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#digging through my files and found these again and ugh
dogcollarpunk · 2 years
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wh*re behaviour
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Same as it ever was 2
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Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as neglect, bullying, manipulation, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.
This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.
Summary: Between your home life and work, you just can’t catch a break. Especially after you draw the ire of your boss.
Characters: Lloyd Hansen ft. Pete Brenner
Note: Sorry to those who expected a team-up or simps!
As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.
Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)
I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖
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Your eyes burn as you rub them with the heels of your hand. It's late, very late, and Pete's not home. He missed bath time and bedtime. You're only fortunate that the sitter fed the kids.
You continue your tedious Excel mission, yawning at the sharepoint file as you sweep your fingers over the touchpad. You sit against the pillows propped against the bed frame and struggle not to doze. You're almost there, you can do it. Yeah, keep telling yourself that and it might even be true.
You hear an engine. You're not much of an automotive enthusiast but you recognise it. It's Pete unnecessary Corvette. The vehicle he convinced you would be the perfect company car. You sigh and hunker down, blocking out the ruckus of his return.
Still, you hear it all. Him unlocking the door, pausing to take off his jacket and shoes, climbing the stairs, at least considerate of the hour as he keeps his steps light. He enters, seemingly shocked to find you awake as his eyes round in your direction. He stretches, pushing his neck side to side in an exaggerated gesture of fatigue.
"Ugh, long day," he rubs his shoulders with a groan.
You don't acknowledge him as you keep your fingers fluttering over the keyboard. It's too late and you're too drained to be any more angry than you already are. You narrow in on the laptop as he hovers at the edge of your vision, undressing piece by piece.
"Big meeting today. Might've found another investor," he talks above the bellowing elephant in the room. "I think we're almost there."
You curl your lip but say nothing. One word and it's over. It will all come spewing out. Between him and your asshole boss, you have a thread of patience left.
He tosses his pants at the hamper and they catch on the edge before falling on the outside. He doesn't pick them up. You wonder why he insists on spending label name money when he doesn't take care of his clothes. Why he wears big names as you're digging through thrift store bins. You blow out a breath, a sigh that fills the room.
"So," he rolls down his underwear, shamelessly naked but for his black socks, "you just going to give me the silent treatment when I worked all day--"
"I'm still working," you snap and still your hands, glaring up at him, "I'd be done by now if you had picked up the kids from Emma's."
"I... you weren't serious about that, were you?"
"Don't," you warn him and lower your gaze back to the laptop, "I have a big meeting in the morning and I'm gonna spend enough time getting this done. I don't need an argument--"
"Relax," he snips, "I'm gonna shower and sleep. You don't gotta worry." He lumbers over to the bathroom door and you roll your eyes, "we both know nothing else is going on in that bed."
You swallow as your eyes sting again. He slams the door and you hiss. If he wakes up the kids... 
You wait and listen for any stirring beyond your bedroom walls. Thankfully, the house is silent but for the sudden scour of the showerhead. You bat away the layer of tears threatening to spill and shake your head. It's not like you didn't try; you put on some old lingerie two weeks ago and he rolled over and went to sleep. Still, you're the problem. It's always you.
You hit save to make sure the sharepoint updates and you take a final look over each sheet. You're done, you think. You hope. You're too tired to care. You shut the laptop and put it on the night table.
You slide down onto your side and flip off the lamp. You lay with your back to the bathroom door and squeeze your eyes shut. Sleep should be easy but your anxiety further jabs the migraine into your skull. You hate this, all of it. How did it come to this? Where did you go wrong?
🗄️
A couple hours of sleep is hardly enough to recover from the hectic day behind you, or the one awaiting you. You get the kids up, packed, and off to school knowing Pete is probably not even awake. You didn't even try to rouse him as he would only add to your list of worries.
You head to the office, your hope of getting in early crushed as you hurry in at your usual time. You fall into the chair, coat still half-on as you jab the button on the monitor. The PC is asleep but not off. You hit the space bar to wake it up.
You finish stripping off your outer layer and hang it over the back of your chair. You swivel in and gape at the sight before you. Every cell is empty. You click through the sheets as your heart plummets. You close and try reopening the file, hoping it merely timed out.
Nothing. It's all gone but how? You can't believe it. You go into the recovery settings and search through revision history. It's all be locked, you can't see any past edits.
You clutch your head as despair and panic and grief swallow you up. Luck has never been your friend but this is a new low. You roll back slightly and fold over in your chair. You have a choice; accept defeat and tender your resignation or hope for mercy and pretend in the meeting that the file was corrupted without your knowledge. 
"You know," your chair jolts as someone kicks a wheel, "there's a very strict security policy around here. All work devices should be locked and shut down before they are left unattended."
You sit up and spin, dizzy from grief and utter dread as you face Mr. Hansen. He smirks down at you, a black button-up under a sleek evergreen jacket. His wardrobe is even more ostantatious than your husband's; probably because he can afford it. You lift your face and deflate.
"Mr. Hansen," you murmur.
"Anyone could just see the budget… they could tamper with it," he watches you smugly, "or even…delete it."
Your ribs rack and your ears tingle. He did this. Is he crazy? You stand up and he stays as he is. The closeness between you is suffocating.
"Mr. Hansen," you repeat, "I had the numbers done–"
"Oh, you do?" He chuckles, "that's great."
"What did you do? Why?" You accuse.
"I told you, honey bun, you owe me," he pishes his shoulders back, "so…" he lifts his arm and checks his watch, gold and expensive. Probably worth as much as your mortgage, "how exactly are you gonna pay me back? First I let you off early," he holds up a finger  "then… I work a miracle and help you recover that pesky budget."
"Sir," you choke out, mortified, "I'll… I'll stay overtime all week. I swear, I'll–"
"Hmph, nah, I got enough soldiers running the ant hill," he tweaks a brow, "overtime… boring. You got kids, they need mommy home to kiss them goodnight."
You clamp your lips together and watch him desperately. He just wants to torture you. You can feel it all slipping away; your job, your husband, and yourself.
"What do you want?" You exhale weakly.
He tilts his head and lets the tip of his tongue poke out, "you know," he wags his index in front of you, "I know this trick on Excel, why don't I show you?" He pauses for effect, basking in his victory, "in my office?"
A stitch dimples between your eyebrows. His office. Why? You don’t let the trickle of suspicion overflow. You’re not his type. Definitely not Kendra. No, this will be worse than whatever disgusting thoughts he has in her direction.
You set your chin and turn your hands out, “alright, fine. Show me.”
You wait, and he hesitates, as if waiting for you to flinch first. Finally, he pivots on the heel of his ridiculous loafers and struts towards his office. You leave your chair facing the rest of the office and follow, pressing your sweaty palms to the pilled wool that strains across your thighs.
He opens the door of his office and you enter behind him. He lingers by the door and closes it as you stop just inside. For all your years there, you’d never actually been inside his office. There was never any reason for it. Thankfully.
He doesn’t say a word as he rounds his desk and sits casually in his tall-backed chair. It’s much better than those out in the bullpen with the worn cushion and squeaky wheels. You wait, patiently impatient, for him to begin. You feel him plotting, measuring his next move.
He rolls closer to his desk and takes the nearly flat apple mouse, moving it atop the leather pad and clicking with a single finger. His eyes reflect the large screen of his iMac and the corner of his mouth curves upward.
He looks at you and beckons with his other hand, “come here. I’ll show you.”
You reluctantly round his desk. There’s something about his nonchalance that both irks and unsettles you. You near and look at his screen. You see the slobbery lips of a teary-eyed woman right before he minimises the window. You pretend not to notice as he clicks onto the excel file.
It’s there. All your work. You squint and see the title in the bar of the window; Copy of… He kept a copy but he destroyed yours. It’s all a trick. You can’t be surprised by that.
“There it is,” he clicks his tongue, “all your hard work. Wow, I gotta say, that’s impressive.”
“You…” you put your hands on your hips and glance between him and the screen, “what do you want?”
“Nothing much,” he snickers, “and I’d say it’s not too different than what you want. What you really want.”
You blink at his vague statement. You bring an arm up across your stomach and stare at him nervously. Men like him just want their ego inflated. You just have to remember how to kiss ass.
“So,” he leans back and reaches for his belt, “we don’t got much time. Meeting’s in a smooth fifteen so–”
“What are you doing?” You hiss.
He stops, keeping his hands over his lap. You see his velvet pants twitch.
“We can play pretend. I don’t mind. You like the whole hard to get thing, I get it, you got class,” he says, “but we both know the old man isn’t giving you what you need. I can tell by the way you keep your ass clenched–”
“Mr. Hansen,” you snarl.
“I’m not asking for much. A quick handy,” he unbuckles his belt, “I just want a little more than you give the husband. I don’t want it to be a chore, alright? You’re not washing dishes–”
“You’re gross-”
“And you’re going to do it,” he opens his fly. Again, your shock is lacking. No underwear, nasty. “Because you’ve been here, what…” he reaches into his pants and pulls his dick out as he talks, “twelve years?” He strokes himself without shame, “and you walk out of here without a single reference and you’ll be lucky to get a job at the McDonald’s drive-thru.”
You focus on his face, horrified. Like most women, it’s not the first time you’ve been in this position. Propositioned in such a revolting way. Put in a winless situation. Yet, you somehow believed those days were over for you. You’d found safety in age.
“You can’t be serious…” you mutter.
“I’m fucking serious and I’m horny. Since you wanna cockblock me, you can deal with the consequences, honey,” he turns the chair towards you, “you do remember how these things work, right?”
You stare at him, almost glaring. You don’t let your revulsion seep through fully because as repugnant as he is, he’s right. You need this job. You’re not young, you can’t just walk away and crash on a friend’s couch until you find something better. You’re a mother and a wife. A wife.
“Is it really cheating if you can’t stand it?” He chortles as if reading your mind.
You take a breath and step forward. He winces at your suddenness. He braces the armrest of the chair as you reach for his rigid length. You grip him, biting down to keep from ripping your touch away. You look past him to the wall as he grunt and lets out a quivery breath.
You pump him and he hisses, “honey, it’s not a stick shift. Be fucking nice. Get some fucking lube on it.”
You tamp down your disgust and pull your hand back. You hold it up and spit onto it, hiding the action as best you can. You’d rather spit in his face.
You grab him again and run your hand from base to tip and back. He chokes and clings to the chair tighter as it shifts beneath him. He groans as you fixate on the framed Harvard Business School degree. Just when you thought life couldn’t slap you in the face again.
He pushes his head back and rumbles as you feel him tensing. He’s like any man. Simple, through and through. 
You feel him trembling and sense the change in his tone. He’s close. You taste bile, sickened by yourself and him. You stop and keep your hand around him.
“Send it,” you demand.
“Huh?” He puffs.
“Send the file or I don’t finish. And neither do you–”
“Honey, that’s not–”
You squeeze, “send the file.”
“Fine, fine,” he reaches over, straining as he taps a few buttons. You watch the screen and he hits share, you wave him away from the keyboard. You type in your email with your free hand and press enter.
“Great,” you pump your hand again, hips aching at the awkward way you have to bend.  
You grasp the chair above his shoulder as you speed up. He growls and plants his feet, rasping through his rising pleasure, “don’t fuck up my suit–”
You angle his dick and cup your hand under the tip. You have to look then. You watch as he explodes, catching the gushing flow in your palm as he quakes and moans out his delight. Your stomach churns as you stroke him until he’s empty and squirming.
You retract your hand and turn to grab a tissue to wipe away the mess. You’re certain to take a healthy dollop from the sanitizer bottle as well, clearing your throat as you try to shake off what you just did. You look at your watch and roll your shoulders.
“I’ll see you in the meeting,” you retreat to the door as his breath peters out.
“Honey…” he sighs.
“Mr. Hansen,” you reach for the door, leaving him with his limpening dick hanging out.
You march out, not looking one way or the other, as you head for your desk. You’re shaking by the time you reach it, nearly collapsing into the chair. What have you done? You are just as disgusting as he is. You’re pathetic, you’re a loser, you’re… a cheater.
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Summary: Eli's way too shy to ever talk to you in person, so he helps himself to a late night stroll through your Cloud files to get to know you.
Pairing: CyberStalker!Elijah Kamski x afab!Reader
Word Count: -1,8k (This was supposed to be a drabble…)
Content Warnings: Smut 18+!, Stalking, Hacking, Female And Male Masturbation, Heavy Violations Of Privacy, Obsessive Behavior, Strong BDSM Themes
A/N: This has been eating away at my ability to think for the past few days…
Tagging: @blueberrypancakesworld @herprivateisland
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I'm inside of your system,
I'm inside of your lair
To haunt you is my destiny
I'm a virus, impossible to find
I'm lurking in the shadows of your mind
- Virus By Priest
You wouldn't even have recognised him as he'd passed you on your way into the supermarket, automatic front doors swishing open as you squeezed yourself right past him as he was walking out, his hands clasping around filled grocery bags. Elijah knew that you'd be on your way now for your weekly shopping run and he just couldn't hold back a nervous smile as the light scent of your perfume crept up into his nose. Flowery, fresh and persistent enough to stay with him until he arrived back at home.
This, alongside plenty of others, was one of Elijah's little weekly rituals to keep up with you. He went shopping with you, not just groceries but sometimes also clothing or a bouquet of flowers from the florist right next to the little café you frequented nearly every morning for a tall coffee latte with exactly one pump of vanilla syrup. It always made him think of how your lips would taste like sugary sweet vanilla when you strolled into your workplace with the cardboard cup still in your hands. On the rare occasions when you fell sick, Eli had sat across from you in the waiting room, avid to keep his ears perked to make sure you were healthy and well again soon. None of that you'd ever noticed. Why would you? He was just one face of hundreds of thousand in this city and whilst Eli went unnoticed, he knew everything about you.
Really everything? That's at least what he'd been thinking until he decided to treat himself one Saturday night. After months of “looking after you” it had gotten a bit stale to be close to you by getting himself off to the few rare bikini pics he'd found by digging through your Instagram page. There was something about you, something he couldn't quite pinpoint but it told him that there was more to you, that he just had to venture far enough to find the thing you were hiding away and to him, a Cloud storage provider was nothing else than a server. A server that could be hacked just like every other and that he did in a heartbeat. He couldn't even really describe it as hacking because you weren't really careful with your almost very much the same passwords you used online. In general, it was a mixture of your dogs birthday and the name of your first real crush from middle school… Tyler. Ugh, Tyler, by now a divorced loser with a receding hairline and a latent porn addiction. Maybe a few changed in regards of capital letters but it took no more than two tries to get into your Cloud data storage account.
“Let's see what you got in here, sweety.” Elijah murmured to himself, excitement making his pulse pick up a beat whilst the pale light from the desktop reflected from his black- framed glasses. For a moment, nothing really caught his eye: files filled with family vacation pictures, an occasional photo dump of a night out in town from two years ago… nothing really new to Elijah until he spotted a folder titled “Teacher” that made his eyebrows arch up.
“The fuck's that?” He asked into his bedroom that was only illuminated by the shine emitting from his laptop that sat in his lap. You'd never worked as a teacher, not once and nothing even remotely close to that. After high school you went to college whilst working in retail hell to support yourself and afterwards you went on to write for a history magazine with your freshly accomplished degree. You'd never been a tutor or a teacher as far as Eli knew and even if…why would that be any data worthwhile to keep around? With slightly knit together brows, he clicked on the folder just to land in a subfolder with files dated in almost sterile accuracy. One folder for every week reaching back as far as nearly two years ago. As Elijah's stomach bubbled with the need to find out what this was all about, he double-clicked on the folder titled with the date from 3 weeks ago just for his eyes to widen and his for his jaw to nearly drop.
Trying to comprehend what was loading up on the screen right in front of his, Eli's mouth stood slightly agape as the only other physical reaction came from further down. Before his critical thinking had caught up to what he was looking at, his body surely had and he felt his cock unapologetically twitching against the soft fabric of his sweatpants. Picture upon picture of your bare skin practically jumped at him and a heavy groan erupted from his chest as he clicked on the first image to start investigating somewhere. He nearly choked on his own spit as his eyes roamed over the photograph. Your face wasn't in frame, perhaps a safety measure stemming from the nature of the contents, but it didn't even need for Eli to know that it was your naked body that he saw. You'd been flipped on your stomach, wrists held together by cable ties as the dainty rings on your fingers gave away that it was without a doubt you. There was hardly any fabric covering your behind, just a pair a ripped fishnet-stockings stretching across your ass and thighs. A lack of panties practically presenting your thoroughly soaked and glistening cunt to the viewer.
“Uh…oh…OH…” It trickled from Elijah's lips as he moved the cursor to click for the next picture. Your posture was nearly the same but instead of smooth skin underneath the skimpy stockings, it showed your ass all bruised up in colors ranging from a bright red to deep purples, almost like a sadomasochistic nebula painted to your skin by brute force and he didn't know how to feel about that. The sight right in front of him turned him on beyond measure but at the same time…how have you been with someone he didn't know of? How had you been able to keep that side of yours from his ever watching eyes? Eli felt like scolding himself, a surge of white-hot rage jolting through the pit of his stomach for being so utterly incompetent and not seeing what had been right in front of him the entire time! Your loose sweaters, your liking for mainly long-sleeve tops and just softly form-fitting pants…it all came together now but on top of all of that it should be him, always should've been and not some strange rando you hid away somewhere in your Cloud files…
The potent mixture made out of rage and arousal ebbed through Elijah as he continued clicking his way through the files, pictures of your naked body in deliciously compromising poses causing his jaw to clench and teeth to grind with the same fervor his cock pressed against his slacks. He was so agonizingly hard that it almost hurt just for his fingers to brush around the outlines of his hard on. In a vain attempt to soothe himself, Eli gently cupped himself with the full width of his palm, the careful pressure aimed to ease the constant throbbing as his fingers fondled with his tightening balls.
“Fucking hell, babe, what's all of this, hm? You're gonna drive me insane…” The words came as a hardly choked back moan as Eli moved his hand above the fabric of his sweatpants. Up and down in slow, careful motions to not just explode and gush into his shorts like a pent-up virgin on the first date but the first eager drops of pre-cum soaked through already.
Elijah kept it together, softly stroking and pleasuring himself whilst clicking through your pictures like they were his personal peep show. He tried so hard to not just run with his desires, to drag it out and to savor every moment in which he body shivered with arousal but after a few minutes and several naughty pictures, he came across a full on video file and in that instant, he could've sworn that Christmas came early this year.
With his heart raging inside the ribcage, he hit the spacebar for the video to start playing and as soon as a pitch-black screen lightened up to reveal a shameless close-up recording of you fingering your flushed and swollen pussy with not two but three fingers that pushed inside again and again whilst your needy moans echoed through the speakers of Eli's laptop, he felt his throat render dry. Every word seemed stuck in his throat like a lump he just couldn't swallow no matter how hard he tried. With reddened cheeks, he watched you fuck yourself in high resolution right on his damned laptop screen and couldn't hold back any longer. Exhaling a shallow, trembling breath, he led his hand to slide past the waistband of his slacks, helping him to slide both the pants and his shorts just down enough to free his aching cock that he started fisting the very second he had the fabric off of him.
“You make me so fucking hard and so fucking desperate. It's so damn pathetic. Should be me who does that to you.” Elijah’s thoughts now just ran free as the rapidly rising arousal intoxicated his mind. It didn't take long for his balls to tighten up again, his cock in his hands growing rigid with every next stroke before his entire load spurted out onto the keyboard and up to his navel in thick white ropes. His orgasm rippled through him in a brutal outburst, making him feel lightheaded for seconds after the gushes of sticky cum flowed all over his hand too.
“Fuck!” Eli whined out before taking a deep breath, half-lidded eyes still trained on the screen that depicted you shoving your fingers knuckle-deep inside your wet cunt anew. With a slim grin on his face, he contemplated how long it would take before he could again.
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writefinch · 9 months
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In Hot Pursuit (Part 3)
(more Catradora She-Ra slashfic, see previous parts here: https://www.tumblr.com/writefinch/728642200176574464/in-hot-pursuit-part-1
https://www.tumblr.com/writefinch/728754104388796416/in-hot-pursuit-part-2)
It got worse when she slept.
An hour before sunrise she stopped trying to sleep. Everything felt tender and she could feel roots and rocks digging into her under the bedroll, so she got up. She couldn't go further than a hundred meters in any direction for another hour, so she stood up and stretched, which felt good, really good, almost good enough to make up for how badly she'd slept. She had time to eat a whole meal-sized ration pouch of tuna pasta, and she actually heated up her instant tea to go with it. She wished she hadn't heated the tea; her cheeks flushed the second she sipped it. She cleaned up her camp, packed everything away, checked her maps and checked her pack and double-checked both of them again out of boredom.
The sun rose with a few minutes to go. The dirt under the tree had smeared into clay where she'd spent hours tossing and turning on top of it. It irked her, she was supposed to be able to curl up and sleep anywhere, Adora was the one who shadowboxed in her sleep. She scattered dead pine needles to conceal the depression, but even Adora would be able to spot it.
Her transponder buzzed and flashed green. She beelined for a creek nearby to refil her canteens. It was small and muddy but it'd be fine after a pass through a water filter, and a walk upstream through the shallow water would completely wash away her scent, at least for a while.
The cold water around her ankles shocked her awake. The next transmission point was five kilometers east from here, an hour's hike in this terrain. Scorpia said this estrus thing lasts three days, it's been one day, so all she needed to do was stay ahead of Adora, even just one kilometer ahead of her, for the next forty-eight hours. That was assuming that this thing broke like a fever and got worse until it stopped, maybe she'd get lucky and it'd peak today, and even assuming Adora caught up tomorrow - and why assume that, it's not like she doesn't run circles around Adora all the time - it'd probably be so mild by then that she could play it off as getting over a cold, and then Adora would have to accept that even sick Catra was a better scout than she was.
Spite hardened into determination as she pushed forward, channelling the nervous, gnawing energy into her step. She crossed the creek and set off up a hill, staying within the treeline wherever she could. If she moved fast enough, she could trick herself into thinking that the flushed cheeks and hard breathing were just from exertion.
X623, Y031, Z108. A clearing with a jagged lump of shale sticking up out from the dirt. At the top of that rock was a small antennae. Catra scaled the rock, connected her transponder to the antennae, and patched into the hailing frequency. A progress bar filled in the bottom of the tranponder screen as it relayed the last day's tracking data back to base.
'Scorpia, this is Catra, I'm at the second point, confirm when you've received the transmission.'
'Catra, this is Scorpia, all data successfully received, you're cleared to move on to the next point.' Instead of giving the next set of coordinates, she paused. Then, she said. 'So, how are you holding up?'
'Ugh.' She'd meant to think that, not say it. 'I'm fine. This estrus thing is driving me crazy but I'm halfway through it, right? It'll be over before Adora even sees me.'
'Right. About that, Catra, yesterday I felt lost after I couldn't give you any good advice, so I looked through my personal files and found a copy of the orientation document, with appendices.'
'Yeah?' Something gnawed at her stomach. She'd heard this tone in Scorpia's voice before.
There was a deep intake of breath through the transponder, and then '"First estrus in felid phenotypes occurs sixty Etherian days after the last suppressant dose and lasts between seven and twenty-one days with an average length of fourteen days. During this period, observed symptoms are flushed skin, tail deflection, spinal flexion, rubbing or rolling, treading of the hind legs, body and tail tremors, emotional instability and vaginal discharge." Catra, that's the appendix for your body type.'
'No. That can't be right. Read it again.'
Scorpia carefully repeated the paragraph. Catra shook her head, and had to stifle a sob when she heard the words 'between seven and twenty-one days' again.
'Fourteen days? I can't draw this out for fourteen days.' She winced as she felt her voice crack.
'It could be as low as seven days!'
'I can't draw this out for seven days!'
'I am so sorry.'
She glanced down at her hand. It was shaking, and her claws extended and retracted involuntarily. She lowered her voice. 'Scorpia, change the frequency to our personal encrypted line, and if there's anyone else in the room with you, get them out.'
A click, a crackle, a beep. Scorpia's voice sounded tinnier. 'Done, and I've been alone the whole time.'
'Okay, first question: estrus makes me feel really, really needy. Every time I slow down, my brain yells at me to curl up somewhere quiet and lick myself until I can't see straight. If I do that, what will happen?'
'You'll feel great! The appendix says "genital arousal is magnified significantly during the estrus period."'
'That'll cure me? Really!?'
'Oh! No, I'm sorry, it won't help that at all, it just feels good.'
'Gah!' Catra felt her teeth clench and her forehead pulse, and then a thought struck her. 'Wait, estrus is about mating, right? What if I trick my body into thinking that's happened?'
'Let me look, just one moment, ah, "during the estrus period, stimulation via vaginal penetration combined with firm pressure to the lower back and the application of viscous fluid to the cervical opening will trigger ovulation--"'
'Yes! Yes! Here's what I need you to do, first you need to find Entrapta and swear her to secrecy and tell her that this is for your own personal use, you need to make her build a cylindrical device with a rounded end sixteen centimeters long with a slight and I mean slight upwards curve, it needs a pump device filled with that goop in aloe vera leaves and it'd be good if it vibrates but that's not like critical, she's got to build it in the next five hours and that'll give you time to use an old Horde drone to airdrop it at the next--'
'"--however, this will not end the estrus period, and multiple ovulations can be triggered within a single felid estrus."'
'No!' Her voice cracked the 'no' into three syllables.
'I'm sorry. I wish I could help you more.'
'No, this can't happen! Scorpia, everyone is gonna--' her voice cracked again, '--gonna see me like this. I can't let this happen to me again!'
'What can't you let happen again?' Scorpia spoke with the softness of caution.
Catra stifled a sob, sighed, and sobbed anyway. 'Two months ago, I saved Adora, by extension saving She-Ra, the Heart of Etheria and the entire universe at the same time,' she said, hoarsely. 'It was really impressive.'
'You did a great job. I was so proud for you.'
'Do you know how they've all treated me since then? They're treating me like a hero! This is the first time in my life where I've done something great and nobody is trying to undermine ten minutes later! Nobody says it doesn't count because I didn't train hard enough, nobody is 'rewarding' me with a bunch of paperwork they think I'll fail at and nobody is telling me Adora did it better!'
'Yeah, people out here are a lot nicer than--'
Catra sighed. 'It's not cause they're nice, it's cause they're still deciding. They know I was the one who was always one step ahead of Adora, and they know I saved everyone. If people see Adora catching up to me, if they see me like this - needy? feverish? meowing? - then I'll go back to being treated like Adora's sidekick. I can't take that again.'
'Catra, I want you to listen to me,' said Scorpia, her voice unusually firm. 'The only person in the Horde who thought you were less capable than Adora was Shadow Weaver, and she thought that because she was a bad guardian, a bad commander, and a bad person. You were never a sidekick.'
'But don't you see? Right now, everyone loves Adora, and they're scared of me. If they think I'm a dumb little housecat who just wants to curl up in Adora's lap and purr and lift her tail, then I'm not so scary any more am I? They won't have to flinch when I look at them, they won't have to stay on my good side, they won't have to ask what I think about anything, they can just ask nice, loveable Adora what she thinks her sidekick thinks.'
'Catra! It's not going to be like that.'
Catra thought she sounded just like her, and for a moment wondered if Adora had given her lessons. Her voice hardened. 'I know it's not going to be like that. Scorpia, I've changed my mind, I'm not dragging this out. I'm going to beat her so fast and so hard that she'll have to re-think the entire exercise and prove to everyone that she's not my sidekick.'
'It's only a training exercise--'
'It's more than that and you know it!'
'I was going to say, it's only a training exercise, so, as your friend, why don't I modify your transponder and cut an hour off your daily rest period, just to give you a little edge?'
'You'd do that for me?'
'If you're not cheating, you're not trying. I had to forge paperwork all the time back in the Horde, with pincers, so our unit wouldn't fail half its inspections. I honestly kind of miss it.'
Catra felt tears on her cheeks again. 'You're the best. Thank you.'
'I know. The next coordinates are X829, Y042, Z055.'
'I'll see you there.'
* * *
She saw the outdoors for the first time when she was seven or maybe eight, all young kids, too young to be issued rifles as they marched around a small hill in the arable land south of the Fright Zone. It wasn't real wilderness, walking by the hedgerows of mechanically-tilled fields, across runoff-filled ditches that were more algae than water, through the copses of grid-planted timber trees on the hillside, but when you're three feet tall it might as well be the Whispering Woods. It took three hours to get to the far side of the hill and four hours to get back and by the halfway point they were bug-bitten, sunburned, chafed, thirsty, briar-scratched and exhausted.
It was wonderful.
She remembered the mint bush at the side of the trail, one weed among many, how she'd taken a single leaf between her thumb and forefinger and gently plucked it off, slick and waxy on the dark upwards-facing side, soft and almost fuzzy on the underside, and how it smelled like nothing else in the Fright Zone, like you'd given coldness itself a flavor. She remembered trying the same thing with a stinging nettle, and how hard she'd worked not to cry, and how Catra distracted her from the pain by challenging her to a cranefly-eating contest, which worked because she hadn't yet learned that Catra always won those contests.
It made the Fright Zone feel… delicate. The Fright Zone was a garden of pipes and right-angles that required constant tending to fix the cracks, the leaks, the mould and the pests. The outdoors was the opposite, it had to be hacked back and controlled to stop it turning into more of the outdoors. The wilderness grew its own possibilities, and the wonder she'd felt at that had never really gone away.
In the present, her quads burned as she hauled her way up the slope. She found herself missing Bow and Glimmer. She'd see a weird plant or a shortcut or an animal track and she'd get that tiny impulse to turn her head and halfway-think to say 'Hey guys, look at this!' before remembering she was alone. Also, a teleport or even a good rope arrow would come in clutch right now.
Still, there were silver linings to solitude. There was a kind of freedom to it. Hard to make a lot of noise when you're the only one there, less shapes to silhoutte against the skyline, less scent to leave on the trail. It stripped away distractions, it gave her space to listen, it gave her time to think.
It also gave her time to not think. Without the thoughts and voices of others to crowd it out, she could let her mind empty out until nothing but the shape of her training remained, and her instincts would fill in the gaps. You couldn't follow a trail this quickly thinking hard about it, she'd been moving at a light jog for hours like a truck barreling down a highway on autopilot, the track marks and hints of scent like tail lights seen through heavy rain, nudging her steering one way or another to keep her on the road.
With all that had changed since the Heart incident, all the Horde territories that had gone dark overnight, the nootectonic shifts which had turned lethally-dangerous First Ones waste zones into traversible territory, the enticingly dangerous ancient ruins springing forth from the soil, the Princess Alliance needed a strong cadre of pathfinders just to map the new Etheria. It was Catra's mission to recruit a promising team, train them, send them out into the field, and use them to train a whole corps of scouts. It had been Catra's idea, lock, stock and barrel.
Catra hadn't asked Adora to join her. She'd left the files where Adora could see them, and she'd talked about it where she knew Adora would overhear her, and then she'd spent all day being hard to find so Adora had to run around looking for her. When she finally caught up with her, Adora very casually and very cooly asked her, with no hint of neediness or fear-of missing out, if she could be part of the operation.
'Adora, I could get used to hearing you beg…'
That little smirk of hers was criminal.
She was glad Catra had talked her into doing this dry run, no trainee scouts, just the two of them. There was clearly some rust to shake off. When they'd both been cadets, they'd been allowed to do the Raider Assessment and Selection Course, a miserable six week ordeal of long marches, reduced rations and constant discipline. The only personal items they were allowed were a toothbrush, a uniform, and the Raider's Handbook, a comprehensive guide to Horde light infantry doctrine and procedure. She'd brought along her old copy of the handbook, and she read a few pages at the start of each nightly rest period, wincing as she recognized her mistakes. It was nice to be able to spot these things before a trainee could point them out.
It was mid-afternoon when she reached Catra's last campsite. At first it was a guess, based on the 'slow' look of the tracks around the clearing and the timing of when their last rest period took place. She saw leaves and pine needles lying in piles like leaves and pine needles don't, and when she nudged the pile with a stick, she saw a depression in the dirt as if someone had laid down a rucksack or a bedroll. She got low to the ground, and sniffed. Catra.
She crouched down next to the tree, drank from her canteen and ate - raisins, an oatmeal bar, a block of spicy chili cheese. She opened her map. She'd checked off the last transmission point, and followed with her finger to Catra's last campsite. There were five potential transmission points Catra could be headed to from the last one. This campsite ruled out one, assuming she wanted to reach the next one before tomorrow.
Something felt strange. She looked down at the impression in the dirt. Catra was a quick sleeper, and she's light. She wasn't the type to wear a hole through the mattress tossing and turning all night. Had she been trying to level out the ground? Or trying to rig together some piece of equipment? When she got bored and didn't care who knew it she liked to scratch stuff up, but there was no sign of that, no claw marks and no wood shavings. It was suspicious.
Which was normal for Catra, in all honesty.
She stood up and continued walking. There was a creek nearby on the map. She needed to go there for water. She knew Catra would have gone there to mask her scent, which she clearly needed because Adora could practically see her smell today. It would be difficult with the water washing away prints and scent, but if she could work out if Catra had gone upstream or downstream she could rule out another transmission spot either way.
When she reached the riverbank, she saw the entry pawprints in the soft mud. That meant Catra hadn't just crossed the creek, she'd waded in and continued on through the water. That would make her scent impossible to track.
But it didn't?
It was faint, sure. It faded and shifted as the breeze changed, but its traces still lingered on the banks of the creek. Almost right away, she knew that Catra had gone upstream. There were a dozen points where Catra could have crossed but one just… it just smelled like Catra! Not long after, once she waded across the creek, the trail picked up just as strong as before.
Adora stopped, crouched, and thought.
Catra never smelled this strong before. The smell was strong and strong in a weird way too, more concentrated and more Catra-ish, like a fighter cutting weight before a match, condensing her bodily essence as she sweated out all her excess water. She didn't know how, but Catra was clearly marking her scent deliberately. She wanted to be found.
For a moment, Adora thought Catra was patronizing her. Catra considered herself the better scout by far, and she wasn't completely wrong. This was just her way of ruffling Adora's hair, calling her 'squirt' and reminding her who was learning from who out here.
She then remembered Catra would never do that. That was what she would do to if she felt cocky. When Catra wanted to prove her skill, that meant complete domination of her opponents. And if she wanted to demonstrate total superiority, to beat Adora and force her to her knees, why would she make her trail easy to follow unless--
Catra was preparing an ambush.
That would technically be a victory condition, she thought. The hunter team can't exactly accomplish its objectives if its lone member is gagged and hogtied at the runner team's feet. She grinned wide, and blushed a little.
Things had been wonderful since the Heart of Etheria, and the nights and days she'd spent in Catra's arms had been the sweetest of their lives, but it had been so sweet and so pure it had almost scared them, as if they had found themselves back in a dream that they might wake up from at any moment. As much as she'd never admit it to Catra, she craved a little spite, some rivalry, some… claws, and some teeth.
And right now, she wanted to see exactly how Catra was gonna scratch and bite once Adora pinned her to the ground and rubbed her face in the dirt.
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luciferpanini · 2 years
Note
uhhhh I'm just gonna drop some questions about the swap au: Do you have any info about the stories of the other swap au groups? I know you've been asked about it before, but, idk, there could be new stuff??? What does Mafuyu's mom think about her being in a theater troupe? Is she more laid-back here? Does Ichika ever get singing instruction from someone? I don't know how she could find Nene to teach her, and I don't know why Nene would accept. What is the relationship between Niigo Rin and Miku? Do they interact normally? Uhhhh you don't have to answer this one (You don't have to answer any of them, actually) but, what are some ideas for sets and stuff? Why did Mizuki join WxS? Did they do it for Rui (sorta like Rui for Nene in canon)? Also I think it's funny that the people who hide themselves the most in canon niigo are in a thea-*trips and falls into a hole of no return* I'm sorry for all the questions! I hope you haven't answered any of them already, and if so, I'm sorry again! I really like the whole au and love reading lore-dumps!
*cracks knuckles* aigh so.
info about the other units can be found here.
Mafumom is still as bad as she is in the main story, Mafuyu lied to hell and back in order to be in WxS, it's a constant struggle for them. Mafuyu in the swap AU is a lot more assertive though.
Ichika practices singing with An, because I don't think swap!Nene would have the confidence to teach another person. Maybe way later? I can imagine Ichika being a Deep Sea Diva fan too.
Rin and Miku act like funky siblings in the AU. Miku absolutely adores Rin and follows her around, while Rin is always like "Ugh, Miku leave me alone, stop giving me snacks >:T, if you push on my swing it's over for you!!", but deep down they care a lot about Miku. They tease Miku a lot though, like a mischievous older sibling.
Oh I have uuh Niigo (lim Kanade, Ena, and Nene) filmmaker set for a Nene focus event, betta fish Tenma siblings for Niigo/MMJ mixed event, and uuh Kanade and Ena for Niigo/WxS mixed event (no card concepts for this one, only outfits)
digging through my file for the sketches.
Actress!Nene
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Director!Kanade
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Cameraman!Ena
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Outfits
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Bettafish!Saki
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Outfit
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Bettafish!Tsukasa
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Temporary Wonderstage workers Kanade and Ena
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hkjhdsf yes i just have these lying around but i didn't show them bc they're largely rough and unfinished.
Mizuki joined WxS for Rui's sake because he wouldn't budge at Mafuyu's invitation so they got frustrated. Essentially Rui was in an awful state mentally during his first year of high school (and Mizuki's third year of middle school). They passed by each other a few months after Rui's graduation and Mizuki went "my god you live like this??". They stuck around as Rui's "assistant" just to make sure he doesn't pass away at the tender age of 16, while still figuring out their own turmoil. Yes yes, Mizurui the lonely besties with trust issues learning about companionship via becoming clowns love that for them.
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Text
Grief
Part 2 to Guilt
Sorry if ending is abrupt, it was already very long and I’m very tired.
Video used for quotes;  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LxPHSGYX4Y&t=7967s Summary; Rei found the video of Teruya’s death, and decided to watch it to get answers.
Word count; 1849 Page count; 5 
TW for badly written emotional breakdowns. 
Whenever she was sad, Rei could always expect to have him by her side. For him to hold her and tell her that everything would be okay.
Rei could wake up from a nightmare and feel his arms wrapped around her, his face buried in her hair as he whispered sweet nothings to her. Promising her that he’d stick by her side and help her through her guilt.
Now he was dead. Teruya was dead because of Rei’s selfish desire to live. He was dead because Rei’s own incompetence prevented her from making two emergency codes fast enough. Rei was a fool.
When she looked through the files of the killing game, she found multiple videos- one being of Teruya. She knew she needed to watch it.
“...Uh, what? Where am I? I’m pretty sure I logged out…” Teruya’s voice was filled with confusion, and his eyes were wide in shock. 
Then his throat was grabbed.
Mikado Sannoji held Teruya up by his neck as his mask grinned. “Pleasure to see you again! Teruya.”
The green-haired man grabbed at Mikado’s hand, gritting his teeth and digging his nails into the sleeve. “Ugh!? M-Mikado.….. Sannoji……!!” 
“You arriving here means you’ve unlocked your reset code. And after all that, fufu… You still fell into my trap.” The wizard laughed his dastardly laugh, listening in glee at Teruya’s grunts.
“Da…… d…… Damn you……………..” Teruya spluttered out, skin growing lighter in color as his breathing was restrained.
“It’s still too early for you to die… Even though you’re already dead, there’s a possibility that it’d complicate things further if you actually died. I decide when you die.” Mikado spat, dropping Teruya and watching as the former merchant inhaled desperately.
“I decide when you die…” Rei muttered under her breath, shaking her head at the quote as she watched the video, trying to bite back her horror.
Teruya grunted and coughed, holding his head. He barely noticed as he was tied up, seemingly half conscious. “...W-What is this……!! Why have you tied me up!?”
“I must keep you quiet and here for now. Do not worry too much. I brought you some food.” The AI spoke nonchalantly, as if he didn’t nearly kill Teruya.
Rei skipped ahead in the video, she always did. She couldn’t bear to look at Teruya’s beaten up face for more than a few minutes. It hurt her- why?
“-ut your damn mouth! This isn’t the time for that… I should be in the real world, with Rei……” Teruya went slightly quieter at the end, eyebrows creased and eyes full of fear.
“He… Wanted to be with me? Ah… I’m overthinking it… He likely forgot to mention Kinjo… He… wanted to be by both of our sides, to prevent our fights… Yes, that’s right…” Midori glanced over at Rei as the ginger mumbled, soon turning back to her own work at seeing Rei wearing headphones and writing something down on a lined piece of paper.
“There we have a problem. If you disappeared from the virtual world, my firewall would disappear too.” Mikado’s mask donned an angry expression as he stared into Teruya’s eyes.
It took Rei a second to put the pieces together, but she figured it out. Why else would the firewall disappear when Teruya disappeared- he was the firewall. She figured she had this right, so she skipped past, once more.
“Iroha.” Teruya spoke, a firmness in his voice that one would hardly ever hear. Iroha screamed in response, jumping and scrambling away. “I’m not surprised but, are you really the last Void…?”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-why are you talking to me……” she stammered out, clutching her sketchpad to her chest. 
“...Is Mikado trying to kill me?” Teruya whispered, staring at her blankly. There was dried blood below his mouth.
Rei paused once more, squeezing her eyes shut to hide tears. “Yes, you fool… He was trying to kill you…” She whispered to herself, clenching her pen even tighter.
“Eh!? N-No……….” Iroha seemed to know something, and she was horrid at hiding it.
“......Even a fool like me can tell. Mikado said if I die, things would be difficult for him. He’d expect I’d do something like this after hearing that… It’s all another lie.” Teruya’s voice had a sort of wisdom in it that one wouldn’t expect to hear from him, not after his behavior earlier in the game.
“No…” Rei whispered, one single tear dropping off her face and onto the paper she was writing on. The video was nearly over, she knew what was coming. The ginger didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to believe he was dead.
Shadowy hands grabbed her shoulders, causing her to jolt but… No one was there. Midori had left for her lunch break, as had everyone else. Rei didn’t want to be alone at this moment, but she knew she had to finish watching the video.
“Yeah. He wants me to refuse to eat and starve myself to death.” His green eyes began to look at the rice on the floor, but not with hunger. He moved his one free hand slowly across the floor to it.
Iroha was too distracted to pay attention, trying to ignore his words. “Eeeek, I d-don’t know anything, la la!~” She said loudly, trying to speak over his voice.
“...Or is it reverse psychology? If me dying would really cause such a problem, why aren’t you forcing me to eat…? Why are you just standing there, watching me starve?...That’s the problem, I’m refusing to eat and you’re both acting like it’s according to plan.” 
What he said seemed to get through to Iroha, as she put her sketchbook down and didn’t try to speak over him. “A-And that’s weird… If he wanted to kill you, he could do it any time……” Nervousness coated her voice. “And if he wanted to starve you, he wouldn’t bring you meals like this…”
Rei wished she was by Teruya’s side when this had happened. To comfort him, tell him that she would get him to safety one way or another, to give him hope like he always did for her. But it was too late, no matter how much she wished it wasn’t.
Whispers filled the room as tears dripped down her skin and onto the sheet of paper below, narrowly missing the ink.
“...I think… The meals are insurance. You’ve poisoned the food, haven’t you…?” His hand had grabbed onto the chopsticks. He was going to do it.
“No, no… don’t do this to me…” Rei pleaded ever so silently, as if wishing she could change the past. She didn’t want to believe her only support- the only one she trusted, at least- was dead.
The voices were going to get to her.
“P-P-P-Poison……!? Y-You’re just overthinking!! It’s just rice!! Delicious rice!!” Iroha had raised her voice again, clutching her sketchbook once more.
Teruya had an almost sorrowful expression on his face as he fiddled with the chopsticks, lifting up a single grain of rice before putting it back down. “...If I’m weak in spirit, I’ll succumb to hunger and eat the food, and if I do that, I’ll die from the poison anyway. It doesn’t matter if I starve or get poisoned. Either way, it’s definitely a trap to kill me.”
“Don’t eat the food, you goddamn idiot…” Rei muttered, rubbing her eyes as she listened, barely able to see the screen through the blur of tears. 
The whispers were getting louder.
“It’s only natural when you think about it. If I’m alive, then nobody can go back to the real world. So what would you both do when this is all over, if you can’t leave? In the end, that bastard would end up killing me one day. And he’s trying to hide it by bringing me food.” Teruya said with a twinge of anger to his voice. 
Iroha squeaked in confusion at his words, putting her sketchbook to the side as her eyes widened ever so slightly. 
“That bastard. He said I’m already dead and that he decides when I die. I know what that means… He’s going to kill me, but it’s not time yet. He’s trying to predict when I’ll die by manipulating my actions.” His green eyes shone with determination as he rolled his wrist and neck, preparing for what he was going to do.
“...... T-That’s. I have no clue……….” Iroha tried to feign ignorance, but failed.
Teruya began to smirk, eyebrows creased. “But what if Mikado made a mistake in his plan?...What if he isn’t as smart as he thought? For example, if I stay alive, nobody can get out, and you can’t contact the outside… What if you’ve only focused on your front and not your back, and I eat the rice?”
A ‘rock’ formed in her throat as Rei choked back a sob. Midori had opened the door to get back to work, but saw the older woman’s state and immediately shut and locked the door. Rei needed privacy whilst she was in such a state.
“..........Huh? T-Teruya, you wouldn’t……….” Iroha gasped out, eyes wide in horror as the realization dawned upon her.
“.........I bet it’s really delicious. Bon appetit.” And with that, Teruya held the chopsticks as properly as he could and lifted up a few grains of rice.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh!?!? W-What’re you doing?!?” Iroha nearly screamed in horror as she watched Teruya raise the rice to his mouth.
Rei took the headphones off, placing them on the desk as the video played on. Shadows seemed to roam around her, grappling her arms and squeezing her neck. Your fault. It’s all your fault, Rei Mekaru. You’re guilty for the deaths of so many.
She squeezed her arms, digging her nails into them through the sleeves of her white-to-brown jacket. Satsuki died because of her. Mikako died because of her. Teruya died because of her.
She was beginning to hyperventilate, and tears were flowing down non-stop as she let out soft pleas for the pain to stop and to be left alone from these thoughts. 
Rei began to feel light-headed, and moved to hold onto her chair for support. So much bottled-up sadness, letting itself out at just one thing- she was pathetic, wasn’t she. Truly pathetic.
When Rei began to try and calm her breathing, however, she heard something from the headphones, loud and clear;
“Yeah…… I should have done this in the ballroom……… Looks like I’ve grown up a bit…… I don’t know how much time I’ve given them by doing this, but…… I hope…… I helped them…… It’d be great……U….gh… I’ll……. Leave it all to you….. Rei…….. Tsurugi…………….. Ple…ase……” 
Teruya’s final words. Loud and interrupted by coughs repeatedly. Wishing for Rei and Tsurugi to win.
That was Rei’s final breaking point.
She closed the video through a blur of tears, pushing the paper aside numbly before holding her head in her hands and screaming, her sorrows embedded in each sound. It hurt, but so, so good.
Especially when she imagined the warm embrace of Teruya coming from the shadows that consumed her.
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the-bau-quinjet · 3 years
Text
One Misunderstanding
Bucky x Reader
Summary: You struggle to fix Bucky's first impression of you. Bucky struggles with his own feelings.
Warnings: angst, Hydra things- like brainwashing and torture, a few curse words, panic attacks, anxiety
Word count: 5609
a/n: this idea came to me very suddenly, but I'm in love with it. Hopefully whatever I just wrote does it justice.
Masterlist
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"Everyone, meet Y/N. She's the newest member of our little group, bringing in a whole new level of hacking and tech skills. Y/N, meet the team." Tony introduced you to everyone, eager to share your skills.
You turned to the group, getting ready to introduce yourself further, but instead tripped. You shrieked as you fell down the small set of stairs you were at the top of.
Sam, being the closest, caught you. "Good thing you've got tech skills." He chuckled as you righted yourself, firmly planting your feet on the ground.
"Haha, yeah. I'm not a big fan of violence." You winced as you said it, wishing you could take it back. You didn't want to get into the reasons as to why you don't like violence.
To your surprise, nobody asked why. You would have guessed they would have questions, but maybe they weren't interested in your past. They all had their own issues to deal with afterall.
"Eh, we don't need anymore people for fighting anyway. Welcome to the team." Steve greeted you warmly, as you would have expected from America's golden boy.
You gratefully shook his hand, glad to not have to talk about anything yet. Unfortunately, you tripped again when you tried to move back, falling into the one and only Bucky Barnes.
His hands steadied you, dryly laughing at your clumsiness. "You really are clumsy."
You did you best to not show how embarrassed you were. You couldn't deny the claim. Unless you were fighting, something you vowed to yourself to never do again, you were clumsy.
Being abducted and tortured by Hydra may have made you a competent fighter, but your aptitude for tripping over nothing never left.
"Right, sorry!" You greeted everyone else quickly, eager to get situated in your room. "I'm just going to unpack everything." You waved as you backed out of the room, bumping into the wall as you left.
-
You had just finished putting away your stuff when you heard a knock on your door.
"Come in!" You figured someone would have questions for you.
Unsurprisingly, Natasha was the one to step into your room. Of everyone there, you expected her to have learned about your past. It comes with the territory of being a spy.
"Hi, I was hoping to talk to you." Her tone was friendly, but clearly she was skeptical of you. Again, you weren't surprised.
"I thought you might. I'm assuming you read my file? Honestly, I thought everyone would." You laughed gently, shaking your head at yourself.
"I did. Your file is pretty bare bones though. I did some extra digging... Not everyone else is as nosy as me." She grinned, already pleased with your openness. "So, why'd you pretend to be clumsy?"
"Oh, it wasn't pretend. I've always been clumsy. When everything happened, and I learned how to fight, I thought my newfound agility would help. Turns out, it didn't. The only times I'm even the slightest bit coordinated are when I'm fighting or training, but I wasn't lying about that either. When I escaped, I promised myself I wouldn't hurt anyone else."
"Why join the Avengers at all then?" She looked curious, still unsure if she could trust you.
"I wanted to help people. I just didn't want to use the skills they gave me to do it. So, I learned how to code, figured I could help behind the scenes."
She smiled, letting down her guard. Clearly it would take some time, but you could easily see the two of you being close friends.
"So, nobody knows about what you went through?" She couldn't help but be curious about your past.
"Nope. I don't talk about it much, but it's not a secret. I'll answer anything you want to know." You smiled, eager to try and make a real friend here.
You spent the next few hours answering every question Natasha could think of. You told her about being abducted and experimented on.
That lead to even more questions, basically boiling down to the fact that you're not a super soldier, but you do have enhanced senses- and seemingly enhanced clumsiness for when you're not using them.
You told her about learning how to fight, and the punishments you would endure if you got it wrong. The two of you bonded over the shared experience.
Finally, you told her about how you escaped. When the Winter Soldier escaped, every Hydra effort possible was made to find him. That included you. Resources were spread thin, trying to cover more areas. It was the perfect opportunity for you to get out.
"Really, I owe my freedom to him. Even if he doesn't know anything about me." You felt the tears in your eyes, too many emotions swirling through you to keep it all in anymore. "Since then, I've learned everything I could about technology and coding, which pretty much brings you up to date."
Before she could ask anymore questions, there was another knock on your door. Quickly wiping the tears from your eyes, you called another "come in!"
Steve poked his head in the door, cautiously looking between you and Nat.
"I've been sent to stop the interrogation." He grinned, stepping farther into the room.
Nat rose from her spot on the bed, kissing him on the cheek while rolling her eyes. "It wasn't an interrogation. We were bonding."
"Yeah, over what?" He chuckled, trying to figure out what the two of you had in common.
Maybe it was the look in your eyes, or maybe Nat just likes knowing more than everyone, but she smiled conspiratorially at you before responding. "Girl stuff, babe. Just girl stuff."
You smiled as the couple left the room, grateful for not having to explain everything again.
-
Over the next few weeks, the team constantly teased you for your clumsiness. Well, not the whole team. Nat knew the truth, so she never said anything. Peter never teased you either, although that is likely due to the teasing he endures as well.
Weirdly enough, you bonded with the kid over it, eventually telling him about your past as well.
Normally you could shake it off. They clearly didn't mean anything by it. Except Bucky.
Whenever he said anything, he stared you down. His eyes felt like they were piercing your soul. You're not sure exactly why, but he didn't seem to like you much.
Which wouldn't be an issue if you didn't have an embarrassing crush on the man.
Really your infatuation started when you first escaped Hydra. His own escape lead to your freedom, so you admired him. When you found out he was working with the Avengers to help people, you admired him even more.
Watching him on missions is really what caused the infatuation to blossom into a full blown crush.
You, however, would adamantly deny that if anyone ever asked. Which is what just happened.
"What?!" You nearly tripped, again, with how quickly you turned to look at Wanda and Nat.
"You heard me." Nat stared at you, a neutral expression on her face. "When are you going to do something about your crush on Barnes."
"I, I don't- I don't have a crush on Bucky." You stuttered, a lackluster job at denying the truth.
"Please, Y/N. It's so obvious!" Wanda joined in.
The three of you hung out a lot around the compound. It was nice to have a support system to lean on when things got hard.
"Well, even if I did, which I'm not saying I do! He doesn't like me. I don't know what I did, but his eyes feel like daggers whenever we're in the same room." You started out strong, but quickly morphed into a sad resignation. It genuinely upset you that Bucky didn't like you.
"I think I might know what that's about..." Wanda bit her lip, immediately feeling guilty at having said anything.
"What!?" You eagerly turned to her, needing answers. You shuffled your way across the room, never fully rising from your seat on the ground.
"I don't know if I should tell you! I'm not even supposed to know, but sometimes his thoughts are really loud!" Her guilt multiplied.
"You have to tell me now! Then I can fix it!" You were practically begging at her feet from your position on the floor.
She looked at Nat, who just shrugged in return. "Not my place, although I would love to hear it."
"Ugh, fine. But you can't tell anyone I told you!" Wanda glared at the two of you, unable to say no to your pouting face. "The first day we all met you, do you remember what you said?"
Your face scrunched as you tried to remember. "I'm not a big fan of violence?"
She nodded, looking at you as if she just told you everything.
"So?" You asked incredulously, unable to follow her train of thought.
She rolled her eyes, having to spell it out for you. "He kind of took that personally..."
Immediately, you sunk completely to the floor. "Oh, god. Fuck! That's not what I meant at all! I just meant I don't personally like using violence! Shit, shit, shit." You continued to mutter to yourself as Nat and Wanda shared a look.
"Why don't you like using violence?" Wanda asked, intrigued by your reaction.
You thought back to your conversation with Nat the first day you got here. You told her it wasn't a secret, it just wasn't something you brought up.
"Can you just look in my head? I don't really wanna explain it, but I want you to know." You asked, glad to share you past with another friend.
Wanda nodded, seemingly doing nothing until realization dawned on her.
"Oh shit." She whispered, not even realizing she said it out loud.
"Yeah." You huffed out a dry laugh.
"Y/N... I'm so sorry." You smiled at her, having worked through most of the trauma already. "You totally have a crush on Barnes though."
That earned a real laugh. "Hey, that's not what you were in there for!"
"It's not my fault! You were thinking it really loudly!"
The three of you laughed together until you sunk back into a pit of despair.
"What do I do? How do I fix this?" You whined, laying back on the ground like a child.
"I think you just need to talk to him. Explain what you meant." Wanda shrugged, unsure of any other advice to offer you.
"She's right. Just talk to him." Nat nodded along as you whined on the floor.
-
After a few days, you finally worked up enough courage to try and talk to Bucky. He had just finished training, so you knew exactly where he'd be: in the kitchen.
Walking in, you were glad to see him pulling ingredients from the fridge.
"Hey Bucky, can I, um, talk to you for a minute?" You stuttered through the words, nervous about what he would say.
He barely looked at you, nodding his head for you to continue.
"I just, I wanted to apologize." You trailed off when his head snapped up.
"For what?" Well shit. How are you supposed to explain this one without ratting out Wanda.
"Oh, well, um... I just thought maybe I said- I did something that upset you. Uh, you just don't seem to like me very much, which is totally cool, you don't have to like me if you don't want to. I just didn't want it to be my fault... Fuck." That went horribly. Taking a deep breath, you started over. "I didn't mean it."
Bucky is looking at you like you have three heads. "Didn't mean what?"
"That I don't like violence."
"So you do... like violence." He'd somehow grown more confused.
"Well, no." You paused, unsure of how to explain yourself.
"Then you did mean it." His soul piercing stare is back.
"I-"
"It's fine, save it. Some people get to choose not to be violent." And with that, he left the kitchen, abandoning his post workout smoothie.
You stared at the doorway, in shock over how poorly that went. You stood there , unaware of the 25 minutes that had passed, trying to figure out how it could've gone better when Steve found you.
"Y/N? What are you doing?"
You didn't hear him, too lost in the memories. Memories of Hydra, forcing you to do things you never wanted to. This happened from time to time if something triggered you into remembering, otherwise you had a handle on your emotions.
"Y/N?" Steve said your name again, concern evident in his voice. He gently laid a hand on your shoulder, trying to get your attention.
Everything happened so fast after that. The feeling of someone's hand on your shoulder caused you to panic. With all the memories of Hydra in your head, your training kicked in instinctually.
You grabbed Steve's arm, pulling him closer to you for better leverage. Before he could question your moves, you flipped him, pinning him to the ground.
The second you made eye contact, you realized what just happened. Horror and regret flashed in your eyes.
In an effort to get off him, you threw yourself backward, knocking into a cart full of pots and pans. The clanging of metal hitting the ground echoed through the small room.
Steve sat up slowly, trying to register the turn of events. You sat in a ball on the floor, tears pooling in your eyes, mumbling apologies over and over again.
Sam, having heard the commotion from the pots and pans, ran into the kitchen ready to fight.
"What- What happened?" He asked in confusion, lowering his arms from their defensive position.
"I don't know." Steve looked at you, still trying to figure it out.
"Y/N?" Sam's voice was gentle, but it still startled you.
You jumped from the ground, rushing to help Steve get up. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to. I never wanted to hurt anyone again." Your breathing was picking up, short bursts of air leaving your lungs. Your hands were shaking as you pulled him from the ground.
Your panic increased as you took in their concerned expressions.
"Hey, look at me." Steve's Captain voice, came out, urging you to make eye contact. You followed orders, breathing rapidly, your whole body shaking.
"I'm going to touch you now, is that okay?" His words were gentle, but commanding, causing you to nod in response.
He pulled you into a tight hug, rubbing soothing circles on your back.
You wanted to explain, to tell them what happened, but all that came out was a pitiful "Bucky".
"Do you want me to get Bucky?" Sam asked, trying to understand you.
The idea of Bucky coming back caused your panic to increase. You shook your head rapidly, "No! No no no no no." You kept repeating the word, shaking in Steve's arms.
"Okay! Okay, no Bucky." Sam reassured you, voice calm and soothing.
You’re not sure how long you stood like that. Sam moved around the kitchen, cleaning up the pots and pans you had knocked over.
When your breathing steadied, Steve asked, "Do you want to talk about what happened?"
You nodded, leading the two men to the couch in the adjacent common area. You sat for a minute, unsure of where to start.
"Why don't you just lead us through it all?" Steve suggested, still rubbing your back.
You nodded, grateful for the starting point. "I went to the kitchen to apologize to Bucky."
"What for?" Sam interrupted, already confused.
"Sam! Just let her talk." Steve muttered, slightly annoyed.
"Sorry!" He glared back at Steve before turning to you, "Sorry, please continue."
You couldn't help but laugh at their banter.
"Right, I wanted to apologize for what I said the first day I met you all. I realized how it sounded, so I wanted to try and fix it." You paused, waiting for the recognition to hit them.
It didn't take long. The two men nodded, silently urging you to continue.
"Honestly, Wanda told me that was why he always seems mad at me. You have to know, I never meant for it to come across that way! It's more of a personal, 'I don't want to be violent' than shunning others for doing what's necessary." You took a deep breath, not eager to relive the conversation.
"Anyway, I told him I didn't mean it. I just couldn't explain it right, and he got upset, which makes sense!" You turned to look between them, not wanting them to think you were insulting Bucky in any way. "I don't hold what he did against him. It wasn't his choice, and I completely understand that. I just couldn't put that into words when I was talking to him, and I made everything worse."
Tears popped into your eyes again, upset at what he must be going through. You weren't with Hydra for but a tenth of the time he was, and you didn't endure the same level of brainwashing.
"He said something about some people not being able to choose not to be violent, and then he left. I don't know how long I was standing in the kitchen replaying the conversation, but it brought up bad memories for me." You sighed again, working up the nerve to tell them everything.
"Wanda and Nat already know, but I guess it's your guys's turn. This was so much easier to just have Wanda read my mind." You laughed at your own joke, the two men sharing a concerned look.
"I was taken... by Hydra. They experimented on me, gave me enhanced senses, trained me to fight, and punished me when I did something wrong." Again, tears sprung into your eyes, occasionally falling down your cheeks.
"Why wasn't this in your file?" Steve questioned, more to himself than you.
"I haven't got a clue. I guess nobody knew about me? But, I escaped. They didn't brainwash me like they did Bucky, because I don't have the serum. Or, at least, I think that's why." You shook your head, refocusing on the important parts.
"When every available Hydra agent was tasked with searching for the Winter Soldier, I took it as on opportunity. Their resources were spread thin. I was able to getaway."
You went onto explain your reasoning for joining the Avengers as a tech specialist, trying to convey the same earnestness you did with Nat.
"You can ask Nat or Wanda too. Nat found out day one, Wanda a few days ago." You wiped your tears, hoping they believed you. "Actually, Peter knows too."
"I was stuck in all those memories when you came into the kitchen. I didn't even register that you were in the room, so when you touched me I freaked out. I never meant to hurt you!"
You looked at Steve fearful that he would be upset.
"Y/N, I believe you." You cried tears of relief at his statement, genuinely exhausted from the day. "It's not your fault, and you didn't hurt me. Just caught me off guard. You're surprisingly agile when you want to be." He tried to lighten the mood, glad to hear you laugh.
"Well, I train in the middle of the night sometimes. I- I want to be able to get out if I'm ever forced back there." Your voice was quiet, admitting a secret you hadn't even told Nat.
"We won't let that happen." The sternness of Sam's voice surprised you.
"Thank you." You wiped your tears a final time, looking between the two men. "Now, what do I do about Bucky?" You refocused your energy on fixing your relationship with the super soldier.
"He never would have said what he said if he had known." Steve started the conversation, defending his friend.
"I know. I don't hold it against him, I just wish I could explain. I get so nervous when he looks at me like that." You rambled, too tired to filter your thoughts.
"Like what?" Sam asked, eager for more information to tease Bucky with.
"Huh? Oh, I don't know. Like he can see into my soul." You deadpanned, earning a laugh from both men. "I just want him to like me." You nearly whined, upset by your poor relationship.
"Like you, huh?" Steve grinned. Nat and Wanda chose that exact moment to walk into the room, eagerly joining the conversation.
"Barnes? Did you tell him how you feel?" Wanda squealed with excitement.
You buried your head in your hands, avoiding the knowing looks the four of them were surely sharing. "Not exactly." You gestured to your head, hoping Wanda would figure it out and share with Nat.
"Ooh... It didn't go well, basically Barnes got upset, Y/N flipped Steve and had a panic attack, then told these two everything." Wanda explained to Nat quickly, trying not to make you relive it.
"We need a plan." Nat declared.
"No, I just need to learn how to have a conversation with the man." You rolled your eyes at yourself. "I'll try talking to him again." You went to leave the room, turning around to glare at them. "And none of you can say a word of this to Bucky."
-
Despite you request, Steve still tried to talk to Bucky.
"What's up with you?" Steve questioned, trying to subtly pry into Bucky's thoughts.
"Nothing. Why?" Bucky answered in a questioning tone, trying to figure out Steve's motives.
"I heard you talked to Y/N is all. How'd it go?" He gave up on the subtle approach pretty quickly, knowing Bucky wouldn't answer a question that wasn't asked.
"How did you even hear that, punk?" Bucky deflected.
"Not the point. Answer the question."
"Not great. I messed it up." Bucky sighed, annoyed at himself for barging out of the room. "She said wanted to apologize, that she didn't mean what she said." He ran his hands through his hair, struggling to explain where it all went wrong.
"Would've been fine if I could follow what she was saying. She was rambling about me not liking her, which you and I both know isn't true. Ugh, i've never been mad at her. I'm mad at myself! At Hydra for making me a monster! How could she ever like me if she doesn't like violence? My entire past is violent." He huffed, having worked himself up again.
"You're not a monster, Buck." Steve started gently.
"I know you think that." Steve gave him a pointed glare. "I know, okay? But what does she think?"
"Maybe you should try talking to her. You might be surprised by what you learn." Steve clapped him on the shoulder, trying to reassure him, before leaving the room.
-
Everytime you tried to talk to Bucky, something got in the way. The first time, he was called in for an emergency mission before you even got the word hello out.
The second time, Tony walked into the common area, completely oblivious to the tension, and put on a movie.
The third time, Steve and Nat interrupted you. You were just about to apologize again after an awkward greeting when the elevator doors opened. The sounds of the cheerful laughter and stolen kisses didn't really set the mood for confessing your past with Hydra.
The fourth, and final time, was the most embarrassing.
You walked into the room on a mission. You were going to talk to him, no matter who decided to walk in.
"Bucky, I really need to-" and you tripped on a toy Morgan left out, causing you to tumble to the ground. That would have been embarrassing enough, but there's more.
In your effort to get up, you tripped again, hitting your head on the coffee table, causing you to bleed profusely.
"Shit." You cursed yourself, holding your hand up to your bleeding forehead.
"Are you okay?" Bucky rushed to you from the other side of the table, concerned with the amount of blood spewing from your head.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." Unfortunately, you chose that moment to jokingly reference your past.
Some of the people who tortured you had a sick sense of humor. Whenever they would hit you hard enough to make you bleed, they said something about only having one head. A play on words because of the greek serpent with multiple heads.
"Head wounds bleed a lot, I'm lucky I only have one." You froze instantly, unsure if he would have had a similar experience. Slowly, you looked up in an effort to make eye contact.
Bucky was also frozen in place. Clearly he understood the reference.
"Wh- where did you hear that?" Bucky struggled with his sentence, trying not to flashback to his time at Hydra.
"Oh my god. I'm so so sorry." You instantly started apologizing, trying to backtrack. "I really need to learn when to stop fucking talking." You said more to yourself than him.
"Where did you hear it?" He asked again, putting more power behind his words.
"Um, well, i've been trying to tell you for weeks now, but um, I also kind of, have, um, well, you see-"
"Just spit it out." There was the slightly miffed Bucky you were used to.
"I was taken. By Hydra. 9 years ago. Um, they forced me to learn how to fight. Tortured me if I did anything wrong. Forced me to do things..." You trailed off, realizing you didn't need to give him many details. He has first hand experience.
"Y/N, I-" You cut him off before he could say anything else.
"That's why I don't like using violence. I only know how to do that stuff because they made me learn it. I didn't want to use the skills they gave me." You took a deep, grounding breath.
"I don't blame you for anything you were forced to do. It wasn't your choice. You're not a violent person, and your past actions don't define who you are. You're here to help people. That's what you chose. That's who you are."
You made eye contact before you continued. "I've actually wanted to thank you for the longest time."
"For what?" He was incredulous, wildly caught off guard by everything you've said.
"The only reason I had an opportunity to escape was because 2 years ago, you escaped. If Hydra's resources hadn't been spread so thin trying to find you, I probably would've never got out. So thank you. For being strong enough to fight back."
You smiled at him, still unsure of how he was feeling.
"I... I'm so sorry." To say you were stunned was an understatement. What the hell could he have to be sorry about? Sure he was a little rude, but from your point of view he was completely justified in hating you.
"Bucky, you have no reason to be sorry. You didn't know, and I couldn't get out of my head enough to tell you. You just make me nervous." You clapped a hand over your mouth, shocked at having said what you just said.
You could see his face fall ever so slightly, causing you to jump back into your explanation.
"Not because I'm scared of you or anything! Hell, I could probably take you in a fight." You winked, trying to lighten the mood. It seemed to work, judging by the slight smirk on his face.
"I just, I've looked up to you for so long. Your determination to do good after everything you've been through is really inspiring. It's actually why I wanted to join the Avengers in the first place. I never would have-" You would have kept rambling if he hadn't stopped you.
"Y/N, I am sorry, and I do have reason to be. There's no excuse for what I said to you in the kitchen that day. Even if I didn't know, I threw everything you've been through back in your face. If someone had done that to me, I probably would have had a panic attack." He tried joking, but by the way you froze he could tell he struck a nerve.
"You had a panic attack? I'm so sorry! God, I just left you all alone and-"
It was your turn to cut him off. "Actually, I was kind of frozen in place until Steve touched me and I maybe threw him to the ground... Then I had a panic attack..." You smiled, trying to convey the joke. "So, I wasn't alone. Sam was actually also there. If anything, it made me better friends with both of them because I told them everything. So I have you to thank for that to." You playfully nudged his side.
He ran his hands through his hair, then down his face, clearly trying to deal with his own guilt.
"Hey, don't beat yourself up about it. You didn't know. It happened. We're good now, so we can move on." You smiled, trying to cheer him up.
"How are you so relaxed about all of this? You were tortured for years... I..." He was genuinely curious, trying to find a way to cope with his own pain.
"Well, even before that I always thought therapy could be helpful for me, so I really jumped in full force when I was free. Plus, if you can't joke about something, you haven't really moved on. Some days are harder than others, but I just try to appreciate the people I have now and the good experiences I've been lead to." You kept the tone light, trying not to get too emotional.
He just stared at you for a few minutes, making you questions everything.
"I mean, it's totally different for you though! I was only there for 7 years, you were forced into all that for like 10 times as long. I didn't mean to belittle-"
"I think you inspire me just as much as you say I've inspired you." He cut you off again, a small smile growing on your lips.
"Well, in the spirit of our newfound friendship, can I be totally honest?" You bit your lip, nervous about telling him the truth.
He looked nervous as well, but nodded anyway.
"I kind of, maybe, sort of have a crush on you." You watched his expression carefully, although there was really no need. His face easily gave away his surprise.
"You..." He stuttered, moving his fingers between the two of you. "Me? But, I was so mean!"
"What can I say, I saw through the facade... Well, really Wanda accidentally read your mind and told me why you were so upset around me when her and Nat teamed up to get me to tell you how I feel." You rambled again, realization dawning that you accidentally outed Wanda.
"But you can't tell her I told you that! She didn't mean to! She just said you think really loud sometimes and it's hard not to hear it! She did it to me too actually, I mean I told her she could look in my head so I wouldn't have to explain everything again, I know so lazy, and that's how she confirmed my crush on you." You said it all with wide eyes at a rapid speed, unable to control yourself around Bucky.
You slapped your hands over your mouth, forcing yourself to stop talking. Bucky looked on in amusement, slowly reaching to pull your hands away from your face.
"I won't tell her, if you get dinner with me tonight." He smiled cheekily, relishing in your blush.
"That's a deal I'm willing to make." You reached your arms around his neck, kissing his cheek before running to get ready.
***
Bonus:
Sam whined playfully as he looked at the high scores. "Whose username is 'God is a spoon' and how did they get so good at this game?"
He looked around the room, eying any suspicious candidates. Everyone denied it, throwing out accusations left and right.
It was another of Tony's team bonding nights and he chose VR games on the oculus. Obviously, Beat Saber was a top contender amongst the group.
You walked in with Bucky, unaware of the conversation going on, but immediately joining it.
"Peter! I bet it was him!" You playfully nudged the younger Avenger, having formed a close friendship in the early days. "What am I betting on?" Everyone laughed, happy to see you in a good mood after being so stressed for so long.
"Whose username is 'God is a spoon'." Sam chuckled after filling you in. You and Bucky settled on the couch, cuddling next to each other.
"Oh, that's me. Why?" You looked around curiously, trying to figure out what they wanted. "Is it a weird username? It was actually one of the catchphrase things in Just Dance on the switch, I didn't just think of it." You tried to justify yourself, causing more laughter.
"You?! How did you get all the highscores on this game? I thought you were the clumsy one."
You made an exaggerated face to show how offended you were, playfully swatting at Sam.
"I'll have you know, 7 years of Hydra 'training' and experimentation has its perks." You joked with the room. "One of them being I can beat your ass at pretty much any video game."
"Oh, you're so on." Sam smiled, glad he could joke around with you about it.
Meanwhile, Tony looked incredulously around the room, being the only one in the room who hadn't heard about your history, he was rightfully confused.
"I'm sorry, 7 years of WHAT?"
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yamujiburo · 3 years
Text
Jessie and Cassidy reconciliation fanfic thing
I was going through my notes app just now to just clear out some junk and I found something I'd written like a year ago and totally forgot about hahhaha. I don't usually do fanfics but I guess I was in a writing mood that night. I can't remember why I stopped. I either got stuck, didn't know how I wanted it to end or was just having a hard time figuring out like,,,, the arcs and what I wanted the main focus of the story to be. Anyhow, here it is if you wanna read the set up I made for it haha
Jessie, James and Meowth have once again failed to complete a mission and Matori is TIRED of it. She brings it up go Giovanni who tells her not to worry about them. Matori can’t figure out why Giovanni puts up with them and starts digging on possible reasons why Giovanni would keep them around. She decides to go to HR to find answers. There, she meets Wendy.
“Ah– Matori!”
“Pull up records for Jessie, James and–“, Matori notices that Wendy already has Jessie’s files pulled up and gives her a strange look.
“I see you’re already doing your research on Miss Jessie…”
“N-no! Well, yes. It’s just that Jessie has continuously failed almost all missions she’s been assigned! Not to mention she’s singlehandedly almost made the organization go broke. Well, not really but she still owes a lot of money!”
“And the other two?”
“Huh? Oh yeah them, too I guess.”
“I just don’t understand what Giovanni could possible see in them. They’re not good for Team Rocket.”
“Tell me about it, I’ve been trying to get the boss to fire them for years. But he’s got a real soft spot for them apparently. Tch, to think they were the top of their class once.”
“Hmph, I find that hard to believe.”
“I can’t speak for James and Meowth, but Jessie really was a promising recruit. So much so that when she threatened to quit, she somehow manipulated every exec into fulfilling her demands.”
“Threatened to quit?” The gears in Matori’s head began to turn. Sure Giovanni wouldn’t fire the trio, but if they were to quit, there would be nothing he could do.
“Yeah, she had a falling out with her first partner. And instead of being PROFESSIONAL she wined until she got a new one. Then she proceeded to go through like 10 more partners until James came along. If you’ve ever talked to her I’m sure you can tell she’s not the easiest person to work with.”
“Hm. Perhaps it’s time to switch up some teams.”
“C-can you do that? Is that allowed?”
“I could pull some strings.”
“Isn’t that sabotage?” Wendy asks. Matori shoots her a look.
“Call it what you want, but it’s my job to make sure this organization is successful as possible. Getting rid of some problem lackeys will only benefit Team Rocket. If Giovanni won’t do anything about them, then I will.”
“Matori. You are my hero”
“Are there any potential candidates we could temporarily team them up with? Or members they’ve been known to… not get along with?”
A big, Gengar-like smile creeps on Wendy’s face. “I know just the agents.”
_____________________________________________________________
Early in the morning in Jessie and James’ base, they get a call from Matori. Jessie is already annoyed, knowing who’s calling, but she wakes up her team members just in case it was Giovanni.
“A little early don’t you think, Matori?” Matori composes herself and ignores Jessie’s jab.
“Giovanni hasn’t arrived yet, but I have very important news.” Jessie, James and Meowth’s interests are piqued. “Your success rates have been… less than exemplary. But, you have previously shown you are exceptional agents.”
Jessie is taken aback by the, sort of, compliment from Matori. “So what’s the issue?”
“We have reason to believe that, while neither of you are individually the reason for your constant failures, you are incompatible as a team and you are going to be reassigned to different partners, effective immediately.”
James and Meowth look at each other shocked, and the thoughts going through their head were interrupted by their soon to be, not-leader. “WHAT?! You can’t split us up! We–“
“I apologize for the inconvenience. But this is for the benefit of Team Rocket. I do not have time to argue this. It has already been decided and your new partners have been decided. James, you are to return to headquarters where you will meet your new partner and Jessie, you will remain where you are and your new partner will arrive tomorrow.”
“What about, Me-owth?”
Matori pauses. She hadn’t thought about the cat. “You can decide who you wish to go with. Thank you for your time. Best of luck with your new arrangements.”
Matori hangs up. Jessie, James and Meowth stand staring at the screen, solemn. What doe they do now? Years of working together over, just like that.
“UGH THAT LITTLE FOUR EYED BOWL CUT HAIRED FREAK! I’m gonna do something about this! They can’t do this to us!” James gently puts his had on Jessie’s shoulder.
“There’s nothing we can do,”
James packs up, Meowth has decided to go with James. They say their goodbyes. James and Meowth grab the rest of their things and leave. Jessie is left alone with her thoughts.
_____________________________________________________________
Back at headquarters, we see James and Meowth being led by Matori to her office where she says his new partner is waiting. She talks about how this member is in a very similar situation. They walk in and see short, green hair. “BUTCH???”
“Oh no not you guys!”
“If you’re my new partner, that must mean…”
“Oh no,” they all say in unison.
_____________________________________________________________
Jessie still lying in the same place on her bed. Why was she feeling this way? She’d been through so many parters before. Sure she’d been with James and Meowth longer, but she wasn’t one to get attached. Well, not anymore. In the middle of her thought, she hears the elevator to the base coming down. She gets up and makes herself as presentable as possible (over shirt is off, makeup kinda smeared, boots off). Before she can get her shit together, a pair of white boots click, clack in. Jessie looks up, and the flash of orange, blonde seared her eyes.
“CASSIDY?!”
“JESSIE?!”
“No, no, no there has to be some sort of mistake. I can’t be teamed up with you! I hate you!”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
“I can’t believe I going to have to work with your ugly ass every day.”
“You’re one to talk. Have you looked in the mirror lately?” Jessie turned to the standup mirror leaning against the wall. She was definitely not looking her best.
“You caught me at a bad time!”
“You sure? I recall you always looking this ratty. I guess it has been a while since I’ve seen you, thank goodness," Cassidy said smugly. Jessie was already pissed off.
“We’re calling Matori RIGHT NOW to fix this.”
“Gee, while you’re looking like that?”
“I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT.” Jessie picked up the communicator, which brandished a large R on the wall. Matori picked up.
“Good afternoon Jessie, are you aware that you’re not in uniform?”
“Cut the crap you clod! You set me up with Cassidy on purpose!”
“Ah I see you’ve met your new partner! Hello, Cassidy.”
“Matori,” Cassidy said with a small bow. Of course Cassidy was trying to stay composed. Just another way to try one-up Jessie.
“We can NOT work together. I demand you put me back on my old team!”
“While I’m not one to disagree with higher ups, Miss Matori, I unfortunately have to side with Jessie on this one. You might not be aware but Jessie and I were partners once in our training days. We simply are not compatible,” Cassidy explained as politely as possible.
“Was there a reason for this, incompatibility? I was looking through your records and it appeared that you two were quite the team back in the day. I had assumed that the executives just wanted two top agents to be on other teams with some less skilled trainees.” Both Cassidy and Jessie blushed.
It was true that Jessie and Cassidy were at the top of their class for quite some time. But the reasons for them being split up were quite… personal.
“Listen, we just can’t work together. Try getting that through that helmet head of yours.”
_____________________________________________________________
~aaaaand this is where i got to~
Anyone wanna finish this for me? /j
I can't remember where I wanted this to go. I think I was gonna have Jessie and Cassidy try to suck it up and work together so they don't lose their jobs. They fight Ash and Goh, trying to get Pikachu as usual and quickly fail because of their bickering. They eventually have a heart to heart, wondering where they went wrong back when they were a team. They say a lot of things that they'd failed to communicate in the past and reconcile.
THEN this is where I kinda got stuck on what I wanted the focus/them to me. There was a version in my head where after they reconcile they like,,, make out and start falling in love again (for those new here, I firmly believe Jessie and Cassidy are bitter exes and had a falling out during their training days). After this their chemistry and communication improve immensely resulting in them succeeding to catch Pikachu. Matori comes to retrieve it but Ash and Goh get it back while it's in Matori's hands (making it her failure). And then I wasn't sure how to end this version. Maybe things going back to normal after Giovanni finds out that Jessie and Cassidy are dating and deems it unprofessional. Jessie, James and Meowth are reunited and Cassidy and Butch are as well. Happy ending were things are as they were but now Cassidy and Jessie are on good terms and still together maybe???
The oooother version was centering the story more around Jessie and her inability to keep her partners/not appreciating them. If I went with this I think I'd start off the story differently with her being a dick to James and Meowth (which she is a lot of the time but this time she crosses a line). After the team switch she finds that she really had been taking her teammates for granted. I think Cassidy and Jessie still have that heart to heart but then it's more about how Jessie hurt Cassidy and Jessie kinda realizes that she's still making the same errors currently. They reconcile buuut the both of them still want their old partners back so they hatch a plan to successfully steal Pikachu but ensure that Ash gets it back when it's in Matori's hands. They request that they be paired up with their old teammates and in exchange, wouldn't tell Giovanni that Matori messed up. Everything goes back to normal the end.
I had too many jumbled ideas and because I don't have the attention span to write for more than a couple hours I just dropped this LOL. Just thought I'd share in case anyone found this remotely interesting or entertaining hehe
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Penthouse
Note: After events of Elevator. I love/hate this. loved starting, fucking hated finishing it. fucking nightmare. no tags, for this garbage. this hodgepodge of a story shows the weakness in my writing. ugh. 🙃 Don’t read this. i wrote this for my own entertainment. Long AF. so much preamble.
Summery: Freedom was sweet
⚠️Warning: 18+ Only content with dark themes, Kidnapping, Non Con/Dub Con, Cream-pie ⚠️
Dark Steve x Reader
🏢
You stood, back facing the multi level high rise with a banker box, filled with various items of your old life, in hand stunned. For the past few years you were held against your will by James 'Bucky' Barnes. The notorious mobster used you as his play thing, torturing, beating and occasionally starving you. Now you stood outside free.
"Hey!"
Your back tensed at the sound of the familiar right hand man of Bucky.
*It was a trap, of course.*
He wanted to see how far you would go this time, before he dragged you back to that damned penthouse.
"Never thought the day would come huh?" Steve laughed cheerfully.
You looked at him wordlessly, waiting for the shoe to drop. Instead he dug in his pocket, pulling out a fat wad of rolled up bills. Tucking it under one of the garments in the box you held.
"This should get you on your feet." Steve smiled at you. You blinked at him confused by his words. He turned from you briefly, hailing a cab to put you in.
*Was it really true? Were you really free?*
As the yellow cab pulled up an SUV parked behind it. When the back door opened the people filing out caught your eye. A beautiful woman dressed in black sequins and from what you could surmise maybe barely old enough to drink. Followed by Bucky and a few of his lackeys.
Steve lowered your head into the idling cab, careful not to hit your head on the open door. "Your replacement" comically chucking a thumb back in their direction. Closing the door he knocked on the drivers window and took out more money. Telling the cabbie to take you where ever you wanted before leaving.
Sitting in the back seat you turned and watched Bucky led the young beauty into the building. "Where to Miss?" The driver asked and it was a question you hadn't had the privilege to answer in such a long time you didn't know what to say.
🏢
It took some getting used to, but eventually you found your bearings. With the money you got a tiny apartment miles away from the penthouse. It was funny as you had always fantasized about moving to Canada or over seas if you were to ever escape Bucky, but here you were, still stuck in the same city.
Now free again you were able to live life as you wished. Eating when you wanted, going where you wanted the freedom was exhilarating. Unfortunately the time spent with Bucky you lost all the friends you had, family was scarce and thanks to him there was also a large gap in employment. Finding a job wasn't so easy, but eventually you landed on your feet.
🏢
The diner was quick to snap you up for their evening to graveyard shifts. It didn't pay well, but it was fine and you loved it for what it was. Free food, the occasional good tip, the money was enough to live off of and it was far away from Bucky's syndicate.
It took a bump from a passing waitress to bring you back to earth. A booth in your section filled to the brim with your nightmare. Looking to the door you contemplated walking straight out and never looking back. A high pitched whistle caught your attention. The table across from theirs signaled for a check.
Panicked you looked for a fellow waitress to help you out of the bind, but no one was in sight. There wasn't a point in running. If they were here, then they were going to get you.
Holding your head low you walked over, hugging the laminated menus tightly to your chest.
Quickly you handed them their receipt and tried to make your fast escape. A familiar voice cleared his throat making you jump. You stood with your backs to them for longer than would be normal and the table in front of you didn't appreciate your company.
Of course this was it. The nightmare would continue. Turning to the table you greeted them robotic-ally. As if they didn't all know your name already. While you passed them the menus it was if you didn't exist. Your eyes darted back and forth between each of them, barely a glance as they received the menu.
Your heart ached for the girl that was now your replacement. You could see from her face that she was running on fumes. You wondered how long Bucky had kept her up, breaking her in, if she tried to escape like you had.
A day out for you was normally a reward for good behavior, so she must be a 'Good Doll', you shuttered at the recollection.
"Long time no see!" Steve perked up when he finally turned his head to notice you. You had to ignore the prickles, control your nerves like you used to when you went out with Bucky, but he didn't look your way.
"I will be your server today. Is there anything I can start you off to drink with today?" Your voice came out as even as you could get it. Digging out your pen and pad, almost dropping it as you trembled.
"This is what you've been up to huh" Steve asked, his volume louder than others around him would like. He was the only one who seemed to care about your presence, the others just ignored you, going over the menus.
Your heart wanted to break through your chest as you tried to hold it together. When no one else seemed to care still, you could finally try to breathe properly. Bucky was too focused on his phone and from the subtle movements of his arm under the table, the girl fidgeting next to him.
* Just stick to the script don't engage in anything else.*
"I will give you folks a few minutes then come back to take your order."  you said ignoring him. Steve frowned at that, but you knew he wouldn’t move without Bucky’s order. Walking back you felt stiff and you were sure that sweat was seeping through your uniform.
🏢
You were a nerves wreck once you finally ducked into the little waitress nook by the kitchen. Scrubbing your face with your hands you took several deep breaths, the action not really taking the effect you wanted.
"Excuse me" her voice was barely above a whisper and though you never heard it you knew who it belonged to.
"Go back to your table Miss." you refused to look at her.
"Please you don't understand" her soft voice shook. You knew that if you looked, her face would be filled with tears. When she touched your shoulder you fell away tripping over your own feet as you rushed away. Finally you were face to face with her.
"I need your help, please" you were right she was crying.
"Get the hell away from me!" You pressed your back flat against the wall. Huddled in the corner as guilt and self preservation fought a battle inside of you.
"Everything alright back here?" Steve popped his head through the doorway.
"Y-yep.......just fine she needed to uhhh p-pee and I was just showing her the way" you felt your heart bash inside your chest once again. Steve wasn't stupid, but you prayed that he believed you.
With her back to Steve you knew that look and a part of you felt guilty for doing nothing. The young girl walked past you  to the restroom while Steve lingered in the hall. Lowering your gaze you peel yourself off the wall and slunk into the kitchen.
Steve followed, leaning in the archway of the kitchen. You tried to look busy and you were surprised that the cooks didn't ask him to leave. Even this far out their reach stretched you guessed.
"Can't speak to old an old friend?" Steve inquired.
"Steve, please..."
Steve may have looked sweet, but he was never one for sympathy.
"You're not in trouble I just came to say 'hi'."
*Bull shit*
He turned his head to see the young beauty leaving the restroom and you were glad. You didn't want to see him dragging her out if it came down to it.
*She must've run before.*
"Whelp it was nice talking to you again" he said as he followed arms length behind the girl.
🏢
"You folks ready to order" you forced another smile as you talked. It was almost eerie how they acted like any other customer. It was as if you hadn't known these men for the past five years. Each gave you their order. You served without any further incident.
When they finally left they even gave you a sizable tip. It seemed now that you were truly just a faded memory to Bucky.
🏢
Heading home on the train you couldn't wait to feed the alley cat friend you were trying to earn the trust of. Another day bringing him left over food from work.
"Here puss, puss" you called out to the darkened alleyway. Pinching off pieces of meat and tossing it about.
Your name was called out so you instinctively turned to find the sound. When your eyes found Steve you dropped everything you had and ran. You didn't know where you were going, shoving through various people as you booked it down the avenue.
The lights of a tea house caught your eye in the far distance. Dashing inside you try and calm down and walk to the bathroom hurriedly. Ducking into and locking one of the stalls you stood on the toilet seat and waited.
Hoping he didn't see which way you had gone.
The door to the restroom opened slowly, the sound of foot steps crept closer to your stall. Holding your hands over your mouth you tried to hold in your sobs. It was hard to control your breathing, you were panting heavily from the run. Even with your eyes squeezed shut you knew he was standing right in front of the stall you hid in.
"I know it's been a while...but you should know better than to run from me." His dark chuckle filled you with dread.
"You had fun right?"
🏢
The numbers ticked up in the metal lift slowly. The whole way up you looked down at your feet. Unable to bare the cocky look on Steve's face.
Stepping out of the elevator, the hall that led to the penthouse was long, but not enough. Steve moved from behind you and opened the door. The familiar cold chill of the penthouse hit you. Taking your shoes off at the door you walked over to the living room area.
"I'm really quite surprised. I thought you would've skipped town... Thought you would make me chase you half way around the world." Steve chuckled, that was the straw that broke the damn. Your face felt drenched, you had tried so hard not to cry in front of him, but once again you failed.
The past few months felt like a dream, in the back of your mind you knew it was a lie.
"You should probably get undressed." Steve ordered. You heard him shimmy out of his jacket, hanging it on the door as you sobbed.
Steve was just parroting orders from Bucky you were sure. It didn't matter that Steve was in the room, Bucky was what you were more worried about. He had let you go and for some reason he got his dog to drag you back. Steve's presence only added to the humiliation, defeat and soon further shame.
🏢
You stripped yourself of your clothes, folding them neatly and placing them on a pile next to the couch. The room felt colder, your skin and nipples prickled while you walked over to Bucky's chair.
Bucky had a favorite chair in the living room. A seat that was solely reserved for him and that is were you stood, naked while you waited for him to appear.
He normally was already sitting waiting. Not seeing him there didn't help stop the tears from flowing. Had you pissed him off at the diner? Had something happened to the girl? Did she tell him that she talked to you?
Behind the chair you were able to gaze at the city as you thought through each possible slight. Steve walked up from behind, placing a hand on your shoulder causing you to jump.
"Calm down he isn't here." Steve told you as he held up his hands in surrender, flopping down on the seat before you.
There had been many an occasion that you witnessed unknowing souls sit in Bucky's chair. The action seen by him as an unforgivable level of disrespect that made your stomach turn as he would rectify the slight.
The chair was Bucky's throne and only to be christened by him and him alone.
Steve's legs spread wide in defiance as he made himself comfortable as you tried to understand the sight of Bucky's most loyal man before you.
"Bucky won't like you in his chair." You warned.  His eye's went wide almost surprised by the sound of your voice.
"Hah... Bucks got you trained good" Steve lightly laughed. "Come have a seat."
You blinked at him as he craned his neck to admire the look of distress. Bucky was not one for sharing and you doubted he would be thrilled to see you naked and straddling Steve in his favorite chair.  
When you didn’t move Steve’s warm hands pulled you down, your knees folded at his sides. On the descent you gasped, your eyes wide with panic and confusion. His playful grin fueled by your dismay. The chair wined at the added weight and you were sure it would break from the way you struggled to escape it.
Steve's arms wrapped and rested around your hips, pulling you close, making your movements hard. Your legs were tucked and  pinned at his side, your frantic movements rousing something that made you shutter when you felt it. With what little space you could manage, your arms moved up to wrap around your chest in an effort to cover yourself and make a buffer.
🏢
"You know you were always my favorite." He spoke calmly while your whole body shook in fear. It was a nerves shake that Steve had witnessed many a times and from the glint in his eyes you knew he enjoyed it.
"So creative in your escapes, but just too sloppy at covering your tracks" he t'sked while the hiccups and tears intensified. Steve rocked you back and forth gently in his lap. The fabric of Steve's pants rubbed against your mound, the length of his cock pressed desperately against his zipper and he made sure you felt every inch.
"Remember that time you set the penthouse on fire. Good trick getting the firemen to get you out". He chuckled completely unbothered by your distress. Smiling up at you brightly as if he were talking to an old friend. His walk down memory lane was not as fondly remembered as yours.
"At the diner I was sure he would've flipped out when he saw you, but I guess he was just to preoccupied to notice." Steve gave you a playful wiggle of his brow. As he talked you bit back shame. The incessant movement stimulated your clit, you could feel a wetness growing at it was only a matter of time before he noticed it too.
"The new girl learned her lesson far too quickly for me. I let her take off once just for fun... Then she never did it again."
"He has someone new right? He doesn't need me." Your were a sniffling mess. You knew Steve long enough that your tears meant nothing to him, but that didn't stop you from pleading.
"Oh sweetie if you didn't know by now he didn't let you go."
Your mind was swirling. Steve orchestrated it all just to have 'fun'.
🏢
"I want you to look up." He requested and you looked at him confused. "Over there in the left corner." He nudged his head and your eyes looked in the direction.
Your heart sank to the floor. There was a camera, one you never noticed before. You felt sick. Was Bucky watching you? The optics of this situation you could only imagine.
As far as Bucky was concerned you had ran out on him and Steve was just doing his job bringing you back.
From that angle it would look like you walked in, stripped and got on top of him. That you were fucking him in Bucky's chair. Steve's eyes lit up as you put all the pieces together.
"I fucking hate you" You said softly. Your chin fell to your chest as you continued to bawl.
"Oh Sweetie I don't care. I can only imagine the look on his face right now." Steve ducked his head down to look you in the eye, confirming Bucky was indeed watching.
Taking your wrist he moved them behind your back, bonding them effortlessly with one hand. Steve was hell bent on making your bad situation worse. You needed to get free and get out.
Steve's head moved to nestle your breast, you tried to lift off your knees, but his thighs kept you trapped in the chair. You attempted to jerk your wrists free of his hold, but Steve only held tighter.
Steve wasn't afraid of reprisals from his boss. They had been friends from childhood, at most he would get a slap on the back if the head. While you shuddered to think of what he would do to you.
"Don’t worry we have time to play" he teased. You felt Steve's hot breath on your breast as he talked. When he licked and sucked at your nipple, taking it in-between his teeth, flicking his tongue on it you felt your arousal grow.
"Please Steve..stop" you panted out as heat rose throughout your neck. You felt his mouth smirk swirled around your nipple, his face nuzzled in your chest, inhaling deeply on yours skin as you rocked in his lap.
The chair groaning protests increased and you prayed that it would break, giving you a chance to be free. When your hands were suddenly released you pushed at his chest hard, surprisingly he fell back with a chuckle.
"Why can't you just let me go?" You slapped at his chest as Steve rose to his feet. The weight of your ass rested in his palms as you tried to force yourself down and out of his hold. You yelped when Steve pinched your ass hard, the sting a warning to stop. Though your movements didn't cause his hold to waver, it was as if you weighed nothing.
🏢
Steve liked you. He was normally indifferent to the women that Bucky would bring home, but you were different. He loved the way you cried for mercy then begged to cum. The shame in your eyes when he watched you submit.
Bucky had a habit of replacing his toys. So Steve waited patiently for Bucky to tire of you, but a man could only wait so long.
"How many times had you wished it were me?" He changed the subject. Gone was his playful smile, his face stoic and unreadable just like Bucky's.
"I saw how you looked at me... wanting my cock inside of you... What would Bucky think if he knew"  Steve purred.
You hadn't wanted Steve or any of this. It was just that his eyes were just that inescapable. Bucky's second set of eyes. Always through a cracked door, from the corner of a room, reflecting back at you from a mirror. His eyes haunted your sleep just as much as Bucky's did.
He turned slightly to open the door behind you. Once it opened you knew the room you were in, Bucky's bedroom. You had shared it with him, but nothing in it belonged to you. You were nothing more than a dog that was made to come happily whenever he called.
When Steve tossed you on the bed you bounced. You watched, frozen while he stripped at the foot of the bed.
🏢
His mouth moved, but if he was speaking you couldn't hear it. The pounding of your heart was so loud in your ears that you couldn't make out whatever he was saying.
Each step he took you pushed back on your hands, scooting backwards on the bed to get away. Your elbow hit the head board as he unhooked his belt and unfastened his pants.
The bed dipped as he placed a hand on it, you watched and time seemed to slow when he stretched out to snag your ankle. You took the bed covering with you when you clutched it as you twisted and turned to pull yourself out of his grip.
With one hard yank you laid flat out on your stomach. Steve couldn't help licking his lips at the sight of your ass jiggling as he played with you. When he let go you stumbled over yourself, pressing your back flush once again to the head board.
🏢
Bending over he dug something out of his discarded clothes. Standing straight you watched as he played with his phone. Steve tossed the device to you and you blinked at it wildly. "Bucky’s across town with his new girl. It would take a few hours to get here." You picked it up as he talked. You knew the spot on the map, the red indicator blinking Bucky's location.
"Tell you what. I will let you go. If you give me what I want and I won't come after you again." He offered. Flopping on the bed Steve's back faced you. It was a trap you knew it, but some semblance of hope still lived in you, so you sat quietly and listened.
"Or I can take what I want and then stand by when Bucky comes back." He laid out on top of the bed with his hands laced behind his head. Gripping the phone you contemplated quickly dialing the police, but you were sure they would never make it in time. And if they did by some miracle come, you couldn't guarantee they wouldn't be dirty anyway.
Swallowing thickly you placed the phone faced down on the mattress. Steve tilted his head and observed you, smiling at you expectantly when you started to move.
You tried to reason with yourself as you approached him. You prayed that he would indeed keep his side of the deal.
Steve unlaced his fingers as you rounded him and you felt your skin prickle all over again. The bed didn't make a sound as you haltingly swung your leg over his waist.
Your hands shook as you placed them on his bear chest. Despite the heat coming from Steve your shaking remained. Your stomach tensed when Steve's fingers trailed up your thigh and rested on your hips.
Holding you, Steve lowered you down, flicking his cock back and forth with one hand to align himself to your entrance. His tip played with your folds, the prodding brought a slickness from your core.
🏢
Steve loved the way you cried. The sight of your puffy face whenever you begged and pleaded.  He loved that despite all the fear there was a fire that wouldn't die no matter how hard his buddy tried to stomp it out.
"You mad things fun around here." Steve's tone lowered to a husky growl. His eyes turned their focus from your face to your breast as the feeling of utter defeat washed over you.
His cock pressed threateningly against your lips as your palms rested on his bare chest. Steve kept you paused in position, your thighs burned while you hovered in place. the trembling not unnoticed by Steve. Moving from his cock the one hand traveled upward, gently ghosting over your hip as it crept up your frame.
Bucky despite his distance stayed at the edge of your mind. You looked around the empty room, jumping at every odd noise. The paranoia in your eyes made Steve painfully hard, but he controlled himself as he explored you.
Steve's large hand encompassed your breast as he palmed it. Gliding his thumb over your hard nipple the soft fatty flesh bounced in his hand when you inhales sharply.
A very sensitive area he noted. He wanted to know every inch of you, what made you squirm, but that would have to wait until another time.
It made his cock twitch just thinking about it.
🏢
With one quick motion he forced you down. The plunge sent jolts deep. Your cervix ached with fullness as your stomach tensed and strained to adjust to him. Mewling through gritted teeth you sheathed him completely.
"Did Bucky fill you up this good?" He growled. Steve felt your cunt hug him tightly, the feel made him twitch inside of you. You grunted when Steve bucked his hips at your lack of reply. His cock strained against your core, you hadn't noticed your nails had dug into his chest. When he bucked again he let out a long drawn out his as your nails dragged against his flesh. The thin lines on his skin leaving a stinging reminder of you.
"No!" you sputtered out much to Steve's pleasure.
"Good girl" Steve praised.
You gasped out when he finally allowed you to rise up, but before you could relax he forced you back down again. Steve muscles flexed under your hands. His deep grunts growing in volume as he resisted the urge to flip you over and rail into you deeper.
"That's it, that's a good girl" he grunted. Steve controlled the momentum. Every downward motion sending jolts to your core. You rocked into him, his voice humming as your pussy clenched around him. "Who do you belong to?" He demanded, making sure to throw his hips hard with each syllable.
"Steve Fuck!" You let out a sharp gasp at the feel of the head of his cock hitting your ceiling. Steve sucked in his bottom lip slowly letting it drag out again, the way you grabbed made him groan with delight. The feel and sound of you struggling made him almost come right there.
Unlike Bucky, Steve was different. You could never read Bucky, every wrong move you made in his game was met with swift reprisals. While Steve read of an unabashed wild eagerness.
"Such a dirty whore just for me" He beamed as you bounced atop of him. His blonde tresses stuck messily to his glistening forehead. Your shamed dissolved into pleasure as your ass slapped against Steve.
The feel of him overwhelmed your senses. Your pussy squeezed, your climax barreling through you like a freight train.
"You know better than that." Steve swatted hard on your side. The sting still there as you forced back your need.
You choked down what was left of your shame and begged him. You needed to cum, the tight coil in your core threatened to burst.  
"Please.." You rasped out, looking away unable to face him. Steve reveled in your pathetic attempted to hide away from him. He felt you, there was no denying what you hungered for.
"please. ..Steve.. " you panted out. The sound of your sloppy sex and punishing manipulation was splintering in your womb.
"I need to come" You mewled.
Steve shot up, his massive arms wrapped around you, clutching your shoulders he shoved himself deep inside.
"Come on my cock" he commanded. Holding you down tight as he pumped his seed into you.
Your cunt milking out ever last drop as you both breathed heavily.
"Hey Buck... welcome home." Over your shoulder he stared deep into the eyes of Bucky as he coated your walls.
🏢
<<< Elevator
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babyboibucky · 3 years
Text
Babysitting Bucky - Part 5
Pairing: FATWS!Bucky x Reader
Word Count: 2,368
Summary: You’ve been assigned by the government to keep an eye on the Winter Soldier to ensure that he was no longer a threat to the world.
A/N: It has begun lmfao, check out the link at the end of this post if you’d like to be tagged in the next updates! Would love to receive feedbacks! 
MASTERLIST
-
You found yourself in the conference room of the Avengers compound, together with Sam, Bucky, Sharon and Fury discussing about an upcoming mission.
Sharon went over the brief of the mission with everyone. There was an intel about a certain drug cartel that decided to expand their business and venture into the trade of biological weapons as well. Grabbing the folder on the desk, you skimmed through the information and frowned when your eyes landed on a familiar name.
“Black Sparrow? I thought the entire organization was taken down during the raid years ago?” You asked.
Bucky turned to you, “You know these guys?”
“One of my first missions, I was the assigned liaison officer to check up on the whistleblower who was placed under the witness protection program.” You explained.
Sharon sighed, “Apparently, not everyone was imprisoned. Whoever decided to keep the organization going, we have no idea.”
The mission required all of you to find out about the illegal trades. There wasn’t much information provided, except for the tip that an important trade might be taking place soon.
“Black Sparrow’s nest is said to be hidden within a fruit shop downtown.” Sharon added.
Fury let Sam takeover the strategizing, with him deciding to do a stakeout to see how the organization operates. Once the trade takes place, raid the nest, find out the other groups involved and most importantly the source of biological weapons.
“You up for a stakeout, Buck?” Sam asked.
Bucky shrugged and glanced at you, “Only if the babysitter agrees to do so.”
You let out an exasperated breath, “Mister Barnes, I would appreciate it if you’d address me properly.” You scolded.
Sam cleared his throat, “Alright. Sharon and I will try to research on the potential groups involved in the trades. Stakeout starts tonight so pack your things.”
-
All your things have been packed and you were about to leave your room when you received a call from none other than Secretary Ross.
“Ugh, what does he want now?” You complained to yourself before accepting the call.
“I heard about the stakeout, Agent. Isn’t it convenient?”
You rolled your eyes; the secretary’s voice was too chirpy, as if he was excited. He was definitely up to something, what it was, you still didn’t know. Something about the mission you were tasked to do was off. They didn’t even tell you for how long you needed to tag along the Winter Soldier.
“Yes, sir. I will make sure to keep an eye on the subject and report whatever it is that I find out of place.” You reassured, hoping that the secretary would simply hum in agreement and end the call.
“Good. But wouldn’t it be better if you stir things up a bit?” He asked.
You frowned, “I don’t understand what you mean, sir.”
Secretary Ross chuckled, “Push his buttons, Agent. See how he reacts to certain triggers.”
God, he really wants you to dig some dirt on Bucky. You were supposed to tell him that you already tried doing so and that nothing bad happened, but the Secretary reminded you that he wanted to see a detailed report about it and ended the call.
You didn’t want to push Bucky’s buttons anymore. Bringing up the Soldat seemed too much already and he had already proven how much in control he was of himself. However, you felt conflicted as well since you needed to file a report. You could easily fake it though, but you were afraid that the secretary might have eyes and ears lurking around.
You were too deep into your thoughts, almost losing track of the time. Thankfully, FRIDAY interrupted and informed you that Bucky and Sam were already outside the compound, waiting for you.
-
“You’re eight minutes late, Agent.” Sam reprimanded as you approached them.
“Did you have a hard time packing Bucky’s diapers and feeding bottles?” He teased.
Bucky grunted in dismay, “Jesus, Sam.”
“Sorry, had to take a phone call from the secretary.” You responded and began placing your things inside the trunk of the car.
Bucky stiffened at the mention of Secretary Ross, his hands tightened into fists at his side. You eyed his stance and noticed that he seemed uncomfortable. Who wouldn’t be if the government had their eyes on you?
“Nothing to worry about, Mister Barnes. You’re all good. I made sure of that.” You told him reassuringly before sliding into the passenger’s seat.
Bucky drove to the stakeout location with an uncomfortable silence in the air with the occassional directions coming from the GPS. You were slightly nervous about being on a week-long stakeout. It wasn’t because you were afraid of Bucky, but being with him by yourself was intimidating.
Seven days with the Winter Soldier. With no one else around.
You and the Winter Soldier. On a stakeout. For an entire week.
The more you thought about it, the more it was beginning to sink in. You’ve had your fair share of stakeouts in the past, but you were either by yourself or paired someone you closely worked with. But a stakeout with Bucky Barnes? How the fuck were you going to keep calm the entire week and maintain your calm persona?
“So...” Bucky trailed, tone unsure as if he too was uncomfortable with the silence and decided to break it but not knowing how to proceed.
“Do you want to turn on the radio?” He asked and cleared his throat, keeping his gaze on the road.
You looked out the window, “Yeah, why not.” You said with faux nonchalance.
Bucky quickly turned it on and adjusted the volume. He skimmed through various radio stations before settling on one.
Despite having the radio playing in the background, the atmosphere between you and Bucky remained awkward and uncomfortable. You could tell that Bucky could feel it too, so you decided to start a conversation.
“How has it been being an Avenger?”
You didn’t know why you chose that question, but it was the first thing that popped into your mind.
Bucky let out a soft chuckle, “Is that part of your research on me or are you actually trying to start a conversation?” He asked, glancing at you with amusement.
“You know what, forget about it, Mister Barnes.” You waved off.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I was genuinely curious.” He sheepishly responded, “But to answer your question, it’s been...weird so to speak. Especially having someone watch my every move.”
You shrugged, “Well, I apologize but I don’t have a choice. This is my job and I have to—“
“I know, Agent. You don’t need to explain, I completely understand. I’m really trying not to make it hard for you to do your job.” He explained.
You were actually surprised at how easy it was to talk to Bucky. You were expecting him to be completely broody and tight-lipped, considering all the things he went through. There were times when he’d be moody of course, but for the most part, he was friendly. And very kind.
“Well then I appreciate it, Mister Barnes.” You stated.
Bucky let out a breathy laugh, “I’m still looking forward to the day when you’d call me, Bucky.” He said and gave you a smile.
You felt your face heat up from the way he smiled at you and how his eyes crinkled at the sides. He almost looked the same as he did in his photos dated back to the 40’s, when he was oozing with that boyish charm and innocence before he was drafted for the war.
You immediately looked away and bit your lip.
-
The two of you arrived at the cheap motel that was situated a few blocks away from the fruit shop. The building was old and almost looked dilapidated. It was known to be the number one spot for illegal transactions. It was the perfect place for a stakeout.
“The old lady at the reception seemed suspicious of us, I saw how she eyed the both of us when we checked in.” You said upon entering the motel room, groaning at the stench that welcomed your nostrils.
Obviously, the room was far from decent given the quality of the motel itself. There were two beds separated by a night desk and a small coffee table; the cream curtains were splotchy and dusty, some parts of the wallpaper were torn apart and the flooring creaked with every single step.
“I think she was merely judging us, thinking we’re one of those couples.” Bucky said as he placed his bags on the bed.
“Those couples?” You asked, walking over to the other bed and inspecting the bedding.
“Well, I heard this motel is a popular location for shooting x-rated videos.” Bucky explained casually as he walked towards the window, pushing the curtains aside, revealing the perfect view of Black Sparrow’s nest.
You almost choke on your own spit, “You mean to say...that old lady thought we were going to shoot porn?!”
Bucky hummed, “Maybe. It’s probably for the best, that way we’ll remain unsuspicious. Less chances of being interrupted as well.” he replied casually, as if it was no big deal but you also noticed that the corner of his lips curved into a slight smirk.
Clearing your throat, you regained your composure and went to unpack your things instead, starting with some of the weapons you brought. A stakeout often resulted to a raid so you had to make sure that you were prepared in case of an attack. Bucky moved away from the window and closed the curtains again before sitting on his bed.
“Those all yours?” he asked with interest as he watched you arrange your knives and guns on top of your bed.
You glanced at him for a quick second and saw the glint in his eyes as he observed your arsenal, you just hummed in response and started cleaning your guns while Bucky watched in silence.
“When we sparred...” he trailed and you froze, expecting him to confront you when you brought up the Soldat to trigger him.
“You used Romanoff’s technique. Where did you learn that?” he asked.
You shrugged, “Mister Barnes, it’s not that hard to learn that move. I’m just as trained as you and Mister Wilson, I know a lot of moves.” you explained but Bucky didn’t seem to buy it.
“It’s actually kinda hard to execute that move. Not a lot of trained agents can do that easily.” he pressed.
You pursed your lips before looking up at him, “Sounds to me like you’re trying to compliment my skills, Mister Barnes.”
Bucky ended up letting go of the topic.
-
The first few hours of the stakeout was uneventful; you and Bucky simply kept watch to see whether there were suspicious movements in the fruit shop. It seemed to be a regular fruit shop but there were certain people walking in and out of it that looked pretty shady.
This was going to be a difficult task.
There were small conversations between you and Bucky, mostly formal and about the mission. Everything seemed to be going well but you knew that the longer the both of you would stakeout together, the more it was going to be uncomfortable. You figured that you’d cross that bridge when you get there.
It was past six when you felt a pang of hunger; the last time you had a meal was during lunch. You needed to get food before your stomach could even embarrass you in front of Bucky who remained staring out of the window, keeping watch.
“I’m getting us food for dinner, would you like anything?” you asked.
Bucky shook his head, “Anything is fine.” he offered a small smile.
You left the motel and thankfully, there was a nearby Mcdonald’s a couple blocks away. On your way back, you decided to casually pass by the fruit shop to get a closer look. You didn’t want to linger around but you did notice that there were certain people who kept on going in and out of the store throughout the day. You rushed back to your room to inform Bucky about it and upon stepping inside, you were welcomed by the sight of the Winter Soldier fresh out of the shower wearing only a towel that was wrapped around his waist while he was drying his hair with another towel.
Your eyes immediately zoomed in on the droplets of water that was running from Bucky’s neck down to his pecs, sliding lower to his chiseled abs. Your eyes remained on his abdomen, even when the water had disappeared into the towel around his waist. By the time you snapped out of your trance, you shifted your gaze back to Bucky’s face hoping that he didn’t catch you staring at his body.
Oh, but it was too late because your eyes were immediately met by a pair of baby blues.
“I...b-bought...” you stammered and wanted to slap yourself for sounding like an idiot. “...dinner from uh...Burger King.” you continued, unable to look away from Bucky’s piercing gaze.
“Mcdonald’s.” he said.
“What?”
“You bought from Mcdonald’s...not Burger King.” Bucky corrected you, pointing towards the brown paper bag in your hands.
You coughed and finally managed to look away from Bucky’s half-naked figure, “Yes, I meant Mcdonald’s. Sorry.” you softly said and pre-occupied yourself by taking out the food from the paper bag and placing them on the small table.
As you focused your attention on arranging the food on the desk, you felt Bucky hover behind you. His bare chest slightly pressing against your back as he reached for the french fries that was still inside the paper bag. You stood still and tried to keep your cool despite the closeness between you and Bucky. He pulled away just as quickly and grinned when you looked back at him with a frown.
“You smell good, Agent.” he said before grabbing his clothes from his bed and walking back into the bathroom to get dressed.
You blinked a couple of times before you realized what had just happened.
“Fuck!” you whispered under your breath.
This was going to be one hell of a stakeout.
-
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downywrites · 3 years
Text
I feel bad for my radio silence, so please have the draft lol
Skeppy finds that there is a way to tame beasts without ever drawing his sword.
Skeppy was not fond of the nether. It was hot. It was humid and dry, all in the wrong places. The piglins were rude to him, the hoglins were wild and liked to cause him all kinds of trouble, and the netherrack burned his skin whenever he touched it. He had no kind of interest in the area, he really didn’t.
And yet, he found himself floundering in the vastness of the nearest nether fortress. The almost-black bricks were refreshingly cold under his hands, a breath of fresh air within the stuffy stratosphere of the nether. He glanced bemusedly at his compass, the usually faithful tool rendered completely useless by the biome. “Prime, where the hell is the exit of this damn place?” The sounds of zombie piglins groaning in the background echoed through the halls, making him shiver. “Ugh, just get me out of here already…” The diamond-encrusted hybrid’s feet made slight screeching noises as he scrabbled for a good grip on the tile. He tried his best to ignore them. “Come on, come on…” As he weaved through familiar hallways and rooms, his impatience bubbled at the top of his throat, begging to be let out. His tail lashed impatiently as he walked. After a few more minutes of searching, he threw his hands up in the air in annoyance, making a few confused piglins grunt and turn to look at each other. “Are you serious? Just get me out of here, Primedamnit!”
He growled under his breath, exposing a few filed down teeth as he did. In the back of his mind, he hoped he didn’t make the piglins angry. Slamming his eyes shut, he tuned into the air around him, trying to sense any sort of familiar substances around him. ‘If I can’t get out of here, at the very least, I’m taking some loot with me.” The vibrations of gold armor around him squealed loudly, but he ignored it for the sake of finding some diamonds or some larger portions of treasure. The heat of the fortress pressed down on the hybrid. “Is there anything nearby, or did I get into this mess for literally nothing?” Opening his eyes to glare at the piglins, he scowled at the floor he walked on, stomping wildly like a child having a tantrum. As he walked, he continued to tune in, clinging onto the idea he had in mind. ‘If there is nothing in the whole of this place, I might as well just go and troll someone by telling them to come to these coordinates.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘That would be funny to see.’ Before he could continue on his train of thought, a large ping made him gasp. Blueberry colored eyes widened at the sheer mass of diamonds and gold directly below him. “Holy shit!” Kneeling down to touch the floor, the vibrations of the valuables had him shaking with excitement. “Jackpot!” He ruffled through his bag, careful not to drop anything as he did so. He wasn’t one to leave anything around, not when there are piglins nearby. Within moments, he had made a hole in the floor, the small area inside dark and black as pitch. “Well, here goes nothing.”
He sincerely regretted the way he entered the cave or riches. Like the intelligent, mature human being he was, he had left his bag just barely out of reach, his pickaxe inside of it. And, in a similarly benevolent and logical fashion, Skeppy had immediately tried to escape the hole with his entire torso already in it to grab the item. Ironically enough, the world had it out for him. Why? He certainly didn’t know. But whatever karmic god he had pissed off was really, really mad at him that day. Because when he reached out to grab it, the whole of the ceiling crumbled, taking him down with it. In short, he was not having a good day. A small sigh escaped his lips, rubbing his head from where he had smacked it on the floor a little. “Ow. Jeez, why does everything hate me so much?” The whining noise of gold and the gentle pinging of diamonds surrounded him. His eyes gazed upwards at the small cascade of light above him from his endeavor. “Fuck, how am I supposed to get back up?” His eyes darted over the shadows of riches untold, drinking in the glitter of blue and yellow in the soft, barely visible light. “Hmph.” Crossing his arms and pouting, he rested against a firm chunk of nether brick, gold clinking around him as he did. “Guess I’ll just rest for a bit. It’s not like some fuck’s gonna get me here.” As if the gods themselves had it out for him one last time, the sound of valuables clinking to the floor startled him back to his feet. Legs wobbling from the effort and the sheer waves of fear he felt rippling through his body, he got into the best fighting stance he could and turned to face the source of the noise. The shimmering lights shifted in from of him, like a tide of danger forming to wash him and his ignorance away. Once again, the back of his mind informed him that perhaps he should have listened to the others when they said not to try anything stupid. ‘Then again, who would I be if I didn’t do anything stupid? Isn’t that my defining characteristic?’
That was the defining thought in the front of his mind when the shadow growled, white eyes slowing and casting a beam of light directly at his trembling form. Not exactly the best way to start off a fight, he would say. His knuckles gleamed back at the creature, sending light bouncing off of its scales. It snarled, a loud, guttural noise that threatened to take him down without a single point of contact with the beast. “W-would you believe me if I said that I didn’t mean to come down here?” Heated breath, even warmer than the outside air in the nether’s outdoors, buffeted his face and forced him to dig into the ground as much as he could just to stay standing. The shape shifted into the light, glimmering scales morphing into an identifiable (and distinctly terrifying) muzzle shape above him. Little diamonds skittered on the floor as it moved. Tiny little pinpricks of glitter and noise danced in his eardrums through the cacophony of screeching rocks and piglin shrieks and the musty, dank breath of death looking above him. Eyes struggling to focus on the the looming shadow that was beginning to block out the little light he had, he yelled up to the creature in panic. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Don’t fucking kill m-” An even louder growl hummed through the air. It opened its maw, nether vines and natural substances writhing like snakes on its face and horns. “Language.” If this were any other situation, Skeppy would have laughed. ‘It languaged me? A gigantic nether mob that is trying to kill me LANGUAGED ME?’ Unfortunately for him, he had no time to laugh as a large claw came down, large sinewy fingers extended outwards toward him. With a rather unmanly shriek, he vaulted himself onto a mountain of gold coins, running up it as well as he could. He spluttered as a few coins somehow found their way into his mouth, metallic taste staying in his mouth for several moments longer that they should have. All the while, the claws reaching out for him continued to swipe at his form. The wind from its movements blew into his face, causing him to take a step back. “Woah, woah- AGH!” The foothold below him shifted like dunes in the desert. With a small exclamation, he fell onto his butt, eyes wide with fear. A beam of light fell upon his form, a low, guttural growl singing through the air. “You have trespassed. And you broke my ceiling. You will pay.” Its low voice reginited the pit of fear that was currently planting its roots into his stomach. He scuttled back, shaking his head no. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to, p-promise!”
A large claw encapsulated him, tight and rough around him. The diamond hybrid scrabbled and squirmed in his grip, spouting fear-fueled insults and small, very fake reasons for breaking and entering, literally. A single squeeze to his midsection made his voice freeze and choke up in his throat. “Silence.” A white-eyes glare sent him reeling. ‘Too bright!’ “You have caused me problems.” Another squeeze made the bright light look like a vignette for a moment. Unable to speak, he scrabbled even more at the scales on the claw that held him, trying to find a soft spot to prod. A snarl rippled through the air, the vines on its muzzle swaying from side to side dangerously. “You will pay for your crimes-” A small, almost comically high-pitched yelp escaped the dragon-like creature. The grasp on his torso lessened. With it, came extra clarity on what he was doing exactly. There, right at the smallest spot where the underside of its wrist and lower palm melded into one, was a barely noticeable irregularity. Without knowing it, Skeppy had scribbled his nails over it. He raised a single eyebrow, unable to censor the words that tumbled out of his mouth. “You’re..ticklish? I big, strong creature of the nether.. Is ticklish?”
A series of sputtered, rumbling words didn’t help the creature’s case. “No, that’s not.. No. It’s not that, it’s sensitive. I swear on the bastions, do not- ACK!” Skeppy dug his nails back into the spot, giggling at the noise he got in return. “Aha, take that!” A frustrated, chuckly laugh made his very bones vibrate. “You know what, forget it. I’m going to put you down, and you...leave. Just leave. Do not mess with me anymore, got it?” He nodded in agreement. ‘I am so not going to let this slide. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? I die?’ The air wooshed around him, the only indication that he was moving downwards beside the glaring beams of light flicking around the area. As his feet touched the ground, he squirmed out of its grasp impatiently. “I can get down by myself, thank you. And,” he pointed up at the creature with a grin, “I’d like to see your face. Do you have a human form or something? And like, a light? I promise I won’t take any of your stuff for myself if you do.” The sound of scales scraping against metal made him wince. “Are you really making a demand out of me? Badboyhalo, the great demon of the Nether?” He sharply retorted, “Well, I can certainly say I have something, saying that I have blackmail on you right now! How would everyone react to word that you are ticklish?”
A sigh, much smaller than the other vocalizations from the beast, echoed through the room. “Fine, then.” Skeppy craned his neck to look at the shadowy shape, desire to watch the beast transform outweighing he dangers of doing so. However, all too soon, it was over. It didn’t take long for a shape to climb out of the scales they had shed, shaking off a few pieces of extra skin and ragged things he wasn’t quite able to make out. With a stretch of their back, a pair of wings, ragged and sharp in all the right places, flapped outwards from behind him. As they came closer, it was more and more obvious that the person was not human. From the red-tipped horns pointing upwards from their head, to the obviously inhuman pair of bat-demonic wings, all the way down to their lower back, which sported an appendage that was reminiscent of one of his friend’s old card decks full of angels and hell-demons of long ago. The flat, spade like appendage sported the same color scheme as their horns, pitch at the base and a shade of maroon crimson, quite like blood, at the tip. It gave their body a form that certainly reminded him of the towering creature that loomed above him minutes before. Their white, glowing eyes had not changed either.
They stopped a few feet away from him.
“Happy now?” Skeppy hesitated for a moment, confused, before remembering it was just him in the room. “Ah, sorry, you look really...cool! And yeah, it’s all good. Thanks for not, clobbering me, I guess?’ Looking straight into the demon’s eyes, he learned, was a bit of a challenge. They were double his height, and certainly didn’t look like they cared much about changing it. They scoffed, but it didn’t seem to be an insult, more of a normal, reflexive reaction. “It’s fine. Are you going to go now?” Skeppy pondered that for a moment. “Perhaps, but...I wanted to know something- no, two things.” They leaned in closer, eyes narrowing in a look unrecognizable to him. Perhaps irritation? “First thing, what’s your gender and your name? And second…” He looked at him dead in the eyes, gaze unwavering, even though the glare that seemed to burn in his retinas tingled a bit on his face. “Do you get a lot of affection, as the ‘great demon of the nether’?” Putting air quotes around the title made the demon look the slightest bit annoyed at the gem, but he didn’t care much at all about it. “I am male. And my name's Badboyhalo, if you didn’t hear earlier.” He balked slightly at the last question. “Affection...What do you mean by that?”
A small gasp of shock ripped from his throat, but he tried to play it off with a cough. A questioning eyebrow dispelled that idea quickly. “Is it something rude? Did I say something wrong?” Badboyhalo growled lowly. “If you made me say something bad, I will not hesitate to send you back where you came from with a tapestry shredded on your back.” The gem hybrid winced at the imagery that flashed to mind. He flailed his arms a little, shaking his head vehemently. “No, no! I’m just a little…worried for you, is all.” A scoff. “Worried? For me? And not for you? You have a lot of nerves for a strider-rider.”
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wackybuddiemewbs · 3 years
Text
Random Buddie Fic Snippets - no title, just (bad) vibes
Here’s to another snippet of things that ghost through my Word files. This one’s particularly headache-inducing for me personally. For one, trigger warnings galore. And then I have *checks file* 41k (!!!) words worth of non-fic noted down, but it’s really just unassembled bits and pieces of mostly dialog. Grrrrrrr. 😖
Since such a fic would take a lot more planning... which is basically the antithesis of me for all intents and purposes... I pester you with snippets like they are pestering me. Said it before and can only reiterate: I make you suffer with me. *cackles*
Basically, the story plays on the idea that Eddie and Buck grew up together due to plot convenient purposes and meet again at the fire station after years apart. Anyway, here’s to more madness mingled with angst! Cheers!
Buck slings his duffel bag over his shoulder when his phone vibrates. Sighing, he shifts his weight to take it out of his pocket and take the call. A smile creeps up his lips when he sees the picture flare up on his screen.
“Hey, what’s up, Mads?”
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that you were right about that little bakery downtown. It’s so worth the twenty minute trip,” she nearly groans. And Buck can relate. When he found that authentic Mexican bakery on a long run through the city, he may or may not have shed a few tears of happiness. And he may or may not have bought pastry worth a hundred bucks.
Totally worth it to run all those extra miles for the carbs, though.
“How many conchas did you have?” Buck asks, chuckling softly.
“I’m pleading the fifth.”
“Did you drive back to get more?” he questions, though Buck is fairly sure what the answer is already, which comes promptly, “Which is why I might be late for work.”
Buck laughs, leaning back against his car. “They are in the top 5 of conchas I ever had, which is saying something. So yeah, I get the feeling.”
And he should really know, he’s had the best in the world and no. 2 and 3 also. Though those are not up for sale.
“So, I need a bit of distraction to keep myself from digging through the remains of the bag before I make it to the car,” she tells him.
“Sure, what do you want to hear?”
“Howie told me that you’re getting someone new on the team today. Are you excited?”
“… Oh, ugh, sure.” Buck can feel his jaw cramping at that.
“You know you just sounded more excited about me being on a sugar high thanks to Mexican pastry than you are about your new teammate arriving.”
He’d hoped to avoid that conversation before he got over with it. Because that’s how he normally rolls with it. He gets over with it.
Works with band-aids and most situations that give you discomfort.
But Maddie has maybe not the sixth but seventh sense apparently big sisters seem to inherit by birth, so it appears that not even the most amazing conchas up for sale in all of Los Angeles will spare him having that conversation now. Which is the equivalent of tearing duct tape off, but slowly.
“I’m a huge concha fan, what can I say? And sure, it’s cool. It’d be nice to have a partner on the team, like, permanently, like Chim and Hen, more like.”
Buck rolls his eyes back as far as they will into his skull. It’s a small wonder that Maddie doesn’t buy his bullshit. He was fine just dodging the topic until now, it’s what normally works best for him. But yeah, Maddie just knows how to coax it out of him, and he loves and hates her for it.
“Talk to me, Buck.”
Buck looks up to the sky. “… I guess I’m just a bit nervous.”
“You are nervous? Don’t you think it’s up to the new teammate to be a bundle of nerves?”
“That’s kind of my thing, though,” Buck argues.
He has been ever since Bobby announced that they’d get a newbie, not a probie, but someone to be on the team with them. Dutifully, Buck laughed at the comments about how Bobby seemingly hired him a babysitter to make sure he doesn’t do reckless stuff all the time.
The nervous energy settled in when he got home that day and his leg wouldn’t stop bobbing well into lying in bed, trying to sleep. He only fell asleep halfway through reading the Wikipedia list of minor planets named after people.
“Then why do you feel nervous?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You know you can tell me,” she says softly.
Buck closes his eyes. He understood by now that yes, he can. But that doesn’t mean he wants to. Most of the time, Buck wished he didn’t have to tell anyone anything ever again and simply exist in the here and now. Because the here and now is sunny and tastes of pretty damn awesome conchas.
“I know it’s stupid, but…” His voice trails off.
And maybe she can read his mind, Buck wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be the case, because Maddie goes on to say, “You know he’s not taking your place, right?”
“What? Yeah, I mean…” Buck chews on his bottom lip. Whenever Maddie starts to talk like that, he feels like he’s sitting with a therapist. And suddenly, what he wants to believe are just his antics sounds like food for the shrinks.
“This is supposed to be your partner. Someone to have your back, not stab you in the back,” Maddie points out.
“Rationally, I know all that. It’s just…” He stretches out his legs.
“It’s just what?” she asks in a gentle tone of voice.
“What if he’s better than me?”
What if they realize that he’s expendable after all? What if someone comes along who can do things better than Buck without the attitude? What if he can’t prove his worth anymore because that guy can do it just as well, maybe even better?
“Then I will be glad because that means someone capable is watching out for my baby brother,” Maddie answers, pulling Buck back to the current conversation, not the fictional ones inside his head.
“What if we end up hating each other’s guts?” Buck continues. He had to restrain himself from actually typing a list of all those questions on his phone when his mind went spiraling upon receiving the news. Because that’s what’s been going on ever since Bobby announced. And Buck knows how stupid it is, but his brain didn’t get the memo. There are so many what ifs that it’s making him dizzy thinking about them.
“Then you talk about it like actual adults. And anyway, no one can hate you to your guts. You’re amazing.”
Buck has to fight hard not to blush. “Thanks, but you’re biased because you’re my sister.”
His heart still beats a little faster every time he says those words out loud. Something that comes so light and casual these days, though it isn’t. It is closer to what it should be. Because it should be casual, natural, given.
But apparently, the world didn’t get that memo yet. Seemingly a pattern.
“And as your sister, I’m also always right.”
“Are not.”
“Are too.”
He laughs. She chuckles back.
“Listen,” Maddie continues. “Just be yourself. You’re going to figure it out. This is exciting, Buck. More people to add to your family, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” he croaks.
“I’ll call you during lunch time, unless you’re out on a call. And then I want all the details on the newbie.”
“Alright. Pro tip: Put the bag of pastries in the trunk of your car. Only way to keep your paws off of them while driving.”
“I may actually crawl back, but yeah, it’d require a lot more effort.”
He smiles. “Drive save.”
“Will do.”
“Alright, I’m heading in,” Buck says, pushing away from his car. “Or else I will be running late, too.”
“Love you, little brother.”
“Love you, too. Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Buck hangs up and stuffs his phone back into his pocket.
Maddie is right. There is nothing to be nervous about. He has a team now. No one is leaving. New people are arriving. That’s how it works. That’s normal. And he gets to pester the newbie. So he should really be excited, as Maddie said. Buck knows he should focus on that. On how great this could turn out to be. On having a partner. Someone to have his back. All the time.
He sucks in a deep breath as he comes to stand in front of the door leading inside the fire station.
“The door is not closed,” he mutters with closed eyes, grabbing the handle. Buck pushes inside. He is greeted by the familiar hum of the fire station coming to life. People are talking over coffee, some are still fastening the buttons on their shirts as they make up the stairs.
And there’s no place he’d rather be. Buck knew that the moment he first walked into the station for the first time, and that assessment hasn’t changed since.
Buck makes for the locker rooms to change, not wanting to run late like Maddie. Once changed into his uniform, Buck finds himself a little more at ease. Athena once pointed out that they wear those uniforms as a way of protecting themselves. You take them off after work and leave all the bad behind that you’ve witnessed on a call. For Buck, the other way is just as true, though.
When he puts on that uniform on, he can leave his anxious, knee-bobbing self behind and do something meaningful. Because that’s what he found here, beside the team that means so much to him. He found a purpose. A way of answering a calling that lies far back in a past he can’t and won’t remember. To save lives.
Buck looks at his reflection in the mirror, straightens out the collar, makes sure his hair sits perfectly. His glance lingers on the name tag a moment longer, brushes his fingers over the metal plate, the one thing he can’t fix or straighten out.
But that won’t make me flinch. Ever.
“Buckaroo! Time for coffee and talk! I need new material on that show Denny and you are watching and that you need to update me on, so I don’t have to watch it!”
Buck smiles as he closes the locker to see Hen standing there with two cups of coffee.
“Coming.”
But that fixes a whole lot already.
-------------------
Hen sips her coffee in silence as Bobby goes on about who is doing what for the day. She is glad that she isn’t assigned truck cleaning duty. That’s one of the best things about newbies and probies coming in. They get to do the dirty work for a bit. She had to jump those hoops, too, like everyone did, so it only seems fair.
Chim nudges her in the side, pulling her out of her musings. “Have you seen the newbie yet?”
She nudges him back a bit harder to tell him wordlessly that he is supposed to stop doing that. “If I had, don’t you think I would’ve told you by now?”
“Just saying, being late on the first day is not a good sign.”
“Can I help you with something, Han, Wilson?” Bobby calls out. “Care to share with the rest of the team?”
Buck laughs beside them, earning himself a nudge from Hen. That kid is going places sometimes, but Hen learned to love him fiercely after he stopped being a punk.
Fine, he’s still a punk sometimes, but we got to see there’s a heart of gold underneath all the punk and muscle and hair gel.
He grew on her the way he managed to grow on anyone, even the Captain who doesn’t like to admit that more than anyone around the station. He fired the boy first week in, and it was well-deserved, but he proved capable and kind.
Hen knew she was done for this humanoid golden retriever when she fussed over not having a babysitter for Denny and Buck jumped in after he’d just done a double-shift. She and Karen were still working things out and he just made the room, even though the boy deserved bed more than anyone else. Still, he took Denny to the park, finished homework with him, and got him to go to bed even though the kid is not so much a negotiator as he is a small dictator when it comes to bedtime. Karen and she found Buck passed out, snoring like a lawnmower, a book still in his lap while sitting next to Denny’s bed.
“Nothing, Cap,” Chimney answers. “Just sharing excitement about the newbie.”
“You’ll meet him shortly. He had to pick up his gear first and talk to the higher-ups another time. Once he arrives, you can pester him with questions as I know you will.”
“On it, Cap.”
Bobby rolls his eyes, but then his mind goes back to the clipboard and the rest of the chores yet to be divided among the firefighters on shift. The rest of the morning routine goes without further incident, so the three are soon walking down the stairs to their designated task of checking their stocks on medical equipment.
“Okay. That is a beautiful man,” Chimney says, suddenly stopping in his tracks.
Hen trains her eyes on the dark-haired Latino, putting on a shirt. That should be the newbie, then.
“Where’s the lie? And I like girls.”
“Eddie…,” Buck breathes beside her.
Hen whips her head around at the sound.
“Wait, you know this guy?” Chim asks, but Buck doesn’t say anything. Instead, he starts to walk towards the new guy, or almost staggers, she should rather say. The newbie only takes notice of him when his head pops out from the shirt.
“Buck?”
To Hen, it feels like the two just go in slow motion while the rest of the fire station is crazy and busy as always. As though the whole world disappeared around them.
She can’t make out whatever words may be exchanged between them before the new guy covers the last few steps between them and pulls Buck against him in a tight hug. Shock is written all over his face, but also huge relief. Though Hen honestly wished they stood the other way around, because she would like to know just what expression is flitting across her little golden retriever’s face.
“What on earth is going on here?” Chimney mutters.
“I ain’t got no clue.”
The newbie pulls away, smiling over both ears, both hands deftly resting on Buck’s arms. Even though Hen still can’t see Buck’s face, it seems that the guy is doing all the talking for a change. Then he is hugging him all over again.
“I repeat, what on earth is going on here?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Before they can overcome their paralysis, Buck starts to move, gesturing behind himself. The new guy nods with the brightest of smiles, not once letting go of Buck’s arm as they start to walk towards them.
Her confusion is multiplied by the way Buck carries himself, eyes downcast, looking nothing but nervous.
Did someone exchange the 118’s golden retriever this morning, or what’s going on here?
“... can’t believe we meet again in this place of all places,” she can hear the new guy say as they approach.
“S, same.”
Buck is stuttering. To repeat the repeat: What on earth is going on here?
“We have so much catching up to do.”
“Yeah.”
“Buckaroo?” Hen calls out, or maybe demands. She no longer cares for the details here. She needs to get down to the bottom of this. Fast.
“Oh, sorry, I just… this is Eddie.”
“Hi.”
“Hi Eddie, it is a pleasure meeting you. We will greet you good and proper in only just a moment. Hold the line,” Hen says, before turning her attention back to Buck. “Now to you, Buckaroo. Spill the beans.”
“Yeah,” Chim agrees.
But Buck is not forthcoming. Boy looks like a fish out of the water, his mouth opening and closing without any sounds coming out. This makes the sirens ring inside Hen’s head, not the ones at the station. Because their Buckaroo never stops talking, even when he should sometimes, and even when he wants to stop talking, he will keep talking. So him not finding anything to say may or may not force Mother Hen to have to look after her punk chick here.
“We grew up together,” Eddie says after a pause, still all soft smiles and maybe even softer curls, by the looks of it. Hen will worry about that later, too. “I honestly had no clue he was working at this station, let alone that he was in L.A. Color me surprised. Abuela will not believe this.”
“Abuela?”
“My grandmother. She’s the one who fostered him before…,” Eddie continues, but then stops himself when he notices the look of sheer panic on Buck’s face. “They do not know this.”
Buck shakes his head.
“Dios.”
“Wait, you were in foster care?” Chimney almost cries out.
“In Texas?” Hen adds, her mind still short-circuiting thanks to that input.
“Yeah. I was adopted by the Moores after that.”
Chimney gapes at him. “You were adopted?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait, they don’t know about that either?” Eddie asks, now almost as frantic as they are.
Welcome to the club, hon.
“Now they do,” Buck mutters.
“But Maddie isn’t adopted. I should know.” Chimney lifts his index finger.
“Right,” Hen agrees.
Eddie makes a face. “Who’s Maddie?”
“My girlfriend, Buck’s sister.”
“You have a sister?” Eddie slaps his hand against Buck’s arm, shock taking the place of confusion.
“Wait, you grew up with him and don’t know his sister?”
“It’s a long story,” Buck sighs.
“Like how you’re Texan?” Hen scoffs.
Buck holds up his hands. “Okay, guys, can we stop spiraling for a second?”
Hen opens her mouth to give him a piece of mind, but she’s abruptly cut off by their captain standing at the top of the stairs. “Buck! I could use a hand up here!”
“On my way, Cap!” Buck yells back, the amount of relief to opt out of the conversation more than imminent. “Sorry, duty calls!”
“Hey no,” Chim hisses, but Buck isn’t having it. He pats Eddie on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Okay.”
With that, he starts to jog, or rather run, up the stairs. All watch him go, before their eyes fall back on the people standing right in front of them.
Well, if that’s not awkward.
“So, ugh. Hi again,” the new guy says, smiling sheepishly. “Eddie Diaz, your newbie.”
“Hi. Hen Wilson.”
“Howard Han, but you can call me Chimney or Chim. And why I’m called that is between me and God.”
“Okay. That may be only the second most confusing thing to happen on my first day.”
“We don’t normally act like this,” Hen tries to reassure him.
Chim makes a face. “We don’t?”
Hen nudges him in the side hard enough to make Chim gasp.
“Wilson, Han, you’re supposed to get on with the stocks!” someone calls out.
“You’re not our boss!” Chim shouts back at what turns out to be that jackass Lambert from B-roll no one likes because his attitude stinks about as much as his aftershave.
“But Cap is and he told me to tell you to move it!”
“I hate that guy,” Chim grumbles.
“I think I’ll like it here,” Eddie chuckles.
“They are so young and innocent when they join,” Chim snorts.
“Welcome to the 118,” Hen says, giving the younger man’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I suppose you should go up there as well and talk to the captain.”
“Alright, I’ll see you around.”
“Most certainly.”
“That was only mildly threatening,” Chim laughs, rolling his eyes well before Hen jabs him another time.
“Good to have you here,” he adds.
“Indeed.”
“Good to be here. See you later.”
“Later,” both say in unison.
Eddie smiles at them before climbing up the stairs.
“You try to get a hold of your boo, I’ll see what info I can squeeze out of Cap or Buck, whoever I get my hands on first.”
“Aren’t we supposed to get on with…”
Hen glowers at him.
“I said nothing.”
“Less talking to me, more talking to your girlfriend.”
Chimney makes a mock salute, before walking away while fiddling with his phone. Hen let’s her gaze wander up to the gallery with a grimace. Something is not right, but she is going to figure it out. Because Hen Wilson keeps all her little chicks on track, even more so now that they got a new one to take care of.
-------------------
Eddie tosses the sponge into the water bucket. Getting some of the crappier chores for the day is something he fully expected to happen. What he didn't expect, not in a million years, was running into Buck. Eddie’s head is still reeling because of it. And for what it seems, the same is true for Buck.
Buck.
To say that he seemed shocked is an understatement. Eddie knows the way Buck expresses panic. He’s grown up making sure the kid breathed instead of keeling over when it hit him, so Eddie knows that this was not just surprise, this was fight-or-flight level panic. Eddie knows by now he was so panicked because his colleagues didn’t know about the fostering or adoption – and he could still kick himself for bringing it up unawares.
He jumped to the conclusion because Buck used to talk about it freely to anyone who asked, especially after he was adopted by the Moores. Because it was his way of signifying to the rest of the world that he’d made it from being abandoned to finding friends and family. So Eddie assumed that Buck wouldn’t act any different around his colleagues.
Far from it!
“Eddie, my friend.”
Eddie nearly jumps when Hen and Chimney materialize next to him.
Speaking of…
“Hi,” he greets them.
“How’re you liking it thus far?”
“The detergents smell not as bad as some others do,” Eddie snorts. “But I’m pretty sure that’s not what you came here to ask me about.”
“Just so that you know, you can tell us anything,” Hen says in that mild tone of voice, though Eddie is pretty sure she only says it this way not to scare him away.
“You are looking for bribing material on Buck, I take?”
“We always appreciate it, but we are more like… trying to get up to speed. Until you came to the station, we didn’t even know he’d been fostered,” Hen answers.
“Or adopted,” Chimney adds.
“In Texas.”
Eddie chews on the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, about that. So he actually found his sister?”
If seeing Buck nearly floored him, hearing about his sister was definitely not adding to Eddie’s calm.
“Yes, she’s my girlfriend. You’ll get to know her soon enough.”
There is a part in Eddie that’s very much relieved to hear that Buck found at least part of his family, but another part of him hurts at the news just as much. Because that means Buck likely learned some very uncomfortable truths about his past that won’t have added to the man’s confidence.
“Back in Texas, we knew nothing about where he came from, including whether he had siblings or not. There was an assumption, but no one could be sure.”
“How old were you by the time your grandmother fostered him?”
“I was eight years old.”
“Eight years old… Buck made it sound like he and Maddie were out of touch like, only by the time she got to know Doug.”
Eddie frowns. “Who’s Doug?”
“No one you want to know.” Chimney shakes his head.
Eddie shakes his head. All of this starts to make less and less sense. Why didn’t Buck tell them about any of this? Why didn’t he when he apparently found his sister? Why are they about as clueless as he is, even though they’ve been working side-by-side with him for how long now?
“We lost sight of each other when the Moores moved away from Texas. So they aren’t around anymore?”
Hen shrugs at that. “Let’s say we’ve never met them, never talked about them, or seen any pictures.”
“Kid arrived here with a travel bag and the will to become a firefighter,” Chimney adds.
Eddie can’t help but smile at that. “That sounds like him.”
“You sound pretty clueless actually, and not gonna lie, that is strangely reassuring,” Chimney snorts.
“I prepared for meeting many new people today. Not my best friend back from childhood.”
“Aw.” Hen clutches her hands in front of her chest.
“I just hope he’s not mad at me.” Eddie grimaces. There is something tugging at his heart, just thinking about it. A memory that goes way back in time. When he thought he’d messed it up with Buck forever and always, but he forgave quicker than Eddie could forgive himself.
“I don’t remember our Buckaroo being capable of keeping grudges for long.”
“Then that hasn’t changed at least,” Eddie sighs.
“I think you two should definitely get something to drink after work, reminiscence about the good old times. Catch up. Report back to us in the morning,” she says, her voice trailing off.
“You are aware that they are childhood friends.”
“But I can be far more intimidating.”
“I think getting something to drink and catch up is actually a good idea,” Eddie ponders. “So thanks.”
“You, I like.”
Eddie grins.
“You still missed a spot, though.”
Eddie chuckles, shaking his head. Buck made some good friends here, for what it seems. And he is more than glad for it. They can surely figure this all out.
-------------------
Waking up this morning, Buck thought his biggest worry would be to sort himself out with regards to the newbie and his standing on the team as a result. While that remains true, he just didn't imagine for one hot second it may be Eddie of all people in the entire universe.
Eddie.
When Buck saw him at the station, he didn’t know how to breathe. Even though he hadn’t seen him in years, he knew instantly, only to know that he suddenly knew nothing anymore. Buck used to think he made his peace never seeing Eddie again after they moved away, but then Eddie was hugging him and all those things Buck made sure to bury deep in the ground started to crawl up through the dirt, scratching at a way too thin surface.
And now he is sitting at a bar, nursing his alcohol free beer – because he doesn’t drink when driving, he has to get people out of cars thanks to that behavior way too often, thank you very much. He is at a bar. With Eddie. His Eddie. Because Eddie invited him to get a beer after the shift, and Buck didn’t know how to say no.
Story of my life, isn’t it?
“… I don’t even know where to begin,” Buck admits after a while of awkward silence spreading between them, wherein both men just started peeling the label off of their bottles of beer.
“Same. I mean, you got a sister.”
“Yeah, ugh, I would have told you that, but Chim is still over the moon with her, so of course he mentioned her before I could. They are cute together, but at the disgusting kind of stage,” Buck ponders.
“I’m just so happy for you that you found your family, Buck.”
He manages a feeble smile. Because Buck knows that Eddie means it, understands it perhaps better than most. Because he had to deal with it growing up, had to deal with Buck dealing it growing up.
“I didn’t really find Maddie. We just… happened to meet again. Like us two did today.”
Eddie blinks at him. “Really?”
Buck nods his head. The universe always had the strangest kind of humor when it came to him.
“She’s a dispatcher now. We talked over dispatch for a while, not knowing who we are to each other. We decided to hang out. As friends. She didn’t know people in the city after she moved there only recently, so we also went to a pub and… we started to talk.”
Déjà-vu much, huh?
“Over time, I told her some stuff about my past and, well, Maddie realized that the timing seemed oddly familiar to the brother she thought had died,” Buck continues. “DNA test confirmed it.”
“I was wondering about that,” Eddie sighs, still trying to process that input for what it seems. “I mean, I really put my foot in it, just blurting out with this.”
Buck holds up his hands. “Eddie, no. You had any reason to believe I had told them. I suppose I’ve been blowing this up out of proportions anyway, so this is really just on me.”
“It’s your choice what you want to share with people about yourself, Buck.”
Buck blinks. Sometimes, he forgets how wise Eddie used to be already at a young age. He was also a dumbass a lot of times, but when it came to talking about Buck’s feelings instead of his own, the guy always knew how to make sense of the chaos and make Buck feel like his feelings weren’t just a tedious affair best ripped off like band-aids.
Eddie always understood Buck, even when he couldn’t understand himself. And Buck wants to think that the same was true the other way around, for as long as it lasted.
“Thanks.”
Eddie smiles at him, sipping from his beer.
“Speaking of, thanks to Maddie I now know my official name,” Buck continues, doing his best to sound jovial. “Evan Buckley.”
“Buck-ley. Well, that explains how you got the name,” Eddie ponders, before tilting his head to the side with a cocked eyebrow. “So do I call you Evan from now on?”
“If you want me to call you Edmundo?”
Eddie narrows his eyes at him. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Buck sniggers. “You should know better than to tempt me.”
“Evan.”
“Edmundo.”
“This sounds all kinds of wrong,” Eddie laughs, shaking his head. “For me, you can only ever be Buck.”
“Which is convenient, because I can only be Buck.”
There was a brief moment in time when Buck considered changing his name, taking on that identity, the one intended. In the end, he dropped the idea for what he hopes to be for good. He doesn’t know who this Evan Buckley was or what he’d be now. He knows what Buck was like growing up. He knows what the guy is up to these days. And while they have their qualms, he’s mostly at peace with Buck.
Even a name tag doesn't change a thing about it.
Because he’s Buck. And thankfully, Eddie sees it the same way. So maybe he’s not entirely crazy for holding on to that, however schizophrenic it may be in the end.
“Anyway, part of the reason why I managed not to let anyone in on this is that Maddie agreed to run with not mentioning it. We just stuck to the part where we lost sight of each other and found one another again when anyone asked. And until now, no one really questioned the timeline.”
“And no one ever made the connection between Buckley and Buck?” Eddie asks.
Buck shakes his head. “Maddie’s married name is Kendall. She considered changing it back to Buckley after she broke up with her scumbag husband. But when she found out what kind of scumbags our parents are, it was out the window. So no one had reason to question the difference in names and just assumed that Maddie’s birth name was Moore, too.”
“I take that there is no good explanation as to how you ended up in Texas, then,” Eddie sighs. Buck can tell that he’s trying to sound casual, soft, but the white-knuckled grip on the beer bottle is an entirely different story.
“No, not really. As far as we understand it, our parents moved across state borders under the pretense to get treatment for me. Then they just dropped me at a fire station and drove back. They told Maddie I died.”
“Why would they do that? Why would anyone’s parents…?” Eddie shakes his head, disbelief settling in. Buck knows the feeling oh too well. When he found out, it didn’t make sense to him at all. But as more details were added, the clearer the bigger picture became, though it turned none the brighter.
Buck looks around, just to be sure none of the 118 was sent here to spy on them. Once he is sure there is really just them, Buck hunches forward in his seat.
“Well, I was a big, fat disappointment, I guess. They had me to save their oldest son, Daniel. He had juvenile leukemia. I was… I was a savior baby. Just that… ugh, I didn’t save him. My guessing is that they never wanted me, so they gave me away after Daniel died. I was just there for spare parts anyway.”
Buck suddenly feels something cold in his neck, only to realize it’s Eddie’s hand gently squeezing it. Buck tenses for a moment, then eases to the familiarity of the touch, suppressing the urge to lean into it like he used to.
“I’m so sorry. I would’ve hoped for something else to come out of this.”
Buck manages a feeble smile. “It’s fine. I got a sister now I never expected to find. That’s great. Over the moon kinda great. And now I also ran back into you, too. So I’m one lucky bastard after all.”
Eddie’s hand lingers for a while, no words spoken and yet all is said between them. And how much Buck missed that. Not having to say things for them to be understood.
Eventually, Eddie’s hand falls on his shoulder, giving it a light pat before returning to his beer. “So we’re still friends after I spilled to your colleagues?”
“I didn’t stop being your friend after you got so mad for me saying that you couldn’t bake for shit, so you covered a balloon stuck to a cardboard box in frosting and told me you’d baked a cake and I cut the thing only for it to explode in my face.”
“To this day one of my proudest achievements when it comes to pranks,” Eddie snorts, breaking out laughing at the memory.
Buck can’t help but laugh along. Many of those memories got stuffed away alongside the ones he’d buried in the ground. He had no reason to unearth them because he chose not to tell anyone. But with Eddie, those things come back to light and they shimmer like gold, even after all those years of packing on dust.
“Laugh it up all you want, I got back at you eventually.”
“Don’t remind me,” Eddie groans. “I got grounded for a month because you led my parents to believe I’d be stupid enough to have a folder for porn on the family’s computer and made a message pop up every time that the folder was overloaded and created a system error.”
“Yeah. That was a masterpiece,” Buck sniggers. “But anyway. If that didn’t cancel our friendship, I think we’re fairly good with all this here.”
“Then I’m glad. When you fled the scene, I got kind of worried.”
Buck shrugs. “You know me. I’m a whirlwind of emotions, so I thought it’d be best if I took the time to cool down.”
“That was definitely not how you went about it before,” Eddie argues.
And Buck can’t argue with that. Back in the day, Buck just let the storms rage, never minding the consequences. On the job, that’s still how he rolls, but it was also how he talked, how he presented himself. After he got to meet the Diaz family, he stopped hiding a lot of things. He screamed when he felt like screaming and he cried when he was sad. He laughed when he was happy. And sometimes he even cried because he was that happy, but he learned that this was okay. Abuela always told him this and he took it to heart.
At least for as long as I could.
“Which is why I’m working on it. But anyway! Enough of me. Tell me about you. How long have you been in L.A.? What got you here?” Buck asks. Judging by the look on Eddie’s face, his transition of topics is not nearly as smooth as he’d want it to be, but Eddie rolls with it anyway.
“I moved here only shortly, for the job,” he says. “Before that, I was working some odd jobs. Before that, Afghanistan.”
Buck winces. “Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s one way of describing it. After I came back home injured, I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to set priorities differently, and somehow… I ended up in L.A.”
“Fresh start.” Buck nods his head. There is still so much to unravel in just those few sentences. Afghanistan. Injury. Priorities. Eddie tends to hide a lot more in his words, even more so when they are scarce. But for what it seems, he will now get the time to dig deeper. Because that is what Buck knows someone has to do in order to understand someone like Eddie Diaz.
“Yeah, exactly.”
“I get that feeling,” Buck says. “Los Angeles is great for that, worked out for Maddie and me, too.”
“We’ll have to drink a lot of beers to catch up on all those years we didn’t hear from each other to wind up having a fresh start in the same city.”
“Then it’s a date.”
Eddie wants to say something, but then his phone vibrates. “Sorry about that.”
Buck holds up his hands. “It’s fine.”
Eddie takes out his phone and checks his messages. Buck can see the instant shift in the other man’s demeanor. He knows that change like the back of his hand, even with years between where they parted ways and now crossed them again. Eddie’s shutting down.
“Hey, uhm, sorry, I gotta head out. It’s urgent,” he says, grabbing his wallet, clearly embarrassed and beat-up for having to leave so suddenly.
Some things don’t change, do they?
“Hey, it’s fine, man. We, ugh, we are stuck together now anyway, right? We’ll find enough time to catch up. It’s a date, after all,” Buck assures him. “Also, you’re not paying for the beer, unless you wanna pick a fight with me. Just go.”
Eddie smiles at him wryly. “Thanks. I’ll pay next round?”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Now off you go.”
“Sorry another time. I really gotta…”
“See you at work!”
“See ya!”
Buck manages to keep up the smile until the door shuts behind Eddie. His shoulders drop and he sucks in a deep breath. He pays for the beers and nearly flies out the door.
He makes for his car and climbs in. Buck realizes only now how badly his hands are shaking. Struggling for breath, he takes out his wallet again and fishes out that one crumpled piece of the past he carries with him whenever he’s not on the job, so to be sure it doesn’t get further damage.
Buck unfolds the faded photograph with shaky hands and presses it against his mouth, breathing hard against it. The tears keep coming, no matter how hard he tries to stop them. They are happy and sad. Desperate and relieved. Everything and nothing. And all that at the same time.
Eddie is back.
Eddie is back in his life, just like that, after the years it took him to accept he’d never see him again. That he’d moved on as he should have.
How do you rip off the band-aid or duct tape for that?
Or maybe that’s just the universe telling him that some things really can’t be fixed.
Because apparently, the universe is still mocking him.
23 notes · View notes
timextoxhajima · 4 years
Audio
Member: PWARK SEONGHWAbs
Category: playlist feels one shot
Genre: fluff and smut (idk how this is gonna turn out lol i just couldn’t get the visual of boss/ceo? seonghwa out my head and you’re his secretary and i just--)
Word Count: 5.7k
A/N: if you haven’t noticed by now, most of my one shots/work don’t really have cliche plots? there are certain tropes/cliches that i don’t really like or i’m just not tuned into being comfortable writing them like eg. boss and employee is pretty nasty, that’s why the chaebol juyeon series turned out like that (i’m not gonna spoil it but if you know, you know that y/n wasn’t just an employee.) so in here, i guess it’s not going to be an exception? i don’t know when the day will come that i will write one that is EXTREMELY cliche and be able to be satisfied/happy with it. 
this is the first smut i’m writing for seonghwa; i’ve only been writing it for san and a tiny bit for mingi and the rest’s literally for juyeon ;_; so i hope i don’t butcher it. 
see you on the other side :D
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“니 맘 전부 알고 있어”
“I know your heart”
“oh god--” you shove the food on your spoon into your mouth, nearly throwing it on the table just as the music starts ringing in the room, and he was already resting his chopsticks on the bowl. “please don’t--”
“seonghw-- ugh.”
too late.
“forget it, do whatever you want at your own dinner table. i can’t believe you invited me over just so i have to watch you have your own concert,” the food calls you again, and seonghwa acts like he’s in a drama or a music video. 
“have you finished compiling the contracts from the previous year and making sure everything tallied?” he raises a candid brow at you, his hands reaching out to you as the lyrics ran its course. a frown draws into your forehead, and you swat his hand away, reaching for a piece of fried egg instead of watching him act his heart out. 
“i’m still working on it, but i’ll have it in by the end of tomorrow,” the egg finds its way between your teeth and you push some rice in along with it, fingers finding your phone when it lit up.
“wooyoung’s asking if we’re going to hang out anytime soon.”
you look up through your damp hair and glare at seonghwa, hands still flailing around and his torso following along with the movements. 
it really was a wonder you’ve been friends with him since you were teenagers, and somewhere, somehow, some deity really thought making you the secretary of one of your best friends was a good idea.
initially, you were relieved that your boss was someone you knew as well as you did the back of your hand, but within the first six months of being seonghwa’s secretary, you literally couldn’t help yourself from hurling a file at him once in awhile. 
it wasn’t difficult to catch you screaming at him in the office because he passed out from overworking himself, telling him to go home. not because he was taking a nap, but because you found him sprawled across his desk after working through the night.
that was the day everybody in office found out you were friends from the same circle. 
so whenever anybody had the slightest issue or complaint about their boss, they’d come to you in hopes that you would smack -- or yell -- some sense into him. 
seonghwa had his shitty days and it didn’t stop him from being a terrible boss; you could empathise. but otherwise, he’d be strutting around office and annoying the hell out of both you and your colleagues by giving them sweets, to the extent that someone would wonder just how he was the one everybody needed to address as ‘boss’.
“wooyoung? but hongjoong’s overseas and mingi practically vanished off the face of earth. if he wants to have a meal together, he needs to hunt mingi down first,” the fishcake in the soup suddenly contained enough power to make seonghwa stop rolling his chest and send it into his mouth. 
“i’ll tell him no then,” the message sends and you put the phone back down onto the table. “anyway, the security told me when i left the office that the camera in your office is down and they’ll have someone sent over to fix it over the weekend, so they just told me to relay the message to you.”
“why wouldn’t they just email me?”
your tongue digs into the gap between your gum and your upper lip sa you reach for the glass of coke. “i’m pretty sure they’ve given up emailing you, especially since you don’t use that email address often.”
“hey, i have one for office operations and one for business, is that so wrong?” his defensive tone causes his voice to crack and go off tune, striking a funny bone in you despite already hearing it a billion times over. 
“i didn’t say there’s anything wrong, it’s just annoying when you give someone your email but you don’t even check your inbox,” you finish your last spoonful of rice and chicken, downing the soup to wash down the food. “but anyway, point is, don’t do anything dumb in your office.”
he scoffs, finally returning dedicated focus to his food. the food that he bothered to prepare for you before even telling you he was cooking dinner. it made you obligated to show up, else you’d get an earful from him for being ungrateful. 
“name me one dumb thing i could do in my office,” his cat eyes widen and the whites around his pupils glare at you under the lighting. 
“how would i know?” sucking the grains of rice from the hidden spots in your mouth, letting the water droplets on the side of the coke glass run over your nails and drip off the base. “like have a heart attack and pass out tomorrow, if you choose to stay over time?”
seonghwa stretches his legs under the table, and his sock-covered feet jab you in your ankles. a sharp ‘tsk’ slides out from gritted teeth, and he laughs at your reaction. 
“it’s not peak period for companies to be contacting me now, so that probably won’t happen.”
“well, don’t leave your office door unlocked or something, someone could waltz right in and find your shit and that’ll just might be the end of you.”
“honestly, i thought it  would’ve been funnier if you encouraged me to do more dumb things in the office, since there wouldn’t be any footage of it.”
wincing in disgust, your hands wipe the water off the surface of the coke glass and you flick it at him. a loud snicker blocks out the music for a moment when he ducks and uses his arm as a shield. 
“god forsake i recorded that and told the office you said that,” the coke glass empties itself down your throat, and you help yourself out of the seat to help him clear the dishes. 
“it’s a good thing you’re worth trusting then,” you hear him say loud enough for you to hear while you rest the plates in the sink. 
a chair drags across the floor and the soft clinking of the porcelain plates from the dining table mixes with the water gushing out of the tap. 
if you had to describe your friendship with seonghwa, it’d be an open book. 
one of the best things about being friends with him was that he was always mature enough to look past little arguments or conflicts that shouldn’t have an impact on your friendship.
sometimes he was whiny and pouty and it nauseated you, but he was always one to have your back whenever you needed it. his shoulder was always there for you to cry on, not the mention the hugs he gave. 
so why ‘open book’? 
“i’m only worth trusting because you kept my secret and prevented anybody else from blowing shit out of proportion.”
a gentle chuckle rings by your ear, and seonghwa refuses to fill the sink with more dishes while you were still standing there. there wasn’t a time when he’s hosted a dinner and let his guests do the dishes for him. 
the water runs the dishwasher soap off your skin and you step away for him to take over. 
“it didn’t blow out of proportion only because i didn’t tell anybody else,” he turns and flashes his smile at you, and it reminds you of the first time you fell for it. 
you guessed it. 
park seonghwa was the love of your life at some point of time, and he knew. 
in fact, nobody else knew besides the two of you. 
you had made it so painfully obvious that if anybody was observant enough, they’d be able to pick it up. luckily for you, hongjoong was too busy making sure mingi wasn’t sticking a pen down his throat just to prove a point, and seonghwa was the only one who noticed you staring at him. 
so ‘open book’ in some sense... for the both of you. not so much anybody else outside your exclusive friendship.
the fear in your chest and entire body was so overstimulating in that moment he caught you staring at him, with eyes you assumed he would’ve found creepy, that you could’ve cried in that instant. 
it wasn’t likely that he’d stop being friends with you just because you had feelings for him, but it was likely that he’d start distancing himself from you just so he wouldn’t hurt you. 
~~~~~~~~~  FLASHBACK ~~~~~~~~~~~
“don’t fuckin’ let him swallow the pen!” he yells at hongjoong, who was struggling to use his relatively shorter limbs to hold mingi’s long limbs down. your stressed vision was darting back and forth between the little wrestling match and confusion and fear start to swallow you like waves on a stormy day when seonghwa gets out of his seat and walks towards you. 
“come on,” he shows you a hand. everybody was seated in his living room, pizza boxes empty and coke bottles neatly thrown into a trashbag in the corner with the flashes of light from the television brightening the room every few seconds. “let’s go out and grab some fresh air while these two idiots settle themselves.”
seonghwa literally pulls you to your feet, and he must’ve guessed how much shit you thought you were in, for you to require someone else to tear you away from the ground. 
the sliding doors rustle open, and the cool autumn air outside greets you as if to mock you. the street lamps outside his house prevent you from seeing any stars, but you remember why you were out here in the first place.
your fingers find each other, your nails automatically starting to pick and peel at the skin on the other hand as seonghwa pulls the doors shut, muffling the whining and the screeching mingi was polluting his surroundings with. 
your forearms were rested on the surface of the wooden barriers, and your eyes looked dead straight in attempt to avoid his. the wooden barrier creaks, and you catch a glimpse of his hands gripping the rough surface, his torso leaning over it at an angle so he could meet your eyes without needing to shift you.
the thumping and racing in your chest was so rapid and aggressive, you wish you were dead instead. your lips parted, already prepared to say sorry and get the hell out of his life before he breaks your heart first.
“seonghwa, i--”
“no, it’s okay,” his voice was gentle in the almost-quiet atmosphere. “i was already suspecting it, and you only confirmed it.”
the blood rushes from your feet into your face, and your knuckles whiten from the amount of effort you channeled into holding the wooden barriers to support yourself. the last thing you wanted to do was to pass out infront of him. 
“i know you don’t feel the same, but i don’t want this to ruin our friendship,” mustering enough courage, you turn to him and lock pleading eyes with his. 
“well, neither do i. i wish i could ignore it, and if you were just any other girl, i wouldn’t have bothered having this conversation with you,” he turns and leans his lower back against the wooden boards. “but it’s you and you’re one of the few things i can’t risk losing.” 
silence. 
“this friendship is more important than whether or not you reciprocate. so even if you did, i’d be terrified to even start one with you... in fear that we’d break up and everything prior wouldn’t mean anything,” the words roll of your tongue with such fluidity, it surprised you even more than it did for seonghwa. 
“if that’s the case, then i’m relieved,” he pushes himself off the wooden planks and digs his fingers into the top of your head, ruffling your hair. “i don’t want our friendship to finish so pathetically either, so i take it that you want this conversation to be just between us?”
the nerves in your body tell you to nod, and you carry it out before the thoughts even get processed.
a weak smile curls his lips upwards, and he removes his hand from your head. “okay. you have my word.”
~~~~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~~~~~
so just like that. 
you and seonghwa made a silent deal never to tell anybody, and you made an effort to shove your feelings for him so far down your heart, you think you might’ve shat it out into a random toilet bowl in the last six years or so. 
“anyway,” you recall how you even got to this part of the conversation. “so don’t do anything remotely dumb in the office. if anybody encourages you to do it, i’ll murder them myself.”
his teeth glimmer in the light and the water starts running its way through the bubbles and foam on his hand and the plates in the sink. 
you stay long enough to remind seonghwa not to do anything stupid in his office the next day and to lock the door whenever he wasn’t in, at least five times over. seonghwa forces you to eat some strange concoction of ginseng and peach juice before you had to run out the door and straight home. 
the next day at work passed strangely quicker, and much quieter than you thought. 
seonghwa didn’t spend much time outside you office, and your colleagues handling external liaisons were busy too. it wasn’t difficult to figure out that despite seonghwa saying that companies wouldn’t be approaching him for new partnerships, one big one must’ve come by to keep him in his little box in the corner of the floor. 
but more often than not, being seonghwa’s secretary made you feel obligated to stay until he actually chased you home. and even if he did, you’d try to peel him away from his workspace too, well aware that he’d probably spend the night in his office if you didn’t.
today wasn’t an exception. 
the last external liaison officer left the office and waved goodbye to you, leaving you at your desk in the cubicle nearest to seonghwa’s office. 
you gather the contract summaries and place them into a clear file, throwing your phone into your suitcase and pulling your blazer over your shoulders. after you hand him the contract administration file, you’re going to make sure he went home today, even if it meant shoving him off his seat. 
you stretch out your arms to straighten the sleeves of the blazer, one hand clutching onto your suitcase and the other holding the file. turning off the light at your desk left seonghwa’s office light as the last remaining source of illumination of the area. 
“seonghwa,” you call out, trapping the file between your elbow and your rib as you knocked on the door.
“door’s open,” his voice sounded so tired and strained, you wish you could scold him for being so hardworking, but that was just the way he is.
“i thought i told you to lock the door,” seonghwa’s eyes were plastered to the computer screen, sheets of paper strewn about on the desk. usually you’d be surprised, given how neat and organised seonghwa had to be. but since this must’ve been one hell of a contract, you could understand that he lost some of his bearings. 
“i’m in the office, there’s no reason for me to lock it,” his eyes tear away from the screen and look down at the papers. 
the office smelled like febreeze, which you already were used to. seonghwa sighs a loud sigh and he gets out of his seat, stretching his limbs while you walk around to his desk, placing the file down and picking up some of the sheets he was just looking at. 
you drop your suitcase to your feet and your eyes naturally begin to skim through the brand new contract he spent the entire day obsessing over. seonghwa shifts and you hear his shoes pace up and down the space behind you, probably trying to get the blood circulation going from the hours of sitting down. 
the lamp sitting on his desk illuminates the papers in your hands into a bright white, and the printed black words become so much shinier under it. 
“oh? samsung?” your eyes widen slightly at the name printed on the sheet. “no wonder you’ve been in here the whole day.”
he hums, and you start to feel his torso looming over you from behind. 
“what else do you have to do though?” you flip through the sheets, and he pushes your hair aside, his fingers lightly brushing against the skin under your ear. 
“not funny, seonghwa,” the frown deepens into your forehead when you notice all the sheets had already been filled up. “are you clearing emails? if you’ve filled up the contract sheets then there’s no reason for you to be her--”
the pressure on your lower back combined with the soft breathing on your neck cuts off the oxygen from your nose to your lungs. the air hitting your skin causes goosebumps to erupt all over your skin, and you start to cringe from the ticklish sensation. you flinch and your shoulder shrugs up to your ear as you turn around, taken aback to realise he was standing right behind you, barely giving you any space to turn. 
“uh...” the air was eerily still, and there was a strange look in his eyes that you don’t find familiar. your rear rests against the edge of the desk, and you pass the sheets to your left hand, right hand reaching up to wave it infront of seonghwa’s face. “are you okay?” 
“i’m more than fine,” gently wrapping his fingers around your palm, you raise a brow in confusion. 
you sigh and return the sheets back to the middle of the desk, hand still in his. “you look like you’re going to pass out, is there anything wrong?” 
naturally, your other hand finds his, and you pat the back of his hands like you were petting a dog.
“i need to ask something, and you gotta promise to answer me honestly,” there was a hint of fear and anxiety in his voice, and you didn’t like it. 
nonetheless, he was one of your best friends and he wouldn’t ever hurt you, no matter what he said.
he was probably going to ask something you would find offensive.
“alright,” you release his hands and cross your arms over your chest. “hit me.”
seonghwa shoves both his hands into his pocket and straightens his back, the change in posture making him look taller than what you were used to seeing. 
“do you still feel the same?”
the muscles in your neck snap your head backwards, and both eye brows lift themselves further away from your eyes. a small snort escapes your nose, and you start to nibble on your thumb. 
“‘still feel the same’? about what? about what happened seven years ago in your living room?” 
the smile doesn’t disappear from your lips, and it only gets wider when seonghwa nods. 
“park seonghwa,” you chortle, lifting your hand up to his forehead and pressing so hard into his skull that his head tilts backwards. “are you sure you’re okay? because i’m pretty sure that’s your juiced-out brain talking.”
one foot was already turned to walk out from between him and the desk, but he slams his left hand onto the surface of the expensive wood, and the loud slap of skin against wood startles you. 
your head whips to the left to look at him, and it dawns on you that he wasn’t messing with you. not a single feature on his face twitched, and you could see his soul crawling out of his eyes and threatening to squeeze into yours. 
“an honest answer.”
the most vital organ in your body starts to race, and the sensation yanks you back seven years to when seonghwa figured it out for himself. 
you haven’t felt the same kind of panic and worry since then. 
“i’d like to believe i’ve gotten over you, why?” the neurons in your brain struggled a little to piece that sentence together. 
“so it’s not a definite ‘no’?”
straightening yourself, you pat down your blazer and jab a finger into his shoulder. “did you not hear a word i just said?” 
“y/n,” this time he grabs your wrist, and you could feel the groves and bones of his fingers. “it was a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.”
a pause, and you start hearing your heart in your ears. 
“do you still feel the same?”
everything inside you screams ‘no’, but you were well aware that if you had to even convince yourself that that was the case, then it was obvious the answer is ‘yes’. you start screeching at yourself in your own head, knowing that if you kept quiet any longer, seonghwa’s sharp eyes and extreme situational awareness was going to help him crack the code. 
“i--”
“so it’s a ‘yes’.”
fuck me.
“seonghwa, let me explain, okay? it’s not that i didn’t try, i’m just letting those... stupid feelings wear away on its own,” you writhe yourself out his hold and he releases you, but you couldn’t prepare yourself for what he said or did next. 
“there’s nothing to explain, just let your heart tell you what’s good for you.”
there wasn’t a single cell inside you that could tell you why you were so scared, so when seonghwa cups your cheeks with his hands and presses his lips against yours, the realisation pulls your eyes wide open. 
red and white sirens go off violently in your head like declarations of war, and your palms press flat against his chest to push him back.
“what are you-- seonghwa, if you think this is funny, then you need to know that it’s not. at all.”
“no, please, i didn’t mean to make you think i’m messing with you,” his eyes soften, and you were relieved to realise that the seonghwa standing in front of you right now was the one you recognised.
“really? because if we weren’t friends for like ten years, i’d think you’re just another playboy.”
seonghwa offers a weak chuckle, and he rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment. you take a few deep breaths to steady your heart, the mind-boggling situation not exactly resting in a comfortable spot in your head. 
“is that how you really see me? a playboy?” he raises a brow with mischief, and the slowly diminishing gap between the two of you alarms your senses all over again. 
“i’m well aware of how the girls in school used to look at you,” his breath starts to hit your upper lip again, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand. 
“okay, but that was seven years ago,” you watch with the slightest pinch of horror when his hands run up your arms and rest on your shoulders. “but now we’re both adults and i’m sure you’re mature enough to understand your own feelings, regardless of what i was treated as in school.”
“could you hurry up and get to the point?” you frown when he leans in again, your head slowly inching backwards. “all this beating around the bush is going to piss me off and i’m going to leave you here alone and go home.”
the sound of his laughter landed in your ears like music, and you let it run through you that it was one of the many things that led you to fall for him. 
“okay, well...” he licks his lips ever so subtly, and he tilts his head so you didn’t need to. “if you still have feelings for me then i want you to know that i have feelings for you too.”
the confession rests on your skin like a layer of silk, and your eyes somehow become comfortable closing this time round. 
he tasted exactly the way you’d expect him to: strawberries.
your hands were still awkwardly gripping the edges of the table, so when he finds them and pulls them around his own neck, that was when you lost all sense of reality. 
you couldn’t decide between kissing him because you still had feelings for him or because you’ve spent so much time being comfortable around him, some part of you felt so at home.
the line was so thin that you physically felt it disappear. 
the thought of it was kind of messed up, but it was seonghwa, the one who stayed your friend despite knowing you had feelings for him, the one who stayed and protected you by not telling anybody else. 
not wooyoung, not hongjoong, not mingi. 
the feeling of your entire existence, and the last seven years, melt into that kiss was so heartfelt, and it may have been your feelings for seonghwa talking, but his lips against yours felt like heaven-born puzzle pieces meant for each other. 
seonghwa picks you up and places you on the desk, the kisses soft and gentle, and his fingers on your cheek made you feel like heaven all on its own.
if hongjoong were here, you just know he was going to yell at the two of you for choosing intimacy over your friendship, but for two people who had mutual feelings for each other, there wasn’t much anybody could do about it. 
seonghwa breaks the kiss and he gives you a gorgeous smile, the sight shoving a hundred butterflies into your stomach while the strawberry taste lingers on your lips. 
“tell me if you’re uncomfortable--”
“we’re in the office--”
“camera’s not working.”
a small scoff runs off your tongue, and he dips his nose into your neck. kisses the weight of feathers land on your skin, and your heart starts running through your chest like it was in a competition. his hands push your legs open, the sudden jerk shooting little bolts of shock up your spine.
whines start to drip over your lips upon the kisses on your neck, and seonghwa drags his palms up your thighs, the pressure slightly but never overwhelming.
he wraps his arms around your waist when he returns his attention to your lips, pulling you so close to him that your chest was pressed against his, and your nose starts to pick up on his scent. 
your weight begins to shift backwards as his hands messily push all the things on his table to the side, laying you on your back but never once breaking the kiss. 
“this is so not okay,” you huff embarrassedly, arm finding your forehead when he pulls away. you heard him gulp, and it reminds you that he must be as anxious as you were, if not even more.
“are you really okay with letting me do this?” he presses a kiss into your cheek, fingers caressing your knees that he held on either sides of his hips. “you can say no, and we’ll be fine. we let it go once, we can let it go again.”
the look in his eyes were so dangerously comforting, you felt your mind glitch a little trying to process them. seonghwa was so genuine and sincere about your feelings that it made you nauseous. the pricetag the both of you were putting on tonight was your friendship. 
one wrong move and it could all go down the drain.
“i’m okay as long as i know that you’ll still be here, even if anything goes wrong.”
seonghwa looks at you with slightly sorrowful eyes, before he kisses you again, and the amount of comfort and promise that you absorbed from it was enough to make you tear up. 
“i’ll never leave you, even if we aren’t a couple and if we’re just friends... even if we stop talking fifty years down the road, i’ll still want you to be by my side in the afterlife.”
your nose sours at his little speech, and your heart shatters without warning. pulling him back to your lips, you kiss him like life was going to tear him away from you. 
seonghwa drinks your love and need for affection with ease, fingers trailing down your stomach and under your skirt to play with the rims of your underwear. 
fingers slide under the material and he smiles into the kiss when he realises your body needed him more than you’d like to admit. you would’ve slapped him across the face if he pulled away just to tease you, but he doesn’t.
he swallows a loud groan from you when he slips a finger in, and your grip around his shoulders tighten upon the blissful sensation. 
your fingers start to fumble with the dress shirt he was wearing under his blazer, and bit by bit, the whiteness of his skin start to remind you of milk. 
seonghwa removes his finger and sucks it like a lollipop, his eyes flying up to the dress shirt around your chest and he does the same for you. 
you couldn’t contain the mewls that slipped through your teeth when he undoes enough buttons to expose your cleavage, and the kisses on the curves of your breast felt like you were already one foot into the afterlife. 
the last button on his dress shirt comes undone, and you marvel at his torso. for a split second, you felt so proud you fell for him not because of his face or body, but because of his personality. yet, now with the knowledge that he looked like that under the layers of clothes, it was too difficult a task to hide the lust that overcame you almost instantaneously.
“hold your horses, kitten,” he pulls away from your chest, at the same time removing your underwear from under your skirt. your eyes involuntarily lock with his, and again, you couldn’t recognise them.
“who are you and what have you done to park seonghwa?” you mock him in attempt to calm your own bundle of nerves. a smirk pulls his lips up in the corner, and he yanks you to the edge of the table where his groin was dangerously near your exposed core. 
“i’m yours and he’ll come back once i’m done with you.”
you throw your head back into the table when he kneels down, and his tongue finds your sensitive nub. your fingers run through your own hair when he starts flicking against you, occasionally lapping your dripping neediness up. he doesn’t push into you, which was both frustrating and pleasuring at the same time. 
you start to lose your grip on reality, and just as you were about to protest against him being such a tease, he removes his face from your south and begins undoing his belt. 
your lids were droopy with lust, and watching him undo the button and zipper of his pants made it so much more worth it. 
“i wish i knew this day was coming,” you whisper to him as he leans over you again, one arm holding his torso above you and the other, you assume, pulling his underwear low enough to release himself from the material. 
“so you can tell the girls that you’re having sex with me in the office?”
the line sounded so lewd, blood began rushing both down to your south and up to your cheeks.
“what, you’re shy now?” the brow he raises was so smug, you would’ve bitten down on his bottom lip if you didn’t suddenly gasp when he plunged into you without warning. 
your chin tilts so sharply towards the ceiling, he had to pull it back down for him to shove his tongue into your mouth, and a pinch of pain seeps through your entrance into your thighs. 
the harsh, rougher kisses were pulling inappropriate noises out from your throat, and he starts thrusting into you when he assumes you’ve gotten used to him. his right hand was supporting his weight by the side of your head, and his left palm was gripping onto your thigh with such immense strength, you were sure he was going to leave marks by the time you were done. 
seonghwa finally pulls away, beads of sweat forming on his forehead and his pants becoming more apparent. your arms grip onto the edge of the desk above your head, and tears start to form in your eyes when the pain completely dissolves into pleasure and bliss. 
“my pretty, pretty, secretary,” he huffs into your ear and licks the edge of your skin, the contact sending you over an edge and the friction in your abdomen drilling dirty thoughts into your head. 
“seonghwa--” the thrusts get deliberately harder and rougher, the sudden bucking of his hips enough to jerk the entire table. “oh-- shit--”
the tip of him starts to ram into a magical spot inside you, and your eyes roll into the back of your head when he doesn’t stop.
“be a good girl and come for me.”
every word literally gets hammered into you, and it sends you into an abyss of bright light while your legs shiver in ecstasy, and seonghwa pulls out shortly after, his speed allowing him to grab some napkin from the corner of his table so that he wouldn’t release anywhere on his desk. 
you struggle to catch your breath, and seonghwa reaches over to clean you off the table. 
“oh, no,” you cover your mouth and give a painful chuckle. 
“what is it?” his voice was soft and smooth again, and the gears in your head stop to process that this was the same person who just called you a good girl a few moments ago.
he pulls your hand away and gives you a light kiss on your lips, eyes scanning your face with worry and concern. 
“i told you not to do anything dumb, but i ended up doing it with you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A/N: WHOO ok that was kinda long for a one shot. anyway, it’s super mellow compared to what i did for pilot juyeon so i hope you (smut)readers don’t mind heh. i’m still working on HOSTIS chapter 2, so look out for it! it should be up any time in the next few days. 
thank you for reading, and stay safe!!
- love, dana
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imaginesandinserts · 4 years
Text
Irreverent Pt. 10 - Father Dearest
Title: Irreverent Pt. 10 - Father Dearest Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader Rating: R  Words: 2841
Content Warnings: Mentions of suicide
Irreverent Series Masterlist
"That's your dad?"
You were still reeling in shock as you watched Strauss and your father climb up the stairs towards the offices. Spencer, Emily, and Derek were all watching you. You think the question had come from Spencer but with the ringing in your ears, you couldn't be positive.
What was he doing here? Why was he with Strauss? This was supposed to be your place. Away from them. Away from him. So how on earth was he there, chatting with Strauss as if they were old friends. You must not have schooled your face too well, because Emily was asking you if you were okay. Her voice was lost in the din as you watched Strauss knock on Hotch's door and then draw both him and Rossi into the room with your father.
"Hey, hey, Y/N, look at me!" It was Emily again, trying to get your attention. You blinked and tried to focus on her - her voice - hoping it would ground you. She was holding you by your shoulders and she looked really worried. Both Derek and Spencer were right beside her looking equally bewildered by your reaction.
You had to get in there. You had to know why he was here. If he was here it was for nothing good, of that you were absolutely certain. You tried to give Emily a reassuring smile but it might've just been a grimace at best, because she didn't look reassured in the least. It's okay. You'd explain later. Right now you had to get to Hotch's office before he…before he did or said something that was...something. You weren't sure what. But you knew you had to stop him.
Before you knew it, your legs had carried you up the stairs, leaving your team to look at you worriedly. They'd had no choice but to let you go or risk causing a scene.
You knocked quickly but didn't wait for an answer as you normally would, but simply entered Hotch's office. You were being rude. You'd apologize later for your behavior. But not now. Show no weakness. This was your home, your office, your team.
"Agent L/N, may we help you?" Strauss asked, looking annoyed by your sudden interruption. It was against protocol and in her eyes it was insubordination - the worst of the deadly sins as far as she was concerned. Hotch and Rossi both looked at you curiously. It seemed you'd interrupted them in the middle of introductions though of course Rossi recognized your father. Maybe Hotch did too, who knew.
"I'm sorry, Chief Strauss. Please excuse me, I know I've overstepped. Why are you here?" The last part was directed at your father whose schooled poker face revealed nothing. No surprise at your intrusion. He looked at you with the same look he used to give you when you'd asked a particularly stupid question at the dinner table. The look designed to make you feel small and guilty.
"Agent L/N." It was Strauss again. Your father had chosen to ignore your question it seemed. "This is highly irregular, for you to interrupt a closed door meeting that you were not invited to."
"it's alright Erin. My daughter and I haven't seen one another in some time. Curiosity was a skill I ingrained in all my children. She took to it a little too well it seems," he laughed a bit disingenuously, gesturing to the surroundings. He was trying to defuse the situation but you couldn't be sure why yet.
"Actually Erin," he continued, "since you've assured me that this team is the right team for the job, maybe it would be alright if Y/N joined us?" He was asking, but he wasn't really. He had a way of doing that. "Please everyone, sit. Let's not all be so stiff. Darling, come sit by Papa." He motioned you over to him as he made himself comfortable on Hotch's couch. For some reason unknown to you, you followed and sat down on the cushion next to his, leaning just slightly away from him. You tried to revert your face back to neutral but there was no way Hotch and Rossi couldn't sense your complete unease.
Hotch's guard had already been up when Strauss had strolled into his office with the man, whom he now knew to be your father. Now, watching how you held yourself around him and seemed so electrifyingly confrontational, had every single one of his senses on red alert. He met Rossi's eye and knew that the older agent had caught on to the same - not that it was too hard to do, as you had barged in and demanded to know what the man was doing, daring to step foot in Quantico.
"As we were about to say," Strauss continued, looking thoroughly perturbed by your interruption. "Mr. L/N was contacted recently in his capacity as liaison between us and the Eastern Europeans, with some very disturbing news which he felt it imperative to share with us. The Director has already spoken with me about this, but Mr. L/N was contacted by a concerned citizen who has identified the presence of a serial killer who seems to be hunting American citizens up and down the East Coast for the past several decades."
"What about his role makes him the best contact regarding a tip about serial killers." You could've kissed Hotch for seeing through the bullshit. That's what it was. Complete and utter bullshit. Bureaucratic bullshit that you had been trained to see your entire life. Your father leaned closer and put his arm nearest you at the back of the couch, and then moved it down to be around your shoulders. You just wanted to fling yourself across the room and stand next to Hotch. Behind Hotch. Anywhere but seated near this man.
"I am a trusted figure in these communities. Often these people do not trust law enforcement to be on their side." He was trying to explain his job, his duty as he called it. The entire thing was revolting.
"So what do you have for us, then?" It was Rossi who asked this time, fixing your father with a firm look.
"Oh David, it has been such a long time since we last saw one another. Your directness. Always something I've admired." Ugh. He was trying to be charming. Rossi had to see through it.
Strauss chose to be the one to take Rossi's question. "Mr. L/N has compiled a lot of information on this case. I have already passed it along to both Agents Garcia and Jareau and the BAU will be prioritizing this over any other case." Her tone left little room for argument and you knew you were already on thin ice due to your earlier interruption.
Hotch was fuming on the inside. Strauss was dictating which cases his team did for some political agenda. And your father was at the middle of it for some bizarre reason. You seemed frightened. That was a sobering thought for him. He made sure his face revealed nothing as he simply nodded, knowing he would rant to Rossi about this as soon as Strauss was out of earshot.
The wheels in your head were spinning trying to make sense of it. Strauss wanted the team to take a case to hunt down a serial killer that your father had identified. Why? Who was this man? Why was your father trying to get him caught?
"Darling, why don't we let Agents Hotchner and David here get started and you can join me for dinner?" He was asking you to share a meal with him. Un-fucking-believable.
"Oh Papa, you know I would love to. But as you and Chief Strauss have emphasized, this case is of the utmost importance. I'm sure the whole team will be brought in and we will probably have to fly out tonight." You looked to Hotch for confirmation and he nodded.
"Yes, sir. Agent L/N is correct. We'll be bringing in the whole team and starting right away." Oh that perfect, smart, beautiful man. He was about to get free babysitting for Jack for life.
"Well, in that case, I suppose I'll leave you to it. Chief Strauss, thank you. Agents. Y/N, escort your Papa back to the elevators at the very least and perhaps the two of us can plan something for when you've wrapped up this little nuisance." You wanted to refuse but of course you couldn't. You faked a smile, and as he shook everyone's hands and exited the room, he pulled you in closer, tucking your hand into the crook of his elbow as you walked out together, with Strauss at your heels.
"So, that was Y/N's dad," Hotch found himself feeling a mixture of revulsion and pity as he watched the man force you to walk him to the elevators. Your posture was stiff the entire way.
"Yes, however I've never seen him with Y/N before," Rossi confided as the two of them started to dig into the files that Strauss had left on Hotch's desk.
"Did she seem-"
"Scared?"
Hotch nodded grimly.
"Yes."
*------------*
As the elevator doors closed, hiding his face from view, you knew you had to face the team again. They were bound to have questions. You just weren't sure how honest you were prepared to be with them quite yet.
As you turned to walk back, you saw Rossi summoning everyone to the conference room. He was waiting for you outside, after having ushered everyone else in.
"You okay kiddo?" Rossi actually looked really worried, and you reminded yourself that this was a man who might actually have some idea of who your father truly was.
"Not even in the slightest." You let out a breath that you had likely been holding since you'd heard his voice again.
"Alright, come on in then. We might as well all talk it out," he said, urging you in to join the rest of the team. They all look so worried. Emily made eye contact and you could physically feel her suppressing a what-the-fuck-was-that-y/n? You couldn't look at her too long - any of them. You turned to look at Hotch standing at the head of the table. He still looked calm. A little worried, but he was maintaining the calm overlay and that helped. Hotch was here. Hotch could handle anything.
You knew they were all waiting for you to go first. It seemed Garcia and JJ had filled everyone else in while you'd been in Hotch's office, as they all had a copy of the case file in front of them. You took a deep breath, bracing yourself, not quite knowing what was about to come out of your mouth.
"So…that was my father." You looked around, trying in vain to maybe just laugh it off, but they all looked so concerned still. This was mortifying.
Steeling yourself, you decided to just go for it. "Look, Hotch, whatever he says, whatever he does, don't trust him. This case, there's no way he just came across someone who handed him a file on a serial killer we knew nothing about. Isn't that suspicious to anyone? How did he possibly convince Strauss and the Director!" You had blurted out more than you'd actually meant to. You must look crazy.
They were all suspiciously quiet. It appeared they were deferring to Hotch and Rossi.
"Y/N," Hotch's voice was soft and cajoling, your name always sounded so nice in his mouth. "Why are you afraid of your father?"
Of course he'd pick up on that. You released another deep breath. You could hear the wall clock ticking as they all looked at you still. "My father is not a good man," you began, stifling the part of you screaming at you to trust no one. "Rossi, you know him. You know his reputation. He's not like your mom, Em. He's not an ambassador like her. He makes shady backroom deals and he's a liaison which is really just code for government-approved mob bosses. If he wants something from us, it's part of a larger plan and we won't know what it is until we're in too deep."
You hadn't realized you were shaking as badly as you were, but JJ had come around the table to sit next to you and her warm hand was truly the only thing keeping you mentally in the room instead of in a dark room inside your mind, screaming your head off.
"Okay, but Y/N, that doesn't answer my question. Why are you afraid of him?"
You had to just get it out. They would believe you, even if no one else would.
"I don't know if you guys know this, but I have two older brothers," you started to disclose.
"Yes, older one is Dominic - he works under your father. Your younger brother, the middle child, Julian, is deceased - mugging victim." Reid's recall from your background file sure came in handy.
"Yeah," you gave Spencer a shaky smile for filling in some of the details. You weren't sure how you were going to get this out entirely. JJ's hand was still clasped in yours and Hotch's brow was furrowed in worry, his lips a thin line. "I can't prove this," you said, shaking your head a bit, "but I'm confident that my father had Julian killed."
Penelope gasped, barely audibly.
"Y/N, sweetheart," JJ's voice broke out into the silence. "Why would you think that?"
"Julian was - he was not who my father expected a son of his to be. My father is a traditional man, and he cannot stand anyone contradicting him. Going against what he's ordered them to do. In my last year at Harvard, Julian was seeing someone. He had told me around the holidays and was going to introduce us at graduation. He died the month before. At graduation, a close friend - someone who has been around for me and my family since before I was born - confided in me that he suspected that Julian's death was not a suicide. You see, my father had a business deal he wanted to seal and he was pressuring Julian to date this girl while Julian was in his other relationship."
"Your brother was gay," Rossi asked but it wasn't a question. They all knew by the way you'd described your father.
"Yes. But I didn't know. Like I said, old school, traditional family with a reputation to hold. I only found out afterwards because my friend had Julian's journal from his final days. In it he was going to go public with his relationship and wrote about an argument he had had with my father when he refused to date that girl to seal the deal. My father knew then that Julian was gay."
"But, you really think he would kill his own son?" Derek was standing now, the incredulity evident on his face.
"I know he did. In his final days Julian was scared. My father has a lot of contacts that are seedy at best. Hiring a hit to avoid the embarrassment to the family of having a gay son - that is something that he would do. I grew up with the man, and there isn't a doubt in my mind that he's capable of it."
"Y/N," Emily had finally spoken. She looked at you and you knew that she wanted to believe you but her inner investigator needed more. "Is it possible that Julian committed suicide?"
"Yeah, it is," you admitted. "In which case my father drove him to it and then made it seem like a mugging to avoid the embarrassment of a gay son who committed suicide."
JJ's touch was reminding you too much of how good of a person she was and the crap family that you were associated with. You withdrew your hand from hers and stood to go lean against the wall as they all processed everything you'd revealed. Penelope brought over a glass of water for you and made sure you drank it, petting your hair to help calm you down. You hadn't realized you were still trembling.
After a few minutes, it appeared Rossi and Hotch had come to some sort of nonverbal decision, because Hotch had walked over to stand in front of you. You looked up to meet his eyes - his warm brown eyes which seemed lit with fire - rage and anger on your behalf. "Okay, then we'll work the case. But there's two cases. One is the case we've been handed. The other is figuring out why."
His declaration was directed just at you but it was obviously meant for the whole team. As you looked around the room, you could tell there were people in here who believed you with no proof at all. They'd simply accepted that he was evil and there was a larger plot afoot, just because you'd said so. All they'd needed was your word.
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mollymauk-teafleak · 3 years
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Partners in Crime
Please consider reblogging and leaving a comment over on Ao3!
Just a silly little scenario I had rattling around in my head! Huge thanks to @spiky-lesbian and @minky-for-short for always being amazing betas!
tw: mentions of drinking, hangovers
Juno Steel opened his eye and immediately wanted to strangle the person who had designed this hotel room. Any interior decorator who knew they were putting together a hotel room in Nueva Vegas, the prime place on Neptune where people went to get blackout drunk and collect the finest hangover symptoms in the galaxy, yet still insisted on neon wallpaper deserved death.
He inhaled, feeling an ache in his ribs that came from too much raucous laughter and tasting stale alcohol, taking a mental catalogue of his body as his nerves came back online. His eyelashes felt heavy with mascara that had curdled overnight, his throat felt rough with overuse, his stomach only had a slight roil to it, a sea on a choppy day rather than in the middle of a storm. He was wearing the pyjama bottoms he’d actually packed but he couldn’t speak for the shirt- his top half was still wearing last night’s spangled bralet.
And he had Nureyev’s arm thrown bonelessly over his chest, his sharp chin digging a little painfully into his shoulder, his soft snores in one ear and his dark flyaways ticking his nose. His breath smelled pretty strongly of gin but Juno could put up with that, he wasn’t one to throw stones.
Overall, Juno Steel had suffered far worse mornings. In fact, this one would probably still make it into the top twenty.
Smiling, he gently nudged Nureyev to one side, making sure he fell back against the lavish pillows and settled again before sliding out from under the silky sheets. The hotel room’s crisp air conditioning raised goosebumps across his skin as he padded across the room, stockinged feet sinking considerably into the thick, bright pink carpets. They really had made an ungodly mess of one of the most expensive hotel rooms on Neptune, he was pretty impressed with just how many empty plastic glasses, dregs of champagne clinging to their sides, were scattered around the hot tub, just how much glitter had shed from their clothes onto the floor, the probably very incriminating blueprints and files and notes that were scattered like confetti. Not incriminating for the job they’d just pulled off, of course, just several they were considering in the future.
There was no sign of the rest of their family, no Rita singing almost incomprehensible karaoke into a can of chips, no Jet sitting in a chair by the window with his arms folded and head nodding as he slept like an old dad though a whisper of any threat would snap him up and ready. No Buddy and Vespa slow dancing to music only they seemed able to hear while the neon flashes from the signs outside the window bathed them in candy coloured light.
They must have staggered back to their own rooms, just before the celebrations of a job well done would have wound down into a sleepover. Juno frowned as he scratched tiredly at where his hair was matted down, trying to remember. Buddy’s usual habit of making them all drink as much water before bed as she could had saved him from vomiting and a splitting head but memories were still fuzzy. Very fuzzy actually, now he tried to grab hold of them. No wonder his tongue tasted of about half the bottles behind the bar and his bladder felt fit to burst.
By the time he’d gone into the bathroom, wincing at the colour of lime green it had all been done up in, and dealt with that problem he could hear Nureyev stirring.
Coming back into the room, now dressed a little more appropriately in a soft bathrobe, he saw him stretching like a cat, his own wince playing across his sleepy face.
“Good morning,” he rasped, “Feeling rough too, huh?”
“Fairly,” Nureyev croaked, not making it very far before slumping back against the pillows, “What time did Buddy say we had to be back on board?”
“Not till three. It’s only eleven right now.”
“Ugh...I might not make it.”
Juno snorted, rolling his eye, “God, you’re such a lightweight, you whine so much when you’re hungover. Look, I’ll pack the bags, you focus on getting your shoes on. I think one of them’s in the hot tub.”
Nureyev groaned, bringing his hands up to bury his face in them as Juno pulled the curtains wide and flooded the room with pale sunlight. So little actual sunlight could reach this distant gas giant, what fell across Nureyev’s face was actually simulated from a massive rig of translucent spotlights that covered the city much like Mars’ domes. Rita had told him all about it around their third glasses of champagne, before her speech started collapsing into inhuman giggles and nonesene and his memories got cloudy.
He certainly couldn’t remember quite how they’d gotten the room into such a state. It hadn’t even really been that big of a job, a fairly run of the mill casino heist to fund some bigger projects that Buddy had percolating in her brain. But, from the lingering carnage of their celebration, you’d think they’d stolen a goddamn planet rather than a few measly hundred thousands of creds.
And there was a lot of confetti. All over the damn place, where had that all come from?
“Babe?” Juno frowned as he started pulling their papers together, “Do you remember much about last night?”
Nureyev gave a sleep mumble and Juno heard the sound of the silken sheets running over each other as he turned, “I remember us pulling off a job so seamless it deserves to be in some kind of textbook on thieving. I remember everyone coming into our room. I remember Buddy ordering champagne...and that’s it.”
Juno suppressed a snort of amusement. He was sure if it was his husband’s small frame or his lack of experience with the stuff but about two swallows of anything alcoholic had him absolutely useless. Adorable but useless.
“Just seems like we really tore it up for some reason,” Juno shrugged as he moved further along, now gathering up scraps of their disguises- the velour blazer he’d been wearing over that bralet, the other one of Nureyev’s stiletto heels, a diamond ring he couldn’t remember which one of them had worn.
He paused, something about that ring making him stop. It was lying in the midst of some other jewels he’d been wearing yesterday in his role as a ridiculously wealthy outer rim socialite. So it must have been his, he didn’t exactly need his years of experience as a detective to realise that. So why didn’t he remember it? Why did it look so brand new, so out of place with everything else lying in that modest dragon’s horde of luxury?
“My love?”
Juno turned, taking the ring with him, “Yeah?”
Nureyev was still lying in bed, though he was holding his left hand a little ways from his face, frowning curiously up at it as he turned it this way and that. As he watched the fake morning sun catch in the gem on a ring that sat there, a ring identical to the one Juno held.
“Did...did we get married?” Nureyev said slowly, an expression on his face not dissimilar to the one he wore when he was doing one of the many puzzle boxes Juno got him as gifts, after he’d realised a year ago that he loved them.
“Yes, about a year and a half ago. You were there, remember?”
Nureyev shot him a look across the room, “I mean last night, my love.”
Juno sucked in a long, slow breath before answering, throwing the ring up in the air and catching it, “Yeah, that would really explain a lot, huh?”
They caught each other’s eye then and after that there was nothing they could do but laugh, hard and helpless until Juno was having to brace himself on his knees to stay upright and Nureyev was curled on one side and trembling.
Once he could see and breathe clearly again, Juno found it, lying amongst a sheaf of floor plans for the casino they’d robbed yesterday. A wedding certificate, one corner of it crinkled and soaked where some spilled champagne had caught it, a little rumbled from being shoved into the pocket of a velour blazer on the car ride back to the hotel but fairly unmistakeable. The signatures were certainly theirs, even if the names weren’t.
“Yep,” Juno’s face still ached from grinning as he climbed back into bed next to his husband-twice-over, “Apparently once Rigel Fortescue and Jack Antares were done being complete strangers while the Orion’s Palace Casino had half it’s funds drained, they went off and got married.”
“Congratulations to us, I suppose,” Nureyev wiped his streaming eyes, giggles still pressing up against his words, “Oh god help us, is there any way we can keep this from the rest of the crew?”
“Well, looks like they all signed as our witnesses so I don’t think that’s an option, babe,” Juno snorted, showing him the band of signatures clustered along the bottom of the certificate, each one a ridiculous pseudonym but the handwriting was all familiar, even with how drunk their friends had clearly been.
Nureyev gave a groan of dismay that he didn’t really seem to feel, cuddling up against Juno, “Does this make us a little trashy?”
“Yeah well, you knew who I was when you married me,” Juno nudged him teasingly, “Both times.”
“Hush!” Nureyev kissed his shoulder, moving slightly so he could hitch one leg over Juno’s hip. He was still wearing his suit trousers from last night, Juno noticed, if last night really had been their wedding night then they’d neglected a pretty significant part of it.
So he turned to meet Nureyev’s body with his own, wrapping an arm around his slim waist to close what little gap there still was between them, “Maybe this could be our thing? We wear a new name pretty much every week anyhow, why don’t we get married as many times as we feel like? I know personally I’d be willing to go...well, at least another three times. Maybe four, for the money.”
He felt a light nip through the shoulder of the robe as Nureyev admonished him with his teeth. Though his hands were saying something different as they slid down Juno’s back, squeezing lightly.
“I suppose it could be quite a fun tradition…” he murmured softly, “But I would like to remember the next one. Perhaps a beach wedding on Saturn…”
Juno grinned and kissed the top of his head, “Whatever you want, babe. I’ll make sure the next one is perfect.”
“Our first one already was. But there were parts of my moodboards I didn’t get to use…”
Juno nudged him lightly until he was on his back, starting to kiss his way down his neck, tasting his perfume on his lips, “And?”
“And I love you,” Nureyev amended, smiling as innocently as someone very obviously moving his wife’s legs apart with his own could, “And marrying you a thousand times wouldn’t be enough to show you how much.”
“I love you too,” Juno murmured against his collarbone, “Happy honeymoon, baby.”
And, as much of a surprise as it had been, as much as their heads still ached and they could still taste cocktails on each other’s tongues, as much as they had a ship to catch in a few hours, it was. It really, really was.
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nadisabug · 3 years
Text
Tea Girl // Prolouge // Pt1
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Pairing: eventual Zuko x fem!reader
Warnings:  Annoying little brother lol, mean grumpy old man, just filler, a lot of setting up and explaining backstory, some cursing bc I am A Sailor, a lil surprise at the end ;)
Summary: After Y/n’s little brother wakes her up, she goes through her daily routine. 
A/N: Ahh so this idea stemmed from a short one shot I wrote and now it’s a whole new thing 0.0 I don’t have a posting schedule for this yet, but it will be slow since I will also be working on requests as well during this. Also this reader’s background is super specific and detailed so if you don’t like that avoid this. Anyways I hope you all like it because it’s my first series on this app so I am a little nervous I know it’s trash but I hope you like it enjoy <3
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Series Masterlist // Part Two 
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The sun filtered in through the blinds of my window, gently nudging me awake. I rolled over away from the offending light source, desperate to escape my daily life. I snuggled into my pillow. Just a few more minutes.
"Sissy, wake up. The sun is up!" I felt a presence behind me, small hands pushing into my side.
"No Kai it isn't, go to bed," I grumbled, turning away more.
"Yes it is, get up!" I felt as my younger brother flopped onto me, crushing my rib cage and restricting my breathing.
"Oof, ugh, get off of me fatty," I groaned and tried to roll away from him.
"I am not fat," Kai sat up off of me, but still left his hands on me, his palms digging into me. "I am in peak physical condition. But I won't be if you don't get me to training on time."
"Ugh, fine," I sighed and pushed him off of me. I sat up and pulled the covers off of me blinking blearily into the room. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the dim light and I surveyed our sparse room. There was the mattress I was currently sitting on and a chair in the corner with clothes piled on it. Other than that the room was pretty much empty, the only decorations the on the walls were the ones that came with the house. The normal Earth Kingdom wallpaper along with a few paintings of landscapes. Nothing of ours adorned the walls.
I got up from the bed and stretched. I heard behind me a small cheer as Kai happily hopped off the bed and rushed to the closet to pick out clothes for the day. I followed him slowly, letting him get there first. I didn't have to pick, seeing as I would be wearing my normal uniform for my job at the tea shop.
We got around in the small bathroom attached to my room, seeing as it was the only bathroom in the small apartment. Luckily, I had earned enough money recently to move to a two bedroom apartment, so I had my own room now. I used to stay in the living room area and let Kai have the room, but with my recent raise at the tea shop we were able to move. That was another reason that the walls were so bare, we hadn't finished unpacking yet. Boxes were piled up in the small living room area, most of them still full. Our kitchen area was sparse too, seeing as most of the kitchen ware was in boxes.
I got around quickly and Kai and I were ready before the sun was all the way up. We got everything we needed and left the apartment, braving the cold weather.
"Sissy, I'm cold," Kai pouted as we walked to his teacher's house.
"I know, but there's nothing I can do about that," I sighed and reached over, tugging on his jacket. He frowned and pulled away, not liking the attention. "Tell me about what you are supposed to learn today," I suggested.
"Oh!" Kai exclaimed happily. "I know, we were going to go over holding our stances while we fight..."
I nodded along, but slipped into my mind while he talked. I was so glad that he was enjoying his martial arts classes considering his past. He was a nobleman's child I found wandering the streets when I lived in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se. I picked him up immediately and found out that he was disowned because he was not showing bending abilities. Yet, despite not having that ability, he had a different one. He had a knack for art. He loved creating on any media, whether it was charcoal from our fireplace or color that I got him for a special present.
I hated having to make him go to martial arts classes, but it essence it was a babysitting service so that I could work longer days. School only went from midday to afternoon, and I didn't want to leave him alone in the house being that he was still only 9. It was a a special class for those who could not bend but still wanted to learn how to defend themselves. It was a really good class, and he really liked being around other kids like him who couldn't bend. I wanted to be there for him but-
"Okay we're here!" He announced, pulling me from my mind.
"Okay, so remember what we talked about-"
"No walking to school alone, wait for you to come pick me up," Kai nodded. "I know, I know."
"And then after school?"
"Stay in the art teacher's room until you come and get me." Kai folded his arms and stuck out his hip. "I don't get why you always have to tell me this everyday."
"So you remember," I answered, bopping him on the nose after I did. He scrunched up his nose and faked a grimace.
"Whatever, I'm going to training, see you." Kai turned around and disappeared into the tall gated yard of his instructors house. I watched as other kids filed in behind him. I waited an extra moment to make sure he didn't need anything and I set off to work.
It was a long walk but I didn't mind. I made it before long and found the shop closed, as always. I waited in front of it for my boss who would soon open up the shop. I had asked for a set of keys before so I could start the preparations, but he had denied saying he couldn't trust me. The man was crotchety and old, not the nicest, but he let me leave to walk Kai to school and paid me well so I couldn't really complain.
"Well, here it is, Ms. L/n early again," I heard a rough voice from around he corner and turned to find my boss. Speak of the devil. He was old, maybe late 70s, with wispy white hair along the side and back of his head with a giant bald spot in the middle. He was wearing traditional Earth Kingdom clothes with some alterations that constituted our uniform.
"Yes, Kai insisted on getting me up-"
"That was not an invitation to tell your life story," my boss snapped. I closed my mouth immediately, shutting up. Again, quite gruff but he let me get away with a lot so I stayed.
We filed into the tea shop and began getting it ready. I pulled the chairs down from the tables and started pulling out chinaware. When I went to the back to get the stoves ready, my boss was in the front already greeting customers.
Shit.
I forgot to heat the water as soon as I came in. Now I would have to wait for the water to boil, which would take a long time, thus getting my boss mad at me.
A small voice in the back of my head whispered, or I could do it myself...
I shook away any doubts that I had. I didn't want the boss pissed off at me so early in the morning. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then took off the gloves I always wore. I placed my bare hands around the cold kettle and focused for a second. Then, after a few seconds, the water was boiling.
Boom. Done. Boiling water. And no one was none the wiser...
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