#every time i remember she died a while back i go through several stages of grief all over again | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cherienymphe · 3 years

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Bloodied Crowns (Peter Parker x Reader)

WARNINGS: NON-CON, STEPCEST, murder, violence, abusive realtionships, Tony x reader, prince!Peter, king!Tony, queen!Reader

➥ divider by @firefly-graphics

➥ based off of this ask

summary: When your husband, King Anthony, is killed in a coup staged by his son from his previous marriage, Peter, you are forced to marry the young man who no longer feels the need to hide his feelings.

Peter was only eighteen when you married the king, the stern monarch losing his wife only a few months prior. The engagement and the wedding happened so quickly, and before you knew it, you were married to King Anthony Stark. Truth be told, you’d feared that you’d never marry at all, and that you’d bring shame to your name, but a stroke of luck, or perhaps misfortune, had put you directly into the king’s path.

Your family had attended the queen’s funeral to pay your respects. It had been drilled into you to catch the eye of an available suitor, as it had been many times before, and while you were disgusted that you could not even properly pay your respects to the royal family, you understood your parents’ desperation. You were twenty-eight with no prospects on the horizon. They had no other children, no sons, your mother unable to conceive after yourself, and so the weight of carrying on the family name was solely on your shoulders.

Your family was not poor by any means, but you were far from wealthy. That being said, your mother spent an outrageous amount to get you the most captivating black dress money could buy. It was not something that would draw too much attention, but enough so that you did not look like a grieving widow yourself. When it was your turn to pay your respects, you recalled bowing to the young prince, the brunette barely acknowledging anyone’s presence. It was rumored that he and his mother were close, that he’d taken her death very hard, and the way he seemed to stare right through you confirmed as much.

When you bowed to the king, apologizing for his loss, you could feel his eyes on you. This was nothing you concerned yourself with. After all, you were speaking to him and he you, but when you rose, you were taken aback by the intensity you found in his dark eyes. Where his son seemed to look through you, the king could not seem to take his eyes off of you. No one else seemed to notice, and, brushing it off, by the time you returned home, you had forgotten all about it.

Until a few days later when a royal guard was at your door. You were being invited to dine with the king, the invitation extending to your family as well, and although you were confused, you knew you could not refuse. Even if you wanted to. The dinner was nice, and you were a bit surprised at how easy it was to get along with the king. You never thought him cruel, but you’d heard that he was a rather stern man. After supper, he extended the invitation to staying at the castle so that you would not have to travel back so late in the evening. Your mother answered before you had the chance to, and it was no surprise to you that the answer was yes.

The castle was so different during the night. It seemed less welcoming and more ominous, and you found it hard to sleep that night. Convinced that the corridors would be empty, you quietly slipped from your chambers and made your way down to the kitchens. There were still a few servants lingering about, cleaning or preparing for the next day. You felt guilty for bothering them for something to drink.

“Nonsense, my lady. I would be more than happy to get that for you,” a younger girl by the name of Guinevere told you.

“Oh...please,” you waved her off. “No one is around. Call me Y/N.”

Her eyes seemed to sparkle as you told her your name, but she said nothing more as she gave you your water. The dark corridors did not scare you, but the eerie silence was a bit off putting, especially in such a grand structure. You had turned the corner to make your way back to your room when you bumped into none other than the prince. You had almost dropped the drink, and you placed your hand on your chest in an attempt to still your heart.

“Your highness. My apologies, I did not see…”

Your words died in your throat as the prince fixed you with a look that made your stomach churn. You snapped your mouth shut, swallowing as he simply glared at you, brown eyes looking so much darker. You had not seen him since the queen’s burial, and he did not look much better than he did then. Before you had a chance to say anything else, he had shoved past you, almost making you drop the goblet in your hand, and a low gasp escaped you as your other shoulder harshly met the wall. You turned to watch him go, shock and confusion pouring through you, wondering what you had done to offend him so.

It was only a few weeks later did you get your answer.

“I...I beg your pardon?”

The king reached for your hand, a soft breeze ruffling his dark hair as he brought it to his lips. They were soft as they brushed over your skin, and the corner of them curved upwards into a smile.

“Everything is already being arranged, but...this is my formal proposal. I need a queen, Peter needs a mother, and you are everything I could have hoped for,” he told you.

You stared at him in shock, feeling as if the world had been ripped out from beneath your feet. Your mind whirled as you tried to make sense of this and where this had come from, and suddenly, the puzzle started to piece together. The countless dinner invitations, the gleam in your parents’ eyes, the hushed conversations...the prince’s animosity. You were being courted by the king this whole time...and you’d been none the wiser. His chuckle pulled you from your thoughts.

“When your mother told me that you could be quite oblivious, I thought that it was a simple exaggeration.”

He found humor in your distress, you realized, and you swallowed.

“I do not know what to say,” you slowly breathed, and you watched him tilt his head at you, a frown beginning to form.

“You say yes,” he said with a scoffing laugh as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

You realized that to anyone else, it would be.

“Your majesty...I feel as if we’ve only just met. Surely, you would allow me time to think-.”

“Think about what?”

His hand tightened on yours, and you winced. He leaned in, genuine confusion in his dark eyes as he stared into your own.

“I am a king telling you that you are to be my queen...and you are hesitant?”

The severity of the situation suddenly dawned on you. Anthony was a king. You were a mere lady attempting to refuse his proposal for marriage, and your heart sank to your stomach. You blinked at him, and his face suddenly smoothed over as he sighed.

“Ah. I understand what this is about…”

“You do…?”

He softly smiled at you, reaching up to brush his thumb along your chin.

“You come from an acceptable background. You are beautiful and smart and kind. I assure you, this is genuine. This is not some poor attempt to cope with my grief. In all honesty, my marriage to the queen was over long before she died,” he told you.

You looked away, realizing that you were not getting out of this. Whether you liked it or not, you would be marrying the king, and with reluctance and a shaky voice, you accepted his proposal. He straightened when you did, a look of satisfaction on his features, and he looked as if he wanted to kiss you. You were thankful that he did not.

The wedding took place only a couple of months later, every nearby royal, and even some across the water, in attendance. It was a grand and beautiful affair, no expense spared, and it was days later that you found out it far outshined his first wedding. You remembered feeling sick as you walked down the aisle, the feeling only getting worse as your gaze met that of the prince.

In the time since the official engagement, you had interacted with the prince only a handful of times. Each time more disastrous than the last. You told yourself that he was grieving. His mother’s death was sudden and had hit him hard and here his father was, marrying again so soon. You did not fault him for his cold behavior. He was young, after all. You would expect nothing less, to be honest, but you could not lie and say that it did not hurt.

Unfortunately, even after the marriage, he did not soften towards you. Every attempt to get to know him was met with nothing short of loathing, and you finally accepted that he would come around in his own time. The last thing you wanted Peter to think was that you were trying to replace his mother. You did not know how long this would go on, but you did not expect it to be more than a year.

You were wrong.

“I throw that kid the best birthday celebration a nineteen year old could ask for and this is how he shows his appreciation? By not even having the decency to show up?”

Tony was angry as he sipped from his goblet, glaring down at the attendees dancing below. A wonderful number was being played by a string quartet, several single princesses in attendance, and an hour into the celebration, Peter was still absent. You placed your hand on your husband’s arm with a sigh.

“I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, Tony. He will show,” you tried to assure him.

His shoulders sagged as he slammed his drink down, and his eyes softened as he turned to you. He reached for you, and you flinched, but he paid it no mind as he brushed his finger along your cheek.

“You are far too nice to him...and he hardly deserves it,” he whispered.

“He’s your son,” you reminded him with a frown. “Do not talk about him like that.”

“He’s ungrateful,” he spat.

“He’s grieving,” you argued.

“It’s been a year,” Tony sneered. “How much time does he need?”

You sharply turned away, swallowing a sigh as anger flared within you. Sometimes Tony could be so insensitive, amongst other things, and it baffled you. Peter lost the only mother he ever knew, and Tony was treating it as if it was something minor. After a few more moments, you excused yourself under the guise of needing some air. In truth, you were determined to track down the prince.

It was not a hard task. He tended to frequent the same places when he called himself hiding. You found him deep within the grounds, lounging on a branch high up in the tree. It was getting late, the sun currently setting, and you held up the skirts of your dress as you trudged towards him. You knew that he heard you, and you resisted the urge to sigh as you stood below him. Your heart ached for him as you could not even begin to imagine what he was going through. After all, you still had both of your parents.

“Peter,” you eventually called.

He yet again pretended as if he had not heard you, a hurtful habit of his, and this time you did sigh.

“Peter, please come down. Your father is concerned about your whereabouts, and...and I am concerned about you. I-.”

“Why have you deluded yourself into thinking I care about how you feel?”

His tone was cold, venom coating every word, and your heart clenched. He rarely spoke to you, every time he did as cold as today, but this was different. You were unsure of what to say, and before you had the chance to remedy that, he was hopping down. It was a bit cool out, and his coat flared behind him as he strode towards you, face hard and nostrils flared.

“Why have you deluded yourself into thinking that I care about you at all?”

You reared back, staring at him with wide eyes. His words hurt, that you would not deny, and as much as you fought against it, you could feel a familiar burn behind your eyes. You swallowed, briefly glancing down as you took a step back.

“Peter-.”

“My mother was not even in the ground properly before you came sniffing around my father like a bitch in heat,” he sneered.

Your lips parted, wide eyes staring at him in shock at his words. You had never seen him look so hateful, borderline murderous, and you suddenly realized that this was about more than grief.

“P-Peter...that… That is not what happened-.”

“Isn’t it?” he wondered, taking another step towards you. “Do you think me stupid? Blind? You think I have never known of the way so many women prayed on my mother’s downfall?”

“I never-.”

“Do you think that I do not know that you all came to her funeral not as mourners, but as vultures? As desperate snakes trying to slip your way into my father’s bed so that you may take her place?”

“No! That is not what happened-!”

“You are no different from the rest!”

He was practically upon you now, glaring down his nose at you with so much disgust it finally made the tears spill over.

“I always knew that you were a desperate and conniving whore…”

You gasped, more tears falling at his insult. He raised one dark eyebrow at you.

“...but I never took you for a liar too.”

You were frozen as he looked you over one last time before breezing past you. You shook, unable to stop the tears, and you felt like you were going to be sick. You had no idea that Peter’s disdain was in fact not misplaced due to grief, but was instead as genuine as could be because he thought you to be something you were not. This knowledge made your heart hurt, and it turned out that you were not as adept at hiding your feelings as you thought.

“What troubles you so?” Tony wondered later that night, his hand on your shoulder as you sat at your vanity.

“Whatever do you mean?” you asked with a small smile.

His gaze met yours in the mirror, and the way his jaw clenched told you that he did not have much patience tonight. His fingers pressed into your skin, and you swallowed. You looked away, eyes blurring a bit as you recalled Peter’s cruel words.

“Peter hates me,” you confessed.

You heard Tony heave a sigh, and you turned to look up at him. He ran his hand through his hair as he rolled his eyes.

“That kid hates everyone and everything,” he replied.

“No, Tony. You do not understand. He believes me to be something I am not. He thinks that I schemed my way into marrying you, that I am trying to replace his mother-.”

“Peter will be just fine. He will grow to get over it in time,” was his enlightening reply, and you stood.

“But it is not true. Tony, does this not bother you? Because it bothers me! He should be like a son to me. He should be looking to me for guidance and care, and he curses the very ground I walk on. It hurts,” you spat, wrapping your arms around yourself.

Tony’s entire demeanor softened, and he pulled you into his arms. He pressed his lips to your cheek, and you winced at the soreness before he took your chin in between his fingers. He tilted his head at you.

“I love that you’ve grown to really care about him. It warms my cold heart…”

You forced a chuckle at that.

“...but Peter has always been a bit difficult when it comes to me and anything in relation to me. His mother is really the only person he ever really connected with. This will pass, I assure you.”

You reluctantly accepted that Tony just did not care about this as much as you did, and likely never would. Against your better judgement, you opted to let it go, and softly exhaled when Tony pressed his lips to your jaw. He trailed kisses down your neck, tightening his arms around you.

“As much as I enjoy your big heart, I would rather not spend the rest of the night discussing my troubled son,” he murmured, lips finally finding yours.

You did not know if you would ever grow used to making love to Tony. The only time he had ever been anything close to gentle was on your wedding night, and you had still cried, waking up sore and bruised. It eventually dawned on you that this was simply how Tony was, but it did not mean that you had to like it.

The years that passed did not improve things as you’d hoped they would. Tony was still the same as ever, and Peter was no different. Your conversations with the prince were rare, but every one was brief and left you with a paralyzing chill. When he was not speaking to you, his animosity was enough to force you to keep your distance. The hurt that his behavior caused never got any easier.

“When you have a child of your own, this will mean nothing to you,” Tony would assure you.

However, it only did the opposite. Even though Peter was not your own, it did not mean that you viewed him any less, and you knew that would not change when you finally did have a child. Whenever that happened. You and Tony had been trying for years, and there was still nothing to show for it. It was a great source of stress for you both, but Tony was taking it much harder than you.

“They say that it took many tries before they were finally able to have Peter, and even afterwards...the queen was never able to conceive again,” Guinevere had whispered to you one night.

“Oh,” you sadly said. “How awful…”

The blonde girl had glanced around the busy kitchen before leaning in.

“The king will never admit it, but many believe that he was the problem, and considering he is experiencing the same thing with you…”

Your heart sank as she trailed off, and despite everything, you found yourself feeling sorry for your husband. Many would argue that you should feel sorry for yourself. After all, it was a popular opinion that the woman’s womb was always at fault, and kings have gotten rid of their wives for less, but you knew that Tony was far too possessive of you to ever do such a thing.

It was a subject you wished you could talk to Peter about. He knew his father far better than you did, and sometimes you wished you could get some insight on how to make this better for him, but Peter was disgusted by your very presence. There came a time when you reluctantly accepted that it might always be this way, but everything changed when Peter was only a few weeks shy of his twenty-third birthday.

Tony, ever the showoff, was having a ball every week for five weeks straight leading up to the night. It was the second gathering when he had dragged you out of the great hall. His hold had been tight, steps hurried, and you forced yourself to swallow down the pain. The corridor was dimly lit and equally as empty, and tears of frustration were kissing your eyes.

“Tony-.”

“I saw you,” he spat.

“Saw me what? Saw me greet one of your friends? Because that is exactly what King Steven is to me and nothing more!”

His dark eyes were hard as he pressed his fingers into your arms, lip curled over his teeth as he sneered at you.

“He desires you. It is plain as day, and he has never been subtle,” he bit out.

“Somehow I am at fault for that? Steven is a bachelor in every sense of the word. That is how he is, and you know it-.”

“Yes, but I thought to myself, surely my loving wife would have the sense not to entertain his antics!”

“I was being polite,” you told him, wincing at his tight grip. “Just because you are only ever nice to people when you want something-.”

You swallowed your words with a sharp shriek, pressing your hand to your hot cheek as the tears finally spilled over. Your eyes were on the floor as Tony shook you, a scathing remark on his tongue, no doubt, when he suddenly stilled, swallowing whatever he was about to say. His sudden change confused you, and you hesitantly looked up only to realize that his gaze was not on you. You turned to find Peter standing just at the entrance of the corridor, his wide eyes on the two of you.

Tony was quick in straightening you up, and you hurriedly looked away as he acknowledged Peter.

“Why are you not enjoying your celebration with your friends?”

It was a while before Peter responded.

“I noticed that you had slipped out, so I came to find you. I had hoped to continue our...conversation from earlier,” the prince answered.

When you turned back around, you avoided Peter’s eye, but you could still feel the weight of his gaze. Tony’s hand was rubbing into your back as he responded.

“Of course. Sweetheart, you will excuse us, won’t you? Peter and I have much to discuss, and I am sure the other wives are missing your presence,” he said, turning to you.

He threw you a tense and threatening smile, and you shakily returned it with a forced one.

“Of course. I shall see you in there when you return. Peter,” you acknowledged as you hurried past him, avoiding his gaze still.

You did not return to the hall though, but instead made your way down to the kitchen. It was filled with servants, and Mary Jane gasped when she saw you. She and Guinevere were always joined at the hip, but the other girl had been ill for the last few days. The redhead dropped what she was doing, shooing another servant off of a stool before grabbing your arm.

“My God,” she breathed.

The other occupants tended to the food and drinks, much too used to seeing you down here twice a week or so. Mary Jane pressed a cold piece of steak to your face, and you hissed.

“Is it that bad?”

“It is swelling already, your majesty,” she said.

You shifted on the seat, holding the cold meat to your face as you shooed her off.

“I hardly notice how hard he hits anymore. It still manages to shock me every time though, and I have no idea as to why,” you whispered.

She was just about to reply when another voice rang throughout the kitchen.

“Everyone out.”

You turned with wide eyes, confusion tearing through you at the sight of Peter just at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone seemed to hesitate for a moment, worrying about the food, no doubt, before eventually heeding his order. Mary Jane, no stranger to your relationship with the prince, threw you a worrying look before being the last one out. Peter seemed to hesitate as well before huffing, quickly approaching you.

You moved to stop him, but he was already pulling the red meat from your cheek before you had the chance. He stared at your skin for a while before putting it back in place. You held it there as he leaned against the counter, a familiar look of anger on his boyish features.

“This is not the first time this has happened,” he murmured.

There was no need to respond. It was a statement, not an answer. The silence was heavy, thick with tension and filled with words unspoken. Outside of that night, this was the longest you had ever been alone with Peter, and the first time you did not feel uncomfortable in his presence.

“You did not want to marry my father...did you?”

You looked at him with wide eyes, lips parting to refute such a blasphemous statement, but no words came out. Words failed you. Peter was a smart young man, always had been, and you were sure that he would see through whatever lie you pieced together.

“Of course, it was not like you could refuse if you wanted to. He is a king, and you were a mere lady,” he said more to himself than you.

You sighed, putting the steak down as you stood.

“My father has never been kind to anyone in his life. I do not know why I thought you were an exception…”

“Peter… I do not want this to affect how you view your father, do you understand?”

He simply frowned at you, and you continued.

“He is not without his flaws, this is true,” you slowly said. “...but he is still your father. In his own way, he loves you and only wants what is best.”

Peter stared at you for a while before scoffing, a humorless laugh not far behind. He pressed his hand to the counter as he stared at you with a look of shock.

“My father does not deserve you,” he said, almost as if he could not believe it.

He chuckled again, pressing his hand to his forehead.

“All this time, I thought that the two of you deserved each other. I hated you...and now...now I just feel sorry for you. For both my father...and me…,” he quietly finished.

“Peter-.”

“I have been nothing but cruel to you, and for that I am sorry. I am sorry for the things that I have done...and the things that I have said.”

You blinked, convinced that you would never hear those words. They warmed your heart, and you looked away.

“It’s alright. You believed what you believed, and if I were in your shoes, I might have believed the same. Your feelings were valid, Peter,” you told him.

He blinked at you.

“I never wanted to replace your mother. That is still not what I desire...but I am here. I know that there is only a decade between us, but I have come to love you like a son despite everything.”

Peter’s eyes softened, and you could see the guilt there.

“I never wanted to rush you, even now, but I hope that you will view me the same one day. Tony is no longer your only parent, and I am always here.”

Peter looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he held off.

“I should get back before your father comes looking for me,” you said, heading for the stairs. “Oh...and please refrain from provoking him.”

You looked to Peter.

“I may dislike him at times, but I do not want to send him to an early grave.”

Peter simply hummed, sending you a strained smile before you left him to find your husband.

You remained in the corridor as the angry voices bled through the door. Both Tony and Peter assured you countless times that their strained relationship was none of your concern, but it could not be helped. They had never had the best relationship, but if possible, it had soured even more over the years, and you were unsure of who to blame.

The minute Tony started to get more serious about grooming Peter for the throne, things had gone from tense and strained to borderline violent at times. Not only did the two have such opposing views when it came to how to run the kingdom, but your husband had been pushing the idea of marriage more and more lately. It had only gotten worse when Peter neared his twenty-fifth birthday, the party on that fateful day ending abruptly when Peter had stormed out.

You were pulled from your reverie when the door swung open. Peter was the first one out, and he held up a hand as you moved to approach him.

“Not now, Y/N,” he huffed, quickly striding down the corridor with a frustrated sigh.

Tony emerged not long after, and you moved to kiss him, knowing that it would soothe him for the time being.

“That boy will be the death of me,” he complained.

“You both provoke each other, and I do not know why,” you told him.

“He has duties! He is twenty-five and nowhere near taking them seriously. It seems that he is determined to ruin me,” he spat.

You sighed.

“Would you like for me to talk to him?”

“You seem to be the only one he actually listens to, so by all means,” he gestured down the hall, face cloudy.

You patted his chest before leaving him, wondering if a day would come where you would be a functional family. You and Peter were nowhere near what you used to be, and for that you were eternally grateful, but his relationship with Tony was far worse than it had ever been, and you did not know how to even begin to fix it.

You found Peter sparring with his dueling instructor. The sound of clashing swords was loud, and you rounded the corner, wincing when Peter just narrowly missed a rather dangerous blow. He motioned for the other gentleman to stop once he spotted you.

“Come on his behalf, have you?”

“Peter,” you sighed.

He snapped at the other man.

“Give your queen a sword, will you? Come,” he was talking to you now. “Spar with me.”

You reluctantly accepted the other man’s sword, a grimace on your face as you stepped forward.

“I am a horrible dueling partner,” you complained.

“Nonsense, Y/N. You are far better than what you were a year ago,” Peter said with a chuckle.

Your heart sank a bit at the sound of your name, but it did not distract you from blocking the swing of his sword with your own. Peter smirked at you.

“See?”

“Peter, this is not why I am here,” you told him.

“Of course not,” he calmly said. “My father knows that between the two of you, you are the only one I actually respect. He believes that you have some sway over me...and I am not reluctant to admit that he is right.”

He blocked your blow, quick to do so again when you swung your sword down towards his legs. He eyed you, a bit of pride in his gaze.

“Very good,” he praised.

“I was hoping to talk you into agreeing to some sort of compromise with him. Any compromise, really.”

Peter let out a humorless laugh, spinning before bringing his sword down over his head. Your eyes were wide as you lifted your sword, the sound of them clashing meeting your ears.

“There is no compromising with that man. He is determined to bring this kingdom and all of its subjects to ruin, and he wishes for me to just stand back and watch. He does not hear a word I say,” he spat.

He swiped his sword at you, several times and in several different successions. Unable to keep up, you were not surprised when your sword was knocked from your hands. You did not flinch when the tip of his blade found your throat, confident that Peter would never hurt you. He pressed the tip further, eyes locked on yours, and you swallowed.

“Do you agree with him?”

“Of course not,” you honestly answered.

Peter lightly dragged his blade down your neck and towards the top of your dress, his eyes following its movement before he quickly snatched it away. He tilted his head at you, raising an eyebrow as he waited for you to continue.

“You know I do not agree with how your father runs this kingdom, but I have no say. I never did. Believe it or not, Peter, you have much more influence than I do.”

He turned away with a disbelieving laugh.

“Somehow, I doubt that…”

“Look, I am going to say something that I know you are not going to like,” you suddenly said.

Peter did not respond, so you continued.

“I think that you should consider marriage.”

You saw him straighten at that, back tense, and you rushed to say something else.

“If Tony feels that you are taking your future seriously, then he will be more inclined to take you seriously.”

He turned to you with a withering look, and you rolled your eyes.

“Do not look at me that way. I am not saying that you have to marry some poor girl right away, but at least make an effort to look around, and show Tony that you are attempting to meet him halfway,” you advised.

Peter gave you a hard stare for the longest time before eventually rolling his eyes and looking away.

“Very well. You always do get your way, don’t you, Y/N?”

Your mouth parted for a moment before you snapped it shut, looking down. This did not go unnoticed by Peter, and he neared you.

“What is it, now?”

Your eyes met his, and you tried to hide your hurt, but it must have been clear as day. Peter’s entire demeanor softened, and he stuck his sword in the dirt, reaching for you.

“What is it?”

You exhaled.

“That...is another thing I had hoped to discuss with you.”

He frowned in confusion.

“You still refer to me by my name…” you watched as his face fell. “And I do not wish to rush you, I never have, but when you say my name...it makes me feel as if I am doing something wrong here.”

“You are not,” he rushed to assure you. “Believe me…”

“I do not want to replace your mother, but if I am doing something-.”

“It is merely a force of habit. That is all,” he interrupted.

“You are sure…?”

“Positive,” he said with a small smile.

“...okay,” you said with a nod. “...and what will you be doing after this...?”

“I will be speaking with my father,” he reluctantly told you.

“Good,” you said, Peter bending to allow you to quickly peck his forehead. “...and please be polite. I hate the way you two provoke each other.”

He roughly exhaled.

“Yes...mother…,” he seemed to bite out, eyes on you.

You looked to him with wide eyes, heart swelling as your smile grew. You chuckled, kissing his forehead one last time before leaving him to finish his instruction.

Contrary to what you had hoped, your advice did not improve things. Now that Peter had agreed to at least looking for a wife, it just gave him and Tony one more thing to disagree on, and disagreements about the smallest of things only gave room for disagreements about more serious matters. Peter hated the way Tony ran the kingdom, and you could not fault him for that.

Meals were more tense than ever, and it soon became suffocating to be in the same room as father and son. You did your best to keep the peace between them but there was only so much you could do. Especially when the arguments would get so intense that you feared for them. Tony could get so angry, and while you had never known him to put his hands on Peter as he did you, it still worried you that he might one day. And Peter…

Sometimes Peter would get a look in his eye that chilled you to the bone. He would get so fed up with his father, lips pressed together as Tony tore into him, and you would see the younger man’s eyes flash with something you could not name. It was a look that terrified you and made him look like someone that was not Peter, at all.

Tensions only mounted as your birthday neared. You did not want either of them involved in the party planning process, convinced this would be the final nail in the coffin. Truth be told, it was also for yourself as well. It allowed you to breathe better.

“The party is tomorrow night, and Peter has yet to have the last fitting for his attire,” you told Mary Jane as you stood.

“I can finish this up, your majesty, while you go find Peter,” she replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely! I am almost finished, anyway.”

“Wonderful! I shall return shortly. There are only so many places he could be at this hour…”

The corridors were scarcely occupied as you decided to check Peter’s chambers first, making your way to his wing of the castle. You were unsurprised to find them empty, and you quickly made your way outside. He had a habit of frequenting the grounds, the maze especially, and you were confident that you would find him there then.

You had not been inside the maze for a while, but you remembered how to navigate it vividly. You were deep within it, somewhere in the middle perfectly between the beginning and the end when you stumbled upon a sight you were not prepared for.

At the other end of a long stretch, were a couple, far too wrapped up in each other to notice your presence. You felt your face heat up as you stumbled upon the lovers, and you were prepared to turn back when the young man lifted his head, familiar eyes meeting yours. A gasp escaped you, and you were frozen on the spot as Peter simply stared at you.

He did not break his gaze as he continued to thrust into the woman beneath him, who you absentmindedly recognized as Guinevere. Her eyes were closed, clinging to Peter as moans tumbled from her lips, and even though Peter was silent as he stared at you, the heat in his eyes was undeniable. Finally coming to your senses, you willed your feet to move, but you did not escape in time to miss the way Peter’s deep moan rang throughout the air.

Upon your return, you told Mary Jane that you were unable to find Peter. You did not want to think of the awkward encounter, and told yourself that the tailor had never been wrong before. You were positive that Peter’s attire would fit. You did not see the young man again until the following day, your birthday, and it was only an hour or so until your party. Tony was meeting with a few of his Lords when there was a knock on your chamber door.

You were quick to answer it, surprised to find Peter on the other side. You only felt uncomfortable for a moment before you took in his attire. You beamed, widening the door to allow him in.

“Oh, Peter, you look positively dashing!”

“Did you doubt that I would?” he smugly wondered.

You threw him a look.

“I swear, you are getting more and more like your father every day,” you told him with a chuckle.

“I got you something,” he suddenly said, and it was only then did you notice the box in his hand.

You blinked in surprise, eyes widening when he opened it to reveal the most beautiful necklace you had ever seen. The ruby heart in the middle was positively blinding, standing out against the rest of the diamonds that made up the band. You pressed your hand to your chest, mouth parting.

“Happy Birthday.”

“Oh my… Peter, this is so sweet of you,” you told him.

“Well,” he started, setting the box aside as he took the piece of jewelry into his hands. “It is not every day that one turns thirty-six.”

He motioned for you to spin around, and you obliged.

“This might also double as an apology for yesterday. I regret that you had to see that,” he chuckled.

You joined him, waving him off.

“Nonsense, Peter. It was a bit of a shock, but nothing more. You are a young man, after all, and I could never fault you for doing what young men do. You are treating Guinevere well, I hope? She is a sweet girl.”

Peter groaned.

“Yes, Y/N.”

Your heart sank at the sound of your name, and you frowned a bit.

“I am treating her just fine,” he assured you.

You chose not to comment on his use of your name, wondering if you had done something wrong.

“Would you ever consider marrying her?” you pushed.

Peter was quiet as he brought his hands over to lower the necklace at your neck. It was not one that rested at your décolletage, but at your throat instead, and your eyes widened a bit when he pulled it back. You reached up to your neck, forced to stumble back into his chest to keep from choking, relaxing a bit when he finally clasped it together.

“No,” was his simple answer. “It is not like that.”

He rested his hands on your shoulder, turning you around to admire you. His dark eyes took you in before finally focusing on the necklace, the corner of his lips lifting a bit. He pressed his finger to the ruby heart, drawing patterns over it before eventually stepping away.

“It looks great,” he told you.

“Thank you. We should track down your father before they start my own celebration without me,” you replied.

It was not long after that the three of you were entering the great hall, a smile on your face as everyone greeted you. Tony and Peter were at your sides, and both of their hands rested at the small of your back as they guided you to the royal table at the head of the room. Everyone only quieted down when you took your seats, and you looked down at the familiar faces with a smile.

Your attention was drawn to Peter as he stood, raising his glass as a servant came by to fill them. He only filled yours and Peters, but another quickly came to fill Tony’s. Once everyone’s glasses were filled, that was when Peter spoke.

“I would like to propose a toast…”

He turned to look down at you, dark eyes unreadable as he swallowed.

“...to the woman who loved me even when I did not deserve it.”

Your heart swelled as you smiled at Peter, so happy that you two had come this far.

“No one could ever replace my mother...and I would not want them to, but you, Y/N, you are the next best thing.”

Your eyes softened, realizing that while maybe Peter did not see you as something akin to a mother just yet, he still loved you, and that gave you hope. You could live with that for now. Peter’s eyes fell onto his father, and he suddenly smiled.

“...and to my father, the king. If it were not for you, Y/N would never have come into our lives.”

His voice was even, but his eyes glinted before he turned to the rest of the royal court, his glass held high.

“To the king and queen. Long may they reign,” his voice traveled over the room.

Everyone else repeated his words before taking a drink, you and Tony following suit. As you set your glass down, you watched, a bit concerned, as Peter swallowed all of his wine, a look of satisfaction on his face as he lowered his glass. You turned to Tony, prepared to ask him if he wished to say anything, just as he let out that first cough.

It sounded nasty, and you frowned, prepared to ask him if he drank too fast when he coughed again, blood staining his bottom lip. Your heart fell to your stomach, eyes widening as you reached for him, hands trembling. You were prepared to call for help when you noted the sound of several coughs reaching your ears, followed by screams.

When you turned towards the rest of the room, you saw every single one of the royal court coughing up blood, and you stood on unsteady legs as understanding dawned on you. You reached for Peter, your hand gripping his arm as fear and horror clung to you.

“P-Peter…”

You looked to him, but his face was stony as he looked down at everyone. The only people who were okay were you, Peter, the servants, and the few guards. You watched as Peter waved his hand, confusion filling you as two guards opened the door to let more in. You were frozen as they all drew their swords, stomach churning as you realized what was about to happen. You turned back to Peter, but he was already moving past you.

“Peter, what- what is happening? What are you doing?”

You lunged for him as he drew a dagger, hand fisted into his fathers hair to pull the struggling man’s head back.

“Peter, no!”

He shoved you away, right into the arms of a waiting guard, and you did not turn your head in time to miss the way he dragged the blade across his father’s neck. A scream left you, belonging to a voice that you did not recognize, and you continued to scream and cry as the guard backed up. Peter pointed at you, his father’s blood coating his hand, his face unrecognizable to you.

“Get her out of here…”

His eyes met yours, dark with a harmful intent that terrified you. Who was this man? He ran his eyes over you.

“...and do not let her get away.”

You fought against the guard as he dragged you away, kicking and screaming all the way. Your efforts did not even cease as you made it into the corridor, having been forced past the dead bodies of your friends and acquaintances. The guard towered over you and was easily double your size, so all of your efforts were useless.

He only let you go when you reached Peter’s chambers, dragging you through the receiving chamber to toss you onto the floor of his bedchamber. The impact made your head spin, and by the time you pushed yourself to your feet, he was already pulling the door shut. You slammed your hands against it just as you heard it lock, and another sob threatened to escape you.

You had only ever been in Peter’s room a handful of times, and you wrapped your arms around yourself as you looked around. Your chest hurt, heart breaking as you recalled the way Peter had so callously taken his father’s life. Your husband was dead, and it was no secret that the man was far from perfect, but his absence scared you. What would become of you now? Why did Peter not poison you like the rest? God, had his feelings never changed, at all? Had he still secretly hated you this whole time and wanted to get some sick satisfaction out of killing you here?

You lost count of how many times you tried the door before moving to the balcony doors. They too did not budge, and you kicked them in frustration. You could barely form a coherent thought, and more tears spilled over as you realized just how alone you were. You did not understand anything. Why would Peter do this?

As you heard someone enter his receiving chamber, it occurred to you that you might get your answer.

Your eyes met Peter’s as he entered his chambers, and you stumbled back, afraid to take your eyes off of him. You watched as he locked the door behind him, and the sight of that made your face crumble.

“What have you done?” you shakily asked.

The room was quiet save for your soft sobs, and you flinched when Peter took a step forward. He did not look like the young man you knew. He stood there in the dark attire he had picked out for your birthday, looking every bit like the murderous man you now knew him to be. A dark strand of hair kissed his forehead, jaw clenched as he eyed you. It started to lightly rain outside, and your eyes fell to the blood on his hands.

His father’s blood.

“Have you come to kill me too?”

Finally, his face shifted, and he frowned at you.

“Kill you?”

Peter scoffed, laughing to himself as he tilted his head at you.

“You could not be farther from the truth…”

“Then what do you plan to do? What are you doing, Peter? I do not understand…”

“My father was going to run this kingdom into the ground. We both know it…”

You started shaking your head before he was even done.

“Something had to be done.”

“Not like this! You killed him- you killed everyone,” you cried.

“...and here I thought you would be thanking me,” he sneered.

“Thanking you?”

“Unless I was wrong, and you enjoy being slapped around,” he threw at you.

You felt as if you were just slapped then, and you pressed your back into the wall, tightening your arms around yourself.

“Not like this, Peter. Not like this,” you tearfully murmured.

The rain got louder, filling the otherwise silent room with some noise, and you flinched when lightning flashed, shedding light on the room and on Peter’s dark gaze.

“What will become of me? Did you ever think about that? I am the widow of a murdered king. A king murdered by his own son in a coup!”

“...and the future wife of the next one,” Peter calmly stated.

You froze, his words failing to make sense despite the fact that you heard him just fine. Something about them did not sound right, and your lips parted, a shaky breath escaping you.

“What...what did you just say?” you hesitantly questioned.

Peter took another step towards you, and you slid along the wall...away from him.

“Do you have any idea how much it pained me to watch you with him?”

“Peter…”

You shook your head, still moving away as he moved closer.

“Do know what it was like to watch him mistreat you again and again only to turn around and reap the spoils of his marriage as if he had not just caused you harm only moments before?”

His voice was low, thick with something you were too disgusted to name. Your eyes were wide, filled with tears as the reality of the situation dawned on you. Peter’s feelings, his father’s murder...the two of you alone in a castle full of people that have proven their loyalty to him. Peter was only eighteen when you married the king, standing face to face with you, but now, eight years later, the young man towered over you.

He suddenly chuckled, and the sound terrified you more than anything now.

“I find it funny… My father was always telling me that royals take. We take what is ours. We take what we believe we should have. That is what we do, son,” he mocked. “We take.”

His cold eyes bore into yours as you stumbled away from him. In a circle the two of you went, and you pulled on the handle of the door as you pressed your back to it. Fresh tears spilled as it refused to budge.

“Now look. I have taken his life, I have taken his kingdom, and I have taken the woman he thought belonged to him-.”

He swallowed the rest of his words as you suddenly dived to the other side of the room. Peter followed, and you reached up to pull the portrait from the wall, tossing it at him only for Peter to evade it. You frantically crawled across the bed, kicking Peter in the chest as he reached for your ankle. You fell to your knees on the other side, running to the balcony doors with tears in your eyes.

Again, the doors would not budge, and you were prepared to throw yourself through the glass when Peter was suddenly there at your back. He enclosed you in his arms, and you reached back to fight against him and push him away, but he only pinned you between him and the glass. The sound of the thunder drowned out your screams, and you yelped in shock when he fisted a hand in your hair, yanking your head to the side.

Peter was determined to taste you, tongue and teeth brushing your skin as he ground himself against you. Nothing you did seemed to deter him, and it suddenly felt hard to breathe. The storm raged outside, wind pushing rain against the window. One of Peter’s hands dragged up your leg, pushing the skirts of your dress with it, and you slammed your hands against the window, attempting to push back.

This only egged him on, and he moaned in your ear.

“Peter, please,” you begged

You could feel the air against you, and your efforts to get away only increased when you felt him moving to release himself. The hand in your hair moved to your neck, cutting off your airway as he pulled your head back to rest against him. You struggled to breathe, nails scraping against the glass. He leaned down to cover your lips with his own, kissing you for the first time, and you sharply inhaled.

He moaned at the taste of you, his tongue meeting yours, tasting the wine that you wish had killed you too. You both struggled against the window, your hands turning into fists when he pushed his leg between yours, quickly followed by the other. You turned your head away, your small victory overshadowed by your ultimate defeat as he thrust into you. You yelped just as Peter shuddered against your back, a long sigh escaping him as he pressed a hand into the glass beside your head.

He pressed his face into your hair, grinding against you, the sound of him breathing you in reaching your ears. Your own forehead was pressed to the glass now, tearful eyes taking in the storm as Peter dragged his cock in and out of your unwilling core. Your body shook from both your sobs and his ministrations, and again, you pushed against the glass in hopes to push him away.

He merely shoved his chest into your back, forcing you back against the glass before wrapping his arms around you again. One hand pulled at the neckline of your dress, ripping it straight down, and your lashes fluttered when he slipped his hand beneath the fabric to roll his fingers over you. His other arm came across your middle, pinning your own at your sides.

“You are finally mine,” he breathed after a while.

You shook your head in denial, another lightning strike bathing the room in a glow. It was gone as quickly as it came, and you were forced to focus on Peter’s reflection in the window. He was lost in the euphoria of you, the feel of you wrapped around him, sucking him back in again and again.

“Finally,” he groaned. “At my side and in my bed as my queen…”

His hand slipped from beneath the torn fabric of your dress, dancing along your skin before his fingers brushed over the diamond choker at your neck.

“I have all night to claim you as mine, and no one is around to stop me.”

“Peter, this is not you-.”

“Oh, but it is,” he sighed. “This is the man you loved when he did not deserve it. This is the man you will marry, bear children with…’

You let out a choked sob, fresh tears falling at his words.

“Oh, please. Everyone knew that my father was the problem. He was the only one in denial about it, and I have a feeling that by the time I am done with you, you shall be with child by tomorrow.”

“Peter, please,” you screamed.

His hand tightened on your throat, pulling your head back so you were forced to stare at the ceiling, back arched to take his slow and purposeful thrusts. He kissed the corner of your eye before doing the same to your cheek. His breathing was choppy, heart pounding in his chest, and the way his hips stuttered told you that he was close.

“Oh God,” he moaned, stilling against your back as he spilled himself into you.

You froze against him at the feel, realizing that there was no turning back. You shook in his hold, feeling the urge to be sick when he suddenly pulled out of you, replacing his cock with his fingers. You gasped, reaching down to grab his wrist as he shoved a second finger inside of you, the wet sound of it reaching your ears even with the rain outside. He pressed you to his chest as he curled his fingers into you.

You bucked your hips, ashamed with your actions as he pulled pleasure from you like it was nothing. LIke he somehow knew your body better than you did. His lips were at your ear, brushing against your skin before he trailed them to your neck again, pressing kisses there. Your nails dug into his wrist, but he paid your efforts no mind as he thrust his fingers into you, setting a pace that had your legs shaking. You knew that if it were not for his hold, you would have collapsed already.

Peter hummed when your breath hitched.

“You are close...aren’t you?”

“Peter...stop,” you shakily begged.

“I shall stop when I feel your arousal dripping down my hand,” he purred.

His words had you clenching around him, and he moaned against your neck.

“I suppose I cannot blame my father for being so possessive of you. Your walls feel like heaven…”

“Peter…”

“I do not know how I will ever allow you to leave our bed-.”

“Peter-.”

“I guess I shall just have to keep you tired…”

“Please-!”

“Come for me, Y/N. Fall apart for your king,” he whispered.

And you did. You seized in his arms, walls clenching around him, your arousal coating his fingers and dripping down his hand. Your nails drew blood, but he only moaned with you, cursing as you rode yourself on his fingers, your other hand reaching back to twist into his shirt. That was the hardest you ever came, and shame filled you. As you came down from your high, Peter lowered the both of you to the floor.

It was only then did you notice the bloody handprints on the glass. The same blood on you, no doubt. More tears sprung forth as it all seemed to hit you, and Peter forced your head onto his shoulder as he shushed you. You obliged, and he leaned down to press his lips to your forehead, rocking you as you sobbed in his tightening arms.

tags: @xoxabs88xox @harryspet @readermia @opheliadawnwalker3 @nickyl316h @captainchrisstan @sebabestianstan101 @villanellevi @lokislastlove @notyourtypicalrose @coconutqueen21 @hurricanerin @hyoyeoniie @cocoamoonmalfoy @mandiiblanche @gotnofucks @oneoftheprettynerds @doozywoozy @mcudarklibrary @melli0112 @buckybarnesplumwhore @dramaholic18

#dark peter parker #dark!peter parker #dark!peter x reader #peter parker x reader #ROYAL AU #prince peter parker #dark fic

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toukatan · 3 years

Note

You read every gojohime fic???? That's amazing!!! What are your favourites?

hello anonie! i guess i can say i’ve read at least a good 80% of all the fics, at least. probably. most likely because the fic tag at the start of the year was tiny and now the community’s grown so much there’s almost 600 of them. that’s insane to me. like hello?

i have a lotta fics that come to mind, that i should honestly make a master post on because i love them all. so here are a few many that came to mind immediately as i typed this up.

gojohime fic recommendations!

multichapter

limitations by ohmytheon

“Parenthood chooses you," her mother used to tell her, but Utahime never understood that saying more than the moment she realized she was pregnant with Gojo Satoru's child. They were never meant to be something serious - never meant to be more than they were - and yet they both suddenly find themselves in a world that doesn't care about their desires - and that brings them closer in a way that no one else can understand. It won't be easy and it won't be kind to either of them, but it appears as if the universe has other plans for them

no one is what they were before by ohmytheon

The world broke when Gojo Satoru turned on jujutsu society. It's not the hopeful place it was before, but Utahime has never been one to give up. Until she's placed in a dangerous position directly in his path, and she finds herself trapped in a web that doesn't seem intent on ever letting her go.

and touch me like you never by ohmytheon

In public, Gojo is a special grade bastard, especially to Utahime, and has been all their lives. He knows exactly what insults to throw and what buttons to push to drive her up a wall. In private, however, he's got quite a few other things to tell and show her, which only makes things more confusing. It would be easier if she could avoid him entirely, but for some reason, he won't let her go entirely.

gravity by aerfei

This is Utahime, fierce and indomitable, and this is Satoru, who despite holding the world’s regard, still craves something that Utahime has had all her life. Coming together is sometimes an act of desperation, and sometimes a deliberate choice. Or: An Iori Utahime character study, through the lens of her relationship with Gojo Satoru, starting from the beginning and ending at the Goodwill Event arc. Manga spoilers and (at least 95%) canon-compliant through (at least) chapter 135.

count every single leaf in autumn by florieneofthesea

“I told my family we’re dating.” Utahime’s hand hovers over the door. “What?!” (or: Gojo tells his family that he's dating Utahime to get them off his back, so of course they invite her to the dreaded family dinner™)

favourite colour by otherthingsonhold

At 28, Satoru Gojo's responsibilities only start to multiply. With his clan looking to him to lead the family, and the balance of the universe in his hands, Gojo isn't thinking of much else. But when his mother brings something to his attention, the only thing Gojo can do is follow through. But how is Utahime Iori part of all of this?

gojo catoru by ashittywriter

Utahime is tasked to catsit a suspiciously large Persian dollface cat with pristine white hair, the most boop-able nose, and to top it off the cutest cerulean eyes. Too bad the cat also happens to be her idiotic colleague Gojo Satoru.

at the tail-end of spring by florieneofthesea

Utahime doesn't expect to remember her ex's number off by heart but it comes in handy when she's a little less than sober outside a club in a city she's not familiar with and her battery on three percent. She just wishes things turned out differently for them. (Or, post-break up exploration where outer forces refuse to let them have their happy ending.)

a second chance by onewordmore

In another world, it wasn't Geto who sneered down at humanity, regarding them to be worthless monkeys that deserved to die. In another world, it wasn't Geto who openly defied the Jujutsu Council and brought down terror and fear to all. In another world, it wasn't just Amanai Riko who died that day, amidst the cheers and delighted cries of the insane. And Utahime was going to learn, first hand, the consequences of her own death.

from you to me by onewordmore

A drabble series regarding Gojo and Utahime. From fluff to smut to angst to love. This is going to have it all.

oneshots

oceansize by aerfei

The marriage is arranged by their families, small clans both, with all their hopes and traditions laid gently upon the shoulders of their only heirs -- and yet, this distance is impassable.

under the cover of darkness by ohmytheon

It takes a little alcohol, early morning hours, and a game of truth or dare for Gojo and Utahime to admit some difficult truths to each other.

risk/reward by ohmytheon

No punishment had ever been more effective in making Gojo do his actual job than receiving praise from his secretary - or more grueling than when Utahime withheld it.

like a good roommate by ohmytheon

Utahime has a problem: her bed wasn't delivered to the new apartment. Her ridiculous roommate, Gojo, has a solution - but he's kind of panicking on the inside.

aware of us by halspur

“We did alright, didn’t we?” Gojo put his phone down after taking several dozen photos of Tsumiki walking across the stage, his eyes soft. “I mean, we were just kids, too.”

love song by halspur

“Because you’re weak.” Gojo said, muffled into the thin skin of her throat. “I can’t leave you alone.”

tear you apart by halspur

“I don’t want to be mean to you,” Utahime’s cheek was pressed into his spine, her voice muffled. “I like you.”

cuddles are for clean boyfriends by just_trying_my_best_everyday

Utahime finds Gojo Satoru sitting right behind the door, blindfold hanging on his neck, completely soaked in blood and petting her cat with both hands. And he stinks.

honey by florieneofthesea

Gojo Satoru experiences love a decade before he fully realises it.

roots by florieneofthesea

At the start of winter, Utahime starts to cough up blood. She thinks maybe its just the lingering damage from her last mission, but the coughing persists and it starts to scratch her throat, and itch at her lungs and when she finally makes the trip to Tokyo to ask Shoko for her help, she doesn't even get the first word out. Shoko welcomes her at the entrance to Tokyo Metropolitan Technical School and Utahime hacks up a single, pale blue petal, smattered with blood. She stares down at the flora on the ground and wonders if she's been cursed. Utahime looks up, and Shoko's eyes are wide.

to have and to hold by ashittywriter

“M’sorry," Gojo said his voice slurring at the end. "But please go away, I have a girlfriend." Utahime blinked in confusion. What the fuck?

souvenir by PrettyKittyLuvsU

“Aha!” Gojo tugged something out of his pocket, his long fingers curled around it as he held his hand behind his back. His other hand waved before him, a cheeky grin splitting his lips. “Ora, ora! Hold out your hand.” Utahime stared flatly. “Ora, ora!” Gojo persisted, continuing to wave his hand as he grinned. “Hold out your hand already!” Utahime scowled at the hand swaying infront of her face. She had half a mind to slap the man instead, but her students were closely watching. Even Gojo’s students, the second years mainly—for Sukuna’s vessel was apologizing profusely as the brown haired girl continued kicking him while the quiet one made no effort to stop her— looked in fascination at whatever ridiculous souvenir Gojo wanted to hand her. Utahime slowly lifted her arm, already planning on throwing the thing back in Gojo’s annoying face. Gojo gets Utahime a very special kind of souvenir. Set during the start of the Goodwill arc.

dayum this exposes me huh? i do be reading a lot but what can i say i love to see it. all these fics are amazing, to the writers y’all are doing fantastically like my goodness you be really putting ya girl in a loop with some of these fics with your plot-lines and doing it flawlessly. can’t thank them enough for them, their hard work and time!

be sure to show the writers some love and support with comments, bookmarks and fight that dayum kudos button when it smiles at you because lemme leave more—

i think they’d really really appreciate it when they hear the bing and be sure to check out all of their stories including the ones in the pairing tag! happy readings 😙✨

#there’s so much more. i gotta make a master post but yeah send your love to the writers #they’re amazing and deserve all the love and support #🤍💫✨#gojohime #fic rec #anon #asks #replies #nitatalks

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redgillan · 4 years

Text

Under Pastel Skies - 9

Sugar daddy!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Modern!AU Bucky doesn’t need anyone, especially not a sugar baby. He isn’t that desperate… but she smiles so sweetly and she’s endearingly awkward, and he’s so lonely. She’s an artist, a painter, the type of person who always puts others before herself. Throwing caution to the wind Bucky offers her a place to live, a place where she can finally paint whatever her heart desires. He doesn’t need much in return; a friend, a muse.

Word Count: 6,257

Warnings: mention of accident, mention of blood

A/N: I’m sorry this took longer than usual but it’s pretty long so yay! I hope you’ll like this chapter. We’re slowly getting there :’) Thank you for the feedback, I truly appreciate all of you! Also 1 marvel quote and several Bob Ross quotes that I obv don’t own.

Wannabe sugar daddies don’t interact, idc if you have money, eat it and leave me be.

Good luck on your interview xx

Bucky had just hit ‘send’ when Sam cleared his throat noisily, drawing Bucky’s attention away from his phone. His friends were frowning crossly at him, their glasses raised in a silent toast. He set his phone face-down on the table and picked up his glass.

“Sorry, you were saying?”

Sam shot Steve a ‘see?’ look and Steve replied with a shrug and a little smile. They looked like two sassy grandmothers judging their only grandson. Bucky checked his phone again, and out of his peripheral vision, he could see his grandmothers share another look.

“What?” he barked, annoyed.

“Nothin,” they both answered at the same time before they took a synchronized sip of orange juice.

Smacking his lips together, Sam opened the menu and began to skim through the choices. A waiter suddenly came out of nowhere to take their order. Bucky ordered a cranberry rosemary scone, smoked bacon, an eggplant sandwich, and a plate of lemon-ricotta pancakes.

“Excuse-me,” Sam called out to the waiter. “Could you make his pancakes in the shape of an angel?” he asked, ignoring Bucky who was openly glaring at him.

The waiter, albeit a little surprised, kept a smile on his face. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Bucky told him, handing him the menu. “Thank you.”

Without another look to his friends, he grabbed his phone and checked his messages for the third time in less than two minutes. Steve snatched his phone up and sat back in his seat, waving the phone at Bucky.

“Enough! Live in the moment.” He pocketed the phone and gave Bucky a pointed stare. “You’ll get it back later.”

“What the hell? You’re not my father, give it back!” Bucky snapped, extending his hand, the palm facing up. Steve shook his head. “Give it back, you fucking meatball.”

He got up and tried to reach inside Steve’s pocket for his phone but Steve kept shifting in his seat. They wrestled like that for a minute while Sam watched them, eating a breadstick and looking mildly entertained.

“Okay, fine,” Bucky panted, pushing himself away from Steve. “You leave me no choice, Rogers.” He cleared his throat like an actor about to jump on stage. “Give me back my phone, Steve!” he said, raising his voice. “Do you enjoy stealing from disabled people?”

He nearly shouted the last two words, and to Steve’s horror, the buzz of conversation around them had died. He could feel people staring at him. Cursing softly under his breath, he reached into his pocket and dropped the phone into Bucky’s awaiting hand.

“It’s okay, we’re friends,” Steve said to the people sitting behind him. They looked at him with a disapproving glare. “Jesus, Bucky, you’re making me look like an asshole.”

An amused expression crossed Bucky’s face as he sat back in his seat. “Don’t touch my stuff.”

It was quiet while he checked his messages. Slowly, those around them returned to their own conversations. Sam pointed his half-eaten breadstick at Steve.

“Do you think the waiter will spit in your omelette?” he said the last word with an exaggerated French accent. Steve glared at him.

Their waiter arrived a moment later carrying a large tray with their brunch. Steve poked at his omelet with a suspicious frown, then looked over at Bucky who was still on his phone. Sam stole a slice of bacon from Bucky’s plate and gave it to Steve.

“I hear you’ve got a date tonight,” Sam said, making conversation.

“Yeah,” Steve chuckled, embarrassed. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just looking for something casual. I’m leaving in two days.”

“Where’re you going this time?”

“South Africa,” Steve replied, stealing another slice of bacon. “What about you? What’s that big emergency?”

Sam glanced at Bucky who was grinning like an idiot at his phone. “Not now. Let’s eat first.” He took the plate of bacon, took what he wanted then handed it to Steve. “Want another?”

Steve kept looking over at Bucky while they finished his bacon but Bucky didn’t seem to acknowledge their presence. He was in his own little bubble.

“It’s like we don’t even exist,” Steve remarked out loud.

“I know, it’s amazing. Look!” Sam straightened up in his seat and cleared his throat. “Bucky Barnes is the biggest idiot on the planet, and he can eat my farts.” Bucky was hunched over his phone, his thumb typing away. “See?”

“Impressive.”

“That’s the angel effect,” Sam said.

With a happy little sigh, Bucky pocketed his phone and turned his attention to his friends. He frowned at the amused look they shared.

“What are you guys talking about?”

“Steve’s first date in two years.” Sam turned to Steve. “You must be nervous.”

“Strangely, no.” Steve broke off a small piece of omelet with his fork. “I actually know him. He’s an old friend from college.”

“Nice,” Sam said.

“He’s a fashion photographer now.”

“Wait, what?” Bucky’s brows pinched in confusion as he stared at Steve.

Undeterred, Steve continued. “We’ve been facetiming a lot lately.” He shot Bucky a glance. “Why do you think I go to bed at 8?”

“But I thought-”

“You thought I had a date with your girl,” Steve said with a warm smile. “Listen, man, I like her. She’s cute, funny, talented. She’s a real sweetheart. But I like her because she brought back that light in your eyes. You look happy. That’s all I ever wanted for you. You had to go through so much crap, Buck. You deserve this.”

Bucky looked down at his pancakes, feeling tears pool in his eyes. He blinked them back and sniffed quietly. “So you were never going to ask her out.”

“I was until you called her ‘angel’,” Steve replied with a shrug. “You kept saying you were okay with this but, I mean, I’m not that dense.”

“Why do you keep going out with her then?” Bucky grumbled.

“Jeez, Mother Gothel, I didn’t know Rapunzel wasn’t allowed to leave the tower,” Steve exclaimed. “We were bored. You’re in your office all day. It was fun to mess with you though. You’re a grumpy Gus when you’re jealous.”

“I wasn’t jealous, okay. I was annoyed. There’s a difference.”

“Uh-huh.”

Bucky looked over at Sam who had been strangely quiet throughout this whole exchange. He loved teasing Bucky, and he always had something to say about Bucky’s love life. Sam wasn’t looking at Bucky, he just pushed his food around with his fork, his lips pinched shut. He met Bucky’s eyes, then lowered his head again.

Bucky had a feeling something bad was about to happen.

“What’s the big emergency?” he asked quietly, afraid of the answer.

Sam set his fork down beside his plate and leaned back against his chair with a sigh. He trained his gaze on the front door, seemingly deep in thought.

“I’m moving to D.C.” He paused to let the information sink in. “They’re transferring me to the D.C. office. I’m their new chief financial officer.”

“Congrats, man!” Steve exclaimed. “You deserve it.”

“Yeah,” Sam replied with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“So why the long face?”

“I’m a little anxious to leave New York. What will Barnes do without me? Without his mentor? Without someone to look up to?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “I think I’ll be all right.” He hesitated before he asked, “Did you tell her?”

“Tell who?” Steve inquired, polishing off the last of his omelet.

Bucky felt the wave of long-held sadness his Sam’s eyes. “I’ll tell her tonight.”

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

Sam and Bucky shared a look. They weren’t sure how Steve would react.

The word sugar daddy held a pejorative connotation. Every single one of those relationships featured a powerful, rich man and a poor, vulnerable man or woman. There was a clear power imbalance here that never appealed to Bucky, and he was pretty sure it never appealed to Sam either.

Whether it was a no-strings-attached service or an emotional service, it was still a hole in your resume. One that would be hard to explain to your future employers. He was afraid people would call you names, treat you differently or harass you if they knew.

He often wondered if he had unintentionally ruined your life.

Deep down he knew Steve would never call you a whore or treat you differently but he was still trying to protect your reputation. He believed that Sam had Natasha’s best interest at heart too.

Sam told Steve everything. He remembered the day he had met Natasha, their instant chemistry, the subtle flirting, the arrangement, their first night out, their first kiss, their first time together, their new arrangement. Steve listened attentively. When Sam told him that you were Natasha’s best friend, Bucky interrupted him and told his own story.

“Wow,” Steve deadpanned, leaning forward to take one of Sam’s poached egg and avocado toast. Sam slapped his hand away. “Is that a thing now? Sugar daddies, I mean?”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Yeah.” Steve sipped his mimosa with a bored look on his face. “You’re both not ready for the real conversation, so I’m just making small talk.”

Sam and Bucky exchanged confused looks. “What real conversation?”

“Sam, you just got an amazing promotion, you’re going to be the Prince of D.C. and you’re sitting here like someone kicked your puppy,” Steve replied, then turned to Bucky. “And you, well... I’ve been living with you for the past two weeks and you’ve gone all Alpha male on me, Buck. Cut the shit. You’re both in love with your sugar babies. Companions, or whatever the fuck you want to call them.”

Sam and Bucky sat in silence with their heads hung low. Steve opened his arms wide like a lawyer in a bad TV show saying ‘I rest my case’. When he spoke again, his voice was soft.

“Look, as maybe the world's leading authority on waiting too long, don't,” he said. “What’s the worst that could happen, um?”

It made Bucky think. Best-case scenario, you loved him too and life was a breeze for the next fifty years. Bad-case scenario, you didn’t share his feelings. Worst-case scenario, you shared his feelings but couldn’t make the transition from sugar baby to girlfriend.

Yeah, worst-case scenario sucked...

He came home around three in the afternoon, and smiled when he saw your shoes and coat. Knowing you were home always put him in a good mood, but his heart was heavy. He felt conflicted. He didn’t know if it was better to tell you how he felt now or to just keep living in this little bubble with you until it’d inevitably burst.

And to make things worse, Sam was going to end his contract with Natasha tonight. He made Bucky promise not to tell you about it. Bucky felt sorry for Natasha, he wondered if she had feelings for Sam. He wondered if she had a backup plan.

He found you in your studio, sitting on the floor, huddled against the wall, with one knee drawn up to your chest and your arms loosely wrapped around your leg. You were staring at the painting you’d just made, the still wet paint glistened under the artificial lights.

This painting was different from your usual landscapes and occasional portraits. There were various shades of blue and grey intertwined, and five big splotches of dark red paint layered on top of the canvas.

Bucky knew just by looking at you that something was wrong. You looked defeated, sad, upset. He reasoned that your interview didn’t go as planned. Quietly, he stepped into the room and sat down on the floor next to you, his left shoulder brushing your own.

“I just got home,” he said.

“Where’s Steve?”

“He said he had some errands to run. He’ll be back later.”

You nodded, still staring straight ahead. “Okay. I bet you can’t wait to have some time to yourself. I asked Natasha if I could stay with her, but she’s going out with Sam tonight. I’ll stay in my room, I won’t bother you.”

Bucky felt his heart drop, his breath caught in his throat. He had made the woman he loved feel unwelcome. God, he wanted to kick his own ass.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, tilting his head to look at you but you were stubborn and refused to meet his eye. “I thought you were going out with Steve and I- I didn’t want you to feel like you had to stay with me.”

“I’m not interested in Steve. I told you that.”

“I know.” He moved so that he could see your face. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you, and for the way I treated Steve. It won’t happen again. I promise. Can you forgive me?”

“Of course, Bucky,” you huffed.

He saw your chin quiver slightly and your eyes glaze over with unshed tears. You looked utterly broken. He reached up and wiped a stray tear from your cheek.

“Sorry, I had a difficult day,” you said.

His palm cupped the side of your face, his thumb stroking a caress across your cheek. You met his eyes for the first time and he smiled softly at you.

“My angel.”

His words made you cry even harder, silent tears streaming down your cheeks. With his hand still cupping the side of your face, he leaned closer and pressed his lips against your other cheek. You closed your eyes and basked in his affection.

He could feel the warmth of your tears, could taste the salt on his lips as they streamed down your cheek to his mouth. Slowly, he pulled back and looked at you, a smile forming on his lips when he saw a fleck of dried blue paint above your eyebrows.

“Painter Smurf,” he teased, wiping it off. You let out a huff of air that sounded like a laugh. “I’m here for you, angel, whatever you need.” He pulled you against his side and you rested your head on his chest.

“My interview didn’t go very well,” you said after a long moment of silence. “She said that I’m really talented, that my technique is perfect. But my work is too figurative. It’s not what she’s looking for.” You paused to wipe your nose on your sleeve. “It’s just- It wasn’t my first meeting. They all tell me the same thing: I’m not good enough.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky said, kissing your hair. “Your work is unique. It’s raw and beautiful. If they can’t see that then they’re morons.”

“She told me that if I had been a white man in the nineteenth century, people would still talk about me today.” You sighed. “I don’t know, Bucky. Maybe I should work on something more abstract.”

Bucky tilted his head to one side as he looked at your painting. “Is that why you painted this?”

“Mhhh,” you hummed. “She told me to play with the textures, the forms, the lines, the colours. Suggest rather than show. Let the painting tell its own story.”

“Yeah, I think you did it.”

“You think it’s good?”

“I don’t think those adjectives apply here. Not with modern art. It’s in the eye of the beholder,” he said, running his fingers along your shoulder. “Abstract art isn’t supposed to be beautiful, it’s supposed to make you feel something, right?”

“How does it make you feel?”

“Unsettled, sad.”

You straightened up and sat shoulder to shoulder. “My brother died in a hit-and-run.” You let the information sink in for a minute. “I was with Okoye, we got a call from our mom but by the time we got to the hospital, he was already dead.”

Your voice was surprisingly calm and controlled. Bucky wanted to reach out to you but he was unable to move. He listened attentively, his heart squeezing painfully in his chest.

“He was wearing some kind of compression shirt, grey-blue with two white stripes, and it was covered in blood. When I close my eyes and think of that day, all I remember is that shirt and the blood.” You tilted your head and gave him a little smile. “That’s what I painted.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say. He just sat there, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Sorry,” you let out a small laugh. “I had a shitty meeting and then I came home and basically relived one of the worst days of my life to put it on a canvas. Now it’s staring at me and all I want is to shred it to pieces.”

Bucky noticed that your hand was close to one of your palette knives. Your fingers brushed against the handle, debating whether you should pick it up and slash the canvas. He laid his hand on top of yours.

“It won’t help,” he said. “Trust me. I can put the painting somewhere else if you want. You won’t have to look at it again. I promise.”

“Yes, please.”

“C’mon, beautiful, let’s go downstairs. I know someone who can help you.” He got to his feet and extended his hand to you. You frowned up at him, a silent question in your eyes. “His name is Bob and he paints happy little trees.”

A bright, wide smile spread until it lit up your whole face, and Bucky’s heart melted at the sight. He grinned at you and pulled you to your feet.

“I love Bob Ross,” you said, and Bucky gave your hand a little squeeze.

In the living room, you sat down on the sofa, crossing your legs under you and grabbed a blanket while Bucky connected his YouTube account to the TV. He sat down beside you, propping his feet up on the coffee table and adjusting the blanket in his lap.

“Hi, welcome back. Certainly glad you could join me today.” The show started and you melted against Bucky’s chest, pulling the blanket up to your neck. “Thought today we could do a fantastic little painting-”

You were pressed against his bad side, but Bucky didn’t mind. As the show progressed, you slid further into his lap until your head rested on the armrest of the sofa, close to Bucky’s right hand.

“People know when you’re happy. They can look at your paintings and tell how you were happy. They reflect your moods. Paintings are a reflection of your innermost feelings.”

He gave your head a little massage while you both watched Bob Ross create a stunning lake view painting.

“Cuz in your world, you can create any kind of illusion that you want. I spent half my life in the military, and I had to live in somebody else’s world all the time. Painting offered me freedom, I’d come home after all day of playing soldier and I could paint the kind of world that I wanted. It was clean, it was sparkling, shiny, beautiful-”

You shifted a little, and Bucky wondered if those words resonated with what you had been through. Being adopted, losing a brother, taking care of your sick mother when your siblings left, graduating, making ends meet... Those experiences had shaped you into the woman you would be for the rest of your life. A kind and strong woman who never really got to live or enjoy life.

He understood how important painting was to you. He was an artist too. He wasn’t a painter, but writing offered him a kind of freedom he had lost a long time ago.

“We should paint along,” you said, tilting your head up to look at him. “Then I’ll sell yours. I bet people would pay a lot of money to own an original Grant Thomas painting.”

Bucky chuckled. He knew you were teasing him, the slight curl of your lips said as much. “I’ll sign it James Barnes. It’ll be worthless.”

“It’s not worthless to me,” you said.

“Would you hang it in your room?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then, okay, I’ll paint along with you.”

When the episode ended, you decided to eat dinner first and paint later. You were sitting at the kitchen island, eating a bowl of leftover pasta from the night before, when Steve came home.

“Hey guys,” he greeted, throwing a plastic bag on the kitchen island before he made his way to his bedroom.

“I’m so fucking late. I still need to take a shower and get dressed.” Steve came out of his room, shirtless, and working his belt buckle open. “Hey, Buck, can I borrow some clothes?”

“I swear to fuckin’ God, Rogers, if you undress in the middle of the kitchen I’ll make you eat your jeans.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He rushed to the bathroom and closed the door behind him. A minute later, Bucky heard the shower running.

Later, you went upstairs to gather canvases, paint brushes and paint while Bucky helped Steve pick out an outfit.

Steve was too excited about his date to remind Bucky that he was an idiot, and Bucky was happy that for once they didn’t talk about his feelings for you. He teased Steve and watched as Steve squirmed, the tip of his ears bright red. Just like old times.

Then they met you downstairs where you had two easels set up in front of the television. Steve stood in front of you, visibly nervous and agitated, while you looked at him from head to toe.

“How do I look?”

“Like you’re wearing clothes two sizes too small for you, which makes you look even bigger than you normally are so... pretty good.”

“Yeah?”

You chuckled. “You look great, Steve.”

Steve responded with a relieved sigh and a little bashful smile. Bucky liked that look on Steve, it reminded him of their childhood when Steve awkwardly flirted his way through Brooklyn.

Bucky jerked back to the present when Steve turned to him for confirmation. He gave him a firm nod and a thumbs-up, then walked him to the kitchen. They talked about Steve’s plans for the night while Steve gathered up his things.

Bucky was walking back to the living room when Steve called out his name and threw something to him. Bucky caught it in mid-air, then looked down at his hand. A shiny looking condom wrapper was nestled in the palm of his hand. He scowled at Steve.

“Just in case,” Steve said with a shit-eating grin.

“You’re a dead man.”

Steve’s laughter echoed down the corridor as he left the apartment.

Blowing out a breath, Bucky pocketed the foil packet and joined you in the living room. You were sitting at your easel, blobs of paint arranged in a semicircle on a palette. There was another easel next to yours, with a palette resting on a stool to make things easier for him.

You selected the lake view episode you had watched earlier, thinking that it would make things easier. Bucky was in awe of you, you made painting look so effortless and beautiful. You added your own trees and clouds, shifting things around to create your own world.

Bucky followed Bob Ross’ instructions closely but, in his opinion, it looked like someone had made it with their feet. You laughed at his comment and told him that you would still hang it in your room. It boosted his ego a bit.

When you both finished your painting, Bucky looked up at the clock. It was close to midnight which made him do a double take.

“Time for me to hit the hay,” he said, yawning. “This is as good as it’s gonna get.”

“Mhh,” you mused, turning the TV off.

“You okay?”

You shrugged. “Yeah, I- uh, I was kind of hoping we’d do this all night,” you said, playing with a mostly dried paintbrush. You looked at him from under your lashes. “But it’s fine. I understand, you’re tired. I think I’ll wait for Steve.”

Bucky looked at you with a pained expression. He could tell something was bothering you. He placed his index finger under your chin and tilted your head up. “Angel, I don’t think Steve is coming home tonight.” You pinched your lips together and nodded. “Talk to me. I want to help.”

“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Your words hit him like a punch in the chest, leaving him momentarily breathless. He pulled you close and pressed a long kiss to your forehead. You clung to him for dear life, your warmth and familiar scent made his heart ache.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled against your skin, then pulled back a little so he could look you in the eye. “Let’s change into something more comfortable, um? Then we’ll catch some shut-eye. I have an idea, the first person to fall asleep has to make breakfast tomorrow.”

“You sure?”

“You’re right. I’m exhausted, I’ll fall asleep first,” he said, shaking his head. “New rule, last person to fall asleep has to make breakfast.”

You snorted. “No, I meant... are we going to sleep in the same bed?”

“I promise I’ll stay on my side. But if it makes you uncomfortable, there’s a bunk bed in Steve’s room.”

“No, it’s fine. I want to wash my face first. I’ll see you in a minute.”

Bucky tried to play it cool but his heart was pounding. He kept seeing flashes of his dreams in his mind: skin against skin, steady puffs of air brushing against his skin, the smell of sweat and something uniquely you surrounding him.

He was absolutely terrified.

He went upstairs, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth and changed into his pyjamas. His night-time regimen took longer than he had anticipated so he wasn’t surprised when he found you sitting cross-legged on his bed, scrolling through your phone, looking so calm and peaceful.

You were wearing your pyjama bottoms and a fluffy sweatshirt stained with blue paint and tomato soup. He felt his stomach flip when you raised your head and smiled at him. A chill ran through his spine, and made the hairs on his arm stand on end. He’d never seen you look more beautiful.

“Hey,” you said, placing your phone on the nightstand. “Which side of the bed do you sleep on?”

“The side you’re sitting on.” You rolled to the other side of the bed and slid under the covers making him laugh. “You didn’t have to move.”

“It’s fine. I prefer this side.” You looked around the room. “I like your room. It’s very you.”

“Ah?”

“Yeah, neat, organized, lots of books, a cosy armchair, stormy blue comforter. It looks intimidating but it’s actually really soft. Like you.”

He suppressed a laugh. “Thanks.”

Bucky climbed into bed beside you, turned off the light and drew the blanket over him trying to get warm. He lay on his back looking up at the ceiling. He was so stiff and nervous, he forced himself to breathe normally. You turned onto your side and slid one of your hands under your pillow.

“Do you usually read before you go to sleep?” you whispered, afraid to disturb the silence.

“Yes,” he whispered back. “Do you?”

“Sometimes.” There was a moment’s silence before you spoke again. “I’ve started reading your book.”

“Oh, Christ,” he let out a small laugh and turned his head to look at you, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. “I hope I didn’t traumatize you.”

“You have a very dark sense of humour,” you said. “But I already knew that.”

“I’ve always had a dark sense of humor, but trust me, when I lost my arm I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Therapy helped a lot. Besides, laughing is good for your health, right? My books are very personal, I don’t censor myself.”

“I know. I wasn’t expecting it to be so honest.” You shifted a little and looked away from him. “I don’t know if I’ll finish it, I feel like I’m intruding.”

“I understand.” He shifted slightly so he was lying on his left side, facing you. “I wrote it like a diary. Talking isn’t my strong suit. I don’t know, I think I’m trying too hard and I just end up being rude or not making sense. When I write, I take my time, I find the right words. It’s easier when I don’t have to look anyone in the eye.”

He knew his book was a little rough. He focused on his depression, his rehabilitation, relearning basically everything. He talked about rediscovering his body, intimately. He talked about his friends, his family, strangers, therapy, dating.

“Can I ask you a very personal question?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

He swallowed hard, his throat raw and tight. ��Yes.” In fact, he was in love right now. “Once. I don’t trust easily.”

“I know I read what happened between you and your girlfriend.”

She had been his first girlfriend since the accident. She was kind, patient, a little over excited but he found it cute. In a way, she reminded him of himself before the accident. She wasn’t afraid to touch him, and God, he needed to be touched.

Sam had witnessed little things that irked him but Bucky had ignored him, refusing to see the warning signs. He wanted to be happy again. But then he couldn’t bury his head in the sand anymore.

She treated him like a child in front of their friends, and her friends praised her for taking such good care of a man like him. A man who, in their mind, was high maintenance. She cut his meat for him even though he was perfectly capable of doing it himself. She helped him dress, tied his shoes, zipped up his coat, etc... He felt infantilized, humiliated.

He didn’t think she was a bad person though. It was just her personality.

“How’s Natasha?” he asked suddenly.

A puff of air caressed his face as you snorted out a laugh. “Why do you ask? You don’t like her.”

“I like her a lot,” he argued. “She seems wary of me, which I understand, but she’s great.”

“Yeah, she is.” You considered his words. “She’s doing well. She went on work date with Sam.”

Despite his promise to Sam, he couldn’t bear the thought of keeping things from you. “I have to tell you something about Sam and Nat.” You waited for him to continue. “Sam got promoted, he’s moving to D.C. He broke things off with Natasha tonight. I mean, their arrangement.”

“I know,” you said. “She texted me while you were in the bathroom. I’m going to spend the night at her place tomorrow. It’s been a while since we had a girls’ night, and we both really need it.”

“Good.” He cupped the side of your face, let his thumb brush your jaw. “I’m going out with the boys tomorrow. Steve’s leaving soon.” He pulled his hand back. “We should try to get some sleep.”

“No, please,” you said, shifting closer to him. “Not yet.”

“Angel, we can’t stay awake all night.”

“I don’t want to be alone in the dark.”

“I’m right here with you,” he spoke gently.

“But once you fall asleep I’ll be alone.”

Bucky raised his head and kissed your forehead, his lips lingering on your skin. When he pulled back, he rested his hand on your forearm and let his warmth seep into your skin. His thumb caressed the inside of your wrist, stroked over your racing pulse point.

“I’ll wait until you fall asleep,” he said.

“Thank you, Bucky.” You smiled and let your index finger run down the length of his nose. “Does it hurt when you sleep on your left side?”

“Not really,” he replied. “Most of the time it’s just weird. It feels like my phantom limb hangs down through the bed. Like my arm is invisible and just goes through the bed.”

“What do you miss the most?”

He let out a long exhale. “Not much. Hugs. Proper hugs... I guess. Holding someone close and wrapping myself around them. Squeezing someone against my chest, making them feel protected. I used to be a great hugger. Now I give bro hugs.”

“I love bro hugs.”

His chuckled dissolved into a grin, and you both stayed quiet for a moment. He knew you weren’t asleep, he could hear you thinking. “What’s on your mind, beautiful?”

“I was wondering,” you started, then trailed off. “One day we’ll have to end this arrangement. Do you think it’ll end well, or is it going to be messy?”

It took him a minute to respond.

“Y’know, one of the things I learned in therapy was to stop worrying about things I can’t control,” he said. “That’s in the future, for future-you and future-me. I don’t know how it’ll end but I can promise you one thing: I’ll always be there for you. Arrangement or not.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” you breathed out. “Right-now-me is a lucky bitch.”

You both laughed softly, then fell into a contemplative silence. There was something so peaceful about lying in bed with you, his hand loosely wrapped around your wrist, sharing warmth. He didn’t want to fall asleep.

For the next hour you talked about your families, your childhood, your friends, your likes and your dislikes. You told him about being an adopted child and living with other adopted kids. He could tell you were holding back when you talked about your siblings.

The only one you gushed about was Okoye. You were evasive when you talked about Scott and Wanda, though you did tell him that you had agreed to meet Wanda.

“What’s your favorite comfort food?”

“Breakfast for dinner.” Your voice was soft and small, he knew you were falling asleep. “When I was a kid, we had breakfast for dinner every Sunday night. We’d grab a bowl of our favourite cereal and eat together in front of the TV. I miss those days.” Your face was half buried in your pillow. “What’s yours?”

“Easy, pancakes.”

You smiled, your eyes were closed. “I like pancakes too.”

He watched you fall asleep and made a mental note to make some pancakes for breakfast. Your breathing evened out, and he waited a few more minutes to make sure you were asleep before he rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.

Bucky woke up to the sound of rain striking against the window. He opened his eyes and noted that the room seemed brighter than usual. A quick glance at the bedside clock told him that it was already a little past eight.

He stretched, sighing contentedly, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his closed fist. He tilted his head to look at you, still sleeping next to him. You lay on your stomach with your face turned away from him and your arms hugging your pillow. He adjusted the covers around your shoulders and stealthy slipped out of bed.

He went to the window and fixed the shades to make sure they didn’t let any light in. Then he made his way downstairs where he found Steve cracking eggs into a bowl. He was still wearing Bucky’s clothes, but his hair was a mess. Still he looked positively glowing.

“Mornin’,” Steve greeted with a wide smile.

“Hey, man.” Bucky took a seat at the kitchen island. “When did you get back?”

“About ten minutes ago. Long enough to notice that your angel hasn’t slept in her room last night. Wanna talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Bucky said with a shrug. “She didn’t want to be alone.”

“So you slept with her.”

“We slept in the same bed. Nuance.”

“I’m gonna nuance your face with my fist if you don’t talk to her soon,” Steve exclaimed. “She’s not going to stay single forever, Buck. Things are gonna change, one way or another.”

“I know.”

Steve set the bowl aside and held the edge of the counter behind him. He sighed, exasperated. “If I were you, I’d talk to her before something happens and takes your choices away from you.”

Bucky pinched his lips together, hard, and looked down at the counter. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I- I don’t know how to talk to her,” he said, feeling tears gather in his eyes. He met Steve’s eyes. “I physically can’t talk to her. It hurts. It’s stuck here-” he aggressively grabbed his stomach “-all the time. And it hurts, Steve, you have no idea how painful it is.”

“That’s love,” Steve replied, smiling at him like he, too, knew how it felt.

“Well, it fucking sucks.”

Bucky wiped the back of his hand against his runny nose. Steve stood there in silence.

“This book I’m writing,” Bucky said, breaking the silence. “It’s about her. Just her.” He paused. “I can’t back down now, my publicist’s too invested in our story. I know it’s an eccentric way of telling someone you fell in love with them but... writing’s easier than talking.”

Steve nodded, his eyes glued to the floor. “It’s like a long love letter.”

“Something like that.” Bucky climbed off the stool and rounded the kitchen island. “Now, I’m going to make breakfast. I promised her pancakes.”

Steve smiled and watched him move around the kitchen. “I hope it works out for you, Bucky. I really do.”

Part 10

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #marvel #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagines #bucky barnes imagines #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes imagine #marvel imagine #redgillan #redgillanwrites

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slippinmickeys · 3 years

Text

A Sequel: Amazon Archeologist/Scientist AU, Part 2:

You can read on AO3 here.

1. “How does it feel to have cured cancer?” asked Kathy Lee. Scully couldn’t take her eyes off the rim of the host’s wine glass; it was smeared with lipstick, and the wine contained therein had legs, running down the bell curve of the glass in thin amber stripes.

It was oddly, surreally quiet on the unnaturally blazing stage -- multiple cameras pointing at them, a team of professionals sitting in dead silence in the dark spread out below.

“I only wish I’d done it sooner,” Scully said, going off script a bit. “I think of the people that died while we were still searching, still researching, while the studies were being checked and… I just wish I’d found it sooner.”

The host’s face softened, and she reached forward and put her hand over Scully’s on the arm of the chair where it was resting. She gave it a squeeze and Hoda took over, “Up next, the group BTS is going to sing us their latest single!”

There was a dull bell that rang off to Scully’s right and the stage manager stepped forward, headphones clomped over his ears, his mic slung low around his jaw.

“We’re clear!” he called, “Sixty seconds!”

The show would be cutting to a co-host standing at a stage set-up outside 30 Rockefeller Center. Scully reached up to unhook the mic attached to her lapel, and a trio of sound technicians descended on her. In ten seconds, she was relieved of all equipment, and she was left swaying in the funnel of the Fresnels on the too bright stage.

“You did great,” she heard from her left, and the show’s host winked at her, and retook her hand, leading her to the dim cool just off stage.

She found Mulder standing before her once her eyes adjusted, just outside the reach of the stage lights, looking nervous and out of place, his hands clasped behind his back. He was wearing a turtleneck and a suit coat, looking every inch the tenured professor.

“And who’s this?” Kathie Lee asked, looking at Mulder brightly.

Scully shook herself, trying to remember her manners. It wasn’t always easy, having spent so much time in the field.

“Uh, this is Mulder,” she said, “Dr. Fox Mulder. My, um… my fiancé.”

The television host smiled warmly at Mulder and clasped his hand.

“I’ve heard the story of your meeting,” Kathie Lee said, “It’s a real pleasure.”

“I’m a big Giants fan,” Mulder said, giving her hand a firm shake, “the pleasure’s all mine.”

The host winked at him and then stalked off, and Scully exhaled, falling a little into Mulder’s side.

“I’m glad that’s over,” she said.

“The price you pay for changing the course of human history,” Mulder mumbled, squeezing her into his side and kissing her hairline. He led her off the soundstage and into a waiting limo.

2. It had been a whirlwind since the Nobel Prize Award ceremony in Stockholm. It was cold in Sweden in December — especially to a person who’d spent years in the humid jungles off the beaten paths of the world, and she and Mulder both felt out of place and perpetually in the clasp of a bone-clutching chill.

“I just want to be back in the field,” she’d whisper to him, and he would kiss her hand. With the prize money, they could buy a house, start a family — but they both would rather be in a jungle somewhere, sweating into the other’s skin on a too-narrow cot, in a too-hot clime. There was no science when they were in the cradle of the other’s hips, there was just each other. Sex made life more simple. Sex made life more fun. But sex didn’t cure cancer. Pleurotus Mulderatus did that, and the world wanted to hear about it.

3.She had a free ticket. Any university, any assignment.

“I feel pressure,” she told him, her nose pressed into his ear. “What do you do after you’ve cured cancer?” she asked, earnestly, “there’s nowhere to go but down.”

He’d taken her to Rhode Island, to his family’s cottage in Quonochontaug, creaky and drafty and smelling of mildew and old pine. No one had visited in decades and everything needed to be cleaned and aired out.

They kayaked and frolicked in the waves, drank coffee in adirondack chairs and listened to the pinched squawks of hovering sea birds. They’d find a place in the dune grass, down low where the wind wouldn’t catch them. They’d soak up the sun and then go into the cottage and make love between the knotty pine walls, their moans absorbed by the thick shag carpet laced with the grit of sand, faded drunkards path quilts nailed to the walls.

“Down is a state of mind,” Mulder would murmur into her ear, “Up is fighting gravity. You have nowhere to be but here. You have no one to impress but me.”

He would catch her lips with his own and they would sink into each other gratefully.

4.Mulder was burning pancakes in the kitchen when there was a dull knock on the screen door.

Scully was laughing at Mulder’s culinary ineptitudes when she turned toward the sound, her laugh fading when a well-done-up woman appeared on the stoop, holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare, trying to see into the murky depths of the house.

“Are you press?” Scully asked through the screen door glumly, her mood taking a nose dive.

“I’m Samantha,” the woman said, and it took Scully a full five seconds for her synapses to fire, to figure out the identity of the visitor.

“Oh my god,” Scully said, swinging the door open to admit the polished woman waiting on the other side. The door itself was swollen with humidity and didn’t shut all the way -- it caught like there was a second latch. “Come in, come in!”

Samantha had a full head of thick hair just like her brother, but it was curled and tawny, streaks of not-quite-blonde highlights running from the roots. She was wearing Lily Pulitzer pastels, and would have looked at home in a sun hat or on the pages of Coastal Living.

“You must be Dana,” she breathed, smiling widely. Scully nodded and looked around self-consciously. “God, this place hasn’t changed in thirty years,” Samantha finished, shaking her head ruefully. “Where’s Fox?”

“Kitchen,” Scully said, inclining her head toward the cooking space, though she knew Samantha knew right where to go.

“You’re using the cast iron?” Samantha said boldly and apropos of nothing, stepping into the sunny kitchen, “God, I hope you seasoned that thing.”

Mulder’s face brightened at seeing his sister, and he turned to her fully, enveloping her in a hug, a greasy spatula in one hand, held out so as not to soil her clothes.

“Like you can cook,” he drawled, turning back to the smoking pan.

“I know enough to hire a caterer,” she said, plunking down in an olive green vinyl kitchen chair, looking at ease but totally out of place in the dated decor of the cottage. “So. Who do I have to fuck to get a mimosa around here?”

“Me,” said a voice from the entryway. The screen door slammed ineffectually shut and Scully’s own sister Melissa stood awkwardly in the slant of sun showing through it, holding several plastic bags laden with glass bottles and juices, a hopeful, nervous smile on her face.

“Missy?!” Scully squeaked, and Mulder looked to the door, his face chagrined and pleased as Scully launched herself at her sister, wrapping herself in the earthy patchouli smell of the woman, the plastic bags clunking to the floor at their feet.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“I got ordained online,” Melissa said, drinking a Bellini from a yellow smiley-face mug, her feet tucked under her on a rough-hewn dining chair. “It’s perfectly legal.”

“But it’s--” Scully started, then abandoned her argument. She looked to Mulder desperately, who smiled and plunked a cup of hot coffee in front of her.

“It was only an idea,” he said, squeezing her hand and sliding an ancient sugar dish in front of her. The crinkles around his eyes had hardened in the ocean-reflected sun, lending him an air of easy humor she hadn’t witnessed much of in the jungle.

“Don’t you need two witnesses?” she asked, realizing how lame it sounded the second the words were out of her mouth.

Samantha leaned over and grabbed her hand, squeezing her fingers in such a way that made her feel bolstered and secure. “Not in Rhode Island,” Mulder’s sister told her, looking her square in the eye.

“We don’t have to do it,” Mulder said, still standing at her side, “but I thought…”

She felt overwhelmed with emotion, thinking of her father, who hadn’t lived long enough to witness her greatest achievement, which would have saved his life.

“Mom sent her wedding dress,” Melissa said, holding up a garment bag -- it was a yellowed ivory in the kitchen sun, the zipper up its middle aged and brittle.

XxXxXxXxXxX

They exchanged vows on the beach in front of the old cottage in a whipping Atlantic wind. Gulls hovered overhead and the sun was as bright as a brass doorknob, the air clearer than glass.

Samantha had read a poem by an amateur poet named Tim Pratt called Scientific Romance (Mulder having confessed to her later that night that it only seemed right to have had a reading replete with scientific notation for a wedding between two people such as themselves). Melissa had read words as old as the institution of marriage itself and they exchanged simple rings and had eyes only for each other. Scully handed her bouquet -- a small posy of wild swamp azalea and yellow flag that Melissa had picked the hour before -- to her new sister in law as she strode up the peeling wooden steps of the house. Mulder had insisted upon carrying her over the threshold and Melissa and Samantha had stood back thoughtfully, and were now sitting closely on the beach, heads bent together, talking in hushed tones.

Scully didn’t know quite what to do with herself, dressed in old lace in the heavy salt air, her left ring finger feeling as heavy and pendulous as an old bell. Mulder wrapped his arms around her from behind and told her they never had to leave.

“Nobel Laureates live in Rhode Island, too, you know,” he whispered into the hair behind her ear.

“Mmm,” she said happily, watching her sister and his dig their feet in the gritty sand.

He kissed the skin where her shoulder met her neck. “Life can be as simple as the state motto.”

“Which is?” she asked.

“Hope.”

5. She stood above the riverbank, the grass a trampled, muddy squelch. A monkey called from overhead, a high primate shriek that echoed through the canopy. Its compatriots soon joined in, the welcoming committee announcing the rare arrival of a visitor.

He sat in the back of the approaching hollowed-out canoe, his knees practically to his neck, the lanky bones of him jutting out at all angles. He wore jeans and chambray, all wrong for the climate, but the blue set off the dark mink of his hair, and his eyes -- as green as the river upon which his boat perched -- caught hers from twenty yards away -- they held her gaze as the craft glided to shore, and he leapt off with the galumphing grace of a power forward.

“Dr. Scully I presume,” he said, finding his balance on the slippery shore and reaching a hand forward. She clasped it gratefully, then brought it to her belly, which was protruding out like a carved fertility statue, a life-sized goddess, gravid and full. “I thank God, doctor, that I have been permitted to see you,” he finished, and they embraced on the shores of the jungle river, perspiring and damp and finally, finally feeling at home.

#fanfic #msr #my fic #the x-files #au #prompts #drabble ish

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justoneofthoseghosts · 3 years

Note

Break me + brettsey

A/N: To the anons who requested for this, I tried my best 🥲 Also, you know I love fluff so wow, this was really emotional to write but I do love a challenge so er, grab some tissues maybe.

Warnings: character death

Throughout the years, Sylvie has learned that life isn’t always fair.

No matter how hard she studied for the 2nd grade spelling bee, someone studied harder and got that big, shiny trophy. She had her first kiss at seventeen with a boy she thought she’d love forever but he ended up being a manipulative jerk, just the first of many who turned out to be frogs instead of princes. Her birth mom sought her out and just as they found their footing, she died at child birth.

But this one, it really takes the cake, Sylvie thinks.

She pleaded with Matt to get his cough checked out weeks ago, asking him politely when she noticed it getting more and more frequent. It crept in especially late at night in bed when they were supposed to be sleeping, instead, she would hear him try to stifle it so as not to wake her. He shrugged it off and told her not to worry, which is classic Matt. She should have known. Even after all these years, her husband is still so stubborn.

One night, when the coughing won’t stop, she manages to get through to him and he agrees to go to the ED. Sylvie grabs the car keys and leads him out the door.

They greet the new charge nurse, who brings them into a treatment room. Sylvie doesn’t think much of it as Ethan comes in and they make small talk and catch up with the ED chief, who at 70 seems to show no signs of retiring. He orders a few standard tests. They wheel Matt off to get an x ray while Sylvie goes to grab a snack from the vending machine.

When Ethan finds her forty minutes later, his face is grim. Her heart drops to the pit of her stomach and she knows it’s not just an ordinary cough.

Stage 4 lung cancer.

Matt Casey, retired CFD battalion chief has stage 4 lung cancer.

It’s like a cruel joke. Matt’s never smoked a single cigarette in his life but his career as a firefighter has finally caught up with him - all the fumes, the smoke, the dust have made their way into his lungs. Sylvie doesn’t cry while the oncologist takes them through their options. She’d gladly sit through a hundred rounds of chemo with Matt if needed.

Except he doesn’t want that.

They argue about it for several weeks. Matt says he wants to spend the rest of his days at home, maybe they can rent a cabin in the woods in Michigan where the air is fresh, the sky is blue and they can just be, waiting for the inevitable.

“Matt,” she starts to say, an edge in her tone. They've been going around in circles and Sylvie is ready to put her foot down.

Matt shakes his head, taking her hand and gently telling her what he's been repeating since that day they found out, “I’ve lived a full life. We have these great kids and grandkids. I can’t ask for anything more.”

Sylvie yanks her hand out of his grasp. She's had enough.

“What would you do if it were the other way around?” She yells, her voice trembling slightly. She doesn’t think she’s every screamed at him this loudly in all their years together but she doesn’t want to give up. She needs him to understand.

Matt sighs, running a hand through his now grey hair. After a beat, he looks her in the eye. She knows he can't lie and say he'll take it lying down if she were to tell him what he's been parroting.

“I’d be begging you to get the treatment because I couldn’t bear to live a day without you,” he admits quietly.

They hold each other’s gazes, neither willing to concede.

“Please, Matt,” Sylvie whispers as she feels the tears threatening to fall. She grabs hold of his arm, squeezing it. She needs him to fight, if not for himself then for her because she doesn't think she can handle life without him, not quite yet.

He finally relents, “okay, okay, we’ll get the chemo.”

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. Sylvie burrows deeper into his embrace, sobbing. She cries for the first time since they found out about the cancer and Matt rubs his hand over her back, comforting her.

Sylvie drives Matt to the hospital for his rounds of chemo while he jokes about shaving off his hair. One night, she wakes up to find his side of the bed empty and the light in the bathroom on. She peers in and sees him kneeling in front of the toilet, vomiting. She takes a seat beside him and quietly helps him, remembering their wedding vows.

In sickness and in health.

On the side, she starts to volunteer for the CFD’s firefighters cancer network, trying to raise more awareness on the dangers of such a noble job. She cheers with Matt one Spring morning when Gallo, Violet and Ritter decide to run the half marathon in full firefighter gear, in support of the cause. She’s glad that even if they’ve both retired, 51 still remains to be a part of their family.

Six months in, the doctor tells them that the chemo isn’t working as well as he hoped and the prognosis isn’t good. Sylvie still wants to continue but Matt sits her down one night after dinner.

“I think it’s time we just wait this out, Syl.” He tells her gently, interlacing his fingers in hers.

Sylvie wants to say no because this can’t be how it ends for him, someone spent his life saving people is about to succumb to a deadly, incurable disease. It really, truly is unfair.

But at the same time, she understands his request. He doesn’t want to put their family through another roller coaster ride of emotions, of uncertainty, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s saying he wants to take the reins and do it his way.

It reminds Sylvie of that quote from Harry Potter she read when she was younger.

To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

She didn't understand it at all at thirteen but she does now, glancing over at Matt and seeing the steely resolve in his eyes.

They’ve been together for over 30 years. They’ve built a home filled with love and kindness, full of laughter and running blonde children who all grew up to be exceptional adults with thriving careers. They have two wonderful, adorable grandchildren. She remembers what Matt told her, how he’s lived a full life.

She feels a tear slide down her cheek and Matt’s other hand brushes it away. She knows the next word coming out of her mouth will break her heart but she says it anyway because it's what's right.

“Okay.”

There’s something in the air, Sylvie thinks and her soul begins to fill with dread. Today, it seems, is the day. Matt’s been in bed for the last three days, not really able to move or eat much. Without the chemo, the doctor told them he had about three months to live and with each day that passed after that, Sylvie started to feel hope that maybe he had more to give.

It’s been a little over a year since the diagnosis. Sylvie’s trying to read a book while Matt is taking a nap. She’s distracted by her thoughts but hears him whisper.

“I think it’s time.”

She nods, her lower lip quivering. She approaches him and kisses the top of his head before making her way out of the room to make a few phone calls.

The house starts to fill with family and friends arriving to say their last good byes. Their kids are here, surrounding their dad and telling stories about how Matt always put them first no matter what. The remaining members of their second shift at 51 start to trickle in one by one. Sylvie told them it was going to be a celebration of Matt’s life, how she didn’t want them to mope around because it isn’t what he would want so they laugh and jest until late in the evening.

Matt kisses his grandkids one last time before they leave and Sylvie climbs into bed with him. He rests his head on her shoulder as she holds his hand and watches his eyes flutter close and his breathing gradually stop.

Sylvie recollects their many years together - growing from friends to something deeper, the first time Matt swung like Tarzan from the aerial after they got together and Sylvie telling him never to do it again and of course he did many more time and she never really stopped worrying, buying a house, their wedding day, the birth of their children, sending off each kid to preschool up until watching them graduate from college, meeting their grandchildren for the first time, celebrating personal and professional milestones together, cheering each other on.

She looks at her husband’s still form thinking yes, it has been a full life.

#you ask for angst and I try to deliver #but wow that was hard to write #and I'm sorry in advance #chicago fire #brettsey #fanfic prompt

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parjiljehavey · 3 years

Text

this isn’t where we intended to be

A/N: Because we don’t know the details of how Boba survived the Sarlacc, I hand waved it. Am I shamelessly blending Legends into this? Yep. Don’t stop me now, I’m having a good time!

I also forgot to mentioned that the titles are lyrics from You Must Love Me. Madonna or Lana Del Rey, both are valid and full of feels.

Tagging: @escapedthesarlacc, @silverfish-kingdom, @shadowfoxey, @fresa-luna

Rating: T for Teen

Content Warnings: Angst, Bad Spy/Military jargon and descriptions, Boba Is Pining, We got some Surprise Appearances at the end.

PREVIOUS // NEXT

ix.

The first thing the Imperials did after setting up their garrison was confiscate any weapons. They searched house by house, apartment by apartment. The only things they didn’t take were the kitchen knives. You were lucky enough that the panic room Boba built was hidden from almost every scanner imaginable, leaving the armory Boba had on this world unseized.

Jekiah had chosen then to wail his little heart out from the bedroom, announcing his anger that his noon meal was being delayed to all who could hear. It took everything in you to not laugh when the stormtroopers and the scrawny little officer with them flinched.

There was a diner around the corner from the apartment that you had started frequenting because you had became obsessed with their milkshakes during your pregnancy. The twi’lek that owned it was an older woman with long lekku she draped around her neck who carried herself in a way that you recognized.

It was Sinya’s diner that the locals gathered in afterhours to discuss the Imperial occupation a month after the weapons has been taken. The blinds were shut, casting the room in near darkness except for the dim green glow of the menu signs.

Jekiah was strapped to your chest, content to sleep against your breast while voices rose when someone in the diner proposed fighting back against the Empire. A raucous arose as all attending agreed.

Sinya spoke up, “We’ll need to run reconnaissance to get a better idea of their numbers and the heat they’re packing.”

You should have kept your mouth shut and your head down, if only for Jekiah’s sake. It’s what Boba would have wanted you to do; with few exceptions, when did you ever do what Boba wanted?

“I can take care of that.” Heads turned and the crowd parted to stare at you, a woman with her baby. Sinya looked at you, and you looked at her. A tattooed brow was raised.

“You sure?” She gestured to Jekiah.

You looked down at your son, rubbing your thumb over his dark downy hair. He nestled his face further against your breast, seeking out your heartbeat.

“Yes. I am.”

He had woken up with the gritty taste of sand in his mouth, his skin burning and itching, and his armor missing. Shab’la Jawas.

It was the Sand People, who had ultimately rescued him and tended to the wounds he’d gained from the Sarlacc. He wasn’t able to translate what they were saying without his buy’ce, but he was able to communicate enough with them with the sign language that any hunter worth their spit learned when they spent enough time chasing targets through the sands of Tatooine.

He was given clothing and weapons once he was well enough to leave, and went on his way to begin the long trek back to Jabba’s palace. He had no doubt that anything that wasn’t nailed down had already been taken after news of the Hutt’s death had spread. Boba was confident that the Slave I was still where he had left it when he arrived.

Sure enough, the Firespray-31 was still there. Usually, he’d lower the ramp through his HUD, however, lacking his armor, Boba had to use the security code. It hadn’t changed in decades; he had it memorized. Accessing the security logs, Boba cursed.

It’d been five months since he left you heavily pregnant in his safehouse.

Fierfek.

xi.

A week after the meeting, you left Jekiah with your neighbor, two older women who had cooed over Jekiah ever since you’d come back from the medical center. Jekiah had learned how to cling to your shirt and had refused to let go, right up until a brightly colored nexu plush entered his field of vision. He’d been entranced with the neon pink toy and had let go easily after that.

The Zabrak grinned, “One of our nephew’s old toys. He won’t miss it.”

Returning to the apartment, you opened the panic room. Weapons lined the wall, far out of reach of a child and a case held your gear. The armorweave long coat and pants you had once worn regularly were a little too tight across your belly and hips, but thankfully, you still had mobility. You could handle this small discomfort; it was nothing compared to the later stages of your pregnancy and Jekiah’s birth.

You attached the stealth generator to your belt, making double sure it’d stay there with tape. Next went on your boots, and then your visor, followed by your gloves and gauntlets.

The gloves had been a gift from Boba; “They’d been outlawed in the Mandalore system for centuries,” he had said, “but I figured you’d appreciate these in your arsenal.”

Another gift had been the heavy, matte black gauntlets. The wristblade had utterly delighted you. You’d asked Boba what they were made of that made them so heavy. His answer had been beskar. It had taken you some time to learn how to fight with them on, something Boba had helped you with. You had ended up with more bruises than he had, some more pleasurable than others.

An ache in your chest came up and a lump formed in your throat. You swallowed around it and pushed on. You had a job to do.

You ran a systems’ check twice, ensuring that your vitals read correctly and the targeting system was accurately linked to your rifle. Happy with the results, you activated the stealth generator, and made your way out of the apartment building entirely. You kept to the shadows of alleyways and near cover.

Following a returning patrol, you infiltrated the Imperial garrison.

xii.

He’d elected to shave off the rest of his hair; most of it was already gone, the Sarlacc’s digestive acid killed the hair follicles. He inspected his wounds; no matter how primitive the Tuskens may be, they’d done a good job at patching him up. The wounds that were still healing he covered with a bacta-patch.

It had been a difficult decision, but, Boba had chosen to pursue his missing armor. He knew you’d understand why he didn’t immediately return; it was his father’s armor. You’d be furious with him, more than likely banish him from bed, but you’d understand.

It didn’t stop the guilt gnawing at his gut.

It didn’t stop him from waking up expecting to feel his arm asleep from you laying on it to curl against his chest or feel your cold feet pressed against his legs.

xiii.

Over the next two weeks, you infiltrated the garrison several more times gathering information on troop movements and supply routes. There was more than one garrison on the planet; as soon as news spread to the others, they’d be swarming like flies on a carcass. This was going to be a hard and dirty fight.

You said as much at the next meeting in Sinya’s.

“If we are going to do this, we're going to need more numbers than what we have.”

A large Nikto stepped forward. “Mercenaries? Lady, we ain’t got the money for that!”

Sinya was watching you from behind the counter. She nodded at you.

“Let me worry about the money. As soon as the mercenaries are planetside, start bringing the people from smaller towns and the farms inside.”

xiv.

Finding Sandcrawlers was easier from the air; it’d take months to traverse Tatooine on foot. He stopped in Mos Eisley, Mos Espa, and Anchorhead intermittently as he needed supplies and fuel. He picked up scrap metals to barter with the Jawas for information. This routine continued until a priority alert came across.

Liberation from Imperial Garrison. Boba’s stomach sunk.

There was no thinking as he plotted a course back to the planet. No other thought as the Slave I gained altitude.

Just you.

xv.

Sinya had had her pegged as a hunter as soon as she had first walked in months ago. She always looked around, noting exits and entries. Standard merc behavior, Sinya remembers doing that before she retired; Goddess, she still did it.

The bump on her belly made Sinya decide she wasn’t a threat. The delight she took in the milkshakes was endearing. Sinya had made sure that every time she saw her on the way in, a milkshake was already being blended. Especially when she started coming in with her baby boy strapped to her chest. That baby was the grumpiest little thing Sinya had ever seen.

It was nice, Sinya decided, once everyone had left after the woman had reported back on her findings and it was decided that they did need mercenaries, to talk shop with someone who knew their stuff. Sinya missed the merc life somedays.

Sinya listed off every large mercenary company that she knew was still in existence. Even Black Sun.

“No,” She shook her head. “If the Imperials offer more, they’d switch sides. Even if they didn’t, it’d be another battle to get them off. We’d be trading one for the other. That’s a risk we can’t afford. We need people who hate the Imperials just as much, if not more then we do.”

Sinya's tattooed brows furrowed. “Who are you thinking of?”

The woman smiled.

bonus

xvi.

He heard a low whistle from somewhere in the Oyu’baat when a priority alert popped up on the bounty board. The bartender fiddled with a control panel, enlarging the alert so it overtook other listings. It got Shysa’s attention, the Mand’alor dropping his feet off his table as he stood up. Noise died down until the only sound was the boloball game.

100,000 credits for every Mandalorian that signed up for the liberation of a small world out in the Outer Rim from the Empire. A 10,000 credit bonus was being offered for every piece of artillery that was brought in. Payment would be given from stocks, proprieties, or cold hard cash, per the contractor’s preference.

Osik. That was a lot of credits for a small world to be offering. He wondered where they were getting that kind of money. And it was specifically requesting Mandalorians.

Shysa clapped his hands together, drawing attention away from the board and to himself. He climbed up on top of his table looking out over the crowd of Mando’ade.

“Well, vode. Who wants to go kick the Imperials shebs again?”

Cheers of Oya rang out and Mird’ika howled as he pulled on his fine, gray gloves.

#boba fett #boba fett x reader #boba fett x you #boba fett x y/n #star wars #star wars fanfic #star wars fanfiction #should i should the surprise?#SHOULD I #yeah i will #jaing skirata #fenn shysa #lord mirdalan #mird #mird'ika #republic commando #series: you must love me

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george-fabian-weasley · 4 years

Text

Fred Weasley — Helplessly Part 2

Summary: After the Battle Of Hogwarts, Fred was rushed to the muggle hospital for better treatment of his injuries. While on a coma, his soul stayed with you for a couple of months. He watches as you went through the stages. And he watches when you start to write a song, just for him.

Words: 2,253 words

Warnings ⚠ : Just... Pure Sadness

Disclaimer: I am still in pain.

TAGLIST FOR HELPLESSLY: HERE

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 (COMING SOON!)

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CHAPTER 2: Weakness & Comfort

Your eyes felt like burning.

“Coma?” You repeated with a whisper, everyone was looking at you in concern, knowing how badly the new information could be to your health. “Y/N…” Hermione called softly; her hand reached yours with a gentle grip.

“I-I need to see him, please. I need to see Fred.” You said, hastily ripping off the wires on your arms, slightly panicking the others. “Y/N, dear, why don’t you rest first?” Molly hold both of your shoulders, somehow making herself as a barrier between you and the ground. She was giving you a gentle, slightly alerted smile. You shook your head fast, “I need to see him. I-I need to see if he’s okay. Fred… Fred’s okay, right?”

George came and helped Molly on keeping you on the hospital bed, “Yes, Y/N, he’s okay. You, on the other hand, need more rest.”

You were anxious, you can’t rest. Not until you see Fred.

“No! Let go of me!” You shrugged off George’s hands from you and jumped off the bed, only resulting your legs to fail you after remaining static for so long. So when you fell to the ground with a thud, Ron and Harry went running to you, trying to help you up.

“Y/N, I think it’s best if you could just-“ “Ron, please, I need to see Fred.” You cut off Ron’s words, gripping his arms tightly as you looked at him in the eyes. Your eyes were watery, your throat was burning. The thought of not seeing Fred made you so scared. The image of Fred laying down the grounds of the Great Hall kept resurfacing in your mind like a broken disc player. You were scared, you were panicking, you were stressing out, all at the same time.

As you kept trying to move forward to the door, Harry and Ron kept holding you back; holding your arms each, so you started screaming, “No! Let me go! I need to see him! I need to see Fred! Let go of me!!!” You tried again, and they still held you back. You throat was burning, and the emotions began choking you up. Tears were running down your face as you tried to break free from Harry and Ron desperately, screaming in agony.

Bill and Fleur hurriedly left the room to call a doctor to stop you hyperventilating, while Molly was already sobbing under the embrace of Hermione. George was trying to keep his tears all to himself, he hated to see you so distraught like this, it broke his heart so much the emotions were choking him up.

“Fred!!!” You wailed out, your voice hoarse from shouting and screaming.

The doctors finally arrived, and they had you pinned down to the floor when they injected you with a tranquilizer. Your crying had quieted down, but the weak whimpering you made; “Please, I need to see Freddie… He almost died in my arms, please…”, before you passed out was enough to make the whole room heartbroken.

When you woke up again, it was night-time. The view outside the window was dark, the only light was the small fluorescent light right on top of your head, just enough to dimly light up the room. You noticed the room wasn’t as crowded as before; there was only George, Molly and Hermione left in the room. George was sleeping in an uncomfortable position on the hospital couch, Hermione was dozing off sitting on one of the chairs, and Molly was beside you, with her upper body leaning onto the bed, seemingly sleeping as well.

“Molly…?” You whispered with a hoarse voice; your voice was small, similar to a young child asking her parents if they were mad at her. Instantly Molly woke up, the exhaustion in her face was clear, yet she was smiling widely at you, “Oh, dear, you finally woke up! Are you hungry, perhaps?”

You shook your head, your eyes sad. You remembered how you acted a few hours ago, and you weren’t proud of it. Your guilt was terribly heavy, your eyes turned glassy the moment they stared into Molly’s kind, loving ones. “I’m sorry.” Was all you could say, watching her smile softened at your words. She took a hold of your hand; her calloused warm hand brought you comfort almost immediately, “You were scared. And I don’t blame you, dear. War certainly brings the worst out of us, especially when we’re desperate.”

Molly had told you that you needed to stay in the hospital for a while, at least until your legs are strong enough to hold your weight again. The healers had said that you were overwhelmed with stress, and plus the injuries from the war, they’d actually be surprised if you didn’t faint.

A week passed by like a total blur.

While Molly and George took turns to look after between you and Fred during the day, Hermione had stayed with you the whole time, the hospital even gave her an extra mattress so she would be comfortable. She would be awake at night until the sun rises, to look after you. Because-

“Y/N, I’m here. You’re okay, sweetheart, you’re okay.” Hermione hugged you when you suddenly woke up screaming. You were having cold sweats everywhere, and your eyes were flooding with tears. You gripped onto her tightly, sobbing uncontrollably, “I dreamt it again, Mione… I-I can’t. Every time I close my eyes, I see him on the ground-“ You couldn’t finish your words.

She rubbed your back lovingly, giving no damn of her wet shirt, “He’s okay, Y/N. Fred’s alright.” She muttered softly, caressing your head to calm you down. After several minutes of silent crying, you pulled away, sniffing. The nightmare was reoccurring, almost every night. You were exhausted to say the least, emotionally and physically. The nightmare drained you so much you’re afraid you’re becoming a shell of who you were.

“Can we go see him, Mione?” You asked her, you couldn’t stop the yearning in your heart. You need to see him. Hermione sighed, this wasn’t the first time you asked her this, “Y/N, it’s 2 in the morning.”

You only nodded. You knew it’s not going to work, but you had to try anyway.

Hermione watched you quietly with silent pity. Out of all, you were the most traumatized from the war. Sure, some of other people had nightmares too from the war, but not even Harry got it bad like you. She was grateful Ron was with her the whole entire time during the battle, she didn’t even want to think what would happen if she was in your shoes and the one laying on the ground was Ron. She knew how much you loved Fred, and she had seen how much the tall lad adored you.

She’s 100% sure, if soulmates are a true thing, you and Fred would be the first soulmates she thought of. So she did something; even Hermione herself was calling herself crazy for it.

“Can you walk?”

Hermione helped you walk to Fred’s ward by holding your arm, acting as your walking support. Unlike before, your legs got more strength and you could stand, but you were still having difficulties to walk. The hospital hallway was dimly lit and barely no one was there, except for one or two sleeping nurses at the counters. Despite that, you feel no fear inside, your main goal was to see Fred.

One whole week, you were yearning for this.

And there he was, on the hospital bed, with his eyes closed, and an oxygen mask on his face. He looked pale, yet he looked peaceful. Almost every part of his body was wrapped with bandages, especially his head, blocking your view from his red hair that you ridiculously missed. You sat on the seat beside his bed, watching his chest rise up and down as if he’s just sleeping, not trapped with wires and machines. Your shaky hand took a hold on his unmoving one, and you took a trembling breath at how cold it was.

The beeping machine was the only sound in the cold room.

“Hello, Freddie.” You whispered, watching him quietly. The anxiousness that you were feeling for a whole week vanished into thin air, your heart was beating healthily again at the sight of this boy of yours. Your thumb caressed Fred’s skin, a habit you’ve been doing for years because you knew how much Fred loved it when you do it. For once since the Battle of Hogwarts, you smiled sincerely, even with tears in your eyes, “I missed you, darling. I missed you so much…”

Your emotions were mixing with each other. You were happy that you get to see Fred again, breathing and alive, but you can’t help to feel broken that he’s not really alive. You caressed his face lovingly, in your mind, Fred was looking at you, giving you that cheeky smile you’ve seen a million times. But then your eyes woke up from your imagination, Fred was closing his eyes, pale and cold.

Your heart clenched tighter.

Hermione waited outside, giving you some time with Fred. She couldn’t bear to see you cry again because of him; her heart couldn’t take it. So she stood outside, letting out a shaky breath as she heard the quiet sobs of yours. Her eyes began to water, you were her best friend, you were there for her for almost every event of her life.

Watching her strong best friend become weak and fragile was enough to send Hermione to tears.

After giving Fred a kiss on his knuckles, you left with Hermione with a calm smile. You hugged her when you realized she was crying outside; it was your turn to comfort her. “Have I told you, I love you so much, Hermione?”

Hermione slightly laughed at that, with tears and all, “Yeah, you have, dummy.”

The next day was better for you, you weren’t as terrible as the past days, but you weren’t great either. Nevertheless, you feel better. It’s not like you’re saying goodbye to Fred, it’s more to comforting yourself that he was indeed alive and will wake up soon.

You just didn’t know how long it would take.

The Weasleys had invited you to stay at the Burrow for a while so they could take care of you once you’ve been discharged. Not wanting them to see anymore of the ugly sides of yours, you declined softly, giving reasons like your shared apartment with Fred will get dusty if was unkempt for long. As worried as George was for you, he reluctantly agreed, with a condition he gets to visit you every week to check on you.

Hermione even offered to stay at your apartment for a while, to keep you company. You once again declined, Hermione never had time for herself ever since the Battle had ended, you didn’t want to burden her any further. You were touched however, seeing so many people who weren’t even your blood caring about you immensely as if you’re one of their own. You believed at some point, you are, and you were grateful.

When you returned home a few days later, accompanied by Harry, Ron and Hermione; they insisted, you were glad they did. Seeing the shared space of you and your lover, with him being in the hospital unconscious, you broke down as soon as you step foot into the place.

Your three friends tried their best to be there for you, telling you jokes and making you laugh, trying to let you forget for a moment, so you could relax. After dinner, they reluctantly left, grimacing at the idea of leaving you all alone without anyone else in the house. But you convinced them you would be fine, and that you were too tired to think about other things. They gave you a goodbye hug, and Ron kissed the temple of your head comfortingly.

But as soon as they left, the smile on your face drained. You leaned your back against the bedroom door, slowly sliding down to the cold tiled floor. The dimly lit area seemed to darken, the darkness started to surround you. As you hugged your legs, tears once again without fail came without warning. Being left alone after surrounded by people you loved was the worst feeling ever, and despite that, you didn’t want them to see this ugly side of you. It’s enough that Hermione saw it, even with her, your best friend, you feel awful showing her your moments of weakness.

So you sat there, sobbing alone, with your heart aching for one man.

You remembered that morning where you visited him before going back home, you volunteered to wipe his body, the feeling of wanting to take care of your loving boyfriend was so strong. And so you did, with heavy tears in your eyes at the battle scars he had when you removed the bandages to change them to new ones. Despite the scars and cuts and burns and bruises, Fred still looked beautiful in your eyes. You kissed him goodbye on the forehead, not forgetting to squeeze his cold hand.

Somehow, the memory comforted you like no other.

Unbeknownst to you, a certain soul had followed you home the moment you visited him that night. Fred Weasley, now a lost soul, felt his heart physically snapping into pieces as he watched you quietly.

“Oh, darling. What have you done to yourself?”

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PART 3: READ

TAGLIST:

@paigeyisme @britishspidey @hargreevesgrace @jasminweasley @neutralgoodval @kaidenceweasley

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slimesidian · 3 years

Note

Might we have Team ZITS lore 👉👈🥺

U want Team ZITS lore??? Owo U want the most thought out lore I Have!?!?!? Okay this will be Super Long and I apologize in advance.

-Mod Slime

We will not be going in order of the acronym but rather an order that I think fits better. So we're gonna start with Impulse n Skizz respectively!!

Impulse was born human, much like Skizz, but unlike Skizz, Impulse was abandoned in the End. Why? He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember who left him there either, but he does remember being cared for by a tall lady with long black hair, a long purple dress, long dragon horns, a tail, and giant dragon wings. She cared for him, made survival easier for him(in more ways than he's aware of) for so long until one day she just disappeared.

He didn't know where she went, he was only 7 or 8 at the time. Years passed, he got used to being alone, to only speaking the shorthand Galactic of the Endermen, to eating nothing but Chorus Fruits, and the cold became nothing but the norm for him.

Then came Skizz. He didn't want much from the End when he showed up, just to explore, really. He just wanted a little adventure. He did not expect to find a random Player already there and seemingly living there in an Endstone hut.

The two didn't really click at first. Impulse actively tried to shut Skizz out. He didn't like the strange presence of the human at first… but Skizz started leaving little gifts for Impulse. Mostly food. Impulse didn't understand at first what the food was. He'd never had anything like it before.

Eventually Skizz managed to convince Impulse to come with him, even if they couldn't understand each other. While tryna get home the two got separated, and Impulse almost died while Skizz was looking for him.

Luckily, Skizz killed whatever had been attacking Impulse and carried him to the house they'd call home for years to come.

While it's just the two of them, Skizz teaches Impulse basic English, while Impulse tries to teach Skizz how to speak and write Galactic in return. Learning together makes their transition from knowing nothing to knowing enough balanced between the two, and now sometimes they'll slip language mid-sentence.

Once they can properly communicate, things get a lot nicer, and it's easier for Impulse to trust Skizz now. In fact, he's already gotten attached. No going back now.

Anyways, now I get to introduce the Next of the quartet to join! And that's Zed. I may change this order one day but the story of how they were found wouldn't change! Anyways, it's time for the amnesia boy.

So Zed kinda just wakes up in a forest with no knowledge of who he is or where he is or how he got there. All he has is a plain white sweater and some simple jeans. He wanders around aimlessly for a bit, accidentally adopting a brown sheep in the process, and eventually stumbles across Impulse and Skizz's shared home.

Impulse sees him first and is immediately confused but welcoming, and it honestly doesn't take long for Zed to be adopted into their found family dynamic. They help him make a better sweater, this one being brown, much like his current aviator jacket.

Zed doesn't actually know it at the time but he was made. He's a robot that imitates life. He doesn't remember this fact, though. He doesn't know what he is, but his ears and eyes are proof that he isn't human. At least that's his initial thought.

And finally, Tongo Tak himself.

Tango is actually the oldest of the four members, but in Netherborn years he's in his developing stage. He has yet to develop any of his fire powers, and his eyes are severely sensitive.

He pretty much had a difficult time surviving since he was alone, so one day while in the Deep Nether(1.17 Nether) he tried to steal gold from some Piglins, he just needed enough to make armor, even if it was bad. Sadly he got spotted and had to run.

He eventually bumps into Impulse, who he hides behind as the Piglins approach. Tango is kinda covered in arrows and slashes and Impulse just pulls out his own bow and starts shooting at the Piglins while also nudging Tango towards the portal.

When they get through the portal Impulse breaks it so they can't be followed. It's night when they show up, so Tango's eyes aren't in as much pain as they could be. They did try to ask him if he wanted to go back, and every time Impulse tried to put him back, Tango kept coming back. Eventually, the trio just decided he was gonna be part of their family.

Tango can't actually speak English, he can only make weird grunts and squeaks and noises like that of Nether mobs. Zed picks up on this and is the first of the trio to communicate with Tango.

Over time, it's obvious that Tango has trouble adjusting to the Overworld. He almost goes blind before they have to make him Redstone eyes. Impulse and Zed worked on the eyes together while Skizz made sure Tango didn't hurt himself by running into things.

The four pretty much vibe until Tango and Impulse decide to make Moonlight SMP(and this SMP is why I'm tempted to change the order of the members of Team ZITS meeting).

This leads to Zed and Tango creating alter egos(Wormman and Dr. Tangno) and that's that.

Next thing they know Tango is being asked to join Hermitcraft, and he takes the offer and is absolutely ecstatic about the new server, so much so he begs X into bringing Impulse via summoning circle.

That leaves Zed and Skizz both terrified because Impulse just vanished but they do learn that he is okay and he is not dead.

Nothing lore wise happens until Zed goes to Hermitcraft for the first time and accidentally splits into himself and the embodiment of his memories from Moonlight, but only the memories where he was dressed up as Wormman. Thus, the Wormman we know and love(and miss) came to be.

Skizz kinda ended up alone in their old world but he and Impulse make enough worlds together that it's fine. And they all get together and keep in touch! And eventually Skizz joins Legacy so he's not completely lonely anymore!! (and also he's pretty much adopted by Pearl as a younger brother. She already adopted Grian and Sausage so why not Skizz too)

I think that's it on the main lore front. The only other important thing to note is that Skizz is no longer a human as of 3rd Life. His code got infected with the code of the Enderman that killed him and now he's an Enderman hybrid.

I think that's it? It probably isn't but that's my ZITS lore :D

#mod slime #mod slime talks #hermitcraft #mcyt #hermitblr #hermitcraft adjacent #ask to tag #impulsesv #tango tek #zedaphplays #skizzleman #legacy smp mention #headcanons #team zits #zits lore

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bondsmagii · 3 years

Text

Here’s something I really can’t explain.

To sum up: I shouldn’t be alive right now. I shouldn’t be writing this. I have no idea how any of this could have happened, but the fact you’re reading this now is kind of living proof that it did happen, so I suppose I’ll try and explain it as best as I can.

A little backstory for you. Way back in the late forties, my great-grandfather was a young man working with the local fire department. He came back after the war and just couldn’t settle into any kind of desk job, so despite my great-grandmother worrying about his mental state he ended up running into burning buildings for a living. Naturally he saw some messed up shit, but nothing haunted him more than a hotel fire that he attended.

At the time there had been an annual prize night for a local grammar school. Hundreds of kids and their families were crammed into the hotel’s large ballroom when a stray match lit up the curtains on the stage. Back in the day they weren’t exactly great about fire safety, and the walls and furniture were panelled or made with highly flammable materials. The whole room went up in minutes. Over one hundred people died, over half of which were children below the age of fifteen. It was an indescribable tragedy, and my great-grandfather – along with every first responder there – was scarred for life over the things he saw that evening.

My great-grandfather did his best to live with what happened, and for the most part he did well, all things considered. All of his grief seemed to be directed towards one little girl, who was never identified or claimed. She was badly burned but not unrecognisable; the theory was that her whole family had died with her, leaving nobody left to notice she was gone. She wasn’t the only person to suffer this fate, unfortunately – all told, five people were never claimed by families – but because my great-grandfather was the one to pull her body from the wreckage, he sort of became obsessed with her. He was preoccupied until his death with finding out her identity, and every year on the anniversary of the fire he visited her grave to lay a wreath. Unfortunately, he died without ever finding out who she was.

Fast forward a few decades, and I’m in my early twenties. My great-grandfather died when I was quite young, so I only had a small idea of this part of his history. It was, however, enough to make me wary of large fires – especially hotel fires. One summer, I’m visiting another city for my younger brother’s university graduation, and I stay the night in a hotel near the city centre. I remember fires were on my mind already, because initially they had tried to give me a room on the twenty-third floor, and I had politely refused and requested a lower floor. (An old maxim of my great-grandfather’s: never stay on a floor where you wouldn’t survive the fall.) Because of the graduation, the hotel was packed, and I ended up on the fifth floor in the end, but I figured it was better than nothing.

The first night was fine. The second night a fire broke out. The hotel had had some electrical rewiring done within the last month, and something went wrong. The fire smouldered for hours, undetected, before spreading into multiple parts of the ventilation system. Smoke and flame was pushed to all corners of the hotel before the fire cut out the power. Later, investigators would discover that the fire burned through the power for the smoke and fire detection alarms almost immediately – yet somehow the fire alarms went off. This is only the beginning of the inexplicable that night.

By the time the alarms woke me, my room was already filled with smoke. I had been drilled on this so many times as a child that it was instinctive for me to roll off the bed and onto the floor; only then did I start to panic. Luckily I had fallen asleep with the curtains open – the only time I had ever done that in a hotel – and the city lights illuminated the room enough to let me know the smoke was only in the top two thirds of the room, and not as thick as it could have been. I had time to crawl into the bathroom, wet a towel, and tie it around my nose and mouth. Then I crawled to the door and lay a hand flat on it. The door was cool, so I cautiously pulled it open.

In the hallway, it was pitch dark. This is the worst case scenario for any fire. Smoke disorientates people, and they feel ill from inhaling it. Panic compounds the confusion. People can get lost in their own homes – hotels are the worst place for something like this. People stand little chance of getting out if they haven’t memorised an exit, and even then it’s not foolproof. I should know. I always memorise exits, but when I went out of my room I turned the wrong way. I don’t know why. I was panicking, I was confused, and I just made the wrong choice. It should have cost me my life.

I realised my mistake as soon as I reached the end of the hall. The door there was propped open (fire safety hazard, I remember thinking, like it mattered at that point) but I could see no flames. The door led to the stairwell, and I had just crawled out onto it when the entire world went black. The smoke and flame had intensified, the fire sucking in oxygen and the smoke being forced up the stairwell like a huge chimney. It spilled over the edges of the landing and enveloped me even hunched on my hands and knees. My eyes began to sting and water; I couldn’t see anything. I crawled back and bumped into the wall, and for several long seconds that felt like minutes, I couldn’t find my way out of the stairwell. The heat was evaporating the water in the towel, and the sheer amount of smoke meant it wasn’t doing much good anyway. By the time I finally made it back out into the hall, I was coughing and choking. Panic made me pull the towel down. I only took the smallest breath before the floor tilted under me and I experienced a horrible rush of lightheadedness – with smoke so toxic, sometimes a breath is all it takes.

I kept crawling, heading back towards my room, now realising my mistake. At that point I was forcing myself to stay calm, but it wasn’t working. I had realised I had probably just gotten myself killed, and it was almost impossible to breathe. The temperature was climbing, and I knew the fire was close. I could hear screaming from somewhere nearby, doors slamming. Every single rational thought had left. I scrambled down the hallway in pure panic, and then I saw the child.

She was hunched down, looking right at me. She wasn’t in any kind of night clothing – she looked like she was still in the clothing she would have worn at the graduation ceremony, a neat little dress and polished shoes, a ribbon tied in her hair. She was perhaps eight years old at my best guess, and seeing her shocked some sense into me. Before I could speak or gesture to the direction she should go, she waved and then pointed.

“Come on, mister,” she said. “This way.”

Together we crawled to the other end of the hallway. Smoke was billowing from that stairwell, too, thick and dark though still not as bad as the other one. Either way it didn’t look good, but the little girl didn’t seem concerned – not even when we crawled out onto the landing, and the orange flicker of flames was visible several floors below.

“No,” I said. “It’ll be too hot.”

“Come on, mister,” she said again.

She began scrambling down the stairs, staying as low as possible. I could hardly leave her, so I followed.

The heat was unbearable, and by the time we were on the floor below, visibility was zero. The smoke was so thick and black that even the flicker of the flames had vanished; the only way I knew how close they were was from the heat and the deafening roar of it. Have you ever been near to a large bonfire? Have you heard how loudly it crackles? That’s nothing. Big fires, they roar. They sound closer to a freight train, a tornado. It’s a sound so loud that it sets off a primal kind of terror, even without the heat and the smoke to add to the danger. What I’m saying is that it’s something that’s very difficult to crawl towards, yet there we were.

I couldn’t see the little girl, but every time I began to panic she would reach back and touch me. The heat grew and I could smell my hair burning, my clothing threatening to catch. The floor was excruciating, and while I didn’t realise it at the time, I was in the process of receiving third degree burns on my hands and knees from the floor alone. I felt faint, the heat making my head pound. It seemed to drain my of my energy, and during those last seconds – as we passed directly past the floor where the inferno was at its worst – I was sure I was running only on pure animal instinct to get away.

Then we descended into the hallway below the fire, and it was all gone. The heat lingered, but it was nothing compared to what it was before. The smoke was hazy grey, high up by the ceiling. The little girl was tugging at me, and I realised I’d collapsed to the ground.

“Quickly, mister!” she said now. “Not far!”

In my pain and confusion, it didn’t occur to me that she wasn’t burned; that she had no difficulty breathing. She tugged hard at my clothing, and while I didn’t know that my clothing was alight at the time, later I remembered and wondered how she had done it. With her prompting and encouragement I made it down the last of the stairs and out into the hotel’s lobby, which was shockingly untouched. Alarms were blaring, but the room was free of smoke and many of the hotel’s employees remained there, grabbing people as they emerged, coughing, from stairwells and hurrying them outside. When I stumbled into the lobby I was immediately tackled by several employees who were, I was later told, beating the flames from me. I had stumbled into the lobby on fire.

I don’t remember anything else. I didn’t have time to mention the girl. I passed out, and was kept in a medically induced coma while my body recovered from serious burns. I very nearly didn’t make it, and when I awoke I had several months of painful operations and skin grafts to go. My hands were badly burned, though the doctors managed to save nearly all my fingers – I’m only missing the little fingers to the first knuckle, and while the scarring is bad I can use the hands well. My knees are badly scarred but functional. My back isn’t pretty to look at, but it doesn’t bother me now, not outside of itching in the heat. I forgot about the girl until just before I was released from hospital, five months later, but to my relief I was told that no children had died in the fire. Whoever she was, she had gotten out safe.

Almost a year later, my grandfather died. He was the son of my firefighter great-grandfather, and when my own father and I were around his house, sorting through his things, we came across some of my great-grandfather’s stuff. Medals, a few old photographs of the family, some letters. My father and I went through the pictures, my father pointing out relatives and telling a few stories here and there. What you would expect from such an occasion, really – but then I found an old picture of a little girl.

I recognised her immediately as the little girl I had seen in the hotel – there was no denying it. The picture was an unpleasant one, taken post-mortem, and while half of her body was badly charred the other half looked as though she could be sleeping. Her hair was the same, the bow singed but present. The dress was the same. I could even still hear how she sounded. Come on, mister! I was so shocked I didn’t say anything. My father looked at it for a long moment, and then he gave a sad sigh.

“I wish he had found out who she was,” he said. “That haunted him. He felt like he failed her.” He took the photo from me and looked a little more closely at it. “Nonsense, of course. He did everything for that little girl. I’m sure she would thank him if she could.”

She did, I thought. She did.

#creeptastic #creepypasta #my creepypasta #writing #my writing #short story #fiction #back at it again with the spaghetti afraido

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echodrops · 3 years

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I’m obviously late to the tumble party... but I stumbled across your Notagami Essays posts and they are absolutely Fabulous! Love your writing and the amount of detail you go into :)

So I figured you may be a good person to ask - if you just had to guess (bc as far as I know it’s never been officially confirmed?) but if you had to take a guess or give a rough estimate, how old do you think Yato was when he first met Sakura? We know he’s estimated to be at least a thousand years old, we know he’s - from the start of the series to present - estimated to be somewhere between 18 and his early 20s (physically)... but I can’t find a single thing/discussion/post/stickynote/whatever where it talks about how old he might have been when he first met Sakura - let alone the emotional/psychological effects of Sakura coming into his life and introducing healthy mindset/morals/maternal-influence etc. etc. (obviously no mom and Father’s neglect played a big role in him not knowing how inappropriate it was for him to ‘accidentally touch’ and yell “boobs!” but you can also just say he was so young he didn’t know how inappropriate that was?) My point is: how old do you think Yato was (physically anyway) at the time of their meeting? and Do you know of any discussions or care to share your opinion on how being the no more than the age of blank affected his mental/emotional understanding of Sakura teaching him a new narrative?

Sorry this is a random out of the blue ask 😅😓 if I rambled on and you don’t feel like answering, I get it, just figured it was worth asking :)

I fell down a serious rabbit hole trying to see if I could figure out the answer to this question about Yato’s age but unfortunately I’m mostly coming up empty-handed.

The answer to this question actually depends on two different pieces of information which--as far as I can remember--we’ve never actually been given for certain.

1) We would need to know when Yato was actually born.

The manga has kind of hinted at a total (not physical) age for Yato in the flashbacks which showed him as a young child during the Heian era (putting him somewhere in the vicinity of a little over 1000 years old) and Father not making masks before ~1100 years ago, but the problem is we still don’t know how many years might have passed between this scene (the youngest we’ve ever seen Yato):

And the next flashback scene, where Yato meets Nora:

If gods age normally when they are children, these two scenes might be only a handful of years apart. But if gods don’t age normally, then these two scenes could be decades or centuries apart, which leads to the other missing piece of information (under the read more to save people’s dashes):

2) We would need to know the aging process for gods who are just born/reincarnate.

Up to this point in the manga, we’ve only seen two gods reincarnate--Ebisu (who reincarnated too recently to really help answer this question) and Takemikazuchi. The implication of Takemikazuchi’s backstory is that his shinki forced him to reincarnate and then hid his reincarnation from all of Heaven. The only way they could have kept other gods from noticing that Takemikazuchi had reincarnated would have been by not allowing him to go out at all until he had grown enough to match his previous reincarnation in appearance. This seems to suggest that gods probably do age normally when they are children--hiding Takemikazuchi away for ~20 years seems a lot more likely than being able to hide him away for centuries, after all... (I also feel like I have very vague recollection of some scene in the manga where someone comments on Takemikazuchi not having been around for a “few years,” but it’s been so long since I reread I can’t recall if this is a real moment from the manga or just me misremembering.)

Overall, however, based on what we’ve seen in the manga, my guess would be that when they’re young, after just being born or being reincarnated, gods age pretty normally. This would suggest that, for the first few years at least, the physical and mental ages of reincarnated/newly born gods actually overlap; baby Ebisu acts like a little kid because he is, in fact, both mentally and physically a little kid.

That would mean that, for all intents and purposes, Yato’s physical and mental ages lined up when he was young and meeting Sakura, and he acted like a little kid because he really was just a little kid, god or not.

(Detour for a second though:

This line always struck me as interesting in that it might, just might, give us a more specific timeframe for Yato’s “birth”: although the constellations, of course, are visible in the sky every single year, this particular combination of concepts (kanoto-tori, yin metal rooster) is known much more commonly as one of the sixty years on the cyclical Chinese calendar, also used in Japan. Counting back on the calendar, 961 A.D. was a yin metal rooster year and would align just about right for what we know about the timeframe in which Yato later met Sakura (~970ish). Just referencing constellations doesn’t mean Adachitoka was pointing to a specific year, but it might have been another hint as to the timeframe of the flashbacks.

Okay, detour over.)

Anyway, without 100% confirmation on either of those pieces of information--when Yato was born and whether gods age at the same rate as humans after reincarnating--I don’t think it’s really possible to pin down Yato’s “real” age (physically or mentally) at the time he met Sakura. We mostly just have to estimate.

Personally, based on his size and behavior at the time, I’d put him somewhere between seven and maybe up to ten, but the way Adachitoka draws characters kind of makes it impossible to judge their ages by appearance; Yato is about the same size as Nora when he meets Sakura, implying that he and Nora were around the same physical “age” at that time; meanwhile, Nora is later portrayed as being roughly the same age as Yukine, suggesting she was maybe 12-13ish years old when she died. So, despite being drawn tiny, it’s possible Yato was meant to be anywhere from a little kiddo (6-7) to all the way up to Nora’s age by the time he met Sakura.

But all that said, I think what you were really asking about was more the mental state Yato would have been in when he met Sakura and how his young age would have impacted his ability to change his world views, right? The answer to that is... complicated and could be approached a lot of ways. Coming from a background of working with and educating social work students, there are several common psychological theories of child development that might apply here, for example.

I’d recommend checking out Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development, though.

(Pulled from here.)

I don’t have time to explain the entire theory with the complexity it might deserve, but the basic idea is that, as children develop, they experience a series of crises or challenges that they must overcome. Successfully overcoming each challenge results in successful psychological and social development; failing to overcome a challenge in childhood will result in long-term negative impacts later in the child’s life. (There are plenty critiques of this theory too, so don’t take this as gospel or anything--just a theory worth thinking about!)

Given Father’s lack of interest in teaching Yato basic concepts of humanity, I would put Yato at approximately the “Initiative vs. Guilt” stage when he met Sakura. At this level of Erikson’s theory, children struggle with asserting themselves and developing a healthy sense of how their personal desires might conflict with the expectations and rules set out by others. In this stage, giving a child positive feedback for their actions teaches the child that those actions are “right,” while giving negative feedback teaching the child that their actions are wrong. In order to overcome this particular challenge, children need to begin taking initiative and aligning their actions with social standards; the child acts, and the parental figure reacts--through this process, children learn “I can do X thing but I cannot do Y thing.”

When you hear things like “Children are cruel,” most often what people are referring to is that it takes time for children to learn empathy and to experience guilt when they cause harm to others; children do not natively understand the repercussions of their actions. It’s only through a process of testing the boundaries, of receiving praise or punishment, that children define what is “right” versus “wrong,” and begin to feel bad when they do something deemed wrong.

And this is pretty much word-for-word what we see Sakura teaching Yato.

If they have healthy role models and caretakers during this phase, children develop successfully. Successful children in this phase get their first taste of personal responsibility; unsuccessful children are (supposedly) plagued for years afterward by a sense of guilt and shame when their actions produce disapproval from everyone around them.

Yato... doesn’t exactly make it through this development stage unscathed, because he receives conflicting definitions of right and wrong from his Father an Sakura:

Which ultimately results in, years later, the Yato we know and love who still does his Father’s bidding to kill humans even though it fills him with a horrific sense of guilt:

Through his time with Sakura, I think it could also be argued that Yato moves into the next stage of Erikson’s theory as well, getting into the “Industry versus Inferiority” crises.

Meeting Sakura brings out Yato’s true, deep down desire as a god: to help people. (I think it’s important to note that this isn’t something Sakura teaches him--it’s a quality Yato already possessed; it was explicitly Yato’s desire to please people that led to him murdering in his father’s name.)

Once he learns what makes people happy, Yato immediately pursues that with intense focus:

The primary goal of this phase of psychosocial development is to experience a sense of confidence in one’s actions. When children practice their skills, pursue areas where they are praised, and gain new skills and aptitudes through mentoring from healthy role models, they gain confidence in their ability to excel, to fit in with peers their age, and to create meaningful things. By encouraging Yato to pursue positive behaviors--playing peacefully with other children, appreciating natural beauty, and creating useful things like boots for the needy--Sakura moved Yato toward successfully completing this phase and developing a sense of confidence in his actions and his ability to achieve positive things in the world.

Of course, Father cannot have that (because confident children with a sense of self-worth are much more difficult to abuse), so he puts an immediate end to Sakura’s influence over Yato in the most insidious way possible: although he clearly manipulated the situation to achieve Sakura’s death, out loud, he blames Yato, implying that Sakura’s death was all Yato’s fault, the results of Yato taking unwanted action “industry” and yet failing--creating a sense of “inferiority” instead.

This, of course, haunts Yato all the way to the present, as he--again and again and again--blames himself for things outside his control or failing to live up to expectations that no one in his situation (still being manipulated) could possibly hope to get “right.”

Finally, you could say that Sakura’s presence is Yato’s life is ultimately what sows the seeds of the manga’s main plot up to this point, with Yato’s quest to create an entirely new identity for himself as a god of fortune instead of a god of calamity. Personally, I would say that Yato is currently still in this phase of development, still working out how to define himself and who he will ultimately become once he is finally free to decide on his own path in life. It was Sakura’s gentle influence--his desire to become the kind of god who could make her smile--that eventually sparked his conflict and finally led Yato to the brink of catastrophe. If he wishes to become the god Sakura told him he could be, he can no longer suffer his father to live.

So, long story longer, I think it can be argued that Yato meeting Sakura at such a young age is EXACTLY what made it possible for him to change, and exactly what has led to his crisis in identifying himself and redefining his sense of right and wrong.

Uhhhh... I hope that answers your question!

#noragami #noragami meta #noragami spoilers #noragami manga #psychosocial development #Yato #Sakura #Father (Noragami)#speculation

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vintagedolan · 3 years

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mixtape | track ten

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Indiana’s mental health class was in her first semester in the pre-med program. Abnormal Psychology, PSY 249, in a stuffy room in a building on the far side of campus. She’d hated it. College was supposed to be challenging, her program was supposed to be the most rigorous, and yet the class was a breeze. They went through condition after condition - depression, PTSD, anxiety, schizophrenia. The inner workings of the brain, the chemical imbalances, the medications that would help people come back to themselves. She passed the class with a 101%, stowed the knowledge in a seperate folder in her brain for safe keeping, and moved on at the end of the course. But she kept one piece of paper out, one piece of knowledge that didn’t make sense.

Voluntary Emotional Detachment. It was a relatively new idea in the world of psychology, seeing that many of its characteristics could fall under depression. That wasn’t what confused Indy. No, that came when her professor lectured on the voluntary portion.

“Emotional Detachment is a useful tool sometimes, when it’s used purposefully. For example, if you have a toxic family member in your life, you may voluntarily emotionally detach yourself from them. It’s a defense mechanism, especially during times of trauma. You’ll find yourself numb, unable to feel even if you wanted to. It happens with loss sometimes as well, where you can’t feel the gravity of what you’re losing. Your mind knows what it can withstand, and sometimes, it pulls back. It shields you from the cruel world we live in. It protects.”

Indy had scoffed in her seat, so loud that her professor looked at her and frowned, which was enough to have her blushing red and keeping her head down as she scribbled notes for the rest of the class.

It was the one time she’d ever been reprimanded by an academic authority. Professor Upton pulled her aside before she could escape out of the lecture hall doors.

“Ms. Cross. You seem like a bright girl, but I don’t appreciate the disrespect.”

“I’m very sorry professor, it won’t happen again.” Indiana had practically stumbled over the words to get them out, her palms sweaty on her backpack strap as she held it on her shoulder.

Indy had a million explanations, but she knew that her professor didn’t care to hear them. And they were lies anyway. The true reason she’d scoffed was something she didn’t want to share.

It was because her professor had made it seem so easy, to just turn it off. Emotionally pull the plug, to sever your ties to someone.

She’d scoffed because if her brain had the capability, and it hadn’t moved to protect her when her mother died, shielded her from the aftermath of unimaginable pain that she’d endured, she wasn’t so sure that she was at all intelligent after all.

But she understood why now.

It was because her mother dying had made sense.

Not in the grand scheme of things. Not in a karma driven universe - there was no justifying losing a light as bright as Nicole Cross in a world that had checks and balances, a world that cared.

But physically, it had made sense.

Nicole’s cancer started in her pancreas. Stage III when they found it. 13.3% survival rate. And it spread like wildfire. Indiana threw herself into her books, looked for anything, some medical breakthrough that someone had missed. She looked into drug trials, she looked into synthetic pancreas research. All the while, her mother’s cancer took over cell by cell, multiplied and multiplied the way cells are built to. And when it reached her brain, it took over her brainstem.

When it got to that point, Indiana heard the four words that she would never forget.

“She’s done. We’re done.”

They had echoed out, bouncing off the bleached linoleum, making a cold room even colder. Her father’s voice had never sounded so unfamiliar, and she was glad that her mother was sedated when she broke down. There was no detachment, only raw, searing pain unlike anything she had ever experienced. She sunk to the floor, ragged sobs finally breaking free when she realized what she’d known was coming was finally happening.

The fight was over. It was time to let go.

Charlie hadn’t cried. No, Charlie stood still as stone in the corner of the room, eyes unblinking as she stared at the shell of her mother in her hospital bed and willed it to be a dream, a nightmare that she would finally wake up from.

And then, she remembered where she was. She remembered who she was. And she picked her little sister up off the floor and held her in her arms, like she always had when Indiana was hurting.

Without the vital cues from that little piece of Nicole’s brain telling them to, her heart stopped beating and her lungs stopped asking for air, and she died.

And it made sense.

This didn’t make sense. His words made no sense.

There was no one to hold Indiana Cross now, and she had a new set of four words that would haunt her.

“I can’t do this.”

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

Six days. Grayson’s thoughts ate him alive for six whole days. He lived through the odd limbo that the world seemed to find itself in on the days between Christmas and New Years. A pause in the spin on the axis, a time to reflect on everything the year had brought, and what the next one had to offer.

Even in his daze, Grayson could only remember one other December he’d tried to hold onto so hard.

His father’s face was at the forefront of his mind, but not the images that he wanted to see. All he saw was a look of disappointment in his eyes with each hour that Grayson’s lips stayed pressed together while Indiana rested, oblivious in his arms. He towed the selfish line of wanting to enjoy the last days he had with her while his guilt threatened to drown him with every breath he dared to take. He hid it well, as he always did when he really needed to. They had their date nights, with movies and postmates since he still didn’t want her out in public with him. They stayed in the tiny house again to enjoy nature, snuck into Jet’s a few times. He smiled when he was supposed to, went through the motions that were expected of him. It had worked for him before, for videos, for time with friends when all he wanted to do was sit in his room and speak to no one. The only person he could never fool was Ethan, who kept his distance, but stayed close enough to keep his eyes on him. He thought he had everyone but his twin fooled.

But Indiana noticed. Indiana always noticed.

Nicole had called it the curse of intelligence when she was younger.

“Sometimes,” she’d said. “When you know too much about how the world works, how people work, you see things you aren’t supposed to. You understand things you aren’t supposed to.”

Indiana was 12 at the time, sitting on the other side of the kitchen table.

“What do you mean mom? How can you know too much?”

“You’ll know one day. You’ll see.”

The way she’d said it made Indy sit her fork down, her stomach suddenly tight.

And now she’d seen.

On New Years Eve, Indiana Cross leaned in to kiss her boyfriend as the clock struck midnight, on her couch in her apartment, with her picture frames on the shelf over their heads and the sound of fireworks outside her window.

Grayson didn’t lean in.

He leaned back, and he spoke.

“I can’t do this.”

Indiana took a breath. In. Out. Filled her lungs and emptied them again.

She’d noticed. But she hadn’t let herself believe it. She’d pushed every little nuance she’d seen, every time that Grayson’s eyes didn’t catch the smile he tried to put on his face the last few days- she’d pushed it to the back of her mind and justified it. He was just worried about leaving, he was just stressed about Bekah like she was, he was just tired. She’d seen every sign and she’d justified it.

She swallowed air, her throat painfully dry.

“What?”

“I can’t do this, I’m sorry.”

Indiana did what she always did, what she’d always done her entire life when anything didn’t make sense, when anything went slightly off track.

She tried to understand why.

She racked her brain for everything that she’d done, every syllable she’d spoken, and every movement she’d made since that first day at Frazier outside, with him in his green pants on the bench, and her with two Jet’s coffee’s in her hands.

Her fingers were cold as she pressed her hands together. There was a finality in his tone that had her chest tight, her ribs pressed together, muscles pushing on bones and squeezing everything until she felt like she was going to suffocate. She opened her mouth.

“Oh.”

Grayson had his head in his hands, leaned over his knees on the couch. He shook in an unfamiliar way, like he was choking, and it took Indy a moment to realize that he was crying.

She felt like she was in a dream, watching what was happening to her from the outside. It was like slow motion as she watched the girl on the couch curl in on herself, her walls reconstructing at ten times speed - he’d been so gentle with each brick that she didn’t even realize they’d been taken down. He spoke after a moment of heavy silence.

“I love you, but we can’t. I can’t do this to you.”

Her brain refused to process it, refused to even try to dissect it, and she spoke the only word she seemed to be able to find.

“Oh.”

“Indy I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I should have said something sooner, I wanted to, I’m an asshole for waiting this long.”

She swallowed and wrung her hands together.

“When is your flight?”

His tears streamed faster somehow as he blinked.

“Tomorrow afternoon. We have meetings on the 2nd.”

In. Out.

“What time?”

Grayson looked up. Indiana was sitting straight up, head up high. The only thing moving were her hands, which she kept squeezing together over and over. It scared him, to see his once bubbly girl so still while his tears continued to fall. He couldn’t read her.

“I’m not sure, I’d have to check. Dee, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

She smiled her hospital smile, the one she used when she got bad news, and it was somehow worse than if she’d yelled at him.

“Indy.”

“It’s okay. C’mere, it’s okay.”

She opened up her arms for him, and she didn’t even seem to notice that they were shaking ever so slightly.

Grayson’s eyes were too blurry to see the quiver. He was fighting himself again, wagering whether sinking into her arms would only cause more damage in the long run. But he knew how it felt to be there, and he wagered that it would be worth whatever hellish guilt it was sure to bring later. So he leaned in, and just a single touch from her had him sobbing again. He pressed his face into her shoulder with so much force that she fell backwards a bit, and suddenly they were intertwined with him above her on the couch.

His pain was physical. She could feel it, in the way his body shook and paused when he tried to suck in a breath that his lungs desperately needed, the wet hot air soaking through her shirt with every exhale he choked out. His tears were warm, the salt already stiffening the fabric that soaked them up. Her hands found his back, and she lifted a finger to his skin before she paused.

She didn’t know what to write anymore.

Instead, she moved her hand to his hair, scratching at his scalp, holding him steady. He was heavy against her and she closed her eyes, felt him there with her, took in the weight of him.

“Shhhh. It’s okay.” We’re okay. “You’re okay.”

Her words only made Grayson cry harder when he realized what she was doing. He came back to himself for a moment when he realized that all the shaking wasn’t him. He could feel the way she held onto him and shook, so subtle that he could tell she was fighting it. His stomach churned at the thought of how bad her pain must be if it was causing a reaction in her body, and he moved to push himself up.

“Indy.”

She clung to him, panic breaking through the protective numbness that had taken hold so quickly. If it was the last time she was going to get to hold him, she’d hoped it would have lasted just a bit longer.

But she took a deep breath and she let him go, forced her arms to release him.

It hurt worse to see his face again, see the pain in his puffy eyes. She reached back out for him, swiped her thumb across his cheek to catch a tear. Her fingers got distracted in the feeling of his scruff, and she scratched over it for a moment, indulging herself, willing herself to remember the way it felt on her fingertips.

“It’s okay.” It was a reflex to her, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying it.

“It’s not though. Indy, it’s not okay. I’m hurting you.”

She didn’t have a response to that. Her eyes fell to her lap, picking at her fingernails.

“I’ll be okay.” It was a lie, but she would have said anything to bring some of the light back to his eyes. Her pain she could manage, but his was her breaking point.

“Please don’t do that. Please don’t pretend on this.” He brought in a shaky breath, blowing it out quickly.

In. Out.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to scream. I want you to be pissed at me, I want you to be mad that I waited this long to tell you! You haven’t even asked why,” he cried. Indy wondered for a moment why it always hurt more to see boys cry. It seemed to be more painful for them somehow - heavier.

“I think I know why.”

He sat up a bit more at her words. Waiting.

“It was a chance thing, you being here. Us meeting. Your life is entirely different than mine, and you have your people in LA. There’s… I mean there’s plenty of girls there who don’t have the stuff I have. Class, work -” Her voice cracked at the end, Grayson’s outline blurring just a bit as she looked up.

“No. No no no, hey,” he stopped her, hands hovering over her for a moment before he gave in and rested them on her arms, holding her without fully pulling her in. “It’s not that. I promise you, it has nothing to do with anyone else. I want you, I don’t want anyone else. But I know you, and your dreams are here, and I’m not gonna take that away from you.”

Indiana’s confusion only grew. She’d only heard one thing he’d said.

“You want me?” Her voice sounded pitiful, even to own ears.

“Of course I do.” He spoke it like it was the only possible truth, and a flicker of hope rose in her gut, fighting it’s way up. “Indy of course I do.”

“Then… why?”

“Remember when we went to LA?”

His words brought back a flood of memories. The two of them kissing in the ocean, the secret beach, sleeping in his bed with his green wall, piggyback rides around the house, the late night Cudi drives.

“Yeah.”

“You remember how much you hated it there? How bad you wanted to come back home? And what did I promise you?”

Indy couldn’t find her voice. Her brain was otherwise occupied, watching her memories being drug through dark ink, staining them.

“I promised you I would never ask you to leave New York.” He finished it for her. “And I meant it. But I can’t stay here Indiana, no matter how bad I want to.”

“Your life is in LA.” She repeated her words from earlier, monotone and unattached. Her heart fought with her, begged her to tell him everything. Tell him that she was going to start working at Jets and start therapy so she could fly out to see him. Tell him that she was halfway through her UCLA application essay that she’d been working on on nights he fell asleep before her. Tell him that she’d drop everything and follow him anywhere.

“You’re the most giving person I’ve ever met. You give so much to everyone but yourself. But I’m not letting you give up your life for anyone, especially not me.”

She wanted to be mad that he assumed that she would. But there was an understanding, a sadness in his eyes that reminded her that he knew her better than she had ever realized.

“We could make it work.”

He looked like he wanted to believe her.

“You deserve someone who is here for you.”

“You’re here for me.” Her mouth was starting to outrun her mind, a dangerous game that she usually couldn’t stop once it had begun.

“You deserve someone who is here to celebrate your accomplishments every day, not someone in a different time zone on the other side of the country.”

“We could make it work.” It was more of a plea that time, and she saw it register across his face, the pain it caused him.

“Indy.”

“People do long distance all the time, we could do it.”

“We aren’t long distance people,” he said, but Indy’s mind was already running.

“We could set up a facetime schedule, and you wouldn’t have to visit that much, I’ll be busy with school anyways. And if we hate it, then we can stop. We just have to try, we’re never gonna know unless we try it.”

Grayson was silent for a minute, which was enough of an answer. He’d known this was coming. Ethan had warned him that it would happen, that Indiana would try to reason her way through it. He’d told his brother that he had to be confident in his choice or he’d get swayed off course.

Grayson wasn’t sure he’d even be confident in his choice to remove himself from the best person he’d ever known. But knowing that in the long run it would be better for her was the only thing that let him cling to the last bit of resolve he had.

“Indy.”

Her lip quivered, and he felt his heart crack.

“Please,” she said.

“C’mere. Just c’mere.”

It wasn’t a surrender, but an offering of comfort. Indy knew it would hurt her later, but she didn’t have the willpower to resist it. She crawled into his lap, and the last of the numbness that had started faded away. In his familiar arms, she lost her last semblance of control.

She crumpled into his shoulder, broken sobs shaking her frame as she clung to him, let him hold her as she wrapped herself around him, as if it would somehow make him stay.

He rocked her as she sobbed, accidentally pressing a kiss to her shoulder before he realized what he was doing. It was torture in the rawest form, worse than he could have expected to be the cause of her pain.

“I’m so sorry Indy, I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her over and over, hoping she believed him. She pressed her face against his neck to keep her eyes closed, pretending for a moment that everything was fine.

“I love you.”

The tears returned to his eyes, and in a moment of weakness he turned and pressed a kiss to her hair, her temple. His lips had missed her.

“I love you too Indiana Cross.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Her finger traced against his back. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. She wished she could erase it somehow when his breath caught in his throat again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he shook his head.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” His voice was muffled by her skin, seeing that he was unwilling to lean back from her.

“I know this is hurting you too,” she said, and was met with the feeling of more of his tears on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“The only thing you did was make me love you too much. Don’t be sorry for that.”

The way her heart squeezed wasn’t natural, and though she knew the phenomenon wasn’t as everyone said, she was sure it skipped a beat in her chest. She squeezed him tighter to her, like she had so many times. She synced her breathing to his, laid her head on his shoulder, committed the sound of his heartbeat to memory.

Their tears dried out over the next hour, the numbness of acceptance starting to blanket over them. Neither of them dared to move a muscle, Grayson especially. All he did was rub his hand over her back, up and down the same as he had been since she climbed into his lap. They both knew that moving would mean having to figure out what to do next.

It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Indy wasn’t sure, and she was scared to look at a clock, to see her fleeting time left with him wasting away.

“Did you pack your bag already?” Her voice was too loud even though it was barely above a whisper, pulling them back into the reality they wanted to avoid.

“Yeah. It’s at home.”

Indy could see it in her head, his Jersey room, quiet and waiting for him with his orange duffle on the bed. But her stomach filled with a wave of nausea as she realized what it meant.

“So you have to go home.”

Grayson’s hand paused on her back. She was holding her breath.

“I… I didn’t know if you would want me to stay.” It was the first time he could remember not knowing what to say to her.

Her arms tightened around him, her breathing getting a little bit more ragged. He ran his hands over her back quickly, desperate to soothe her.

“Shh, shh hey, I’m staying. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yet.” She whispered, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he flinched. “Sorry, that was harsh.”

“Not undeserved,” he said, turning and resting his cheek against her shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have. So whatever you need, I’ll give it to you.”

Indy sat up. Her eyes had settled a bit, her tears washing the jellyfish blue into a shade of navy that Grayson didn’t recognize. It made his breath catch in his chest.

“Whatever I need?”

“Whatever you need.”

She looked at him, and her head tilted to the side just slightly. A small smile tried to make its way to her face, but her lips quivered.

“Could you kiss me?”

He paused, watching her fight off her tears with a deep breath.

“Is that what you need?”

“Just… just one. I didn’t know, you know. That the last one was gonna be the last one. And we’re here, and I just thought, that maybe - ”

He kissed her. For the first time, he was hesitant. He kept his hands to his sides, not wanting to push anything too far, not wanting to make anything worse somehow. Indy barely reacted either, too nervous to do something wrong.

They pulled back from each other, breathing shallow, nerves taking over as they tried to figure out what to do.

“Thank you,” Indiana said.

Grayson swallowed hard, watched her eyes as they flickered between his own.

And then they were kissing. Really kissing, chasing the taste of each other like air at the end of a sprint. His hands went to her face, holding her to him as her hands went to his torso, bunched up his shirt and tried to pull him into her, closer somehow despite the fact that they were already touching everywhere that they could be. The desperation was palpable, in the way their hands roamed and fell back into their familiar patterns. Indy sucked in the first real breath she’d taken in since the clock had struck midnight, breathed him in as best she could, trying to lose herself in him like she always had. But her mind wouldn’t shut off, reminding her that it could really be the last time she had him like this.

He felt her tears, first on his thumb that was holding her cheek, and then against his own skin. It took all his willpower to pull back from her lips. She let him, her breathing shaky as she tucked her face back down into his neck.

He picked her up effortlessly, standing up from the couch and moving them to her room. The Cudi vinyls seemed to mock him, especially when he laid down and stared up at them on their small shelves. Indy didn’t move an inch, staying wrapped around him, laying on top of him when he rested back against the pillows.

Time moved quickly, and Indy still avoided the clocks, scared to see what had already passed.

Grayson wanted to hear her voice. Wanted her to talk to him, wanted to commit every single thing she said to memory, but he wouldn’t ask. She had given him enough.

He closed his eyes, focused on the feeling of her fingers over his shirt, tried to make out what shapes she was drawing like he always did. He felt her hands travel up higher, up his neck to his skin, scratching over his beard.

Her fingertips were gentle as they moved up, over his lips, around his cheek to his eyelids, down over his nose, then to the other side of his face. She traced the pattern a few times, and Grayson waited until she was on his nose to speak.

“What’re you drawing?”

“You,” she said. “Memorizing.”

He didn’t know how he still had more tears to make, but they started to fall anyways, down the side of his face over his temples.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

“I know. I wish you could stay just a little bit longer.”

“Me too.”

He traced a heart on the back of her arm.

“I love you too.”

The truth of it was, she didn’t know how to not love him, and that was the scary part of it all. She couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t love him with everything she had in her.

She didn’t know who she was without it anymore.

“If you ever change your mind, I’ll be here you know,” she said. He took in a deep breath, pressing a kiss to her hair.

“I’m not gonna do that.”

Her heart sank.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I can’t ask you to do that, to wait for me. I’m not going to string you along, that’s cruel. Once I’m back in LA, I want you to move on.”

Indy shook her head against him, burying her face in his chest.

“No.”

“Indy.”

“No.” Her brain refused to process it, to imagine a single scenario where she felt anything good without Grayson by her side. She knew it wasn’t healthy, and she vowed to never tell anyone but in that moment, she reserved herself to be miserable every minute that she wasn’t with him.

“I know it’s not gonna be easy, but you deserve to be happy. And I’m sorry that I’m gonna make that harder, but you’ll find somebody who can love you better than I do.”

“Does that mean you’re going to just move on when you get back to LA? Just forget about me?” There was a spite in her voice that she didn’t like hearing in her own voice. But Grayson didn’t flinch. It was almost reliving to him. He was getting what he deserved, what he’d earned for breaking her heart.

Her anger meant she cared.

“Indiana I’m never going to forget you. If you think I could, I was an even worse boyfriend than I thought.”

“No, don’t do that.” She pushed off his chest and sat up. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make me think that the last three months were bad. That’s the last thing I have to hold onto. Those were the best months of my life, you don’t get to take that.”

Grayson didn’t have an answer.

“Okay.”

“You made this decision for the both of us, I don’t get a say in it. So I’ll hold onto it as long as I fucking want to. You don’t get to tell me I have to move on.”

“Okay.”

“Okay then,” Indy said, reaching up to wipe a tear away. She sucked in a breath and pushed it out through shaky lips, trying to hold herself together.

“Sorry.”

Grayson shook his head. “Indiana you can be mad at me. You should be mad at me.”

“I am mad at you.”

She knew it wasn’t in the way that he meant. Because she wasn’t mad that he’d broken up with her. Because deep down, under all the pain and all the love and all the worry, she knew he was doing it for her. He was doing what she would never have the guts to do, even if it was the right thing.

No, she was mad at him for infiltrating every single part of her. Every thought, every muscle, every cell of her body contained him. Every hope she had for her future was molded around him. He was there in everything. His curls were in the dreams she had about her future children. His smile in the back of her mind every time she closed her eyes. His eyes, bright and green, always there.

“Do you want me to leave?” There was no malice in his tone, only genuine concern.

She pondered it for a moment. Thought about what it would look like, for him to actually walk out the door and never come back through it.

“No.”

“Okay. Then I’ll stay.”

“I can drive you to the airport. So Ethan doesn’t have to come into the city.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“Okay.”

They stared at each other for a moment, staying very still, waiting for one of them to make a decision.

“We should probably sleep.” Grayson checked his watch. “It’s 4am.”

“Okay.”

Another pause. Another moment of uncertainty that they’d never had to navigate.

“Do you want me to take the couch?”

She shook her head, and with a sigh, she gave in. Grayson could finally breathe again when she settled against him, pushing her hand up under his shirt, running her fingers over his ribs. He wrapped her up in his arms tightly, focused on the feeling of the weight of her on him.

And he closed his eyes.

His alarm went off at 9:45. As soon as it sounded, Indy turned her face into his chest, a new wave of tears coming forward as the realization hit her

It was time to let go.

He just held her and kissed her head for as long as he could. She didn’t know if she’d slept. If she had, it was only for a few moments. She’d kept waking up, reminding herself that he was still there.

They barely spoke. No one ate breakfast. He hadn’t brought a change of clothes, and parts of his shirt were stiff from the saltwater of both their tears. It took all the strength he had to keep it together when he closed the apartment door behind him for the last time.

She took his hand in the elevator, and his tears fell, making his cheeks even colder when they walked outside. It felt odd, for him to climb into the passenger seat with her in the driver’s as they continued down the road. His mind was flooded with memories, with doubts. He couldn’t stop picturing the smile that would spread across her face if he told her that he’d changed his mind, that they could try.

He fought it, kept his mouth shut, reminded himself that this was his decision and he had to deal with the repercussion of it.

Indy was quiet too, evidence of her earlier decision to not hurt him anymore than she already had. She didn’t want to make it any harder on either of them. No matter what, she still loved him, and she didn’t like to see him hurting. She kept herself superficially distracted, focused on the colors of the cars that passed, and the number of the exits on the highway.

The airport had never come quicker.

Grayson’s chest tightened when they pulled off. He couldn’t ignore it anymore, couldn’t push it down and stay strong like his dad had always told him to. An image of him hugging her goodbye over her console came to his mind, and he panicked.

“Would you want to come in? Like park and come in? I know you hate airports, and you can say no. But… I’d like to give you one last good hug before I go.”

She merged into the lane that led to the parking as her tears began to fall. He ran his thumb over her hand until they got out. They found each other again behind the car, Indy linking her arm around his and holding on as tight as she could as they walked. She was ten times more anxious than the last time she had walked into an airport, her usual pertifying fear of Grayson being on a plane the least painful part.

It was hard to keep her sobs quiet but she bit them back as best she could. Grayson heard them, shifted so he had his arms wrapped around her as they walked. Her eyes were blurry with tears but she noticed the bright yellow and orange bags before she spotted Ethan. He gave her a sad smile that she did her best to return. From the look of pity in his eyes, it was even worse than she thought.

Her vision was obscured by Grayson, who moved in front of her. She clung to the front of his jacket with both hands, unable to look him in the eyes. She didn’t know if she could handle it.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, tears so full that they dripped off her chin and onto her shirt.

“I’m so sorry.” His own eyes burned as he watched her. But her next words caused the worst pain he’d felt in a long time.

“Can we have a redo?” As her voice shook, his last barrier fell, and he was sobbing - the kind you try to choke back and keep quiet as he crushed her against him, burying his face in her hair.

“Not this time baby. Not this time.”

They weren’t sure how they could cry harder, but they did. He swayed as he held her, tight and warm. Ethan wiped his own tears away with his jacket sleeve as he checked the boarding time on the tickets.

“I love you. So much,” she said.

“I love you too. I’m so sorry. If you ever need me... “ he trailed off, unsure if his offer would only hurt them both more down the road. She understood what he meant, and she took a deep breath. In. Out.

“Right now, I need you to turn around, and I need you to walk away, or I’m never going to be able to let you go.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t move. She finally looked up at him and held herself together, determined to look at his face in person for the last time without the distortion of tears.

“Take care of yourself, okay? Be safe. Be happy. I’m always gonna love you.” Her voice was as steady as she could make it, and that somehow hurt him worse.

“Forever,” he whispered, and then he was kissing her. He wrapped her up in his arms as tightly as he could, held her to him until he forced himself away, only keeping a hold of her hand.

Ethan, always in tune with his brother, seemed to recognize his cue.

Indy nodded and squeezed his hand one more time, and then she let him go, their fingers tracing over one anothers until they fell away, the distance too much.

A numbness spread over her body as soon as he let her go, and she watched from her spot as he disappeared down the hallway and into the security line.

She didn’t remember getting back to her car. But somehow, she managed to crawl inside and lock the doors before she crumpled forward onto her steering wheel.

#mixtape #this one is a doozy #love you guys #can't believe it's already track ten #wild wild wild #grayson dolan #grayson dolan fanfiction

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thr-333 · 4 years

Text

Mismatch- Part 17

Bio Dad Bruce Wayne Month 2020

“Push me off the roof you coward!”

First< Previous > Next

------

“So do you want to be Batman or should I?” Marion brings out the two outfits identical in every way except size.

“It’s not actually dressing up,” Marinette scolds fixing her hair.

“Well then you single handedly ruined halloween,” Marion grins coming up behind her, “Everyone wears them for it,”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Marinette watches him warily in the mirror, prepared to defend if-when he makes a move to mess up her hair.

“So Batman or Robin?” Marion holds the outfits up, dangerous close to her head.

“I don’t care,” Marinette stands up, spinning around, using the chair as a shield.

“Coin flip then,” Marion drapes them over the chair, “Oooh foreshadowing!”

“Please tell me you're going to take this marginally seriously?” Marinette leans back on the dresser as he fishes for a coin.

“You’re starting to sound like our manager,” Marion flips the coin with extra flare, “Heads,”

“You should thank Kate for setting this up,” Marinette catches the coin before he can, “Tails,”

She takes the Robin outfit from the chair, ducking Marion as she passes.

“You know I don’t think Kate wants to see me,” Marion takes his outfit behind the opposite curtain, “She's pretty stressed something will go wrong,”

“In Gotham?” Marinette pokes her head out the curtain on the other side of the room.

“I know, crazy right,” Marion also peaks through the curtain, “Where would she get that idea?”

“Who knows?” Marinette cheekily grins before ducking back behind the curtain.

“If we get attacked again I think we might give aunt- I mean,” Marion pauses pulling on his grey turtleneck, “ugh, this is hard,”

“Mari, the outfits are designed for easy use,” Marinette teases, tone sounding half hearted even from this distance.

“What are you calling her in your head?” Marion pulls the turtle neck down all the way.

“Selina,” Marinette answers, as he shrugs on his hooded crop top over the turtleneck, split into two colours to make a vague bat-shape. “Although I just avoid saying it out loud,”

“Great minds think alike,” Marion pulls on his grey leggings, that Marinette had thankfully made into thermals.

“I’m the only great mind here,” Marinette teases, Marion lets out fake gasp as he pulls a pair of shorts over his leggings, “You just like to copy,”

“How dare you!” Marion pulls the curtains aside dramatically, Marinette doesn't even look up from where she's putting on bracelets, “Dishonour! Dishonour on you, Dishonour on your kwami! Dis-”

“Hey!” Tikki flies out of the backpack.

“Sorry Tikki,” Marion looks away from the fuming Kwami, trying to avoid her by pulling on his black and blue boots.

“It’s ok Tikki,” Marinette finishes putting green and gold bracelets up to her elbows, “He’s just trying to be funny,”

“And succeeding!” Marion corrects, smoothing a mask over his eyes.

“Ah-ha,” Marinette stands, black and yellow scarf flaring out at the back.

“You know I don’t think she agrees,” Marion stage whispers to Plagg from his bag.

“Ah-ha,” Plagg says in the same tone, as Marion is pulling on his black gloves.

“Traitors, all of you,”

“Hey look,” Marinette bumps his shoulder, nodding towards someone.

“It’s Jason,” Marion whispers back excitedly, moving to wave.

“MCD doesn't know him,” Marinette grabs his arm, “Let’s hope this isn’t as awkward as it was with Chloe,”

“I thought that was fun,”

“Of course you did,”

"Hi," Jason approaches nervously, completely different to how Marion's met him before, it's cute.

"Oh hello, stranger," Marion grins, ignoring the kick from Marinette, he'll be careful, it's fine he's got this, "Whats your name?"

"Jason," Oh my God he's blushing!

"Jasin," Marion repeats pretending to write on what he was handed.

"Um…." Jason looks like he's about to correct Marion, this will be perfect- "yep,"

Fuck fuck fuck i though he would correct me fuck, Marinette help! Marinette rolls her eyes at his pleading look.

"Jason, CD," Pointing to the page without writing, "son,"

"Ohhhh Jason,” Marion says, as if he had come to some amazing realisation, Marinette looks like she wants to slap him, “haha, sorry, of course, I just didn’t hear you right, because I don’t know your name, why would I know your name? It's-"

Marinette rightfully cuts off his rambling with a swift kick, that both knew would never actually hurt him. At least Jason looks just as embarrassed as him, neither quite knowing how to start the conversation back up,"

"How about we take a picture?" Marinette says, their saving grace.

"Yeah, that would be great," Jason fumbles for his phone, Marion hopes his mask will cover his blush, as he remembers what Jason had said about him at dinner, the only reason he was blushing.

They take a nice picture together. Then one where Marion throws bunny ears behind MDC. She swats his hand away and he pushes her out of frame. The next picture is one of him and Jason with Marinette rising up, like a threatening blur in the background.

"Aw thats a nice picture" Marion looks over Jason shoulder, they were meant to be with the next person already but they were a design hopeful, babbling to MDC about her designs, "You should send it to me,"

"Of course," Jason seems flustered with his proximity, enough so that he didn't see Marion's trap.

"Great heres my number," Marion quickly writes it down on blank piece of paper, a picture seeming a bit too narcissistic at that point.

"...Waut,"

"Well you have to send it to me someway," Marion shrugs, conveniently ignori-forgetting that pictures were sent through his social media all the time.

"Right... right," Jason seems to be in a bit of a daze when Marion sends him off, standing next to Marinette as the fan leaves.

They watch Jason leave. Marinette starts giggling when he almost runs into a wall.

“Are you ok?" Marion asks, partly for the security guard who was waiting for their ok to send the next person up.

“You are such a dork,” She breaths through her upcoming laughter, “I think I need a minute,”

“Fine but if I get a hopeful fashion designer I’m telling them your new direction is crocs,” Marion huffs, not really insulted, but if he didn't act it she would only up the anti.

“Do it and your casket will be made out of crocs,” Marinette threatens ineffectively, walking to the backstage door.

“I kinda want to see that,”

“You’d be dead,” Marinette calls from the door.

“Minor issue,”

Marinette waves him off, which could have been an aborted swat. He watches as the crowd nearby begin whispering, some offering others to go first to stall for time. Marion plans to shove this in her face next time Marinette claims she isn’t popular. He’s about to take a camera out for evidence when one of the groups, fast tracked but the crowd, approaches.

Marion goes to do his more basic greetings when a gun is shoved in his face. The group made up of armed men surrounding him, one holding a camera.

“Smile for the camera,” The figure pulls his coat back, revealing the frankly disturbing face of the Joker.

“Oh it’s you,” Marion keeps a blank face, evidently confusing him, “Any chance two-face will show up?”

“.... No?” Marion fights to keep his composure as the crowd are threatened by the remaining thugs, pushing them to the ground.

“Pity, what a waste of good foreshadowing,” Marion shrugs casually, that camera is probably filming.

“What,” Marion supposes its a rare thing to see the Joker taken aback, but watching a group of armed men storm backstage distracts him from the sight.

“Nothing, I just made a brilliant joke earlier and you're sort of ruining it,” Marion makes exaggerated gestures, testing his limits, the guns follow him but don’t shoot. “Anyway are you here for an autograph or what?”

“I’m not-” He watches the Joker's face twist in gruesome realisation, “you’re trying to stall me,”

“Stall you from what?” Marion tries not to make his scan of the crowd obvious, “Please go in depth,”

“How about on the way up to the roof?” Chilling smile, but Marion is too used to fear to let it get to him.

“Oh goodie, I hear it has wonderful views,” Marion claps his hands, probably getting weird looks from the goons hiding behind masks, but who are they to judge?

He’s guided to the elevator. The Joker making the mistake of not tying his hands, or gagging him. He feels Kaalki and Plagg tense in his pocket.

“Huh, no elevator music,” Marion observes as the elevator starts to rise, “I just kind of expected it at this point,”

“You are strange,” Marion makes the mistake of glancing over, the Joker does not seem perturbed by that fact.

“You’re telling me that?” Marion tilts his head, “Actually that's quite the achievement,”

The Joker starts to go on about his plan, something about throwing MCD off the roof in front of the crowd for whatever reason, he’s not really listening. No, instead he’s made his own plan. There's no way Marinette was caught, not when she has no one to look after. She must be somewhere in the building, probably as Sparrow. It’s best if Sparrow and Songbird are seen near their other identities as little as possible, so he had to deal with the camera. If she saw the footage, which was probably being broadcast (a brilliant idea, really, no problems with that) she would intercept them. The best position would be on the elevator, but he had to buy time.

The cameras closest so he strikes, hitting it out of the goons hand, mid sentence. In the split second confusion he hits the number panel, lighting up all but a few.

“Huh, that was easy,” Marion says with genuine surprise.

“And here I thought you were being a good hostage,” Marion feels several guns press against him, but it’s only the pistol with the Joker at the end that worries him.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Marion smirks cockily, the threats turning more violent.

No, not threats, promises. Marion debates calling on Kaalki, while he’s still able too. It wouldn’t be great for a miraculous to be seen in a different country, but better than the one that can teleport than Ladybug. If Marinette couldn’t stop them in time she would surely turn to Ladybug and pick him up as he falls, right in front of the crowd and cameras. Not great.

There were other heroes in Gotham, they both knew. And if it was just him at stake he would put faith in them. But it’s not. He’s Chat Noir and there's not enough time to train a new Black Cat, not anymore.

The elevator finally reaches the top. Marion braces to help Marinette fight on the other side of the door. It opens. There’s no one. Great, great, great .

“Well, well, well why don’t we see what's behind that mask and carve up your pretty face, hm?” Joker leads him close enough to the edge of the building that anyone else should be scared.

“That sounds counter productive,” Might as well try plan b, he should have come up with one, but as is he’ll have to wing it, “Weren’t you going to throw me off the roof?”

“Eager aren't you?” Not really “After, promise,”

That grin paired with the knife inching closer should scare him, but honestly the only thing that truly scares him anymore is someone going for his ring, or Ladybug’s.

“What's the point? I’d be dead soon anyway, sounds like a waste of time,” Marion debates adding a yawn to match the tone, but it seems like overkill.

“A few screams are never a waste of time,” Marion is backed up further to the edge of the roof, able to see the fretting crowd below.

“Sounds to me like you just don’t have any confidence,” Marion says with all the sass he can muster, which is a lot.

“Oh, do explain,” The knife inching closer to the edge of his mask encourages the opposite, but he was never much good with warnings.

“If you really believe your plan will work and I wouldn’t be saved by I-don’t-know, Batman?” Yep that strikes a cord, probably not the best cord to strike with a knife in your face, oh well his wounds will heal soon anyway, “Then you’d throw me over the roof, a few cuts doesn't matter much when your dead,”

He can see the gears turning, debating if there's merit to his bullshit or if it’s just that. Honestly Marion doesn't know either.

“Revealing my identity and stuff is just a way for you to feel like you’ve won when Batman beats you,” He carefully doesn't emphasise the ‘when’, making it sound casual, like a given fact, “Cutting my face is just admitting you think the heroes will win,”

Just a little bit more. He’s almost pulled off plan ‘b’ for bat-shit crazy. He has the horse miraculous in his grip, Kaalki won’t like it but it's hard to put glasses on in mid air.

“Besides, won’t the mask leave a bit more impact?”

Hook. Line. Sinker.

“You really think the Bats going to save you huh?” The grin is unnerving, so Marion matches it with one of his own.

“I do,” He challenges, chin tilted up, “do you,”

He hears a cackle that would have surely appeared in his fear toxin dream if he heard it before. He’s pushed, vest twisted in the jokers grip, trying to stay balanced on the very edge.

“I like you kid,” And yeah, by that smile it’s not a good thing.

“Goodie,” Marion says sardonically, ignoring the shouting below, probably because his torso is all the way off the edge.

“Make sure to scream,” He feels the grip loosen, not having the natural response to grab onto something.

“I won’t,” he sends one last smirk as he’s dropped, weight sending him off balance and off the edge.

He’s in free fall and knows the screaming is not his own. He’s too busy debating the right time to transform. The street is getting closer and closer, no staff or grappling hook to save him.

“Klakki!-”

The air gets knocked out of him at the sudden change in directions. He can feel the arm and hears the glass shattering. For all the speed of a few seconds ago he is not expecting the quiet that follows. He’s leaning forward against someone's chest, both crouched down inside the building he just fell from. He recognises the shade of red first, Marinette had spent weeks with it pinned up all over their room and Marion has been wearing it ever since. He relaxes.

“Are you ok?” He gets pulled back from the chest, his complaints are cut off, a gloved hand tracing over his cheek, he feels the sting so it must be cut.

“Yeah I’m fine,” Probably not convincing, since his crush is the closest he’s ever been and Marion is almost the same shade of red.

“You’re fine?” The disbelief is clear and it takes Marion a second to realise why.

“I mean… Oh no! Trauma!” Marion tries to fall dramatically but the arm still on his back catches him.

“Good thing you’re a popstar not an actor,” Marion feels relief at the stiff atmosphere relaxing.

“Excuse you,” He snaps back up, poking Red Hood’s chest, smirking, “I’d make a wonderful actor,”

“Yeah, yeah,” Red Hood looks away, as far as Marion can tell with the helmet, “You sure you’re ok?”

“Yes, are you?” Marion stresses, remembering that he broke through the glass.

“... what?” Red Hood's full attention comes back to him.

“Are you ok?” Marion tries not to get annoyed at the answer, humour then, “After all breaking through a window isn’t much fun,”

You idiot you can't use his line on him ! Not in different identities! What if he figures it out?!

“Yeah.. yeah," He looks away again, "I’m… great,”

Marion smiles, guess things did turn out great in the end.

“CD!” Marion jumps out his skin, both suddenly realising how they looked and stand, Marinette runs right up to him, “Are you ok!?”

“Yep I’m… great,” Marion exchanges a private glance with Red Hood as Marinette frets over him.

“Thank goodness,” She sighs, shoulders sagging, then coming back up to hit him over the head, “Then why are you such an idiot!”

“Natural talent?” Marion rubs the spot, she put some Ladybug strength in that one.

“At least you’re good at something,” She sighs, brushing her hand over the spot.

“Rude,” Marion pouts, even as his head feels better, and his cut is startling to close up.

“If every things ok then,” Red Hood says awkwardly, “I’ve got a clown to go beat up,”

I Forgot!! How do you forget that! Marion yells at himself When your crush saves you from falling to your death…. Less romantic than it seemed in the moment.

“Have fun….” Marion waves, increasing the awkwardness ten fold, “dear god, I am an idiot!”

He groans into Marinette's shoulder after Red Hood left.

“Yes, but blush later, we need to be ready to provide backup,” Marinette pulls him out of the room stepping over broken glass.

“Uh- yeah! Right! lets go,” Marion snaps out of it, running after her.

“You are such a mess,” She insults as they jog, or with their speed, sprint up the stairs.

“Of all people you don’t get to call me that,” Marion needn't remind her of how she spilt orange juice all over herself at breakfast.

“... You just fell off a building, I was talking about your clothes,” Marinette has on her, ‘you’re an idiot’ face, well practiced that one.

“Oh,”

“But yeah you are a walking disaster,” She speeds up.

“Hey!” Marion sprints after her.

They reach the roof, not as out of breath as they should be.

“I thought I told you to stay put?” Red Hood snaps, alone on the roof.

“You didn’t,” They chorus coincidentally.

“I thought you had common sense,”

“We don’t,” They chorus on purpose.

Red Hood just shakes his head, probably smiling under the helmet.

“So the Joker escaped?” Marinette is the first to wipe the grin off her face.

“He was gone when I got up here,” Red Hood shrugs, “Waiting on intel,”

Probably from oracle.

“I didn’t say thank you!” Marion realises, not used to being the one saved.

“You don’t have to,” He looks away again, “Just doing my job,”

“But I want to,” Marion walks into his line of sight “So thank you,”

“Yeah well… thanks too I guess,” He looks away again and it's starting to get annoying.

“For what,” Marion leans over enough that he should be in sight, but he can't see his eye to confirm.

“I like the outfit you designed off me,” Marion freezes, almost stumbling over, “The interview was… entertaining,”

With that killing blow, a grappling hook is sent out and Red Hook is whisked away.

“.... Hey, can I borrow your miraculous?” Marion says blankly when Marinette comes to stand by him, “I need to wish myself out of existence real quick,”

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

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