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todrokishoto · 3 years

Text

bnha boys x tickles

character(s): bakugou, deku, denki, kirishima, todoroki

warning(s): tickles, blood (nosebleed), swearing?

a/n: random idea i had. enjoy this hc/scenario thing while i work on some longer fics. p.s. i’ve never really written headcannons before so idk if i did it right lmao

B A K U G O U

mans isn’t ticklish

trained himself to tolerate it bc being ticklish is for the weak

won’t tell you that tho bc it’s a valid excuse sometimes ok??

like,,, let’s say you’re tracing mindless patterns on his abdomen right

the two of you are just lying on his bed in his dorm room

and while it might have been innocent enough on your part

he can’t help but be... flustered as your hand moves awfully close to the waistband of his pants

feeling his cheeks heat up, straight up refusing to let you see how much your touch affects him, he swats your hand away with a grunt

“that tickles, dumbass,” he huffs, his voice slightly strained. you pretend not to notice.

your eyebrows lift upward in surprise at his statement. not once had he ever mentioned he was ticklish. propping yourself up on your elbow, you let your eyes trail over his features, studying him.

his eyes are closed but only after mere seconds of feeling your gaze, they open back up. his crimson orbs stare into yours, neither one of you breaking the prolonged silence. you, frankly, didn’t want to. bakugou, on the other hand, refused to - fully aware his voice would betray him again.

he couldn’t believe he had just lied about being ticklish. but, letting you believe your soft touches had tickled him rather than admitting they made him feel things he know he shouldn’t seemed like the most logical option. yes. there was no way he’d reveal his less than innocent thoughts.

“what?” he grumbles, quirking a brow questioningly. “take a picture. it’ll last longer.”

you fish your phone out of your pocket, holding it up above him. “okay—”

your words turn into a squeal as he smacks the phone out of your hand and grabs your arm, pinning it above your head. he hovers above you, eyes full of mischievousness, his teeth exposed by the grin dancing on his lips. you stare back up at him, eyes wide, body tense as you attempt to gauge his next movements.

“how ‘bout a taste of your own medicine, huh? since you seem to find it so funny.”

and before you can protest, his fingertips dig into your sides, eliciting careless giggles from you as he tries his best to find your most ticklish spots.

K A M I N A R I

would tickle you on the daily just to hear your laugh

pls he’s a total sucker for your squealing giggles. they’re his favorite

this boy will find any excuse to tickle you; pinching your sides, blowing raspberries on your stomach while lying in your lap - you name it

one of his favorite ways is to use just a teeny tiny bit of his electricity, making the ticklish that much more unbearable

we all know his love language is physical touch, so he just can’t help himself really

but don’t even think about tickling him. boy will practically screm bloody murder and literally run away from you like a child running away from their parent when it’s time for bed

you’re bored. so bored, in fact, that you’re even thinking about purposefully provoking your boyfriend’s explosive friend just for some entertainment. you quickly scrap the idea, not feeling like being the target of his harsh words today.

your boredom quickly dissipates, however, as the yellow locks of your boyfriend come into view. he’s chatting animatedly with kirishima and sero, his back facing you. you put a finger to your lips as a pair of red eyes look at you curiously. luckily, the redhead understands and says nothing as you sneak up to the table they’re currently seated at.

“hey, babe!” you greet loudly, your voice dripping with fake innocence.

before he can turn around, your hands are at his sides, pinching and poking with all their might. an odd sound - something between a gasp and a grunt - escapes your boyfriend at the feeling and he flails his arms, desperately trying to escape your hold.

you underestimated just how ticklish your electric partner is, it seems. because before you can dodge it and sero can warn you, denki pushes his chair backward, knocking you over in the process. your boyfriend whips around immediately at the sound of your body colliding with the floor.

“oh my god, baby, i’m so sorry. i didn’t mean—” his apology trails off at the sound of your loud laughter.

you’re clutching your stomach with one hand, attempting (but to no avail) to silence your laughter with the other. denki rubs the back of his neck, eyes full of confusion, while he tries to regain his breath from your surprise attack. once again, he catches you off-guard as he crouches down next to you, his fingers finding your tickle spot with ease.

your laughter gets louder and he smirks. “not so funny now, is it?”

K I R I S H I M A

mans has a hardening quirk

aka he can just harden his skin, so tickling him is basically impossible

once in awhile, when he knows you just want revenge for the times you’ve been tickled by him, he won’t activate his power

but still, he barely chuckles, which makes you frustrated™

he doesn’t really tickle you on purpose that often tho bc that’s not manly

will tickle you accidentally while rubbing your arms or breathing on your neck while cuddling

you’ll squirm in his hold and he will just apologize with a laugh and hold you tighter

you sigh, shuffling ever-so-slightly, stuck within your boyfriend’s tight grasp. the two of you had been cuddling on one of the sofas in the common room, but he had succumbed to his exhaustion and had fallen asleep next to you.

normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. you had no issue being his pillow once in awhile and his cute, little snores made it impossible for you to wake him. today, however, he had fallen asleep in the crook of your neck and his soft breaths were tickling you. with every exhale, your body tensed as you tried your best to remain still.

“kiri,” you whisper, his nickname slipping past your lips with gentleness. “babe, wake up.”

he stirs at the sound of your voice, his breathing halting momentarily. you wait in suspense but he only buries his face further into your neck, a long breath fanning against your exposed skin. you squirm instinctively. your movements must have alerted something in him because he begins shuffling shortly after.

you can’t see his face but you can tell by his breathing that he’s slowly but surely waking up. you practically hold your breath, praying that he will move before you have to voice your discomfort. unfortunately, luck isn’t on your side it seems.

“kiri, i love you, but please move,” you plead, pushing against his chest softly. his red eyes are filled with confusion as he props himself up to look at you. “you’ve been tickling my neck for the past fifteen minutes. i was going insane.”

he pouts then. “aw, babe, you should’ve told me. you could’ve woken me up, y’know?”

“yeah, i know,” you sigh, rubbing your neck where his breathing had been just a few seconds prior. “i just didn’t want to wake you, is all. you’re so cute when you sleep.”

“you’re cuter,” he quips enthusiastically, poking your nose with his index finger. “okay, your turn to cuddle me instead. i’m not ticklish so lay wherever you want.”

M I D O R I Y A

i feel like this broccoli bean would be ticklish everywhere?

either that or he’s not ticklish at all

maybe his body’s been beaten so many times that his nerve-endings are either overly sensitive or they barely feel anything

idk™ BUT

sweet, freckled little izuku would also not tickle you without consent

we stan a respective king

he would be so careful to apply a little bit of a firmer pressure to not tickle you

sweetie had been to flustered to ask if you were ticklish when you first started dating and it was too late to ask now

you’re sitting next to him on the gras outside of the doors, relishing the feeling of the nice evening air against your skin. the two of you are chatting mindlessly. well, izuku’s doing most of the talking and you’re mainly listening, but you don’t mind at all.

his arm is grasped between your two hands as you gently trace the scattered freckles and scars adorning his skin. he had been so flustered when you had grabbed it, unable to will the redness away from his cheeks. you had only giggled in response.

izuku didn’t know why you seemed to be so fascinated by his scars. you had always asked questions about them, wondering if he remembered where he got them. always made sure to call him handsome on days where he was particularly bothered by the markings on his body.

he loved it. he loved you.

but as your continue to trace them, your touch featherlight, he can’t help the shiver that runs down his spine. he squirms, his hand clenching together and forming a fist. you take notice and halt your actions immediately. he turns to look at you, meeting your wide eyes.

“did i do something wrong?” you ask quietly, feeling the guilt claw its way to your chest.

“no!” he practically shouts, his voice a few octaves higher than normal. he clears his throat. “n-no, you didn’t. it’s just that... heh. i’m, uh, kind of sensitive in certain spots, i guess? and while i really don’t mind you touching my scars, you were so gentle and i-i just... it tickled.”

his chin tilts toward the floor, his bashful gaze flickering away from yours. you notice the pink dusting across his freckled cheeks but decide not to point it out, desperate to make your boyfriend feel at ease again.

“zuku, say that next time! i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to tickle you. i didn’t even know you were ticklish, to be honest.”

he rubs his neck, peering over at you once again. he grins sheepishly. “i-i never told you, i guess. usually, i’m able to resist the urge to squirm, um, like that.”

“you’re so cute!” you gush, grabbing ahold of his hand once again. “i’m ticklish too, y’know. but i’ll let you find my tickle spots on your own.”

and, for the umpteenth time that night, your boyfriend blushes as he thinks about exploring your body to find your very own tickle spots.

T O D O R O K I

we all know he had a shitty childhood fck u endeavor

he never had tickle fights with his parents or siblings when he was little

so poor bby probably doesn’t even know he’s ticklish until you accidentally find his weak spot one day

let’s say you’re both cuddling in your bed right?? and things are getting a little heated

so,,, you detach your lips from his, placing a kiss on his cheek, then his jaw, then his neck

and let me tell you - this poor boy doesn’t know what to do

he tenses up immediately, slamming his chin down to protect his exposed neck, his jaw banging against your nose in the process

“y/n!” he calls out immediately, chest heaving, his body still tense as if on high alert. he reaches out to you when he spots you holding your nose, your brows furrowed in discomfort. “i’m so sorry. i don’t— are you alright?”

you nod, releasing a hum to confirm your response. your nose is throbbing, but when you open your eyes and meet shoto’s wide bicolored ones, your pain subsides quickly. poor boy looks so helpless - torn between reaching out for you and distancing himself.

“hey, sho, it’s okay. i’m alright,” you remove your hand clutching your nose to shoot him a smile but you stop midway, noticing the crimson liquid on your palm.

“you’re bleeding,” your boyfriend observes quietly, the guilt obvious in his voice. “i hurt you. i’m so sorry. i... what you did made me feel weird and my body just reacted. i, uh, i’m sorry.”

he scrambles out of your bed, reaching for the box of tissues he knows you have stashed in your desk. he hands you a handful of them, awkwardly lingering by the foot of the bed as you wrap the paper over your nose, clamping your fingers shut around it.

you shake your head with a gentle laugh. “sho, it’s okay. i didn’t know you were ticklish there. i can’t really control what my body does when i’m tickled either, so i don’t blame you.”

“ticklish?” he repeats aloud, almost as if testing out the word.

you nod, the innocence of your boyfriend once again surprising you. you feel your heart ache slightly at the thought of him not knowing what the action is. had nobody ever touched him enough for him to find his tickle spots?

“yeah. most people are ticklish somewhere on their body. usually either on their waist, their armpits, feet or neck - like you. it’s normal. typically, when people are touched where they’re ticklish, they’ll squirm and laugh.”

he nods and you remain quiet as he processes the information. then, much to your bewilderment, he leans forward and grabs ahold of your side with his fingertips. he pinches gently and you jerk, narrowing your eyes at your boyfriend smiling harmlessly.

“so, is that your tickle spot, then?”

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luvjoyed · 3 years

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┃ pretty stranger

summary ━━ you catch eyes with a pretty stranger who happens to have more interest in you than you’d expected.

pairing ━━ wilbur soot x gn!reader

warnings ━━ minimal swearing

word count ━━ 1.3k

a/n ━━ this came to me in a dream ( literally ) and i wanted to make the idea come to life beyond just inside my head. this is also based on the meetup of tommy, wil, and george that happened a week ago! i’ve struggled with this is much, writing shouldn’t have any business in being this difficult for me *sobs*

you had noticed a pretty stranger sitting among two other people on your tube ride, one being quite loud while he filmed the other two, one had almost raven hair and the other had a mess of curls hidden under a beanie. the one your eyes drifted to so often had a nosebleed halfway through the trip and you couldn't help but giggle a bit to yourself at the younger's reaction. it gained many stares and yet his caught yours out of all of them.

his cheeks had flushed from embarrassment due to all of the sudden attention, but he laughed anyways as he had been pulled away from the shared gaze to keep the blood at bay as most as possible with a paper towel.

a few moments of bickering had when on between the friends, mostly consisting of him and the blond. it had went on for well over a minute. you wondered what they had started to argue over. swears could be heard here and there, you having to hold back laughs at some of the terrible and strongly accented insults.

you quickly snapped your glance from the situation as the man started to get up from his seat. a poke to your shoulder and you jumped at the touch. you look up to find the brunet male you had come familiar with wearing a shy smile looking down upon you with the paper towel stuck into his nostrils. you grin in the same way, him swiftly sitting in front of you after your permission was given.

a look of concern comes over your face and you squint your eyes, studying his expression. in a way, he looked frustrated to have come up to you in the first place, and in another way, he looked to be tired from whatever had just gone on. he was looking behind you. his eyes dart to your own from his friends seated a few rows away.

“tommy is telling me to tell you that i think you're pretty.” his face is close to yours as he speaks, him leaning forward to better see said friends, and settling back once he’s done paying mind to them.

the last four words stuck out to you, it sounded magical falling from his lips. your stomach turns over itself, butterflies come into your throat as the smile lingers while he's looking at you. you can't help but love the happy chemical filling his eyes.

“tommy's the annoying child then, hm?” you get out, somehow without a single stutter.

he laughs, tipping his head back slightly. you hear tommy loudly say 'what the fuck?'. you laugh along with the stranger and he lets out a breath, saying, "yeah, yeah he is."

his honey orbs sink into yours momentarily. you both take time to allow the weight of the situation to settle into your chests. a giggle erupts from you and you look away, your hand covering your mouth. this is when you lock eyes with tommy, your laugh is harder than before. the blond looks to his friend now, almost to ask if he was the only one seeing this. the curly haired male couldn’t have cared less at what he had to say. his focus adverts back to you.

“he wasn’t completely wrong to have asked me to call you pretty, because you are.” his gaze hadn’t let up off of yours until you broke it when the last word slipped past his teeth.

you shake your head, stifling another laugh because of the sweetness laced within his voice. “i don’t even know your name,” you point out the obvious. “i know the child’s name and not yours! that’s not fair of you.” you tried to over up your nervous habit with adding a joke to the end of it, trying your best to make up for the slamming of your heart against your chest and the sweat gathered on your palms.

he nods, “right, i forgot about that, sorry.” a laugh pushes up his throat and he picks up his hand from his thigh, reaching it out to you. you slip your hand into his after you wipe your palm on your jeans to rid of the clamminess. “i’m wilbur, lovely to meet you.”

your whole body ignites at the wide grin he adorns once he’s heard of your name. “it’s lovely to have met you too, wilbur.”

you match his expression and he looks to his friends once more. he looks proud of himself for making this long of conversation with you — it wasn’t much of one, so you had assumed he didn’t interact with people often — and that in itself made him that much more adorable to you.

“here, wil—” he looked back to you so fast that it made you jump back a little in surprise. “sorry, i’m so sorry. i’m way more interested in you than them is all.” pink floods your cheeks at these words, no one had been interested in you for what seemed to be ages.

you smile gently at him and reach towards his face. he pulls back at first instinctively, you gathering he wasn’t used to physical touch at all. “come on, it’s alright. i think your nosebleed is done and over with, you’d forgotten about the paper towel in your nose, lover boy.” out of the corner of your eye, you see tommy gagging and the other brunet laughing at him.

“your friends are getting a real kick out of this,” you hum, placing the crimson colored papers into the bin beside you. “they’re not used to seeing me interacting with people outside of them, tommy and his fucking attachment issues.” his curved lips showed you he were only joking. you catch his eyes for another time. you’re convinced you could never grow old of them.

“is tommy related to you? you seem very close to him.” you sit back into the seat, trying to make yourself more comfortable. your foot shifts into his, his long legs being a curse in the small space between seats on the train, and you couldn’t be bothered to move it.

he shakes his head in response. “no, no, nothing like that. we’re really close friends, he’s like a bother to me, man.” he swayed his vision to the younger boy absentmindedly and you watch wilbur’s eyes go teary. he blinks them away and meets back to you. “i’m happy for the both of you, you guys have something not many do. you must be a great role model for him.” you offer him a lipped smile.

“god, would he hate to hear our conversation right now,” he pauses to laugh, “he hates his soft side being shown, but he always calls me his brother on stream and shit.” your small smile has now turned into a wide grin, that almost bringing tears to your own eyes. replaying what he said, you find he mentioned streaming. “you stream? what, are you famous or something?” amusement lifts your brows up to him and he flushes.

“i’m only messing, but seriously, you stream? that’s cool! might have to stop by sometime.” his eyes light up, posture straightening. you can tell that’s made him excited. “oh yeah? you’d watch me play minecraft with that twat?” he motions to tommy and you laugh, wilbur along with you. “i would,” you nod almost too enthusiastically. “i would love to watch whatever you do.”

he turns worried as the tube comes to a stop. his hands fumble to his backpack on his left. “i’m so sorry, i have to go, but here.” he hands you a receipt with messy numbers written onto the blank side. “we can talk more later?” he searches your face for an answer before he packs a few things back into his bag. walking away slowly, you smile and nod. “sure! talk to you soon, wil.”

you were left alone, thoughts swirling of wil, and a simple text sent to his phone saying ‘hi! :)’. a text that made him feel just as you were feeling.

#luvjoyed #wilbur soot #wilbur soot mcyt #wilbur mcyt #wilbur soot dsmp #wilbur soot x reader #wilbur soot x you #gn!reader #wilbur soot imagine #wilbur soot oneshot #fluff #imagine #oneshot #dream smp #dsmp #mcyt fanfiction #mcyt fandom

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polaroid15 · 3 years

Text

With Great Power...

Chapter 4: With great power comes a great need to stand up to bullies

Summary: Peter stands between Flash and a bully. Turns out, they can be friends after all.

Read on Ao3 HERE

------

“Yo Penis Parker!”

Peter groans.

“Where’d you get that sweater? The trash, probably. Seems like your thing.”

From beside him, MJ stiffens. Then without missing a beat, flips up her middle finger. Peter would give anything to tell Flash that the sweater used to belong to Tony Stark, that he gave it to Peter personally after a rough night on patrol because he was Spider-Man.

Yeah, that would shut him up.

Instead he shrugs. “The trash, Timbuktu- whatever floats your boat man.”

Unpleased by his response, Flash crosses his arms in a show of dramatic flair. They’re standing at their lockers, the lunch bell having just rung, and it’s more than obvious that the results from their calc test last period has put him in a bad mood. Well, worse than normal anyways.

And when Flash is in a bad mood, Peter ends up paying for it.

“MIT?” he scoffs, narrowing his eyes at Peter’s chest. “As if you’d ever have a chance at being accepted there.”

“Unlike you?” MJ digs. “I sat behind you in Calc, dumbass. Looks like you could spend less of your time being an annoying idiot and more time hiding your face behind a book.”

Flash falters. MJ had hit him where it hurts and it shows. He opens his mouth to retaliate but before he can he’s being lifted up by the collar of his shirt and slammed into his locker. Students gasp and back away from the altercation, though lots pull out their phones. After the initial shock Peter recognizes Flash’s attacker as Jake Miller. He’s twice as big as Flash and three times as mean.

“What the hell Flash!” Jake yells. “You said those answers were legit! My dad is going to murder me!”

“They were! I don’t- I don’t know what happened!”

“I was supposed to ace that stupid test. This is your fault!” With another low noise of anger Jake pulls Flash away from the locker only to throw him back into it. This time, harder. Flash’s soft gasp of fear passes through Peter’s chest like cold water.

Damn it. Of all people, why did it have to be Flash?

“Hey!” Peter yells, stepping closer. He feels MJ’s hand close around his wrist. “Come on. Leave him alone man.”

Jake’s shoulders tense. He throws Flash on the ground where he lays and covers his heads with his hands. But Jake’s attention is turned on Peter. He smiles wickedly. “And what are you going to do about it? Flash is gonna get what’s coming to him.”

Slipping from MJ’s strong grip, Peter advances further. Where the hell are all the teachers? “It’s not his fault you’re too stupid to take a calc test.”

“What the hell did you just say?”

Curling his hands into fists instinctively, Peter raises his chin. The whispers around them are growing louder. From behind Jake, he sees Flash staring at him with awe and holding his shoulder like it hurts.

“I said you’re an idiot Jake. An idiot, a cheat, and a bully-”

His spider sense warns him of the incoming punch and it takes every particle of his self control to not move. Jake’s knuckles hit him square in the nose and he can’t help but gasp at the sharp pain. He’s been hit in the face before, sure, but never without his mask.

A bone snaps. Stars blossom up behind his eyes and he stumbles back, feeling warm blood leak down over his lips. MJ tries to catch him and they both end up on the floor with Jake above them, staring at his fist in shock.

“Not cool man,” Peter groans.

Mr. Harrington appears then, finally, and pales significantly at the scene. It doesn’t take long for him to click the pieces into place. “Jake, with me. MJ, help Peter to the nurse’s office.”

Some students cheer as Jake is marched away. Others send Peter unsympathetic looks. He feels MJ’s hands tighten around his biceps. “You okay?” she whispers.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Believe me, I’ve been through much worse-”

But when he stands a sudden rush of vertigo washes over him. He tips and almost falls, choking on his words, and two sets of hands reach to steady him. He expects the second to belong to Ned, but when he opens his eyes, it’s Flash.

“Parker!” he yelps, his cheeks flushed. “What the hell were you thinking?”

He’s too shocked and dizzy to push him away. “He was being a jerk.”

“So was I!”

“He was going to pulverize you.”

“I could’ve taken it.”

At this, MJ snorts loudly. “No you couldn’t.”

Ned skids to a stop beside them, his eyes wide. “Peter! Are you okay man? What do you need?”

Feeling some relief at having Ned by his side, Peter nods towards the end of the hall. “Bathroom.”

“What?” Flash stutters. “He needs to go to the nurse-”

But Ned and MJ are already helping him down the hall, parting swarms of their gossiping classmates like the Red Sea. Reluctantly Flash follows them, and Peter can’t help but notice how fast his heart is beating.

He tries to catch the falling blood in his hands but there’s too much of it to really spare the mess. He’ll feel bad for it later, but right now all he can think of is getting it to stop.

When they reach the bathroom Peter eases himself down on the toilet seat as MJ starts unrolling wads of paper towel. He presses it to his face and whines at the pressure. “This sucks,” he decides.

Ned shoots Flash a dark glare, to which Flash swallows heavily.

“Lean forward,” MJ instructs. “And pinch your nose here. It should help stop the bleeding.”

Peter obeys, a pulsing headache starting up behind his eyes. There’s blood in his mouth and on Tony’s MIT sweater, which really is more disappointing than the injury itself. Because bones heal, but man is it hard to get blood out of fabric.

“It’s not slowing down,” Flash says, shifting from foot to foot. From worry or awkwardness, Peter isn’t sure.

“Why are you here?” Peter asks.

To this, Flash deflects, a usual defiance crossing over his face. “Why didn’t you go to the nurse?”

Peter, Ned, and MJ share a significant look. Peter sighs. “It’s not that bad.”

“That’s absolute crap! There’s a literal puddle of blood underneath you right now! You’re acting like this is normal or something. As if you weren’t weird enough already-”

Ha, Peter thinks, if only you knew.

He would reply, expect he’s feeling increasing light headed. More blood falls against his tongue. Resisting the urge to spit it out, Peter lets it sit. He closes his eyes and feels Ned’s warm hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Mm? Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

They don’t just give him one. They give him ten. But even then the blood doesn’t slow. He urges his healing factor to kick in as he begins to seriously consider if Jake is human.

The blood at his feet grows. MJ and Flash start to argue. It makes his head spin. He almost misses the buzz of his phone in his pocket but manages to pull it out all the same, a smear of red appearing on his screen as he accepts the call.

“‘Lo?”

“Jesus, kid. What the hell is happening? I just got an alert from your watch that your blood pressure is dropping like crazy. Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

Eyes closing, he finds the energy to push out a humourless laugh. “Yep. At school. Don’ worry ‘bout me. Everything’s fine.”

“Then how do you explain your vitals?”

“Is that Mr. Stark?” Ned asks sharply, reaching for the device. Peter swats him away and nearly faints when it upsets his balance. Has his heart been beating this fast the whole time?

“Kid?”

In his weakness, Ned snatches the phone away and holds it up to his ear with determination. “Mr. Stark?”

Peter can still hear Tony’s responses, the worry in his voice increasing at Ned’s own apparent distress. “What’s going on Ned?”

“Peter got punched in the face. He broke his nose and is losing a lot of blood. I mean, a lot. Remember the Rhino? It’s like that. Way more than he should be.”

“Damn it. His healing isn’t doing anything about it?”

“Ned-” Peter moans.

“No. It just keeps getting worse-”

“Ned.”

“Christ. Okay, hang tight. I’ll be right there. Can you give the phone back to Peter?”

Peter grabs his phone back from Ned, narrowing his eyes as MJ switches out his paper towel. “Mr. Stark you don’t have to come-”

Flash stumbles where he stands. “What?”

“Of course I’m coming,” Tony snaps. He sounds angry, Peter thinks. “Look Pete. By what Ned says you’re losing a lot of blood. Try to stay awake until I get there okay?”

“It’s jus’ a nosebleed. I’m fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. And remember- no passing out!”

Peter is halfway through objecting before he realizes Tony has hung up the call. Exhausted and hurting and embarrassed, Peter throws his phone at the sinks. Flash edges towards it and picks it up, wiping off the blood with his sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Already Peter feels his anger ebbing. He sighs, leaning his aching head against the cool metal of the stall. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“Of course he does,” MJ says while Ned nods in solemn agreement.

Flash looks nervous, a characteristic that is decidedly very un-Flashlike. “They’re right. I’ve been a dick. And you still saved me from getting flattened by Jake.”

“He had it coming.”

“Maybe. But I’m still sorry.”

A thick silence floods the bathroom, interrupted only by the sound of Peter’s steadily dripping nose. Looking more earnest, Flash wrings his hands together. “I’m sorry Peter. And not just for this. For- for everything.”

Peter.

He smiles even though it makes his head spin. White spots are gradually eating away at his vision but he elects to ignore them. “It’s cool, Flash. I promise.”

“How touching,” MJ says.

Another wave of dizziness passes over Peter so strongly that he can’t see straight. He feels three sets of hands hold him up as he struggles to breathe in air through his mouth, the blood he had been keeping in dribbling out onto the floor.

“Oh my God!”

Tony.

His mentor’s swimming image suddenly appears as Peter dares to crack open an eye. He looks disheveled but alert with worry, his hands replacing Peter’s own at the bottom of his nose. “I said no passing out, remember? I really can’t leave you alone for three seconds-”

For some reason, Tony’s presence has Peter feeling weak. Because it’s safe. It’s over. “I got blood on the sweater you gave me,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? What? Kid, shut up.”

“I really liked it. I’ll still wear it. Promise.”

Over Tony’s shoulder Peter sees Flash with his hands in his hair, chest heaving with unbelief. Despite everything, the look of shock on his face makes Peter smile.

“How’d this happen?”

MJ and Ned both look at Flash. Peter tries to open his mouth before Tony can notice but it’s too late. He stares at Flash with suspicion. “Well?”

“Um. Uh-”

MJ sighs in annoyance, crossing her arms. “Peter took a punch for Flash.”

Tony doesn’t look surprised by this. If anything, his expression softens. “Of course he did.”

“Was nothin’,” Peter insists. He’s not sure if he feels like throwing up or fainting. Maybe both. “That guy had it comin’. Jus’ like that mugger las’ Friday-”

“Okay!” Tony interjects loudly, patting him on the shoulder. “I think it’s time for us to head out. Feel up to a trip upstate?”

Peter can’t nod. He uses his free hand to give Tony a bloody thumbs up.

“God, kid. You’re a disaster.” Tony helps him stand and grunts when Peter falls heavily against his side. “A bloody disaster. Literally.”

“He’s a hero.”

Everyone looks at Flash in surprise, another wave of awkward silence following his words. Flash blushes fiercely but looks straight at Peter regardless. It feels like an apology, like understanding. Something warm in Peter’s chest distracts him from the throbbing pain in his face.

“Thanks Flash,” he says, surprised that he means it.

Because maybe, just maybe, they could be friends after all.

#peter parker #flash thompson #mj #ned leeds #tony stark #broken bones #bullying #hurt peter parker #irondad #irondad fic #my fic #spider-man #mcu #protective tony stark #tony stark acting as peter parkers parental figure

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misssquidtracy · 4 years

Text

Laundry Duty

A short piece of Virgil-centric fluff for @fictivekaleidoscope to help her feel better after her op. I find Virg a challenge to write, so this took longer than the 10 minutes I originally promised XD.

Please excuse me while I scamper back to Gordon’s corner with my tail between my legs. Writing anything other than him is a bit like learning a foreign language for me.

Genre: Humour & fluff.

Characters: Virgil, Scott & John, with young Gordon and Alan in the background.

Summary: Virgil is the domestic househusband we all fantasise about, but with a dark twist...XD.

-x-

Virgil was not amused.

At all.

As if a solid week of back-to-back rescues garnished with a healthy amount of sleep deprivation hadn’t been enough, the massive pile of dirty laundry that was taking up two thirds of the floor was yet another nail in his green coffin.

Thunderbird Two’s pilot was flabbergasted at Scott and John’s laziness. Sure, he was guilty of not pulling as much weight as he usually did, but he was on his first day off in two weeks. Scott was into his fourth day of not being deployed and John had left EOS in charge of Five while he was planetside. Last time Virgil had checked, both brothers were perfectly healthy and as a result, more than capable of laundering their own clothes.

Scott had shrugged when Virgil had confronted him on the issue, not understanding why he couldn’t chuck all his dirty clothes into a pile and offload them onto Grandma. When John had suggested that he might do the same thing, Virgil had capitulated and very grudgingly offered to toss their clothes into the washer with his own. The embarrassment of one of his brothers getting deployed in an unwashed uniform for the entire world to see (and smell) would be enough to send him to an early grave.

Except, what had seemed like a good compromise an hour ago didn’t seem quite so good when it became apparent just how many items needed washing. There were the regular and spare iR suits, plus six days and five bodies worth of jeans, shirts, socks, pyjamas, t-shirts, swimwear…

Virgil scowled and resisted the urge to stamp on a particularly filthy looking shirt of Gordons. He was no househusband, but even he could tell that it would take at least six, possibly seven loads to get through this infernal pile. And considering each cycle took an hour and fifteen minutes to run, plus the fact that he’d probably have to pre-soak all of Gordon’s contaminated items, he was looking at between seven and ten hours of laundry on what was supposed to be his day off.

No way. Absolutely no way.

Anger completely overtaking logical thinking, Virgil grabbed an armful of clothes (instantly wishing he’d pegged his nose beforehand) and dumped them haphazardly into the nearest washer. Not pausing to consider material, colour or degree of dirtiness, he shoved everything in together. When the first tub was stuffed to capacity, he rummaged through the remainder of the pile and pulled out his own clothes before depositing them in the second washer. Heaven forbid he throw all his good shirts in with Gordon’s bright green swim trunks.

John’s white polo shirt was a different story.

Satisfied that the first washer was suitably stuffed (probably to the point where none of the clothes would actually get cleaned), Virgil double checked to make sure none of his own items were mingling with Gordon’s trunks and Scott’s socks. After finishing his inspection, he opened one of the cabinets and pondered over the choice of detergents.

Virgil quickly realised why laundry duty was the least favoured chore amongst his brothers – there must have been at least ten different types of detergent staring back at him. Scented dryer sheets, stuff for sensitive skin, perfume pearls, organic this and that, et cetera, et cetera…

Deciding to indulge in some petty revenge, Virgil selected the most ostentatious, sickeningly feminine detergent he could see; a bright pink bottle with a picture of a cloud on the front labelled ‘Sunset Marshmallow’. He popped the cap, inhaled deeply and nearly gagged at the cloying scent that assaulted his nose. It smelt like something a unicorn had vomited up.

Thunderbird Two’s pilot upended the bottle and tipped most of the contents into the washer containing his brother’s clothes. As the cherry on top, he also dumped in an entire container of scented pearls in the fragrance ‘Dusky Rose’, before slamming the lid shut and hitting the start button with an air of flourish. His mood rose considerably at the thought of his lazy ass brothers stinking like a garden.

Virgil’s own clothes were treated to a modest amount of regular lemon scented detergent and no fragrance pearls. Heaven forbid that he be caught smelling like a pre-teen girl.

Leaving both washers happily humming away, Virgil breezed out the door and allowed himself a small snicker of amusement.

‘Lazy suckers.’

-x-

Virgil didn’t know why, but somehow all his revenge attempts always ended up boomeranging back to bite him on the ass.

After his brother’s hideously perfumed clothes had finished their wash cycle and been tossed in the dryer with some more scented pearls for an extra dose of revenge, Scott and John had arrived to sort through and collect what belonged to them. Virgil, who had been fishing his own freshly scented (but not too freshly scented) laundry out of the second dryer had noticed some raised eyebrows and grimacing faces as the combined scents of Sunset Marshmallow and Dusky Rose hit both Scott and John square in the face (and nose).

All had seemed reasonably well up until that point. Scott and John had quickly caught wind of Virgil’s revenge act, but were both smart enough to realise that they had nothing to throw back at him. They had left their dirty laundry at his mercy, and now they (and John’s green polo shirt) were paying the price.

Virgil had insisted that they all eat lunch together before commencing their afternoon chores. Not willing to pass up the opportunity of free food, his brothers had agreed and were now sat around the kitchen island. Gordon was busy doodling on the sofa with a sandwich in his lap and Alan was taking a nap in Scott’s room.

What started as a fairly civilised family gathering began to disintegrate when John started to sniff and rub at his nose. Several minutes later, a light rash broke out on his neck and along his forearms. Several more minutes later, he was folded in half as a series of violent sneezes shook his frame.

“What – ACHOO– was – AH– in that – AH– stuff you put – AH– in our laundry? ACHOO!”

Virgil shrugged and resumed eating, “Don’t know. Price you pay for being lazy though.”

John wiped a tear from his eye as another sneeze took hold, “ACHOOOO!”

Scott grimaced as John directed a particularly powerful sneeze over his sandwich, “Argh, John! That’s disgusting! Cover your nose for god’s sake!”

“Virg,” John wheezed, doubling over into a flurry of slightly smaller, but no less violent sneezes, “Help me! ACHOO! Please! I – AH– can’t – ACHOO– stop! ACHOO!”

Virgil sighed and stood up from the table. He disappeared into John’s room and ferreted around in his brother’s ensuite before locating some foil wrapped tablets. Upon returning to the kitchen, he was mildly shocked to see the redhead tearing his shirt off and throwing it to the floor.

Virgil didn’t say anything, opting instead to hand John his tablets with a fresh glass of water. The medication disappeared down the middle brother’s throat in the blink of an eye, quickly followed by a large glug of water.

“How many of these do I have left?” John croaked, motioning to the wrapper in his hand before succumbing to another sneeze.

“That’s the last packet I could see,” Virgil replied, retaking his seat at the table, “Do you have some spares?”

John groaned and shook his head, “I’ll need to take – ACHOO– some more in about an hour – ACHOO– to get rid of the worst of it – ACHOO!”

Virgil sighed and dropped his head into waiting hands. He’d have to pick John up a fresh batch of antihistamines before the middle brother gave himself a nosebleed. The engineer kicked himself mentally, not out of guilt, but out of disappointment at his own stupidity. It was a well-known family fact that John was allergic to just about every damn thing on the planet. Peanuts, chamomile, celery, most types of pollen, kiwis, cinnamon and juniper to name a few. He’d even been allergic to the formula Alan had been given as a baby. Virgil had found that particular incident hilarious, but had retracted his humour after being informed that the redhead was honourably discharged from babysitting duty due being literally allergic to Alan.

‘Bad call, Virgil. You should have just shrunk all his clothes instead.’

Depositing his plate by the sink, Virgil picked up his phone and made for the hanger stairwell, “I’ll be half an hour, Scott. The closest mainland pharmacy is right on the Australian coast.”

Gordon hastily crammed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth before jumping up from the sofa and sprinting over, “Virg! Can I come with you? Please? I promise I’ll behave!”

Virgil didn’t have the energy to protest, “Fine, but don’t you dare wander where I can’t see you.”

Crumbs sprayed out of the little blonde’s mouth as he bounced up and down excitedly, “I promise! Let’s go!”

Scott snorted as Gordon rocketed out the door.

“Only half an hour, you say?”

In the background, John let out an exotic profanity as blood started to stream from his nose.

Virgil set his jaw.

“Half an hour.”

Revenge. Boomerang. Ass. Him.

#thunderbirds #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds tag #thunderbirds are go #gordon tracy #virgil tracy #scott tracy #john tracy #alan tracy #grandma tracy

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whumphoarder · 5 years

Text

Living the High Life

Summary: Peter gets a nosebleed while on Tony’s private jet. Chaos abounds.

Word count: 1,751

Genre: Fluff, humor, whump

A/N: Thanks to @awesomesockes for the idea, and to @xxx-cat-xxx & @sallyidss for beta reading!

Link to read on Ao3

The plane jostles slightly, causing the seatbelt light to flash overhead. Glancing sideways, Tony sees Peter’s eyes widen as the kid grips the armrests of his seat nervously.

“Hey, chill out, alright?” Tony says with a chuckle. “I don’t really want your handprints embedded in my two hundred million dollar jet.”

Peter gapes at him, his nervous expression being replaced by one of disbelief. “Wait, wait, two hundred million?” He releases the armrests and grabs his open bottle of coke from the cupholder so he can quickly screw the cap back on. “And you were letting me drink soda on it?!” he demands, horrified.

Tony smirks; he always gets a kick out of seeing the kid experience for the first time the same luxuries that Tony himself has been taking for granted since childhood. Private jets are no exception.

The two of them are currently flying out to California for the weekend to visit Tony’s recently rebuilt Malibu mansion, as well as to get Peter campus tours of UCLA and CalTech (two of the schools he’s considering applying to during his junior year). Tony’s excited to see the kid’s response to everything from their upcoming hotel accommodations to actual palm trees.

The plane hits a few more bumps of turbulence. His face draining of color, Peter squeezes his eyes shut tightly and leans back in his seat with a tiny moan.

“Wait a minute…” Tony raises an eyebrow, giving Peter an amused look. “Are you telling me that Spider-Man—a guy who swings from literal skyscrapers through the streets of New York on the daily—is scared of heights?”

“Not heights,” Peter grits out, his teeth clenched a bit. “Just flying. Like, in a plane.”

“Flying?” Tony frowns. “But you flew to Germany with no problem.” Or, at least none that he recalls Happy reporting to him. Though, to be fair, they were all a bit distracted that week.

Peter opens his eyes and shrugs. “Well, that time I was kinda more focused on the fact that Tony Stark pulled me out of school for three days so I could steal Captain America’s shield, so…” he trails off as they hit another bump and gulps. “Just, you know, Parkers and airplanes have kind of a history...”

Suddenly, it clicks. An instant wave of guilt washes over Tony. Of course the kid would have issues with flying after having his parents die in a plane crash when he was only four years old. Hell, Tony was twenty-one when his own parents were killed and he still prefers to drive himself rather than relinquish control of his vehicles to a chauffeur (with the notable exception of Happy).

Tony softens his tone before speaking again. “It’s just a little air pocket,” he reassures. “We’ll be through it soon. And worst case scenario, I’ve got suits on board.”

Peter nods tightly a few times. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll be fine.”

Figuring a distraction is in order, Tony starts recounting a particularly memorable MIT party back in the day during which Rhodey got so wasted he danced on the ping pong table to “Heat of the Moment” until it collapsed under him. By the time he’s done, the kid’s nervousness seems to have dissipated and he’s giggling along, the plane ride all but forgotten.

Once they’re through the turbulence, the flight attendant brings out their lunches and Tony once again has to grin at the kid’s awe.

“Honestly, I would have been happy with like, McDonald’s,” Peter babbles, sawing away at his filet mignon piece with a knife and fork, “but this definitely beats that.” He pauses, frowning. “Unless it’s McRib season. McRibs are the bomb, Mr. Stark.”

Tony pulls a face. “I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

Peter giggles. Then the plane begins shaking again—a bit harder this time—and the giggles fade, replaced by breaths which are a little too carefully measured to be natural.

Alright, back to story time. “Hey kid,” Tony begins, “have I ever told you about the time Happy fell backwards into the compound’s swimming pool?”

“Uh, don’t think so…” Peter says, gazing nervously out the window.

Tony launches right in. “So, Happy was doing his laundry, like he does every Sunday afternoon. I swear, the guy separates every single color until he’s got like, seven loads. Total fanatic about it. Now, you gotta understand DUM-E had been malfunctioning for the past few days, and so—”

“Oh no…” Peter breathes out suddenly. The kid turns back away from the window, his hand clamped over his mouth and nose and an urgent expression on his face. “Oh no, not here, not here...” he mutters, his words muffled by his palm as his eyes dart around the plane.

Figuring he has a pretty good idea of what’s about to occur, Tony immediately bends down to grab a paper airsickness bag from under the seat, but Peter has already unbuckled his seatbelt and is scrambling up from his chair, his hand still clamped over his face.

“No, Peter, you can’t—” Tony calls after him, pointing to the still illuminated seatbelt sign, but the kid is already racing toward the lavatory. Tony quickly unclips his own seatbelt and jumps up to hurry after him. He’s halfway down the aisle before the plane hits another patch of turbulence that causes Tony to stagger into one of the other seats.

From inside the lavatory, he hears a crash followed by a sharp “oof!” Tony winces. Maybe he shouldn’t have insisted the bathrooms on his plane be designed four times as large as the cramped ones on commercial aircrafts—it leaves enough room to actually fall down.

“Peter?” he calls worriedly, knocking on the closed door. “You alright?

“Don’t come in!” Peter’s voice yelps. “I’m fine! I got it handled!”

Tony’s worry deepens. “Kid, you really can’t be out of your seat right now. If you’re getting sick—”

“I’m not!” Peter says quickly. “Really, it’s okay. Uh, I just…” His voice trails off, and then, barely audible, Tony hears him mutter, “Oh god it’s everywhere...”

The plane shakes again and Tony stumbles, pressing a hand to the lavatory door to keep himself upright. But Peter must not have locked it because the door pushes open and Tony half-falls into the bathroom, catching himself one-handedly on the corner of the sink. His hand lands in a few drops of something red and wet.

“What the…?” Tony turns away from the sink, taking in the horrific sight. Blood drops seem to be covering every flat surface of the bathroom—the countertop, the floor, the sink. Peter is sitting on the floor beside the toilet, his light gray t-shirt and blue jeans now stained with crimson splotches as he frantically tears off more pieces of toilet paper to add to the growing bloody wad of tissue he’s pressing to his face. Tony blinks at him. “Are you hurt?”

Peter shakes his head. His voice is nasally when he speaks. “I’m really really sorry.”

Tony blinks again. “This is all from your nose?”

Peter nods, looking absolutely miserable. “I, uh, kinda get bad nosebleeds sometimes? Like usually if it’s too dry, or if I get stressed, or… I dunno, I guess if my nose just feels like it?”

“Well that’s... inconvenient,” Tony remarks.

The plane jostles and Peter braces his free hand against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. “Is it supposed to be doing that?” he groans.

“It’s just turbulence,” Tony assures. “I’ve flown through a hell of a lot worse, I promise. There was this thunderstorm once when I was flying over Portugal when a bolt of lightning actually—” He’s cut off by a pained whine from the kid. Tony clears his throat. “...But, that’s probably a story for another day.” He makes a vague gesture in front of his own nose. “Is it stopping?”

Peter pulls the tissues back to check. Immediately, a fresh wave of blood runs down from his nostrils, causing Tony to wince though the kid seems unfazed. “It’s slowing down,” he says with a shrug.

Tony huffs out a short laugh. “That’s kind of concerning, but we’ll suspend that for the moment.” Stepping further into the bathroom, Tony moves over to the cabinet to locate a stack of plush white towels. He holds one out to the kid, who throws him a horrified look in return.

“I’ll just get blood all over it,” Peter says worriedly. “Those look really expensive.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “It’s a towel. It can’t be more than, what? Forty? Fifty bucks?”

Peter’s eyes widen. “Oh my god, that’s even worse! I was thinking like ten!”

With a deep sigh, Tony chucks the towel directly at the kid’s face. Peter shoots up his free hand to catch it on reflex, leaving bloody fingerprints on the pristine material. He makes a little distressed moan upon realizing. “Mr. Stark…” he whines.

“You’re welcome,” Tony says with a huff. “Now let’s get you back to your seat. Safety first and all that jazz.” As if to emphasize his words, the plane promptly hits another rough patch.

Peter shakes his head, teeth clenched through the jostling. “Can’t. I’m covered in blood. I’ll ruin your two hundred million dollar jet,” he grits out.

“You’re not gonna ruin the jet,” Tony points out. He pauses for a beat. “Just the jet’s upholstery.”

Peter only moans miserably.

Tony sighs. “Alright, we’ll figure something out.”

“Whoa, does this seat go all the way flat?!”

Tony chuckles as he adjusts the controls on Peter’s seat to recline it backwards. “Yeah, wonders never cease, kid,” he remarks.

Peter—now wrapped completely in the unrolled emergency parachute from the plane’s cargo area like some kind of nylon burrito—is finally strapped into his chair again. The bleeding has nearly stopped now, though he’s still pinching his nose with tissues to be sure.

Tony pulls a single use ice pack out of the plane’s first aid kit. He squeezes the packet and shakes it to activate the chemicals inside before passing it to Peter. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Peter says. He presses it to the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “And I’m really sorry about all the mess…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Tony waves his hand dismissively. “But you are definitely going to need a shower when we land before you even think about trying out the mansion’s rooftop swimming pool.”

Peter’s eyes widen yet again. “Your what?!”

Tony chuckles. This never gets old.

If you liked this story, you might like:

Arachnids & Phobias

Grand Entrance

Them’s the Breaks

Link to all my fics

#peter parker whump #spider-man fic #iron dad and spider son #irondad fic #mcu writing #poor peter parker #nosebleed #airplanes #my fic

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set-phasers-to-whump · 4 years

Text

what are friends for?

this is for @not-just-fantasy who requested some marius getting beat up!!! i had a lot of fun writing this, especially developing the oc, which i’ve never really done before!! hope this is alright! (also sorry the con is like. barely described lol. its surprisingly hard to come up with a believable one)

It was a relatively simple con, as far as cons went. It involved posing as an accountant, and would result in a modest payoff, one which, hopefully, would fly under the radar until long after Marius had dropped off the grid. Well, Marius and his assistant.

He didn’t usually like to do serious jobs with people he didn’t know well, but he’d been training this person, whose name was Alia (though Marius’ ‘client’ knew them as Danny). Alia was a quick thinker, and a good deal taller and more muscular than Marius, which helped play them off as a bodyguard for a rather anxious accountant, who overvalued his safety (as well as his own importance).

And so far, things were going great. Alia and Marius were staying in a cheap hotel in Hartford, meeting daily with their client, William Henderson, a CEO who had recently become concerned about the security of his accounts. It had been three days, and in another two, the job would be finished, and the pair would walk away a couple thousand dollars richer. That was the nice thing about the rich, Marius thought. You could take enough money from them to comfortably sustain yourself, and they wouldn’t feel the difference.

Of course, they might notice the difference, and get angry about it anyway. So this operation had been a little more slow-going than one unfamiliar with the business might have expected, but overall it was progressing at exactly the pace that Marius knew it would.

Marius himself, currently in character as Oliver Pierce, accountant and possibly the most boring man on the planet, was in a meeting with his client. He had elected to have Alia stay in the car, as today’s business was to be the most delicate work, which could easily end the whole con if it was not handled correctly.

Alia had agreed to this, having never been in on any real sort of con before, and they were busying themself by sketching the alley the car was parked in on the back of a map they’d found in the glove compartment. Sure, it was boring being left in the car, but they were beginning to understand just how fiddly the con business could be, and were quite frankly relieved to have been excused from what was sure to be a high-pressure situation.

Back in the office, the situation was certainly high-pressure. But not in the way that Alia would have thought.

Marius was trapped. Literally and figuratively. The door was locked, his arm was pinned to the desk, and he’d been completely discovered-Henderson knew exactly what con he was trying to pull, he knew where Marius had been staying, he knew Alia was a con artist in training…the list went on. Marius was in deep shit, and for once, could think of nothing to say to keep the con going.

Henderson knew this, and was delighting in it. “You really thought you could pull one over on me? I thought something was up with you the minute I met you, and look at you now, proving me right with no help! You think you can install your creepy little...scanning device on my computer? You think you can mess with my computer without my knowledge? You think you’re smarter than me?”

“It’s not a scanning device,” Marius muttered under his breath, before he could think the better of it.

“What did you say?” Henderson demanded, twisting Marius’ arm.

“Nothing, nothing,” Marius said quickly. “Let’s just...let’s talk, right?”

But Henderson, apparently, had had enough. He slapped Marius across the face. “How about you shut the fuck up?”

Marius blinked. Fuck. He could get out of this...somehow.

“I can see those little wheels turning in your pathetic brain, Oliver,” Henderson sneered, his voice full of contempt. “You get out of this one when I say you get out.”

Marius didn’t want to think about what that could mean.

---

Alia, still sitting in the car, had finished sketching the alley, and had moved on to sketching the interior of the car. It was a very boring subject, as there was virtually nothing in the car to personalize it, but it was better than nothing. They wondered how Marius was getting on...he should be out soon, if everything was going to plan.

---

But of course, everything wasn’t going to plan. Henderson, after delivering his ominous statement, had said absolutely nothing as he slowly let go of Marius’ arm which had been pinned to the desk.

Marius, naturally, sprinted for the door, though he knew it was locked. He glanced around for anything that he could use as a weapon-he had the distinct feeling that he was about to get seriously beaten up, and Henderson already had several inches and a considerable amount of weight to his advantage.

But there was nothing. Henderson advanced on Marius, a truly dangerous smile on his face. Marius had backed himself up against the door, and looked frantically around, for what, he didn’t know-but it didn’t matter, anyway. The second Henderson’s fist collided with the side of his face, nothing mattered except survival.

Henderson hit hard, and accurately, the kind of punches which told Marius he’d been trained, probably in boxing, which was not an especially helpful fact.

An uppercut to the jaw sent him crumpling to the ground, his ears ringing. He tried in vain to stand up, to attempt to hold his own somehow, but Henderson kicked his legs out from under him.

He fell back to the floor, the back of his head connecting with a bookshelf with an audible crack. Stars swum in his field of vision, and he probably would have blacked out, had it not been for the sharp kick which was delivered to his stomach, which diverted his attention from the pain in his head and caused him to hunch over in an instinctive and futile attempt to protect himself.

Henderson grabbed Marius by the back of his suit jacket, hauling him to his feet, and pinned him to the bookcase with an arm against his throat. He punched Marius squarely in the nose, and it made a sickening crunching noise, and then Marius became dimly aware of the sensation of hot blood pouring down his face, making it hard to breathe, and his mouth was full of blood, and all he could register was pain, and he could barely breathe, and his head was spinning, and he was sure he was going to die…

And then the arm at his throat let up, and he slumped bonelessly to the ground. Falling hurt, but it hurt far less than everything else did, and he didn’t make a sound.

Henderson was saying something to him, something which he couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears. A smack to the face cleared that up well enough, though, and he could hear Henderson’s taunting voice asking if he’d had enough, if he’d learned his lesson.

Marius nodded, or did his best impression of it, anyway, which was perhaps not the best idea, as his dizziness increased tenfold. He stayed slumped on the ground for several minutes, doing his best to stop the world around him from spinning, and to gain enough control over his limbs to stand.

Henderson, however, had apparently grown bored of this whole exchange, and pulled Marius to his feet once again, holding him upright until he got his bearings. “Be thankful I really needed to punch my anger out, or you’d be on your way to prison right now,” Henderson hissed, as he moved to unlock the door. “Now get the fuck out of here before you bleed any more on my carpet.”

Marius did not need to be told twice, and he stumbled his way out of the office, a shaking hand attempting to stop the blood that still flowed down his face. God, he was still so dizzy…

Somehow, he made it back to the alley without collapsing. He stood a few feet away from the car, suddenly realizing that he really couldn’t make it another few feet.

---

Alia jerked out of a light doze to the sound of approaching footsteps, which abruptly stopped. Curious, they looked in the rearview mirror...and nearly screamed at the sight which greeted them. Marius, conman extraordinaire, was beat to shit. His clothes were rumpled and torn in places, and splattered with blood. One arm curled protectively around his torso. The other was attempting to stop a profusely-bleeding nose, which dripped blood down his already-bruising face.

They jumped out of the car, hurrying to Marius’ side. Just in time, too, for they had no sooner laid a hand on Marius’ shoulder to ask what the hell had happened than he was collapsing onto them, unconscious.

Alia, fortunately, had quick reflexes, and managed to catch Marius before he hit the ground. They picked him up as carefully as they could (he was so light), and set him down in the passenger seat, upright, so that his nosebleed wouldn’t choke him to death, then backed up out of the alley.

Alia was panicking, just a little. Their first con was not supposed to have gone like this. What were they supposed to do? They doubted that conmen went to the hospital, but they had serious doubts about their ability as a makeshift nurse. “Marius? Please, wake up, I don’t know what to do.”

He stirred slightly. “Hm?”

“What am I supposed to do?” they repeated, panic edging into their voice.

“No...nothing...go...hotel...con-” he paused, coughing harshly and wincing at the pain that that brought to...well, everything. “The con...it’s over...he found out…”

“Shit,” Alia said, having suspected as much but having hoped for some other outcome. “You really just want me to drive back to the hotel?”

“Yes. I’ll...I’ll be fine,” Marius insisted, and closed his eyes once more, blood still steadily dripping down his face.

Alia doubted this, but Marius was their...boss, or something like that, in all of this, so they listened, and drove as quickly as they could back to the hotel.

Once they arrived, the pair faced the task of making it back to the room unseen, which turned out to be fairly easy, as there was almost no one in the lobby to witness the spectacle of Marius, who had woken up enough to insist he could walk, being heavily supported by Alia, whose clothes were now smeared with blood and who was doing their best to remain inconspicuous. The one man who noticed them seemed content to pretend like he’d seen nothing at all, and went back to reading his magazine after sparing them little more than a once-over. The perks of cheap hotels, Alia thought to themself, as they waited for the elevator.

By the time the creaky elevator had reached the third floor, Marius had once again collapsed, and Alia had once again picked him up, flinging him carefully over their shoulder as they made their way down the hallway (which, fortunately, had a dark carpet that would hide the blood which dripped onto it). Finally, the pair made it back to their room, where Alia set Marius down on the edge of the tub and thought about how the hell they were going to do this.

Marius, fortunately, chose that moment to wake up, and muttered something about there being a first-aid kit in his suitcase.

It was there, and it was pretty well-stocked, too. Alia brought it into the bathroom, gathered all of the washcloths they could find, and got to work.

Fortunately, Marius’ nose had finally stopped bleeding, which was one less thing to worry about. He stared ahead at nothing, blinking sluggishly, as Alia gently wiped the blood off of his face. They had the feeling that this was normally something Marius would have loathed to have anyone do to him, for him, and they wondered briefly just how bad he must have felt in order to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being cared for.

Apart from the blood, Alia quickly realized that there wasn’t a whole lot else they could do for Marius. They removed his suit jacket and button-up shirt, both of which were fairly unsalvageable, and examined his torso, which was already horribly bruised. There wasn’t much they could do about the injury that would make it feel any better, apart from some ibuprofen (and even that might not do much, they really didn’t know), but they wrapped the bruise in some bandages anyway, to at least do something.

That done, Alia was well and truly out of things to do to help. They handed Marius two packets of ibuprofen, which he took quickly, and then stood up, fidgeting with a slightly bloody washcloth as they wondered what they were supposed to do next.

Marius interrupted their thinking. “You can...you can go, it’s over...won’t get any money…”

Alia looked at him, slightly bewildered. “You mean leave, right now? While you’re beat all to hell and might have a concussion or something?”

“You’re not listening, Alia, you won’t get anything, it’s finished.”

“I know I’m not getting anything,” they said, “but you’re...my friend, or something. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“Oh,” Marius said, evidently startled by their reply. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

“No, you don’t,” Alia said, pulling Marius to his feet as gently as they could. “You have a perfectly good bed to sleep on.”

Marius made his way to his bed, painfully slowly, but mostly on his own. As soon as his head hit the pillow, his eyes fluttered closed, and Alia heard his breathing even out. Good, they thought, and then shit, there’s blood all over the bathroom that I’m gonna have to clean up.

---

Marius awoke with a pounding headache and a dull throbbing in his torso. He blinked his eyes open slowly, pushing himself into a sitting position and wincing as the movement made the throbbing in his torso spike into something more painful. He looked around. He was back in the hotel room...how had he gotten there? He mentally reviewed what had happened the past day: he’d woken up, had some breakfast, gone to the meeting with Henderson...after that, his memories became a jumbled blur of pain. Alia had been with him, he thought. No doubt they were long gone by now, now that their payoff had been ruined.

The lock on the door clicked, and Marius started. Before he could do something to fend off whatever intruder this was, the door opened, and Alia, their hands full with plates of hotel breakfast, stepped into the room, smiling at Marius when they saw that he was awake.

“Morning,” they said, handing him a plate. “How’s...everything?”

Marius looked at them, slightly shocked.

“What’s wrong?” Alia asked, already beginning to worry. “Oh, I knew I should have just gone to the hospital…”

“No!” Marius interrupted. “No...I’m fine, I’m just...why are you here?”

Alia looked at him, clearly confused. “What do you mean?”

“There isn’t any chance of a payoff anymore.”

Alia sighed, and said, “I know that,” in the exasperated tone of one who has already had this conversation before. “I don’t care.”

“Why?”

Alia shrugged, and sat down next to Marius on the bed. “I dunno. I like you? We’re friends, or something? I mean, I think two people can call themselves friends after one of them has collapsed on the other one multiple times.”

Had he done that? He supposed there was time to think about that later. “Yeah,” he agreed slowly. “I guess we’re friends.”

He was silent for a moment. Alia ate their breakfast. “Thanks,” he said finally.

“What are friends for?”

aaaaaaaaaAAAAAA i hope this was okay!!!! I had so so much fun writing it!! I tried to make it open to the possibility of anything happening after this, like romance etc, but i thought friends was a good endpoint for these two!! hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading!!!!!

#my writing #i say things #sneaky pete #marius josipovic #beat up #collapse #bloody nose #blood #also fun fact when i started writing this i had no idea if alia was even a real name i just liked the sound lol #i hope u liked them!! i rlly loved writing them and developing their character #honestly before this i didnt really get the appeal of oc's but like...theyre so fun #i Get It now!!#also i am either trash at titles or somewhat okay and unfortunately lately its been the former #the other day i titled a fic as 'okay' not even realizing i had another titled 'be okay' im a mess lol #anyway yeah hope u liked!!!!!

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bird-was-here · 5 years

Text

Home Base - Self Para 004 (pt. 1/?)

Oz did a lot of staring at nothing now. A lot of checking his phone. The anger he felt, at one point hot, explosive, had simmered into something dark. His two pillars were gone. He didn’t know how to feel about Nathaniel. The apartment felt so

empty.

For years images of his father would wake him in the middle of the night like war flashbacks. It had gotten better. It was getting better. Until now. For the first time, in a long time, his night terrors aggravated his insomnia. Too many memories. Too many bad memories.

His recollection of childhood was fragmentary, most likely due to his brain trying to protect him from the pain of his trauma. Had he ever not been afraid of his father? Was there ever a moment in time where Oz looked at Judge Lamar and saw something other than red? Just red.

Sometimes, he wondered if Nate heard him talking in his sleep — how violently he’d wake up, sweating... it was something that happened often enough to be a secret he’s kept from everyone but Daisey who knew them well. Oz was one of the lucky ones, one of the few that had the privilege of knowing what her hand on their forehead felt like. The quiet, shhh. As children, she was the first person he went to when something happened — again, all too often; She stood by him through the literal terror that was his adolescence; As young adults, she stayed up with him when he couldn’t sleep. Daisey knew the dark recesses of Oz’s mind better than anyone. And now she was gone.

And spread across the asphalt.

When did it end?

tw: ptsd, domestic/child abuse, blood

August 2011

The pot was threatening to boil over.

Not that times were ever tepid, hidden behind the heavy curtains of the Lamar household — always drawn tightly closed, house of horrors it was. And yet, when his mother had offhandedly commented that she was considering a position at UCSF, he should have known.

He should have known.

When there was so much red in your life — so much anger, so many nosebleeds, so many bruised wrists — all the red flags just look like flags.

Oz was stupid to have missed the signs.

“San Fransico?”

“Yes. San Fransico.”

In the security of what had been his joint daycare, playroom, classroom and occasional bedroom, otherwise known as his mother’s office at Ashmont General Hospital, he sat quietly. Hands pinched at the fabric of his jeans. He was fifteen.

And he didn’t want to move to San Fransico.

“You and I,” his mother continued, back to her son, long fingers filing paperwork that needn’t be bothered, “Will go to San Fransico and your father…” She closed a drawer, quietly, but absolute. “— Your father will stay here. We’d visit.”

Oz didn’t reply.

They didn’t look at each other enough. They didn’t look at each other now. They couldn’t see the shared look of uncertainty painted on both of their faces.

“Baby.” it was a pet name he hadn’t been called since he was a literal infant, as unprecedented as the look she gave him when she turned, how her hands found the sides of his face, “Don’t,” she held his gaze, “Tell your father.” His mother nodded her head, as if to convince herself just as much as to convince Oz that everything was fine, that she was holding the strings together, that she was handling it, “OK?”

Too taken aback to verbally respond, all Oz could do was mirror her, nodding his head, “OK.”

He was meant to be on a bus to a cross country meet thirty minutes away that had abruptly been canceled. Instead, he found his way home early. Daisey had asked him to come over, but Oz declined. It was out of character, but he was sure she would get over his absence, would find Alice or Parker or any of her other myriad of girlfriends to pass the time smoking with.

The familiar creak of their large front door and the inconspicuous beep of the alarm system greeted him. It was routine, how he lazily moving to toss his keys in the bowl on the side table in the corridor before he paused. His hand hovered over the dish.

Oz had been deaf in his left ear since he was three years old, but knew the sounds of his house (big and empty and hollow); he knew the walls well enough to know when something was wrong.

The keys were placed carefully, silently, down.

He poked his head around the corner to the sitting room, expecting his father to be there, seated on his throne with a bottle of something hard. Empty. The kitchen next, in search of his mother or a note on the island giving him instructions for the dinner that was in the freezer. Empty. The stairs, winding, and grand, loomed in front of him.

Oz skipped the first step. It always creaked.

As he climbed to the second floor of the estate it became uncomfortably evident that the discord was coming from his parent’s suite, one of the many rooms in the grandiose house he never bothered to consider.

“— You barely take the kid to see her and now, suddenly you need to see your mother?”

The taut voice of his mother came next,

“Langston, please.”

“Let me ask you something -- Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I’m dumb?”

“No!”

“Your mother?”

“Langston.”

“Who are you seeing?”

“Langston we’ve talked about this! I’m not seeing anyone —”

“I tell you where you go, and when you go. Do you understand?”

“Let go of me!”

Enough.

“What’s going on?”

Oz stood in the doorway, he hadn’t even taken off his jacket — typical of a varsity sports captain, repping the windbreaker of his high school — backpack still slung over one shoulder.

His father held a firm grip on his mother’s wrist, “Walk away.”

“Oz, it’s fine,” She pulled at her arm, teeth-gritting, “It’s fine —“

His father looked at him, still standing there in the doorway. “...Now, I know you’re hard of hearing.” Oz had gotten tall. “-- So I’m going to tell you one more time. Walk. Away.” Almost as tall as his father now. “This doesn’t concern you.”

This doesn’t concern you.

“Yeah, I think it fucking does.”

He hadn’t taken much notice of the taxi outside, he had assumed it was some of his father’s business colleagues from out of state, visiting. He now understood who it was for. His mother would be back. Sometimes, she needed to get away from this place. He understood.

It would have been easy to go to his room or to leave the house entirely. It would have been easy to ignore the scuffle. Too easy to let his mother ‘handle it’ like she ‘handled’ everything before. He needed to make a choice: to hold his ground, or walk away. He chose to step forward.

His mother looked at him, then at his father, then back at Oz. Their eyes met. If there was one thing, among the many, that the Honorable Judge Langston Lamar detested, one thing that infuriated him above no other, it was insolence. And it seemed that as Oz grew, the more he disrespected the King.

His father’s hand slipped from his mother’s wrist, leaving the impressions of his fingers on her skin. It gave her skilled fingers enough time to finish packing, zipping the suitcase with speed, a precision only a neurosurgeon could possess.

Oz was giving her an out.

“You want to make this your business?” It was the slow turn that was the most terrifying, the calm before the storm, “I see. So you think that you're grown now?” his father took a step forward; Oz took a step back, “Did you forget? Did you forget this is my house?” He slapped his chest, “My fucking HOUSE?” His mother hauled the travel bag off of the bed, escaping with it around the perimeter of the room and through the second door leading into the hallway. One step forward, another step back, “You must have lost your goddamn mind.”

The front door opened, then closed.

And Oz’s father laughed.

Hands placed on his hips, the judge raised one to run over his chin, “You want to play ball?”

And laughed.

It was rich. He stared at the ceiling, catching his breath. Rich.

“OK.” Returning his gaze to his son now in the hallway, “Let’s play ball.”

Run.

There was nothing else to do but run. And run fast and hope that he could outrun his father who had been a track star in his day. Oz had followed in his footsteps in that regard.

The judge’s movement was so swift, long legs starting after Oz who dropped his book bag where he stood. He didn’t need that extra weight.

The sound of their feet slamming down against the floorboards boomed through the house, ricocheting off the walls in the hallway where Oz tripped over the rug. How many times had he fallen like this, skinning his forearms on the old floor and immediately pushing himself up off the ground and to his feet again? He didn’t have time to register the sting. When did he ever have time to think about how much this hurt?

If Oz hadn’t been in his running shoes he might not have made it; he practically skidded into his bedroom, slamming the door in enough time to keep his father at bay.

‘Just give me enough time to get out the window’ was all he could remember thinking, hands fumbling for the safety locks. Safety locks. It was safer outside.

Who he was pleading to he didn’t know. Maybe a god he hardly believed was there.

“Oz!”

He heard his father try the locked door, then try again as he slipped out the window and into the closet tree, down its trunk, and onto the grass, hand swiping against the ground and pushing him forward to gather enough momentum to hop the gate. He was running bases, he was almost home.

And Oz fucking ran.

He ran till he was at Daisey’s.

He didn’t breath until she opened her window. Didn’t breath until she opened her window for him to fall, literally, onto her floor.

“Breathe.”

She crouched beside him; His chest burned.

“Breathe.”

A long exhale.

“Do you need to stay the night?”

She placed a hand on his back. The answer was always yes.

Safe.

#lil' oz things #self para 004 #missing daisey #robo apartment #tw: blood #tw: ptsd #tw: domestic abuse

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hecate-herself · 5 years

Text

Kai swore, catching Irene just before she collapsed to the ground. Blood was steadily dripping from her nose and her eyes were hooded, she looked close to passing out, all pale and faint, breathing hoarse and rasping. She blinked, trying to force herself to focus and to look at him.

"Hey, I've got you." He said softly, gently touching her cheek, ignoring the blood as it began to drip onto him. "I've got you." She smiled, clearly not quite with it. She tilted her head to press it against his hand and he cupped her jaw.

"You always catch me." She said. Definitely not with it. Her eyes, when she managed to force them open, were too bright, like she had a fever. "Always."

"No I distinctly remember dropping you once. You weren't happy."

"Oh. Sorry." He laughed.

"Don't apologise." His hand was still on her cheek as he looked down at her, cradled against his chest, bloodied and slipping out of consciousness. "Here." He pressed his handkerchief into her hand and guided her hand to place to hold it over her nose. "Let's get you somewhere safe." He swept her up with practised ease, bridal style was the easiest way to carry her and her head lulled against his shoulder as he stepped over the prostrate bodies of incapacitated werewolves. Irene wasn't particularly heavy so it didn't require much effort.

"How far until home?" She asked, sounding like a tired child asking their parent.

"Maybe an hour. Try and stay awake, alright?" He said, she shifted to press her forehead to the crook of his neck, inhaling sweat and cologne that clung to his skin. The nosebleed was slowing down now.

"Okay." She muttered.

"I mean it Irene. Don't fall asleep on me. You took quite the beating back there. I'm worried you hit your head."

"Aren't you hurt?" She asked, voice growing fainter with each passing minute.

"Nothing a night's sleep cannot fix." He said. A few bruises and small cuts, nothing like her nosebleed and probable concussion.

"You shouldn't be carrying me if you're hurt." She said.

"Can you walk?" Silence. "Exactly. Maybe we can get the train. No cabs at this time of night."

"You hate the train."

"I'll take the train over traipsing the street with you in my arms at two in the morning whilst you steadily bleed over me."

"It stopped bleeding." She said. "Mainly." Her head was still hurting and she felt tired enough so fall asleep in Kai's arms but at least she wasn't bleeding still.

She could have fallen asleep in his embrace. Kai was muscular but not to the point where his arms were uncomfortable to lay in. He was warm, he was always very warm. And the sound of his heart made for a soothing lullaby and she could feel herself drifting in and out of consciousness, lulled by the steady beating. "Hey!" Kai jostled her. "I said don't fall asleep." She groaned and forced her eyes open again.

It was tricky to get through the train station turnstile with her in his arms but he didn't put her down and just struggled instead. The stairs were easy but he was a little worried that he'd trip and they'd both end up falling. But the station was thankfully quiet and they waited alone on the platform.

"You can put me down now." She said.

"Yes that is not happening. I'll put you in a train seat, but I'm not putting you down before."

"This is just embarrassing." She complained into his shoulder. "Please Kai. I Could give you an order."

"And I am allowed to disobey orders." He replied. "Especially if the person giving the order is in poor health with a possible head injury" He smirked down at her. His face was probably only a few inches from hers, and Irene realised that she could very easily kiss him from where she was. She then questioned why she thinking that and came to the conclusion that she did have a head injury, normally she was better at controlling her feelings than this.

"You are the worst." She muttered, voice swallowed by the roar of the train as it came rattling into the station with screeching breaks. She cringed and pressed her face against his shoulder, the sound rattling through her skull. Kai deposited her into a seat and took the seat next to her so that she could slump against him. "Literally the worst."

"Of course." He said soothingly (annoyingly) as he slid an arm around her shoulders and guided her until she was quite comfortably leaning on him. "Whatever you say." She could feel his breath against her ear and scalp. It tingled. The train jerked into motion again, too loud and Irene turned to move closer to Kai, her forehead against his chest, hands over her ears. He ignored the feeling of her blood on his shirt and wrapped his arms around her to hold her tightly against him, one hand on the back of her head, running his fingers through her hair. "We'll be home soon 'Rene. It's alright." She forced herself to breath. It hurt.

Six stations later and Irene was now more pale, looking sickly and shaky, she couldn't bring herself to protest as Kai scooped her up with ease and carried her out of the station. "Just stay awake a little longer. You can sleep once we're home and we've got that blood off you." He could feel her breath against his neck, shallow but at least it was steady. The station wasn't too far away from where they lived so it only took a few minutes for them to get to the front door, and Kai had to set Irene down to find out his keys, keeping a tight arm around her so that she wouldn't accidentally end up face down in the gutter.

He sat her on the edge of the bathtub and ran the sink full of warm water.

"Thank you." She breathed as he dabbed the blood from her nose, lips and chin. "For carrying me home."

"I wasn't about to leave you there Irene." He wrung the cloth out and soaked it again. "I quite enjoy your company." That was one way of putting it, he thought. "And a new mentor would take time to train." She managed a small smile. "That's better." He smiled too.

A lot of the blood was dry now and it took a while and several sinks full of fresh water to get all the blood off her. "I think out clothes are ruined, but that's all of it off your skin." He said, sitting back on his heels, looking up into Irene's face.

"Cold water and baking soda with get it out." She said. "I'll deal with that tomorrow."

"Alright." He knelt up and kissed her forehead. "Let's get you to bed. I'll come and check on you in a few hours." He got up and helped her up too. He must have pulled a little too hard because she stumbled into his chest.

"Oof." She took a deep breath before looking up. He was looking at her with those dark eyes that she was sure she could drown in. Though he'd never let her drown. He always caught her. She swallowed sudden burning feelings and desires. She was in no state to act on them anyway. "Goodnight." She said quietly, she brushed a gentle kiss to his high cheekbone, too short to kiss his forehead without standing on tiptoes and she didn't trust her balance to do that. "Sleep well."

#the invisible library #creative writing #write #writer #writing #writeblr #Fanfiction #Fanfic #writing fanfiction #Hurt/comfort

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heyitskylie13 · 6 years

Text

My Journey to Try to Meet Tay

So, I put together this thread on Twitter not long before my first Rep Tour date (Columbus, OH 7.7.18) and it got quite a bit of attention in the Swiftie fandom (as of right now, I believe the original thread is up to 113 retweets and 242 likes, which is A LOT for little old me). I am trying to get @taylorswift & @taylornation to see it, and maybe...just maybe....this story can finally get its happy ending before I am finished with my rep tour dates. I figured in order to increase my chances of getting it seen, I’d write it all out here on tumblr as well, and maybe some of you very sweet fellow swifties will reblog, tag Tay, etc. I’d truly appreciate it. My next show is Atlanta Night 2, and then I will be in Nashville as well. Here we go, an overview of all of the times I have gone out hoping to meet @taylorswift:

1) 2007 - Country Concert Festival Fort Loramie, OH - I was 15 years old, and Taylor was the earliest act of the day and only had like a 30 minute set. I begged my parents to let me go with my boyfriend at the time just to see her play. There were only like 3 people in the crowd who knew her songs! I’d been following her Myspace (LOL) so I knew already that she loved interacting with her fans, and I waited by her tour bus opposite side of a gate for over an hour before a security guard eventually told me that she was not going to be coming over, that I was pathetic for waiting so long, and that I need to leave. I started crying, and my boyfriend made us go.

2) 2008 - Country Concert Festival Fort Loramie, OH - Taylor got invited back! A slightly later slot, but it was on Sunday which a lot of people don’t stick around for (the festival actually has since cut the day entirely). My high school bestie and I were there though with a poster baring Tay’s lyrics and screaming every word to the songs she played. I don’t have photos of our posters because some drunk girl stepped on it after we had accidentally dropped it and ended up ripping it pretty bad. We waited by the buses after her set for quite awhile before we were eventually told by security that she had to catch a flight to NY or something and wouldn’t be coming out.

3) 2009 - Defying Gravity Tour - Taylor was opening for Keith Urban and a group of my friends and I got tickets to just to see her! I got to meet Mama Swift for the first time, but didn’t meet Tay. I wasn’t really surprised because there were so many of us in our group, and this was before her headlining days so we didn’t even really know if there’d be a chance or not.

4) 2009 - CMT Awards Nashville, TN - I bought tickets when it was announced that Taylor would be performing, and drove to Nashville from Ohio (with my older sisters accompanying me because I was only 17 haha). I got to meet a lot of celebrities actually outside of the venue beforehand, but not Taylor, and my phone also died before the show so I didn’t get any photos.

5) 2009 - Fearless Tour Columbus, OH - Nothing crazy happened this day, really, but it marked the beginning of Natalie and my’s ongoing Taylor concert bond! Taylor also came this close to us during “Hey Stephen” and touched my hand as she was walking back to the stage!

6) 2009 - Fearless Tour Indianapolis, IN - A random guy-friend of mine ended up with an extra floor ticket to the show and invited me so of course I said yes! I saw Mama Swift again, and she actually remembered me and “all my jean skirt, cowboy hat friends” from Cincinnati (the keith urban show!) -- I was shocked, and she is so sweet that she upgraded us from our back-of-floor seats to the pit!

7) 2010 - Fearless Tour Cincinnati, OH - My friend and I arrived to the venue at like 10 A.M. the day of the show, and we brought a scrapbook we had made for Taylor. It ended up raining and still we stood outside (trying to protect our book lol) for nearly five hours across from the tour buses/loading area. Eventually someone from Tay’s team came out and gave us pit passes and took the book promising to get it to Taylor. I still have no idea if she ever saw it.

8) 2013 - The 13 Hour Meet & Greet Nashville, TN - This is the hardest day to talk about of them all...We came from Ohio and walked around the event ALL DAY (totaled about 10 hours) trying to be picked by Taylor’s team members and we watched fans meet Taylor all day from this close to us. We never were picked, and eventually we left/gave up once they announced the last meet & greet wristbands had been handed out. It was honestly heartbreaking because this event had our hopes up so high, but Taylor is truly an angel for meeting SO many people that day, and I don’t fault her at all. Plus, we did get to enjoy a free acoustic set!!

9) 2011 - CMA Fest Nashville, TN - At an event this big, we truly didn’t expect to meet Taylor, but we still had an incredible time supporting her as a CLOSING act of the festival!!

10) 2011 - Speak Now Tour Indianapolis, IN - We had SOOO many glowsticks haha but it worked somewhat! Taylor’s team came up to us in our literal nosebleed seats and gave us pit passes! It was an amazing experience, but we still didn’t get to meet Taylor.

11) 2011 - Speak Now Tour Cleveland, OH - This concert was the VERY NEXT NIGHT from the previous entry in this story! Two out of three of us (Natalie and I of course) made a back-to-back trip from Indianapolis to our hometown (2 hours each way) and then to Cleveland immediately (4 hours each way) to see Taylor again in our same get-up from the night before. We had floor seats this time, and there were these two precious little girls in front of us who kept standing on the chairs in order to see and getting scolded by security. It was breaking my heart that them (or their parents who kept trying to hold them but they were heavy as like seven year olds) couldn’t truly enjoy the concert. Since we knew what the setlist would do, we told the family about Taylor’s “b-stage” songs she’d sing later closer to us. I saw Andrea and told her what was going on, and she said I looked familiar haha I gave her a brief overview of shows I’d been to and when we’d met and she said, “so of course, you’ve met Taylor” or something along those lines and I truthfully said “no I haven’t.” She had me go get the family and brought all of us into the sound-stage/b-stage private area for Taylor’s set there and for the rest of the show. The family was so excited and when Taylor came down from the stage, she hugged those little girls on her way out to the crowd and when she was hugging these other girls in front of us, she extended her arm to half-hug us at the same time. I CRIED A LOT.

12) 2013 - Red Tour Columbus, OH - At this point, we tried to up our costume game lol we went for the “22″ music video look. We were pretty happy with it! We didn’t get noticed by anyone for anything at this show, though. Nothing crazy happened, but as always any night at a Taylor Swift show is magical and memorable <3

13) 2015 - 1989 Tour Louisville, KY - OOOO Lucky #13 ;) This really was a lucky show. We went to the @taylornation booth and they were impressed by how many shows we’d each gone to, and when I told them all about my Master’s Degree Thesis (I wrote it entirely on Taylor just a few months prior, and had just earned my graduate degree about a month before this show!). They were really intrigued by this and kept asking for all sorts of details lol when we left the booth, we barely made it far away before one of the girls from TN was chasing us down. My heart was beating SO FAST. She asked if we’d like to enjoy Taylor from the pit that night instead of our ticketed upper-level seats. OF COURSE! We didn’t get offered Loft ‘89 that night, unfortunately, which once we’d been upgraded we didn’t expect. Although, some girls nearby us did get upgraded and then later given Loft as well. Props to them! This was still one of my favorite show experiences and memories, especially because I heard the “Clean” speech for the first time and I REALLY needed it at this time in my life. A lot of tears were shed.

14) 2015 - 1989 Tour Gillette Stadium, MA - We won tickets to this!! Couldn’t believe it. Four of us got to go, and we drove TWELVE HOURS (it actually ended up being like 14 after traffic and stops etc haha) to go to this. This was one of the costume get-ups I am the most proud of. When we got to the TN booth, there weren’t any of Taylor’s team working it (I guess it was stadium employees taking pics idk). We did our best to stand out during the show, but we didn’t get to meet Taylor. I actually heard that there may not have even been a Loft that night, but there had been at the previous night Gillette show.

15) 2015 - 1989 Tour Columbus, OH - We loved our outfits for this, we were BAD BLOOD AF!! We didn’t get noticed in any way this night, though. Taylor was still amazing as per usual and it was my last time seeing the 1989 Tour. We did, however, cry on the drive home feeling defeated yet again....

16) 2018 - Reputation Stadium Tour Columbus, OH - Just recently added this one because I’m one show into the Rep Tour and have still not met Tay. My first show of the rep tour required me to drive 6 hours from Nashville (I moved here in 2016), but I was so excited that the drive there flew by! I’ve really been working hard to get noticed on social media this era (as you’ve seen everything above wasn’t working for me). I thought maybe this twitter thread was finally enough to get attention from Taylor/TN, so I honestly got my hopes up more than I should’ve about getting a DM for pre-show. I’m still not totally sure what was going on, but it seemed that there wasn’t as many pre-show DM’s as usual and maybe the process is changing (or the holiday impacted it idk still really). Not that I thought I was a shoe-in or anything for a pre-show M&G, but the situation did make me feel like my shot of meeting Taylor now was definitely low. We were absolutely in AWE of every aspect of this show, though, let me tell you. I wasn’t disappointed in any way by Taylor’s production. Wow. Just wow. We also were unexpectedly right next to one of the B-stages so Taylor was so close during that part of the show! I cried my eyes out to the “Long Live” & “New Year’s Day” mash-up because of my new long live tattoo and because NYD has significance to me and my relationship. Unfortunately, I ended up feeling AWFUL like a majority of the show though (like sick) and it got worse about halfway through.I spent a lot of time trying not to throw up or miss any of Taylor performing, and I toughed it out, but it wasn’t the way I wanted to experience the show. I ended up having to sprint past everyone with Natalie’s help to make it to a bathroom and throw up and I felt awful our whole hour drive back to Natalie’s house. It’s honestly probably good I didn’t get picked for post-show rep room because of how bad I felt! ANYWAY I’m still sad it didn’t happen for me, but I am hopeful that it wasn’t the right time and my time with Taylor is still coming.

CONCLUSION: I am not in anyway ungrateful for the @taylorswift experiences I have had thus far. I know I have gotten more from Andrea and @taylornation than many have. Some people haven’t even gotten to see Taylor live! I know that, BUT my DREAM since before section #1 here has been to meet Taylor and thank her in person for everything she’s helped me get through. So if it’s possible in anyway to make this happen so I can tell her that, show her my tattoos she’s inspired, tell her about my thesis, etc....it’d mean the world to me.

#taylor swift #taylor nation #reputation #rep room #taylurking #reputation stadium tour

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boshawsharky · 6 years

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Made It This Far

This fic contains references to self-harm, mental illness, delusions, and torture. It details a night of Pratt’s life after the end of the game. What happens in this fic is a work of my imagination and by continuing to read, you are consenting to read what could be potentially triggering.

Staci Pratt, T/W, 1,964 words.

This is my first Far Cry fanfic, so if it is inaccurate I apologise.

It’s official: Staci Pratt is an alcoholic.

Growing up with an alcoholic father, he swore he would never be in this position. He remembers his dad yelling at him for waking him up, or his mum trying to push him out of the house to protect them both. He remembers shamefully going to school and seeing his dad passed out on a park bench.

He swore this would never happen. He swore he would never turn out like his dad, yet here he is. Covered in beer cans and bottles, protecting him as if they were blankets. Almost as comforting, too.

His hand reaches to the nearest can and he lifts it to his lips, tilting his head back and keeping his mouth open to collect the few droplets that pour from inside, even if he can barely taste them. Anything helps, especially if it helps him forget Jacob, even if just for a few hours.

He always comes back in the morning, though. He always sits there at the end of his bed, or by the door, or by the sink- wherever it was that he passed out- smirking, looking down his nose, chuckling at him. Sometimes he is so close, Pratt can smell the coffee on his breath.

Fuck, the man is dead. You are going crazy.

He doesn’t understand how all this happened, he could have never expected to be this way. Then again, it was only two days before he was broken that he was joking about taking fuckin’ Nancy instead of Rookie. He didn’t see that happening, or Rookie saving his ass from Jacob.

Loud music pumps from down the road in Fall’s End, presumably from the bar that he sometimes meets Hudson in. They’re celebrating the New Year- that’s coming in a few minutes. Sharky Boshaw had invited everybody to a party in his trailer park- literally everybody, Rookie, Whitehorse, Hudson, everybody. Even Pratt. But Pratt couldn’t bear to go and see their sympathetic faces and the way they inched around him as if he was a bomb waiting to explode.

Well, frankly, he could. It can only take one little thing to trigger him, sometimes even the sight of his own face can do it. The scar across his nose, or if he has a nosebleed it feels like the world is ending.

The man moves and knocks all the cans off of himself, brushing them from his legs with a great clatter. The glass bottles smash on the floor, but the cans just bounce and roll. He pulls himself up and collapses on the sofa, tears threatening his eyes. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He thought he was getting better. He thought he wasn’t as weak any more.

You’ll always be weak, Peaches. Always.

He really thought the alcohol would take Jacob away from him. He thought it would help him, make him at least the slightest bit better. Why is it not helping this time?

He can see him stood in the doorway to the living room, judging eyes watching his every move, and that same bloody smirk on his features. Staci catches his eye, and immediately feels all the anger, all the upset, everything he has ever felt, fill him again.

The last full can on the side becomes his tool as he grabs it from its place on the table, throwing it out of the open window with a mighty roar and listening to it explode outside, covering the porch with beer. He feels like a prisoner in his own mind, and he wants out.

He continues to scream as he paces around the room, grabbing at his hair and pulling it before eyeing the phone sitting on the unit by the wall. He stumbles over to it, feeling like a dummy numb with emotions. He feels empty, he feels lost, he feels like he isn’t human.

The crowd down the street erupt into cheers and celebration, which tells him it is now midnight, it is now 2019. He has the phone in hand, but he stares at it. Who is going to answer him now? Fuck, who is he going to ring?

He slams it down with force, letting out another scream. He’s twenty-six, and he can’t even take care of himself. He can’t find the key to free himself from his own mind.

When he was seventeen, he was trying to impress his friends at a skate park. Something went wrong, he snapped his board, it flew up and hit him in the forehead, creating a gash. There was so much blood and he passed out. He thought when he came to two minutes later, he thought that was the worst feeling.

It was stupid, really. Just nine years later, he would be being tortured, he would be ruined, he would be broken.

At least he had his friends there, then. And a family to go home to- well, his mum. When Jacob had him strapped down to that chair, he was alone. He had never felt so isolated yet so exposed in his life.

He thought he would die there. He thought that his corpse would rot there until he was nothing.

That, that was the worst feeling.

And you’ve still not escaped.

He can feel Jacob’s rough hands grabbing one of his wrists, and he pulls it away from him.

“D-don’t touch me… You’re, you’re not real,” Staci whispers, closing his eyes and rubbing his wrist. He can’t calm his racing heart or his choking breaths. He can’t even stop the tears from flowing any more. “You- you can’t con, control me like this...”

But you’re wrong.

“Ple-please,”

Tears are streaming down his face and he uses his hand to numbly wipe them away. He’s choking on his own breathing and everything feels too much, too overwhelming.

Peaches, you’re-

“Shut up!” Pratt roars, picking up the phone from the receiver and dialling Sharky’s number- everyone is at Sharky’s place. Hopefully, someone can help.

“Happy new year!”

It’s Nick Rye’s voice that comes through the phone, drunk and happy.

Happy.

When was the last time Staci was happy?

Don’t do it, Peaches. You think you’re strong, handle this on your own. You can do that, can’t you?

“N-Nick,” Pratt whispers down the phone, praying Nick will hear him.

“Hello?” Nick says, and Pratt can imagine him looking at the phone with confusion on his face. Staci repeats himself. “Staci! How are you?”

“I, I need Ro-Rook,” he can barely make sense of his words as they come out of his mouth, nevermind nick trying to listen over the phone. “Please, Nick,”

“Sure, bud.” Nick’s tone goes soft, the same way that he hates people doing, “ROOKIE!”

Their voice is soft and comforting, like a soft, bright hand reaching through the darkness.

“Staci!” They are cheerful, happy, tipsy. Honestly, Staci would have loved to be there, but he would’ve had a panic attack, or he would have got slaughtered and passed out somewhere he cannot get home from. “Happy new year, dude! You okay?”

“I-I-I need you,” Staci puts his head in his hands as he sinks to the floor, somewhat restricted by the cord. It’s just turned 2019- why do people still insist on corded phones? “I need you, Dep. He’s back...”

“Jacob?” They ask carefully, listening to Pratt’s cry and taking it as an answer. “Fuck- I’ll be there soon. I need to find a designated driver, though- give me twenty minutes and I’m with you,”

You’re weak, Pratt. You’re nothing. When the collapse comes, what then? Who are you fighting for? What is the point in your existence if you can’t protect and serve? I mean- that is your job.

It’s been five minutes since the phone call and Staci is sat on the toilet seat in the bathroom, holding a smashed bottle in hand. He’s not coping well with this. He’s not coping at all.

“S-stop. I know you’re not real,” he can’t tell if it’s the alcohol in his system or the trauma that is making him speak funny, but he hates it. It makes him look even stupider than he feels. “I know you’re made up by m’ mind...”

But you hated me, Peaches. Why would your mind think of me if you hate me?

“Ruined my life...”

Your life is pointless anyway.

Pratt takes a deep breath and pulls his legs to his chest, putting his head back and bringing the sharp glass to his wrists.

The Deputy pulls up outside Pratt’s house, asking Kim Rye- the designated driver- to wait there for them, then makes their way inside.

There is an exploded can outside, and all the porch is wet from what they presume to be beer.

“Staci?” They call when they get inside the house, looking around. The empty living room is covered in beer bottles and cans, and the very phone that Pratt had used to call Deputy is hanging by its cord. They furrow their brows in confusion and head up the stairs, to the muffled sobbing. “Staci-”

“I fucked up, Rook,” he says, washing his arm under the tap of the sink, pinkish water running down the drain.”I-I couldn’t help it, ‘n Jacob was tellin’ me I’m worthless, ‘n-”

Rookie takes Pratt’s arm from under the water and presses a towel to it- for the most part, it has stopped bleeding, but they look sore. “We can fix this,” they say quietly, kneeling down in front of him and looking him in the eyes.

They reach for a med kid under the sink and use the bandages to wrap around his forearm, covering the mess he made.

After a short period of silence, Pratt looks to Dep. “How was Sharky’s party?” He asks, trying to fill the stuffy silence.

Deputy laughs, raising their eyebrows. “It was… Er… Explosive...” He says, shaking his head. “I mean, fun, but… A lot of fire. Lotta fireworks.”

Staci smiles, though it is lacking all emotion.

“I’m sorry- I shouldn’t have called you. I should man up and deal with it- I’m weak and-”

“Shh. I don’t mind.” Dep says, shaking his head. “Honestly. You call me whatever time you need,”

“I’m a fuck up.”

“We’re all fucked up, Pratt. That’s what they do, they play mind games with you.”

Pratt feels all the alcohol from earlier in his stomach, and suddenly, he is throwing up into the sink. When Rook first rescued him, they got back to the Wolf’s Den and ate some actual food. This caused him to be sick because when he was with Jacob, his diet was purely raw meat and rainwater. The good food made him sicker than a dog.

“I owe you my life,” Pratt then says, as Rookie helps him stand and guides him into the bedroom. “You don’t even understand, Dep. We would be nothing without you, and I’m so stupid because you helped me survive literal Hell, and now I’m out of there and I can’t even think right-”

“You need to sleep,” they say, not undressing him but helping him into the bed. “Come on, you’ve had a rough night. You don’t know what you’re saying,”

Staci closes his eyes, feeling worn, feeling defeated, feeling nothing but everything.

“I’ll come over in the morning, okay?” They say, holding his hand for a minute. “Rest. Call me when you wake up.”

“Is he okay?” Kim asks when the Rookie gets back into the car, putting on their seatbelt. Quietly, they nod. “Good. Wanna go back to the party or home?”

“Home, I guess.” They answer quietly.

“You know, you really have saved everyone’s ass. We would be nowhere without you. Pratt, Hudson, Whitehorse- everyone. We all owe you everything and we could never pay you back.”

#far cry 5 #nick rye #sharky boshaw #the deputy #deputy pratt #staci pratt #kim rye #far cry #video games #deputy hudson #joey hudson #earl whitehorse #hurk drubman jr #peaches #jacob seed #john seed #joseph seed #broseph seed #trigger warning

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freaoscanlin · 7 years

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Given Unsought, Part 1

A/N: This fic is something I’ve been working on and I’m pretty deep into it now. I’ll be posting the full thing on AO3 as soon as I figure out just a bit of it, but I thought I’d put the first part up now. This is a retelling of season three of Agents of SHIELD where Jemma came back from Maveth just a liiiiittle bit different. The final fic will be about 40-45k, and it’ll be broken down into weeks. Jemma/Daisy with mentions of other ships. Warnings for language, injury, isolation, past abuse. I’ll be posting the fic in chunks and tagged on my blog as “given unsought.” Thanks to @insidiousmisandry for encouraging this, you enabler.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better. The Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene I, Line 147

Week Four

In her years at SHIELD, Daisy had learned to evaluate the silence of the post-mission flight. The grim quiet of a failed mission had an entirely different flavor to the quiet of exhaustion after a successful op. And a truly successful op didn’t usually contain great stretches of time without talking. Bringing an agent back from the dead usually called for breaking into one of Hunter’s many secret stashes of beer on the quinjet and cracking open a cold one. If Bobbi was the pilot, she’d play cheesy eighties pop on the intercom and Daisy could get a dance party started in the hold.

She’d even twirled May once. That had been very, very strange, and Daisy still wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed that.

The flight from Gloucester should have been jubilant, full of dancing and music. They’d brought Simmons back. She was safe, and coming home, and Fitz—after months and months where Daisy had lost hope—had done it, the cheeky bastard. He’d gone to another world and had come back clutching his friend. By all rights, even though she’d drained all of her energy, Daisy should have been standing on her seat, holding a beer aloft and shout-singing Captain & Tenille with Mack. Instead, she sat quietly in the co-pilot’s seat and watched his giant hands as he moved them over the controls.

“Feeling okay?”

“Nothing sleeping for a year can’t fix.” She stretched out her arms, grimacing as her muscles creaked. “I still can’t believe Fitz did it.”

“Can’t you? He’s a determined one, our Fitz.”

Daisy nodded. She could have flown back on Zephyr One, but she hadn’t wanted to abandon Mack. Plus, she suspected that she’d only be in the way as Bobbi checked Simmons over. And maybe there was a desire to avoid more unnecessary medical checkups herself. Sure, she had the mother of all migraines, but the nosebleed had stopped. She’d be fine. “What do you think it was like over there?”

“Looked like it was pretty dusty.” Mack flipped a couple switches overhead.

Daisy glanced down at her front, still covered in dirt from the explosion of the monolith and hugging Jemma afterward. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

“We’ll find out more soon enough, Tremors.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just impatient. I can’t believe she’s back. Like finally, something’s going our way.” Chasing down the rapidly expanding inhuman outbreak pattern had grown exhausting. Convincing Dr. Garner to let even one of the people onto her team of secret warriors doubly so. She’d fallen into the classic pitfall of being evaluated by him herself earlier that day and even though she hadn’t wanted to rail at it as much as she would’ve in the past, he did leave her feeling frustrated and annoyed.

But Simmons was back, and she was going to be fine, so that had to count for something.

“A much needed win,” Mack said, smiling as he agreed. “Seatbelt on, we’re coming in.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Pilot sir.”

Mack rolled his eyes at her, but she caught the smile he tried to hide.

The Zephyr had beaten them back to base. Though Daisy expected everybody to be busy with Jemma, Bobbi stood with her hip cocked and her arms crossed over her chest, waiting for the loading ramp to descend. Daisy groaned.

“Time to head to the lab. Coulson’s orders,” Bobbi said.

“I’m fine. I just need to sleep and I’ll feel like a human being again. Things just got a little shaky for a bit—ha. Literally.”

“You passed out twice,” Bobbi said, tilting her head. “We’ll put you on a bunk next to Simmons.”

Okay, that might not be terrible. With all of the science that needed to be run, it wasn’t like she would be able to see Jemma at all otherwise. Daisy followed Bobbi out of the hangar, both of them waving cheerily at Mack as he sarcastically called that, sure, he’d be happy to handle the post-mission checklist by himself, no problem.

“He loves us,” Bobbi said as she walked Daisy to the lab.

Bobbi had lied: they’d put Jemma off to one side of the lab and Daisy was led to the other and checked over by a SHIELD tech. With their leading inhuman biology expert on another planet for months, the rest of the lab workers had had to step up, and it just wasn’t the same. None of them ever gave her lollipops the way Jemma had sardonically taken to doing to keep Daisy from griping about getting poked so much. She wanted to complain, but Bobbi kept looking over and raising an eyebrow at her. Daisy decided it was easier not to cause a ruckus.

“Can I go yet?” she asked.

“Just a couple more tests, Agent Johnson.”

“Sameer, we’re poker buddies. You know all my tells, I think that entitles you to call me Daisy.”

For that, he took another vial of blood, though he assured her he would’ve done that anyway. Daisy grumped at him and leaned back on her cot. Movement on the opposite side of the room, near where Jemma still slept, caught her eye. One of the techs running blood tests did a double-take at something on his screen and began gesturing, wildly. Fitz and Bobbi immediately raced over. Daisy rose to her feet, too, only for Sameer to grab her arm.

“You probably should give them a moment,” he said.

“If she’s hurt—”

“They’ll figure it out much faster without distractions.”

As much as she hated it, he had a point. Daisy allowed herself to be pulled back, and sat down on the cot while Sameer ran the rest of his tests. She kept an eye on things, monitoring the way the surprised tech gesticulated while talking to Fitz and Bobbi. Fitz shoved him to the side and typed rapidly into his computer. Whatever he saw on the screen made him shove both hands into his curls and rest his hands on his head, elbows out.

Bobbi put a hand on his shoulder and said something to the tech.

“Something’s wrong,” Daisy said. “Something’s wrong with her—I need to—”

But Fitz stomped right past her when she stood up. Bobbi looked over, met Daisy’s eyes, and shook her head. She gestured for Daisy to stay put.

“She can’t expect me to just sit here when something might be wrong with Simmons,” Daisy said.

“Looks like she does.” Sameer rummaged in the pocket of his lab coat and held out a grape lollipop. “Will this help?”

“No.” But Daisy took it anyway. She flopped down, determined to stay until Bobbi gave her some answers. She missed the needle until Sameer had it in her arm. “What the—hey! What are you doing?”

“Dr. Morse’s orders. It’s just a sedative.”

Daisy felt her eyes begin to roll back into her head. “I’m cleaning you out next time we play poker,” she said and the last thing she saw before she slept was Simmons, curled up on a cot, asleep.

The only mercy when she opened her eyes was that her head no longer ached, but everything else pretty much sucked. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, her left arm had fallen asleep because she’d apparently laid on top of it for hours, and Mack hadn’t carried her back to her bed like he occasionally did whenever somebody (Bobbi) knocked her out. She’d apparently been kept in the lab, drooling into a pillow for all the techs to see. Not that there were many of those around at the moment.

Daisy rubbed her hand over her face and grimaced at the gritty sensation. She glanced at the clock, saw that it was just after four a.m., and groaned. “I’m quaking Sameer into a wall next time I see him.”

“I’d advise against that.” Bobbi’s voice sounded rusty. Daisy looked over her shoulder and saw her on the chair beside her cot, eyes open and arms crossed over her chest. The knee brace had been set aside for the night. “He was following my orders.”

“Yeah, well, don’t think you’re forgiven either, Barbara.”

Bobbi made a face and sat up. “Like you’d have gotten any sleep with that migraine you tried to hide. You can thank me later.”

“Thank. Right. That’s exactly what’ll happen.” Daisy sat up and stretched. She looked over across the lab, to the other cot on the far end. “Is Simmons okay?”

Bobbi paused for so long that Daisy swiveled away from Jemma to face her coworker. “Is something wrong? The planet wasn’t killing her slowly, was it?” Best to blurt out the worst possible option, get it out of the way, even while her brain hammered Not Jemma not Jemma not Jemma.

“No. Her body adapted to what we suspect is a lower level of oxygen, so that will cause a few problems in the short term. Her metabolism’s changed. But she’s healthy.” Bobbi folded her arms over her chest. “But there’s something else, though. She’s pregnant.”

The word slammed into Daisy so hard it might as well have been a punch to the face. “She got sucked into an alien planet and came back pregnant? Was it something in the air? Or was it the planet? Wait, how is that even possible? And is she okay? Is the baby okay? How far along—”

“Easy there, motor mouth,” Bobbi said, and Daisy abruptly shut up. Hysteria, she realized. That was what coursed through her veins. That, and adrenaline. “One question at a time.”

“How?” was all Daisy can manage.

“She hasn’t talked much, but as far as we can tell, it happened the usual way. As far as we can tell, she’s about four weeks along. That’s early to tell, but we’re SHIELD. Cutting edge is kind of our thing.”

“She wasn’t alone over there?”

“There was an astronaut with her. She didn’t say his name, but we’re assuming that he’s human.” Bobbi shrugged.

Daisy looked toward Jemma. In sleep, she remained twitchy, pale and drawn like she constantly awaited danger. For all they knew, she did. Daisy’d barely heard her say five words since Fitz pulled her out of the portal.

Speaking of…

“Guess there’s no need to ask how Fitz is taking it?” Daisy asked. Late one night, drunk off cheap tequila and sitting in the middle of the room he’d turned into a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream in search of Simmons, he’d confessed that he’d made his move. Daisy, not nearly as drunk, had found herself struggling to congratulate him, with no idea why. They’d be cute together, she’d said, when they got Jemma back. Of course they would be. They were Fitz and Simmons. FitzSimmons. They already had a smushname all their own without even trying.

And hell, Fitz’s mania had paid off, hadn’t it? Fitz had doggedly and methodically followed the steps to save her for months, while Daisy threw herself into finding inhumans so she wouldn’t have to think about the grief and fear waiting just around the corner, far too close for comfort.

“I don’t know,” Bobbi said. “He didn’t say much when he came back.”

She gestured. On the other side of the lab, Fitz had a studied frown on his face as he stared into a microscope. From the set of his shoulders alone, Daisy figured bothering him would be one of the worst ideas she’d entertained since trusting her mother.

“You know she asked him to dinner right before…” Bobbi trailed off.

“I know,” Daisy said. “Should I—I don’t know? Talk to him?”

“You can try, but I don’t think it’ll work. I’m sending Hunter to annoy the truth out of him if he gets back soon.”

Daisy raised her eyebrows. “You’re going straight to the nuclear option?”

“For a man whose talents are very annoying, he’s also very good at what he does.” They both paused when Daisy’s wrist-unit beeped with an alert. “See you later.”

“Um, if she wakes up, tell her I’ll stop by?” There was too much she wanted to ask, as she was burning with curiosity and kind of a weird sense of unreality and terror. Her friend was pregnant. With an actual human child. Well. Daisy looked at her hands. Maybe mostly human. Who knew? Daisy sent one last swift look at Jemma and left to handle whatever emergency had arisen on the inhuman front.

What the hell happened on that planet, and what would Jemma do now?

Week Six

For the next two days, her timing was so terrible, it might as well be one of their plans. She dropped by whenever she could get one of the other agents to cover the enforcement agency channels, but Jemma was always sleeping. Daisy busied herself with briefings and seeing Joey, and worked on trying to track Lincoln, who wasn’t answering her calls. Finally, she escaped and made it to Jemma’s bedroom, but there was no answer to her soft knock, so Daisy moved on to her own quarters two doors down and passed out face first into the mattress.

Coulson called her in before she was even fully awake the next morning, to a distress call in Tallahassee. It turned out to be a false alarm—just a kid with a lighter and some superstitious neighbors—but the mission still nearly went sideways three times. Daisy couldn’t deny that she was frustrated. Searching for other inhumans was beyond trying to find a needle in a haystack. More like a needle in a field full of haystacks.

And behind all of that a constant tattoo beat in her head: Jemma is pregnant, Jemma came back from an alien planet with a baby.

In the hangar bay after nearly five days in Florida, she stepped off the quinjet and frowned. “Why don’t you go on without me?” she asked Mack.

“Tremors?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Got something on your mind?”

“Nah, I just—I just—” Stop babbling, Sk—Daisy. He’s going to know something’s up. “I think I’ll take a walk, clear my head before I get stuck in an underground base and feeling all claustrophobic. Or worse, somebody needs me to do something.”

Mack eyed her, but he nodded. “I’ll keep your paperwork warm for you.”

“My hero,” she said, and waved at the rest of the support team as they headed in for post-mission grub. Daisy moved back to her quarters to grab a set of civvies, pulling a dark beanie over her hair, and made for the secret exit that put her on Fourth Street. From there, it was only a few blocks to the bookstore.

She kept an eye out, just to be sure nobody tailed her, before taking a deep breath and stepping resolutely to the appropriate shelf. Wow, this area of the bookstore was huge. And there were so many books with similar titles. Daisy stared at the bookshelf.

Rows and rows of babies stared back at her from the covers. She picked up What to Expect When You’re Expecting because even a homeless hacker living in a van had heard of that one, and paged through. More than part of her felt ridiculous. It was absurd that she’d even be here looking at these books. Jemma had, like, a gazillion degrees, she was bound to know everything that went into pregnancy. But Daisy didn’t, and she felt kind of stupid about it.

Even worse, there wasn’t really a What to Expect When Your Best Friend Went to an Alien Planet and is Now Expecting. Unfair. There seemed to be every other super-specific topic of baby raising on these shelves. But that was Jemma Simmons for you. Always going above and beyond in the most endearing way.

Daisy selected a couple books that didn’t look as schmaltzy as the others, ones she suspected might be written with the fathers in mind, and carried them to the counter. She paid cash and made sure not to be memorable, neither staring nor avoiding the cashier’s eyes. When she left, she kept the beanie low.

At the next store over, she picked up a cloth shopping bag just in case the plastic bag they gave her wasn’t opaque enough. She also rooted around in a small gift section, as she didn’t want Jemma to think she was avoiding her or weird about anything. So a little trinket, that seemed like the ticket. A little blue vase of bright yellow daisies, cheerful and bobbing gently in the breeze of a ceiling fan, caught her eye, and Daisy paid for them almost without thinking about it. Books safely hidden, flowers in hand, she went home.

For once, she was in luck.

“Skye!” Jemma’s face lit up when Daisy stepped in. Then she looked down and away, sheepish. “Daisy. Sorry.”

Daisy held out the flowers. “It’s a multipurpose gift,” she said. “It’s pretty, and it’s a reminder. You can call me whatever you want.” She absolutely meant that. Everybody else had an adjustment period where they called her Sk-daisy, which was aggravating but at least they were trying. With Jemma, Daisy was so happy she was back that she didn’t care.

She studied her friend, pale and diminished but vibrantly alive, and words came tumbling out. “I can’t stay for too long, I’m tracking law-enforcement channels, but I’m really sorry that I haven’t come sooner. It’s—there’s just a lot going on.”

“And I’ve been sleeping.” Jemma’s voice cracked, but her smile felt real and familiar.

“Which is good,” Daisy said a little too fast. Sleep was good for the baby, right? It seemed like it would be. “Do whatever you need to do to get better. We need you. And I…” What did you say to somebody who comes back from another dimension with an amniotic passenger in tow? She sat down on the bed, glancing once at where Jemma’s hand resting on her abdomen. Absently, like an afterthought.

Jemma sighed. “Bobbi told you.”

“The tech who ran your tests wasn’t exactly discreet. Coulson fired his ass, don’t worry, but Bobbi told the team in case it got out. I know you probably don’t want to talk about what happened yet, but when you do, I’m here to listen.” Daisy set the bag of the books on the floor and sat on the bed, close to but not crowding her friend. Bobbi had warned her that Jemma still jumped at everything.

“I’d rather listen now, if that’s okay.” Jemma leaned forward. “The terrigen is spreading?”

“And so’s the paranoia.” Shoptalk. She could handle shoptalk. Daisy filled her in on the nightmare of the past few months, the way cocoons spread all over the world, with inhumans popping up—

“Like daisies?” Jemma interrupted, giving her a small, real smile.

“I’ll let you have that one,” Daisy said, unable to stop her laugh. “We found a new one a few weeks ago. Joey Gutiérrez. He’s very sweet. He just melts metal, like, poof, wow. I think once he gets a handle on it, he’ll be incredible. If we can ever get Dr. Garner to sign off on letting him be a full-time team member.”

At this rate, Andrew was never going to sign off on anybody for a secret inhuman team.

“And you?” Jemma asked, surprising Daisy. “How are you handling all of this?”

“I…” Daisy blinked. She hadn’t really thought about it. How was she handling Lincoln being a fugitive, the ads from politicians on TV, the fearmongering and spreading hate toward what she was? The message boards about “How to Hunt Inhuman Scum” that twisted her stomach into knots? Even at SHIELD, where she was insulated, a couple of the new agents still twitched whenever she walked into the room. “I’m handling it. I’ve been more worried about you, to be honest. You’re really okay?”

“I think so.” Jemma’s voice was soft, like talking too loud hurt her ears. “I just…there’s…some of it is hard to talk about and—”

She jolted like frightened prey when Daisy’s cell phone buzzed. “I am so sorry,” Daisy said.

“N-no, it’s okay. You should take that.”

Guilty, Daisy picked up the phone and answered. Lincoln’s voice, distressed and just as afraid as Jemma seemed, filled her ear. She gave Jemma one last apologetic look and, passing the daisies on the nightstand, hurried off go to handle yet another crisis.

Part 2.

#skimmons #bioquake #agents of shield #daisy johnson #jemma simmons #bobbi morse #mack #avengers #avengers fanfiction #aos fanfiction #fanfiction #given unsought #lincoln is there but he's kind of 'sir not appearing in this fic'

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