“yeah-” he stutters out, his head shaking slightly, “they’re my biggest seller. i’ve got a list- a wait list- probably twenty buyers!”
five nods, “so the serial number i told you?” he raises an eyebrow.
“yes, it- it could’ve already been bought.” he tells him, his breathing shaky.
as five stared into the guy’s eyes, you swore he could see into his soul, and though you had seen it multiple times, it still unsettled you. “i need that list, lance.” the knife pushes against his skin slightly, and he visibly flinches, “names and numbers, i need it now!”
“i don’t have it,” you can see his eye’s glossing, and you don’t blame him for being close to tears. “the only copy’s in my safe at the labs.” he quickly adds on, probably praying to himself that he wouldn’t die today.
smirking, you slap a hand on his arm, and he jumps at the sudden touch. “alright then, start the car, bud.” you lean back against the seats, petting the dog again. “we’re going on a trip.”
-
stopping the car just a street away from the building, all of you get out, you and five both holding onto lance’s arms to make sure he wouldn’t make a run for it. he could probably easily push you guys away, as you were practically thirteen years old, probably no muscle at all, but you assumed he was too afraid to even think about running.
as you rounded the corner, the building up ahead, your eyes widen. flames engulfed the lab, smoke pouring out of the windows. your heart practically stops. your only clue to go off of, was totally destroyed.
you could only stand in shock as lance slipped out of your grip after five ran forward, both of them looking up at the burning building. as five stood in front of the entrance, there was a sudden explosion, sending him flying back into the road.
that got you moving, quickly running to his side and crouching down next to him, ignoring the burn in your thigh. “holy shit, are you okay?” you question, slightly panicked, as it definitely wasn’t a simple fall to the ground. first of all, it was the middle of the road, concrete, and he had been knocked back pretty hard.
pushing himself up as he nods, five looks at the building. “there goes the only evidence we had.” he mutters, and you sigh softly.
standing up, you hold a hand out to him to help him up, which he gladly takes. “guess we better get to searching for another lead, then.” you glanced to the lab, pursing your lips at all the rubble that surrounded the entrance where it had exploded.
“i guess so.”
-
you sat on the floor of the library, the glass looking down at the lower floors behind your back. books surrounded the two of you, scattered around as you tried to search for any clues inside of them.
bottles of alcohol also surrounded you, which you guys weren’t holding back on. with your only piece of evidence gone, you were ready to give up and just let the world turn back to the rubble it had been when you first got stuck, as long as you didn’t have to be in it again. you didn’t know if you could handle that like you did the last time.
“you know, i thought we’d be able to figure this out faster.” five mumbles, breaking the silence between the two of you. his words were slightly slurred, from the alcohol. he sighs softly, flipping the page he had been reading to move on to the next.
taking a sip from the bottle you held, you lean your to the side to rest your head on his shoulder. “so did i.” your words are just as jumbled, maybe even worse. “but i guess the world is just... against us.” you close your eyes, feeling tired. you weren’t sure if it was from trying so hard and failing miserably, the alcohol, or actually being tired. you didn’t care.
five stayed quiet for a moment, his gaze still trapped on the book, until he glanced to you. “remember the first night? at griddy’s?” he questions softly, tracing the lip of the bottle with his finger as you nod. “you were saying something about how you felt when we were both separated in the apocalypse.”
you remembered that moment very clearly. even with a hazy mind. you had been preparing to tell him about the feelings you had had for him, before those guys crashed the party. you weren’t sure why you didn’t tell him after. probably slipped your mind after the big fight. “oh.” you sigh softly, eyes still closed as you thought, “yeah, i was just going to tell you that i used to like you. in more than a friend way.” you chuckle, sitting up and shaking your head.
“it’s so stupid.” you look at him, your head tilted to the side, “when we got stuck and i couldn’t find you, i felt like i lost the whole world- well, i guess i did, but not in the literal way.”
his eyebrow’s were furrowed at the information you gave him, probably processing it all. “you liked me?” he questions, a hint of confusion in his tone.
“well, yeah.” you take another drink from the bottle, frowning when there was only a tiny bit left. “i guess i stopped once i found out you went crazy and fell in love with a mannequin.” you laugh, motioning to the mannequin that he had brought along and sat between you two, looking up at the lights on the ceiling.
pursing his lips, five nods, humming in acknowledgment at what you said. “find anything that might help us?” he asks, and you groan, looking back to him.
“i don’t know if we ever will.” you felt like this whole mission was hopeless. you had been ready when the two of you first made it back, prepared to do whatever it took to keep the world safe, but now, all of that confidence and hope was gone. you were close to just giving up.
setting his now empty bottle down, five leans back against the glass. “maybe.” he mumbles softly, and another silence falls.
you don’t even realize when you fall asleep, slumped against his side.
-
when you wake up, it takes you a bit to feel the arms holding you up, your body bouncing slightly with each step they took. your eyes shot open, and you sigh in relief when you see that it’s just diego.
“it’s not secure.” you hear luther’s voice behind him, turning your head to see him walking behind with five in his arms. “those psychopaths could come back at any moment.”
“hey.” you mumble as your eyes fall closed again, and you groan as you feel your stomach churn. it probably wasn’t the best idea to drink that whole bottle, but your mind would clear up once it’s effect wore off a bit, and it would leave you with a killer headache. that was something to worry about later.
you hear five speak, but you can’t focus on his voice, only hearing fragments of what he says. something about puberty. and the end of the world. when he asks what they had been talking about, luther sighs. “two masked intruders attacked the academy last night.”
“they came looking for you!” diego says, the accusation clear.
sighing softly, you let your head hang, “hazel and cha-cha.” you inform him, words jumbled together, “assholes from the commission.”
“best of the best.” five adds on, chuckling, “other than us, of course.” you grin, nodding slightly.
both of the men seemed to be annoyed by your lack of genuine answers, but it’s what they get for thinking that questioning to drunks was a good idea. “the best of what?” luther urges, glaring at five.
“you know, delores always said she hates it when i drink.” five ignores the question, patting the plastic woman on the head as you groan loudly.
you grab onto diego’s arm slightly, “fucking delores. stop talking about her!” you pull yourself up a bit, looking at diego, “he’s in love with a fucking mannequin? can you believe it?” you grin, shaking your head and letting yourself fall back again.
“hey!” you jump as diego suddenly yelled, apparently down to his last straw of patience. “i need you guys to focus.” he stops in his tracks and turns so he could see five as well. “what do they want? this hazel and cha-cha.” his tone is firm, and you’re surprised he’s still expecting actual answers.
you see five’s amused grin and you laugh, but the two men don’t seem nearly as entertained. “we just want to protect you.” he adds on, tone a bit softer but still demanding.
five lets out a mocking laugh, and your grin is obvious. “protect us?” he derides, leaning forward in luther’s arms. “we don’t need your protection, diego. do you know how many people we’ve killed?”
“we’re the four fucking horsemen!” you laugh, throwing your arms up slightly, “the world is ending, and the apocalypse is coming. there’s nothing you can do to help.” you glare at him.
you hear five heave and throw up, and your nose scrunches up. “that’s fucking disgusting-” you can’t stop yourself from doing the same. both the men look at each other in irritation.
-
taglists
main: @horrorklaus
tua: none at the moment
five: @anapocalypseinmymind @five-hargreeves-official @insatiable-ivy @coffee-e-addict
let's save the world @aspiringwriter1 @thetrashypanda423 @lilacs-lavender @academy-umbrella
if you’d like to be added to any taglists, just ask!
#tua x reader#tua#umbrella academy x reader#umbrella academy#five hargreeves#five#five hargreeves x reader#five x reader#fanfiction series#fanfic#fanfiction#oneshots#fandom#reader insert#lstw#let's save the world
270 notes
·
View notes
Text
Devil Eyes
chapter 1! this is more or less a continuation of The Problem is You, but it can be read separate. will reblog with the ao3 link so it doesn’t get hidden.
(warnings for death, panic attacks, trauma, references to violence)
Fundy may be avoiding Tubbo.
(He’s familiar. He recognizes the same empty look in his eyes, the same tired slump of his shoulders, the signs of someone desperately trying to suppress their emotions. Fundy’s sure he looks just the same.)
Tubbo has not addressed Schlatt’s dead body. It’s disappeared by now, he knows, because he keeps finding himself at the scene, and he keeps staring exactly where the body lay.
(He can’t get the sounds of desperate choking, coughing out of his head, can’t stop feeling like he’s the one dying, like he can’t breathe. He keeps waking up gasping, Schlatt’s goat pupils burned into his eyes, his final words echoing in his ears.)
It’s not just Tubbo; everyone has been pretending nothing is wrong, that everything is great, even when they stumble over rubble that still hasn’t been moved, even days after the fact. They keep pretending everything is fine, and Fundy wants to scream.
He sees through the cracks-- none of them are doing okay, but Fundy just wishes they would fucking admit it:
Tubbo has chewed through his lips, left blood trickling down his chin in a nervous habit that he can’t bother to try to break.
Tommy screams Wilbur’s name in the middle of the night, and they all pretend they can’t hear through the thin walls of their makeshift refuges.
Quackity’s hands haven’t stopped shaking, and he has started wearing his ring around his neck again in a way he hasn’t done since before the inauguration.
Phil’s eyebags grow more and more every day, and every once in awhile he’ll simply stop and sigh to himself like he can’t believe what’s happening. (Fundy relates.)
Niki has been spotted in the button room many times, sitting on a piece of rubble and staring at her hands.
Everyone else has faded into a background blur, people he avoids and people he can’t bother noticing.
(Fuck. That’s ironic.)
Dream has been trying to talk to him for a while, now, but all Fundy can hear is a buzzing in his ears and whispers from Wilbur he’s been trying to ignore.
“Fundy,” Dream snaps, tapping his wrist. Fundy jumps more than he’d care to admit.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeats, running a hand over his face. Dream reaches out, gently, and fixes his fur.
(Fundy can almost forget he’s the one who started this all, who has caused all this chaos. His finger burns like the ring is fire.)
Fundy has been more uncomfortable with Dream than he’d care to admit. He wants to forget all this has happened, wants to forget about the destruction.
He wants someone he can trust, but he’s cursed, and there’s no way to escape that.
He reaches out and catches Dream’s hand, holds it for a second, then lets go and stands. Dream follows.
“I’m gonna go sleep,” he says, and leaves him behind.
Bad passes him on the way down to the common area, which is simply the cleanest area of the destruction. The eye of the storm. Fundy gives him a wide berth, wants to avoid him as best he can. Niki is cooking some sort of soup, and he goes to join her.
She jumps when he sits down beside her, and he gives her an apologetic smile. She pats his wrist.
“How are you doing?” She asks worriedly, genuinely, and Fundy wants to burst into tears.
He’s always loved Niki. She’s wonderful, the kindest person he’s ever met.
(He has no idea how she’s lived this long.)
(He keeps her at arm’s length, because if he gets too close to her she’ll betray him, and he doesn’t think he could handle that.)
Niki hands him a bowl and they eat in silence, but for once it’s comfortable, or as comfortable it can be with Wilbur whispering in his ear.
“Are you okay?” Niki asks after a minute. “Your ears are twitching.”
He shakes his head to clear it as best as he can. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
He finishes his meal, thanks Niki, and wanders on. He feels directionless.
His feet take him to Schlatt’s place of death, again. He stares down at the floor, the pattern of the wood carved into his brain forever.
` There’s no reason he should be here. Schlatt didn’t matter to him, shouldn’t matter to him, but he did.
He can’t do this anymore. He crouches on the floor, holds his head in his hands, and cries.
Someone is patting his back, murmuring something or other, but he can’t bring himself to care. He feels like he’s going crazy, Wilbur’s voice in his ears near-constantly. He can’t hear himself think.
It takes him a while to calm down. He rubs disgusting snot on his sleeves, leaves tears and dirt smudged in his fur.
Once he’s finally stopped hiccuping too much to pay attention to anything else, once he’s finally able to breathe again, is when he raises his head.
Quackity is sat next to him, tears running down his cheeks as well, the ring on the chain gleaming around his neck.
Fundy relaxes. Of everyone, Quackity is the best candidate, one of the people he may trust the most.
(Which isn’t a good sign, but he can’t bring himself to care.)
“Sorry,” he rasps, sounding altogether too much like a certain president who was here a few days ago.
Quackity shrugs. “It’s not a problem. I saw you looked upset, and…” He reaches up to brush a few tears off his face.
Fundy hiccups. “Were you crying too?”
“Nah, nah,” Quackity says, still clearly wiping his tears. Fundy snorts.
They sit in silence for a few seconds, neither of them quite sure what to say, both of them wanting to spill their guts and yet so hesitant to do so.
And then Quackity stands, claps his hands together (Fundy jumps), and says. “You know what. This is bullshit.”
He grabs Fundy’s arm and pulls him to his feet, and then outside and towards the common ground. Fundy rushes to wipe the rest of his tears off his face and fur, but he’s so confused he can’t quite get there.
Quackity reaches the area where Niki had been cooking maybe half an hour before. He makes a beeline towards Phil, who’s settled on a rock, sharpening one of his swords. His wings are curled around him, still covered in bandages. Not many of them had been injured in the explosion, but Phil had been trying to cover Wilbur.
Quackity catches his attention and claps again, taking a breath. “Let’s admit it. You two’ve got to have a chat.”
Phil looks back and forth between the two of them. “Oh? What do you mean?”
Quackity runs a downy hand over his face. “Listen, y’all are fucked up. You’ve got to talk it out. Fundy isn’t handling this well.”
Fundy’s face burns, but he can’t help but be grateful for Quackity. But… why couldn’t he have been the one who’d been able to bring it up? Did it take Quackity’s interference?
You’re just a follower, Fundy.
…
That’s not Wilbur.
Schlatt.
His hands are shaking, but he can’t fall apart. Not here.
“Okay. Let’s go someplace private, then, Fundy.” Hm. Maybe he can imagine Phil being a father, now.
(That’s cruel. He doesn’t deserve that. Fundy’s just trying to force him away. He can’t get too close.)
Fundy makes to follow him.
Are you going to just do what they say, Fundy? You’ve never hesitated to BETRAYdisobey before.
Fundy freezes, his mind shuttering closed. His hands are shaking like leaves. Phil and Quackity are staring at him.
“Fundy?” Phil asks gently, grabbing his hand. “Let’s go, okay?”
Fundy nods.
He can see the shadow of horns in front of him.
#mcyt#personal#minecraft#dream smp#manburg#manberg#lmanberg#lmanburg#fundy#quackity#jschlatt#schlatt#wilbur soot#tubbo#philza#nihachu#fanfiction
69 notes
·
View notes
Note
I know you’re mostly JoexNicky, but would you consider writing AndyxBooker? My HC is that Booker pines hard for Andy. Lots of unrequited love potential. Sex is fine, but feelings are better.
Bold of you to assume I don’t ship ✨everything!✨
And unrequited love/pining????
Mmmmm yes, give me more!!!
Ok, here’s some depressing Booker x Andy pining for you anon 💜
-----------------
Love Like a Dying Flame
Booker wasn’t an idiot. Ok well, maybe when it came to some things, but not this. He had no delusions about Andy. He may not have been around to meet Quynh or see her and Andy together. But he’d heard enough, mostly from Joe, to know that there was an insurmountable wall between him and Andy.
Booker would never expect Joe or Nicky to move on with anyone else should one of them die or be lost. So, why would Andy, whose relationship with Quynh had lasted twice as long as Joe and Nciky’s had so far, be any different?
He knew Andy could never love him. Not when Quynh was still dying and invading his dreams every night. But it didn’t matter what he knew he couldn’t have, he also knew he couldn’t help but hope that someday she could see him as more than just another soldier. After all, they did have- had- all the time in the world.
When his wife and sons had all been laid to rest and the reality of facing eternity alone set in, Booker had all but lost hope. Even now, hope was a small candle at the other end of the infinite cave that was his mind. There seemed to be an eternity of darkness between himself and that flickering candle, and often he would lose sight of it completely.
Then Booker would return from death with Andy’s face inches from his own. She’d say something like ‘ Come back to me’ and press her forehead to his as he rocked through the painful aftershocks of healing. In those moments, the flickering flame felt more like a bonfire.
Those moments fueled him. And kept him alive. Perhaps his body would have soldiered on regardless. But Andy was the one who kept the tatters of his soul tethered to earth.
He had vomited after he touched himself and thought of Andy instead of his wife for the first time. The guilt of betraying his wife had been overwhelming even 40 years after her death. But she was gone, and it hurt too much to think of her so long after she had left him. So his thoughts turned to Andy. It took time, but eventually he stopped like an adulterer. No, now he just felt like a creep.
Joe knew something was up. Booker was sure of it. There had been more than one instance where Booker had caught himself staring at Andy only to shake himself out of it and earn a sad smile from his friend. Joe never said anything of course. That wasn’t the kind of friendship he and Joe had. But there was not a doubt in Booker’s mind that Joe knew.
Booker tried to keep his feelings in check, to rationalize them away. He tried to distract himself and sleep with random women as often as he needed to. And for a while, it worked.
But, in the last few decades it had gotten much much worse.
Toronto, 1951.
The four of them were clearing out an illegal arms dealer and Andy had handed Booker a fully loaded Beretta mere seconds after he had fired his last shot. It was the first time anyone had anticipated his needs in battle before. Nicky and Joe, constantly had each other covered, and at times even Andy. But never Booker. Not before this time.
After that they quickly became a team. Their own sub-unit to mirror Joe and Nicky. And they made a pretty good team in a fight. It certainly wasn’t as effortless as Nicky and Joe fighting together, but it worked. Or at least it had worked.
The flame still disappeared from time to time, but after every fight or battle where he and Andy had traded blows on the same enemy, or one of them had killed someone about to make a killing strike on the other, the candle would come into view, still far away. But there.
Columbia, 1983.
He and Andy were helping to escort a group of refugees over the border into Panama. Booker had been on watch, Andy nodding off beside him. Both of their backs against a large tree, the people they were protecting sleeping in the clearing in front of them. Andy’s head had slumped over onto Booker’s shoulder as she finally let sleep take her.
He knew it meant nothing, not in the way he wanted it to. She was tired and his shoulder was as good a place as any. In any case it clearly had not been a choice, she had practically passed out from exhaustion. Still he couldn’t ignore how good it felt to know that Andy trusted him enough to let her guard down like this.
The flame in his mind burned a little brighter after that.
Busan, 2005.
Joe and Nicky had become trapped in a collapsed and still on fire apartment building. Nicky had run in with no plan as soon as he heard shouts coming from inside. Of course Joe had followed him in without hesitation.
Andy and Booker stayed outside, helping people who made it out, even catching a woman who had jumped from the third floor. Booker had broken multiple ribs when he broke her fall.
When the building had come crashing down with Joe and Nicky still inside, Booker had started to rush the building, intending to find his friends. Dig them out by hand if need be. But Andy had stopped him.
She grabbed his hand and stared directly in his eyes.
“Don’t.” she had said simply. Her voice was low and dry.
He had never seen her look so scared, not up to that point. It was the first time he had seen her cry. Not tear up, but actually cry.
He sat with her as the firefighters and police pulled body after body from the rubble, including Joe and Nicky. She had held his hand the entire time. He still didn't understand what about that fire, which was far from the first or the last they had faced, had broken her so completely that night.
The smoldering flames of the wrecked building matched the ones in his mind. He could feel them on his face, and behind his eyes. He could feel them in the pit of his stomach.
And Now?
Booker wasn’t really sure what to think anymore. It couldn’t be healthy to pin all his love and hope on a person who didn’t return the feelings. And it wasn’t fair to Andy. Booker found it difficult to pull himself out of his depression long enough to really consider what was or wasn’t fair though.
He had spent 150 years second guessing every action Andy took. Always wondering if the reason she chose to sit next to him on every couch and helicopter was because Joe and Nicky were joined at the hip and she had no other choice.
God. He felt like a child, jealous at who’s team he was chosen for in some schoolyard game. Not that he could remember what, if any, games he had played as a child.
Or perhaps the reason she chose him over Joe and Nicky wasn’t because he was the only one left, but because it was him. Sebastien le Livre. This selfish, fucked up, mess of a man, who loved his friends even as he cursed them for their happiness. Even as he made the choice to betray them to find his own peace.
He would never be able to forgive himself for what he had done to Andy. He would never know if his gunshot had been the one that flipped some invisible switch on her mortality. And now he would likely never see her again.
His grief had grown so terrible, his self loathing so all encompassing that he stopped being able to feel that flame in the back of his mind. And now he feared he would never feel it again. Doomed to wallow for eternity, mourning all the loves he had lost over the course of his never ending life.
Two months after his exile began he stopped dreaming of Quynh. He bitterly thought that if he had been able to wait just a few more months before making the worst mistake of his life, he would have been able to be there when Andy finally mourned Quynh. Help her pick up the pieces.
He hated himself for that being his first reaction. He was a selfish piece of shit and he deserved to never see her again. She was better off without him.
No instead he had gotten word to Copley to try and discreetly let Nile know that her dreams of Quynh stopping wasn’t normal. Andy deserved to know.
When he stumbled into his apartment in Paris, absolutely gone on cheap cognac, He was determined to live the entire century drunk. He sobered up as soon as his door pushed open without needing it’s key though.
He pulled his gun, stepped into the room, and saw the absolute last thing he had ever expected to see.
Standing before him was the woman whose face he knew better than his own, the only face he knew better than Andy’s.
“Booker.” Quynh cooly said.
She poured herself a glass of water, and added, “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
He stood, frozen in disbelief, gun still pointed at Quynh. When a single small thought crept into his mind.
This was his chance, wasn’t it? If he couldn’t have Andy, which he had started to make peace with these last six months. Maybe returning something precious to her would end his exile early and allow him to at least be near her during the final years of her life.
Somewhere in the back of Booker’s mind, a small flame flickered to life.
((Available on AO3 as well, link on my tumblr 💜))
#Booker x Andy#Andy x Booker#Booker#Andy#Sebastien Le Livre#Andromache the Scythian#Andy x Quynh#it's background/past#but it's there#The Old Guard#The Old Guard fic#my stuff#my fics#oh this is rated S for Somebody hold Booker my sad sad child!#but actually just T for Teen/impure thoughts that would make our favorite ex priest blush#Oh also I snuck in my brotp#because Joe and Booker are BFFs#you can't change my mind#what even are these tags??#request
66 notes
·
View notes
Link
hello hello hello
i got thrown off my groove for a month there doing irl shit but i finally sat down and posted this piece of mercy fic that i’ve been sitting on for like a month. it’s all about john and kim hanging out and bonding so that’s fun!!!
i have a couple of ideas for stories but i’m not QUITE SURE how many of them are going to actually get posted. i might do like a yearly synopsis and put it in the series, writing out what happens between stories and stuff so when i reference shit it isn’t out of the blue, BUT ALSO i am lazy and it’s a miracle mercyverse has gotten this much from me, so lets not try to rock the boat huh???
anyway this is a story about john and kim falling into a cave. it’s like a bottle episode except the bottle is like a large intestine. i hope you like it!!! if you do, consider reblogging this post, or sharing the link, or kudosing or commenting or liking or subscribing or SMASHING THAT BELL
as usual, the story is under the cut for those of you who want to stay on tumblr for some godforsaken reason
Kim had thought that she was doing Nick and John a favor when she first offered to go cache-hunting with them. After all, Grace and Carmina had their hands full working on the yard's shooting range, and there hadn't been anything better to do than dig a couple of holes out in the woods. She'd figured, why not? An extra set of hands could speed things up, and she could keep them focused on digging instead of bickering.
Of course, now that she's out here with them, she regrets ever having offered. As it turns out, their method of cache-hunting involves incessantly goading one another into a fight, trading places between aggressive pessimism and irritatingly fake optimism whenever it might serve to piss the other off more. She's given up on trying to stop it; after all, it's not too much worse than what they say while mending fences and hauling scrap. It's just that the distance between them means that they're arguing at a headache-inducing level.
At the very least, Kim had hoped for some kind of method they could fall back on, but at three hours in, they've all but given up. She supposes the first two caches had been pretty easy to find, being in areas where the terrain hasn't changed much — but this neck of the woods has definitely seen some shifting. Between the rock slides and massive knots of collapsed trees, the steep hillside looks more like a beaver dam than the picturesque hiking trail it probably used to be.
"I'm starting to think that Jacob was full of shit," Nick says, as if he hasn't been reiterating the sentiment for the last thirty minutes. "There's no way we're gonna find anything out here."
Nick might be right, but Kim isn't about to gang up on John right now. She's been mostly staying out of it as the two of them argue about Jacob's map coordinates; why get involved now?
She ignores them and instead picks her way up the hillside towards one of the many uprooted trees nearby. Just like the last dozen trees she's checked, this one doesn't hold a barrel in its roots, nor do any of them have any damn sign indicating where they should be looking. Whatever marker Jacob might've left, paranoid bastard that he was, it's definitely been destroyed by the apocalypse.
"I told you that this wasn't going to be easy," John says. "There's half a mile of trail to search, and there's only three of us. This isn't some pasture outside town —"
"When I asked you if we should bring Grace and Carmina along, you said they would just get in the way! Now here you are, telling me we need more people!"
"If they were here, who do you think Grace would blame if Carmina got a goddamn splinter or scraped her knee? How do you still not get that she is actively looking for a reason to shoot me?"
"At this point, I'm looking for a reason, so I don't know what you're expecting!"
Kim has to admit, they're both making pretty good points. She just wishes they wouldn't make it sound like the start of a fistfight.
John's sigh is especially theatrical, and Kim hears the leaves crunch underfoot as he begins to stalk up the hill after her. He's probably going to try passing her, just to get space from Nick, but he really shouldn't bother. They should at least stop for something to eat and some water, and then they can figure out whether or not expanding the search zone is a good idea. They should probably reconsider their current "poke around and hope" method, too.
Setting her sights on a stout, dead tree with its roots partially torn up, Kim decides to make that the last straw. If she's got any luck at all, the cache will be tangled up in the tree's roots, and she'll be able to gloat about finding it for the rest of forever.
"Don't get too excited," John says, catching up to her as he runs away from Nick.
"Too late for that," Kim teases. "My hopes are at an all-time high. I'm about to be crushed by the disappointment."
"Fantastic," John grunts, rolling his eyes.
He lets her take the first approach on the tree, which juts awkwardly out of the ground at an acute angle. Its scraggly branches are covered in dry needles, and the partially exposed root system seems to have rotted from rain. There are no other trees for a good couple of yards in any direction, so this tree must've gotten the brunt of the worst nuclear weather.
"We should take a break," Nick shouts from halfway down the hill. "I need a goddamn drink!"
"I told him this would be a waste of time," John grumbles. "We could have taken any other location, even the one at the goddamn compound, and had better luck than out here."
"Well, we're here now," Kim replies. "Come on, maybe the cache is tangled up in the roots or something."
John reluctantly follows Kim as she tests the spongier, damp soil around the rotting tree's base. It's clear he's already given up, but that only makes Kim more determined to find something worth the trip out here — at the very least, so that she can rub it in John's pessimistic face. He can't be a sour bastard forever.
No barrel in the root system, of course. All Kim finds is molding wood and the flash of exposed rock. It's just muddy enough that Kim's going to have to scrub her boots when they get back. From here, she can see the slope of the hillside, and the trees that slump with their tops pointed in her direction. It's like they're telling her, go back!
"Please talk Nick into giving this up," John insists, lingering right behind her and scowling at the roots that have betrayed both of them.
"I mean, we've only been out here for two hours. There's plenty of time to find something." Kim crouches down to check the rocky substrate for anything interesting. "Look on the bright side, at least we don't have to dig."
"I think you two are blinded by that bright side of yours." John sighs, leaning against the tree and glaring down in Nick's direction. "You know that the interstate is only a half-day hike from here, right? This is the exact sort of place Jacob would've stashed passports, money — bug-out kits to abandon the county, that kind of thing. It's not like he buried more coffee and rice out here."
"So is that your new theory? Jacob was planning escape routes for you guys?"
John frowns. "It's one of them."
Kim stands and comes around to join him by the trunk. She debates on invoking Jacob's memory any more than she already has; he seems to have a habit of upsetting John even from the grave. She gives the tree trunk a little kick as she considers pressing him, knocking some mud from her boot tread.
Her curiosity takes a backseat as the world lurches uncomfortably beneath them. She catches herself against the trunk and looks towards Nick, who's picking his way up towards them. Only now does she notice that the trees in this direction also lean inwards, towards the lone tree they're currently beside.
John catches on at the same time, hissing under his breath before hollering a warning. "It's a goddamn sinkhole, Nick, watch out!"
The inconvenience turns into real fear as Kim considers the terrain. With all the caves littering the mountains around here, there's no telling how deep the void beneath their feet might be — five feet, twenty? Or, God help them, more?
Kim struggles not to panic as Nick makes no effort to hide his own. "Come on, you guys," Nick calls from between two jutting evergreens, "Just cut across before the whole damn thing gives out!"
There's not a second to spare, but even as Kim starts to move she knows it's too late. She gets one last look at Nick's horrified expression before she, John, and the dead tree crash down into the empty space below.
Kim lands hard on her side, her arm taking the brunt of the blow and blossoming in radiant, white-hot pain. The world around her, suddenly dark and unfamiliar, tunnels alarmingly out of her vision, her blood rushing into her ears until she can only vaguely hear her own pained crying. Trying to move only causes daggers of pain to shoot right up her arm and into her brain, but she only finds that out as she rolls off of her definitely broken arm. At least, Kim's pretty sure it's broken. She's terrified of looking over and seeing her bone poking out, or something even worse — she knows that she won't be able to stand it, that she'll pass out, and she can't do that down here in this goddamn cavern!
Vague, warped voices vibrate through her as John appears abruptly by her side. The left side of his face is covered in a smear of blood from a deep wound scored over his brow. His mouth moves like he's trying to speak to her. God, her fucking arm!
"Take a deep breath," John commands once again, and this time Kim hears him and abides. The pain doesn't subside, but at least the panic that comes with it is softened as she struggles to calm down. As she does, the background noises begin to come into focus; the crumbling rubble settling, the sharp, birdless silence of the air, and most importantly, Nick hysterically shouting her name from above.
John puts a hand on the shoulder not currently delivering mountains of pain. "Another one," he says, and Kim obeys. It's while she's trying to catch her breath that John steps away, cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting up, "Kim's broken her arm!"
"God damn it, what happened — never mind, just —! Stay put! I'll go get help!" Nick's voice cracks as he realizes aloud, "Shit, there's nobody to get help from!"
Kim sucks in a deep breath. There's no way that John is going to be able to handle Nick's mounting panic by himself, and so she steels herself and tries to steady her voice. "It's gonna be okay!" she shouts. "I'm fine!"
"Bullshit you're fine, that looks like a two-story drop from here!"
John swears under his breath. "I don't have time for this."
"He's going to try and jump down if we don't talk him out of it," Kim hisses, closing her eyes as a wave of painful pins and needles washes up her arm. She keeps accidentally moving it, and the feeling of the bone scraping is enough to make her want to vomit.
John clearly decides she's right, changing tactics as Kim desperately tries not to start sobbing again. "It isn't bad, Nick!" he shouts, "But I need rope if I'm going to splint it! Get the cord from the glove box!"
Nick is quiet for a moment. "Y-Yeah," he calls down shakily, "I... I guess you got plenty to work with — hold on!"
Kim lets out a breath she hadn't meant to hold, then bites back the scream that threatens to rip from her throat. "Please tell me you can do this," she moans as John crouches down beside her broken arm. "I can't look — is there bone?"
"There's no bone," John replies. His voice is tight and unhappy, but at least he isn't lacking in confidence when he tells her, "I know what I'm doing. Try to stay conscious, and don't move. The last thing I need is to be stuck alone with Nick."
"Excuse him for worrying," she groans, staring up at the sky through the fifteen-foot-wide hole above her. She counts down the seconds until Nick gets back, if only to focus on something other than the pain.
John leaves her to it, making his way over to the tree that's joined them here in the cavern. There isn't much else down here besides them and the vegetation that came down with them; the sinkhole must have joined with a cavern somewhere along the way. The rock here probably hasn't seen daylight before — when she glances around, she spots a dark crack in the wall that implies there might be more, unlit caves to explore beyond.
Boy, she really does not want to go into that creepy tunnel, and she especially doesn't want to do it with a broken arm. Thankfully, Nick returns before that worry turns to panic.
"Everything okay? Actually, never mind — look, I got the rope, and the first-aid kit!"
Anything Nick decides to throw down is going to stay down here, and so Kim quickly stops him. "You keep that, Nick! If you get hurt up there, you'll need it!"
"We need it more," John points out, returning to her with a few branches that he clearly intends to use as a splint. He's not wrong about the medkit; the cut over his eye is a nasty one, and Kim could use all of those expired painkillers about now. Not to mention, there might be more injuries they've missed.
Still. "I'm not leaving Nick without supplies," she says.
John doesn't reply, but his scowl speaks volumes.
After a minute or so, Nick is ready to throw the cord down. They coordinate the hand-off just fine without her, which is great, because Kim needs to reserve all of her strength for what's to come.
Nick's bundled a few of the medical supplies into his worn-out flannel, along with the crank flashlight and one of the ultra-dry military rations, all tied off with the paracord. Kim is both touched at the thought and horrified at the idea that they might be here long enough to get hungry.
"This is good, Nick," John calls. "We're in a cave — there's got to be another way out nearby!"
"I'll go look for a way in!"
"No," Kim shouts, her voice cracking, "You might get hurt, Nick!"
"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, Kim! I'm not gonna leave you down there!"
Kim has never in her life imagined that she would say her next words, but that doesn't mean she doesn't mean it. "I'm going to be okay! John's down here with me, I'll be fine!"
John doesn't seem to have expected her to say that, either, boggling at her with open confusion. But... well, come on! If John can trust her enough to gun down Peggies trying to kidnap him, then she can at least trust him to help her limp out of one of Hope County's many caves. Sure, it's not an ideal situation by any means, but Kim's just happy not to be stuck looking for a way out by herself.
"Are you sure you can even walk?" Nick calls uneasily.
"I can handle it, Nick," John replies for her. "We'll look for a way out — if we don't find anything in an hour, we'll come back here and try something else!"
"What the hell do you want me to do!"
John pauses long enough to look at Kim, but since he seems to have more ideas than she does, she defers to his judgment. "Circle west around the hill and look for any entrances to call from! There's going to be a cave opening somewhere nearby!"
"I don't like any of this, Kim!"
John pinches the bridge of his nose, leaving Kim to answer, "It's the only plan we've got!"
The silence from above stretches out. "We don't have time for this," John mutters, abandoning his attempts to reassure Nick. "There's no telling where a way out might be, and I'm not wasting more time because Nick can't trust me."
"It's not about trust," Kim snipes in return. "He's trying not to panic."
John only grunts in return, settling on his knees next to her as he prepares to do the hard part for her. That leaves it up to Kim to encourage Nick to get a move on; she really doesn't want him sticking around for the painful part. "Nick, be careful, I don't want you to fall in another sinkhole! We'll be okay!"
Nick is frustratingly silent for another moment, but eventually, he relents. "Okay, fine! Remember to mark your path! And don't trust any ropes or ladders you see! And stay outta any water you find, you don't know how deep it is!"
"Jesus Christ," John mutters.
"Oh, shut up," Kim tells him, lifting her strained voice to call back. "Alright, Nick! We'll be careful! We'll see you soon!"
Kim makes John wait another minute after Nick leaves before she lets him at her arm. Despite his sour expression, John manages to be nothing more than stern, and surprisingly gentle. "Careful," he tells her, as if she needs a warning as he adjusts her broken arm. She's unable to decide if the burning sensation or the stabbing sensation is worse, but they're both vying for the spot as John examines the fracture. God, she hopes he knows what he's doing. She hopes it heals clean. She doesn't know what she'll do if she loses the thing.
John jostles her a little too abruptly, and a gasp of pain tears her from her downward spiral of worst possible outcomes. If John notices, he doesn't comment.
"It's not so bad," he says, although Kim's still not sure if she trusts his judgment on the matter. "It seems like a single fracture. I'll splint it, and... Well, there's somebody in town with medical experience, isn't there?"
"I don't know," Kim gasps, head reeling, "Maybe?"
John sighs. "Well, at least you'll survive."
"You better hope so," Kim jokes, or tries to anyway.
John rolls his eyes, but thankfully he's not in a vindictive mood as he prepares to set her arm. "You'll want to scream," he tells her. "Try breathing through your nose instead."
He sure isn't wrong. Kim can't think straight for a minute after he's finished, her face wet as the pain forces her to tears, but John is utterly detached and methodical as he binds her arm to one of the branches. It's reassuring at first, but Kim can't help but wonder just how many people suffered broken bones and serious trauma at his hands, only to see the same dispassionate bedside manner afterward? God, assuming they even survived what he put them through.
"Catch your breath," John tells her once he's done, standing and turning back to further investigate the tree. "The cave systems go on for miles down here, but there are dozens of openings in the hills. As long as we stick to the larger tunnels, we should be able to find one of them."
Kim watches him pick through the tree, sizing out larger branches and dismissing them one by one.
"I'm surprised you're not more freaked out," she says as he picks out a four-foot branch. "You know, being underground and everything."
John furiously breaks the branch from the trunk, then roughly cleans it of dead sprigs and foliage. "Thank you for reminding me."
"Sorry, I just meant —"
"I know what you meant," he says. "It's fine. I'm not... Like I said, these tunnels are hardly inescapable." He strikes the branch against the ground and seems satisfied by the sound. "I spent a lot of time studying the cave systems out here. We considered using them for passage between the gates, but that plan never went anywhere. It left me with enough useless knowledge that I'm not prone to panic down here."
"Useless until now," Kim points out. "Now help me up and let's get the hell out of here."
John helps her to her feet with her good arm, careful not to jostle the splint as she tests her balance. The world heaves for an uncomfortable second or two before righting itself, although it's mostly shock and adrenaline keeping her moving. She's not sure how long that's going to last, but she sure hopes it's long enough to reunite with Nick.
"I should probably lead," John says, looking unhappy about her tentatively upright position.
"Yeah, I don't think I'm in the position to trail-blaze."
"You're barely in the position to walk," he replies. Casting one last look around the sunlit cavern, John turns towards the dark crack in the wall that leads further into the system. "Try not to pass out."
"No promises," she says, staggering her way to their only exit.
She can feel the cool, musty air from here, oddly relieving against her sweaty face. She wishes she hadn't watched The Descent so many times before the apocalypse, because that is really coloring her perception of this situation. Of course, they're more likely to run into a wolverine or bear den than they are to be hunted by a pack of cave-dwelling mutants, but that doesn't stop her from considering it.
John starts forward. Kim, anxious and trembling in pain, tries to joke. "Just avoid stepping on any weird symbols carved into the ground, okay?"
"Christ," John groans, the same way he does every time somebody tries to rope him in with a pop-culture reference. He winds the flashlight up and the beam of light cuts a sharp swath across the dark tunnel "Will you two please let that Hollywood bullshit die already?"
"Oh, relax," she replies. "Tropes are older than L.A. and you know it. They aren't going to disappear just because civilization got nuked."
"One can dream," John snipes dryly in return.
Of course, even with the attitude, John keeps close to Kim, sticking to her uninjured side. Kim imagines her slow pace must be irritating the crap out of him, but he impressively manages not to sigh or stomp like a passive-aggressive toddler. He's been getting a lot better about letting his exasperation get to him, although she bets it's got a lot to do with exhaustion and survival instinct right now.
The silence stretches for a time between them. Kim imagines John is lost in his thoughts, but she's been hyper-aware of every distant sound of rubble shifting or oddly-shaped rock formations that are easy to mistake for humanoid shapes in the dark. The tunnel is only about eight feet across and somewhat taller than that, but that's plenty of room for Kim's imagination to play tricks on her.
"I always thought your anti-Hollywood thing was some kind of shtick," she admits. "Maybe you got scorned on a screenplay or something, I dunno. But you really believe that all of the entertainment industry deserved to get firebombed out of existence?"
"It deserved a reckoning," John replies.
"You mean something like nuclear annihilation?"
John's frown deepens. "Maybe," he says stiffly.
Normally, Kim would try to dig into that more, but she's not in a position to make much sense of it right now. Honestly, the conversation is irrelevant — she just needs something to keep her from fantasizing about monsters in the dark. Or, you know, passing out. Whichever would be worse.
"So I guess you don't have a desert island five, then."
John huffs loudly at that. "I wouldn't be able to remember it."
That just tells Kim that he does have one. She bets American Psycho or Fight Club was on it. Maybe Fear and Loathing?
"Okay, well... say you had to pick a movie to watch as soon as we got home. What would it be?"
Even without looking, Kim knows he's rolling his eyes. "Seriously? Is this really the time?"
"Humor me."
He groans in annoyance, but Kim doesn't miss the short stretch of silence that follows as he thinks it over.
"I don't know," he finally grumbles.
"Come on, you've got to have something."
"I only ever saw a handful of movies growing up, and I lost interest in the medium in college."
"God, you must have been a pretentious bastard."
Despite himself, John chuckles at the jab. "Oh, you have no idea," he replies.
The conversation dies, just like John had probably hoped it would. Kim tries to find something else to distract her, but there's really not much to look at. They've only found one offshoot that John had been able to fit in, but it had ended only a few yards in. They've been exploring for maybe fifteen minutes, though; there's still time for a miracle. Until then, she's got moss to look at, and the distant trickle of water from somewhere far away. With the way the land's shifted, there may be a new river forming somewhere up on the surface. In a few decades, it could swallow these caverns entirely.
"How does your arm feel?" John asks, his voice bouncing off the walls and breaking the silence.
"Not... great," she admits, still trying not to focus on the numb agony of her arm. "I wouldn't mind lying down and sleeping for a few weeks right about now, but I think I can keep it together until we find a way out."
She hopes, anyway.
"Good." John takes a moment to crank the flashlight before it can go out, then picks up the conversation as though Kim weren't even there. "There's nobody in town that I know of that has serious medical experience. With the gates destroyed, there's no telling where the experts we'd vetted for the Project wound up. Dead, probably. Or worse, still involved with Joseph. Hell, even a vet would be better than nothing."
He's definitely more anxious than he wants to let on. Kim doesn't believe for a second that being in this endless, dark tunnel is any better than being trapped in a bunker, save for maybe the space. At least in a bunker, you know which way is out, and you know what's going to kill you.
Now Kim is the one who starts to ramble. "I mean, there's got to be an eagle scout out there somewhere. And there were a couple of doctors still working when I had Carmina — one of them might've survived, right? Somebody out there will know enough to check your handiwork. For the record, though, I think you did a pretty good job for a guy stuck in a pit."
John shakes his head. "I've set plenty of broken limbs." There's a weird sort of challenge in his voice as he says, "Of course, I was the one who broke most of them."
"And I think you feel pretty shitty about it, so I don't know why you sound so smug."
"I'm just reminding you of who you're trying to compliment."
Kim rolls her eyes, her exasperation carrying over in her voice. "I know exactly who you are, John. Quit trying to rile me up like you do with Nick, it isn't going to work."
He huffs. "Sure," he says, then promptly shuts up. Of course he does. No wonder he only ever wants to talk to Nick — it's like he doesn't know how to hold a conversation without trying to start a fight.
Well, Kim needs something to distract her, so she'll carry on with it herself. "I've sprained my ankle a couple of times, but the only time I've ever broken a bone was in soccer camp when I was... thirteen, I think? It was my big toe, and the humiliation was way worse than the pain."
"I can't imagine," John drawls, distinctly unenthusiastic.
Kim opens her mouth to ask the obvious question, then catches herself. Asking about John's past is essentially opening Pandora's box; every time Kim has gone digging, she comes away with something new she wishes she could forget about. The breadcrumbs of information he's given her over the past year or so have honestly kept her up some nights. She probably doesn't want to know anything about the number of broken bones John's had. She definitely doesn't want to know how.
John looks over at her, daring her to ask. It's only when Kim manages to contain her curiosity that he parts with a few terse details. "The first time was when I was eleven. It was a powerful learning experience. One I... try not to revisit."
"Sure," she says. It sounds reasonable enough, anyway.
The flashlight's beam cuts across the wall further ahead, revealing the first major fork that they've come across. They're forced to take an impromptu break as John tries to determine their best way forward. John scowls at the darkness in either direction, but it doesn't seem to help make a decision. Meanwhile, Kim takes the opportunity to rest against the cold stone, swallowing down the nausea that's starting to build. It's a miracle that she's made it this far without fainting, but she doesn't think John's in the mood to hear that.
Frowning, John turns the flashlight back the way they came, sweeping the light down the forking path. "Strange," he mutters.
"What?"
"It's nothing," he says, sweeping the light down the way they came. "Except... see this?"
He steps closer to highlight a uniformly rectangular notch in the wall, just about hip-level. Moving the light reveals more, equally spaced notches, continuing along the wall of the newest fork in their road.
"There were guide ropes installed at one point or another. It doesn't seem to be an active mine, though — it must've been for dumb tourists, just in case of lawsuits."
"I hate to tell you, John, but right now, we're the dumb tourists."
"Unfortunately so. I guess that means we should take the left."
It's smaller, and it looks just as untouched as the rest of the cave has so far, but John's made a compelling point about the seemingly man-made notches.
"You're the expert," Kim says, "I'll take your word for it."
"Alright," he says, not as enthusiastic as Kim would have hoped for. He eyes her somewhat critically, then asks, "How are you doing?"
It's probably the pain making her delirious, but she's surprised at John's concern for her wellbeing. She really shouldn't be. Of course he cares; even if he weren't actively trying to be less awful, he's too smart to leave Kim down here and risk Nick finding out. But still. She's pain-addled enough to be touched by the sentiment.
That doesn't mean she's in the mood to sugarcoat the truth. "I'm surprised I'm still standing," she says. "Let's just hope we find Nick before I pass out."
"I'm sure he'd enjoy seeing me carrying your limp body out of the abandoned mine."
Kim laughs, regretting it as it sends an ache jolting through her body. "Oh, I bet. Just don't be surprised if I tap out at some point."
"You're stronger than that," John remarks. "Follow me."
Now, following John Seed through a dark cave tunnel with a broken arm seems like it would be a bad time. If this were ten, eleven years ago, Kim's sure she would be hunting for a weapon or looking for her own escape route. That is, of course, assuming he hadn't left her to die down here. No doubt that her survival would've banked on how much he would have needed her.
She's glad that's not the case now. John is a reliable navigator, slow-going and cautious as he leads the way, testing suspect rock formations and ducking into narrow crags that don't go anywhere. Honestly, he's probably being more cautious than they need to be. It's already been a half-hour or so, and they're going to need to turn back before much longer.
John has other concerns to bother him, though. "I wonder what happened to the anchors," he says at one point. "You'd think we would have found one by now."
"Maybe they took the rope down before the Collapse," Kim points out. "Lots of tourist traps weren't exactly up to code. Earl probably got here way before we did, back when he was trying to crack down on these kinds of things."
John frowns thoughtfully. "Maybe."
"It's not like people are down here renovating for the next season."
"We don't know that," he points out grimly. "Survivors might've hidden from the radiation down here. Or maybe some angels got lost after Faith was killed."
"Come on, John," she groans.
"Nick's always wondering where the mutants are. Maybe we'll be the ones to find them."
Kim side-eyes John just in time to catch the remnants of a smirk on his face, and she can't help but elbow him with her good arm. She tries to admonish him, telling him, "Knock it off," but she can't help laughing as she does.
"You're probably right about the code violations," John chuckles at last, lifting the light to check the ceiling ahead as it dips low enough for them to need to duck. "Not a lot of these cave systems were what I'd call safe. It's one of the reasons we decided against using them as tunnels. The work involved was too expensive, and the chance of cave-ins was too high. And, as we've found out, they weren't guaranteed to stay underground."
"So, what was going to happen instead? Were you guys going to rely on radios, or what?"
"It doesn't matter what we decided," John points out, more weary of the conversation than irritated. "The gates were barely finished before the Deputy destroyed them, and we never got to find out what might've happened."
They follow the notches through two more forks, and Kim starts to worry that they're only going deeper into the old attraction. Well, at least they're taking the easy way. With a smooth floor and a ceiling that rarely drops lower than eight feet, Kim gets the impression that they're in a manufactured mine, and not an organic one. For all they know, some crazy prepper dug this tunnel out to make a quick buck for his bunker-building hobby. Of course, if that's the case, it's a miracle that nothing's caved in yet.
They pass underneath a lower segment of the ceiling, and the tunnel abruptly opens up into a massive cavern. Defunct light rigs are scattered amongst the stalagmites, with several hanging stalactites covered in chipped fluorescent paint. The rest of the rock outcroppings are covered in lichen, which disappointingly fails to glow in the dark. As John sweeps the flashlight across the large, empty space, Kim gets a good idea of the cheap edu-tainment that was offered on short hikes through the mines. Somewhere in here, there's probably a storage closet full of Halloween decor waiting to liven up the otherwise boring cavern.
"Well, this wasn't worth the twenty dollars it cost to get in," John grouses.
"Don't forget the thirty-dollar iron-on tee-shirts they print off at home," Kim reminds him with a laugh. It's enough to make her lightheaded, and she doesn't quite regain her balance, even after she braces herself against the wall.
"We can only rest a minute," he warns her, sweeping the light in the direction they need to go. Any more huffing and puffing on his part is diminished as the light glints off the rounded edge of something metallic. When John refocuses the light on the object, neither of them really know what to say.
Lying amongst the rocks, battered and dirty, is one of the dark green bliss containers they've been looking for. Kim looks up, but the ceiling is rooted in darkness, and she can't see any sign of another cave-in or sinkhole. The idea that Jacob might've come this far himself crosses her mind, but if that were the case, why is it sitting out in the open like that?
"John, wait," Kim calls as John steps off the path. Suddenly, all her jokes about booby traps seem tasteless, especially with John charging into the unknown like he is.
Of course, this isn't Indiana Jones, and there's no pit of spikes or tripwire to trigger. John doesn't wind up with a face-full of poison darts as he picks up the dented canister; the only thing he's forced to sacrifice is a good grip on the flashlight, which shines at an awkward angle and only illuminates a useless part of the floor. His slow pace and the bad lighting leave Kim to imagine what he's found inside — remnants of supplies, or a dead animal? Indications that something chewed through the rubber sealant, maybe?
John drops the barrel between them, the clanging metal causing Kim to jump. John doesn't notice as he reorients the light, leaning over to illuminate the barrel's contents. The interior is flaked with rust, and whatever sealant had been used is all but completely worn away. The only thing left inside is an empty, smashed bottle of liquor and a few wrapped, moldy packages of cigarettes.
"I don't know if I'm disappointed or not," Kim says.
"I know I am," John replies, grimly reaching into the empty barrel to check for a false bottom. The screech of metal rises up into the cavern, bouncing off the far ceiling and turning into an ugly birdsong. Kim leans back against the wall; if she keeps looking down, she's going to end up toppling over like a broken Weeble-Wobble. John glances her way after a moment, before lifting a clump of wet paper out from the depths of the barrel.
"Of course he buried documents here," John mutters. Kim can't quite pin down whether he's upset or resigned to the bad luck at this point.
"Anything salvageable?" she asks.
"Doubtful. I'll... bring these along, I guess." He checks again, digging out what he can. Other than the loose papers, there's a water-logged manila envelope and an equally soaked box of ammunition. John tucks the box away in his front pocket, holding the papers uncomfortably in his hand. "We'll worry about what these are once we're out of here."
Despite the pain in her arm giving her full-body tremors and John's dismal mood, Kim is nearly upbeat as they exit the cavern. They're still in civilization, after all, even if it's a defunct tourist trap, and the knowledge that they're clearly on their way out is the main thing keeping her moving. If they're lucky, they aren't too far from the truck — if they're really lucky, Nick will have found the entrance before them.
They eventually find a few anchors that are still moored to the walls, a knotted bit of rope still attached, and Kim breathes a sigh of relief. The sigh quickly turns to a groan of pain as she rattles her arm, but at least it isn't enough to knock her off her feet.
John hesitates in front of her, slowing just enough so that he can offer his arm to her. "We can't stop now," he tells her.
"I know," she pants, wiping sweat from her forehead that she hadn't realized was gathering. "Okay. We're nearly there."
She gives up on pretending entirely, leaning heavily against John as they continue forward. Lying down and resting for, oh, a hundred years or so sounds great right now, but first, she needs to make sure Nick hasn't had a heart attack waiting for them. He's probably convinced himself that they've gotten killed somehow, and John isn't going to be able to talk him down on his own.
They approach what will hopefully be the last fork in the tunnel, only to find that both directions have anchors. The newest offshoot seems to curve pretty severely downwards, though; it's clear even as they stop that they should stick to the path they've been on.
"I don't like this," John says, looking first behind them and then ahead, down the new path.
"Fine," Kim groans, "You can choose the next tourist trap we get stuck in."
"I'm serious, Kim." John turns the flashlight down the new path. The air coming from that direction is thick and stagnate — Kim's imagination unhelpfully supplies a few images of killer clowns and deformed mutants to lurk down in the dark that way. God, why did she have to like horror movies so much? Why couldn't she have enjoyed normal, safe entertainment that wouldn't have filled her imagination with monsters and a deep-rooted fear of the unexplored dark?
It certainly doesn't help as John says, "I keep getting the feeling that we're being watched."
"Okay, that's it," Kim snaps, desperately trying to bury the surge of fear the suggestion fills her with. "I'm done being creeped out."
"I'm not trying to scare you —"
"Well, you're naturally gifted, okay? Look, let's just — we know that's the way out," she says, nodding towards the safer route. "Let's just go that way. The sooner we get out of here, the better."
"Agreed," John grunts.
John adopts a brisk walk that Kim has some trouble keeping up with, but she's not interested in slowing down for anything. She feels vindicated by their choice of exit as they pass a faded safety sign lying on the ground, as well as the decidedly fresher air coming in from what Kim expects to be the exit. There are a few moments where John has to resist breaking out into a jog; Kim can't exactly blame him, but his jitters are amping up her own anxiety, and now she's trying desperately to listen for chasing footsteps behind them. It's hard to hear much of anything over the blood pounding in her ears.
It's a massive relief when John finally slows down. "It must have been an animal," he says at last, casting one last look behind them. "God, I fucking hate being underground."
"Well, let's hope we aren't leading the mutants to the surface world," Kim jokes. It probably would land better if she didn't sound completely wiped.
John frowns at her, but the dark makes it hard to pin down his expression. "We're almost there," he says, which sounds alarming like a reassurance.
Her spirits lift as they pass an overturned rail barricade, but the wind is immediately taken out of her sails as they find the path blocked by a chained and padlocked gate. The thick gauge chain-link fence has been welded to brackets on the wall; the bottom has been bent outwards, likely from some angry animal forcing its way through. Unfortunately, it's too small for either of them to get through.
"For fuck's sake," John hisses between gritted teeth.
They're not going anywhere, and Kim's nausea forces her to find something more solid than John for support. She manages to stagger to the nearest wall before falling against it, but it's enough to make her regret moving at all.
At least she manages a weak thumbs up when John anxiously asks, "Are you alright?"
"Just — giving you room to work," she gurgles, staggering a few feet back down the path before throwing up.
John swears under his breath as Kim tries to coax her headache back to something more manageable. She can hear him tearing at the gate behind her; if she weren't feeling so miserable, she'd probably be flipping out on it, too. As it is, she takes her sweet time to turn around and start back for the fence, watching as John tries to widen the gap left behind by some tenacious wolverine. It's going to wreck her arm to try and weasel through the hole, but Kim is willing to try anything at this point.
"How far are we from the truck?" Kim rasps. "Maybe Nick can hear us?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" John snaps, well past the end of his rope. Kim has to admit, she's surprised he made it this far. "God damn it, I don't know where we are any better than you!"
"Okay, point taken," Kim says — after all, she's in no position to argue with him. As it is, it's taking most of her focus to keep from sinking to the ground. As soon as she's sitting, she's going to pass out, and she's not in any position to be doing that yet.
Thankfully, Nick's voice reaches them before she can give up. A tidal wave of relief floods Kim at the sound of him calling her name; she staggers forward, gripping the chain-link with her good arm.
"Nick!" she shouts. The sound of her own voice bouncing off the walls only amplifies her pounding headache, but it doesn't stop her from shouting his name a few more times in desperation.
John grabs her good shoulder. "Careful," he says, "Take it easy."
"You take it easy," Kim snaps as Nick's voice bounces off the far-away cave entrance. Trying to glare at John is a mistake, as vertigo nearly sends her to the floor. The only thing that keeps her upright is John's grip on her arm, easing her back until she finds the wall for support.
"Let me handle it," he says.
Kim has no choice but to follow his orders, reeling against the wall as he picks up the impromptu game of Marco Polo. She's not sure how much time passes between her slow, long blinks, but all that matters is the moment that she sees Nick appear with the lantern held high. It's enough to bring her to tears — well, that and the dizzying pain — and from Nick's tearful shout, it's having the same effect on him.
"Oh, thank Christ," he gasps as he reaches the gate, rattling it with his free hand as if he could just pry it back. "Kim, you're alive! Are you okay?" He turns the full force of his relief on John, concern furrowing his brow. "Jesus, John, are you okay? We needa get that cut looked at."
"It's fine," John says. "You didn't see any keys anywhere, did you?"
"Let me go check the ticket booth," Nick replies. "Don't worry, you guys — I'm not about to let a goddamn padlock stop me."
Nick jogs back down the tunnel and Kim finally sags, sliding to the ground with a tired groan.
"Okay, John," she sighs, "Mission accomplished. Wake me up when we get home."
"Kim, hold on," John replies, but frankly there's no stopping her now. This was as far as she'd hoped to get on her own two feet, and honestly, she's surprised that she made it that far.
She does rouse briefly as Nick begins wailing on the padlock with a steel pipe, but that's something the boys can handle without her. Here and there, she registers hands on her, and dappled light flashes over her face as they finally escape the caves. The fresh air brings her back long enough to help Nick get her settled in the truck, but she's already dozing off by the time John and Nick start arguing again. The rest of the trip, for better or worse, is completely lost on her.
————
When Kim finally comes to, she's immediately met by the familiar sight of her room at home. She can't tell what time it is, only that it's late enough for the lamp to be lit. Judging by the voices downstairs, everyone is still awake — and going by the sling and bandages, they've had some company since she was last conscious. She allows herself to imagine the whole thing was all a horrible nightmare, just for a second, but the throbbing in her arm is already reminding her of the unfortunate truth. At least she can check "escape mutants in a tunnel" off of her bucket list.
She doesn't have long to focus on the slowly returning pain; it's not even a minute later that she hears boots on the stairs, and Nick pokes his head in not long after.
"Hey," is about all she can muster up before she has to clear her throat, but it's enough.
"Christ, Kim!" he exclaims, throwing open the door as he rushes to her side. The worry breaks on his face as he crouches beside her, careful not to jostle her broken arm. "Are you okay? How do you feel?"
"Uh... not awesome," she admits, shifting in an attempt to sit up. Nick hurries to help her, and she can't help but smile at him as he piles the pillows behind her. "Better now, though."
"That's what I'm here for," Nick laughs, "That and making everybody else uncomfortable. They kept tellin' me not to worry, but you know how hard that is."
"They?"
"Well, John mostly, until Jerome and Grace showed up. Then I had to keep it together for Carmina, so that helped. Uh. How much do you remember about gettin' back here?"
"Not much," Kim says. Now that she's more conscious, she's able to discern the late evening light for what it is; it's been hours since she was last aware of where she was. "I... remember getting into the truck, I think? And then... Nothing. Why? What did I miss?"
Nick shakes his head, smiling fondly at her. "Nothing much, honest. Most of the ride back was me and John arguing about what to do. He radioed Jerome for help while I got you up here and settled in, then I called up Grace so she could keep Carmina busy until Jerome showed up with some help. I guess Winona, y'know, down at the Eagle? She was getting her nursing degree, or license, or whatever, so Jerome brought her over here to help out. She said it looked like a clean enough break, and John did a good job setting it, so we just had to make sure you wouldn't be accidentally moving in your sleep." He chuckles. "You know, real exciting stuff."
"Oh, boy," Kim groans, "I bet I scared the crap out of Carmina. Is she okay?"
"Yeah, she's fine. Worried about you, obviously, but Grace gave her a pep talk and we kept her busy downstairs. Figured you oughta be awake before she came to see you."
"Good call." Kim briefly debates whether or not getting out of bed is worth it, but she quickly decides against it. Even if she weren't wiped out, Nick looks like he'd fall apart with worry if she tried to exert herself. "You might have to go get her, because I don't think I could move if I wanted to."
"Don't even think about it," Nick says, pointing at her as he gets back to his feet. "You're on bed rest until tomorrow at least. I'll be right back."
Kim dozes for the few minutes that stretch between Nick leaving and Carmina coming up the stairs. It's impossible to fall back asleep, but the rest is good enough on its own. She makes sure to perk up when she hears Carmina coming up the stairs, smiling wide as her daughter enters the doorway.
"Hey, honey," she says, her voice rougher than she'd expected it to be.
"Mom!" Carmina exclaims, careful to avoid jostling Kim as she climbs into the bed on her good side. "I was so worried!"
Kim folds her arm around Carmina's shoulders and gives her a squeeze. "I know, sweetheart. I didn't mean to spook you."
"What happened? Dad said you and John fell into a cave!"
"That's pretty much it," Kim laughs. "We fell through a sinkhole into an old cave system. It used to be a place people could visit, though, so it wasn't hard to find our way out."
Carmina frowns, picking at a loose thread in the comforter. "But it was probably really dark. And your arm was broken, and John busted his head open, and..."
"First of all, his head wasn't busted open," Kim says, reaching up to ruffle Carmina's hair. "He probably needed a few stitches, sure, but he knew what he was doing, and we both made it out okay. And your dad got the flashlight to us, so we had plenty of light to see by."
Obviously, Kim never wants to go back to that awful place, but she needs her daughter to learn not to panic now, in case she ever has to go into those tunnels herself. There's no summer camp to enroll her in that will teach her how to be mindful of caves, so Kim's going to have to do it herself... She just wishes she'd gotten to it before she'd had her own scary experience.
Carmina huffs, frowning briefly at the door. "You were lucky John was there," she says.
Kim bites back on her knee-jerk reaction to scoff at the idea. "You're right," she admits, a little more reluctant to do so than she really should be.
"Nobody else thinks so," Carmina grumbles. "Grace got mad dad left you two down there and then Jerome got mad at John for getting you hurt and Winona was really mad that she had to give John stitches. I wanted to say something but dad wouldn't let me."
"That's because they have good reasons not to trust him," Kim points out, although that excuse is starting to wear a little thin, even with her. "They just need time."
Carmina groans. "I guess. I'm... just really glad you're okay."
Kim squeezes Carmina's shoulder. "Me too."
Carmina sighs. "So... what was it like?" she asks, unable to resist her curiosity any longer.
That's okay by Kim — she could use the distraction. "Well... it was dark, and chilly. It was really quiet — the only thing we could hear was water dripping on the walls and our footsteps. The tunnel wasn't very interesting... but there was a big cavern in the middle where we found the cache, covered in stalactites and stalagmites. You could see where they used to have lights rigged up, and they'd painted some of the rocks to glow in the dark."
"You didn't see any animals?" Carmina frowns. "I always thought animals would hide in the caves."
Kim absolutely will not be telling her daughter about John's creepy sense of danger, thanks. "You know, we didn't. There isn't a lot of food for rabbits or cougars in there, though. I think they usually prefer little caves, not big ones."
There are plenty more questions for Carmina to ask that Kim only barely knows the answers to. Thankfully, geography and natural history are easy to teach hands-on; while she's not about to go back to the cave they just escaped, there are a couple of old attractions she remembers visiting that might do the trick. Places with good gift shops and little museums and educational plaques everywhere to help Kim explain how basic geology works.
"If you want, we can do some cave exploring of our own one day," Kim offers. "I'll need some time to get better, first. And I'll have to find the right place. But when we have some free time..."
"That sounds fun," Carmina says. "Just don't fall into another one first?"
"I'll do my best. We'll, uh, teach you what to look for so you don't make the same mistake."
They talk for a little while longer about the cave systems that litter Hope County, but it's not exactly Kim's favorite topic right now. It's a relief when Carmina declares that she needs water; even more so when she offers to bring some up to Kim. She considers asking Carmina to relay her thanks to John, but it can honestly wait until morning. Hopefully by then, she'll have adjusted to the makeshift cast, although she suspects she'll have plenty of time to get used to it. How long does it take a broken bone to heal, she wonders? Probably a few months, at least. She's really going to have to take it easy, and hope that nothing catastrophic happens while she's down one working arm.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Phase: Ponds & Mace [SWs Fic]
Part 2
Waking to the bright lights of the medical bay aboard the Endurance Ponds winced. There was a small chuckle above him and the light dimmed, revealing the Corps' chief medic. "Alright there, vod?" Waving the man away he slowly sat up, feeling weak as a newly decanted cadet. Closing his eyes he focused on himself and felt a faint ripple in the force around him. Memories flooded into his mind and he let out a small gasp. Turbo reached for him, concerned, and Ponds held onto the medic's hand as if he were a drowning man.
"Turbo, where's the General?" Ponds asked in Mando'a. Turbo's eyes widened in surprise for a moment before his expression softened and he smiled reassuringly.
"Don't worry, vod, the General was sent back to his quarters after a quick dip in bacta. You've been out for three days." Turbo said, also slipping into Mando'a. Ponds' alarm grew. He knew he'd pushed himself trying to save Mace but he didn't think he'd pushed himself that hard. It must have been the force exhaustion Haat'buir warned them all about. "What has you so spooked vod? The General wouldn't tell us what happened down there." Ponds felt a familiar pang of warmth in his chest and bit the inside of his cheek to keep the feeling in check.
"The General was trapped under a collapsed building. The whole thing came down n our heads. He pushed me out of the way with the force to save me." Turbo winced in sympathy, knowing exactly how that must have felt for his commander. Not everyone knew about which brothers were force sensitive, or what their abilities were. Only the highest ranked vode who knew how to keep that information out of enemy hands and the chief medics of each battalion knew exactly who was force sensitive. It was just safer that way.
Turbo knew every vod that was force sensitive and what their powers were. So he could easily put two and two together and figure out exactly what Ponds must have been feeling watching tons of rubble fall on the man he wanted so dearly to protect. If Mace hadn't chosen to throw him out of the way Ponds would have been perfectly fine. His ability would have saved him.
"I dove in after him." Turbo's eyes went wide and Ponds' shoulders fell slightly. He knew it was a risk and yet he couldn't just leave Mace to suffocate or worse.
"Vod... does he... does he know? Did he see you?" The further slump of Ponds' shoulders and the way his head fell forward in defeat was enough of an answer for the chief medic. "Fuck, vod, what are we going to do?" Ponds heaved a sigh before sitting up straight, jaw clenched in resignation.
"We call the Rid'alor." Turbo blinked at him for a moment before frowning at his suggestion.
"I know you lot want to believe your buire can fix anything but this is the head of the jetiise we're talking about here." Ponds gave Turbo a dry look, shaking his head.
"I meant he could get me transferred. Maybe fake my death and have the medics produce some false autopsy results. We could play my force sensitivity ogg as some sort of weird fluke." Turbo's mouth snapped shut with a click.
"You don't want to be transferred, vod. You... you love working with the General." Ponds didn't respond, though his face did color slightly and he swallowed bitterly. "You can't even lie to the General on a good day. How are you going to fake your own death? Knowing that he would be grieving for you would tear you apart." He was right, force dammit. Ponds was terrible at lying to Mace. The idea of faking his own death and leaving both the General and his men made something sickly pool in the pit of his stomach. These were his men and his General. He didn't want to just leave them.
"I'd hate it. But I will do what I must to protect my vode." Turbo squeezed his shoulder in sympathy and understanding. They all did what they had to in order to keep one another safe.
"I'll see if I can get someone to-" Something at the edge of his senses brushed against his mind and he turned to the door just as it opened. Turbo froze, mouth still open, as Mace stepped inside. His dark eyes were searching and Ponds felt his mouth turn dry as his hands began to tremble faintly with nerves.
"Turbo, I'd like a word with Ponds for a moment." The man said, never looking away from his commander. "Alone, if you would." It wasn't quite an order, but it wasn't a request either. After a year at war they had come to understand Mace's subtle moods. Turbo gave him a look and he shook his head minutely. There was no reason to deny the request. The chief medic hesitated a moment before standing up from the chair next to him. At the door he gave Ponds one last concerned look before the door closed behind him.
Mace stood near the doorway quietly, not stepping further into the room, and Ponds didn't dare look at him. After a long silence that seemed to last forever he felt, as well as heard, Mace quietly cross the floor and settle in the chair Turbo had left vacant. The man let out a slow breath before carefully reaching out with the force. Ponds flinched slightly as the cool shadowed calm that was Mace's presence in the force gently brushed against his shields. Knowing that there was no way Mace had missed his use of the force earlier he lowered his shields and let the man in.
"Oh." Came the almost breathless word from the Master of the Order as he, for the first time, felt the true depth of Ponds' presence in the force. He wasn't quite sure what the man would be able to sense of him. Ever since they were small his brothers had a hard time describing how he felt in the force. He was elusive, fleeting, and hazy. Fading in and out of existence- like a mirage.
Tentatively Mace lay a hand on Ponds' wrist, as if trying to make sure whether or not he was actually there. Ponds moved his arm and carefully caught Mace's hand in his own, giving it a tight squeeze to show that he was there. That he was real and not some phantom. Then, with barely a thought, he pulled his hand through Mace's, watching his face for any kind of reaction.
"What the kark?" Ponds can't help it. The blatant confusion on the man's face makes him crack up a little.
"I don't know how to explain it, and neither does anyone else either. It's just what the force blessed me with at birth." Looking into Mace's dark eyes he could see a wealth of understanding there that he wasn't quite sure what to do with. He pulled his hands into his lap. "You asked me how I was able to get to you while you were trapped." He swallowed. "This. This is how. Solid matter means nothing to me. If I need to get into a room no door can stop me, except anything made with force repelling materials." He'd used it a few times when his men or civilians were captured and needed to be rescued swiftly. There was an added bonus where going through electronics had a tendency to short them out. It was all too easy to override door locks by just shoving his hand into the wall and pulling it back out again.
Mace placed a hand on top of his and Ponds can't help but look back at him. Their gazes locked together and Mace's hand tightens on his. "I swear to you, Ponds, that I will tell no one about this." Ponds' chest feels warm and his throat is tight. "You risked your secret to save my life." There was something fierce in his eyes, determined and strong. "Besides, I would never willingly betray your trust." Ponds wants to believe him so, so, badly.
Mace must be able to see his indecision, either on his face or in the force. The man leans closer to him, his voice a gentle murmur, smooth and soft like always when the two of them are alone. "Ponds, please." There is a slight waver in his voice that makes the commander's heart thump heavily against his ribs. "I don't want to lose you." Had he overheard them speaking? Did the man know Mando'a? After a year at war with his troops he suspected that Mace had learned more of their language than he let on.
The admission that he didn't want to lose Ponds made the force feel warm and comforting around them, almost approving. A blush creeps over his face, coloring his cheeks and ears. Bashfully he looks down at his lap. Turning his hand over he tentatively laces their fingers together, feeling a little too overwhelmed to look Mace in the eyes.
"I don't want to leave you either Mace." His General, no, his jedi lets out a ragged breath. "I know the code you hold yourself to, both as a warrior and a jedi. I don't want to distract you from your path or cause you pain but..."
But. It was such a small word. Yet it was filled with so much promise, and so much danger. Being one of the few force sensitive clones meant he had a duty to his brothers, to protect them. If it came down to it he would kill himself rather than let anyone find his brothers. That didn't even touch on the idea of light or dark sides of the force and what might happen if either he or Mace fell.
As if sensing where his thoughts were heading Mace tightened his grip. "The Code is not absolute. There is a difference between love and attachment." Ponds' heartbeat was loud in the silent room, beating against his rib cage. Trying to push away the well of feelings that had sprung up within him he felt Mace's calm touch against his mind and shuddered. With both of their force presences intertwined like this there was no way the man could not feel everything Ponds was feeling.
"Ponds." Using that soft tone of voice on him just wasn't fair. Neither was the steady kindness and determination threading through him and shoring him up, filling him with strength.
"Will you show me the difference?" His voice sounded so far away to his own ears but it was clear he had been heard by the surprised warmth that flooded through him. Finally looking up he sees the small smile on a normally stern face.
"I promise. We'll walk this path together." Leaning forward Mace presses their foreheads together and Ponds' closes his eyes. It is the first time he's felt so sure of himself since leaving Kamino.
"Ner jetii." Ponds whispers quietly, reverently.
Mace laughs joyfully and the force sings with happiness.
This is a side story to a bigger project. If you’re interested it can be found here; https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608202
Tagging, since you seemed really interested.
@lyumia0202
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
Live
Category: Romantic Fluff, Angst
Fandom: Fairy Tail
Characters: Lucy Heartfilia, Gray Fullbuster
Requested By: FlyingPegasus7 (Ao3)
The air echoed with screams, explosions, and the rumbling roars of dragons as Gray dashed through the cracked cobblestone streets of Crocus. The earth rumbled beneath his feet, making his steps unsteady. He fumbled over the ground as it heaved and writhed, the road beneath him fissuring at a rapid rate. As the earth in front of him hurled up a good two feet, Gray screeched to a stop to avoid tripping over the suddenly raised ground. Hastily, he skirted around the risen section of the street to resume his feverish pace, lest he become prey to the dragon skulking through the buildings behind him.
Gray rounded the corner and pressed against the brick, pausing to catch his breath. His chest heaved with gulping breaths to suck in as much oxygen as he could as quickly as possible; after several minutes of sprinting, his body was becoming deprived, and his vision fuzzed gray around the edges. As he peered around the corner of the building, he blinked rapidly to force the blurry image to clear. The ground trembled underneath him, and the quake slowly rose in intensity as a horned head rose over the roof of an apartment complex. Poison dripped from its jaws, which were also encrusted in ice from Gray’s feeble attempts to overpower the giant lizard-like monster. As the acidic substance puddled on the building and the road, the hard surfaces dissolved into mush. Thankfully for Gray, the massive beast shambled off in the opposite direction. He breathed a small sigh of relief.
He then growled and slammed his fist into the brick wall. The harsh surface shredded the skin of his knuckles, and blood smeared crimson against the mute red. What the hell am I doing?! Running away with my tail between my legs… This isn't how a mage of Fairy Tail should act! he cursed self-loathingly. Still panting slightly, he peered around the edge of the building to watch the wisps of smoke rise from the dissolved building. He said that, but what could he do against such reckless strength and hate? His fist slowly uncurled as his clenched muscles comprehended the sheer depth of his powerlessness.
Gray gasped as a chorus of frightened screams pierced the air. Instinctively, he turned his gaze heavenward to see massive blob-shaped objects falling to earth. The had been expelled from the body of the dragon circling the city. The ground rumbled beneath Gray's feet as a handful of them crashed into the nearby buildings and streets with sickening splatters. One of them collided with the apartment building against which Gray was taking shelter. The ice mage cried out and lunged forward as the roof split, sending bricks and wood beams tumbling towards him. He landed flat on his belly on the cracked cobblestone, covering his head; dust, wood bits, and brick chunks rained over him, coating his dark cloak in white powder. Somehow he escaped significant injury.
Gray pushed himself onto his elbows with a small huff and shook his head to clear the debris from his dark blue hair. As he slowly dragged himself to his feet, the half-destroyed building shuddered and groaned behind him. Water gushed from a burst pipe, rapidly forming a puddle next to the mage that lapped at the toes of his shoes. Gray turned around, brushing the chalky dust from his clothes, just in time to see a dragonoid form clawing its way out of the rubble. Gray's eyes blew wide as it snarled at him to bear razor-sharp teeth and a forked tongue.
As the creature leaped at him with a demented screech, Gray reacted on instinct and used the water beside him to freeze it within an ice wall. Its black form scowled at him from within the transparent, ridged block of ice. Before it could use brute force to escape, Gray dashed off the side street and back onto the main road. Half a dozen of the beasts prowled through the buildings, bending streetlamps in half and overturning café tables with savage headbutts. One of them took notice of his presence and hissed, jumping down from the awning it was ripping apart to shamble towards him.
Gray back-pedaled with frantic gasps, his ice magic swirling around his hand. Suddenly, the small dragon crouched down, and its slimy back bubbled grotesquely. Gray barely had time to throw himself into an alleyway as several white pointed spikes shot out of the creature's body and rocketed toward him. They collided with the brick wall above his head, burying themselves a foot deep and sending cracks rippling through the surface.
If one of those hits me, I'll be impaled! he thought before jumping on top of the dumpster and freezing the monster as it nosed into the alley. Two more of its brethren came climbing over the ice wall, screeching while Gray skirted around the corner.
I have to pick them off one-by-one! he thought as he dashed through the labyrinthine array of alleys. If I let them overwhelm me, I'm dead! It was all well and good in theory, but much harder to exercise in practice. The creatures were tenacious in their hunt for the ice mage, and obviously preferred pack pursuit. As soon as Gray encased one of them in ice, three more would replace it, shooting the white spears at him. The constant guerilla warfare was daunting, and Gray soon bordered on exhaustion. Several of the spikes had grazed him, leaving bleeding and burning abrasions over his chest’s bare skin (because at some point he'd flung his cloak to the wind). After another attempt to overpower the small dragons only to become outmatched, Gray collapsed against a dirty alley wall, sliding into a crouch and applying pressure to the small tear in his side.
"Fuck," he whispered softly as his unfocused eyes spied the trail of ruby-red droplets betraying his location. The dragons would sniff him out in due time; he could already hear the scrapes of their claws against the street and their high-pitched weals rising in volume. "Have to get out of here," he groaned and used the small ledges in the brick to haul himself into a standing position. Using the wall to bear most of his weight, he half-limped, half-jogged deeper into the alley, just as a hulky form blotted out the light seeping in from the street. The dragonoid's screech bounced in the small space, ringing in Gray's ears like a death knell.
Gray's eyes widened as a disheveled blonde girl darted into the alley ahead of him, ducking behind some silver trash bins. A few seconds later, one of the monsters skittered by the alley’s entrance, snuffling like a boar as it passed. Gray watched, frozen, as Lucy peered out into the street to ensure it had left before exhaling deeply. When she turned around, she caught sight of him.
"Gray!" she hissed and darted over just as he slumped against the wall. Her hands fluttered around his wounds but never touched, not wishing to pain him accidentally. "You're hurt…"
"It's nothing. They just grazed me." Gray looked frenziedly over his shoulder as the metallic bang of a trash bin falling on its side clanged in the passage behind him. "We gotta go." He grabbed her hand and tore away from the wall with a grunt. A smear of blood marked the place where he had leaned against the brick. For the sake of not alerting the nearby beasts to their position, Lucy stifled her protests. After taking fervent glances down both sides of the street, Gray pulled her out into the open, intending to take shelter in the half-destroyed bakery a few yards down the road. We need to regroup. Fighting these things on our own is a suicide mission! If I could find Juvia or Erza or anybody, we'll stand a better chance…!
"Gray, look out!"
Lucy's blood-curdling scream cleaved through the night air like a blade. Something knocked into Gray and sent him staggering a few paces to the left on unsteady, wobbly knees. He whipped around as he crashed into a brick wall, and then time slowed down to an agonizing pace. He watched the air warp around the razor-sharp spikes as they sailed towards Lucy, who still had her arms outstretched from pushing Gray out of the way. He watched the blood explode from her skin as the jagged points made first contact, biting into the meat of her shoulder, thigh, and abdomen like carnivorous beasts. The air vibrated with Lucy’s high-pitched, agonized wail that seemed to last hours in Gray’s roaring ears. Ruby liquid painted the cracked cobblestone, grotesque abstract artworks that only the disturbed would find beautiful. Gray watched, wide-eyed and frozen, as Lucy landed on her belly in the road, unmoving with the blood slowly pooling around her in a shining red lake.
“N-no,” he gurgled suddenly. A hard lump made it challenging to speak and release the choking sobs bubbling up in his body. He staggered towards Lucy, but his legs had gone numb. With a haggard cry, he fell on his hands and knees. Those also failed to support him, making him flop uselessly onto his belly. Groaning in agony, he forced his battered body to move. His fingernails cracked as he scraped them harshly against the cobblestone in an attempt to gain enough traction to drag himself forward. His muscles screamed in protest, but Gray managed to crawl a few feet forward where Lucy lay. The blood saturated his skin and clothes, hot and sticky and reeking of iron. Gray pawed at the girl, rolling her over onto her back, and nearly fainted with relief when he found her barely clinging to life.
“Guh… Gray…” Her whisper was but a ghost of a breath. Gray hauled himself to a sitting position with a pained cry. After a few seconds of panting and fighting back the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision, he settled Lucy’s head into his lap.
“Lucy. Lucy, you’re gonna be okay,” he croaked. He stroked her dirt-caked, frazzled blonde hair with trembling fingers to brush it away from her pale, sweaty face. “We’re gonna get you help, Lucy. We’re gonna get you help.” She blinked slowly, barely able to keep her eyelids open to gaze at him with hazy, unfocused eyes.
“You can’t help me.” When she uttered that, Gray shattered. With a low, mournful moan, he curled over her body. The blood leaching from her wounds filled his breaths with the disgusting metallic tang and his skin burned where the red liquid smeared over it. “You can’t help me,” she repeated in a quiet, tired sigh. Tears poured from Gray’s eyes, dripping down onto her ghostly white face and neck.
“No. Don’t say that, don’t say that,” he began babbling nonsensically. “Help, gonna get- gonna get help, Lucy, don’t die, don’t die!” His violently quaking hands struggled to cup the small frame of her face. “Lucy… Lucy, I love you… Please, don’t go, don’t leave me, I love you, I love you!” His mind began to swim with fierce regrets. I should’ve told her sooner. I shouldn’t have let it end like this! I should’ve done something, I should have saved her! It should have been me! It should have been me! “Lucy… Lucy…” he crooned in broken whispers as the light faded from her eyes and her body grew still with death. The ground trembled with a rising quake, and in the near distance, Gray heard the unmistakable hiss of a dragon.
He didn’t care. He continued to cradle Lucy’s body, lamenting every bit of warmth that slowly faded from her skin. His body began to bounce with the intensity of the dragon’s weighty steps. He didn’t care.
What can a man do in such a moment, aside from embrace death?
Reality splintered. Gray had the odd sensation of floating in space as time warped around him into fractured, unfocused momentary blips. Voices echoed around him, but he couldn't understand any words. Gray closed his eyes, feeling like his entire being was falling apart, and then-
There he was, standing in the middle of the street again, holding Lucy’s hand. Gray’s hazy mind couldn’t process what had just occurred; it only became dominated with the incredible urge to act. He whirled around and tackled Lucy to the ground, causing her to squeak in surprise. In the next second, several of the white spikes sailed overhead. They crashed harmlessly into the nearby building, sending the brick wall crumbling. Without hesitating, Gray slapped his palm down and blasted a massive ice wall in the direction the spikes had come from. There were a few pained squeals, and then nothing, nothing aside from the rumbles of the ongoing war around them. He looked down to see Lucy gawking wide-eyed at him, her chest heaving with gulping breaths.
“Gray, I… I…” Her hands roamed her body, searching for the grievous wounds but finding her skin unmarred. She swallowed thickly and then whispered, “I died.” A hard lump formed in Gray’s throat. He couldn’t force out words, so he just nodded forlornly. Lucy’s fingers dug deep into the meat of his upper arms as tears flooded her eyes. “And you… And you…” Her eyelashes fluttered, sending the droplets coursing down her cheeks- cheeks rosy with the flush of life, not pale white with the oncoming of death. “I love you too.”
Kissing in the middle of the battlefield probably wasn’t the best idea, but Gray went right ahead and did it anyway.
His lips smashed against Lucy’s in a fierce, passionate, emotional kiss. Lucy’s fingers carded into his hair, scraping her nails over his scalp as he ravished her mouth with a tenacity. She fought for dominance for a few seconds, but soon yielded to the waves of passion rolling off the ice mage, allowing herself to be swept up in the tsunami. When she sighed wantonly, Gray took the opportunity to slide his tongue into her mouth. The hot muscles swirled ardently in a feverish dance, spreading a warmth and love that Gray had never known through his body. It lasted only a minute or so, but to the impassioned mages, it might as well have been an eternity. No matter how much they wanted to ignore the rumbling and roaring around them, they could not ignore the fraught dangers of their reality forever.
As Gray pulled away from Lucy, he grabbed her by her upper arms, hauling her into a sitting position. He pressed another searing kiss to her forehead and then cupped her face.
“After this, I swear on everything that I’m taking you on a damn good date,” he promised. Lucy blinked, then smiled warmly, for she heard the unspoken order hidden within the vow: live. Gray stroked her cheeks with his thumbs to catch the tears that leaked out of her eyes.
“I’m looking forward to it.” You live too, her eyes beseeched. He pressed his forehead to hers, confirming their promises with a single glance.
Live, so I can love you properly.
Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!
Tag List: @deliathedork @searchfortheonepiece
#graylu#gray x lucy#lucy x gray#gray fullbuster#lucy heartfilia#fairy tail#ft graylu#fairy tail graylu#ft fanfic#ft fanfiction#fairy tail fanfic#fairy tail fanfiction#graylu fanfic#graylu fanfiction
35 notes
·
View notes
Text
Lovelink Fanfic 6
Fanfic featuriing Albert Bishop of Lovelink. Albert makes his way back to his match, but all does not go well
Word Count 2285
A/N Warning - This chapter features an episode of PTSD
6 Not All Roses
How was it possible to miss someone you hardly knew so much? After Albert had gone, I was left in my empty apartment, clean and tidy, with little to do. Before him, I’d never even though about what life in the military must be like, never found the uniform attractive at all. I had swiped right on him out of desperation. But his personality had won me over. I’d had little niggles at how he disappeared at a moment’s notice, how he couldn’t tell me about what he was doing, where he would be or how long for.
But what must it be like for him? He obviously loved his job and took pride in it, but it must come with incredible risk and danger. How much active service had he seen – did he suffer from trauma? So far he’d seemed well balanced and stable. He hadn’t got much longer to serve, but that didn’t mean he was in any less danger than when he first enlisted.
As I had little else to do, I decided to refresh my memory on how to handle PTSD, just in case. I’d taken a course years ago but never used it. I got ready for bed, deciding on hot chocolate instead of wine, resisting the temptation to add a tot of whisky to it. I settled in bed with my tablet and started to read an article. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, my phone pinged with a text message. Blearily I opened it up
Change of plan, coming back
I wasn’t sure what to think – my mind raced.
What happened? Everything okay?
All fine, will explain later
I had mixed feelings now. Of course I was delighted he was returning – but why? Had he fallen out with his family? Had there been an accident? He’d said everything was fine, but was he just saying that so I wouldn’t worry? I couldn’t sleep after that, and couldn’t decide how to greet him. Somehow I didn’t think we’d be ripping each others’ clothes off in the hall, I was too preoccupied for that.
In the end, when he rang the doorbell I was standing there ready to let him in. His greeting this time was more sober, and he simply came in and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight. He smelled of beer and smoke, but he didn’t seem to be intoxicated.
‘Albert – what happened?’ I asked gently when he let me go to kiss my forehead tenderly ‘I was worried sick’ His expression changed to one of concern.
‘I’m sorry baby, I didn’t think. It’s just – well, Pa’s as perceptive as my mother. He worked it out, and told me to make myself scarce, come back to you’
‘What about your brothers?’
‘So drunk they won’t notice – and if they do, Pa will cover for me’
‘How did you manage to stay sober?’
‘I’m not entirely sober’ he grinned ‘but there’s a pot plant in the pub that got a beer tonic’ I laughed
‘You kind of took my advice then’
‘Sure did Ma’am.’ He started taking his jacket off ‘I’m bushed, I just want to crash if that’s okay with you. The beer doesn’t do my performance any favours anyway.’
‘Of course, I was almost asleep when you texted’ He hung up his jacket and came back to take my hand and kiss it.
‘I’m sure we’ll carry on enjoying ourselves in the morning’ he grinned
‘There’s no doubt about that’
------
I scouted ahead through the deserted streets, moving from cover to cover slowly and methodically. All was quiet – too quiet. I listened, scanned for movement, inhaled to catch any unusual scents – cordite, smoke, anything that might give away the enemy’s position. I motioned my team forward to the next safe point and carried on forward, watching where I trod, monitoring the shadows.
Something wasn’t right. I gave the others the signal to stay put while I checked.
Then there was a whistle, and I dropped instinctively to the ground, felt the shock wave of the shell passing overhead. A dull thud, a noise that I could feel in my chest, and then silence, my ears ringing. Chaos. Rubble. Things out of place or just not there any more. A car on its roof, a lamp post horizontal to the ground. I pivoted to look for my team.
Movement. A hand sign – all okay. Relief. Then another whistle overhead.
‘No!’ I sat up in bed in a cold sweat, heart hammering. Beside me, a woman screamed. I threw myself over her body to protect her.
Protect her from what? All was quiet apart from her frightened whimpering. I was in an unfamiliar room. No, wait, I knew where I was. Underneath me, my angel struggled to get up.
‘Albert’ she gasped, panic in her voice ‘Albert, it’s okay’ I leapt out of bed, words tumbling out of my mouth unstoppably. Adrenaline pumped through my body but there was no threat, nothing to run from, no danger….
‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry, did I hurt you? Tell me I didn’t hurt you’
‘No, no, it’s alright. Sit down. I’m fine. You’re fine – you’re safe’ I slumped onto the bed, remorse consuming me. I passed my hand over my forehead. Someone was hammering on the door. She looked puzzled for a moment, then sprang out of bed.
‘The neighbours’ she explained, and went out to the hall. I heard her open the door. Voices, the word ‘nightmare’ and visitor’ drifting along the hall. The door closing, her soft footsteps returning. My heart was still hammering, shame consuming me.
‘Oh fuck. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry’ She put her hand on my arm softly
‘Arnold, take a deep breath’ her voice was soothing. I did as I was told, my senses calming. ‘I’m going to hold you now – is that okay?’ I nodded. She put her arm round my shoulder and paused as I stiffened at first, then allowed myself to let go just a little. She pulled me toward her and I didn’t resist. I rested my head on her soft breasts, heartbeat slowing, breath steadying. Her arms encircled me and she rested her cheek on my head. I felt her breathing, slow and calm, and mimicked it, my panic fading.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry’ hot tears squeezed out of my eyes. Everything had been perfect, and I’d ruined it. Brought my job back to my sweetheart. I’d been tired and just fallen into bed. I’d not done my breathing exercises or my visualisations or affirmations. I’d not made love to my girl. The nightmare had come back.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ I took another deep calming breath. I had to face this. I wanted to run, run from her and never come back, never bring back this horror to her world. But I also wanted to stay with her where it was safe and she loved me and the nightmare never called.
But it had called, and she wouldn’t understand if I left her. I had to explain, had to work it out. I’d hoped I could put it off for now. But I couldn’t. I was sobbing, shaking. I was ashamed of her seeing me like this. The sobbing died away as she held and rocked me.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Her voice was soft.
‘Yes. No. I don’t know’
‘Take your time. You don’t have to, but it might help.’
‘How do you know how to do this?’ I asked. She was saying all the right things.
‘I did a course on counselling once, but I never followed it through’ I sat up and she let me go. She sat looking at me, her face soft, her eyes holding my gaze, but gently.
‘It was just a bad dream about – about scouting for my team.’ I took a deep breath ‘I was so scared. I never lost anyone – never, but there was a close call once’
‘That must have been a challenging experience’ Suddenly I knew I could trust her, and it all came pouring out. I repressed my fears about upsetting her, polluting her world with my trauma. If we had any sort of future, she would have to deal with it too, I realised.
‘It was. This last time my mission was easy, but I was still on edge. You always imagine the worst, because it’s always quiet before the bad things happen. One of the scouts I trained with was killed protecting his team. It could have been me.’ She reached out and took my hand.
‘But it wasn’t. And you’re alive and safe, and you’re with me’ I dropped my head, ashamed at myself.
‘You must think I’m so weak, crying like that’
‘Of course not. It’s a healthy release’ she assured me ‘It’s not unmanly to cry, that’s just gender conditioning’ I let out the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.
‘Can we – just lie down and hold each other?’
‘Of course’ I got back into bed and lay on my back. She lay on her side next to me, arm thrown over my chest. I put one hand behind my head, the other under her soft body. Her scent soothed me as she nuzzled into my shoulder but I felt no arousal.
‘You don’t mind if we just – I don’t feel like…’ My voice cracked
‘It’s fine. If we keep going at it we’ll be worn out and sore. We need to pace ourselves’ We lay quietly until I heard her stomach growl. I lifted my head.
‘Maybe breakfast would be a good idea’
‘Only if you want to’
‘Yeah, I’m hungry too’ So we got up, and she went into the bathroom. I felt a twinge of panic as she closed the door. How could I protect her if I couldn’t see her? I gritted my teeth and went through to the kitchen to look through the cupboards for coffee, turning the kettle on and waiting, ignoring the flutter in my chest. I tried to supress my programming, shivering as I stood in my boxer shorts.
My heart rate slowed as she appeared and I let out my breath. I kissed her on the cheek and went to the bathroom, but left the door open as I urinated and washed. I could hear her moving around the kitchen, and the smell of bacon reached my nostrils as I emerged. I left the bedroom door open as I dressed in jeans and tshirt, throwing a shirt over the top, my dog tag warm against my chest.
‘Here, I guessed you might like a cooked breakfast. How do you like your eggs?’ She stood at the cooker dressed in her silky robe, hair loose and barefoot. I felt a stirring of desire – but just a little, I wasn’t ready for that yet. I still went up to her and stood behind her, kissing the nape of her neck. Another time I might slide my hands over her bare skin, but not now. My hands shook a little.
‘Scrambled’ I replied, and she giggled. I guessed that it tickled her, and I stepped away to sit at the table with my coffee. She was cracking eggs into the hot pan and stirring. I gazed at her, entranced as she worked silently, a vision of normality and comfort. Eggs cooked, she took a warm plate from under the grill, loaded it with bacon and sausage, and spooned the golden mass out next to them. She brought it over to the table, then getting bottles of sauce out of the cupboard – ketchup, brown, barbecue.
‘Toast?’ she asked ‘I don’t do black pudding, but I’ve got beans if you like’
‘No, this is just fine’ I was hungrier than I thought, but made an effort not to wolf it down like I might with my squad. She sat eating hers, glancing my way from time to time. The silence grew thicker as I struggled to think of what to say to her. She waited, not pushing, but I started to grow uneasy. I cleaned my plate with a slice of bread and butter that she had put out. I felt a little better for having a full stomach.
‘Albert?’ she asked ‘Does that happen often?’ I owed her an answer, and weighed my words.
‘No, not really.’ I sighed ‘I’ve had counselling. It’s not severe like some get it, but I have strategies to stop it from happening’
‘Oh? What sort of strategies?
‘Breathing techniques, affirmations, that sort of thing. I was so tired last night I forgot.’ I smiled at her ‘Sex is a good one too, but…’ she smiled sweetly
‘I knew I should have jumped you, soldier’ I winced.
‘Don’t call me that’ her face paled, and I leaned over the table to rub my thumb over her cheek ‘I just want to be Albert. The roleplay before was hot, but maybe go easy on it next time.’ I explained softly.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘It’s okay, you’re doing fine coping with all this. You’re my angel.’ I stood and walked to the window to look out, suddenly restless ‘I just need to clear my head’ I said.
‘Whatever you need to do, Albert’ I took a deep breath.
‘I think I’ll go for a run’ That would do it – something physical, something that needed no thought – just me and the road and the fresh air. I went back to her, lifting her chin and kissing her soft lips. ‘I’ll be back for lunch’ I promised, and went to the bedroom to get my running gear out of my kitbag.
@kittidot @jaxsmutsuo @ramseyswifey @otakufangirl-12 @mostly-tessaandscott @aestheticallypleasing5sos @sunflowy @celiamcg @basicallysailormars @fabi-en-ciel @rdjcoldplay @cyn-onlyyou @american-satanxx @exxtrastout @callmeluna7 @theclowneryqueen @speedyoperarascalparty @katedrakeohd @notoriouscs
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Bleak in the Light of Hope
@twinstarsweek summer storm/injury
“Fucking remind me why the fuck were out here in a goddamn typhoon?!”
“Kacchan, it’s part of our job to help people no matter what.”
“Shut the fuck up Deku, I didn’t ask your opinion. If people are stupid enough not to prepare it ain’t my problem.”
The blonde wasn’t wrong in a way. Unlike a tsunami, typhoon’s came with an advanced warning thanks to weather tracking. But while scientists had predicted when it would reach Japan, they hadn’t expected it to turn and hit Tokyo directly or strengthen into a category 4 typhoon by the time it did. Most of the modern buildings would weather the storm fine, but Japan was full of older buildings scattered throughout the city that couldn’t.
Toss into the mix flooding from the sheer volume of rain, broken gas lines triggering outbreaks of fires, and storm surges battering the coasts, the pro heroes had their hands full. So, the students were brought in to assist, told first to check on their families, then jump in and help wherever they were needed.
“Can we just focus Kacchan! I don’t wanna be here anymore than you do!” After helping secure their parents residences in Musutafu, the pair were unwillingly stuck in the same area of Shizuoka prefecture together.
Cries for help were coming in from all around them. Be it elderly individuals who weren’t able to secure windows, to restaurants who’s gas lines broke and needed to be shut down. Older style homes with heavy tile roofing became projectiles in the 140 mph winds. It was like a war zone with nature on one side and humans on the other.
The pair had taken shelter in an older warehouse type building. It was clear of people, so they took the opportunity to reassess what to do next. Outside, the winds sounded like a freight train ripping along the tracks. The sealed-up building shook and trembled as the pressure inside mounted. This was bad, like really bad. Izuku was growing worried that something would have to give.
“Do you feel that?” His eyes constantly flicking back and forth around the space. “We should get moving,” Izuku prompts his friend. The pressure change inside the building was palpable.
“This place seems strong enough to hold out, so why the fuck we gotta go back out there?! Do you not realize how strong that wind is?!”
“Kacchan, it’s…”
Loud explosions and massive popping sounds ricochet in a domino effect all around them. They have no time to react when the pressure built up inside the building finally implodes. The men dive for cover as the walls and roof collapse in on them. It was all they could do.
By the time Katsuki wakes up and realizes the situation they’d landed in, the pair were pinned down with minimal room to move. It was pitch black and dust filled his lungs from all the debris floating in the air. He starts to cough when he hears a moaning sound close by. “Deku?!”
“Ka—cchan…”
Oh, shit that didn’t sound good! He takes out his phone from his pocket and turns on the flashlight option. ‘Hell, yeah it still works!’ They were trapped under a large slab of concrete, possibly a fallen floor from above them. It was kept propped by even more broken concrete and twisted metal beams. As far as Katsuki could assess, he could sit up but not stand, and to move he would have to crawl.
He gets on his hands and knees. “Deku talk to me!”
“H-Hurts… Kacchan…”
The blonde follows the sound of his friends voice a few feet until the outline of the man’s red shoes comes into view. Katsuki crawls faster. “Can you move?!”
“No.”
Fuck. When he reaches Izuku his heart drops as his eyes fall on the piece of rebar sticking out of the man’s arm and a small pool of blood underneath it. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He needed to get the bar out and stop the bleeding. Katsuki sits beside the man, scanning and calculating just how in the hell was he supposed to do just that.
“Kacchan, just leave me, get out if you can before anything else decides to go.”
“Shut the fuck up, Deku! I ain’t fucking leaving you here dumbass!”
Precious seconds were passing by as the blonde assessed the situation. He had an idea but wasn’t sure if he could actually pull it off. If he could control the explosion in a precise manner and split the rebar into two pieces, he could pull out the part that pinning Izuku’s arm.
“This is gonna hurt so, I don’t know, fucking bite down hard and look away.”
Katsuki holds the rebar between his palms, both applying pressure in a downward trajectory to keep it from moving as well as to create a vacuum space in his hands. He focuses deeper than he’s ever done before, knowing that any miscalculation could result in causing another collapse or blowing his friends arm off. “I’m gonna start counting down from three.” He talks out loud so Izuku knows what’s going on.
Taking a slow, deep breath Katsuki begins.
And on the count of one releases a powerful, pinpoint explosion against the half inch diameter piece of rebar. The loud bang echoes painfully in their confines and rattles the surrounding structure. Katsuki stiffens for a moment, bracing himself for the worst-case scenario, but luckily the vibrations only kicked up dust and the fallen structure holds.
He slowly releases his hands from the superheated metal. It was snapped! The top portion remained stuck in the concrete above them, but now he could remove the piece still in Izuku. “I’m gonna pull it out, are you ready?”
“No, just hurry up.”
This time, Katsuki uses his knees to hold down Izuku’s arm, one on each side around the bar. He then takes hold of the rebar with both hands. “Brace!” He cries out as he yanks as quickly as he can.
Izuku’s high-pitched scream blasts the space, but Katsuki wasn’t finished. He immediately turns the bar over and takes the end that he’d just broken off that was still hot and sticks it into the man’s wounds to cauterize it. The blonde flinches as his friend’s body reacts, trying to flail from the pain. He holds steady with his legs, counting the seconds. One second, two second, check the wound. Two more seconds, finally the bleeding looked like it had stopped.
Katsuki drops the broken rebar to the side, gets off his friends arm, and slumps back, releasing the air he didn’t realize he’d been holding in. After a few seconds of silence, “You still alive, Deku?”
“Barely. Thank you Kacchan f-for doing that.”
The man’s voice was weak and Katsuki didn’t like that at all. He grabs Izuku’s hand and squeezes, “well, don’t you dare die on me nerd. I ain’t about to be pulling a dead body out of here.”
“I’ll do my best,” Izuku croaks back.
Their situation was still dire, and the blonde knew it. His friend had lost a lot of blood and that alone could send the man into shock. He need to get them out of there, but he couldn’t see a way out. The rubble was packed so densely, it wasn’t allowing even the tiniest sliver of light through. Everyone was probably still in the midst of the typhoon efforts and here they were, now the victims needing saving. Katsuki texts Eijiro and Uraraka hoping they would answer, giving their approximate location. Both classmates answers immediately that they were on their way, but it would take them about at least an hour since they were in different prefectures.
With nothing more he can do about their situation the blonde lays down next to his friend. He was mentally and physically exhausted, ready to take a nice hot shower and crash. It was also awkward being there in the dark, silent space with the sound of the hurricane winds and rains still battering outside with occasional creaks and groans from what was left of this building. Guess the void they were stuck in did have one plus point. It kept the weather away.
They pass the time in silence which unless he were to check his phone, Katsuki couldn’t tell how long it really was. To him it felt like forever, waiting, the sounds around them made eerier in the darkness. It gave too much time for his mind to wander into territories he’d long avoided. Or maybe it was the fact, he could have lost his childhood friend that tormented him. Such a notion churned his stomach more than he wanted to admit, but what if instead of the rebar… no, he didn’t want to think about it.
Katsuki reaches out and takes hold of Izuku’s hand.
“Kacchan?”
“Shhh! Don’t speak!” To talk about it would have to make it real despite the fact it was actually happening; the why of holding Izuku’s hand. It felt so weird and wonderful at the same time to hold his friend’s hand. Intimacy without acknowledging it. “J-Just squeeze my hand once in a while so I know you’re still awake.”
Almost understanding his turmoil, Izuku could feel a slight tremble coming off of his friend, and the choked tone of his words. His heart knew the hothead cared even if he rarely showed it and if the situation were reversed, he would be struggling to keep it together. He squeezes his hand back and leaves the topic alone, content to simply have his friend by his side. “Okay, Kacchan…”
#bakudeku#twin stars week 2020#summer storm/injury#katsudeku#bkdk#Bakugou katsuki#Midoriya izuku#bnha#Katsuki bakugou#Izuku midoriya#bakudeku fan fiction#bakudeku fan fic
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually - Chapter 3
AO3
Chapter Summary: The battle continues! Kravitz arrives to help. Taako chills out. Angus remains skeptical.
Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos
Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz
***
The cloaked necromancers Chad and Dave stood beside their fallen comrade, seething with rage. Green tendrils of electricity flew off their staff, materializing into twisting vines that pulverized almost every stone surface in a twenty-foot radius.
Behind them, Magnus coughed up water and struggled into a sitting position. He was still loosely bound by moss, but managed to swat the attacking vines away from Merle, who was looking even worse for wear on account of residing almost directly beneath the epicenter of Taako’s stalactite-shattering stunt.
“Don’t worry,” Merle mumbled, fumbling with a waterlogged Extreme Teen Bible. “I know how to deal with plants —”
His holy symbol began to glow, only for that radiant light to fade almost immediately as Merle’s head slumped. “Never mind, I think I’m concussed.”
From his position on the ledge between Angus and Kravitz, Taako watched with increasing concern.
“I really fucking didn’t think through the collateral damage of that move, did I?” he muttered. “Hey, Kravitz? If you’ve developed any grudging respect for me at all over the forty-eight hours we’ve been playing this game of cat and mouse, then can you do me a solid and get those two out of danger?”
Kravitz eyed the pile of rubble in the center of the cave, where the pool had once been. “Technically, I’ve been hunting you for more like twelve years. But I think I can figure something out.”
Before Taako could even react to the first statement, Kravitz turned into a ball of light and zipped down to the ground floor. Dave took a swing at him with the staff, but Kravitz was too fast, dodging green lighting bolts and disappearing into the shattered remnants of the stalactite.
There was an anticlimactic pause, then a low rumble, and a stone construct began to assemble itself as rubble from across the cave flew together to form four massive arms and fists. A few of the surviving slime constructs charged him, but Kravitz effortlessly flicked boulders through their heads with his lower pair of arms, then scooped up Magnus and Merle with his upper pair.
“What are you even doing with that staff? Either stop him, or hand it over to me!” Chad wrestled the staff out of Dave’s hands and pointed it at the base of the construct’s torso, summoning more vines and wiry tree roots that bored into the stone. But before they could bind or shatter any vital foundations, Taako took his cue to rejoin the fight, dropping a Fireball on the necromancers from directly above before casually floating down to their level, Umbra Staff still wreathed in flames.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Kravitz scanned the cave for ledges out of the way of danger, but Angus still occupied the only safe spot he could see. Instead, he drew upon his link to the Astral Plane and concentrated — and as the cracks in the construct’s form began to glow blue, several sapphire crystals burst out of the wall of the cave to form an elevated platform. He set Magnus and Merle down atop it, then brushed the last scraps of moss off their bodies with surprisingly dextrous stone fingers.
“Unhand me, you undead — oh, never mind, that’s actually really helpful,” Magnus told him. “But do you think you could get me my axe back?”
The construct’s head turned, as a movement on the ground floor caught Kravitz’s attention. Scattered pieces of moss were slowly creeping back together, reabsorbing diluted puddles of slime and writhing as they formed new undead constructs.
“Maybe later,” Kravitz answered, voice echoing across the cave. “Right now, I’ve got other priorities.”
From his bird’s-eye-view, Angus noticed the reforming slimes at the same time Kravitz did. “Taako, behind you!”
Taako had been handling the two surviving necromancers with ease, but he barely reacted in time to dodge a spray of acid from one of their newly formed minions. This one was taller and more deformed than any of the others, and its three arms wielded gelatinous copies of the Extreme Teen Bible, Railsplitter, and the Umbra Staff. Its face was perpetually bubbling and reforming, sprouting Magnus’s sideburns before replacing them with Merle’s beard, then Taako’s hat.
“Ugh!” Taako spat, recoiling. “I know you’re necromancers, but I didn’t sign up for this horror movie shit!”
“Try freezing it, sir!” Angus yelled, cupping both hands around his mouth. “Your Sleet Storm took out a lot of the vines last time!”
Taako fired off a simple Ray of Frost, catching the slime abomination in the shoulder and freezing its whole body solid in just a fraction of a second. Its face solidified somewhere between Merle’s and Taako’s, locked in a shouting expression — but thankfully, Taako didn’t have to stare at his fused likeliness for much longer, as Kravitz’s construct detached and launched one of its fists with a burst of blue astral fire, pulverizing the frozen construct into a thousand clouded ice crystals.
“Nice shot!” Taako called out. “But fuck, I wish we’d realized their weakness sooner!”
“Damn you, and damn your reaper friend a thousand times!” Dave bellowed. “But you haven’t won yet! Fuck ‘em up, Chad!”
Chad slammed the tip of the staff against the ground, and a dozen more vines arose to bind the stone behemoth. Kravitz let it crumble, turning back into a ball of light and zipping over to Taako’s side, where he rematerialized as a humanoid skeleton who gripped his scythe as three new, equally deformed slime clones rose and advanced towards them.
“If you freeze those three, I bet I can shatter them all in one attack,” Kravitz boasted, grinning at Taako.
“Create another sapphire at about torso height in the wall on our left, and I bet I can freeze ‘em all with just one ray!” Taako raised him.
“You’re on!” Kravitz plunged his scythe into the ground, and a sapphire crystal burst out from a wall of dull gray limestone. Nodding approvingly, Taako fired off another Ray of Frost, which ricocheted off the reflective blue surface at the perfect angle and flew in a straight line through all the clones, leaving each of them frozen.
Kravitz twirled his scythe and it morphed into a elegant black longbow, three sapphire-tipped arrows already nocked and blazing with ghostly flames. He turned his bow sideways as he fired, and each arrow pierced one frozen enemy, shattering them into three identical piles of icy shards.
“Ohoho! Nice one!” Taako laughed, applauding enthusiastically. “Look out for those clowns with the staff, though!”
Chad screamed and charged at Kravitz, wielding the intensely magical staff like a melee weapon — but Kravitz simply plucked the string of his bow, and upon hearing the tone, Chad dropped the staff and slammed his hands over his ears. In one lightning-fast motion that literally crackled with electricity, Kravitz reverted his bow to its scythe form and swung at Chad, who was vaporized the second the blade pierced his skin. A mottled brown cloak fell to the ground, sliced in half but no longer occupied by anything but dust.
“Could you do me a favor and freeze the rest of that moss, Taako?” Kravitz called out. “I’ll wrap up this battle on my own, if you don’t mind.”
“Go for it!” Taako told him, conjuring a floating bag of popcorn.
Kravitz vaulted into the air, tearing a rift through the fabric of the Material Plane with a twirl of his scythe. He vanished and reappeared behind Dave’s back, but Dave was ready for him, pulling out a longsword as he whirled around and parried Kravitz’s attack.
“Ah, you’re one of those people,” Kravitz commented, looking about as unperturbed as a skeleton could. “Got into necromancy later in life after the fighter class didn’t work out for you, eh?”
Dave managed to deflect Kravitz’s next flurry of strikes, but found himself losing ground as Kravitz backed him towards the wall below Magnus and Merle’s perch.
“Though it looks like you’re a little out of practice,” Kravitz went on. “Don’t worry — I’m sure you’ll find some new sparring partners in the Eternal Stockade.”
Gasping for breath and only a few more steps away from being cornered, Dave threw back his hood to reveal a rugged half-elven face, and managed a dazzling smile.
“You don’t have anywhere left to retreat,” Kravitz remarked amusedly. “Why the optimism?”
“Because I know something you don’t, reaper!”
“Which is?”
Dave tossed his cutlass from his left hand to his right. “I am not left handed!”
Kravitz laughed so hard that his appearance flickered between living and skeletal, even sprouting raven feathers in his hair for a brief moment. “Really? That’s all?”
Dave’s expression crumpled. “What do you mean?”
With each hand, Kravitz pulled his scythe in opposite directions, and it morphed into two new scythes, each blade as sharp and deadly as the original. “I thought you were going to say you had two swords!”
Shoveling popcorn into his face with one hand, Taako pointed his Umbra Staff behind him and blasted a reforming moss monster without even looking at it. “You tell ‘em, Krav!”
Dave tried to feint to the right then flee to the left, but Kravitz transformed into a dual-wielding whirlwind, twirling blades into a vortex that could’ve torn through solid stone. But every one of his movements was too precise, too carefully honed, to possibly strike an unintended target like a wall or misplaced boulder — one moment, Dave’s longsword was flying out of his hand, and the next, Dave himself was no more, vaporized into a cloud of dust that quickly dispersed and a bright soul-light that was banished directly to the Eternal Stockade.
A wand carved from gnarled wood fell to the ground, and as usual, the Umbra Staff inverted to slurp it up. For just a moment afterwards, Taako could’ve sworn that it tugged his hand ever so subtly upwards and pointed at Kravitz — but the second Kravitz turned around, the tugging stopped, and the residual magic aura surrounding the umbrella faded.
“Well, I suppose we should do something about that necromantic staff.” Kravitz transformed back into a human and walked over to the offending magical artifact, manifesting a black leather glove around his hand as he picked it up. “It’s not quite Grand Relic-tier dangerous, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to leave lying around, either.”
He tore a new rift with his scythe and tossed the staff through. “And just when I was making headway on all that Miller paperwork…”
“Hey, if you need help, I bet you could outsource some of it to Angus!” Taako suggested. “You’re not kidnapping him to whatever weird afterlife cubicle you work from, though. He’s my student.”
“Angus is the child?” Kravitz glanced up to the ledge Angus still stood on, who was watching the events below with a mix of fascination and horror that could only come from a kid detective in over his head. “What were you thinking, bringing him here? He could’ve been hurt if I hadn’t arrived when I did!”
“Well, in my defense, I didn’t expect to have any potentially traumatizing battles with slime monsters,” Taako retorted. “It’s not my fault my life never has a dull moment!”
Kravitz sighed. “Neither does your undeath, apparently.”
“That’s just the way things go for celebrities. Nothing I can do about it!” Taako flipped his hair, then made a mental note to cut it now that it was getting long enough to flip. He didn’t want it turning into a mullet.
“I could name plenty of celebrities whose deaths have been relatively law-abiding, actually,” Kravitz told him, expression deadpan. “I’d say about eighty percent of them total, or maybe seventy-five.”
“I can only imagine the Astral Plane tabloids,” Taako chuckled, tossing his Umbra Staff into the air. “But anyway, let’s get you down from there, Agnes.”
The opened Umbra Staff flew into Angus’s hand, and with only slight hesitation, Angus leapt of the ledge. The handle was warm, but not hot, and something about that gentle heat just felt reassuring.
As Angus safely floated to the ground, enveloped in silver light, Kravitz made a sweeping downwards gesture with his scythe, and the sapphire crystals supporting Magnus and Merle began to rumble and slowly descend.
“Is it Angus or Agnes?” Kravitz asked the boy detective. “I think I must’ve misheard you at least once.”
“Well, it’s definitely not Agnes,” Angus replied. “Are you really the Grim Reaper?”
Kravitz chuckled. “I’ve had this job for almost eight centuries, and I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before. Usually the scythe’s convincing enough.”
Angus crossed his arms. “A little skepticism is always healthy, no matter how obvious the conclusion may seem. Caleb Cleveland taught me that, just like he taught me a lot of things.”
“Can’t say I’m familiar with Caleb Cleveland, but that sounds fair enough,” Kravitz cheerfully conceded. “Though maybe you should exercise a little more of that caution the next time Taako and his friends drag you along on a dangerous mission. Speaking of which, let me fix you all up.”
As Magnus and Merle reached the ground level of the cave, Kravitz’s scythe shimmered and morphed into a lute. Intricate carvings of various corvids covered almost every inch of the ebony wood, with tiny sapphires inlaid for their eyes. Magnus looked over the handiwork approvingly as Kravitz plucked out a simple melody, and an aura of rosy pink healing magic washed across the room.
Merle rubbed his forehead. “Huh, my headache just melted away…”
Taako laughed. “Yeah, that’s what healing magic usually tends to do for concussed people!”
“Has this been our problem the whole time?” Magnus added. “Has Merle just not been able to comprehend the concept of healing?”
“Did the concept of healing get erased by the Voidfish?” Taako wheezed.
“I can comprehend it just fine, assholes!” Merle retorted. “I’m just not used to seeing it as a performance!”
Kravitz returned his lute to scythe form. “Playing four chords and healing you wasn’t a performance. But Taako and I destroying those three undead? That was a performance.”
Taako beamed. “Hey, speaking of which — is there any chance killing three horrible slimy boys is equivalent to taking out one lich in the bounty system? Because I think I rocked it today, not to mention the two of us really vibing, and it would be cool if you could cut me just a little bit of slack.”
“I’m afraid none of today’s harvest had actually died and escaped the Astral Plane before, which means they still rank far below both the three of you, as well as your actual targets,” Kravitz replied. “But I could probably pull a few strings and make sure your cells in the Eternal Stockade are all next to each other, if it makes you feel compensated.”
“Does that include Lucas Miller?” Magnus asked. “I really don’t want to be stuck in a cell next to Lucas for eternity.”
Kravitz shrugged.
“Noelle and Maureen can hang, though,” Magnus clarified. “They’re cool.”
Taako ignored Magnus, walking over to Kravitz’s sapphire platform to examine it. Even after knocking on it and prodding it with his Umbra Staff, it remained solid. “I might end up regretting this question, but your sick crystal stunt reminded me and now I gotta know — if you’re this good with your scythe, then why didn’t you just take a physical form in Lucas’s lab and kill us that way instead of fucking around as a crystal construct?”
“No matter how powerful I am with it, there was always a chance of my scythe touching a crystal and being transmuted into pink tourmaline, which would’ve rendered most of its powers unusable,” Kravitz explained. “So I decided to go in incorporeally — which I may or may not regret, I haven’t decided yet.”
Taako nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve cast that tentacle spell on, like, a dude. Not that I’m know whether you’re thinking of that as a positive or a negative —”
“You know, there’s something I really should’ve given you last time!” Kravitz deflected, transforming back into a skeleton and hoping his flustered expression would be harder to read on a skull than on a face with eyes and skin and flesh. “You need a way of summoning me!”
“You mean saying your name three times doesn’t work?” Merle asked.
“Unless I’m already scanning for undead in the general area, no.” Kravitz reached into his robe and pulled out a quiver of arrows, which he handed to Taako. “These are tipped with sapphires and fletched with raven feathers. Stabbing one into a surface of your choice while saying my name just once will release a powerful magical flare and get my attention, and I’ll warp over as soon as I can.”
Grinning, Taako slung the quiver over his shoulder. “Dude, that’s metal as fuck!”
“But please save them for genuine necromantic emergencies — either when you get a lead on one of the liches, or if another dangerous situation like the one today comes up.”
Taako’s grin faded. “So… they’re for business only.”
“I… uh… I’m sorry,” Kravitz stammered, immediately regretting the stipulation. But I can’t change my mind now, there’d be no way to explain it without just sounding awkward…
“It’s a company policy,” he fibbed. “Not my choice, unfortunately.”
Taako seemed to buy it, though he still looked disappointed. “Oh, well. Woulda been nice to hang with you, but I guess I’ll — we’ll see you later, then.”
“Good luck, Taako,” Kravitz said. “Good luck to all of you — and I mean that much more sincerely than I meant it last time.”
He tore open a portal to the Astral Plane and leapt through it with a dramatic swing of his cloak — but not before seeing Angus stick his tongue out at him, stubborn and defiant in that uniquely ten-year-old way.
Returning to his office overlooking the Astral Sea, Kravitz sighed, and addressed the raven perched on the back of his swivel chair.
“You know, I don’t think Taako’s student likes me very much.”
“Caw,” replied the raven, which almost certainly translated as either I smell popcorn or oh Kravitz, what in the world have you gotten yourself into?
#taz#taz balance#taakitz#taako taaco#kravitz taz#angus mcdonald#magnus burnsides#merle highchurch#and technically lup i guess lol#taz balance spoilers#fic: FTRALA#rosalia writes fic
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
Synthesis
syn·the·sis (n.)
A higher truth gained from two contradicting ideas.
Every man has a breaking point - even Luffy. Good thing Usopp knows a thing or two about overcoming boundaries.
(Or: Sabo is in danger and Luffy is stressed)
Tags: Post-Wano, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nakamaship, Canon Compliant (up until Chapter 977), Recovery, Usopp is MVP as always, Mentions of Ace
Spoiler warning up to Chapter 977. Anything beyond that is pure speculation.
***
There’s a poetic sort of justice to the fact that everyone knows and Luffy doesn’t, this time.
It’s fucked up, sure, a twist of fate so morbid only Robin would find joy in it, and even she looks vaguely sick. You see, repetition is a fantastic rhetorical device: There’s nothing more satisfying than a story coming full circle, when the intricate mosaic of setup and payoff results in much-needed catharsis. Simple and effective, any storyteller will tell you – and Usopp is damn good at telling stories. It’s the one thing he can be proud of, when everything else fails.
Usopp doesn’t feel particularly good about that – or anything really – right at this moment. Perhaps in future he will, by all the seas, he hopes he will because that means this too will pass, and they will emerge from it victorious, just another miracle by the miracle-working crew from the East Blue.
But right now, surrounded by the shaken faces of his crew mates, all he feels like doing is crawling back to bed and passing out until it’s all over. To run for the hills and never return.
Usopp can’t and Usopp won’t, however. Because it’s Luffy, and because he made that mistake once before and swore: never again, never, never–
The newspaper lies innocently between them, a few days old by the time it made it past Wano’s crumbling borders via a confused News Coo, a clearly-alarmed Bepo (he hadn’t even apologized for almost running over Brook in his haste to get to his captain, and looking back that should’ve been the first red flag) and Law bursting into the room the Strawhats have claimed for their recovery, covered head-to-toe in gauze and all warmth drained from his expression.
Usopp did not miss witnessing their ally that close to despair. It makes the bright smile Law shared with Luffy in their moment of victory seem like a distant dream, perhaps part of one of Usopp’s more ludicrous tales.
“They got him. They got Sabo.”
It’s like he dropped a live grenade in their hands, if grenades were made of words torn kicking and screaming from a nightmare they all share. Usopp wants to ask – They, who is they?! – and there’s always a ‘they’, the Marine or the World Government or CP0 or some other shadowy organization pulling the strings of corruption and misery. But it hardly matters because this… this is real, a realization that passes from Strawhat to Strawhat along with the black-and-white print staring at them from pages increasingly crumpled by nine sets of shaking hands:
Revolutionaries Defeated at Mariejois: No. 2 of the Revolutionary Army Successfully Captured!
And in their midst slumbers their captain, huddled in the softest blankets they could find and snoring away his injuries, and he doesn’t know.
The irony – horrible, grotesque, unfair, unfair – isn’t lost on Usopp. Two years ago, he would’ve killed to have this, to be there, to catch Luffy as he bled and screamed and burned at the pyres of his brother’s death. To save Luffy just as he saved every single soul in this room, Law included.
Please, is all Usopp can think of, begging to every deity he’s heard of and those he hasn’t, to anyone who will listen, let him rest. Luffy doesn’t deserve this, not again. Please, have mercy–
Zoro is the first to move and something in Usopp moves with him, a fledgeling sense of optimism fluttering pathetically in his chest. Because it’s Zoro and Zoro always leads them right when their captain is off saving the world or a country (or two). Yet all Zoro does is sit at Luffy’s bedside like a mountain shaken into rubble, a measured kind of collapse that hits Usopp square in the gut. He doesn’t know what the others are doing, doesn’t dare look away from their first mate, but someone is crying and someone else is murmuring comforting words, and that at least sounds like Sanji so the first must be Nami.
There’s only a handful of times Roronoa Zoro has yielded without mounting a counterattack right afterwards and none of them are memories Usopp wants to revisit. Not now, not ever.
“Who else knows?”, Zoro asks, the steel in his voice worn down to a dull edge at best, and Zoro’s hand settles on Luffy’s head so gently it brings tears to Usopp’s eyes, too. Luffy mumbles in his sleep and smiles, nuzzling further into the covers with the clumsy comfort of a napping dog.
Law, too, is staring blankly at that gesture before blinking, focusing anew. He’s so tense a muscle visibly twitches in his jaw with the heavy swallow working its way down his throat.
“Bepo, me. Now you. Kidd is suspicious but he won’t leave Killer’s side, not yet anyways.”
The mere mention of Killer serves as an additional sucker punch on top of the veritable tsunami crashing over them, on the mend as he may be. That could have easily been Zoro, or Bepo, and the haunted glint in Law’s eyes says he’s thinking of it, too.
Zoro nods, absently. “And how long till we can set sail?”
For the briefest of moments, Law looks like he’s going to protest. The Trafalgar Law they met a few months ago would have, grim and annoyed, and the one from just last week would too, exasperated and loud–
Since then, they have beaten one of the Four Emperors and sent another one packing with her tail between her legs, and that feeling of having your dreams within reach if you only try hard enough, if you truly believe in it and your friends and yourself, it forges a bond like little else does. Hope is a dangerous thing – it can heal as much as it can wound, and Luffy has taught them all, one by one, how to endure both sides of that coin.
This pirate alliance of theirs has long stopped meaning what Law had wanted it to, and instead turned into what Luffy promised all along: Something permanent, something unbreakable, that all-or-nothing sensation of trust that is as much a freefall as it is flying.
So Law just… sighs. He rubs at eyes deeply smudged with missed hours of sleep and close calls all around, and Usopp can see his shoulders bend under the weight of being a captain.
“I… I don’t know. But I’ll find out. I don’t need to remind you all that this– It’s not like Kaido. Our chances against Kaido were slim to none but they were there. That report, it’s already outdated. The world has been shifting with us being none the wiser, and it could be that Luffy’s brother is already…”
It’s like Law can’t bring himself to say it, as if even speaking the possibility into existence will make them lose something they can’t get back. His gaze flickers to Jinbei, briefly, then to Luffy, and sympathy deepens the lines on his face.
“I’ll find out”, Law repeats, firmly. “Just… be there when Luffy wakes up. Then we’ll decide.”
And though many things may have changed, two years and countless battles later, this remains the same, always, always. Being at Luffy’s side is a privilege and a duty no Strawhat will ever turn their back on.
Blinking the blurriness from his vision, Usopp looks at the bandages wrapped around Luffy’s chest with loving care and the deep purple of bruises peeking out underneath, and he clenches his trembling hands to fists and hopes. As long as there is a sliver of sky above them and the wisp of a current below, they will follow their captain to the end of the world and beyond.
Come whatever may. Because this time, they are here and they're not letting go.
*
Luffy starts craving food the next morning.
It startles Usopp, the hand that knocks against his head and snaps him out of his doze by his captain’s side. He stares at the questing fingers for a few uncomprehending seconds. Usually he’d laugh, spirits lifted by the prospect of Luffy waking up sooner rather than later so they can celebrate properly.
There is nothing usual about this. Usopp reaches behind himself to the solid weight slumped against his back, shifting fitfully.
Sanji comes to with a tense breath. “It’s just me”, Usopp mumbles and doesn’t ask if his friend is alright. None of them are. Instead he says, “He’s looking for you”, and watches Sanji’s eyes soften somewhere between relief and heartbreak behind the strands of his fringe, weirdly unkempt.
“Mh, thanks”, Sanji replies in a raspy whisper; he gets up and leaves, side-stepping the jumbled puzzle of limbs that are the Strawhat Pirates. Only once he’s out the door does he reach for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket.
Sighing, Usopp rubs his eyes until they ache in an effort to wake up. Fuck, it’s like he hasn’t slept for a year and it’s been barely twenty-four hours. Beside him, Luffy’s hand inches its way towards Nami – sleeping close enough to brush knees with Usopp, head pillowed on crossed arms – and Usopp reaches out, takes it gently.
Luffy’s palm is warm against his, slightly damp from the fever he ran the first few days of recovery. His knuckles are a busted, swollen mess even now, and Usopp is careful. It wriggles impatiently, this hand that knocked a literal dragon out of the sky, and then it settles in Usopp’s grasp and Luffy sighs in his sleep.
Usopp can’t help but smile a little. “Food is coming, captain”, he tells him quietly. “Be patient with us, okay?”
Back to waiting it is. Not for the first time, Usopp plops his chin on the edge of the bed and just… looks. With his straw hat set aside (and safely tucked against Jinbei’s chest where he finally found a semblance of sleep, napping against the wall on the other side of Luffy’s bed), Luffy is sporting a truly impressive case of bedhead, the rest of him lost in a helpless tangle of blankets he tried to kick off during the night. He actually looks his age, Usopp’s age, like this – just some nineteen-year-old punk among many and not the one-of-a-kind captain of a crew famous the world over. It’s a rare chance to soak up this side of Luffy, the expression on his face relaxed and peaceful and lacking the chaotic energy that’s so infectious even eternally-grumpy Law had to give up fighting it off.
A selfish part of Usopp wants Luffy to remain that way, safe in the afterglow of a war well-won and unburdened by the cruelty of reality. It’s the same part of him that remembers the loving smile Sabo directed at Luffy, sleeping soundly in someone else’s bed just like this, and asks, why? Why didn’t you stay put? Why are you risking everything when your little brother is right here–
It’s selfish because stopping someone from doing what they truly want is the exact opposite of what Luffy is all about. Because the thing Sabo yearns for is freedom, and as long as the Celestial Dragons rule over their paradise built on the backs of countless slaves, no one is well and truly free.
If there’s a fight worth dying for, it’s that one. And yet–
“He’s going to be okay, you know?”
Usopp jumps a little, his neck protesting painfully as he whips his head around. Nami snickers at the wince on Usopp’s face before she sighs, the brown of her eyes bright with emotion.
“This sucks but… Luffy is strong. He’ll know what to do. Traffy is with us, we have a fleet to back us up, we’ll call in every favor we’re owed, and then we’ll show those fuckers hell for taking what’s ours. Sabo will be fine. I’ll kill him myself if he isn’t.”
She huffs, then, having talked herself into that righteous kind of fury that’s uniquely Nami even if she keeps her voice down for Luffy’s sake. Usopp finds himself chuckling.
“Say, what’s our going rate for personal rescue missions against impossible odds again?”
“A lot.” The grin on Nami’s grin is knife-sharp. “The Revolutionaries will be in a world of debt just for making Luffy worry.”
“Good”, Usopp says, and grins back just as fiercely.
*
They let Luffy eat his fill, for one because his healing factor is largely based on burning through incredible amounts of calories in no time at all, and also because Sanji looks like he needs to see it.
As much as their cook has his gripes about the bottomless pit that is Luffy’s stomach: Only when his captain is back on solid foods and on track to regain the weight he lost while unconscious does Sanji allow himself to relax. For Usopp, this means making sure his own plate is damn near licked clean by the time Sanji lets out a quiet breath and shuffles to the open window to smoke. The rest of the Strawhats eat, too, a low hum of conversation taking some of the tension out of the room they’ve barely left since Kaido.
The only exception is Zoro, and Usopp can’t help the glances he gives the door every few minutes, as if he’d magically reappear just like that.
The negotiations have been going on for ages now. As far as Usopp gathered, the Heart Pirates are heading intel and logistics, while Momonosuke assured them whatever resources Wano Country can spare – after taking care of their people, Zoro had added with a huff when he’d checked in on Luffy around dawn.
That’s not the problem, then. Eustass Kidd is, and after all that happened around the Kidd Pirates and pirate alliances, Usopp isn’t exactly surprised the guy refuses to compromise when it comes to his crew. Killer is awake now, though, and judging by the explosive arguments raging on outside, Kidd is not happy with his partner’s input on the matter.
The all-too-familiar sound of three swords being drawn is loud in the ensuing hush, and every scrap of metal in the room vibrates from the near-oppressive wave of magnetism sweeping through it.
“Oh? Who’s fighting?”
“Zoro and Kidd”, answers Usopp automatically, sighing. “Again.”
“Ah, okay. Not seriously though, right? We promised them a party after all. Like, a big one.”
“Kinda? It’s hard to tell honestl–”
Usopp blinks and turns to see Luffy awake and tilting his head at him. His hands are yet to stop shoving food in his face and Usopp stares with his mouth agape.
“Y-you’re awake!”
“Yeah!”, Luffy says with enthusiasm, and not a second later does he lift his plate away from the ball of fur charging at him with the force of a bull. Calmly, Sanji grabs the food and sets it aside for later.
“Luffy!”
Chopper’s tearful wail is followed by a breathy oof from Luffy as the reindeer clings to his bandaged chest in a flurry of hooves. Luffy chuckles, “Hey Chopper”, sounding pleased as punch that the doctor is walking all over him. Then he meets the half-circle of relieved looks around him, his smile only getting wider and wider.
“Hey everyone! I slept in again, huh?”
“Hey yourself”, Sanji murmurs around a smoke-filled smile. He leans out the window and calls, “Mosshead! Crew meeting!”, and the clanging of swords on metal immediately stops.
The Strawhats coalesce from all corners of the room, crowding around their captain whilst leaving enough space for the impromptu check-up Chopper is conducting. This, at least, is familiar. Frazzled as they are, Usopp’s nerves are soothed by Luffy’s easy-going compliance with Chopper’s orders to make a fist, breathe deeply, cough, does this hurt? and if the doctor’s hooves are marginally less steady than usual, well, it’s only to be expected. There’s a line forming between Luffy’s eyebrows though, and Usopp knows none of them are ready to answer the questions forming behind that pensive look–
It’s in that moment that Jinbei steps up, eyes a little solemn even if the smile on his lips isn’t. “Glad to see you awake, captain”, he says, and offers Luffy his hand, palm-up. Cradled with infinite care between webbed fingers, Luffy’s beloved hat looks small and unassuming; met with immediate delight by its owner, it might as well be a crown made of gold and the finest jewels far and wide.
“My hat! Thank y– Jinbei!”
The name rings with joy the same way it did during battle, and while Jinbei regards Luffy with some measure of perplexity as he’s drawn into a rubbery hug along with the hat, Usopp exchanges fond looks with some of the crew. Dire news be damned, it’s still a little unreal to have their tenth crew member finally with them, like, permanently.
They couldn’t have found a better helmsman in any of the seas, that’s for sure.
“It’s so cool you’re back! We gotta celebrate! Oi Sanji–”
“Not so fast, Luffy. We gotta talk.”
Those gruff words cut through the smiles and laughter like they’re made of washi paper; finally Zoro is there, skin glistening with sweat and droplets of blood pooling around fresh scrapes, and the unhappy slope of his mouth is an important reminder that fate doesn’t care about reunions and banquets of epic proportions.
The change in Luffy is instantaneous, eyes snapping to Zoro’s. His attention shifts like the wind, a physical force in this limited space. Almost absently, he places his hat where it belongs, a captain once more.
“Zoro? What’s wrong?”
No one answers, the silence lasting a mere heartbeat and an eternity all at once. This is it, Usopp thinks, the moment balancing on the precipice before a future as murky and uncertain as the ocean’s deepest trenches. He closes his eyes.
“What happened? Tell me.”
It’s said with authority, a weight similar to Haki but kinder, reassuring rather than suffocating – and resolve takes shape in Usopp’s chest, an urge to keep his head high and watch it all unfold with courage in his heart.
It has a similar effect on Zoro and it’s only then, with his shoulders squared and gaze steady, that Usopp realizes how miserable he had looked without Luffy by his side. Guilt creeps on Usopp, acidic in his veins. (Later. He can feel shitty about all of this later.)
“It’s Sabo. Things… are not looking good.”
Zoro produces the paper – a different one, newer, and Usopp feels his heart clench – from the sleeve of his yukata and hands it over, pre-folded to the relevant page. All Usopp can see from his angle is Sabo’s smile, determination apparent even upside-down. It’s a re-print of his wanted poster.
Next to him, Robin draws in a trembling breath and Usopp reaches out for her hand, interlacing his fingers with hers to stop them from shaking.
“Sabo?”
It’s with clear surprise that Luffy utters his brother’s name, and Usopp watches helplessly as Luffy’s pupils flit left to right, reading, skipping over dense paragraphs and coming up to the picture at the top over and over–
Then he looks up, and Luffy’s eyes are wide with worry and confusion so earnest it hurts Usopp to the core. “I… What? But he was there, at Dressrosa. And he was fine…? I don’t understand. Is this a joke?”
Zoro’s eye narrows, something wounded there and gone like a shadow. “It’s not. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand”, Luffy repeats, insistent now, and he turns to Robin because that’s what Luffy does when something doesn’t make sense to him. “Robin?”
Robin’s hand squeezes Usopp’s, near-painful. All Usopp can do is squeeze back.
“The revolutionaries, they… There were plans to rebel against the World Nobles. The people in bubbles on Sabaody, remember?” Robin’s voice evens out and yet, her lashes are wet with unshed tears.
“It looks like they failed. We don’t know more than that – the Marine has kept the papers scrubbed clean, as always – but it seems your brother was in charge of the mission. They’re sending him to Impel Down, Luffy. That’s what it means.”
Impel Down.
Usopp can see the exact moment those two words sink in: all blood drains from sun-kissed skin, leaving Luffy’s face close to pallid in contrast to the mottled bruises underneath; Luffy’s mouth opens but no sound arises, no word of protest, no nothing, and Usopp would honestly prefer to see him scream to the heavens or burst into tears than this, this petrified sort of shock that doesn’t belong anywhere near Luffy. Then–
“We’re ready, captain.”
That’s Zoro again, and there’s a hard edge to his tone that Usopp recognizes as sorrow only because it mirrors his own.
“Law has a plan, we’re fully stocked, the fleet is one snail call away. Killer wants to help so Kidd will come too. It’ll take a week to get there, tops. Just say the word and we’ll–”
“No.”
It’s nothing more than a whisper and yet, they all hear it. And even if they didn’t, Luffy repeats it once, twice, gaining in volume.
“No, no. We’re staying here. Sabo–”
Luffy’s voice cracks, and Usopp’s heart breaks clean in two, and Luffy pushes on, panting like he’s running a hundred miles in a hurricane.
“Sabo has his friends, and my dad. He’ll be fine, okay? He’ll come back. Sabo always comes back. So we don’t need to worry.”
That’s how it works: If Luffy believes in something, his crew does, too. It’s how they’ve always worked, how they’ve pulled off miracle after miracle and will continue to do so until they have sailed the entirety of the Grand Line and their captain is made King.
Something burns in Luffy’s eyes now and it’s not… that. It’s desperate, hunted, wrong. A lie said like a truth, and Usopp would know.
It occurs to him, in a distant part of his mind, that this is the first time he’s seen his captain truly afraid.
And it’s that what kicks Usopp’s brain into overdrive, because on this crew of reckless monsters he’s the one tasked with a healthy sense of fear, to manage the doubts everyone else doesn’t have because those are important, sometimes.
Because true bravery is a road made of boundaries and the means to overcome them, again and again and again – as many times as it takes to reach the end.
“Luffy”, Usopp says, and his voice doesn’t shake. He doesn’t let it. “We got this. We can save your brother. You have to trust us.”
In many ways, this is Usopp’s personal nightmare come true. He sees Luffy clench his trembling hands to fists, and his eyes narrow, and the vulnerability there bends into anger in an instant and it’s all so familiar.
“It’s not about that. It’s my decision to make, and I’ve decided. We’re not going.”
But this time, Usopp breathes. He forces himself to pause, just a moment, just so he can think and not lose himself to the panicked rush of blood to his head.
“We’re not gonna die, Luffy. We went through hell before and we came out alright, didn’t we? So we have to go. Please let us go.”
Suddenly Nami moves, kneeling next to the bed. She places a hand on Luffy’s wrist, gentle over the tense line of muscle there. “Luffy. Usopp’s right. Sabo’s your brother. He’s family.”
“I know that. I know–”
Luffy pulls away from her, from all of them, hides his face in his hands and pushes his fingers into his eyes hard enough that the bones in his hand show, thin and fragile-looking. One by one, tears start dripping down his palms and to the covers below.
“You guys don’t understand”, he says, his voice a hoarse, quivering mess. “You think you’ve seen hell but you haven’t, ‘cause Impel Down is hell and if we go there– There’s no way we’re getting out. Not a-all of us.”
It’s so quiet Usopp can’t even hear anyone else breathing but Luffy, every inhale hitched and barely realized before rushing back out. It’s like he can’t but speak, the horrors he’s seen and never talked about strangling him from the inside.
“Back then I wasn’t thinking ‘cause it was A-Ace, and he was trapped in there and not free, and just the thought of him dying like that made me sick. I only survived ‘cause I had a ton of help and ‘cause a bunch of people died instead of me.”
Luffy stops, and breathes, and rubs his arm across his face until the tears are gone. Usopp doesn’t mention he’s probably ruining the careful work Chopper put into binding that arm. Chopper himself is too busy crying his eyes out against Franky’s shoulder to really notice.
“I’m not risking it”, Luffy says then, eyes dull and red-rimmed. “Mariejois – that’s at Sabaody, right? Marineford and G-1 are around there, too. It’s gonna be a huge mess, again, and I…”
I can’t do it, not again.
It goes unsaid, in the end; perhaps, despite everything, Luffy isn’t actually capable of expressing something so devoid of hope, so close to giving up. That’s… more than nothing, it’s enough to hold on to, and that’s exactly what Usopp does.
“Then we won’t go to Impel Down. And we won’t go to Marineford, or G-1, or wherever those assholes are gonna make a show out of– That. Okay, Luffy? We won’t go to any of those places.”
“But… then how…?”
Usopp searches for Zoro, his gaze bridging the few feet between them that feel endless and Zoro blinks and gives him that devil-may-care smirk of his. To Zoro’s credit, it almost looks right.
“We’re pirates”, says Usopp with enough conviction for both Luffy and himself. For all of them, really, for one brilliant moment.
“We’re going to catch them at sea, because we have the best navigator and the fastest ship and the most skilled helmsman. We’re going to fuck them up because we have the strongest swordsman and a musician who can cut through souls and a freaking cyborg with laser beams and Nico Robin. And we’re going to be fine, because Sanji’s food raised you from the dead just this morning and Chopper can heal any wound and because our captain always leads us right. And even if they manage to account for all of that…”
Usopp grins with far too much teeth.
“We just have to get in range. I’ll shoot those bastards from so far away they won’t even see it coming, and if anyone even thinks of laying a hand on your brother I’ll shoot those off too.”
Luffy just stares at him like he’s seeing him for the first time, eyes swimming in tears. Then he laughs, an awkward, hiccupping kind of laughter that’s raw relief more than anything else. “That’s right”, he gasps, a hand rubbing at his chest where the starburst scar is currently hidden from sight.
“You’re right! We’ll save Sabo, and everyone will be okay, and then we’ll throw the biggest party ever. Right?”
“Right”, Usopp says, “and don’t you dare forget it”, voice wobbling all over the place now that his captain is smiling again, and he hears a fond sigh from Sanji to his left and a melodic chuckle from Robin to his right and Nami looks at him with so much pride Usopp doesn’t know what to do with himself.
It’s Jinbei he settles on, who gives his captain a soft look before he meets Usopp’s eyes half-way and nods, his smile full of admiration. For him. Usopp, son of Yasopp, from Syrup Village, East Blue.
None of his storybooks taught Usopp what to do after the heroic speech is over and the day is saved. And perhaps there is no trick to it, no how-to guide to achieve that dream of his – perhaps, for now, it’s enough to let himself be dragged into a rubber-limbed hug that threatens to crush his ribs, and share the laugh that found its home in his captain once more.
If that’s the case, then Usopp thinks he’s doing alright on the hero front after all.
#one piece#fanfiction#monkey d. luffy#usopp#roronoa zoro#one piece spoilers#one piece fanfiction#oda's got me so tense about the wano arc and what comes after omg#(also sorry if the read more doesn't work RIP)#let's see if tumblr actually throws this in the tags this time#not linking AO3 for the same reason but this fic is also on AO3!!#my stuff
28 notes
·
View notes
Text
so i started drafting a fic and thought i’d post a little wip cause i rather like it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
James feels like he might vomit when he sees the house.
It’s a complete ruin. There’s smoke coming from the inside, the fence and the front door are in ruins, and half of the roof has collapsed.
His heart is hammering, and he feels panic rise in his chest.
Peter betrayed them.
But maybe, just maybe, this isn’t what it looks like. Maybe the inside is empty. Maybe they’ve noticed in time and fled, Sirius and Remus and Navi. They’re okay, they must be okay.
James runs inside, not bothering to wait for Lily. He has to know, he needs to know, he needs to be sure.
Please, please, not him, not them.
The lounge is in disarray. Most of the furniture is either broken into pieces beyond repair or in smoke. Picture frames lay smashed on the floor, toys and books are scattered throughout the room. The walls have nasty hex stains on them, so does the floor and ceiling.
James can barely notice, though. He doesn’t hear the glass crunching below his feet, he can’t smell the smoke. He feels no pain when he stumbles on a piece of what might have once been the coffee table.
His eyes are fixed on a body, half sitting completely still against the back wall of the room.
“No,” he chokes out, tears already spilling down his cheeks. It’s not real, it can’t be real. “No no no no no no no.”
He’s down on his knees crouching towards it, refusing to believe in what he sees.
Not him, no, not him, it can’t be him, it can’t be, not him.
His hands are shaking as he grabs Sirius by the shoulders - there’s no response. Absolutely nothing. Sirius is motionless and limp as James shakes him.
“Come on, come on!” James sobs. “Wake up! Please, please, please wake up.”
Sirius’s face is even paler than James remembers it being. His hair is a mess, falling down around his face, long like he always keeps it. There’s a small trail of blood from his lips down to his chin, already dried up.
Sirius has his eyes open. Hollow, and empty, and painfully grey.
“Padfoot, Sirius, please,” James keeps on babbling through the tears. He can’t control his breath anymore, pulling Sirius into his arms. His fingers run through his hair, rub Sirius’s back, touch his arms, chest, face. Anything to make him do something, to stop with that stupid game, to just wake up. “Please, please, fuck, wake up, don’t do this to me! Not you!”
He waits for a witty remark, a laugh and an explanation of it all being a prank that went a bit too far.
But there’s nothing. Sirius remains cold and still in James’s arms, his eyes open, not a single movement, or breath. No heartbeat.
Sirius Black lies dead in James’s arms that Halloween night.
“NO!”
Mere hours ago he chatted with Sirius through their mirrors, talking about tonight’s visit, babbling mindlessly about Navi and Remus and how excited they were to see James and Lily again. And now James is here, in the ruins of Sirius’s home, cradling his lifeless body, clinging to it as if maybe, somehow, it will make a difference.
“James?”
He sobs into Sirius’s shoulder, soaking his shirt; he’s wearing his favourite t-shirt, some Muggle punk band James never bothered to listen to. And now Sirius won’t ever make him listen to any Muggle records again.
Lily stumbles next to him, falling to her knees.
“James-”
“He’s gone,” he chokes out. “Lily, he’s-”
“Oh God,” her voice sounds strained, but James can’t bear to let go of Sirius to even look at her. He doesn’t want to let go, he can’t leave, he can’t just leave Sirius here.
He’s unaware of Lily, shaking and soundlessly crying, taking one of Sirius’s hands in hers. Her other hand, trembling, gently closes Sirius’s eyes.
“Please wake up,” James says again. Deep down he knows it won’t make a difference; nothing can bring Sirius back now. Yet he keeps his body in an embrace, talking as if Sirius can hear. “Padfoot, please. You promised we’d talk tonight, you promised.”
“James-”
“You can’t leave me, you can’t, not you, anyone but you. You’re my brother, Sirius, my baby brother, you can’t just do that!”
There’s a hand on his shoulder, and then he’s being pulled into Lily’s arms, still holding onto Sirius’s body.
“What do I do?” he chokes out. “He’s gone, Lily.”
“We need to check the rest of the house, James. Maybe-”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Sirius wouldn’t want-”
“Don’t. Don’t talk to him like he’s-” dead. James can’t make himself say it. It’d be too real.
“We need to check. Remus, and Navi, Jesus, I hope-” she stumbles up, leaving James on the floor. He can hear her going up the stairs.
He wants to move. He needs to see if maybe, hopefully, Remus and Navi made it out. But he can’t make himself let go of Sirius.
'If anything happens, promise me, James. Promise you’ll keep them safe for me.’
He rests Sirius’s body against the wall, just like it had been when James entered the house.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobs. “I wish-... I love you, Pads. I love you so much.”
He slowly gets up, tearing his eyes away from the body that once was his best friend.
He makes it to the hallway when he hears Lily’s shriek, piercing through his entire body. He stumbles up the stairs, even if deep down he knows what it means.
Lily is in the nursery, on the floor, clutching yet another body. James looks away, tears spilling again, a sob escaping his throat.
Remus didn’t make it either.
James pieces it all together. They’ve lost the war. And yet, he can’t bring himself to care.
He’s lost two of his closest friends and his niece. All in one night.
James slumps down next to Lily.
Remus, in a way, looks just like after every full moon; pale skin, drops of blood dried on his face, hair a mess of curls. His wand lies next to him; he tried protecting himself and Navi, most likely.
James feels another wave of nausea at the thought of the little girl. He doesn’t want to see her, he can’t bare to see her like this, like Sirius and Remus.
James takes hold of Remus’s hand, not holding back the tears. Beside him, Lily sobs.
They’ve lost their whole family tonight.
They were so happy, once upon a time. When she was born, Sirius and Remus were glowing, never having thought they’d get to raise a child of their own. It all seemed too good to be true, even in the mids of a war. And James was so happy, too. He’s always wished nothing but happiness for Sirius.
And then the prophecy happened. And of course, it had to be Sirius’s family. Of all the kids in the world, Sirius’s daughter had to be the ‘lucky’ chosen one.
James isn’t sure how much time passes with him and Lily on the nursery floor, Lily crying into Remus’s shirt, James clinging to his hand. They really should leave. The place is bound to be crawling with people once the news gets around.
Yet he can’t make himself go. He has no strength left. They war is lost.
Then, there’s a noise. A noise James can recognize anywhere.
“God,” Lily gets up and stumbles towards the crib, covered with rubble. She pushes away the roof tiles and the pieces of wood, and then there’s the noise again and-
“James, she’s okay.”
James rushes to her.
And in the crib, there is Navi, making small noises. She seems to be asleep, and untouched aside one a wound on her forehead.
“Oh my God.”
“Jesus,” Lily carefully picks her up. Navi squirms in her arms. “It’s okay. Auntie Lily is here, it’s okay, we’ve got you darling.”
“How did-”
“I don’t know, but we need to go.”
“Lily-”
“I know, it’s… it’s awful, I don’t want to leave them here, but if she’s alive then something must have happened, and we can’t stay here any longer. We promised to keep her safe. We need to leave now.”
‘Make sure she’s safe. In case Rem and I don’t make it.’
James takes one last look at the body lying on the floor. He takes Lily’s hand, and apparates.
#wolfstar and their baby oc of mine except... not rly happy whoops#wolfstar#jily#harry potter au#navi is their daughter#ofc named after a star what did you expect from sirius#(i mean she's technically reg's daughter biologically but they raise her so she's theirs)#idk if people like stories with ocs as the somewhat main focus but oh well#i like it#my tag#basically wolfstar and jily swapped#ur welcom
140 notes
·
View notes
Text
Irreparable Places | Lee Taeyong
Prologue
「 I picked a flower from the stem and I watched it die in my hands, and I screamed "Oh my God, I did it again” 」
⇢ Word count: 1,294
⇢ Genre: angst, zombie apocalypse! au
⇢ Warnings: implications of death, weapons
⇢ Pairing/Main Characters: taeyong x reader, potential taeyong x reader x ten
November 5th, 2019
6:50AM
The Borderland
The world was burning, and all Lee Taeyong could do was drive. Ten was collapsed in the passengers seat, his chest rising and falling softly. Despite his exhausted state, his grip on the pistol in his hand was deadly. The sun had just begun to rise, casting a warm glow over the borderland. Its warmth was almost alien to a landscape so bleak, all rubble and wreckage too far beyond repair. Taeyong welcomed the sunlight as it hit his inked skin, it brought him back to moments long gone, moments pried out of his hands. The truck he was driving began to shake, its engine vibrating aggressively. He’d known that the engine was damaged weeks ago, when the truck had failed to start up and the fuel began to run out abnormally fast. Fuel was hard to come by and the truck was barely functioning, he worried that they’d have to start traveling by foot if they don’t get ahold of another one.
Ten startled awake with the sudden unrest of the vehicle, sitting up straight before slumping back in his seat as his heavy eyes landed on Taeyong, “Do you think we’ll make it in this thing?” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
“With an engine like this, we won’t go far, but we should be able to get to the border in one piece.” Taeyong responded, sending Ten a reassuring smile.“Go back to sleep, you need it.” He turned his eyes back towards the road- or what used to be a road, at least. It was barely holding itself together, and Taeyong was struggling to drive smoothly as he drove the truck over deep cracks and attempted to avoid areas that were completely fragmented. Not much was left intact around The Borderland after the F.E.D.R.A dropped over 20 bombs in the area. Infected and uninfected alike had lost their lives, although most were already lost. Taeyong shivered as he recalled the image of disembodied corpses mangled in the debris, a burnt teddy bear lying idly on the side of the road. He could still feel the stench of burning flesh and gasoline seep through his lungs.
Ten cocked a brow at his best friend, taking in the dark circles that lay under his eyes and his tousled hair. “Bold of you to say. Let me drive for once, you can sleep in the back seat.” The smile on his face was earnest, and Taeyong couldn’t help but mirror it, his light almost contagious. He shook his head in disagreement, squinting his eyes at the silhouette of a tank emerging towards them from the dust. Watchers.
“No need, they’re here- get the papers.” Said Taeyong, under his breath. They unstrapped their seat belts and concealed their pistols in their waistbands before getting out of the truck. Ten quickly made his way to the back of the vehicle, taking out their paperwork from a safe they’d hid under a stack of blankets and clothing, weighed down by an old carpet that neither of them knew the origin of. The wind was cold on his skin, the sunlight providing little warmth. Once he made his way back, the tank had just come to a halt in front of Taeyong. He couldn’t help but shudder, seeing it loom over him.
The Watchers came down one by one. Two of them. Taeyong was sure there were two more inside, presumably for back up. Sometimes, they’d squeeze a fifth in. The thought alone made him scoff. He could hear Ten’s breath halt in his throat beside him, and he had to remind himself not to reach his hand out to him. Vulnerability was not an option.
“Names.” Ordered the Watcher on the left. He was masked, they all were. All black jumpsuits, rifles strapped on their backs, boots marking the ground as if it were their own.
“Taeyong and Ten.” Taeyong responded, his voice was stable, staring the Watcher dead in the eye. Ten fumbled with the papers. The Watcher on the right snatched the paperwork from his grip, looking over the details.
“Where’s the third?” Asked the Watcher after reading over their details. He signaled to the tank before Taeyong could respond. Two Watchers jumped out, just as he had assumed. They began searching the truck, weapons drawn, pace slow and alert. “Zhong Chenle. Where is he?”
“He..” Taeyong faltered. Ten gently placed his hand on his shoulder, squeezing it in reassurance. The Watcher gripped his rifle. “He turned. We had to..” The Watcher nodded.
“Back to base.” He ordered. The two Watchers inspecting the truck headed back to the tank. “Follow the tank to the border. Johnny’s waiting for you at the F.E.D.R.A headquarters.” He instructed. Both Watchers turned to the tank, already beginning to drive away.
Taeyong and Ten hurried back into the truck, the latter exhaling heavily as he sunk into his seat. “Fuck them.” He groaned, rubbing his forehead. He took his pistol out of his waistband, checking the ammunition. An act of self soothing. Nobody wanted to feel defenseless in a place like this. “We really have to pretend to tolerate them for god knows how long now.” He said with a roll of his eyes.
“Hold your tongue, they’re always watching.” Chuckled Taeyong, Ten slapping his arm lightly in response. Taeyong tightened his grip on the wheel, his smile not reaching his eyes. Silence befell them, and Ten couldn’t help but fidget as he tried to come up with something to fill the silence.
“We did what was best for him,” Whispered Ten, almost hesitant to bring the topic back up in the first place, aware that Taeyong was still grieving. “You know that, right?”
“I.. I could’ve done more to help him, Ten.” Said Taeyong, gaze fixed on the tank that drove steadily ahead of them. “I could’ve saved him.”
“No, Taeyong. You couldn’t. It was out of your control- out of our control.” Ten stared at him as if he were searching for something he could not find, existing like shattered glass, void of its true form. Taeyong clenched his jaw as tears formed in his eyes, the initials etched onto his skin burned his wrist. “He can rest now.”
The truck came to an abrupt stop, earning a clumsy yelp out of Ten as he almost hit the dashboard. “Put your seatbelt on next time.” Muttered Taeyong, he unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the truck without sparing a glance at his stunned friend. Ten stumbled out before trying to compose himself, hurrying behind Taeyong towards the entrance of the border.
They were faced with concrete walls and guard towers, Watchers wearing gas masks, combat helmets and body armor stood at the entrance, assault rifles pointed towards the pair. The Watchers who lead them there exited he tank, one of them walked towards the Watchers at the border while two others approached Ten and Taeyong. The fourth remained in the tank.
“We will now carry out the standard test for infection,” Stated one of the watchers approaching them. Both of them quickly took hold of Ten and Taeyong, pushing them to their knees and pinning their hands behind them. “Do not resist.” He ordered. They complied, eyeing the scanner that both of the watchers had taken out of their utility belts. They activated the scanners with a push of a button before running them across both of their bodies. Taeyong looked up at the other Watchers, only to see them with their rifles drawn towards them, ready for a signal of infection to pull their triggers. The scanners beeped with a flash of green light.
“Clear.” They motioned for them to get up, they could barely sigh in relief before they were pushed towards the now open entrance, “Commander Seo will get you to the F.E.D.R.A Headquarters."
- this is only the prologue, the reader will be present in chapter 1. im considering making this a potential love triangle fic w ten as well, but im not sure yet. either way, this is a slow burn so it’ll take a while before anything solid progresses so wether or not that’ll fit in will be clear by then.
- the quote under the header is from ‘its sunday, april 19th and i miss you’ by flatsound! also, if it isnt clear enough already, this fic is heavily inspired by the last of us and i really recommend you check it out if you havent already!! its one of my fav video games ever !!
- in the future there may be graphic depictions of violence and major character death.
- pls excuse any errors im too lazy to proofread im alrdy gonna wanna kms when i reread this after uploading it and see 80 typos and 53 grammatical errors
#ultkpop#prettyboysnetwork#kwordsmiths#nctzennetwork#neowritingsnet#nct 127#nct u#wayv#taeyong x reader#ten x reader#lee taeyong angst#lee taeyong fluff#apocalypse au#zombie apocalypse au#ten angst#ten fluff#taeyong au#taeyong fanfic#ten au#ten fanfic#taeyong scenario#taeyong blurb#taeyong oneshot#ten scenarios#ten blurb#ten oneshot#g:NCT#irreparable places
83 notes
·
View notes
Text
Listen, I dont always write fanfic, but when I do it’s because the story exploded into my head and would not let me rest until it was out of my system. So here’s two straight days of frantic word vomit in the form of a 7k Reddie fix-it fic, enjoy
~~~
Eddie woke up alone, and trapped. The cistern had collapsed, and it was a miracle that he had ended up in a little pocket of air, sitting like he was under a tree in a nice meadow rather than the ruins of a killer alien clown’s underground lair.
He took a deep breath—at least, he tried to. The air was laden with dust, and his chest hurt like someone had torn it open.
Which was, he remembered with a shudder, exactly what had happened.
Despite his best efforts, he started to panic. His breath came fast and ragged. He had no idea where his inhaler had gone, and he just knew the air around him was probably as thick with toxins as it was with deep, ominous, terrifying silence. With one desperate, adrenaline-fueled shove, he pushed at the debris above him. It fell away with ease.
What had once been a massive, twisted cavern, the home of nightmares, was now nothing more than sea of rubble. Eddie looked around in horror. There was nothing, absolutely nothing; no signs of clowns, or lepers, or Losers, or even a fight at all. He called out, but his voice wouldn’t come. He coughed—then quickly fell into a fit of coughing—and tried again. Nothing but his own echo.
Panic came full force.
Eddie scrambled out of his hole, his grave, and stared wildly at the remains of the cistern. He couldn’t breathe. The wound on his chest was closed, but it was burning like mad and, by god, he had died. At least, he was pretty sure he had died. That’s what typically happens after a giant monster punches a gaping hole into your chest. And if he had died, then anyone else could have died, too. Any of the Losers—Bev, Mike, Ben, Bill, Richie—could be buried less miraculously under the ancient debris of fucking Neibolt.
"They’re fine,“ he said aloud to no one. To himself. His voice was the only thing keeping him from blacking out. “I’m fine, so they’re fine, everybody’s fucking fine—”
He stopped, realizing for the first time that he was fine. Filthy, exhausted, bleeding in a few places, and sore literally everywhere, but fine. And somehow alive again, despite being convinced that he had definitely died.
"I’ve got to get the fuck out of here,“ he whispered.
~~~
The Losers, or what remained of them, stayed in Derry for over a week after everything had ended. Bev wasn’t ready to go home, back to real life and her shithead soon-to-be-ex husband. Ben stayed for her. Bill and Mike had been trying to help wherever they could, and Richie…
Richie could hardly get out of bed.
His phone had been ringing constantly since before they had even faced the clown. Angry managers and publicists trying to drag him back to LA. But now more than ever, he couldn’t face them, couldn’t face anyone. Richie was different now, with all these memories crammed back into his head, all this fear, and regret—all this fucking love that would never have anywhere to go. How could he possibly just go back, pretend nothing was different?
The others came to him in shifts. For the first couple days, he wouldn’t even let them in, but it got too annoying to listen to them through the door.
Bill tried to relate, sharing stories about Georgie that were more comforting than Richie wanted to admit. He stuttered less, now that Pennywise was gone, but he was especially smooth when he spoke of his brother.
Mike assured him that it was all over. They were free. He said Eddie was a hero and, yeah, Richie fucking knew that, and it didn’t make it any easier, didn’t make the hole in Richie’s heart any fucking smaller. But it was nice to remember, if only briefly, the determined jut of Eddie’s jaw, the spark in his eyes.
Ben was obviously a lot more clever than Richie had ever given him credit for. He knew way too much. Richie tried not to flinch when he mentioned how “especially close” he and Eddie had been. But Richie wasn’t blind either, and he figured Ben’s thing for Bev wasn’t that different, really. Except Bev was still alive.
Bev. Richie had always been close with her. They had bonded a lot over vicious rumors and cigarettes, once Richie had warmed up to her.
She didn’t say much. The first time she came in to see him she had simply sat down in a chair by the bed, and offered him a smoke.
"The detectors don’t even work,“ she had said. “I already checked.”
This had produced the first thing even slightly resembling a smile on Richie’s face. “Good ol’ Bevers,” he slurred into his pillow. “Raised like a real scoundrel.”
They had sat together like that for a long time, Richie slumped against the headboard, smoking like a chimney. It didn’t do much for him, but the habit was familiar. And sitting up, at least, had to be a step in the right direction.
~~~
As it turns out, getting stabbed through the chest, dying, being buried in rubble, and then coming back to life really fucking sucks.
Eddie had managed to dig his way out of the cavern, though he had cut his hands up in the process. It wasn’t the way they had come, if that way was even still standing. He had crawled for a while through a small tunnel, trying and failing to ignore how filthy the stone was, and the open wounds on his hands and face. Every movement sent a shot of pain across his chest. At one point, he had stopped and checked on it, only for his heart to skip several beats when he saw the angry red scar across his ribs.
"I should be dead,“ he said to himself. “I totally died.”
Without his inhaler, Eddie hadn’t managed to take a good deep breath since he woke up, so his only comfort was ranting aloud. Part of him was worried he might draw unwanted attention, but there had been no sign of Pennywise in hours. Or maybe minutes.
"Hard to tell when you’re fucking underground.“
Eventually the tunnel widened, and he was able to stand. His legs protested, and the pain in his chest made little black flecks dance across his vision, but he did it anyway. The floors were still uneven and the walls were slimy, slowing his progress. A few times he wondered if he would ever make it out, if he would be stuck down here forever. Maybe he wasn’t even going the right way. Maybe Pennywise’s last trick was to resurrect him just so he could die alone, covered in filth, in a fucking sewer.
"Fuck that,” he muttered hoarsely. “Fuck that, and fuck him. You can do this, Eddie, just keep moving.”
He pictured the other Losers, alive and well and waiting for him. A few times, he caught himself smiling, picturing their faces when he turned up in one piece.
Bill would lose his mind. He had waited a long time for someone he had lost to come back, and Eddie was doing just that.
Mike would ask a million questions. Call Eddie a hero or something, which would be ridiculous because he hadn’t even fucking killed the thing.
Bev would probably cry. So would Ben, if he had to guess. Eddie might cry, too, even if Richie teased him for it.
Eddie liked to think that Richie might, for once, just shut the fuck up.
Eddie liked to think that maybe, for once, he would force him to.
~~~
By the end of the second week, Richie was mobile. He would drag himself out of bed for the sake of getting some coffee, or some bourbon to pour into it. His friends would cheer him on in their own ways, and it wasn’t nearly as pitiful as it sounded.
"Baby steps,“ Bill would say to him, "it’s all about b-b-ba-baby steps.”
The weather was too nice. Richie found it profoundly inconsiderate to his mood. He would open the window in his room to smoke with Bev, despite the dead smoke detectors, because he could still hear Eddie in his mind.
"You’re sucking in first and second hand smoke, dumbass. That’s twice the cancer. Besides, those smoke detectors are there for a goddamn reason, you know. This place is one giant fucking fire hazard, really, someone should call the fire department, or OSHA, or something because—”
Richie would let the rant play out in his head, which was probably pathetic. But it was all he had, and if he had to leave Derry eventually, forget about Eddie forever, then he would cling to that nagging ghost as long as he fucking could.
It was on the tenth day post-Neibolt that Bev asked him what his plans were. She wasn’t the first to ask, but she was the only one Richie felt obligated to actually answer. Which is why he had hoped she never would.
"I mean, what else is a hack comedian supposed to do?“ He shrugged, an effort to look fine when he really, really wasn’t and probably never would be. “I’ll go back to LA eventually. Maybe I’ll even still have a career if I’m real polite about it.”
"I get it,“ Bev said, blowing a cloud of smoke out the window. "I don’t think I could ever feel ready. But we can’t hide here forever.”
"Maybe you can’t.“
"Rich.”
"Don’t “Rich” me,“ he said lightly. "I could totally just spend the rest of my days wallowing in this room until I wither up and die. Can’t be hard.”
"Eddie wouldn’t want that.”
Fuck that. Fuck that, and fuck Derry, and fuck evil clowns, and fuck absolutely everything else.
"Eddie had a wife to go home to,“ Richie snapped, voice breaking. "So does Bill, and you have Ben, and Ben has you. What do I have? A big, empty apartment where I can drink myself into a coma and hopefully forget that I’m forgetting him? Fuck that.”
Bev blinked at him, cigarette dangling between her fingers like she had forgotten she was holding it. “Richie, is that what you’re worried about? Forgetting again?”
He stared at her, and then stared out the window, taking a drag. “What can I say, I’m a weepy little bitch. Sue me.”
Bev rolled her eyes, which was as comforting as it was insulting, honestly. “You won’t,” she said insistently.
"What?“
"You’re not going to forget Eddie.”
"How the fuck do you know? What, the ol’ clown sent out a memo that I missed or something?“
She laughed, and the sound was so unexpected that Richie snapped his mouth shut with a muted click.
"You won’t for the same reason that I won’t forget you, or Bill, or Mike. We’re friends, Richie, we’re Losers. Pennywise is gone and we’re the ones who killed him. He can’t take our lives from us anymore.”
Richie hadn’t thought of that. Mostly because his thoughts had been occupied with Eddie’s lovely eyes, his sharp smile, the sound of his voice, and all the other flavors of him that Richie would never taste again. He had been so frantic at the thought of losing those memories that he hadn’t considered that he never would.
He couldn’t leave Derry with Eddie by his side, but he could at least carry the memory of him. And, shit, that had to be worth something.
~~~
That was a light. Eddie was certain of it, that was a light!
He had been trudging through sewer water for what felt like days. His body was screaming for him to stop, and he had never ignored so many of his own maladies in his life. The tunnel had gone from uneven rock, to uneven brick, and Eddie had briefly convinced himself that he had turned around and was headed back into Its lair.
Then the brick became smoother, worked, rounded. When Eddie realized that he was now walking through the sewers of Derry, he actually teared up a little. He never thought he’d be so happy while standing ankle deep in grey water.
And now, finally, finally, he could see the literal light at the end of the tunnel. It was faint at first, and he had already had a few false starters—the glint off of a glass bottle, a trick of the eye. This time, however, the light grew as he moved closer.
He broke into a jog, though it was more of a controlled stagger. Water sloshed loudly around him, dragging at his feet, and the sound echoed through the tunnels.
Eddie started to panic again. He was so close.
What if this was Pennywise’s last trick? What if Eddie was still trapped down there, and this was all just an elaborate vision? The tunnel would collapse right before he escaped. That awful laughter would float up from behind him. The water would rise, his wounds would reopen. He would die all over again. He would never see Richie, would never hear his dumb jokes or his stupid laugh. He would never get the chance to shut him up the way he had always wanted to. He was so close now, dammit, so close…
Sunlight.
Warm, blessed evening sunlight.
~~~
The Losers finally departed from Derry in sequence. Bill went first, since he had a deadline, but it took a day and a half of convincing to get him going. Ben and Bev left together, and despite himself, Richie wished them the best.
He was going to miss them. They never would have left until Richie was okay again, and although he was far from fine, he was no longer scared to leave all of this behind. It was actually kind of baffling, to think that he had been nervous to leave Derry fucking Maine in the rearview.
Still, he didn’t leave until the afternoon. The New England sun was nice this time of year, and Richie was trying so hard to focus on that instead of bottomless chasm in his heart. His future felt empty in a way it never had before. Apparently forgetting Eddie while he was still alive left Richie with more hope than remembering him dead. Funny how that works.
Only it wasn’t funny at all.
When he finally loaded his things into the car, and said a final farewell to Mike, it was well past noon. Richie took the long way out of town, hoping for one last grab at closure.
He had been to the kissing bridge a handful of times, back when he was growing up, but no more than anyone else. Mostly because he was terrified of the one spot in the whole world where he had let his secret see the light of day. As he pulled up to the old bridge, he dug around for his pocket knife.
The carving was faded, weathered to match the wood around it. Richie crouched down and ran the point of his knife over the letters until they were stark enough that he could read them through the tears in his eyes.
R+E
He sat there for a while, for once just letting himself cry.
Then he stood, wiped at his face, said a soft goodbye, and left.
~~~
The sun was setting over Derry fucking Maine, and Eddie Kaspbrak was there to see it. He stumbled out of the sewers and collapsed into the shallow water of the river, gasping in the fresh air. He was filthy, sore, tired, and fucking alive, and fucking free. For a moment, he didn’t even bother with caution, splashing the water right onto his face. When he looked up, he felt the fading sunlight on his cheeks, a faint breeze tugging at his hair, and he laughed.
Then he stopped laughing because it fucking hurt.
It took an immense amount of effort to pick himself up again. He had to make it back to the hotel, to the other Losers, to Richie. It was impossible to tell how long he had been down there, but his first priority was getting to them. The rest could come later.
The walk back into Derry was shorter than his trek through the sewers, but it felt like more of a hike. About a mile, mostly uphill, through the woods in the dying daylight. It didn’t help that every odd shadow had him jumping straight out of his skin. When he finally saw the light of town, he practically ran.
Being back in civilization was like finally waking up from the nightmare to an unfamiliar room. He was okay, he was going to be fine, he was alive, but it wasn’t home. He wouldn’t be safe and sound until he found the others. Which was still fine, because he was almost back to the hotel, and he could practically see them turning to look as he came through the door. The shock on their faces, the disbelief, and then they would be on him, and it really would be okay. Richie would say something stupid, Eddie knew he would, and that’s when he would shut him up with—
The hotel was empty.
The lights were all off, despite the relatively early hour. No one was there when he went inside. The lady who ran the desk in the back said that all the guests had checked out. They were gone.
Eddie asked if he could use the phone. She glowered at him, clearly not happy about the dirt and various other substances he was coated in but she pointed to an old landline. Eddie had absolutely nothing, no wallet, no inhaler, not even a pen. But they had all exchanged their phone numbers back at the restaurant, and Eddie had only bothered to remember one of them.
~~~
Richie was almost an hour away from Derry when his phone rang. He figured it was his manager again, or his publicist again, or maybe someone else who wanted to bite his head off for disappearing for weeks. He glanced down at the screen. No name, but the number tickled something at the back of his mind. He let it go to voicemail.
He didn’t think he had room left in his brain for more long lost memories.
A few minutes later, it rang again. Richie glanced down, saw that same number, and cursed. Maybe it was Mike, calling to tell him that Pennywise had a son or something, and the terror was only just beginning. He let it ring out again, as a nagging feeling grew in his chest.
When it rang again, Richie caved.
"Listen, you can’t expect me to keep putting up with this shit, okay? One supernatural showdown a year, that’s the new rule. I am capped out! What the fuck more could you possibly want from me?“
There was a silence, just long enough to make him nervous. And then…
"Richie?”
~~~
There was a terrible screeching sound on the other end of the line. Eddie heard Richie curse, and then rustling, and then silence.
No, not quite silence. Richie was muttering something barely loud enough to be noticeable. Eddie strained his ears, and made out enough to discern the familiar chant.
"This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.“
And Eddie understood, he really did, but it didn’t stop the flare of indignation. He was just so desperately relieved to hear Richie’s voice, and he was a little delirious, and he had died, and there had been several tense minutes where he didn’t think Richie would pick up the phone and, well…
"I am totally fucking real, you dipshit!” He practically snarled it, earning another glare from the lady behind the desk. “You would know that if you were here right now. What the fuck, dude?”
Richie didn’t immediately answer. His breath was rattling through the receiver in short bursts, and Eddie was almost sorry for snapping at him.
"No,“ Richie choked out. "No, no, no, no, you’re not. You were… you're… I was fucking there, and you were…”
Eddie sighed, the anger draining out of him and leaving him empty. “Yeah, I was, Trashmouth. And now I’m not.”
There was another pause, filled only with the awful sound of Richie’s ragged breathing, and it sounded too much like one of Eddie’s nastier asthma attacks. Eddie wanted him to be here, and not just a voice on the phone.
"How?“ he finally asked, voice too small, too unsteady to belong to Richie Tozier.
Eddie sighed again. "I don’t fucking know, Rich. Look, I’m back at the hotel, and I don’t have my wallet or literally anything else. I don’t even know what fucking day it is. Just please tell me you’re not on the other side of the goddamn country."
There was another curse, and more rustling. When Richie spoke again, his voice was more sure, a hint of urgency hidden beneath it. "I’m not, I… I left like an hour ago.” A pause. “Had to pay my respects to your mom.”
His voice cracked as he said it, and Eddie decided to ignore that. “Fuck off.”
Richie’s breath audibly hitched, and Eddie ignored that, too.
�� "Give the phone to the lady,“ Richie said hoarsely, "I’ll get you a room. But don’t get the wrong idea or anything, I don’t do prostitutes anymore.”
Eddie rolled his eyes, scoffed, and handed the receiver to the sour-faced woman. He didn’t trust his own voice now, worried it would give away the chest-bursting relief that had come over him. Richie was okay. He was only an hour away, and he was coming back, and he was okay.
The woman rattled off several questions, and pecked at the keyboard of the ancient computer in front of her. A minute later, she curled her lip and passed the phone back to Eddie.
"You’d better be fucking real, Kaspbrak. I’m pretty sure I just got ripped off.“
~~~
The irony of driving almost twenty miles over the speed limit for the sake of Eddie Kaspbrak was not lost on Richie. He had almost crashed the car once, at the first raspy sound of Eddie’s voice. Now he was hurtling down the highway at breakneck speed, back to Derry, back to him.
Richie still wasn’t sure he was even awake. Part of him was absolutely certain that this was some awful dream, that he would get back to Derry and Eddie would be just as dead as when he left. The other part, the one that was playing and replaying Eddie’s voice in his head, was almost sick with hope.
He had been crying ever since Eddie had told him to fuck off in that just-barely-fond voice that he so rarely used. It had occurred to him, of course, that Eddie would have a field day with that, but he couldn’t stop.
Eddie was alive. Eddie was fucking alive.
Alone, and probably hurt, and definitely pissed off, but alive nonetheless. Richie would have had a much harder time believing it if he hadn’t fought and killed a giant, shapeshifting killer clown two weeks ago.
He was so close. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been pulled over, but he pushed his luck even further anyway, creeping up toward one hundred. He was so close.
There was a paranoid little voice clamouring in the back of his head, shouting things like "trap!” and “danger!” and “impending doom!” Richie ignored that voice.
Eddie was alive.
~~~
Eddie was falling apart. He had made it back down the hall, up the stairs, and into the room before the miles of crawling, stumbling, digging, climbing, and fighting to survive finally caught up to him. Three steps past the threshold, he collapsed.
The room was empty, but it had clearly not been that way for long. It reeked of cigarette smoke. Eddie slumped down onto the floor, and lay there for several minutes, mind blank. Then he started thinking about all the awful little things crawling around in the carpet, and he became acutely aware of everything still coating his body.
With a new surge of energy, he hauled himself up and into the bathroom. There was no first aid kit, no isopropyl alcohol, no sterile bandages, but at this point Eddie would settle for an incredibly hot shower.
He almost lost his balance getting in, which made his heart plummet in his chest. But when he stepped into the water, his whole body unwound like a cut wire. The grime of the sewers fell away, sluicing off his skin and draining back to where it had all come from. Eddie watched his own blood circle the drain, and shivered despite the scalding water.
Richie had barely left, and he wouldn’t have been far behind the others, so it couldn’t have been all that long since Neibolt collapsed. Eddie figured two days at the most. Unless Richie had decided to stay.
"Had to pay my respects to your mom.“
Eddie shook his head. A fog of delirium and exhaustion blanketed his mind and was clearly affecting his judgement; Richie wouldn’t stay any longer than the others. He shut off the water.
Eddie wrapped himself in a towel and left the bathroom, lungs clogged with steam. It wasn’t until he was standing in the middle of the room, strength once again draining from his limbs, that he realized his only clothes were no more than filthy rags. He fell down onto the bed, and cursed at the ceiling.
Several minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
~~~
Richie made it back to the hotel in less than forty five minutes. There had been one more close call when he got off the highway a bit too fast and fishtailed, but he had made it in one piece. After he pulled into the parking lot, he barely remembered to turn the car off before scrambling out of it. He barreled through the door, up the stairs, to the same damn room he had been suffering in for the last two weeks. Figures.
It was then that he finally slowed down, stopped. Eighty miles, and he had never let himself doubt this, but suddenly he was paralyzed with nerves. What if Eddie wasn’t there, and he had been drawn back to this room as a sign that he really should just curl up and die in it?
His chest was tight. He took a breath.
With a shaking hand, he knocked on the door.
A second passed. Two. Three. A silence just long enough for Richie’s heart to stop beating.
"It’s open.”
Then it started again, full throttle, slamming against his ribcage as he opened the door.
Only for it to skip, soar, and drop through the floor all at once.
Eddie was lying on the bed in nothing but a towel, hair still wet from the shower, covered in cuts and bruises. There was a massive, raw scar where Pennywise had run him through. The hole in his cheek had closed, but it hadn’t completely healed. His chest was rising and falling in short movements, like he was struggling to breathe.
Richie was dangerously close to bursting into tears again.
After a moment of silence that seemed to stretch for hours, Eddie turned his head to look at Richie. The movement was slow, almost wary, as if Eddie was just as terrified of Richie being a lie. They locked eyes, and fuck—
Fuck. Eddie was real, and alive, and right the fuck in front of him.
Richie took a shallow breath, and then another. His throat was all twisted up.
"You look like shit, Eds,“ he whispered.
Eddie’s face twitched, brows sliding down into an all too familiar scowl.
"Yeah, well you’re no fucking portrait, asshole.”
Richie shuddered, and suddenly he could breathe again—he hadn’t been able to breathe in weeks—and then he was laughing. Before he really thought about it, before his brain could catch up with anything, he was striding over to the bed and sitting down next to Eddie.
His skin was too pale, making all the bruises and blood stand out harshly. Richie reached over and brushed his fingers over the large scar on his chest. His body was warm and solid.
Eddie went stiff, but made no move to pull away. Richie, not really realizing what he was doing, traced the scar lightly with his fingertips. It spread across the lower half of Eddie’s chest and down over most of his stomach. Richie could still see Pennywise’s claw protruding from the spot, dripping with Eddie’s blood.
"How the hell did you survive this,“ he muttered.
Eddie shrugged mechanically. "I don’t think I did.”
Richie snapped his eyes up to meet his. There were more questions, a thousand more, but they all died as he met Eddie’s gaze again.
He snatched his hand away, finally realizing where it was, what it was doing. Eddie seemed to realize something, too, as his face regained some color.
"Hey, Rich, you wouldn’t happen to have a change of clothes I could borrow, would you? Mine are covered in sewage.“
Richie’s brain finally caught up, and his own face grew hot. He nodded, mostly focused on not staring at Eddie’s half naked body now that it had sunk in that Eddie was half naked. "Yeah, obviously,” he stammered, “in the car. I’ll, uh, yeah.”
He stood, and Eddie sat up but didn’t follow. He looked dizzy.
Richie practically sprinted to his car. It took three tries to get it unlocked, his hands were shaking so bad. As if Eddie would disappear in the thirty seconds it took to haul his shit back up to the room.
When he came back, Eddie was leaning his elbows on his knees. He looked bone deep tired, and Richie knew exactly what that was like. He dropped the suitcase on the floor and flung it open.
"Most of this shit’s been worn already,“ he said. "Just once, but I know how you are.”
"Where’s my stuff?“ It wasn’t an angry question, really, but Richie’s blood ran cold anyway.
"It’s, um… Most of it’s in my car, actually,” he mumbled. He had taken what remained of Eddie’s things the second night after defeating Pennywise. None of the Losers had said anything about it. Richie had hoped it would help with his grief, and it had, just a little. “I could go get it, I was just in a hurry, and I—”
"No, it’s fine. Just give me something comfortable. And nothing with your fucking face on it, either.”
Richie scoffed without really thinking about it. “You think I would wear my own merchandise? I can’t believe you think so lowly of me, Eds.”
"Shut up and give me some clothes.“
"What’s the rush?” Richie grinned. He couldn’t help himself. This was the back and forth that he hadn’t been getting from Eddie’s ghost in his head. “Are you that eager to get into my pants? You’re so much more forward than your mom.”
"Richie, I will fucking strangle you.“
"Not the kind of foreplay I expected, but I can work with it.”
Eddie threw a glare at him, and Richie was filled with the usual buzz from his undivided attention. He wasn’t even ashamed of it now. It was better than anything he had felt in weeks.
He dug out a pair of sweats and his last clean T-shirt, trading insults with Eddie as he did so. It was a tired exchange, and neither of them were on the top of their game, but it was so sweetly familiar that Richie felt drunk. Eddie went into the bathroom to change, and Richie had to resist the urge to shout at him through the door.
When he came back out, Richie’s words died on his tongue.
The shirt was too big, and the pants pooled at his ankles. Eddie was glaring at him like he was braced for an onslaught of teasing. Richie hated to disappoint, but his heart was up in his throat, and all he could think about was how amazing it was that Eddie was actually here, wearing his fucking cookie pants.
When he didn’t immediately say anything, Eddie rolled his eyes and shuffled back over to the bed. “Quit fucking staring, asshole, it’s not my fault you have a lamp post for a body.”
Richie watched him settle on the bed, not bothering with the blankets. He looked exhausted, but he didn’t close his eyes, didn’t even pretend to fall asleep. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Richie was scrambling to get his voice back when Eddie broke the silence.
"I thought you might be dead.“
His voice was small, a little breathless. Richie blinked at him, and finally found words again. "What?”
"When I woke up,“ Eddie went on, "I was buried in the rubble, and I was worried… I thought that maybe you guys were buried too, that the whole place had come down right on top of us.”
Richie was hit with a sudden wave of guilt. Eddie had been down there for weeks, and they had left him there. “Fuck, Eds,” he breathed. “Fuck, I—I’m sorry, man, I tried to get you out of there, but it was happening so fast.” He turned away, shifting so his back was leaning against the side of the bed. “I would’ve stayed down there with you, but Mike and Ben dragged me out.”
He heard Eddie take a breath. “Then you really would’ve been dead, idiot.”
Richie huffed out a laugh. Bev had said nearly the same thing on the eighth day, after Richie had snapped at Bill for not letting him stay in that sinkhole.
"Richie…?“
It was really nice to hear Eddie saying his name again, even if he sounded like he was about to have a mental breakdown. "Yeah?”
"How, uh… How long was I down there?“
Richie sucked in a breath, let it out, felt the weight of too many nightmare-fueled sleepless nights dragging at his body.
"Almost two weeks,” he sighed.
"What the fuck!?“ Eddie barked, sitting up so fast the bed shook. Richie craned his neck to look at him, and Eddie stared back with wide eyes. "Two weeks? I was dead for two fucking weeks?”
Richie’s stomach dropped at the words. “What the hell do you mean, you were dead?”
"I was fucking impaled through the torso, dumbass, of course I was dead. What, did you think I was just taking a nice stroll through the sewers? For two whole goddamn weeks! Jesus, that can't—I mean, that can’t be fucking possible, right? I would have started to decay. My pancreas would be digesting itself, and my cells would be breaking down, and maggots would—!“
He cut himself off, too busy hyperventilating to continue detailing the slow process of his own decomposition. Richie really wished he had brought Eddie’s bag, oversized clothes be damned. His inhaler was gone, burned up and buried beneath Neibolt, but he probably had a backup somewhere.
Instead, panicking, he climbed up onto the bed and took Eddie’s face in his hands. "Eddie, hey, Eds, fucking look at me.”
Eddie’s eyes were wide and endless, a shade of brown that Richie could stare into for hours—but he focused on the glossy fear in them instead of his own stupid heart.
"Listen, I don’t know how, but you’re not dead. You’re right here, and there’s no maggots, or clowns, or fucking disease zombies, or whatever. It’s just me.“
Eddie’s brows drew together, like he was reaching for some conclusion and couldn’t quite connect the dots. His breathing was starting to slow down, though.
"Just you,” he wheezed. “You were…so close. An hour away.”
Richie wasn’t sure where he was going with that. He shrugged. “Yeah, I had only just left. We all stuck around for a while. Kinda hard to just pack up and go home after… y'know, all of that.”
Eddie stared up at him for a moment, doe eyes doing cruel things to Richie’s heart. Then he grabbed Richie by the waist and pulled him forward.
Richie tried to breathe, but it was difficult with Eddie’s face pressed into the crook of his shoulder, and the smell of generic hotel soap scrambling his senses. He held himself still, unsure of what to do. Then Eddie started shaking, and Richie broke from his stupor to wrap his arms around him.
"Eds?“
"Don’t fucking call me that,” came the unsteady reply. Richie swallowed the urge to tease him, to break the tension that hung in the air, to mask his racing heart with humor.
"You probably ought to get some sleep,“ he said instead. "Maybe we can figure this out in the morning, when we’re not, like, in shock, or whatever.”
Eddie hesitated before nodding against Richie’s shoulder. He waited even longer to finally loosen his grip, wiping at his eyes as he turned away.
God, Richie wanted to kiss him.
Eddie rose from the bed with visible effort. Richie helped him turn down the covers, waited until he was settled, and then moved for the chair in the corner. It was an old piece of shit that made his neck hurt just from looking at it, but it would do for tonight. He was halfway through wadding up his jacket for a pillow when Eddie called out to him.
"Rich, this is gonna sound weird…”
Richie grinned. “Weirder than coming back from the dead, or just typical Derry weird?”
"Shut up. I just… can you just come over here?“
"I was just getting comfy,” he sighed, even as he stood.
"No you fucking weren’t.“
Richie laughed, though he tried not to. He was starting to get slap happy, and combined with the shellshocked elation he was trying to process, he was a bit off his rocker. Eddie blinked up at him from the bed.
"Well? The fuck do you want?”
Eddie rolled his eyes. The color that rose in his cheeks was visible even in the dim light of the lamp, which they had both silently agreed to keep on. Without saying anything, Eddie shifted over until there was just enough room on the bed for one more. Richie took an embarrassingly long time to process this.
"Oh come on, shit for brains, just get in,“ Eddie snapped.
Richie almost couldn’t hear him over the rushing of his own heartbeat in his ears. Slowly, he slid under the sheets. The bed was warm where Eddie had already been laying. Richie reminded himself to breathe, somehow struggling more with this than the unexplained resurrection of his best friend and lifelong love.
Eddie shifted, shoulder brushing against Richie’s and sending his brain spiraling. “Thanks, by the way,” he whispered. “For coming back.”
Richie nodded, not trusting himself to look at Eddie. “Yeah, no problem.”
He wanted to say more, but his thoughts were too jumbled to really make sense of them. There was one persistent question, though.
"Why did you call me? I mean, Mike’s still in town.“
Eddie was silent for several moments. And then he said, quietly, "You were the first person I thought of.”
Richie didn’t want to overthink that, but he knew he was going to. “Oh.”
Silence stretched again. Richie let it sit for long enough that he could safely assume Eddie was asleep before saying more. “Y'know, just for the record, I would have come no matter what. Even if I was all the way back in LA. I’d always come back for you, Eds.”
He was just starting to think he was in the clear when Eddie let out a sharp breath and clutched at Richie’s sleeve.
"I love you.“
The erratic beating of Richie’s heart stopped cold. He finally looked at Eddie, who had turned over and pressed his face against Richie’s arm. Tears leaked from his tightly closed eyes, running across the perfect bridge of his nose and dropping onto the pillow.
"Fuck. Eddie…” he trailed off, not sure what to say. Eddie loved him. This night was getting more and more unreal by the hour. “That’s, uh, really not something you want to hear from a guy who’s crying.”
Eddie snapped his eyes open. Christ, they were beautiful. Big and brown and sparkling even when he was furious. Shit, especially when he was furious.
"Are you fucking serious right now?“ he hissed. "You’re gonna joke about this? You know what, never mind, I fucking hate you.”
"Aw, c'mon, Eddie Spaghetti, don’t be like that.“
"Fuck off,” he fired back, trying to turn away. Richie rolled over and hooked an arm over him, pulling him close.
"Hey now, you’re the one who wanted me to share a bed with you, the least you could do is cuddle.“
"Let go, Richie.” Eddie wriggled, but Richie held him tight. Fuck that, he wasn’t planning on letting go for at least a few weeks, if ever. “I swear to god, I’ll knee you in the balls.”
"Don’t do that, I might need them later.“
"Yeah right. Like I’d ever want to get anywhere near your unwashed dick.”
"I never said I was gonna need ‘em for you, Eds.“
Eddie stopped squirming and looked Richie in the eyes, which was unfortunate, since Richie was trying to banter and those eyes always left him speechless.
"Shut up, Richie,” he whispered, and his breath brushed across Richie’s mouth a moment before his lips did.
Richie had figured that if this really was a dream, this would be the moment he would wake up. That was how it always worked when he dreamt of Eddie, ever since they were kids. They would go for the kiss, and he would startle awake with a pounding, aching heart, and a cold sweat on his brow. The cycle of his entire repressed childhood.
But he didn’t wake up now. Eddie’s lips pressed into his, hungry and hesitant at the same time, and it was so much better than any dream. Richie pressed back, just as desperate, and way too strung out to care. It felt more real now than when he had first laid eyes on Eddie, first touched him.
Eddie was here. Eddie was alive. Eddie was in Richie’s arms, and was kissing the breath right out of his lungs.
And Eddie loved him.
When they pulled away from each other, Eddie’s eyes would hardly open. Richie smiled, and even though he couldn’t see it, he could tell how ridiculously soft he probably looked.
"You should come back from the dead more often, Kaspbrak,“ he sighed.
Eddie managed to roll his eyes before they drifted shut again. He gave a weary grunt, and offered no further comment. Richie watched him for a moment, but he was struggling to keep his own eyes open, and he was warm, and safe, and happy for the first time in over a month. Scratch that, in years.
Just before he fell asleep, he reached up and pressed a kiss to Eddie’s forehead. "I love you, too, Eds. Always have.”
He felt it just before he slipped away, Eddie’s arms holding him a little bit tighter.
#it ch 2#it (2019)#reddie#richie tozier#eddie kaspbrak#fanfic#my art#fair warning there's a ton of cursing
80 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
lovegreatboobs
Lover of Great Boobs
winchester90210
no thoughts head empty
abi-art
آبی
life-like-fairytales
Life Like A Fairytale