#he is the witness to the ghost just as we are
Text
translation
Aventurine doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.
(Or: You are the only person in the universe who understands Aventurine in his mother tongue. He often regrets teaching it to you.)
5k words. gender neutral reader, established relationship, angst, non-graphic sex (reader bottoms, anatomy neutral), themes of cultural loss, references to slavery, aventurine’s canonically implied desire to die. MDNI.
Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.
Deception does not come easily to him in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak—and too kind. The universe was a different place in the days when his life was coloured by the warble of Avgin dialect. It felt simpler, partly because he was a child and partly because Sigonia was yet untouched by outsiders. There were no corporations, no casinos, no commodity codes. His entire world was sand, desert, mother, sister, father (or more often—ghost), goddess, tent, wagon, luck, sin, rain, blessing, Avgin.
Katican.
Aventurine is sure that he knew more than just those words. He was fluent as a child. He had conversations with his sister that were complex enough to make his heart hurt, though perhaps his heart was just constantly aching anyway. But the rest of his early words escapes him. He could maybe dredge them up if he thinks long enough, but he also isn't sure if his tongue and lips could form the shape of them anymore. Sometimes he still counts in Avgin, memorises phone numbers in it, but he doesn’t remember the last time he actually strung together a full sentence in the language.
When Aventurine was first stolen into slavery (a word that he had not known as a child, and still doesn't know in Avgin), he wasn’t given a Synesthesia Beacon. He had to rely on his ears and his wits, deciphering the harsh edges of the Katican dialect and then the strange garble of Interastral Standard Language. By the time he had a Beacon installed, it was already translating all speech into Standard—his dominant language.
Sometimes he feels a little aggrieved by it, but at least it wasn't Katican. He'd have blown out his brains if it were.
But it is easy to console himself: Avgin is not a useful language anyway. Dead languages have no value, and the Avgin dialect was killed along with its people. You can’t perform commerce in a dead language, can't negotiate contracts, can't enter a gambling den and use your silver tongue to rob people blind. You can't use a dead language to fell governments and extract resources; you can't use a dead language to bring an entire planet to its knees. You can’t use a dead language to gamble your life; you can't use it to save yourself from the gallows.
You cannot deceive people in a language that is defined by sand, sister, goddess, ghost.
Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin. His command of it is too weak, and there is no one left to which he can lie, anyway.
When you ask Aventurine to teach you his first language, he gives you an amused look.
“Why Avgin?” he asks. “No one speaks it anymore. I can teach you Common Sigonian if you’d like. Or we could learn Xianzhounese together. Maybe Intellitron code? I know a little.”
“You speak Avgin,” you argue.
“Not often,” he says. “And badly when I do.”
“But it's still your language. And I want to understand you.”
Aventurine has to stop himself from laughing. Understand him? He hates being understood. When people understand him, it makes him predictable. And unlikeable. Hardly a position from which he can manipulate people in.
You understand him well enough to know that.
“You'll have to give me a better reason than that,” he says neatly. “Make it worth my while. Reward me.”
You look at him as you ponder, your eyes lingering on his. Perhaps trying to read him, though he prefers to think you're just enjoying the sight of them.
“I’ll teach you my language as well?”
“You mean—you'll reward my hard labour with more work?” he says, lighthearted.
You frown at him despite the joke. “You don't want to understand me better than what a Synesthesia Beacon would allow?” He blinks, pausing. “It’ll be convenient too. We can talk shit about other people in public and no one will understand us.”
Aventurine considers you. He doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.
He also likes the idea of talking shit in public.
“I'm listening,” he says, voice lilting. You lean in, smiling. Sweet. It makes his heart feel something he isn't used to. Something addictive. Something disgusting. He scrambles to cover it with one of the usual tools: humour or distraction or maybe just plain old lying—his most reliable weapon.
“I'll throw in a kiss?” you try.
He hums. “Just one?”
“One per day.”
“Three.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Well, I am a businessman.”
You snort, but he knows you're endeared. You have very noticeable tells when you’re flustered.
“Okay,” you say. “Three kisses on days you teach me.”
“Deal.”
Aventurine remembers more Avgin than he thought he would.
It comes to him slowly, painstakingly. You aren't interested in structured lessons, and he wouldn't be able to provide them anyway. He has a nonexistent grasp of grammar aside from this sounds right and that sounds strange, and Avgin dialect is both so niche and so dead that no textbooks are available. The scholars have abandoned the language as much as the politicians abandoned its people. Aventurine only has you, his fragmented memory, and whatever questions come to mind as you live out your days with him.
Mostly, you ask him about basic vocabulary. Sometimes you ask him to repeat sentences from your conversations in Avgin, like he’s some kind of multilingual parrot. Each prompt forces him to wade through the fog in his mind, the one that’s been shrouding his childhood memories until now. He's startled at how naturally the old words roll off his tongue: One, two, three, four. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Sweet dreams. Five, six, seven, eight. You're lying to me. Why do you always lie to me? I don't know what you're talking about. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Welcome home. Have you eaten? Have some bread. I made you stew. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. That was dangerous. I thought you wouldn't make it back to me. Sometimes I think you want to die. One hundred, one thousand, one million, one billion. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.
When you say, How do I ask you to let me hold you, he answers easily. He'd heard the words so often as a child: Let me hold you, Kakavasha. Let Mama hold you. His mouth forms the sounds without conscious thought.
He regrets it almost immediately.
When Aventurine hears it from you—stilted, halting, but no less gentle—he stops breathing. Let me hold you. You say it all the time in Standard, but it feels different in Avgin. More painful. A strange sense of panic closes in on him when he's wrapped up in you, thinking in Avgin, thinking sand, sister, goddess, ghost. He holds you tightly, like the rags cut from his father’s shirt, or his mother’s locket won back from the shell-slashers, or a bag of poker chips beneath a card table, clutched within his trembling grip.
“Aventurine, is something wrong?” you ask in Avgin, and he replies in Standard with his usual smile.
“Hm? No. What could be wrong if I have you here?”
Lying is one of his greatest tools. Sex is another one. So he says, “I think I'd like my reward now,” and he runs his lips along your jaw, your pulse, the spot over your heart (there's a word for that in Avgin but not Standard, he tells you), until you're laughing. I thought you wanted three kisses, you tease, and he replies, Who said I wanted to kiss you on the mouth?
But he coaxes open your thighs, and once he's inside you, he collects his payment properly. He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and you swallow his lies whole.
There are some things that Aventurine doesn't teach you. Mostly, they’re things that he can’t teach you.
There are countless gaps in his Avgin. His speech is painfully childish—probably more childish than it was when he actually stopped speaking it. He doesn't know how to swear (something that disappoints you) and he doesn't know how to flirt (something that devastates you). He doesn’t know any words that would be useful for work either: commercialization, governance, stakes, winnings, profit. When you ask him what his job title is in Avgin (“Was senior management even a thing in Avgin society?”), he laughs and gives you the word for gambler.
Then there are the words that he remembers—has remembered his whole life—but never says. Not to you, and not to himself. He doesn't teach you any prayers. He doesn't teach you any blessings. He doesn't teach you about Mama Fenge, or the Kakava Festival, or how the rain fell when he was born. When you ask him, What holidays did you celebrate when you were little? he shrugs and says, We didn't have any. Sigonia’s too bleak to do any partying.
Then you ask him one day, while your bodies are spent in the afterglow of sex, sticky with sweat and sweetness, how to say I love you. And he goes quiet.
Love is a cheap word in Interastral Standard. In the language of globalisation and trade, love has been commercialised, commodified, capitalised for power. You say it to him in many contexts: I love this, I love that, I love you. He hardly ever reacts, and he's never said it back. It would feel unnecessary and also cruel if he did: Aventurine has only ever said the words himself as either a joke or a manipulation.
But love feels different in Avgin than in Interastral Standard, doesn't sound like a thing that can be traded or bought. Kakavasha only ever said the word love to his mother, to his sister, to his father's grave. Love in his mother tongue feels priceless.
When Aventurine thinks about you saying it—I love you, Kakavasha, in clumsy, earnest Avgin—something so painful swells in his throat that he can hardly breathe.
“There is no word for love in my language,” he tells you.
You blink. “Okay, then what's an idiom for it?”
“There is none. There’s no word or phrase expressing love.”
You raise a brow. “That’s hard to believe.”
“Is it?” He smiles. “There’s no Avgin in the known universe who cares about love. Only scheming, thieving, and treachery—and you can't do those things when love is involved.”
You look at him in alarm. “Why are you saying that?” You're practically squirming in your discomfort. “I don't know why you think I'd believe such a racist stereotype.”
“It’s not a stereotype,” he says. “I'm not talking about the Avgin culture. I'm talking about myself.”
After all, he is the only Avgin left.
It is an unfair thing to say. A cruel thing to say. After all the laughing and kissing and crying and fucking, after all the tender eyes and gentle words from you—it is probably the worst pain imaginable: I don't give a shit about you. He waits for you to cry.
But you only stare at him calmly, studying him. You brush the hair out of his eyes, seeing them clearly.
“If you lie to me all the time,” you say in Avgin, “eventually I'll stop believing anything you say.”
Aventurine is speechless. His heart does that addictive, disgusting thing again. He thinks about leaving, but then you say, Let me hold you, and he can't do anything other than obey.
Avgin dialect was once included in the Synesthesia Beacon list of functions. The Intelligentsia Guild added it before the Second Katica-Avgin Extinction Event, when the IPC was trying to get a political foothold on Sigonia via the Avgin people. The language was alive then, with enough value to be included into the Synesthesia LLM by the linguists.
But since the Extinction Event—since Kakavasha ran away from home—the Synesthesia data on Avgin has been stagnant, a fossil. Aventurine knows because he's subscribed to software updates for certain languages (Avgin Sigonian, Common Sigonian, Interastral Standard, and now your mother tongue). He gets pinged every time there's a new addition for slang, for neologisms—but there hasn't been a ping for the Avgin dialect since he had the Beacon installed. The live translation function hasn't even been available since the previous Amber Era. When he checks its page on his Synesthesia app, it's very clear why—
SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT
SPEAKERS: 0
STATUS: Extinct
END OF SERVICE: 2156 AE
The complete death of the language has led to an irritating dilemma for you and Aventurine. You keep running into words that he doesn't know—this time not because of his childlike speech, but because they never existed in his language to begin with. Ocean, tropical, rainforest. Starskiff, accelerator, space fleet. Stock market, shortselling, mutual funds. Black hole, event horizon, spaghettification. All things that never came up for Kakavasha, but now come up for Aventurine, and the language has not evolved to include it.
He always wants to switch to Standard to discuss these things, but you're insistent on speaking in Avgin as much as possible. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't mind humouring you—partly because he likes to indulge you, and partly because he’s grown used to hearing the honeyed timbre of Avgin dialect in your household. The place would feel strange without it.
So you start filling the gaps with other languages, filtering them through the lyricism of Avgin. Loanwords, he thinks they’re called. You take ocean, tropical, rainforest from Amazian; starskiff, accelerator, space fleet from Xianzhounese; stock market, shortselling, mutual funds from Interastral Standard. For the astrophysics terms, you try directly translating them—with limited success.
“Can't I literally just say ‘black hole’?” you ask in Avgin, and he nearly spits out his coffee.
“Please don't. That's a dirty word.” He can't bring himself to say what it means, but from the way you’re laughing, you can clearly guess.
“I thought you said you didn't know how to swear.”
“You've just reminded me how.”
“You're welcome.” You look on the verge of cackling. Aventurine finishes his coffee and wonders when you're going to surprise him with your newfound vulgarity.
“Let's just do the space terms based on Standard,” he says. Begs.
“No, that's so boring.”
“Then let's do your language.”
You open your mouth. Close it. Give him a blank look.
“You don't know how to say those words in your mother tongue either, do you,” he intuits.
“Well, ‘spaghettification’ doesn't really come up in everyday conversation, does it?”
“Then maybe we don't need it.” He smiles, senses an opportunity. Smells blood. “How about ‘love’? I'd much rather know how you say that. I bet it sounds beautiful.”
You give him a long look. Your eyes are vulnerable when you share it: Love. I love you. He’s fascinated by the sound of it. Your voice is never that fragile when you say it in Standard. It's never so earnest. He repeats it, staring at you, and your gaze falls to the ground. His mouth curls.
“I like it,” he says. “Let's use that. It'll sound nice in Avgin.”
You try to recover. “Sure. That works. But back to ‘black hole’—”
And the two of you continue like that for days, weeks, months. It feels like a complete bastardization of his mother tongue on some days, in some conversations. Almost unrecognisable. But it doesn't feel bad. It’s all he has, it's all you have, and when he walks into your home, he starts speaking it without thinking: your bastard, patchwork language. The Avgin dialect that exists only in your house. A tongue that can only be understood by a liar.
And then, one lazy Sunday morning, he gets a familiar ping. He expects it to be Interastral Standard, as usual. The language balloons with each planet that the IPC colonises.
But instead, he opens his screen and freezes.
SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT
SPEAKERS: 2
STATUS: Endangered.
SERVICE RESUMED: 2157 AE
NEW UPDATES: 103 loanwords and 5 neologisms added.
He can't stop looking at the status. Endangered. Endangered, which means dying, but alive. The Avgin dialect is alive again. The Intelligentsia Guild determined it, so it must be true. But Aventurine can't agree: there are no Avgin speakers in the known universe other than the two of you, and what you speak isn't real Avgin. The Avgin spoken by his mother and father and sister is dead; the Avgin spoken by Kakavasha is dead. The festivals are gone; the deserts have been terraformed. There are no wagons; there are no dances; there are no prayers. There are no blessings, and he has no home—
As long as you are alive, the blood of the Avgin will never run dry.
His throat locks up.
“Aventurine?” you ask. Your voice is drowsy, but concerned. “Is something wrong?”
He looks at you from his phone, a polished smile on his face.
“No.” His syllables are plain and efficient in the noise of Interastral Standard: “Just looking at details for a new assignment. It’ll be a long one.”
“Oh.” You frown. “Will you be away from home for a long time, then?”
He stops himself from swallowing. “Yes, I'll be away from the house. For several months, probably.”
“Okay.” Your voice is small. “Take care of yourself, okay? I'll miss you.”
Each word you speak resonates with heartbreak. It always does in these conversations, even in Standard—but the sorrow is amplified in Avgin. His mother tongue has an inherently sad quality to it, he's noticed. His people have lost so much over their history—their language is one of loss. It's his language of loss. Kakavasha did all his grieving in Avgin; Aventurine has never felt sorrow in Standard. When the language died, so did Kakavasha—and all his regrets with it.
“You'll come home to me, right?” you ask. It's a beautiful sentence in Avgin. A heartrending one. He feels something that he hasn't known since he was a child.
It's a feeling he has to kill.
“Yes,” he says in Standard. “Of course I'll come back.”
This is not the first time that Aventurine has been mistaken for dead, but this is the longest time.
The latest world to join the IPC network was a tough acquisition. It had been ruled by a despot who wreaked havoc on both the people and the planet, and who was too stupid and reckless to resolve conflicts with his trade partners. He probably would have blown up the whole star system had he been left to his own devices. Aventurine had no qualms about bringing him to ruin, nor did he have qualms about nearly dying in the process.
If things had gone his way, he'd either be dead or missing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to do the latter, actually—to be freed from the IPC. Free to drift alone, speaking with strangers in strange, unfamiliar tongues. No connection to his past, to the cruel history of his luck, to his commodity code. No tether to his inherently unjust destiny. But instead he's back in your house, pockets heavy with his borrowed wealth, speaking to you in his bastardised, childish Avgin. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.
Your Avgin is—shockingly fluent. He doesn't know how. He can't think about it right now. All he can process is the wounded animal noise of your speech as you yell at him, as you cry. Like an injured songbird, or a weeping child. Why did you leave, why did you lie, why do you always lie to me, why don't you give a shit about me, you spit. Why do you want to die, why do you want to die, why do you want to die, you keep saying. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost, he keeps hearing. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost. Don't leave me, big sister. People will die. Why do you have to go?
“I’m sorry,” he tries again, this time in your language. “I'm so sorry. Come here. Let me hold you.”
You collapse into your mother tongue. Aventurine is both relieved and horrified. Relieved that he doesn't need to hear the language of his grief—horrified that he needs to hear yours. He's never heard you cry like this. He's never heard you break like this. These must have been the words you used when the soldiers found you hiding in your closet, when they dragged you out of your home. You were just a child.
Aventurine doesn't know the words you are using—you've never taught them—but he still understands them.
You're very malleable when you’re sad; even more so when you're hysterical. Aventurine understands this about you, and he understands how to calm you—this time in your native tongue—and he understands how to kiss you. He understands that you need to feel close to him. He understands that there are ways to accomplish this other than sex. A normal person would talk it out, have an honest conversation, come to a mutual understanding, and maybe even stop trying to kill himself. They wouldn't fuck you into the mattress while your face is still wet with tears.
But Aventurine is not a normal person. He doesn't know how to have an honest conversation, and he doesn't want to be understood. Lying is his greatest weapon, and sex is a close second. So he kisses you until you’re too breathless to cry, fucks you until you can't think, and makes you come so hard that you’re in too much bliss to grieve. And maybe it's horrible of him, but he enjoys it. He enjoys the way your body takes him in so easily, the way your nails dig into his back, the way you tighten around him when you climax, so wet and needy for him. The way you beg for him in your language for liars as he spends himself inside you: I love you, Aventurine, I love you, I love you, I love you—
Only because it feels good. This is all only because he enjoys fucking you. This is all only because you enjoy fucking him. This is all it'll ever be, and it'll be this way until he gets to meet his end.
(Some months ago, Aventurine started dreaming in Avgin.
It surprised him when he first noticed it. The last time he remembers having a dream in his native tongue, he was twelve years old and still in chains. And even then, it had become a sporadic, strange thing. Awful to wake up from. One minute he was with his mother and sister on a cool, rainy day, speaking fluently in Avgin as he laughed and played—and the next minute, he was being shaken awake in his cage, hearing the cruel lash of Katican.
But ever since he's started speaking Avgin with you, he's been dreaming in it. Vividly. Sometimes he's a child in these dreams, and sometimes he's grown. He's always back in the Sigonian desert, among the tents and the campfires and his family wagons. His mother and sister are alive. Sometimes his father is too. The skies roar with thunder and the stellar winds are always harsh, but they always keep him cocooned up in their arms. He's always warm.
Sometimes Aventurine dreams of nicer days. Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze—all blessings from the Mother Goddess. On these days, he tends to be an adult, and you tend to be there with him. Your Avgin is fluent but strange, filled with funny loanwords and peculiar slang. His father likes the neologisms and starts using them—but only in wrong ways. His sister finds it embarrassing and keeps apologising to you.
His mother loves you. She loves you so much it hurts. This is how I know you're blessed, Kakavasha, she says, glowing. You’re so lucky to have found such a kind person.
Kakavasha knows this. He knows he's lucky, and in his dreams, that isn't a bad thing. In his dreams, his luck means that his home is not violently excised from his heart: his father never dies; his mother never dies; his sister never dies. The tents are not burned; the wagons are not destroyed. He is never forced to forget his people's dishes, their songs, their language, their joy. And in his dreams, his luck means that he meets you anyway, without all the loss and the chains and the lying.
In his dreams, he is able to bring you to the desert. He is able to teach you the Avgin he spoke as a child, to cook all the meals his mother used to make, to share with you their coffee and their tea. He teaches you prayers. He teaches you blessings. He tells you about Mama Fenge, about how the rain fell when he was born. He takes you to the Kakava Festival, shows you how to dance, sings to you all the Avgin songs until you're singing back. He presses his palm to yours in prayer; he kisses you in devotion, not avoidance.
Sometimes the two of you still fight, the same fights that you have in real life, but he handles them with honesty. He listens to you. He apologises to you. He tells you that he’ll change, and he means it—because this world is a kind one, and he has no need to be so cruel to you.
In this kind world, when you lay in bed with his arms tight around you, you smile at him and say, I love you, Kakavasha. You say it in Avgin—real Avgin, not the dialect born from genocide and deceit—and when he responds, there's not even a little bit of insincerity in his voice. Because Kakavasha never became Aventurine in these dreams, so he has no Interastral Standard in which he can lie to you, no silver tongue with which he can manipulate you, no commodity code that inspires his fear of being controlled by you. Kakavasha only knows Avgin, and he only has his sand, his family, his goddess, his home.
And he has you. Finally, he has you.
He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and then he tells you the truth.)
.
.
.
Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.
You noticed this very early on: whenever he lies to you, he always switches to Interastral Standard. Probably he wouldn't be able to do it in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak, and the words he knows are all too kind. He speaks with the innocence of a child, and children cannot deceive people in the way that adults can. Children cannot perform commerce or negotiate contracts. They cannot use a silver tongue to rob people blind. They cannot save themselves from the gallows.
So Aventurine’s Avgin is defenceless. Vulnerable. So vulnerable it hurts. You are not so vulnerable in your first language because your captors spoke it on occasion, and you learned to lie in it to gain their pity. You told Aventurine that knowing it would help him understand you, but this was a deception. Aventurine’s mother tongue was a language of trust, but yours is a dialect of abuse.
The Avgin language died before Aventurine could be gutted by it; this is why it disarms him so completely. This is why he’s so indulgent and so warm when you use it with him, why he yields to all your requests. Not requests for money or gifts—you’re certain those are meaningless to him—but for affection. Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. He can never say no.
This is also why he loves hearing you speak his mother tongue, you think—it makes him feel at home, it makes him feel safe. Maybe it even makes him feel loved. He never seems so at peace speaking any other language, so you try to use Avgin as much as possible. You like seeing him happy. You like it even if it means you need to teach him your own native language in exchange, even when it means you need to hear him say all the things your captors used to say. You don't mind it if it's him. You never mind the harm he inflicts on you, especially not when it brings you closer to him.
It is convenient that he cannot lie in Avgin. You only wanted to learn it in the first place because he talks in his sleep—mostly in Standard, but sometimes in his native tongue. And now that you know he cannot lie in Avgin, you also know he's always being honest in his dreams. Honest when he throws his arms around you in his sleep. Honest when he grabs you so tightly that you bruise. Honest when he buries his face into your neck and whispers prayers into your skin.
Most of the words he says are common ones, the earliest vocabulary that he taught you. But there are some things he's withheld from you—and to learn those things, you had to track down linguists from the Intelligentsia Guild, bribe them with your dirty money, have them give you all their deprecated, extinct data. It felt two-faced, and it was violating, but it was the only way. You already know that Aventurine would rather die than translate his feelings for you, would never want this part of himself understood.
I'm sorry for always leaving you.
I'm sorry for making you cry.
I can't bear the thought of losing you.
Freedom would be too lonely without you.
I don't want to hurt you anymore.
I don't want to lie to you anymore.
I missed you.
I want you.
I need you.
I love you.
end
afterword
#aventurine x reader#hsr x reader#honkai star rail x reader#x reader#hsr smut#aventurine smut#lol it isnt really smut but it is nsft i suppose#nsft#yueshuo.fics
881 notes
·
View notes
Text
I'm just imagining an a/b/o dynamic where the entire 141, including you, are all Alphas. Except, after a few years of such close contact something starts to shift.
You start to become an Omega.
"Why is this happening to me?" You all but wail. It hurts to breathe, everything feels like it's on fire. Your stomach twists again, painful cramps shooting white hot lighting up your spine. "Why does it hurt so bad?"
Your pack is all around you, trying to soothe you in anyway they can but it's not working. Everything hurts, your teeth feel like they're going to crack from how tight you have them gritted. The wave of pain ebbs for a few gracious seconds before starting up all over again. You whine and sob and reach out for any of your team.
"Whats going on?" Price huffs, his cool hand cupping at your face. His touch is the barest relief even as he drags down one of your lower eyelids. He tuts in an intense concern. "Simon, have you seen this before?"
The larger male drops to one knee. He gives you a quick once over before dipping his head towards yours. He presses the front of his mask to the crown of your head. Through your labored panting you barely hear him take in a deep inhale of scent.
He coughs and stands back up too quickly. Judging by his flighty gaze, something is seriously wrong. Another tremor of pain wracks your body. You open mouth squeal. It's getting so much worse.
"Simon!" Soap growls, trying to bring his fellow alpha back from whatever memory he'd fallen into. "What's wrong wit' 'er?"
"She's turning into an Omega."
Everyone in the room turned their gazes towards Ghost, even you, despite your pain. You? An Omega? But you've always been and Alpha. It was part of the necessary requirements to be a part of the 141. You'd been genetically tested, hormonally tested, and aptitude tested. You were a full blooded Alpha coming from generations of Alphas.
"There's...ngh...no way." You hiccup out, tears blurring your vision.
"That doesn't make any sense. That can't happen." Gaz adds. He rubs at your back. His cool touch soothes even more of your pain into a dull throb, but it isn't enough.
"M' n' Alpha!" You cry out in anguish, the first of many tears finally dripping down your cheeks.
Something about Ghost's words hurt worse than any pain your body was making you go through. Try as you may to deny it, he was right. You could feel your body changing, altering, breaking and bending.
"Why is this happening to me?" You wail.
"There's too many of us." Ghost huffs, he glances around at your pack.
"Why does that matter?" Soap grumbles, scooping an arm around your center to pull you up into a sitting position. "We're a pack."
"That's just it." Ghost sighs tiredly.
"I've never heard of this being 'n issue." Price butts in. He grabs your face again and brushes the tears off your cheeks. "Task Forces are fully Alpha run. They 'ave been for years."
"If what Ghost is saying is right, it's biological, Captain." Gaz huffs, his thoughts visibly racing. "Too many Alphas, not enough Omegas. It means we'd go extinct."
"But why didn't she change earlier?" Johnny asks. You teeter in his hold but he keeps you upright. He lets you lean against his chest. He smells more comforting than usual.
"It's hormonal. She's been with us almost three years now, it takes time." Ghost says. Price nods in agreement.
"I'm an Alpha!" You sob, trying wrench yourself free from the multiple men around you. "I- I don't want to be bred. I don't want to be claimed! I'm an Alpha!"
"We're know you are, Love." Price breathes softly. He continued to wipe tears away from your face with a tenderness that only makes your despair swell further. "But this is happening, and we can't stop it."
"Take me to sick bay, please. They'll...they'll put me on blockers or something! Please, anything but this! I don't want to be an Omega."
The pack looks toward Ghost but he shakes his head.
"This is you first heat. The blockers will kill you."
You scream in pain, fear, and frustration. Another wave of excruciating pain washes over you. You wrench out of Soap's grip and fall against the floor. The tile is cool against your flushed skin.
As much as you hate him for it, Ghost is right.
This is your first heat.
Your back arches off the floor. Your toes curl and you squeal, shaking, gasping, panting hot breaths. You can feel yourself start to sweat. There's a sudden gush of wetness between your thighs. Embarrassment floods you. You try to curl into a ball but your body keeps being wracked with tremors.
"H-help me..." You cry out weakly, sobbing into the tile.
Your pack seems to finally get a whiff of your fluctuating scent. All around you, you watch as one by one each of their gazes grow more and more pointed. All of you know what must be done. After all, you're an Omega now.
...and there's no going back.
#cod imagines#mw2#call of duty#mw2 headcanons#simon ghost riley#cod mwii#john soap mactavish#simon riley x reader#captain price#kyle gaz garrick
332 notes
·
View notes
Text
Paul Du Noyer on interviewing McCartney:
"And now, in 2001, when the promotional agenda has switched back to Wings, you almost have to coax him off the subject of John Lennon. Is it just force of habit, or maybe the need to exorcise some kind of long-nosed, bespectacled, sharp-tongued ghost inside his head?"(2001)
"The world's most famous living Liverpudlian has grown more open about the world's most famous dead Liverpudlian. Unbidden references to John Lennon occur in almost every interview I've done with Paul McCartney. It's clear their complex partnership still stalks the halls of his memory. I sit with Paul as he completes a questionnaire for MOJO magazine's All-Time Heroes issue, in 2001:
Who is your hero? John Lennon. When did this person first have an impact on you? At Woolton Village Fête in the year of Our Lord Whatever. What is it that you admire in them? Massive talent, great wit, courage and humour. Have they had an influence upon you? Very much so. Have they ever disappointed you or has your admiration ever faded? Yeah, from time to time, when we were having a barney. But only infrequently.
-Paul Du Noyer (Book: Conversations with McCartney, 2016)
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
Do you guys ever think about how many times CLAMP tiptoe around the word "death", in Clear Card? (you: what kind of question is that???)
Because it's an awful lot.
The actual verb 死ぬ (to die), the classical one, is never mentioned* to indicate "death", and I totally see the reasons why: mainly target and "world view" of the series (lord, if there's something I learned during these 8 years of observing the reactions from the JP fans is that the 世界観, the "world view" is EVERYTHING and if the authors dare doing something that goes against it, they won't forgive them. Especially for a series rooted deep in everybody's childhood).
* (Actually, it is used in chapter 43 in a funny skit with Kero, Suppy and Nakuru, where Kero says "I thought I would die!!!" because he's too embarrassed by the SyaoSaku scene he had to forcefully witness hidden in Sakura's bag 😂but it's a foolish scene)
I think the first time where they actually start to dangle it in our faces is in chapter 28, when they make Momo scream in panic: "If you rewind that far, the repercussions will be immesurable!!" and then Kaito confirming right after "Time magic shortens the caster's lifespan". 命を削る indeed means "to shorten one's lifespan", and what else does that mean, if not that he's killing himself little by little, by using time magic? Sure, magicians have a longer lifespan, but...
Another instance where they make us "sniff" the smell of death but they don't serve the actual meal is in chapter 33, when Kaito goes out in the garden to counter the attack coming from the Association. He condescendingly says 力不足と己の身が滅ぶのを恐れて, mocking them for not including time magic in their collective attack because they're afraid their power won't be enough and they'll literally wreck their bodies in the process. Kaito doesn't straight up say "they're afraid to die", but the verb 滅ぶ means "to perish, to be ruined, to be destroyed" and we all saw what effects time magic had on Kaito's body. He's basically calling them p*ssies, yes.
And excuse me, but the most apparent one....when Kaito (or the Clan) says multiple times "Her soul will break", should Akiho write on herself more power than her body can sustain....isn't that just a very generous way to avoid saying "Akiho WILL DIE" to not scare the young readers away? Because, think about it...if her soul breaks...what is left of her? What is left of Akiho, as we know her? Yes, just a shell, a corpse for use and consumption of the Association/Clan, exactly.
And what to say about the scene of chapter 41 when Nadeshiko is trying to mom-talk Kaito into reason and the guy answers "I guess it's because I'm getting closer to become the same kind of entity as you", meaning, a ghost??? Hence, he's basically saying "I'm about to die"? I always snicker when I read that part because I'm like "OH COME ON, CLAMP, MAKE HIM SAY THE WORD" 😂
Another instance where the characters dance around the concept of death is in chapter 51, when Momo gets to have this very mom-son talk with Kaito (yes, exactly, Kaito set into motion several mother figures throughout the story - Lilie, Momo, Nadeshiko herself - that should tell you SOMETHING). Momo is trying to make him understand that he's literally betted his life away when he made the contract with her, so that should give him an idea of how important this mission is to him, and for whom he's doing this for. She says "When you made the contract with me, you revealed your true name. We could say I hold your heart as magician in the palm of my hand". Here Momo is basically already mentioning the concept I've been saying time and time again when Kaito revealed his true name to Akiho in chapter 80: in CLAMP works, revealing your true name to someone is like placing the most vulnerable part of yourself in their hands. The "imagery" Momo suggests here is actually pretty disturbing: the word 心臓 (heart) is the one commonly used to indicate the actual organ, more than "heart as core of the emotions", and so what she's suggesting is that at any moment, without notice, she might close that hand and crush his heart, basically killing him. Of course Momo would never do that, but she wants to remind him of what damned situation he's put himself in, how far he went for the person he still isn't ready to recognize at this point of the story.
I think the closer they went to say the "forbidden word" was when Lilie in chapter 72 explained to Sakura the extent of her premonitory dreams: "I know things that will happen shortly ahead...things way far ahead in the future...and even things that will happen when I'll be gone".
Another instance where they TOTALLY dance around the real situation (that is, Kaito should've been dead-dead-dead by then) is in chapter 80 when Eriol explains to Akiho what Kaito had been doing: I'm not sure if it's Eriol who sugarcoated it in his speech, or Akiho herself while recounting it to Sakura, but she says "He messed with lots (of dangerous magic), so his condition wasn't supposed to be that good", another polite way to say "he should've been dead by now". In fact, what's keeping him alive is literally the fact that the pocket watch (and therefore, his time) is frozen for now.
And sometimes I wonder if the "unhappiness" or "grief" that Yelan foresaw for Sakura, in the eventuality she couldn't gain control of her own powers, included....death too....NAAAAAAAHHHH
(well, I mean, who didn't think of THAT when they made Kaito say that he could see Nadeshiko because he was close to dying?? Well knowing that Sakura could suddenly see her too?? they did that on purpose jfc)
#card captor sakura#ccsakura#clear card arc#just very randomly musing about stuff#I've been keeping tabs of how many times they've danced around the concept of death in this arc#and it's surprisingly a lot#lmao I feel like Barbie asking THAT question while they're dancing in the movie#but fear not cause even like this the arc never crosses the line#it's like saying well it's time for children to get accustomed with the concept and we'll gradually start to introduce it#gently very gently#but it's useless to keep avoiding it forever#I mean we got someone who was literally throwing his life away as one of the main characters and themes in this arc#sooo...
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
*laying on my floor staring at the ceiling, completely distraught* I mean, what even is Horatio’s role in the play??
“Horatio, Friend to Hamlet.”
Horatio, stranger, young student, trusted confidant and friend of Hamlet, trusted aid to everybody else in Elsinore, advisor, assister, orator, oracle, Cassandra, mourner, witness to all events unfolding, lingerer in all scenes with no dialogue, more an Antique Roman than a Dane, thou that he knowest thine, the sole survivor of tragedy, the audience itself-
#Hamlet#horatio#he IS the audience#he is the witness to the ghost just as we are#his heart dies with Hamlet as does ours#he’s stuck watching an inevitable tragedy play out before him and is powerless to stop it - as are we#It’s sad about Hamlet again hours
572 notes
·
View notes
Text
Thinks oh so hard abt the spiraling upwards clan founders, especially the birchclan founders. Silly lil kitties who's pasts are drenched in blood with the primary regret of not drawing it sooner
#rat rambles#oc posting#warriors posting#spiraling upwards#long story short they had a shitty awful terrible leader who sucked absolutely ass and they tore him to shreds#I mean that literally they pinned him onto the mountain side and slashed and mauled the shit out of him so hard that his lives evaporated#and several of the cats involved in that scene are sill alive and major parts of the story and I love them#oh also the cat that pinned him through a stab through the throat was his own daughter btw everyone hated his ass so much#and for good reason get his ass#alas in the main story I dont rly get to go too deep into how he harmed everyone involved mostly just three main ones#aka bristlestar because shes murtlepaw's ghost mom dawncrackle because hes also haunting murtle and gullspot because shes bristle's kit#so basically all the flashbacks we get involve those three in some form or another#honeystar was also there and involved but Im not currently planning on having her rly talk abt that#most of her more modern angst is the fact that she was forced into leadership against her will#and shes been alive long enough that shes been leading birchclan far longer than she ever lived in her old clan#but she did go through a lot of shit before birchclan was founded and it definitely shaped her a lot#she used to be a very determined and high spirited lil kitty cat who tried to be optimistic#but her family began to slowly be picked off one by one by both the old leader and the one whod later get evicerated#some of the older cats around her hoped it make her back down from her revelutionary ideas but she noticed that and it backfired on them#instead of being worn down to submission she became absolutely Furious and began to lash out more and become more demanding#it got to the point that she really only had two friends in the entire clan and one of them was her aunt whod later also die after coming#out abt having witnessed the leader killing his own kits#that was the final fucking straw for her and she was fully on board when bristle and dawn started looking for cats to join their rebellion#she did get rly frustrated with them as they waited patiently for the right moment but her remaining bestie kept her from going apeshit#so once the big fight finally broke out she was more than eager to join the hoard of cats chasing the bastard upwards#now unlike some of the other cats involved this legitimately actually made her feel a lot better for a while#for the first time in ages she finally felt like she could be optimistic abt smth again and was excited abt the idea of leaving this place#she had lost so much in this damn place since she was an apprentice and just wanted to finally be able to rest easy#but once they got to their new territory and set up camp things went south real fast as a flood fucked everything up#and after losing the only cat she had left in her life and losing her tail and being made deputy on top of that she deteriorated quickly
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
·.⌇ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒. toji witnesses his son’s first steps and it nearly makes the grown man cry.
wc. 1k
tags. dad!toji x female reader. fluff. reader gets called ‘mama.’ life if gege just gave us what we wanted. ending is a bit rushed if you couldn't tell.
“gumi, look here,” you coo at your child who’s sitting in his playpen. you’re laying against some stuffed animals, too tired to move after doing all kinds of chores. the baby looks up at you with curious eyes and you take your chance to make a silly face.
megumi giggles and responds by throwing a small toy your way. it accidentally hits your head, though luckily it isn’t anything too heavy.
toji, who laid lazily on the opposite side of the playpen, watches the scene unfold. he grins once he sees you rub the spot on your forehead, “oi, megumi, careful with y’r mama.”
you chuckle, dropping your dramatic act. you ruffle megumi’s hair a bit before standing up. a yawn escapes your lips and you stretch your arms above your head—clearly in need of a break.
“i’m gonna take a quick nap, honey,” your eyes meet toji’s. your husband nods and sits up with a groan. he’s also sleepy, but he knows that you did most of the work today. he’ll gladly watch over megumi while you rest and regain your energy.
megumi starts to fuss the moment you step out of the playpen. his tiny hands reach out to you—the little boy clearly too attached to his mother. toji shakes his head and effortlessly picks his son up and puts him on his lap, “naw, y’re stuck with me buddy. mama’s gotta rest.”
megumi squirms around and whimpers. he’s clearly not interested in his dad at the moment. toji sighs and tries his best to keep the baby still, but to no avail.
“mama! mama!” the baby’s cries for you breaks your heart. you stop a a couple steps away and turn around with a pout. you notice how megumi is kicking his legs, thrashing around in toji’s arms in attempt to free himself.
you sigh and crouch down, “gumi, mama’s sleepy. . papa’s gonna play with you, okay?”
megumi, of course, does not understand what you mean. he thinks you’re leaving him alone and it causes him to wail loudly. you’re about to console your son, but backtrack when you notice how megumi’s starting to stand up on his own.
his chubby legs are barely holding his body weight up. the balance is hard to find for the baby, yet he still does his utmost best. he nearly trips from just standing.
even toji looks on with wide eyes and a hint of a prideful grin on his lips. he’s silently encouraging his son in his head.
“ma..ma,” megumi babbles. he almost topples over, but toji’s quick reflexes come in handy. a big hand keeps the baby standing straight. the dark-haired man carefully lets go again, however keeps his hand near his son’s body. just in case.
neither toji nor you could believe what was happening. you both watch in awe as megumi’s left foot moves forward—the right one copying that same movement.
your precious boy, taking his first steps right in front of you both to witness. it’s a heartwarming sight. you hold your breath and toji’s lips part slightly. your husband has yet to grasp why this scene in front of him makes him feel so. . . giddy on the inside.
“c’mon! come to mama!” you squeal excitedly and open your arms, encouraging megumi to your best ability. the tiny boy giggles and moves his limbs as fast as they could go. his chubby hands flail around as he quickly walks over to you.
toji stares at his family and that’s when it hits him; how much he loves this peaceful life. his son just achieved another great milestone that he had the honour of witnessing firsthand. it made him happy that he chose this path instead of the more ‘darker’ one.
it also nearly causes your husband to shed some tears from pure joy. but, toji didn’t want to seem too ‘soft’. even if he secretly is for his wife and child.
toji coughs subtly. totally not to get rid of the irritating lump in his throat. a ghost of a smile appears on his face while he got up, immediately moving towards megumi and you.
“good job, kiddo,” toji says as he puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. he stares down at megumi in your arms—the little boy getting drowned in kisses and compliments.
your ears twitch. there’s no denying it; the faint crack in toji’s voice. you give your kid a break from your overwhelming affection and tilt your head back. your eyes meet your husband’s.
you grin when you see how he quickly avoids your gaze. something he never does unless he’s. . . “gonna cry?”
toji rolls his eyes at your question. he ignores your teasing by trying to change the subject. he focuses on megumi who’s still going absolutely wild in your embrace—cutely demanding more praise and kisses.
“daddy can also give ya some kisses, y’know,” toji pokes megumi’s cheek, fascinated by the plush fat. the baby stops babbling the moment his dad talks to him. he looks up at toji and then back at the finger still prodding at his cheek.
megumi opens his mouth and doesn’t waste a single second. he goes for a playful bite, though his little baby teeth do no real damage, “yumm.”
you giggle at the way megumi frowns at toji, his teeth holding tightly onto toji’s fingertip. it’s time for your husband to take over the dramatics now.
“hey, that ain’t so nice now,” toji hisses and leans forward until his face is right in front of megumi—a similar frown on both the dad and son’s faces. they really do look alike now that you see them both from up close again.
megumi only bites down more on the finger in his mouth and toji reacts to that by feigning his anger. it’s amusing to see how neither of them gives up first.
but, it’s also rather cute to see how the father-son dynamic plays out in cozy family moments like these.
your eyes focus back on toji’s face and you can’t help but smile to yourself. he’s a good husband and father; always there for the both of you. his own way of showing support for megumi’s first steps is rather heartwarming. plus, the playful banter between the two never fails to make any moment all the more precious.
#sttoru writes.#jjk x reader#jjk fluff#toji x reader#toji fushiguro x reader#toji x you#jjk x you#toji x y/n#jjk x y/n#toji fluff
9K notes
·
View notes
Text
i think this world is too rotten for me
#mine#everyone is so disgusting and lowly#i despise all of them#nobody is worth my humanity except for the alive being i treasure so much#'alive being' implying that i am a ghost in the way he'll never manage to be#i am so cold and distant and untoucheable and he is warm and intimate and worthy of so much gentle holding and of so much love#i embody what you'd refer to as the audience and he is the one i witness all the time#when he occupies the theatre he is all that matters and the light shines upon him like a divine angel#and i feel disgust towards anyone who dares to enter the space we have#its ours and it is just for us. thats the way it should be
0 notes
Text
De-Aged Danny, gesturing to a dazed Bruce inside Wayne Manor: And this is Bruce! Otherwise known as the Himbo!
Reporters: Hmm, yes, interesting...
Bruce: What the-
Danny: I'm not sure what that word means. I heard it from Dick, but no one will give me my answer, not even Jason, who is easily bribed.
Bruce: Why are there reporters in my house!?
Danny, innocent and childlike: They asked to come inside, Bruce! They seemed like really nice people, so I thought it'd be polite to give them a tour.
Bruce, filled with infinite patience: I really wish you had asked me before you did that, chum.
Danny: But why? We don't have anything to hide... do we, Bruce?
Or, in order to rise to the Ghost Throne, Danny has to complete a series of trials to prove he is capable of ruling (or any other reason, Danny just needs to do trials to prove himself).
The last trial, issued by Clockwork, is thus: discover the Wayne Family secret in two weeks without the use of any of his powers.
He has one shapeshift to pick a form that could endere him to the Waynes, but only one before he starts and he has to get close to the family by his own wits. Danny, after studying the family and reading of one sentence summary of each Wayne, picks the body of a six-year-old little boy that looked like a child Jason Todd.
Bruce: That child is up to something.
Dick, third favorite: I don't know, Bruce; he acts like a normal kid.
Jason, #1 favorite: I doubt the old man's ever met a normal kid.
Tim, least favorite: Bruce is right, but can you please not talk like the villains from Chicken Run.
#dc x dp#dp x dc#dpxdc#dcxdp#de-aged danny#danny thinks the trials happen in simulations in the GZ#he has no idea they were alternate realities each time#c: danny fenton#c: bruce wayne#c: dick grayson#c: jason todd#jason is favorite since danny is convinced that his “death” has to do with the Secret#and also for being completely 100% ok with throwing down with a child#tim is least favorite because he's too suspicious#damian is second favorite for also being 100% ok with throwing down with a child#dick is tearfully trying to gentle parent jason into being a good big brother#all “you're going to be such a good big brother let me teach you.”#which jason doesn't NEED but is kinda flattered that dick has so much faith in him to be a big bro
3K notes
·
View notes
Note
spencer one shot where he’s angry at somebody else [bc he so does look so kissable when he’s angry >:(] maybe someone at one of the precincts they’re working at said something rude about r and he defends u and maybe he gets a lil kiss <3
im thinking “this is calm and it’s doctor” vibes bc that scene does things to me 😭
ty for requesting ♡ fem, 1.1k
cw for sexual harassment
"Jesus," Spencer says, rushing to stand behind you as you bend over.
"Mm?" you hum. You're fishing for your dropped change unsuccessfully by the precinct vending machines. "They have your chips, did you see?"
"Your pants are ripped," Spencer says, hand ghosting your thigh.
"What?" you ask, shooting up. You turn on the spot to hide, hand leaping back. You feel at the seam. "Where?"
"Top of your thigh."
"Shit, really? Can you see my–"
"Yeah," he says, meeting your wide eyes while you locate the rip. "How did you do that?" He laughs.
"Don't laugh!" you demand, though you're giggling as you do, hand covering your thigh and the bottom of your butt inefficiently.
"Do you want my jacket?"
"Don't cover it up, toots."
You and Spencer both blink. There's a crowd of grinning beat cops by the door of the cafeteria who've obviously witnessed your misdemeanour. "Toots?" Spencer asks.
"Sorry, boys, that's the end of the show," you say with a grin. Not because you particularly enjoy having been oggled, but it's always been like this. Men will always make weird comments to you, and you've learned to play nice until they're out of your jurisdiction.
"Turn back around," one says bravely, though you aren't sure which one.
Spencer stands in front of you subtly. "Do you know that thirty eight percent of women experience sexual harassment in the workplace?" he asks, quick but measured. "Thirty eight percent, but I'm sure a much smaller number of those women are federal agents, and a smaller number again have the capacity to break your arm. I've seen her give serial killers radial fractures. I've seen her do worse."
"We were just messing around," one says.
"No need to get defensive," says another. "Don't get mad, boy."
"I am defensive, but I'm not mad."
His tone attracts the attention of a precinct sergeant who barks at them to stop messing around and get back to work. "Were they bothering you?" he asks after they've filtered out with their heads down.
"No," you say swiftly. "Everything's fine."
Spencer frowns, worse when the sergeant leaves, turning to you to take your hand. A few weeks ago at a company picnic, when the sun was high and your spirits comparatively lower, you'd apologised to him for flirting. You love to flirt and especially with him, puppy eyed Spencer with his head of brown hair and his big brain, but some of the team suggested you were taking it too far. You apologised, but Spencer didn't really get what you were saying sorry for and took your hand to lead you out of the sun. He protects you.
"You okay?" he asks.
"I'm fine."
"You sure?" His voice fries.
"I'm sure," you say. His hand is an interesting thing on yours. He has long, long fingers that seem to possess their own willpower, moving even as they're sewn through yours. "I don't know what to do about my pants."
Spencer's eyebrows pinch together. "Well, I'll take care of that. I'll find you something. I can't believe those as–"
"Oh," you interrupt, taking your hand back in want of a better thing to hold, his cheek a mix of soft and scratchy against your palm. "You're still mad."
"I'm not mad," he insists, though eventually he relents, "Alright, I'm angry that they'd think it was okay to objectify you."
"What else?" you ask, letting your voice drop in pitch, the sound smooth as angora silk.
"I'm thinking about if I hadn't been here."
"I can protect myself," you murmur, endeared by the heat in his gaze. "You said it yourself, handsome. Radial fractures."
"You shouldn't have to."
"We both already know that," you say, the side of your hand slipping down his cheek reverently. He squints gently, his lashes dark triangles, his irises a browned sugar. His jaw clenches under your touch. "You're handsome."
"Right now?" he asks dryly.
"Are you handsome right now?"
"Are you really flirting with me right now?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" You draw a line under his ear whisper soft to curl a longer strand of his hair around the tip. "You look hot when you're winning."
"What did I win?" he asks, like he doesn't want to know.
You grin at him, stickying. "Would you like an itemised list?" you ask, rising on tiptoes to speak into the shell of his ear. "What do you think you deserve, handsome? For such a fearless defence?"
He's not immune to your whims, but he is used to them, planting his hands on your shoulders to ease you back on sure footing. "I don't want anything. I'll always defend you."
"Can I give you a small token of my gratitude, at least?"
His pinking cheeks practically emanate heat. "We don't have time for this," he says regretfully, "I still have to find you a coverup."
"Just a small token," you say.
He hums and haws. "Alright. Okay, whatever you want."
"You sure?"
He nods once, his jaw working with something unsaid. You touch his neck, fingertips trailing along the underside of his jaw until you're sure it's what he wants before you brace your hands behind his head and press a chaste kiss to his cheek, close enough that the corner of his lips align with yours but don't overlap. His neck is hot in your hands, his hair soft, his breath hooking as you lift your lips just a touch and your nose digs into his cheek. "Thank you, Spencer," you whisper.
He pulls you closer.
You shudder as his hand presses into the small of your back, wondering what it is he wants to do. His fingers spread. Your thoughts turn to white noise. Like he can sense it, he breathes out and steps away, but any sense of urgency is gone.
"As much as I might tease, I really do need some pants," you say. "I'm not very interested in anyone else seeing my panties today."
He rushes off to find you something and you press the backs of your fingers to your cheeks, feeling the heat there with a resigned embarrassment. He has no idea how much power he has over you, in his stony anger and his eager reception. The phantom of his hand warms your back until he returns, his sweater in hand. "Sorry, this is it."
"If you want me to wear your clothes, just say so."
"Hotch is pretty pissed at us."
"Ah," you sigh, tying his sweater around your waist, "another day in paradise, baby."
#spencer reid#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid x you#spencer reid x y/n#spencer reid x fem!reader#spencer reid imagine#spencer reid fluff#spencer reid fanfic#spencer reid oneshot#spencer reid scenario#spencer reid drabble#spencer reid fic#spencer reid fanfiction#criminal minds fanfiction#criminal minds#criminal minds fic#criminal minds x reader
5K notes
·
View notes
Text
so like. fnaf movie. after night five, all outside observers know is "this 30yo guy with severe anger issues + his 10yo mentally ill sister just walked out of his collapsing workplace with an unconscious, stabbed police officer, saying that someone inside the building tried to kill them but we can't get into the building to check. we went to their house and the aunt who was fighting for custody of the child is dead on the floor. the guy's career counselor is missing, as is his babysitter and her family and apparently they're all dead in the building we can't get into." and like. that all looks suspicious as FUCK however we know that in the few-weeks timeskip both mike and abby seem happy and fine so it's not like mike was arrested or anything. he seems to be more adjusted and is happily talking with her teacher so i doubt he's under stress of interrogation or anything
there's a lot of implications there that mike mighta pulled something but it's all circumstantial evidence at best. i'm sure in jane's autopsy and crime scene evidence they couldn't find any evidence of mike being the one to attack her, esp since it was probably just golden freddy bopping her in the head so they dont even have the weapon, and if she was strangled they'd be able to tell it wasn't by bare hands and they couldnt get prints or anyth. especially if golden freddy is a FULL ghost and thus left no trail.
mike would be smart enough to only tell the cops what they need to know without mentioning ghosts to sound crazy. abby might be more honest with the cops just bc of #autism but they'd be more likely to consider her talking about ghosts and imaginary friends as a child's way of coping, and they cant get anything out of her that would incriminate mike. ADD TO THAT that mike has wounds that are clearly defensive and is SUPER banged up and his wounds would likely match his story way better than evidence of him attacking anyone, AND that there's likely footage and witnesses of him being in the pharmacy and then driving to work (and thus not in the area to attack jane), AND if/when nessie wakes up she'll probably vouch for mike as well, and the cops dont have anything on him
though i DO wonder if they would have records of vanessa patching him up in the police outpost. if they do, that would also back up mike's story as it's 1) far away from the aunt jane crime scene, 2) confirms that he and vanessa were working together, so either she's complicit in Crime™ or his story is accurate and she was helping him save his sister. him going to defend her instead of calling backup is also consistent with his personality of getting triggered and jumping into action around child abduction, esp w/ his sibling in danger
considering what abby would probably say, AND the history of freddy's, it's likely that they would come to the conclusion of is "someone [likely the og kidnapper from the 80s] found out that the guy working at freddy's had a sister, kidnapped abby from her house while her aunt was babysitting and tried to recreate the crimes, his story of him and vanessa defending her and escaping vaguely checks out." whether or not mike would incriminate vanessa by mentioning her dad was the killer is up in the air, and there's obviously some huge holes that are left from nobody believing that there are ghosts in the building but that would probably be the eventual conclusion
but throwing that all away, it would be really, REALLY funny if the rest of the town, being really fuckin nosy and getting into the juiciest gossip they've had in decades, took one look at michael "big teddy bear falling asleep on himself" schmidt and said "there's no way. there's no way this guy murdered his aunt, stabbed an officer and then destroyed his own workplace, especially when he really needed that job and was on sleeping medication," and then turned around to look at abby "neurodivergent in the early 2000s (ableist af time period)" "vocally hates her aunt" "doesn't talk to anyone and claims that she can see ghosts" "vaguely possessive of her brother" "claims that she found the guy who hurt her friends and got him jumped by a cupcake(?)" schmidt and said "oh my god. it was her."
and nobody's gonna directly say anything but they've got cautious eyes on the situation and someone quietly slips mike a copy of the bad seed to see if he has a realization but instead he's just like "hey this book kinda reminds of that golden freddy kid lmao. wonder how he's doin" and then we smashcut to golden freddy kid poking springtrap with a stick
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
DPxDC and OOC
I've had a couple of posts cross my dash recently where people lament that a lot of the dpxdc fandom writes characters very OOC and how we're proliferating these characterizations among each other. I figured I'd add my own two cents.
I think the fundamental discrepancy comes from trying to reconcile two canons with vastly different tones.
Danny Phantom is a comedy superhero show operating on cartoon logic. Why do ghost experts Jack and Maddie never realize their own kid is a ghost? Why is the status quo restored at the end of every episode? Why does Danny shoot an ectoblast out of his butt that one time? Because it's funny. It's cartoony action fun where the plot is resolved in 22 minutes, there's never any lasting consequences and it's aimed at kids.
DC meanwhile wants to be taken Seriously. Heroes get beaten within an inch of their life, traumatized, killed and even the good guys do messed up things (often to each other). Yes there's action and puns, but also horrific violence, actions have consequences and it's (mostly) aimed at adults. When a main character dies the comics show their family and friends mourning and things are very dramatic. Even though at this point we, the audience can pretty much expect every death to be undone within 2-5 years of publishing, but I digress.
So how do we, the fanfic/fanart creators reconcile these differences when we make our crossovers? We either make DP more serious and somber, or we make DC more comedic.
Suddenly we have a DP verse where the Fentons' bumbling obliviousness is elevated to serious neglect or outright abuse. The GiW are no longer a minor annoyance, they are a serious threat with genocidal plans and a desire to vivisect the protagonist. When actions have consequences, we imagine Danny as dealing with serious PTSD from having to be a solo superhero and witnessing his family's death that one time (and maybe also getting vivisected). Danny is not just a teen superhero, he's now the Ghost King with serious responsibility on his shoulders.
On the flipside, if we make DC more comedic we tend to exaggerate character traits for comedic effect, focus more on the interpersonal dynamics (especially the Batfam) and have the characters act more casual and silly. Suddenly the Batfam goes from a group of seriously messed up individuals who have trouble communicating with each other and fight all the time to Batdad "Kids if you don't stop killing criminals you won't get dessert ffs" Bruce. Violence is played for laughs instead of taken seriously. Yeah they fight, but they still Love Each Other.
And THIS IS PERFECTLY FINE. It's transformative work! And trying to reconcile these disparate fandoms is hard! Fandom is a labor of love. We do it for free. We do it for our own entertainment. And no one is forcing you to read fics you don't like. DLDR and all that.
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
Light on - single mom/neighbors fic
Simon Riley/female reader
Morning comes with dark regret.
Light tries to fight past his curtains, luxurious slivers of sun peeking through the edges, casting sharp beams across his face. It’s what wakes him, at first, gently bringing him to consciousness, easing him into reality- before memory slaps him across the face.
Fuck. Did he dream that? Was that real?
He tries, for a barely there moment, to pretend that it was a nightmare. That he didn’t shut you out, turn you away from his door, sweet, beautiful face smiling up at him, timid offering on your lips.
“Thought we could, um, try this again?”
His stomach sours when he remembers the way your shy expression shattered, how you faltered, confused and… hurt. He hurt you. He took your trust, your precious heart, and smashed it to pieces because he was afraid. Because he couldn’t let you see.
His reflection in the bathroom mirror makes him sick.
Fucked up nose, fucked up face, fucked up, cruel, awful person.
Maybe he's more like him than he realizes.
How could he have done that to you? To you. The one person in this entire world that makes him feel warm, that makes him want something more, that gives him hope. His girl.
He knows why, of course. He didn’t want you to see him, didn’t want you to know what it was like. Wanted to shield you from it, keep you and Emmaline tucked away in the space inside his heart, where you're safe. Where you don't realize how much of a monster he is. Didn’t want you to witness the come down, the decompression, the shedding of his skin post mission. Didn’t want you to know that he’s not always the man you think he is, the one you know, the one you trust to hold your baby and take you to the hospital and eat dinner in your kitchen. He didn’t want to shatter the illusion, didn’t want to step out from behind the lie. He wasn’t ready for it to be over yet.
Because what would you have done, if you met Ghost? If you realized that your neighbor is a professional killer? A war criminal? Sure, he told you what he does for a living, but he didn’t tell you that much. And fuck. He couldn’t just let you in his flat. He hadn’t even showered, hadn’t gotten all the grease off his face. He still had blood under his fingernails, men’s dying screams echoing in his ears. How could he let that touch you? How could he let any of that, be anywhere near you?
You and Emmaline would be far better off if he stayed in the shadows. Kept an eye on you, kept you safe, but kept his distance. A good man, a better man, would spare you the pain, the heartbreak, of bringing something like him into your life.
The problem is, Simon’s never been a good man.
He tries calling you. When it goes to voicemail, he hangs up, rolling over in bed, burying his face in his pillow. He keeps himself tucked under his blankets, sleep desperately pulling at him, trying to drag him into the black abyss of his dreams and when the minutes tick by and you don’t call him back… he begrudgingly succumbs to the cocoon of sleep.
He calls again, later, as the sun is setting. You don’t answer, and he tells himself you’re probably busy, busy getting Emmaline and you fed, busy trying to settle her for bedtime. Busy ignoring him. He strains to listen through the walls, hoping to catch the muffled sound of your voice, or the TV, Emma’s cries or giggles, a sign of some kind. A sign that he should try again. Call you again. Knock on your door.
He hears you in the hall an hour later.
Emmaline is crying, and you’re trying to soothe her, low pitch of your “shhh, shhh, shhh” slipping under his door and down the hall to where he’s pacing in the living room. He bolts to his front door, swinging through the frame, turning towards where you’ve got her in a wrap against your chest, backpack straps looped through your arm.
“Shit!” You yelp, eyes wide. Emmaline startles against you, cheeks wet with tears, and then she quiets, mouth hanging open. “Jesus. You scared me.” You’re fidgeting with your keys, fingers clenched just a little too tight around the ring.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” You smile at him, but it’s all wrong, the kind of smile you might give a stranger, someone you only know in passing. His stomach flips.
“I tried calling, earlier, uh- are you two… busy?” Let me explain, sweetheart. Please. I’m so sorry.
“She’s overdue for a bottle,” You motion to Emma, who’s now gazing at him with a sweet little smile, tears evaporated. “and she’s got a tooth pushing through, so it’s been a really long day.” You sound exhausted, and look it too, shifting your weight, stretching with a bit of a wince, and he frowns. Is your back hurting you? Is it your neck? Where is the stroller?
“Do you need some help?” C’mon love. I know I hurt you, let me explain. Please. Let me help. You need me. I need you. He takes a step towards you, longing practically dragging him by force into your orbit, but your face twists, and you move backwards, away from him.
His heart cracks in his chest. No. Please.
“Ah, no. I got it, no worries.” No worries. No worries? “With the teething, she’s… I’ll try to keep her quiet. Just let me know if she’s too loud or if it’s a problem.”
“It’s not a problem.” He rushes to reassure you. “Of course it’s not, sweetheart. I… if you have some time, later… I want to talk to you, about last night, I-“
“Oh, it’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.” You wave him off, eyes tight, lip tugged between your teeth. Emmaline lets out a small cry, just the beginning of a wail, and you sigh. “I’ve gotta get her inside.” He doesn’t want to push you, doesn’t want to make you feel like he’s backing you into a corner or trying to force you to listen to him, and he doesn’t know what else to do. He feels lost. Stupid. So, so stupid for letting his girl, his… family, slip away from him like this.
“Alright… well, let me know if you need anything, yeah?” He asks gently, and you nod without looking at him, eyes bouncing from Emmaline to the floor, to the keys in your hand.
“Sure.”
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
Welcome Home, Daddy
The aftermath of when Bucky accidentally relapsed into the Winter Soldier.
Summary: Bucky was over the moon when he discovered that Y/N was pregnant with his child. But, when the danger that lurks in dark threatened to steal his family away, a fellow soldier decided to come home.
Note: Highly recommend to read 《 Welcome Home... Soldat? 》 for backstory. But, you can also read this as a stand alone (though you might miss some call backs on the soldat's behaviour if you skip)
Pairing: winter soldier!bucky x female!reader
Words: 7.1k++ (bare with me, please)
Warnings: graphic violence, torture, blood, gore, deaths, dark undertones, sudden fluff, tiny bit of angst, google translated russian, and just so much detained anger exploding around, soldat is just deadly yet adorable in this one (i can't even handle it, and i'm the author), this event takes place far in the future after what happened in 《 Welcome Home...Soldat? 》
A/N: Looks like we have the winner for the poll 👀 Who's ready for our lovely soldat to make his appearance again? I know I'm not, but here we are. So, strap in and let's do this!
P/S: Also, I might as well make this as my submission for the seven writing event hosted by @nickfowlerrr 💌 Check out the event masterlist and support the writers by reading and reblogging their stories!
Read my other works here: Masterlist
They say the wrath of a fighter may threatened a heinous war but the wrath of a lover will let the earth drenched in bloody gore. And if a fool was daft enough to tore a lover from his other half, then they might just court themselves right into the hands of death.
And this couldn't be more true, especially if we consider the crime that the soldat was currently committing. Surely, the blood pooling on the floor will forever leave a grim mark that'll haunt the people who ever witness it.
"Where is she?" the soldat prompted the frail woman, limping on the chained chair. Despite the horrid situation, he sounded rather calm when he spoke.
How unfortunate it was for Elle to be associated with Hydra yet to also be so exposed to the dangers of the ghost himself, the Winter Soldier. Hydra may have their suspicion about the soldat making a move, but she didn't expect that she would be involved in the mess of this ordeal.
The cold metal of the soldat's vibranium fingers, particularly his index and thumb, latched themselves on another one of her nails. Her mouth slacked open but no sound was able to be formed when the soldat mercilessly ripped her nail right off her finger.
And oh, the pain was beyond any kind of injury that she had ever experienced, not a even a bullet through her flesh could be compared to this agony of a torture.
He harshly grabbed Elle by the back of her neck, forcing her to watch the blood leaking from the reddened flesh of her fingers, "I asked you a simple question, су́ка (bitch). Where the fuck is she?" The soldat's patience had been running thin and rage had clouded his judgements.
He needed to find her. His precious Родная (darling).
No matter whose neck he needed to slay or whose blood that have to be shed dry. He had to bring his darling home; no matter what it takes.
Unfortunately, it had been almost a month since he lost her.
And no one saw it coming.
Who would've thought that the old Hydra compound that the team raided were meant to be a part of a plan to weaken the Avengers. It was just a distraction filled with unexpected traps and triggers. By the time they flew home, the team were already tired and injured as the result of the raid.
So imagine the desperate struggle and utter panic that Bucky had to go through the moment he stepped his foot into the comfort of their home and had to witness Y/N's exhausted figure fighting for her life.
Hers and the baby's inside.
After hitting the 2 months mark of pregnancy, Bucky decided that Y/N shouldn't be involved in any high stake mission anymore. At first, she only laughed to his statement, thinking he was surely joking but when his stern expression didn't flatter, that was when she reliazed Bucky was not open for negotiation.
Y/N knew it was way too early to settle into her maternal leave but after having a long conversation with Bucky, they both agreed to keep her missions strictly on low-risk stakeouts and desk works at the tower.
It was supposedly be some kind of a precaution for her, to keep her and the baby safe, away from any type harm that might come their way. But, that certainly back fired.
When Bucky's burning anger had pumped him full with high stream of adrenaline, it was as if he went into an auto pilot; a murderous one at that. And soon enough he managed to take down half of Hydra's best agents that joined the mission of collecting Y/N from the tower.
For a moment, it seemed like luck was on their side, at least it felt like it.
It lasted only until Bucky saw how harsh the kick of the enemy landed on Y/N's hip, and how she managed to shield her stomach seconds before her body slammed down to the ground.
That was when fear crawled into his pumping nerves and the roots of it ran extremely cold.
And that was all it takes for Hydra to distract Bucky then immobilize him on the spot with a replica of the Sonic Taser developed by Stark Industries a few years back.
Bucky grunted painfully in protest of the high pitched sonic frequency from the device that overloads his nervous system. His body couldn't help but to slowly paralyzed its movements as his skin turned pale and the strain in his blood vessels became visible.
On the opposite side, Y/N could be seen being forcefully dragged away by a few of the Hydra agents that was left. There were couple of nasty injuries torn all over her body yet she was still stubborn on fighting back.
While she was being pulled farther away from him, she shouted his name loud and desprete, "Bucky!" Hot tears broke from the corner of her eyes as she desperately reach out her hand.
It felt as if she was right there when Bucky's hand was reaching back towards her. Like, a little bit of a push would've been enough to catch her but alas fate was not planning to be merciful.
Bucky's menancing eyes never left her wavering ones as Hydra tortured Bucky by stealing a part of his soul from him; and no one really knew how his heart clenched and torn to the fact that he was helplessly useless when Y/N needed him the most.
And when he only managed to scream back Y/N's name, he was forced to watch her wailed as she was unwillingly being taken away.
The moment when Bucky drowned himself in regret and rage, that was when the Winter Soldier took over his consciousness.
Unfortunately for the soldat, his mortal body was already worn out from all the intense fight that happened prior; he was knocked out right after he took over the body.
But in those few seconds before the darkness consumed him, the soldat managed to catch a glimpse of his darling. He saw the image of her; teary and bruised in the hands of those who created him. The very same monsters who uses him for despicable things.
That was all that he needed to see in order to break those chains around the dark pandora residing deep within his being.
The team was absolutely not ready to deal with the soldat again, this time without Y/N to tame him. Especially when his demands were unrealistic for them to fulfill.
It's been nearly 3 weeks since the incident and they had failed to locate Y/N; repeatedly. Even if they did manage to get some kind of an intel, all the of bases they had raided were basically bunch of abandoned spaces that Hydra used to occupy.
So of course the soldat was agitated. He had every right to be, more so when he thought of the increasing risk of his darling getting hurt in the hands of Hydra. And at this point, those scumbags were just messing with their minds. Especially with his.
"Listen, we're doing our best here, soldat." Steve tried to reason with him but it only fueled the burning flames within the soldat, "ты делаешь недостаточно! (You're not doing enough!)" He spat harshly that he didn't even noticed that he uses Russian language. It seemed like the unkempt irritation had conquered the chaos of his mind.
So that very night, the soldat decided to do this on his own; thus he ran away from the tower in search for his darling. He had to. Especially when he knew precisely why the Avenger was not able to find Y/N as quickly as they should be.
It was because they were the good guys. They were the heros, they were the light. And the soldat was not. In fact, he was the very opposite.
Unlike the Avengers, the soldat was not planning to play nice and soon enough he managed to find a lead.
Which bring us to this very moment in which he successfully snuck into a Hydra agent's home to interrogate her.
But, in contrast of those Hydra troops that attack the Avengers Tower a few weeks ago, Elle was not even involved in the mission of retrieving Y/N. She was actually on a solo mission to infiltrate a certain high school to collect informations on Peter Parker. Hydra suspected that he might be involved with the new hero appearing in Queens.
However, even if she was not a part of the team mission, she knew bits and pieces of the overall plan, especially the whereabout of the main character herself, Y/N.
However, the appearance of the Winter Soldier in her temporary house was completely unexpected.
It felt like it was just few moments ago that the intel on Y/N's location reached her ears. Then, she distinctly remember the glimpse of those murderous eyes glaring into her soul. Next thing she knew was everything went pitch black.
Even if it was temporary, however it felt so surreal.
The darkness surrounding her.
The bone rattling cold.
It felt like death itself.
But unfortunately for her, the soldat was far from stopping.
Elle was fraying at the edges while the soldat crouch to her level. Even if she could barely reconstruct the unclear and blurry images through her dazed eyes, however, that didn't stop the soldat from maiming the dying woman's soul through his unforgiving gaze.
"Wake up..." he growled as he yanked her face upwards, "...we're not done yet."
It took a while for Elle to finally adjust to the light, after being in the dark for – how she felt like – so long.
After the light hits her vision, the striking pain came next. The pulsing pain surrounding of her right eye, her broken nose, her busted lips, her bleeding skin; neck, chest, arms, and almost every part of her limbs.
Everything were – slowly but surely, in each cuts and bruises on her skin – blooming its pain into existence.
How can she skipped all of this when she lost her consciousness?
Perhaps that was how she managed to stay alive as long as she had. By running away from the misery; from her reality.
Elle whined in pain but her voice suggested that she might already torn her throat apart when it sounded more like a broken grunt. Her disoriented gaze fell into her aching fingers, each were missing its nail; the tips of them was where the icky blood trickled from and had shaped a pool of blood on the floor where she rested.
The dim lighting from the room reflected on the surface of the deep-red puddle, revealing the resemblance of it to a mirror. And the blurry image looking back, was the soldat, with a sinister expression on his face.
This game, that they're playing.
It hardly seems fair to one of them. To be tortured if not speaking the truth? That's simply unjust; but if we're talking about fairness, then none of those injuries could ever be compared to the pain Y/N might be going through at this very moment. Every second of Elle's useless stubbornness was costing Y/N's safety.
And the soldat didn't like that. Not one bit.
"You mentioned Spain? Where exactly?" In one swift, harsh motion, the soldat thrust his knife through her thighs, "FUCK!"
The loud scream of pain that tore from Elle's throat was probably the last coherent word that she uttered as the torture continued.
The soldat pulled the knife out and stabbing it into the open wound, he listened to Elle's gasp for a moment, relishing her breathless pleading and the tears now openly streaming down her face.
He stabbed again, twice, each was quick and deep, not caring about the blood that spurted out across his face.
At this point Elle was just a puddle of blabbering mess; streams of saliva pouring out her mouth, sobbing, gasping for air; mixture of grunts, moans and whispers of curses and pleas were all spouted incoherently.
Anger.
Frustration.
Rage.
Wrath.
Even hatred.
The soldat was feeling it all.
It was consuming him, devouring any sanity that was left of Bucky's moral values. The eerie glint in the soldat eyes suggested that he was not planning to stop until she gave him what he wants.
God, if it wasn't for chilling atmosphere around her, Elle might just mistook that she was actually in hell.
"Pyrenees!" She cried out. The soldat instantly stopped when she confessed. He waited for an answer and right on cue, she spoke again, breathless and almost silent as the fear that engulfed her prior refused to release her from its haunting grip. And truthfully she doubt that it will ever let her go, "T-there a secret base n-near the Irati forest."
She exhaled a shaky breath as she pleaded, "S-so please. Please stop this." The was tired of the pain and the numbness that came after. And the soldat knows it.
The room was left silent momentarily, as if he was actually considering her plea but alas he already had plans for her all along, "Shame. You should've killed yourself before I came here."
As he finished the last word, the soldat viciously plunged his knife deep into her neck, digging the sharpness of it through the delicate flesh until it reach the base of the blade.
Elle gasped in response, her hands scrabbling around in effort to break free, to stop all of this. But considering the situation she was in, there was nothing she could do about it other than to take it as it was given to her.
When the motion finally stopped, the soldat simply walked away from the scene as if it was a complete norm for him to behave as he was. He didn't even thought of cleaning the mess he left behind. Or hide the corpse somewhere.
Isn't he afraid that he might leave his tracks for the police to find?
Why would he?
This has been his life for decades on end. His sole purpose of living was to kill. So best believe that the authorities will never be able to link the soldat or Bucky to this crime.
Not today, not ever.
Through the days that Y/N was locked deep within Hydra's base, she hadn't been treated the worst. In fact, the sick and twisted agents and residents in the facility was more than willing to care for her.
This was all because they wanted her baby.
It was always sickening to hear them referring her child as merely a tool for their success. And the way they worship Y/N like she was a gift from God to fulfill their purpose, was beyond insanity.
"Oh, to have the privilage of bearing the offspring of the Winter Soldier. To be able to create the perfect weapon, unlike the father. It is just honorable."
It made her stomach churned with pure disgust whenever she heard those types of comments floating around her.
Besides the eerily digusting behaviour of the agents, there was also the regular check-ups and the lab tests that she needed to attend. Out of all the things she had to endure these past few weeks, the medical check-up has always dreaded her the most.
There was this constant debate within her troubled mind; of the possibility of Hydra manipulating her baby's health and genes by inserting unknown substance into her.
"Come on, mama. On the bed." The doctor said as he patted his rubber gloved hand on the surface of the rigid single bed.
She always found it vile that the people here calling her by that nickname. It tickled her throat in a way that she wanted to puke all the tasteless gunk that they had fed her with.
As she laid on the bed and let the process went on as it usually do, the doctor suddenly stopped everything that he was doing. At first she was weirded out by the irregular act of the man, but when she felt the vibration on the ground and the rushing footsteps from the floor above her, she knew exactly why the doctor suddenly froze on his spot.
And the emergency siren that shortly blared after, had only confirmed her speculation.
But mostly, it was the panic in the doctor's eyes that gave him away; then when Y/N noticed the man scrambled to search the drawers from one of the cabinet, she knew that he was up to no good.
The second that the doctor's hurried his steps towards her with a syringe in his hand, Y/N's body immediately recoiled. She quickly stopped him by grabbing his wrist and twisted it back until the syringe dropped from his hold.
The man cursed under his breath and decided to take her by force when he grabbed a handful of her hair, almost dragging her out of the bed. Y/N shrieked painfully while her hands blindly grabbing the silver tray by the bed next to her.
She then slammed it hard against his head, and watched the contents on the tray fell and scatter onto her. She took quick skim over all the tools and saw a potential weapon for her defence; a scissor.
"Stay still, mama. Or the baby will get hurt." The doctor foolishly threatened.
Maybe it was her defence mechanism or maybe it was just her motherly instinct kicking in but something just snapped inside of her when he said those words. There was this incredibly strong urge to either fight or take flight.
Of course she could easily slipped away and make a run for it but she just couldn't risk it. Especially when her baby's life was currently at stake. So, after a short moment of hesitation, she swiftly grabbed the scissors and surge it through his ribs. The man wailed in pain as he staggered off the bed and fell onto the floor.
You'd thought a single yet firm stab through the guts was enough to quench Y/N's need of fighting back but no. Apparently, the haywire of her nerves had drove her feral and she needed him to be soulless by the time she walk out the room.
That had forced her to nearly jumped on him like a predator pinning on a meek prey and the lack of struggling on the victim's side had only gave her full control to dominate him.
Then all of the sudden, the doctor felt another strike of the pain, digging into the flesh of his chest.
He woefully cried in extreme pain while Y/N did not utter a single word or let out any sound, she stayed silent as she thrusts the scissor in and out his flesh.
Each surge was vicious than the previous. Each stab was gradually speeding up as the motion increases it's number of repetition.
She completely let her emotions took over her sanity.
Until what's left in the room was only the sloshing and splashing sound of blood seeping through every thrust, as she continued to violate the body of the corpse.
Until the calm puddle of blood on floor rippled as the tears that broke from her eyes dropped on it's surface.
And when she realized that the doctor was long dead, that broke Y/N out from her feral state. Realizing what she had done; she shakily loosen her grip on the scissors and scrambled off from the lifeless body.
Her breath was near erratic; it was a chaos of unsteady rhythm as her words was lost at the tip of her tongue. She jolted in shock when the commotion in the facility got louder than before, reminding her that Bucky was there to save her.
Y/N felt a sob choking in her throat as her hands searched her stomach to coax the child in her womb, "It's okay sweet bean, daddy's here for us."
Have you ever heard how ear-ringingly loud it is when it's hailing? How the sounds of the frozen raindrops hitting – the top of your car or the roof of the shades of an outdoor café table – can completely mute your words for anyone to hear?
That has nothing compared to the thundering sounds that echoed throughout the whole facility. The shots were fired from multiple range of stolen guns, all were coming from one moving figure.
The once clean grey and white painted walls of the hallways, were now stained and splattered with the color of crimson. The usually empty hallways, were occupied by the dead bodies of fallen Hydra agents. And the distinct scent of well-kept lair, were effortlessly replaced by the unpleasant and pungent smell; a mixture of blood and sweat.
It was a clear trail of the Winter Soldier's deeds.
This place was supposed to be pristine, but now feels more like how it should be; hell.
While the enemies were roaring into their death, the soldat on the other hand was very much the opposite.
Unlike his foe, it took him very little work from the tips of his tongue and much more on the tips of his gun. When the enemies barked like a dog, the soldat pounced like a wolf; silent and resilient.
By nature, the soldat had never been a patient man, especially when it comes to people harming his darling.
Sure, maybe he can tolerate and play along with people who messed with him, but if one were to touch even a strand of hair of his beloved, then they practically reserving themselves a first class ticket of a one-way trip to hell.
And that unhinged tendencies of his only worsen when wrath was the one reigning his mind while hatred was its ruler. His mind was nothing but a chaos of rampage and vengeance. Seeking nothing but blood and death of his foolish foe.
At this point of time, with the amount of life he had taken from the moment he step foot into the gate of the base, to the very stairs he was currently climbing, one could probably matched his heart rate with the rhythm of the shots formed by the bullets he shot.
Magazine upon magazine he reloaded his gun and waste no less than zero bullet as every shot made was accurately deadly and terrifying fatal to his prey.
As the soldat's feet reached half way up the stairs, a Hydra agent's voice spoke from the lower level, "She's on the LG2, we need a team to come and collect her as soon as poss--" A bullet went straight through the top of his head before he could finish his sentence.
And that was the soldat's last ammo.
While he mentally took note on the intel, his feet was quick to jumped into action and made his way down to LG2. As he entered the hallway, his wild eyes wondered around to steal another gun from a dead man's body.
But he rose into a stand, he felt a tip of a cold steel nudged at the back of his head.
Some would call out the soldat's mistake for letting his guard down in the middle of a battle, but another would definitely ridicule the stupidity of that fool's guts for even thinking that the soldat couldn't counter-attack his weak threats.
However, none of the two man managed to made any move towards each other when there was a faster, more accurate trigger was pulled from someone else, from across the hallway.
And that action left an aftermath of the fool's body to drop flat on the floor, quickly finding it's perfect spot with between the other pile of corpses scattered around.
When the soldat turned around, the sharp of his gaze softened almost immediately.
There she was standing there, in the pastel blue of her 'prison' attire. Her hair was a bit messy even if it was tied, and her complexion looked slightly pale with fatigue but to the soldat, she was glowing like angel; despite the blood on her clothes or the gun in her hand.
She was right there.
His heart.
His love.
His darling.
Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had been crying for days. Her pouty lips trembled when the soldat stepped closer and closer towards her, tears threatening to fall as if she haven't done that during all the weeks that she had been here.
The soldat's steps grew faster.
So does Y/N's.
Tap taping until they were almost running towards each other.
Until the moment they reunited in the middle.
Catching each other's lips in a desperate and insatiable kiss, the soldat pulled her body tight around the waist as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Both whimpered in a yearning moan, both still had their guns hanging on one of their hands.
So many feelings at once, relief and grief, with each of them had a different story to tell.
The couple kept breaking and mending the kiss ever-so-passionately as if they weren't in the middle of the grave-less cemetery; as if they weren't in the center of the piling corpses.
Briefly opening his eyes, the soldat could see a shadow running towards them. When Y/N heard the footsteps from her back, she knew they need to pull away, but the soldat was firm and stubborn with his hold.
So instead of letting her break the kiss, he groaned in disapproval and pulled her lips back to his. An angry growl vibrated against her lips as he continued to explore her wet and warm mouth.
Caught off-guard she melted to his silent demand, almost forgot that the enemy was right behind her. But, she should've know better when the soldat loosen one of his arms from the embrace and pointed his gun towards the target.
His finger pulled the trigger almost as easily as his teeth tugging into the bottom of her lips. And suddenly the sound of a body collapsing behind didn't matter anymore.
When the soldat felt that he had enough of the sweetness of her kiss, he finally pulled away, at least for now. He whispered dearly, "Родная (darling)..." he cupped her face in his large hands and rested his forehead on hers.
She thought she heard it wrong, but did he just called her darling? It took her a few second to piece it together and realized that this man was not Bucky, that he had relapsed into the Winter Soldier again, "Soldat?"
The soldat smiled and leaned forward to steal a chaste kiss on her lips, "Yes, it's me, мое Родная (my darling)" he cooed as he swept her by her feet, off the bloody ground and carried her in his arm, "I got you, Куколка (little one). You can rest now."
"We're just wanted make sure she's alright."
"You can follow us if you want so just please--"
"Soldat! You're going to hurt her."
The familiar voices leaked through Y/N's ears as she was drifting through her dreamless slumber. Soon enough, the loud commotion of her surrounding woke her up from the deep sleep.
The words that the Avengers were yelling out became clearer as she gained her consciousness, and the ever-changing movements of the soldat, evading every step the Avengers made to get closer to him, made her aware of the way she was resting in his arms; perfectly cocooned in a form of a bridal carry style.
The soldat halted on his spot when Y/N opened her eyes to see what was going on, "Soldat?" She blinked multiple times as she adjusted to the lights. The menacing frown of the soldat melted into a much softer expression, "Родная(darling), you shouldn't be awake yet." He craddled her closer to him as he cooed.
Where is she? How long was she out? When did she changed her clothes?
"What is happening?" She asked as she peered over his shoulder to see Natasha sighing in relief, "Sweetheart, thank god you're awake."
Y/N then looked over to Steve, "You've been gone for weeks, y/n. We got news about your rescue yesterday, and you guys just arrived home. Now, if we could just to take you to the medbay and get you check-up, that'll be great." He briefly explained.
"Yeah, that's all we want isn't it? But, someone just had to be sappy and refuse to let anyone touch you. You know, how it is with the soldier." Tony quickly intercepted.
The soldat didn't pay them any attention now that his darling was awake. He was merely focusing on whispering the sweetest things as he traces delicate trails of kisses on her forehead, her nose, her cheek, basically all over her face.
Sam took it as opportunity to get closer when the soldat was distracted on suffocating Y/N with kisses. But he should learn by now how alert and agile the soldat can be, especially when he have Y/N close to his proximity.
So, when Sam took a step closer, the soldat recoiled almost immediately, putting quite of a distance between them.
"Man, if Bucky has a staring problem, then the winter soldier over here has a hogging problem." Sam accusingly pointed at the soldat, only getting grunts as a reply.
Looking at the current situation, Y/N pondered for awhile. As much as she wanted to get herself check-up, it was also wise to not pressure the soldat to give her away.
Considering what she witnessed at the Hydra base, Y/N knew the risk that comes when we let the soldat dwell in anger for too long.
So she consulted the rest of the team to back down for now, and let the soldat do what he wants. Y/N promised them that she will conviced the soldat to let her get a check-up as soon as possible. But for now, they really need to trust her words.
At first every one of them was reluctant to let her go but in the end they agreed to her suggestion.
When the team spread out and gave some space for the soldat, he didn't waste any time and marched straight to where their bedroom supposed to be. As soon as they arrived at their safe space, the soldat almost threw Y/N onto the bed and swiftly drew a knife from the holster of his thigh as his predatory eyes searched the room.
He refused to move even an inch away from where he stood and remained close to Y/N; shielding her figure with his own.
It was very faint, but the soldat could sensed that they weren't the only ones in the room.
Y/N eyed him curiously, wondering why the soldat was still on edge when he wasn't supposed to. So, she hopped off from the bed and stood on her feet before reaching out to hug the soldat from behind.
"You can put the knife down, soldat. It's just us here." She coaxed but the soldat refused to believe her. He pulled her by the arms, breaking her hug in the process and hold her close to his chest, "There's someone else here."
His actions was rather rougher than he intended it to be; even Y/N was startled by the sudden movement, "Oooff, careful there, soldat. You might give the little one a fright." She chuckled softly as she give her belly a loving rub.
And suddenly his attention was completely focused on Y/N now. Usually his frown symbolized irritation, but this time there was a clear confusion in his eyes. The amount of appalled blinking of his eyes increases when the puzzle pieces in his head started to merge.
The soldat knew that he heard a third heartbeat in the room; that was why he was on alert for threats but apparently he had been closer to the source than he thought was.
In fact, it was right his arms. Or maybe a little bit lower, somewhere around his torso.
Y/N didn't say anything, she simply nodded and smiled up to him as she continued to rub her belly.
When the conclusion finally hits him, the soldat dropped the knife in his hand at the same time he fell on his knees. His gaze never broke from hers, not even a split second, until he was face to face with her tummy.
The soldat leaned one side of his ear closer to her and the thumping sound of the third heartbeat got louder. The discovery had caused him to jolt away as shock decorated his features. He titled his head upwards to Y/N with the same wide, confused look in his blue eyes.
"It's okay, love." She giggled amusingly when the soldat repeated his previous actions. He leaned in and jolted back again as if he couldn't believe what he just heard was real, "Is it... his?" The soldat asked as he implied his existance to be separated from Bucky.
There was a hint of sadness in Y/N's expression when he said it like that. There's been many long conversations that she and Bucky had about the soldat after his first relapse.
Though Bucky was still unsure of his own dissociating self, Y/N on other hand believed that the soldat, this particular man whose drenched the earth with blood just to save her, the same man whose currently on his knees to hear a heartbeat of an unborn child; he deserved a little kindness in his life.
"Yes..." Y/N answered truthfully before she continued, "...and he's yours too."
And that surely knocked the air out of the soldat's lungs, he couldn't tell if she was telling him the truth or was just trying to kill him; either way the butterflies in his chest was suffocating him from the inside.
The soldat couldn't speak a single word; because he didn't know what to say. But there was this beam on his features, light in his eyes, softness on his smile when he dreamily stared at her growing belly.
Y/N took him by his flesh hand and place his palm on her stomach, then she spoke tenderly to the baby inside her, "Wanna say hi to daddy, sweet bean? Say, 'Welcome home, daddy.' "
She knew it was silly, because obviously the child in her womb shouldn't be able to speak, and he was not yet developed enough to be kicking his feet. Hell, they don't even know his gender yet.
But how could she not say it when the soldat looked so damn happy when she did. He looked so peaceful and has this daze and some of those twinkling hearts in those steel-blue eyes of. The soldat sighed in pure joy before he leaned to kiss her stomach.
And as it turns out that was all she needed to do to persuade the soldat to letting her see the doctors. He was there through the whole process, refusing to let go of her hand. It was such a good news to hear that the baby was healthy and there wasn't any foreign substance that might contaminated her during her times in Hydra.
After getting proper medical care and some food in her system, the soldat immediately carry her back to their room to settle down. While she laid on the bed, making up for the lost time to finally get the mental rest she desperately needed, the soldat on the other hand, had made himself comfortable by lying his head on her stomach.
He just couldn't stop; as if he was hypnotised by the melody of the baby's heartbeat. His hand snuck under her shirt, lifting the fabric up to reveal the belly where their miracle resides.
Y/N's droopy eyes followed his actions as she watched how carefully the soldat approached her. Out of habit, her hands absentmindedly rake through the softness of his hair as she held him by the head.
The soldat dotingly caressed the child's sleeping chambers as he leaned closer to it, "...Hi there, little one." he greeted with a quiet and loving whisper.
Immediately, a smile beamed brightly on Y/N's face when the soldat proceed to pamper her belly with countless of tender kisses, "...it's daddy." he introduced himself, as if the baby was able to understand him.
The silence that came after was so sweet and comfortable. And Y/N knew she wouldn't be able to have this without the soldat. She tucked a piece of his loose strand of hair behind his ear when she spoke gently, "Thank you for saving me, soldat."
He briefly lifted his head and smiled up at her, "You know I can't live without you Родная (darling). I will always need you." He declared a truthful confession before turning his attention away. His lips grazed on the skin of her belly as he mumbled against it, "And you too, little one."
Y/N could burst into tears just from this interaction alone but she try not to. She doesn't want to look back at this moment and remember how much she wept, so she blinked her tears away while she watched the soldat spoiled the little buddle of joy inside her with so much endearments.
Even though it was always a happy memory for the soldat when he spend time with his darling, but this... this was rare. And he wanted to cherish it for as long as he could.
The soldat laid on his ears again when he peered from where he had his head rested, his deep gaze captured her attention, "Has he been taking care of you good, darling?" He asked.
The soldat probably had no idea how Bucky adored her; if anyone paid enough attention they might even caught him worshipping the very ground she stepped on.
A breathy chuckle escaped from her mouth as nodded with a drunken grin, "He's the best." She hummed approvingly, "Best husband, and best daddy too." She exclaimed brightly as she glanced at the ring on her finger; it was barely visible through the thick of the soldat's hair.
Surprisingly, the soldat didn't react negatively to her remarks, instead, a proud smile curved on his lips as the pride in his chest overflowed and leaked all through his very being, "Good." He simply said.
The smile lines on the corner of his eyes didn't flatten even when he closed his eyes. For a moment, he tried to silenced everything else around him and focused on the fluttering sounds of the baby's tiny heart.
It might have been the thick haze of lavender smoke in their head or the swarming butterflies in their chest, that they didn't even notice the fatigue that had been slowly taking over them, until the tenderness of their caresses were barely moving.
When the heaviness of her eyes weighted the lids, she sleepily asked the soldat, "Will you still be here when I wake up?" Truth to be told, she was afraid that all of this was just a dream; an escape from reality of the cruel captivity.
The soldat briefly opened his own tired eyes and cooed softly, "I'm always with you, Родная (darling)." And Y/N took it as a promise for her desprete soul to cling on; a ray of hope for her to hold onto, if she ever wakes up in that cell again.
Not long after, both of them lost to the lure of somnolent and their soul quickly drifted into the peaceful dreamland. Soft snores were filling the quiet of the room as their mortal body continued to entangled themselves with each other.
It was safe to say that if Steve would ever barge into the room, he'd probably maxed the storage of his phone with photos of the soldat smushing his face on Y/N's belly as she perfectly curled around him.
Maybe it was the sunlight leaking through the window or maybe it was the intense gaze she felt burning on the skin of her face. Eitherway, it certainly disturbed her from her sleep.
When her body stirred, Y/N realized that she didn't need to open her eyes to know that last night was not a dream, especially when she can feel a pair of familiar arms wrapping around her waist under her shirt.
Y/N slowly peeled her eyes open to see a recognizable ceiling. Her eyes then trailed to her side and met a pair of blue of eyes staring back at her. Her gaze searched for the soul within him and found the semblance of Bucky reflected in his eyes.
Still dazed from sleep, she continued to watch him blinking at her, slowly and silently, like a cat declaring their love to their human. But even then, he couldn't hide the afterglow of the tears on his face.
"Bucky, honey. Have you been crying?" Her voice rasped from lack of use, yet her tender fingers find themselves crawling across his wet cheeks.
It was as if her voice was a trigger, and tears quickly reformed in Bucky's eyes again. Y/N gently pulled him to her chest, one hand threading his hair and another rubbing his back as he sobbed in her arms, "It's okay, Bucky. We're okay." She continued to coax him lovingly.
They spend most of the early morning holding each other close and dear. Then when the tears started to lessen, Bucky finally pulled himself away from her. Y/N wiped the excess tears on his cheeks but he caught her hand underneath his; he relished in the relief of her presence when he sighed to her touch.
Bucky's gaze wobbled in the pool of tears in his eyes but he was still determined to speak his mind "I'm so sorry, doll." He apologized, "I couldn't stop them. Even with this damned serum in me, I still couldn't protect you; both of you." If his defeated voice didn't convey his truth, then the tremble of his touch should be enough.
And Y/N's heart simply shattered for him; what did he meant by that? He did save her though. The winter soldier or Bucky. It didn't matter who but she was here now because of him. She was safe; they both were, "But you saved me, did you not?"
"But, I didn't. The sol--" Before Bucky could even finish his sentence, Y/N quickly cuts in, "The soldat is always going to be a part of you, Bucky. And if he saved me, that means you saved me too." She reassured him.
Seeing the hesitation in his eyes, she continued to persuade him, "And if I could speak for our child, which I absolutely can because I'm his mother, then he would say that he is proud that his strong daddy managed to beat the absolute shit out of those bad guys."
Bucky blurted out a hearty laugh, "I don't think it's good to teach our baby to curse when he is still in your womb, mama." His laugh gradually reduced to a chuckle when he wiped the remaining tears from his eyes.
Y/N simply shrugged to his suggestion, "It's not like he wouldn remember this anyway." She smirked playfully.
Another chuckle managed to slip through Bucky's lips before he lowered his face to her tummy, "And you? How's your play date with Winter, hmm sweet bean?" He mumbled as his lips planted on her skin.
Besides the heartbeat of his child, he could also hear the tiny twitching of the baby's limbs moving ever-so-slightly, "Yeah, I bet he spoiled you with lots of kisses and cuddles, huh? Like he did your mommy?" He continued to coo against her belly, unaware of the shock on his wife's face.
"Winter?" A small smile cracked from the corner of her lips. Yes, she was shocked but that doesn't mean she wasn't pleasantly surprised by it.
Bucky didn't even bother to look up at Y/N's face as he was busy blowing raspberries on her stomach, "If he's going to keep popping up in our lives then we might as well call him something else other than 'soldat', don't you think?" He simply said, marking one last kiss on the small growing bulge on her belly, before working his way back up to her face.
Y/N's heart swelled to his gesture and when he laid his head next to hers, she carefully took him by his cheeks, pulling him in for a gentle kiss, "I think he'd love that, Bucky." She whispered against his lips, feeling his smile in return.
Bucky nudges forward to catch her lips again; kissing her slow and sweet as if his whole world has been waiting for this moment. And when the kiss naturally broke, he tempted her with something he knew she couldn't resist, "Now, how about we grab you both something to bite, hmm?"
End.
Read my other works here: Masterlist
A/N: The use of the title in the fic is suprisingly wholesome despite the insinuation of it, don't you think? Lol. Btw, thank you so much for stopping by and read my work. Leave your thoughts behind for me, I'd love to hear from you!
#winterarmyyfics#welcome home soldat au#the seven writing event#nickfowlerrr’s writing event#winter soldier!bucky#bucky barnes au#bucky barnes x reader#bucky x reader#bucky barnes x you#bucky x you#winter soldier x you#winter soldier x reader#winter soldier fluff#bucky fluff#nickfowlerrr's writing event
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
DCXDP FIC IDEA: The Dauntless Matchmaker
Danny Fenton is short on cash. He has been short on cash almost all his adult life, but usually, he can pull through untill the last minute before breaking and asking his family for help.
It's a pain in a half trying to find a job that is flexible enough to accommodate his "Health" issues.
He needs time off to keep his agreement. See back when he was sixteen, he realized that the ghosts that had been bothering him were all trying to challenge him for his power.
At first he looked like easy prey- being new and all- but the more fights he won the more his reputation rose and that made the ghosts attack less frequently.
They just became harder since the big guns wanted a crack at him. Danny proposed that the fights be in neutral grounds- the ghost zone- since fights in Amity Park were ruining his haunt.
Haunt Rights were highly protected and respected in the Infinite Releams.
His adversaries agreed under the condition that Danny responded to the battles within two hours; otherwise, they would haunt him in the human world.
Ghost fighting in the Infinite Releams to keep the ghosts busy, and nowadays, only the strongest bothered him like a bi-weekly challenge from dead beings that don't understand scheduling.
It worked out.....until he couldn't explain why he was missing so often in the human world. With the help of some friendly ghosts, he was able to fake a diagnosis of some muscle disorder and has been living with the excuse that he would go MIA because of it. He missed a lot.
Often enough to have almost every job he's gotten to fire him.
This brings him to his current problem. Yes, Danny can argue that he has a disability but to do so would mean having someone look into it and realize it's not real.
So when Charlie from the Tea MadHouse tells him not to bother returning tomorrow after a four-day-long battle, he can only sigh and turn in his tea maker apron.
He might have to call his parents to ask for help on this month's rent. That's a bitter pill to swallow.
If only there was a job that he could do that had no problem with him taking multiple days off without notice.
"Pardon me. I need a moment of your time." a voice calls out. Danny twists around, turning his neck slightly downwards to meet the green-eyed stare of a young boy.
"I have a proposition for you. My elder brother requires a fake lover to fool our family butler into thinking that he has moved on from the heartbreak of his last disastrous relationship. Not that anyone could blame Dowd for ending things with Drake. In any case, seeing as I have witnessed your unemployment, I figured you would do well for the job."
Danny blinks "I'm sorry?"
The kid pulls out a wad of cash. Danny can practically hear the ca-ching sound surrounding the boy as he raises a brow.
He gapes as the youth slaps the cash into his hand without so much as a blink.
"Do we have an accord?" The boy asks while Danny slowly turns the money in his hand.
"Whatever you say, temporary in-law," He says after flipping through the bills only to realize it's a hundred-dollars. A quick count of how many he's been handed causes his eyes to almost pop out of thier socket.
It's more then enough for this month's rent-hell he has some left over for at least four months!
"Excellent, we are expected at dinner. If Drake acts surprised to see you merely tap the table six times, then four. He shall fall into line and build off our lie."
Danny scrambles after the kid, nodding to himself. "Six, then four. Got it. Ugh, does the dinner have a dress code?"
It sounds like it would since a young boy just gave out hundreds like it was nothing. Danny would feel bad showing up in an old pair of jeans and a faded t-shirt.
Maybe he has a formal shirt somewhere.
The boy's green eyes flickered to him, then his watch on his wrist. "An impressive observation. Pennyworth will not be impressed by a poorly dressed paramour. We have time to purchase a suit. Come along."
Danny has no idea how someone so small can walk so fast. He feels his breathing is coming in quick bursts, but the boy doesn't seem winded at all. He winces when the boy enters a well-known suit place that is very pricey. "Is this coming out of my pay?"
"No. This shall be covered by the company card," The strange child says, holding up a black card with a quick flick of his wrist. At the sight of it, two store attendants appear at their side, offering assistance. Danny has never seen such power.
"W-wait we have a company card?" He shutters, overwhelmed by the attendant pushing him into a changing room and a light blue suit in his arms.
"Yes. However, you have a limit on what can be spent with it. I shall review the details later regarding your medical, dental, and vision benefits."
"I GET DENTAL?!"
"Of course. America's ridiculous health programs will mistreat no employee of mine simply due to lack of funds. " The boy scoffed, sounding offended by the very idea.
Danny doesn't care how long he needs to pretend to be this boy's boyfriend, and he'll sign a contract right now.
_______________________________________
Damian waited for Fenton to finish trying on all the suits the personal sellers had pushed onto him. He personally thinks the light blue was the best but it doesn't hurt to try other options.
They need Fenton to look his best to woo Drake and get him to stop acting so pathetic.
Yes, Dowd had broken up with him for reasons Damian is unaware of, nor does he care enough to find them, but Drake has had plenty of people break up with him before and remain on good terms with him.
Just look at Brown.
Drake had also always bounced right back after the breakup, usually because he would get tied up in either work at Wayne Industries or Red Robin.
Yet, for some reason, unlike all the others, Dowd leaving has not only been messy it also threw Drake into a downwards spiral.
He has refused even to get dress- walking around in a bathrobe and fluffy slippers- eating ice cream and sobbing over photos of Dowd for hours on end. He taken a leave from Wayne Industries and mostly stayed on monitor duty as Red Robin.
At other times, he plays sad songs and watches romance movies with a dead look in his eyes. Usually there were crumbs of some unknown spicy chips all over his face too.
Really it was unseemly.
It's been four months of this, and Drake does not seem to be getting it together. Damian had researched online, and all of the articles indicate that he should have felt better by the third-month mark.
He would have left the fool well alone only Pennyworth is beginning to worry. And Damian refuses to let Pennyworth worry over something fixable.
His research showed that a "rebound" was highly recommended (if done correctly), in the healing process of a breakup. Drake refused to find one, so Damian assigned himself the task of finding one for him instead.
He considered Drake's past lovers' looks, interests, and personalities. Then creating a list of what was considered a good candidate he wandered around Gotham in search of someone who would be a perfect rebound.
His efforts led him to Tea MadHouse- a tea shop with a surprisingly good coffee menu- where Daniel Fenton worked. Over three weeks, Damian had watched him, categorizing the pros and cons that Drake would find within Fenton, and concluded that he would be perfect.
The fact Fenton has lost his job now only worked in his favor. He'll convince Drake that Fenton is a decoy for Pennyworth - since Drake was getting fed up with all the hovering- and he would never notice that the real target of this fake relationship would be Drake himself all along.
Fenton will woo him, sweep him off his feet, make him forget Dowd and ride off into the sunset with Drake none the wiser. It was full-proof.
Damian will make Drake rebound on Fenton, even if he has to throw the idiot at the other teen. He is getting awful tired of the concerned glances whenever Drake slumps his way into a room.
No other reason. He certainly didn't care about Drake that much nor did does he lay awake at night wondering how Drake is doing now that he does not have someone to hold him.
Drake doesn't sleep well alone.
"How do I look?" Fenton stepped out of the booth wearing the light blue suit. It made his eyes pop and framed his body well.
Yes, muscular. The body of a boxer. Drake will lose his mind over those biceps.
"Ravishing." He tells the nineteen-year-old. Damian barely bites back a smirk as Fenton flushed, painting a pretty picture. Drake enjoys talking his lovers up, and Fenton will do well to receive plenty of compliments. "Let us be off."
Drake won't know what hit him.
#dcxdpdabbles#dc x dp crossover#dead tired#The Dauntless Matchmaker#Damian Wayne really said if you want something done right do it your self#Danny went along cause Damian has that much of a commanding presence#hes also poor and needs the job#Tim is in the trenches from Bernard leaving him
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
genuinely going insane . i need to be put down
#found out recently that one of my friends ghosted me after snooping on my accounts for someone else#now i’ve been blocked on ig n he’s even unfollowed me on here n it’s like.#i know the stuff that’s been said about me that’s prompted this but. the person who said stuff tried it with another friend who just didn’t#believe her bc it was very obviously misinterpretations of what i’ve said and when she was presented w that as an idea she dropped that#friend too all bc he tried explaining what i actually meant.#btw this started over her thinking i was mad at her over mario kart (i wasn’t.)#now i’ve lost a friend who she used to avoid at all costs n actively said she wasn’t comfortable around to me bc she’s told him her side of#the story but they’ve been away and not witnessed any of it which she’s taken advantage of.#not to mention she was stirring shit between me and the friend who didn’t believe her for ages and isolated him from me n another friend who#also got dragged into it somehow (the person thought she was conspiring with me but we were just hanging out a bunch bc she was going away#for her year abroad)#all of this started bc of paranoia and a match of mario kart that she thought was too competitive but my other friends who witnessed that#exchange we’re all weirded out by it bc they all knew it was mario kart joking but she thought i was being dead serious when i said ‘we have#beef’ within the context of us fighting for first place?#the whole time i told the friend (who i didn’t realise was dragged into it yet) to not let it affect the way she interacts w that friend too#but she ended up ghosting me and then trying to sabotage relationships i had#the most important part of all of this is that i repeatedly told her that if she was uncomfortable with anything i say she can tell me and#i would apologise immediately#but she just refused to speak to me#not like it would make a difference she spoke to one of our other friends about something they did that she didn’t like and she then#continued to talk about that person behind their back and made us think he never apologised or spoke about it
1 note
·
View note
Last Seen Blogs
tuning-titanium-rtamo-blog
We Are Titanium Tuning Specialist.
mecha-frankenstein
meathook marty and the pajama party
abelloprocess
Type in Motion
mandaley
American Maple
mrleedles3
Leedles' Lustful Library