#its so odd how half of the show feels like a lab grown “sure to do numbers on tumblr” by the book experience and then the other half is lik | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

willowistic22 · 3 years

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The pleasure’s all mine... Prince Romeo

A grand party is held in the palace tonight, but one of the royal family member isn’t in the mood to indulge in it like how they’d usually be. Luckily, a stranger comes to save them. It just so happens that this stranger is so dangerously handsome.

Word count : 4688

Part : -

Warnings : light mentions of alcohol, cursing, and that should be it. it’s nothing too serious.

A/N: HIIII this is my gift for @s9da (well technically for paranormalsoup... i think you can piece in together why i asked you abt paranormalsoup in the wormsie discord server hehe) for the @newsiesgiftexchange i had fun making this bcs i absolutely love newsies royal au, so i hope you don’t mind i wrote a somewhat self indulgent fic for your gift hehe. it was still spromeo like you asked, but uhh idk i hope you like it bcs half of me think it’s not as great as i thought it was in my head. But anyways enjoy!!! :D

“Romeo! Get your ass out of there!”

“How long does it take for you to get dressed?!”

The two muffled voices turned into banging on the door. Romeo rolled his eyes, deciding to ignore his brothers and continuing to adjust his tuxedo in front of his full length standing mirror.

His bedroom door swung open with no warning. In turns, two boys formally dressed came storming in.

“Race! Crutchie! You could have at least waited for me to let you two in!” Romeo protested, adjusting sleeves under his dark blue blazer.

“My God, Ro! You’re not even ready yet!” Crutchie commented, walking over as fast as he could with his crutch to get to where Romeo is standing. He takes the silver tie from the dresser and slings it around Romoe’s shirt collar, “The party is supposed to start right now and you know dad would want all of his sons to be present!”

“He was probably too busy talking to the cat, weren’t you?” Race flops on the big bed, causing the dozens of velvet pillows to jump. It also seems to have awakened a huge white fluffy cat in the midst of the pillows.

“Racetrack! Snowy was getting his beauty sleep!” Romeo protested, seeing the scene unfold from the mirror.

Crutchie flipped both of his brothers off, telling Race to be careful so he doesn’t mess his own outfit up and making Romeo stand still while he helps him get ready. In under five minutes and Romeo is properly dressed just like his brothers.

Crutchie places Romeo’s crown on top of his black locks, the magnificent silver object goes perfectly with the intricate silver curlicue designs on the shoulder and back of his dark blue blazer. With the tiny silver crown lapel pin and its tiny chain draping on the fabric to wrap up the dashing outfit.

The three head out of the room. They strut through the grand hallway like it’s a fashion week runway, feeling confident with every step following the red velvet carpet till they reach the grand ballroom decked to the nines just like them.

A huge chandelier hanging above the open space. A few tables and chairs neatly organized for the awaiting guests but still leaving enough space for a dance floor. The huge glass doors wide open to make use of the huge balcony for the party, also letting the evening breeze through the door.

“About damn time you three show up!” Jack, the oldest brother exclaimed.

“Jack! Do mind your language!” Their father protested.

His three younger brothers walk up onto the podium, greeting their father who’s sitting on the only throne present.

“It was all Romeo’s fault. He didn’t know how to tie his own tie!” Race joked.

The brothers have their little silent squabble as they stand behind the throne. Crutchie decides to not get himself involved in it and tries to break it up, “Oh, grow up you guys!”

Those words did nothing to help. In turn, Crutchie turns to their father in hopes to ignore those three.

“Jackie-love! Listen to your brother, please!” A different voice chimed in.

The three turn their focus away towards it and see Jack’s husband already fully dressed up. In a classy dark purple suit with a grey tie in the same shade as Jack’s own suit.

“We’re celebrating our sixth anniversary and Sarah is finally home from her travels. The least you could do is to keep yourself presentable!”

Jack pushes aside the squabble, switching on his loving smile for Davey. Romeo and Race pulled away from the squabble right after Jack. Their father silently sighed in relief to see his sons finally deciding to act like fully grown adults.

He tells the royal guards to let the guests in. In under five minutes, the ballroom was instantly filled with guests in formal attire. Some fill their assigned seats for the dinner that was promised in the invitation while others mingle with each other. The band, playing lovely tunes loud and clear but it wasn’t time for the guests to get up and dance.

The princes have also indulged themselves in the party. Jack and Davey can be seen mingling with the guests they’ve invited, listening to their congratulations on their sixth anniversary. Crutchie has gone to god knows where, which is surprising because he’s wearing a flashy yellow and black suit in the midst of all the mostly dull colored outfits in the ballroom. Race had gone off to fulfilling his promise to their father of introducing his new lover, the future king of Brooklyn.

Romeo is left to slump on the round table with leftovers sitting idly on his plate. An odd thing for him to do, and he’s quite aware of it too. Romeo adores mingling, making new friends, or even catching up with some old friends that he has indeed spotted somewhere amongst the crowd this evening. Though, his energy to do so doesn’t seem to be there in this particular moment.

The young prince watches from afar as his big brother finally introduces Spot Conlon to their father. Spot’s dark red suit is really contrasting to Race’s own outfit, a bright blue suit with golden curlicue designs on the shoulders and back which is a bit like Romeo’s. It matches perfectly with his blond messy curls and electric blue eyes.

Romeo smiles, seeing his brother’s face lighting up as their father seemingly approves of the dashing Brooklyn boy that he has so helplessly fallen in love with for the past two years. Romeo doesn’t linger on it though. He returns his focus towards his empty table and plate, a sad smile painting his face as he observes his own reflection on the ceramic.

“Well, aren’t you the life of the party!” A voice interrupted his thoughts, causing him to lift his head up, “But if I do say so myself, and I mean no offense to his royal highness, you’re quite the tragic sight sitting here all alone”

His eyes landed on a gentleman standing proud and tall in a maroon suit, a black tie neatly tucked under his blazer. His complexion reminded Romeo of the topaz rocks in some of the castle’s intricate decorations, rich with brown but always glowing bright with the rest of the gems. In this case, his glow comes from the simple smile and the lovely brown eyes behind the silver framed spectacles.

The initial comment brought a smile to Romeo’s face and a little laugh along with it. He fixes his sitting posture, eyeing the stranger with a head tilt while his head tries to figure out who this guest could be.

“And you’re what? Here to be my savior from my little slump?” Romeo replied to match with the stranger’s cleverness.

Seeing the success his opening line has brought, the gentleman pulls out an empty chair next to Romeo and sits himself down, “Well, you’re the prince here. Whatever it is you command me to be, I’m pretty sure I need to follow”

Romeo lets out a small fit of laughter through his smile, looking away from the man’s eyes. It also makes the stranger laugh along with him.

Romeo returns his sight back to the man in front of him. He walked right into a gaze-off he cannot look away from. In no means for intimidation, but a brief yet firm infatuation through the art of eye contact with the man he just met. Only now did Romeo realize how dangerously handsome this stranger is.

“Romeo!” The call of his name pulled him away from the gaze and back to the world around him.

He spots Crutchie zipping through the crowd. A smile painted on his face, just as bright as the yellow and black suit he’s currently rocking in. Romeo stands up to give his brother a hug.

“I see you’ve met one of my friends from the lab!” Crutchie gestured back to the stranger Romeo was just previously speaking to, already slightly bowing his head to pay his respects to the two members of the royal family.

“Oh, you work in the lab!” Romeo concluded, turning back to face the stranger who’s already on his feet.

“Yeah. We call him Specs!” Crutchie giggled, making the other man laugh along while Romeo looks back to where he’s currently standing, “And Specs, this is my brother, Romeo!”

Specs pulls up a simple smile for Romeo and a firm head nod.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you two!” Crutchie apologized, a few moments after remembering they were previously having a conversation. He adjusts his crutch to get ready to leave, “I’ll leave you two to it, okay?”

Romeo watches as his brother walks away to mingle into another group. It leaves him with the previous gentleman he was talking to. The only differences now, he’s not much of a stranger anymore.

“So... That’s what they actually call you? ‘Specs’?”

“Well, it’s because, if you can’t already tell…”

Specs gestures towards his spectacles that rests on the bridge of his nose. Romeo chuckles, playfully rolling his eyes. But the smile tells Specs he’s still in the clear from offending a royal family member.

“What’s your actual name? Unless you don’t have one”

He laughs, parting his lips to let it out before saying, “It’s Julian. But now people mostly refer to me as Specs”

Romeo nods, staring directly into his sparkly brown eyes. Whatever is gleaming under it is very inviting, and Romeo isn’t opposed to this mysterious invitation. He’s rather pleased by its presence. Before he knows it he’s already engaged with it, letting his own obsidian gemstone eyes linger in the gaze.

“A pleasure to meet you... Specs”

“The pleasure’s all mine... Prince Romeo”

Soon enough the sun has fully set. The night sky takes over the heavens above, thread by sparkling pearls to break up the deep blue. But the party didn’t stop. The royal family’s favorite performer, Ms. Medda Larkin, has finally arrived in the most fashionably late way. Her grand entrance was welcomed with warm arms by King Denton himself.

With the presence of the superstar, the band picked up its lack of entertainment as Ms. Medda picked up the microphone after a quick dinner. The jazzy upbeat tune sends all the guests roaring for the dance floor.

Romeo though? He has his own entertainment, in the huge balcony by the bar with his own partner.

“No dance?”

Romeo pries his eyes away from the dance floor he’s observing from outside. He glues them onto Specs, leaning his shoulder on the shiny bar top while twirling his glass of scotch.

Romeo shakes his head, making a semi weird face, “Not really up for it”

“Huh, you’re nothing like what Prince Charlie says” Specs commented, taking a gulp from his glass to finish his drink off, “He says that you’re very energetic and flirty”

The comment makes him scoff through his smile, “I can’t say that he’s wrong. But… I’m just not feeling it tonight”

The little silence between them is giving Romeo the impression that he should explain even further. But he takes this chance to finish his own drink and change the subject, “So, you work in Crutchie’s lab?”

The subject of Specs’ profession quickly did the trick. It also reveals some basic facts about him. As it turns out, Davey was the one that pushed him to work in the royal lab. He’s been friends with Davey since college and has been partners in crime ever since. Davey was first to get the job as a chemical engineer at Crutchie’s lab after a year of switching jobs to match his preferences, while Specs was still continuing his studies for a masters degree. Since he’s been an A+ student at a young age, the first application he sent got him the call for the job interview and got in quickly.

Romeo was very impressed by the story. Half way through it he starts to question as to why he’s been given the honor to talk to Specs. There is no way Specs is anywhere close to Romeo's league.

Regardless, Specs doesn’t seem to question all of that. While there’s a noisy ballroom in the background, they’re having a party of their own. Smiling, laughing, and basically having a great time in their private little universe. Romeo is very much infatuated by the gentleman and wouldn’t want anything in the world to ruin the moment.

“Y’know, you should probably just drop all the formalities at this point” Romeo lightly mentioned, between sipping his third drink he had only touched after half an hour upon asking the bartender for one, “It’s just me”

“Just you?” Specs questioned, lips wrapping up into a warm smile that makes Romeo’s heart melt.

He froze in place, admiring the wonder to behold. It makes Romeo smile wider as he slowly nods at the question.

Before he could say anything else, the loud sound coming from inside took over their center of attention. A loud cheering of guests over something neither Specs or Romeo knows about, as the view was blocked by dozens of backs.

Romeo turns his head away from it, focusing back to where he is currently at. He glances over at Specs and says, “Let’s get out of here”

Specs looks back at Romeo, a little confused with his offer, “And go where, exactly?”

Romeo sips the remaining liquid in his glass, setting it back with a loud clang against the bar top. He spontaneously grabs Specs’ hand and drags him away, leading him to the stairs on the side of the huge balcony. With every step down, the twinkling Manhattan view slowly fades away from their eyes.

It was soon replaced by the view of the royal garden in the dark. A cobblestone path stretching to as far as the eyes can see in the dark, pass the green trees with overgrowing plants hanging over it, and various shapes of bushes strategically placed all around the settlement. The smell of the grass is so fresh and different, unlike anything Specs has ever encountered before.

However, Romeo drags him to the other direction. They walked under a dimly lit tunnel, under where the balcony and the ballroom is. They can barely see each other in this kind of lighting, though Romeo’s crown was able to let the tiniest ray of light reflect on its figure. At the end of the tunnel, they can see an opening which would lead them to the center of the palace where another garden is located.

“Where are we going, if I may ask?” Specs returned to his previous unanswered question.

“Just… around, I guess”

The two smile at each other, Specs nodding along to whatever bullshit he was just fed but still getting entertained by it anyways.

“So… are you gonna tell me why you decide to detach yourself from the party?”

So he noticed. Well, it isn’t like Romeo has been sneaky about it but he was hoping it wouldn’t be brought up.

“That party isn’t for me so…” Romeo started, fiddling the hem of his blazer, “... It didn’t felt right if I were to mingle in there”

“Because that party wasn’t for you?”

Romeo stops in his tracks, realizing how wrong that sounds, “Okay, wait, I take that back umm…”

“No, it’s okay if you’re a little… self centered” Specs half teased.

Romeo scoffs at that, playfully shoving his arms with his shoulders that sends the taller boy laughing. He recollects his composure and re-explains himself, “I mean… Jack, Race, and Crutchie are up there because they have…’something’”

The two continue to walk through the tunnel, Specs fixated to Romeo as he explains himself.

“You see Jack, already living up to his reputation from being a good leader. Charismatic, fearless, all of that. He’s just waiting for our father to step down from the throne so he can unleash his full potential” Romeo started out, which made no sense to Specs question but he kept listening anyways, “And then you got Race. However big of a dumbass and a troublemaker he is, he’s smart! He doesn’t work full time at the lab but you’ve seen him there a few times, right?”

Specs nods, recalling the memory of him seeing prince Anthony while he was working.

“A great problem solver. Despite being the one that causes the most problems in the castle” Romeo added, making Specs chuckle a bit. He lets himself smile at that but it didn’t linger long.

“And you know Crutchie. He’s smart and wants nothing more than to help others. Hearing the voices of the little people” Romeo continued.

He stops walking, causing Specs to do the same. They’ve almost made it through the tunnel, just a few more steps away. The moonlight can reach just far enough to illuminate their faces and highlight their main features.

Romeo looks up to the other boy, “I’m almost 23 and I haven’t really done shit”

Specs fully turns his body towards Romeo, his words from before finally clicking in his head.

“I thought you were a performer” Specs said, “Isn’t that something to be proud of?”

“It is something I’m proud of. But people talk, Specs”

His older brothers are famous for what they’ve achieved that are viewed as ‘useful’ with their title as royalty. Romeo, on the other hand, is a famous Broadway performer. Whether it’s playing the lead role, a side character, or just a part of the ensemble, no one will deny his talent. But people still talk badly about his title mixed with his love for theatre.

Specs stays silent while waiting for Romeo to continue. He let’s Romeo walk out the tunnel first, letting the glow of the night illuminate his whole body along with the garden he’s in. Though, his heart doesn’t seem to be enjoying it the way that he should.

Romeo turns around to face Specs, already slowly stepping out of the shadows of the tunnel. He takes his crown off his head, letting it dangle freely in his right hand, “Living here has its perks. But the downside is people expect you to be a leader of some sort”

The taller boy stands next to Romeo, observing one side of the castle. The bright lights from the chandeliers clear as day through the huge windows.

“So you’re really going to let the stupid comments old people say about you affect the rest of your life?” Specs questioned, letting a small smile creep up his face, “I mean, you’re the one that gets all the girls drooling”

“I guess, but I prefer guys anyways” Romeo half chuckled, his smile yet to return.

“Then it looks like the odds are with me” Specs said in a cheeky manner, taking a few steps ahead of Romeo.

It caught him off guard. He dumbfoundedly stared at the boy for a good few seconds while his back was facing him. Heart beating very fast. Heat rising up his cheeks. The corner of his lips picks up on the tiniest bit of joy and excitement his heart is indulging in.

Specs turns around and Romeo shakes away any obvious adoration towards the boy, pretending to admire his crown in his grasp.

“I mean, I think you’re a very talented actor”

“So you’re a fan?” Romeo asked cleverly, looking up to meet his eyes again while placing his crown back on his head, “Is that why you came up to me in the first place?”

“Among other things… yes”

Well, that’s something to know.

Romeo and Specs roam around the garden in the dark, though they stay quiet in fear that other people might hear their presence. The laughing felt more personal and heartfelt when it’s secretive like this. Somehow Romeo is falling out of his usual confident nature, getting shier with every giggle that escapes their lips or clever remark Specs added on to the conversation.

Romeo brought up the idea for the two to head to his bedroom after spotting a glimpse of his balcony on the second floor. Well, from the ground it’s three floors up. Regardless, they were still able to utilize their environment to work in their favor on climbing to the balcony.

Romeo avoided entering his bedroom because it was embarrassingly messy. So they stayed where they are, carefully sitting on the balcony railing and continuing their conversation. They picked it up so easily that they’re soon laughing together like before. This time, they get a view of the garden below, a glimpse of Manhattan, and closer to the night sky. The warmth of his bedroom through the open balcony doorway defeats the freezing temperatures from outside.

Specs was interrupted mid sentence after an odd feeling came by his leg. Fluffy and warm, like it’s a living being.

“Who’s this?” Specs looks down to see a white fluffy cat looking back up to him. He gently picks up the white furball and cradles it close to his chest with a loving smile.

“About time he decides to wake up from his nap” Romeo commented, scooching closer towards Specs so that they’re shoulder to shoulder so he can pet his little feline companion, “His name is Snowy”

Snowy purrs at the love he’s receiving, giving the two boys long and slow blinks with every pet they provide.

“Do you have any pets, Specs?” Romeo asked.

“My apartment doesn’t allow pets. It actually sucks because it can get a little lonely” Specs replied. He lets Snowy go after the cat starts stirring in his grasps. Specs cleans any excessive fur that got stuck on his blazer before turning back towards Romeo, “I’m glad I get to have my own space after needing to live in a foster home for the majority of the time. But I got used to having lots of people around so…”

“Not courting anybody?” Romeo asked again, “You look like the kind of guy who’d win a lot”

Romeo you fucking idiot. His mind was yelling at him for saying that. No one with common sense would blatantly say that to someone they just met that day.

Specs chuckles through his smile, staring at Romeo with a little twinkle hidden in his brown eyes. It could just be the stars from the sky reflecting in his eyes, but it’s not possible because there was a meaning behind his glimmer.

“Not really my style” Specs replied, a flirtatious smirk making its way up to his face, “Though, I met a guy recently and… I’m trying my best to impress him”

Oh. My. God.

Romeo didn’t realize how close their faces were getting. Hot breaths circulate the small gap between their faces. Romeo diverts his eyes away from Specs’, but it absentmindedly went to stare at his lips. He imitated the way Specs has his lips slightly parted.

“A-and how’s that going for you?” Romeo dared to ask, stopping the gravitational pull towards each other. Any closer and Specs might know how fast his heartbeat is going.

“Not sure” He replied breathlessly, “You’ll have to tell me”

If stomach butterflies could explode then that is definitely how Romeo is feeling right now. But they stayed still. Neither quite seem to have the courage to take the next step.

Specs took the initiative, slowly guiding his hand up to cup Romeo’s cheeks. He then whispers, “Can I-”

“Romeo!” A muffled voice interrupted their little moment. They quickly pull apart and stare at Romeo’s bedroom door inside the dimly lit bedroom. Violent knocking followed after the voice and it continued, “Romeo, are you in there?”

It didn’t take long for Specs to catch on to what’s happening. He scrambles himself away behind the brick wall of the balcony, just next to the doorway. Romeo fixes his suit and answers the door.

Just as he expected it, it was Race. No one in the family knocks as violently as he does.

“My God, Race! Can I ever get some time alone in my room?” Romeo answered the door.

“Why are you even in here? You’re supposed to be at the party!” Race said, “Dad was looking for you, y’know”

“I just needed a little air but I’ll be right there, I promise”

He flips Race away and turns around, seeing the previous boy he was with coming out of his previous hiding spot. He smiles sheepishly at Specs, which was met with his own chuckling.

“Guess, we better head back” Romeo said, looking up to meet Specs’ eyes, “But you’re gonna have to use the balcony”

“I figured”

Specs sits back on the balcony before swinging both legs over the railing to climb down. Romeo leans his body against the railing, held up by his arms. It’s only polite to wait for Specs to climb down before he leaves to get to the ballroom himself.

“By the way… thanks for keeping me company” Romeo felt like he owed him a thank you. After all, Specs could’ve had some fun or gained more than just a casual get-to-know-me conversation if he were to fully participate in the party.

Specs looks up from minding his steps down, back up to Romeo’s eyes with a loving gaze towards him, “Of course. When else will I get the chance to be this close to you?”

Rome looks down to his hands to hide away his blush and bashful little smile. He notices Specs hands are still on the railing, placed quite close to his own.

“But how did I do? Were you impressed?”

Romeo looks up, finding the other boy’s face is already two inches away from his own. The exact same position they were in before getting interrupted by his brother, just this time Specs is hanging on the balcony.

“Is that something you want to know?” Romeo questioned back with a little giggle following it. He thought it would be fun to tease him around before they finally part ways.

“It’s not usual for me to straight up ask but… “ Specs caught on with the teasing, “... technically you were the one that ask”

Romeo giggles along with him. He nods to his question and answers properly, “Yes. I was very much impressed by you, Specs”

The next seconds were filled with silence. The high from their little banter turned into adrenaline to do something with how they’re positioned now. They both realize it, as both smiles slowly fade to parted lips with hot and heavy breaths hitting each other’s faces. Romeo glues his eyes on Specs’ lips, he could only imagine the other boy did the same.

“Do I get the permission to kiss you?” Specs asked, barely above a whisper while his hands traced up Romeo’s arm until it reached his cheek once again.

Romeo stuttered through his next few words before replying with a little giggle, “Permission granted”

Specs wasted no time, softly crashing his lips on the other boy’s. Fireworks set off in their heads as the feelings developed for each other from this short period of time are released in one gentle kiss. Romeo moves one hand to hold his neck, as a means to deepen the kiss and to secure Specs from falling.

They part with heavy breaths escaping their lips. The heavy breathings turned into giggles and giggles turned into goodbyes.

Romeo watches as a giddy looking Specs makes it to the ground and walks towards the previous tunnel. Before finally escaping his vision, Specs glances back up to Romeo. Despite the distant Romeo can see a stupid grin on his face, which only made him laugh.

As Specs finally escapes his view, Romeo lets out a long and adoring sigh and melts into the moment. Lowering his body and placing his head on top of his hands that are gripping on the balcony.

He hears his beloved fur ball meow near him, but he’s far gone for that boy to even care what the cat wants.

“I know, Snowy,” Romeo said, as if understanding the language his cat speaks, “He’s such a dream…”

#random writing #spromeo #spromeo newsies #newsies #specs newsies #romeo newsies #tw alcohol #tw cursing

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xxx-cat-xxx · 4 years

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A little broken

Over a year after defeating Thanos and almost losing Tony, Peter is still haunted by the final battle. In an attempt to outrun the memories, he starts college far from New York.

It takes a visit from his mentor and an ill-timed flu bug that brings them both to their knees until Peter realises that he doesn’t have to take on the whole world alone.

Some Irondad hurt/comfort for everyone who’s quarantining at home (and those of you who have to work. Stay safe!) This is my @marveltrumpshate fic for Heyriel. Great thanks to @whumphoarder for doing so much more than beta reading. I hope you enjoy.

______________________________

The first time they meet, Peter isn’t sure what to make of Tony Stark.

The man shows up unannounced to Peter’s apartment, chewing on May’s date loaf and walking around Peter’s room as if he owns the place—talking as if he owns the whole world. Peter is both awed and appalled, May’s occasional comments about greedy billionaires ringing in his ears. But then Peter starts talking about his motivation for doing what he does, and for a moment something in the older man’s face seems to break. That’s when Peter knows that there’s more to him than what makes the tabloids.

Germany is both a thrilling adventure and an unparalleled disaster. Peter watches the group of heroes he’s looked up to since childhood break apart before his very eyes. The fight is grueling, taking more out of Peter than he knew was possible. He is lying there on the ground, trying to catch his breath, when Tony bends over him. And for a moment, there it is again: the broken facade on his face—below it, pure panic. The way Tony looks at him with thinly masked worry reminds him of Ben’s expression whenever Peter was little and having an asthma attack, and it does something to his insides that he can’t really explain.

Then, a few months later, Peter inevitably screws up and slices a ferry in half. The two of them are standing high above the city when Tony takes his suit away, and Peter feels tears pricking at his eyes. He cries later in his room, alone, because it’s so much more than just the suit; he feels that by disappointing Tony he’s lost his chance at something so much bigger.

It’s a miracle he manages to fix this one.

After Siberia, Tony is darker and quieter and indisputably older—like he’s finally grown up. Peter is sad for him, but it’s not all bad either. This new Tony starts taking more of an interest in Peter’s training—starts acting like a real mentor to him. There are afternoons spent together in the lab, dinners at the tower with Tony and Mr. Rhodes, and even the occasional low-stakes mission. Slowly, Tony’s world starts to feel like a place where Peter might one day belong.

But then, the universe gets ripped in two and somewhere on a red and war-torn planet, Peter clings to Tony in desperation, feeling first his body, then his thoughts slip away from him.

When he wakes again, there’s another battle to fight, but this time there’s no thrill to it. It’s his personal horror film come true.

He can hear the moment when Tony’s heart stops. Peter cries openly this time.

In the end, Tony makes it through. He loses an arm and much of his physical strength, but he’s stubborn as hell and fights his way through recovery. But somehow the day of the battle never fades from Peter’s brain like memories should.

When he finishes school, May proposes NYU, Tony naturally wants MIT, but Peter chooses Culver University. It might be good for him to get out of New York, is what he says. It might be good for him not to be in a place that has Tony’s legacy lurking around every corner, is what he thinks. And maybe moving away will make things easier when he returns.

Three months into Peter’s first semester at Culver, Tony accepts a guest speaking gig at the university and decides to stay at a nearby hotel to spend the weekend with Peter.

And that’s when it all goes to hell.

“Hello? Earth to Peter.” Tony waves a hand in his face. “Who are you daydreaming about?”

“Huh?” Peter looks up at Tony, then down at his half-finished iced tea. “Nothing,” he evades. “Nobody, I mean. Sorry, I’m just—just tired. And I have a lot of work left this weekend.”

“Mh-hmm.” Tony looks as if he isn’t quite believing it. “You want more spring rolls?”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll wait for the main dish.”

Peter hasn’t eaten much today, but he’s not quite hungry either. He’s nursing a headache and the tiredness is not just an excuse. As happy as Peter is to see his mentor, Tony’s timing in showing up the week before midterms really could’ve been better. Peter feels like he might fall asleep right here at the restaurant table, but he already knows that he’s going to have to stay up until late to finish his readings.

“You’re doing it again,” Tony points out. “You’re being awfully quiet, kid. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, seriously.” Peter manages to hold eye contact for a few seconds and then takes another sip of his iced tea. “So, you said we could fix the suit while you’re here?”

Tony takes the bait (or maybe just lets it drop intentionally) and the talk quickly turns technical.

After a few minutes, they’re interrupted by the waitress—a student Peter thinks he recognises from his Python lab—who stares at Tony for a moment, her gaze lingering on the scars decorating his right cheek and ear before dropping down to his bionic arm. Then she catches herself and asks for their order.

When their food arrives, Peter observes Tony take out a box of different coloured pills and swallow a couple of them dry.

“I know, not sexy,” Tony remarks, noticing his look, “but sort of necessary if I want to keep this baby ticking.” He taps his hand over his chest with a wan smile.

Peter grins half-heartedly in return, even while he can feel his insides clench. The comment reminds him of the time Tony’s heart actually did stop, of the battlefield with the dust of Thanos’ army still hanging in the air, of the utter helplessness he felt when Tony snapped, of―

“Uhm, excuse me?” It’s the waitress again, her voice shy, cheeks blushing. She extends a piece of paper toward Tony. “Could I, uhm, could you, maybe give me an autograph for my sister? She’s a big fan. I mean, we all are, of course, but she’s got her room decorated with posters of you and all that…”

Tony looks her up and down with a raised eyebrow and a smirk playing around his lips. “What’s your sister’s name?” he asks finally, making a show of producing an integrated pen from his bionic arm. The waitress is visibly impressed, and Peter resists the temptation to roll his eyes―it’s far from the first time he’s seen this trick. If Tony was famous before, it’s nothing compared to the status he earned since dusting Thanos and saving the universe.

Tony gives the waitress an easy smile along with the paper he passes back, and then turns back to Peter with a smirk. “Fangirls,” he whispers. “Gotta love ‘em. Did I tell you about the kid who offered me all of his allowance for a hoofprint from Gerald?”

Because Tony is Tony, it takes a long time before he has caught Peter up on anecdotes of Morgan, Happy, and Gerald’s newest misadventures, and by the time Peter gets back home, it is already late evening. His studio apartment is small and rather old, with walls that have turned grey over time and windows that don’t fully close anymore, but it’s got its own kitchen and bathroom, which is much better than a dorm room―especially since Peter wouldn’t know how to explain the odd hours he keeps or the regular blood stains in the shower to any of his fellow students.

Peter’s head has been throbbing painfully for the better part of an hour, and the lights from the screen when he pulls out his laptop don’t make it any better. All his body seems to want is sleep, but if he’s going to spend the next two days upgrading his suit with Tony’s help, he really needs to get these chemistry readings finished.

He tries for several hours, but the words don’t seem to want to stick in his mind and it takes longer than expected until he feels that he has understood the chapter. Peter drops into bed around 3:30 in the morning, too tired to even change out of his jeans, and falls asleep immediately.

Peter is woken up by someone knocking on his apartment door to the beat of “We Will Rock You”, and it’s all he can do to stifle a groan. He drags himself out of bed and over to the door.

“Finally,” Tony sighs when Peter lets him in, shoving a reusable thermal to-go cup in the kid’s face and causing him to flinch backwards. “I thought I’d have to actually start singing.” Then he gives Peter a once-over and his face falls. “What happened to you?”

“I think I’m sick,” Peter replies, realising it is true the same moment the words leave his mouth. His head is hurting even more than the night before and his throat feels raw and painful, but the worst is the utter weakness in his body and the chills running down his back that tell him he has a fever.

“What kind of sick?” Tony asks suspiciously. To Peter’s surprise, instead of turning on his heel and leaving the surely germ-infested apartment, Tony steps over the threshold and raises a hand to cup to Peter’s forehead.

“Dunno.” Peter shrugs. “Just feel like garbage. Flu was going around the school last week―it’s probably that.”

“Aw, kid,” Tony sighs, something like compassion in his voice. “Yeah, you feel really warm.”

“Sorry about the suit,” Peter says, moving back to sit down on his bed heavily. “I guess you can just go back to New York early then.”

“What? You think I’m coldhearted enough to leave my former intern alone on his deathbed somewhere in the Virginian wilderness?”

“Culver’s not that bad,” Peter defends. “And I’m not alone either.”

“So that means you have someone here to take care of you?” Tony raises a sceptical eyebrow.

Peter hesitates. “I… May’s a nurse,” he evades. “I can call her.”

Truth is, there actually isn’t anybody. He hasn’t really made friends yet―at least certainly not the kind he would consider asking to take care of him while he’s down with the flu. He calls May twice a week, skypes with Ned—and occasionally still with MJ—on the weekends, and he’s friendly enough with his classmates when they’re working together in classes. But his downtime is mostly spent studying on his own and patrolling the city at night.

“Yeah, no, that’s not happening.” Tony looks him over appraisingly, then seems to make a decision and presses the cup of hot chocolate into Peter’s hand. “Guess I’ll stick around for a bit. Here, drink that.”

“I don’t really feel like it.” Peter is definitely queasy, bordering on nauseous, and the thought of drinking something as rich as hot chocolate almost makes his stomach turn. He shifts on the bed so that he can lean against the headboard, feeling too tired to hold his body up without support.

“Well, you need to have something. Super metabolism and all that.” Tony strides over to the small, definitely not tidy kitchenette and starts opening cupboards, most of which are empty. He comes up with a few packets of shrimp-flavoured instant noodles and a box of Coco Puffs. “Really, kid?”

“I was gonna get groceries today,” Peter says defensively.

“Yeah, I’m gonna do that now,” Tony states. “What do you say to buttered noodles? That’s all Morgan ever wants when she’s sick.”

“Yeah, that’s...that’s fine,” Peter says, dumbfounded at the idea of Tony Stark going to the supermarket and making pasta for him.

“Good. Glad that you agree, since that’s about as far as my cooking skills go.” He zips up his jacket and grabs Peter’s keys from the table. “Don’t do anything stupid till I’m back.” With that, he’s out of the door.

Peter doesn’t feel like he’d be able to do anything stupid even if he wanted to. He can’t remember the last time he felt this bad, and with his Spider-Manning lifestyle, that really says something. He’s thirsty, but his throat hurts in a way that doesn’t make him want to swallow anything. There’s an ugly taste in his mouth and he really wants to brush his teeth, but the bathroom could just as well be a hundred miles away.

If May were here, she would have set him up on the sofa with Star Trek: TOS playing on the TV while changing his sheets and airing out the room, he thinks. And suddenly the homesickness hits him like a train. He misses May. He misses New York and his friends and even the busy schedule that high school provided him with, but mostly he misses coming home to an apartment that’s not empty, having someone to eat breakfast with in the mornings and share his day with in the evenings over burnt teriyaki chicken. Just the thought of May’s disastrous cooking skills almost brings tears to his eyes.

He stays like this for an indefinite amount of time, feeling miserable and blinking back tears, until Tony eventually returns. He sets down the shopping bag on the table and closes his eyes for a moment, rubbing the bridge between them with his fingers, the telltale sign that he has a headache.

“You okay?” Peter asks hoarsely.

“Yeah. You live in a village, kid. Took forever to find a parking spot and then everyone and their mother wanted an autograph. Basically fought my way out of there. Might have to give my lawyer a heads up, actually.”

Peter can’t even bring himself to force a laugh. A part of him wants to tell Tony to just go home already; the other part of him really, really doesn’t want to be alone right now. He sniffs hard and swallows to keep his nose from dripping.

“Hey,” Tony’s expression sobers as he sits down next to him on the mattress. “Did I miss something?”

“I just―” Peter rubs a sleeve over his watery eyes, feeling embarrassed. He thinks for an excuse and suddenly remembers the very real problems of college. “Ah, crap.”

“Huh?” Tony asks.

“I have two tests next week,” Peter admits miserably. “I haven’t done anything for them yet―I was going to study this weekend in the evenings―”

“That’s fine, kid, we can deal with that. We saved the universe, remember? Schoolwork is nothing compared to Thanos, trust me.”

“I know,” Peter sniffs. Then, before he can stop himself, he blurts out, “I‘m just missing home.”

“Ah,” Tony says. He lays his bionic hand on Peter’s shoulder and rubs it. “Yeah, that makes more sense.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter goes on, “I didn’t mean, I’m just―”

“You’re just sick and tired and emotional,” Tony assesses, but there’s no judgement in his voice. “Come on.” He gestures for Peter to lie down and pulls the blanket up to his neck. “Go to sleep, kid.” His tone is almost soft. “I’ll be here.”

Peter falls into a feverish, exhausted sleep. He’s dimly aware of an icy cold gripping him and chills wracking his body, and then of Tony putting an extra blanket on him. At some point Tony offers food, but Peter’s too tired to even fully open his eyes. He mumbles something that he hopes Tony understands and turns over to the other side.

The next time he fully surfaces, it’s from Tony gently shaking him awake. “Hey Pete, I know you’re tired, but you really need to eat something.”

“Don’ wanna,” he mutters, pulling the covers up to his chin.

“Peter. Come on, kid.”

He blinks himself awake. The apartment is dark now; it must be evening already. The faint smell of food lingers in the air. “D’ I sleep all day?” he asks, confused.

“Almost. You can still catch Saturday Night Live.”

“Hmm.” Peter sits up slowly. He feels woozy and weak and his head is still hurting, which is ridiculous considering how long he slept for.

“Just let me check your temperature.” Tony takes off his smartwatch and presses it against Peter’s neck, just under his chin. The cold metal sends shivers down his spine.

“102.6,” Tony reports. “Yeah, that’s not great. A pity that fever reducers don’t work on you.” Tony’s voice sounds rough. Peter squints up at him just as the man turns his head into his shoulder to cough. He looks tired—really tired—and, as far as Peter can make out in the dim light of the bedside lamp, his face is kind of flushed.

“Are you okay?” Peter croaks.

“Uhm...” For a moment it looks like Tony wants to lie, but then he falters. “Not really. Guess I caught the same bug you did.”

“Shit,” Peter says. This sucks big time.

“I already texted May—she’ll probably be up here tomorrow. As soon as you’d had something to eat and drink, I’ll go back to the hotel and get out of your hair. You don’t need an old sick man around.”

“What? No!” Peter blurts before he can stop himself. He feels his breath speeding up, horrified at both the idea of Tony leaving him here alone, and of Tony being on his own in some hotel room feeling as miserable as Peter does now. “Please don’t go.”

Tony looks taken aback. “Pete, I don’t think I’m going to be much help soon.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just…” Peter feels himself blushing. “It’s nice not to be alone,” he admits in a small voice.

Tony gives him a long look. “Okay, fine,” he agrees eventually. “But that means you have to listen to me. And the first rule is: eat your dinner, kid.”

They eat quietly. Tony is visibly making an effort not to let on just how bad he’s feeling, but Peter has learned to read the signs during his mentor’s long period of recovery from the snap. Tony is rubbing his shoulder whenever he thinks that Peter isn’t looking, which means that his prosthesis is hurting him. His shoulders are slumped, showing how tired he is, he’s nursing a headache, and then there is the fairly obvious sign of him hardly having eaten anything except for two spoons of pasta and his medication.

After dinner, Tony calls Pepper while Peter calls May. She gives him a run-down of the usual flu advice―“Stay hydrated, try and rest, and for god’s sake, don’t pile every blanket you own on yourself like that time you had strep, Peter—keep the curtains on the windows”—and promises to drive up tomorrow if she can get her shift covered. Then she asks to talk to Tony. Meanwhile, Peter uses the bathroom, brushes his teeth and changes into pyjamas. Observing himself in the mirror, he realises just how run-down he looks. He splashes some water on his face, which does nothing except make him shiver.

“She asked whether you built that Lego ship she got you for your birthday,” Tony announces when Peter returns.

“Oh.” Peter hasn’t, of course. He’s neither had the time nor the motivation to do so without Ned.

Tony makes a show of looking around the room. “This place is less personal than an airbnb. I told her there’s not even a poster on your wall.”

“So what?” Peter sighs. He feels the need to defend himself, but he’s too sick to come up with anything.

Tony doesn’t press it, luckily. He borrows a pair of sweatpants, which end up being a bit short around his ankles and make it look like he’s outgrown them. It almost makes Peter smile. They pull out the sofa-sleeper that May insisted on him getting, but which he’s had no opportunity to use until now. When everything is set up, Peter is almost dizzy from being on his feet for so long. He’s both sweating and shivering and very glad to lie back down under the covers.

Tony turns on the TV, but neither of them is really paying attention. Peter is half asleep a few minutes into the news and Tony seems visibly uncomfortable, shifting around every few minutes on the couch.

“Do you want to switch to the bed?” Peter asks him, secretly hoping for the answer to be no―he really doesn’t want to get up again. Tony shakes his head, lips pressed tightly together. Then he gets to his feet faster than Peter would have thought possible for someone in his condition and bolts to the bathroom.

Peter hears nothing for a while. Then there’s a few weak coughs, followed by a retch and the sound of splashing. Peter cringes, his own stomach twisting in sympathy. The small size of the apartment and his enhanced hearing make it impossible to tune out the sounds as Tony continues to be sick into the toilet for the next ten minutes. When the retching tapers off, Peter shakily gets to his feet and fills a glass of water from the kitchenette.

He knocks on the bathroom door, then leans heavily against the frame. “I got you some water,” he calls, hearing Tony’s ragged breathing inside. “Can I come in?”

“Just go to sleep, kid,” Tony croaks.

“Yeah, sure,” Peter mumbles under his breath. After a few moments, he hears the sound of the flush and then the door opens. Tony is covered in sweat and looking about as bad as Peter feels, plus there’s a greenish tinge to his face. The smell of vomit wafts out and hits Peter’s nostrils, turning his own stomach.

“Thanks, Pete,” Tony croaks says hoarsely and takes the water from his hand. His metal fingers feel cold against Peter’s burning skin when they brush the back of his hand. “Sorry you had to hear that.”

“‘S okay,” Peter mumbles. He suddenly has a hard time focusing on Tony. His head feels so heavy that he has to rest it against the doorframe as well.

“Jeez, kid,” Tony comments. Then his face drains even more of colour and he presses his knuckles against his lips, swallowing thickly. “Go lie down, okay? I’ll be out in a bit.” With that, he turns and disappears back into the bathroom.

For once, Peter listens to him, unsure whether he will be able to keep standing much longer anyway. After a moment of consideration, he curls up on the couch, leaving the softer bed for the older man. He drifts there for a while, trying to tune out the sounds of sickness coming from the bathroom.

Eventually, he is dimly aware of someone entering the room and switching off the lights. There’s cold metal touching his neck as someone takes his temperature and tsks, then softly brushes back his hair and lays a cold washcloth on his forehead. It feels amazing against Peter’s burning skin.

“Thanks, May,” he mumbles.

Waking up feels like resurfacing after diving into a deep pool of water. Peter’s eyelids are sticky with sleep and his brain feels like it’s been through a potato masher. He’s disoriented, so it takes a bit until he realises that it was Tony’s voice that woke him. “Pete,” he hears him calling again weakly. Something about it shakes him out of his half-awake state.

“Tony?” he asks, sitting up. There’s a rustling sound and a thump from the bathroom, confirming his worry. A quick glance at his phone on the bedside table tells him that it’s just after 4am. Definitely not the time to take a shower.

Peter’s head swims when he gets up from the couch. He takes a few unsteady steps towards the bathroom and then stops to lean against the wall until his vision clears and he can open the door.

Tony is on the ground next to the toilet, wrenched in between the bowl and the shower, looking about ten times worse than earlier. His face is almost grey except for the scars on his right cheek, which are flushed in an angry red. His dark eyes are glassy and deeply exhausted. Sweat sticks to his hair and t-shirt, the prosthesis off and one sleeve dangling empty. The smell of vomit hangs thickly in the air, much stronger than before.

Tony slowly lifts his head when Peter steps in. “Hey,” he croaks, attempting a smile and giving up somewhere halfway. “Sorry for waking you. ‘S just that I could use some help.”

“With what exactly?”

“Getting up?” Tony asks sheepishly. “I tried and almost took down your shower curtain.”

Peter blinks. “Well, shit.”

“You said it, kid.”

Peter extends a hand and Tony grabs it gratefully, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Peter closes the toilet lid and Tony sits down on it with a heavy sigh. He shudders convulsively, then closes his eyes and swallows rapidly a few times, as if trying to stop himself from being sick again.

“How long have you been in here?” Peter asks while checking Tony’s temperature on his smart watch. He finds it to be at a worrying 103.6.

“Uhm,” Tony makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Midnight, maybe? Kinda lost track of time.” Peter frowns. “Sorry for waking you up, kid,” Tony says again, taking his expression the wrong way. “That’s kind of why I didn’t want to stay.”

“You should have called me earlier.” Peter fills a glass of water from the tap. “And yeah, really reassuring to think of you spending the night on the bathroom floor of your hotel because you can’t get up on your own.”

Tony mumbles something that sounds a lot like, “Not like I haven’t done that before.” When Peter hands him the glass, the man’s hands are trembling so much that half of the water spills out onto his shirt.

“Shit,” Tony mutters. “All my spares are at the hotel.”

“I can give you one of mine,” Peter offers.

“Yeah, that... that would be great,” Tony says earnestly. Peter wonders whether he’s maybe a bit delirious. “This shit didn’t use to happen before the snap, you know.”

“Don’t worry,” Peter says, surprised at the admission. He fetches a clean sweatshirt from the dresser and hands it to the older man. His mentor’s whole body is shaking violently with chills. While Tony changes, Peter notices that the scar pattern around his shoulder stump is an angry red. It looks painful, but Tony doesn’t seem to care too much.

Something twists within Peter. It reminds him too much of the time just after the snap when he saw Tony in the hospital, weak with fever from the infected limb.

“Ready for bed?” Peter asks, shaking the thoughts from his head.

“Yeah,” Tony says, although he doesn’t look too sure. Peter pulls him upright and almost staggers under the man’s weight and his own weakness. Tony doesn’t comment, and when Peter turns towards him, he sees that he is biting his lips, eyes largely unfocused.

“This really hit you hard, huh?” Peter asks when they have made it to the bed, sitting down next to Tony. His mentor is bending forward, head in his hands, panting and shaking like he just finished a mission in the suit. That’s not the only thing, though. With his advanced hearing, Peter can pick up Tony’s heartbeat, which is slightly arrhythmic.

“Tony?” he asks suspiciously. “What’s wrong with your heart?”

“Yeah, about that…” The other man raises his head, but avoids Peter’s gaze.

“What?” Peter can feel his own heart rate speeding up in worry.

“I, uh...remember my heart medication?” Tony says casually. “I threw up the last dose. It’s not dangerous, don’t worry,” he adds when Peter stares at him, alarmed, “Or, well, at least not yet. Just sort of increases the nausea and dizziness.”

“Can’t you take another dose?” he asks.

“I don’t think I can keep anything down right now,” Tony admits. “But I’ll try in the morning.”

“Hmm.” This doesn’t really do anything to make Peter feel better.

“Don’ worry, kid” Tony adds with a tired slur to his words, which only achieves the opposite. With a lot of effort, he pulls his legs up to the bed and then lies down under the blankets. “Let’s both sleep for a bit and things will look brighter in the morning.”

Peter gets himself a glass of water and then curls back up on the couch. He hears Tony’s breaths turn heavy and even out before long, but although he feels exhausted, he has a hard time going back to sleep. The sofa feels like rocks under his achy body, and he keeps turning around, unable to find a comfortable position. His head doesn’t fare any better. With his brain cloudy from fever, it’s even harder than usual to stave off the memories from the battlefield.

His eyes finally fall shut and back he goes, right into the middle of dust and blood and death looming around every corner. He knows that there should be screams and shouts everywhere, but it’s silent, dead silent, except for the underlying thump-thump-thump of Tony’s heartbeat, becoming ever quieter.

Peter rounds a heap of rubble and almost stumbles over Tony, who is lying on the ground, half his body eaten away by the radiation. The beating gets weaker even as Peter falls onto his knees and tears stream down his cheeks. He’s been here a hundred times, unable to save the man who saved him, and he knows exactly how this is going to end.

A beat, almost indiscernible. A breath leaves Tony’s lips for the last time.

Silence.

He wakes to the feeling that everything in the world that possibly could be wrong, is wrong. His whole body is hot and he feels nauseous, almost as if he will throw up. Sick, he remembers. He’s sick. Tony’s―

Peter forces himself to take a deep breath that comes out more like a choked sob. He sits up dizzily, and is surprised by the light streaming through the windows. His eyes immediately wander to Tony’s still form on the bed, covered by blankets. Peter can make out his slightly ragged breathing, but he’s way past the point where he would feel calmed by this.

Unsteadily, he makes his way over to the bed and sits down on the floor next to it, shivering uncontrollably from the coldness of the tile, but not wanting to wake Tony up. He tries to calm himself, but his heart won’t stop racing. Everything feels kind of surreal and he can’t shake the image of Tony’s body on the ground, so still and lifeless. There are tears burning in his eyes. He shoves his knuckles in his mouth to keep himself from sobbing loudly.

“Kid?” Tony’s groggy voice asks. “What ‘appened?”

“S-Sorry,” Peter manages. “G-Go back to sleep.”

“Hey.” Tony rubs his eyes and tries to push himself up, only partially succeeding. Looking at Peter, his face takes on an alarmed expression. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Peter whispers, feeling infinitely stupid. “J-Just had a nightmare.” He bites his lip, but with the admission, a dam seems to break. He can feel his eyes overflowing.

“Hey, kid, hey,” Tony says softly. “It’s alright.”

Peter just shakes his head, tears dripping down his cheeks onto the floor. Tony extends a trembling hand to wipe them away. “Do these nightmares happen often?” he asks.

“Sometimes,” Peter evades. He wonders why he doesn’t just tell the truth. That there’s rarely a night when he doesn’t go back to the battle against Thanos, or the dust on Titan, or even the Vulture in flames―an enemy that seems ridiculous now compared to the ones they’ve fought since, but sometimes still makes it into Peter’s dreams.

“It’s gotten worse again, hasn’t it?” Tony asks. “Since you moved here.” His hand drops down to Peter’s shoulder and squeezes it lightly.

“‘S okay,” he lies. “I’m fine. Jus’... just the fever.”

“Mmh-hmm, sure. Come here.” Tony nods his head towards himself, weakly lifting an arm, and Peter lets himself get pulled into the hug. “Woah, kid. You’re on fire.”

“Hmm,” Peter mumbles. “You too.”

It’s true; Tony’s body feels even hotter than his. The sweatshirt Peter had given him is already damp with sweat. And, most concerningly, his heart is still beating out of rhythm. It reminds Peter way too much of his dream for him to ignore it.

“You need to have some water,” Tony says, ignorant to Peter’s thoughts. “And eat something. It’s been a while.”

Peter’s queasiness increases at the thought. “Stomach’s not feeling great,” he admits. “How are you doing?” he asks then, into the older man’s chest. “And don’t lie.”

He feels Tony grimacing. “Like a clock someone forgot to wind up.” His remaining arm lets go of Peter as he brings it to his chest to massage the area around his heart. “But hey, don’t worry. I’m gonna try my pills and some water and then I’ll be back on my bullshit before you know it.”

But he isn’t. Half an hour later, Peter has to support Tony to the toilet to once again throw up the medication and the few sips of water he’s just managed to get down. He stops trying to reassure Peter after the second bout of painful dry heaves wrack his body and doesn’t even resist when Peter wipes down his grey face with a wet cloth. On their way back, halfway across the bedroom, they almost lose balance when Tony’s legs suddenly give out. Peter just manages to stabilise him before they can faceplant all the way.

“That’s it. You need to go to the ER,” Peter decides after all-but carrying Tony back to the bed and sitting him down. Peter’s own body feels heavy with exhaustion. Tony weakly shakes his head and opens his mouth to object. “Please, Tony.”

There must have been something in his voice that gave away his desperation because Tony shuts up mid-inhale. He gives Peter a deep look and then nods shakily. ”But only if you eat something first.”

“Okay.” He checks Tony’s temperature, which has climbed even higher, to 103.8. Peter’s own is hardly any better at 103.2, but at least he can still stand―kind of, he realises when he has to sit down to be able to concentrate on his phone screen long enough to call a cab.

The walk to the kitchen feels like it’s a mile long. Peter surveys the meagre food choices and decides that cold pasta with salt looks like the best option. After the first few bites, his queasiness abides a bit and he manages to finish his small plate, suddenly realising how hungry he was. He drinks two glasses of water with it and finally feels a little less lightheaded. Then he goes to the bathroom and, on a whim, swallows a small handful of painkillers from the bottle of Advil Tony has sitting beside his pill box. They will hardly do anything for him, but hopefully they’ll keep him upright until they reach the hospital.

When Peter comes back, he expects Tony to be lying where he left him and is already wondering how he’s going to maneuver him down the stairs from the second floor with the man's balance shot and his own legs feeling like noodles. But Tony is sitting up and in the process of putting on his shoes. His determination, however, falters a bit when it comes to actually standing up.

“Just go slow,” Peter directs, supporting Tony to the door and taking on most of the man’s weight. “One step at a time.”

They make it down the first staircase before Tony holds up a hand. “Just need a minute,” he exhales, sitting down with a sigh and leaning against the wall, his eyelids fluttering shut. His breathing is ragged. Peter looks at him worriedly, the unsteady thump of the man’s heartbeat loud in his ears. Tony, as if feeling the gaze, opens one eye to squint at him. “Not dead yet, kid. Come on, let’s get downstairs.”

Maybe it’s the fact that the painkillers are wearing off faster than expected or that Peter’s anxiety is finally getting the better of him, but the cab ride is kind of a blur. He just remembers Tony sitting with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, looking deathly exhausted, and at some point grabbing the older man’s hand and holding on.

Peter only lets go of it when he has to fill in the forms once they reach the hospital. The ER nurse takes one look at Tony’s scarred face and missing arm and then directs them to a private room. Peter’s hand is shaking so hard that Tony’s name on the form looks like a child’s scrawl. Behind him, his mentor is already being connected to a heart monitor, while another nurse is bringing an IV stand.

He hands the form to the elderly nurse and then has to steady himself against the wall when he stumbles a bit.

Her brow furrows. “Are you alright?” she asks.

“Y-Yes,” Peter answers quickly.

“Bullshit. He’s got the flu too,” Tony mutters from the bed behind them.

“I’m fine,” Peter insists, feeling his heart rate spike. They’ve done a great deal to keep his secret identity, well, secret while he’s at Culver, and he’s not about to let his powers be discovered just because of a flu bug. “Really, I’m okay. Not a big deal.”

“Honey, you can’t be here as a visitor if you’re sick,” the nurse says, her tone kind, but firm. “You’ll risk infecting the other patients.”

Peter looks up, taking a moment to understand the implications. “What? No, please don’t make me go!”

The nurse eyes him critically, then sighs and relents. “If you’re going to stay, you’ll have to be inside this room at all times. I can’t have you walking around spreading germs.”

“That’s okay,” Peter agrees immediately. It’s not like he was planning to walk the halls anyway; his legs feel like they might go on strike any moment. When the nurse turns around to start working on Tony, Peter wobbles over to an uncomfortable chair in the corner and collapses into it.

He feels like the next time he takes an actual breath is once Tony is hooked up to painkillers, antiemetics, and something for his heart, the fluids dripping steadily into his arm through an IV and the heart monitor finally—finally—reverts back to a steady rhythm of beeps. Tony isn’t conscious anymore to notice; after spending the better part of the last 24 hours on Peter’s bathroom floor, his exhaustion has finally gotten the upper hand. He drifts off as soon as the meds start kicking in.

Once the nurses leave, Peter drags his chair over next to the bed. Tony looks—there is no other way to describe it—frail. Like he might fall apart any minute if Peter stops watching. His fever is still much too high at 103.3 and he is sleeping fitfully, as if the dreams are haunting him as well. Peter can still see images from the nightmare in his mind. Not clear, but looming, like he might find himself on the battlefield any time he turns around.

He doesn’t want to fall asleep, but he’s dead tired. Now with the adrenaline fading, it feels like his body weighs a thousand pounds. He suddenly doesn’t even feel able to keep his head up, and instead lets himself slump forward, crossing his arms and resting his head on top. His cold hands are a sharp contrast to his burning face.

His mind feels oddly detached from his body, like he’s floating, and he has no idea how much time has passed when suddenly the nurse shakes him awake from where he’s slidden down onto the edge of Tony’s mattress. “Can you just move for a second, hon?” she asks gently. “I need to hook up some more fluids."

"Oh yeah, sure, of course..." Peter nods groggily and goes to stand up a little too quickly. The moment he is on his feet, he can practically feel the blood rushing away from his head, and a wave of darkness rolls over him. Peter grabs for something to hold on to but comes up empty. He feels himself sway into the nurse, who grabs his shoulders and just about manages to keep him from face planting on the hospital floor.

“You’re really warm, dear,” she observes after helping him sit back down on the chair. "You really can't be here if you're not a patient. Let me call someone to get you a bed."

“But I—” Peter feels panic swelling in his chest. He doesn’t want to leave Tony alone, especially when he can’t be sure that the man’s heart won’t stop again, but he can’t let anyone find out about Spider-Man either―

"Peter, it's fine,” he hears a thin voice. Tony, just woken up, is shifting wearily under the blanket, turning his head towards them. “They'll sign NDAs and no one will know. Just do what she says and get in the bed, alright?"

So Peter does. The nurse calls her colleague, who sets up a bed next to Tony’s and takes Peter’s vitals. After Peter groggily explains that fever reducers won’t do anything to bring down his 103.5 degree temperature, the nurse hooks him up to fluids to counteract the dehydration.

The world goes blurry again and he is half asleep when he sees Tony slip something into the elderly nurse’s hand on her way out the door.

When she’s gone, Peter gives Tony a confused look. “You bribed her to let me stay in the room?”

“What are you talking about?” Tony scoffs lightly. “I just asked nicely and told her you took part in saving the world―that was more than enough.” He shrugs a bit. “And I might’ve signed an autograph for her son.”

Peter would have rolled his eyes if his head wasn’t hurting so much. “Still a bribe,” he mumbles.

“Go to sleep, kid,” Tony says warmly.

He closes his eyes but then opens them again to see Tony watching him. “You’ll be okay, right?” Peter asks.

“Of course,” Tony replies. “I’m always okay.”

When Peter wakes up again in the early evening, it’s to May lightly stroking his curls out of his face. A tension he didn’t even know he was holding seems to fall off his shoulders.

“Hey, baby,” she says softly when he hugs her. “Rough weekend, huh?”

It is decided that neither of them has to spend the night at the hospital―Tony has to fight to be discharged, but they eventually let him go after making him promise to rest, take his medicine, and tell May if his heart acts up again. In turn, Tony collects each of the staff members’ contact details to have his lawyers send NDAs later.

The drive back to the flat is quiet. Tony attempts small talk for the first five minutes, but is still too out of it from the combined force of illness and drugs, and quickly gives up again. Peter is just relieved that May is there.

Once they’re home, May makes both of them eat some toast and then ushers them off to bed. Peter feels like he hasn’t slept since he moved to Virginia, and maybe that’s true in a way. But now with Tony and May both there, he finally feels like it’s safe to let himself go.

He wakes up to May opening the windows to let in the chilly morning air.

“C’n I have some water?” he mumbles.

May hands him the glass. “Your fever has come down a bit overnight. Feeling any better?” she asks.

“Hmm.” He’s still weary and headachey, but the chills are gone and the world seems much less frightening now. “How’s Tony?” he asks.

“Still asleep. We talked a little last night—he didn’t get much rest, I’m afraid. But you should wake him up and tell him it’s time for food and medicine.”

Peter sits up and is rewarded with a lack of dizziness. He goes to the toilet and washes his face before trudging over to the bed and sitting down carefully on the mattress next to his mentor’s sleeping form. Tony’s eyes are moving rapidly behind his closed eyelids as if he’s in the middle of a dream. His hair is a greasy mess, the scars as red and angry as before and his cheeks still flushed with fever, but the rest of his face isn’t as pale as it was the previous day, and, when he listens carefully, Peter can make out his regular heartbeat.

“Tony?” Peter whispers, gently touching his flesh shoulder.

Tony grunts and rolls himself over. “Pep?” he asks in a muffled voice.

“Not exactly.” Tony blinks awake and squints up at Peter. “How are you feeling?”

“Ugh…I want my hospital drugs back,” Tony half-jokes. “But not on the verge of cardiac failure anymore, so that’s a plus.”

“Hmm.” Peter reaches for his hand to check the smart watch. “Your temperature’s down.” Tony’s is at 101.5, whereas Peter’s is at 100.7. Tony gives first the numbers and then Peter a critical once-over before closing his eyes again.

“Don’t go back to sleep,” Peter warns. “May said you need to take your medicine and eat something.”

Tony groans audibly. “Nurses never let you have any fun...”

The first time they met, Peter wasn’t sure what to make of Tony Stark.

Times have changed, Peter thinks, as he surveys the scene in his apartment.

After a painfully slow shuffle to the bathroom and back, Tony decides that he doesn’t feel up to walking around just yet, so they all eat breakfast in bed, assembled on various pillows and blankets, while Star Trek plays on the TV in the background. With his appetite returning and worries temporarily lifted, Peter devours two pieces of toast with chocolate spread and a glass of orange juice while Tony sticks to saltines, tea, and the pills he swallows under May’s watchful eye.

When they’re done, May announces that she’s heading out for groceries. “No crime-fighting until I’m back,” she orders with a smile. “And I want each of you to finish the water bottles on the table.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Tony salutes sarcastically. The moment May shuts the door, he sets down his half-finished cup of tea and slumps visibly into his pillows.

“You alright?” Peter asks immediately.

“Jeez, kid, you’re worse than Morgan,” Tony comments, not without affection. “I know last night was scary for you, but honestly, this is not even in my top 20 for life-threatening events I’ve experienced in the last few decades.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” Peter retorts. “Because it really doesn’t.”

He must have come across less playful than intended, because Tony’s expression sobers. He regards Peter with the deep look that always gives him the feeling of being x-rayed.

“I know,” Tony says. “But that’s kind of the point. I’ve been through so much shit in my life that I know pretty much exactly how you feel.”

He drags himself a bit more upright and lays a warm hand on Peter’s forearm. “I know how it is when your thoughts circle back to the same moment over and over again and the nightmares won’t let you rest. I know how easy it is to isolate yourself because the memories are eating you up and you feel like nobody can help you.”

He pauses for a moment and rubs a hand over his forehead. Peter remembers the darkness on Tony’s face the first time they met and wonders whether that’s what Tony sees on his now.

“What I’m trying to say is,” Tony continues, “you don’t have to pretend to be fine if you’re not. At least not in front of me or May.”

The irony of it almost makes Peter smile, despite the lump forming in his throat. Tony just spent the last 36 hours trying to downplay the pain he was in. “You are one to talk,” he remarks.

Tony chuckles quietly. “Still learning, kid.” He picks up his tea cup and takes another sip before continuing in a softer voice. “Just trust me, it‘s okay to be a little broken, even when you’re not sick. And you don’t have to hide it. I know what loneliness looks like. I’ve been through all of it and it took me years to understand that the only thing that can help is to let other people in―the right kind of people.”

The thoughts are running a marathon in Peter’s head and he’s dimly aware that he’s trembling. He swallows hard before speaking. “It’s just… sometimes I don’t even want to remember. It’s just so hard to start talking. About”―he takes a deep breath―“the battle. And the dreams. And everything else.”

“Yeah, it is. I never said it would be easy.” Tony seems to hesitate for a moment, but then he pulls Peter toward him one-handedly so that they can lie side by side. He covers both of them with his blanket. Peter turns his head into Tony’s shoulder and closes his eyes, taking deep breaths. “And we don’t have to start today. But I’ll be there whenever you’re ready.”

________________

If you liked this, you might also enjoy my other post-Endgame fic (in which Tony is obviously still alive): What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood

All my fics

Taglist: @toomuchtoread33 @yepokokfine

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improvidus · 4 years

Text

The One About Naps

Warnings | None

Rating | K+

Genres | Friendship, Humor, Family, 5+1

Characters | Tammy Gregorio (POV), Patton Plame, Sonja Percy, Christopher LaSalle, Dwayne Pride, Loretta Wade, Raymond Isler

Pairings | Persalle (undertones)

Word Count | 4K

Summary: Five times Gregorio finds her new co-workers sleeping in strange places, and one time they find her.

1. Percy

The first time it happened, Gregorio was pouring herself a cup of coffee. She had yet to acquire a taste for the “essence de chicorée,” but with the way this case was going—had been going, non-stop, for nearly forty-six hours, now—she needed every drop of caffeine she could get. She had just finished a brief stint of sleep on the sofa upstairs, but she was fairly certain it had left her more exhausted than before.

She blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes and reached for the container of sugar, growling when the little metal spout fought her as she tried to open it. Under normal circumstances, she didn’t take sugar, but she was banking on the chance that if she dumped in enough, it would give her the high she needed to last a few more hours. She clanked her spoon around inside a few times before tapping the loose drops free and tossing it in the sink. A couple of boxes of pizza had been left on the table and she grabbed a slice of Hawaiian, tearing off a bite and making a face. It had long ago gone cold. She swiped up a paper plate and shook her head, grumbling under her breath.

She was about to head back to her desk when she tripped, letting out a less-than-dignified yelp as she flailed to catch herself, wrapping her arms around a chair and spewing an impressive stream of colorful words as coffee sloshed over her hands and her paper plate fell to the floor. Her pizza would have gone with it, were it not still hanging from her clenched teeth. Balance regained, she looked down to see what she had tripped over. The lights in the kitchen were dim, but she could just see the toe of a small black combat boot peeking out from beneath the table. She frowned. Someone had left their shoes in the floor?

Unless…

She set her mug on the counter, slapped her pizza, plate-less, beside it, and got down on her hands and knees, squinting into the shadows under the table. Gregorio felt her eyebrows climb.

There, sprawled on her stomach in the middle of the floor, was Sonja Percy, sound asleep. At least, soundly enough that Gregorio plowing over her foot hadn’t seemed to make a dent. Her head was pillowed on her arms, right foot tucked beneath her left knee. At first glance, Gregorio had thought she was covered by a small blanket, but a closer look revealed it to be a jacket—or, more specifically, a shirt-jack. A denim shirt-jack. LaSalle’s denim shirt-jack.

She smirked. Interesting.

The way the garment was able to fully cover not only her trunk but half the length of her legs, as well, paired with the way she was scowling in her sleep only served to reinforce the “grumpy warrior dwarf” image Gregorio had had when she first met Percy.

“You havin’ some kinda breakdown down there, or were you just tired of chairs?”

Gregorio straightened so fast she nearly whacked her head on the table’s edge. Patton was stopped in the doorway that led to the courtyard, his head cocked, eyeing her quizzically where she squatted in the floor.

“No, I just—” She broke off, gesturing at the sleeping form before her.

Patton caught sight of the wayward toe and a knowing look crossed his face. “Who is it?”

“Percy. Does she do this often?” Gregorio was unable to hide her surprise at Patton’s lack thereof.

He snorted. “Girl, you got no idea. They all do. Cases go long like this, they catch their Z’s whenever—and wherever—they can. They just plop down wherever they at, and abracadabra—they out light a light.” He straightened his tie and patted it back beneath his vest. “Dang near given me heart attacks on more than one occasion.”

Gregorio frowned, turning her attention back to Percy as she processed this new information. She was growing accustomed to her colleagues’ laid back work environment, but this was…She shook her head. “Wow.”

“You’re tellin’ me. I almost ran over LaSalle, once.”

Her ankles and the backs of her knees complained as she straightened, scooping up her plate and chucking it before she retrieved her mug and took another bite of pizza. “Now that’s a story I wanna hear.” They made their way back into the bullpen, leaving Percy to her strange napping grounds.

2. Sebastian

The second time it happened, she had been sent to the lab to see how Sebastian was doing with the forensic analysis of some powdery substance they had found on their killer’s most recent vic. That made six, total. For now. She ran a hand over her face and sighed, offering up a short prayer that their gangly forensic geek would be in an English-speaking mood before rapping on the pane of glass in the door and breezing through. “Sebastian, where are you with the—”

She frowned. The man in question was nowhere to be seen. “Sebastian?”

There was no response.

She ducked back into the hall and poked her head into the morgue. Even Wade was showing signs of exhaustion. If they didn’t catch this guy soon...“Hey, Doc! Sebastian in here?”

“Hello, Tammy. I’m afraid not. You checked the lab? He was in there just a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see him. Huh. That’s okay, I’ll just wait for him. Probably just went to the bathroom or something.”

Back in the lab, Gregorio picked up one of Sebastian’s dolls (“Action figures, Gregorio. They’re action figures. Have some class.”) and fiddled with it as she leaned back against his desk. A few minutes ticked by, and there was still no sign of Sebastian. She shook her head, slamming the doll back down on the desk, and was about to go looking for him when she heard a contented sigh.

She straightened, frowning. Her hand went to her service weapon, senses on alert. What if their killer was here, in the lab? What if he’d already taken care of Sebastian? Another sound led her to a multi-layered cart. There it was again, near her feet. It was almost like a...snore.

An idea formed in her mind as she slowly crouched before the cart.

Shoving her weapon back in its holster, she blew out a huff and rolled her eyes at herself and the sight before her. Yup.

Sebastian was curled on the cart’s bottom rack, sleeping peacefully in the single most odd position she had ever seen. It looked like he had sat down cross-legged and just...folded the rest of him over his legs. His face was smashed against the metal, gentle breaths whooshing in and out through slightly puckered lips. Gregorio snorted. He looked like an over-grown baby. Or a pretzel.

She decided ripping off the proverbial band-aid was the best option in this case. Well. At least the most entertaining. “Sebastian!”

The man jerked upright, eyes going wide and then becoming slits when he smacked his head on the rack above him.

Gregorio smirked. “Sleeping Beauty awakes!”

Sebastian rubbed at his head. “That was mean.”

Gregorio shrugged, watching with some amusement as he carefully maneuvered himself out of his chosen bed. “Maybe so, but that’s what you get for napping on the job. How tall are you, anyway? What, six-two, six-three?”

“Six-two. Why?”

“Six-two. You wanna tell me how the heck you fit in that thing?”

He shrugged, stretching as he stood. “I’m flexible.”

“I noticed that.”

Sebastian’s eyes cut to hers sharply as his ears began to glow a bright red. “Oh. Did—did you—was I—”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.”

The red spread to his cheeks.

Gregorio gave his arm a pat. “Don’t worry, Pretzel Man. Your secret’s safe with me.”

3. LaSalle

Isler wasn’t supposed to be here. Not now. Anytime but now.

The team had been running on fumes for nearly a week, frantically trying to stop an impending terrorist attack. They had averted the bombing planned for a Mardi Gras parade through the Quarter two days ago, but there was no time to celebrate their victory. Their man was still on the loose. Pride and LaSalle had been working triple overtime to let the junior agents get rest where they could during the hunt, and they were beginning to look like the ghoulishly pale masks their would-be bomber left behind him. Pride was consuming coffee by the pot, and when she asked why he wasn’t taking a break, he just shook his head and said he’d sleep when they got their man. For his part, LaSalle just flashed a very subdued version of his usual grin and said he never slept much over Mardi Gras season, anyway. When she’d shoved her half-full mug of lukewarm coffee into his hands, he’d stared into it longingly for a full thirty seconds before reluctantly passing it back and shaking his head. “Can’t. Messes with my aim.”

It was now nearly ten o’clock at night on day three since the bombing attempt and tensions were high, a feeling of dread clogging their usually comfortable workspace as they waited for the next shoe to drop. Pride and Percy were interrogating their suspect’s cousin, and LaSalle was...Well, Gregorio didn’t actually know where he was, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She was too busy wallowing in self-pity as she sat with her face planted in the files spread over her desk, grumbling under her breath.

And of course, that was when Isler showed up. “Am I interrupting something?”

Gregorio squinted up at him, wishing she could wipe the smug expression off of his face. “You couldn’t have called first?”

“No. For all intents and purposes, I’m not here.”

“Okay.” She sat up and pushed her hair out of her face, not allowing herself to feel sheepish about the compromising position he had found her in. He could judge from his easy chair all he wanted. No way he knew what they had been through the last few days. “If you’re not supposed to be here, why are you?”

“I may have a lead.”

She sat up straighter, all contention forgotten. “Really? That’s great, let me get Pride, and we can—”

“Text him. We won’t need backup, and he’s interrogating Miles Ortega, isn’t he?”

“How did you—” he quirked an eyebrow and she rolled her eyes. “FBI. Right.” She tugged on her jacket and pulled out her phone. “Address?”

He gave it to her, and she shot off a quick text to Pride before following him out the door. “Where’s your car?”

“I’m not here in an official capacity, remember? I took a taxi from the airport.”

“Okay. We’ll take the truck.” She climbed in the driver’s seat and sent another text, this one to LaSalle. Got a lead. Borrowing your baby. Don’t worry, I’ll get her back to you in one piece. She smirked. Probably.

“You sending a Dear John, Gregorio? Let’s go!”

She put her phone away and made a face. “Yes, sir.”

As they pulled out into the street, a sudden burst of recorded drums and a chant of “Roll! Tide!” filled the truck. It lasted less than a second, but it was enough to nearly give Gregorio a heart attack.

Isler looked at her with raised eyebrows. “That’s your text alert? I never pegged you for an Alabama fan.”

She snorted. “I’m not. That would be LaSalle’s. He must have left his phone in here.” She frowned, feeling around for it in the center console with her free hand.

“Huh. Professional.”

“He is! Usually. We’re all a little frazzled right now, is all,” she said defensively, despite her surprise that LaSalle would have neglected to grab his phone with all of this going on. Her hand drifted into the back, shuffling through a quilt that she didn’t remember being there yesterday. “It won’t happen again.”

Isler shrugged and looked out the window as Gregorio continued patting down the quilt. Where had he left his phone? She was about to give up, deciding she’d search for it later, when her hand came into contact with a limp something that was very hot, very rough, and very dry.

A hand.

She let out a squawk and the truck swerved a little as she jerked her hand back.

“Gregorio, what the—”

“I—there’s a—” LaSalle. It had to be LaSalle. That would explain the phone. And the quilt. Her jaw clenched. “Sorry, I um—I think that quilt has been on a few too many camping trips. There was a spider or something.”

“You’re afraid of spiders?”

She leveled a steely glare on Isler. “Are you gonna sit there and tell me you’re not?”

He shifted in his seat and returned to looking out the window. “No comment.”

“That’s what I thought.” She glued her eyes to the road ahead and cautiously reached back beneath the quilt to find the hand again. It squeezed her fingers. Uh-huh. Her eyes narrowed. She patted around until she found what she guessed to be chest or stomach and smacked it. Hard. There was a hollow thunking sound and a soft “oomph!” She smiled. Stomach, then.

Isler’s eyes cut from her to the quilt piled between the front and back seats a few times before lingering on her, eyebrow quirked, mouth opening and closing once, twice, and then again before he wisely chose to leave his questions unasked.

She spared him a prim glance. “Spider. Got it.”

4. Loretta

“Hey, Doc, you in here?” Percy poked her head in the door of the morgue and stopped short. “Well, now.”

Gregorio leaned in to see over her shoulder. “What?” She blinked. “Oh. That’s, uh, that’s a new one.”

“Yeah. Should we, uh—”

“Nah. She’s been on her feet for even longer than we have on this one.”

Percy shot her a doubtful look.

“Okay, well. At least as long,” she amended.

They stood in silence for a few moments before Percy broke it. “She looks so…”

“Peaceful.”

“Yeah.” Percy’s face scrunched up. “She’s been in this line of work too long.”

“For sure.”

A beat.

Gregorio shifted on her feet. “This making you uncomfortable, too?”

“Oh, heck yeah.”

“Great, just checking.”

Gregorio didn’t notice the door to Sebastian’s lab open and close until a whisper, loud, hot, and mockingly conspiratorial, brushed past her ear. “What’re y’all lookin’ at?”

The girls whipped around in unison to find LaSalle, smirking down at them and looking very pleased with himself.

Percy put a finger to her lips and shushed him fiercely, despite the fact that her yelp as a result of his whisper had been much louder than the whisper itself.

He held up placating hands. “Sorry. Seriously, though. What’s so—” he broke off, eyebrows shooting up as his head cocked to one side. “Well, there’s something I never thought I’d see.”

“You and me both,” Gregorio said, shaking her head.

LaSalle joined their stack—his chin jutting over Gregorio’s shoulder, Gregorio’s over Percy’s.

The solemn silence was shattered by a loud shutter sound. The girls jumped and swiveled again. LaSalle was holding his phone aloft, grinning down at the photo he had just taken.

They glared.

He threw his hands out indignantly. “What? King would never believe me if I don’t get some photographic evidence of...this.” He waved vaguely towards the sight before him.

Gregorio considered for a minute before shrugging. “That’s fair.”

Percy pulled the door shut gently and stood on tiptoes to see past LaSalle’s shoulder. “Well, let’s see it, Country Mouse!”

Gregorio stationed herself at his other shoulder as he turned his screen so they could both see the photo of Loretta Wade, curled contentedly beneath a white sheet, sound asleep on the morgue’s only available autopsy table.

5. Pride

Gregorio’s nose twitched as it noticed a strange element joining the mouth-watering scent of Pride’s Louisiana-famous gumbo. She looked up from her paperwork. Something was burning.

She waited a moment, expecting to hear Pride scrambling around in an attempt to rescue his food, but all was silent in the kitchen. Frowning, she stood and followed her nose to find Pride standing at the stove, one hand at his side, the other loosely gripping a wooden spoon. The spoon was poised to stir the gumbo, but it wasn’t stirring. Gregorio watched for a moment as he just stood there, unmoving.

“Pride?”

Nothing.

“Hey, boss.”

Nada.

“Okay, you’re starting to freak me out, here.”

Nope.

She crossed the room, coming to a halt when she reached his side, hand going out to take his arm. “Pride, are you o—” she dropped her hand to her side as Pride released a loud snore. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me. You too?”

Another snore.

“Pride.”

Snore.

“Pride!”

No dice.

She took his arm urgently. “Your gumbo’s burning!”

Pride jerked and choked on a snore, his stirring starting up again before his eyes were fully open. He blinked. “Gregorio?”

“The one and only. I thought an experienced cook like yourself would know better than to fall asleep at the stove??”

Pride sighed and waved her off. “It wasn’t intentional. I’m good now. The team needs to eat.”

“The team can get take-out. You need to sleep. Seriously.” She took the spoon from him. “Sonja can’t eat this, anyway. I’ll call the mice twins and have them pick something up on their way back.”

Pride scoffed and shook his head. “You’ve all been working so hard on this one. I wanted to do somethin’ nice for y’all.”

“And we appreciate that, Pride. We do. But you’ve been going just as hard as the rest of us, and honestly…” she glanced at the scorching gumbo and flicked the burner off before putting a hand on Pride’s arm. “I think the nicest thing you could do for us right now is to get some sleep before you burn this place down, yeah?”

Pride chuckled. “You may be right.”

“Oh, I’m right.” She put a hand on his back and herded him to the door. “Go sleep. The case will be here when you wake up, and so will we. If I know LaSalle and Percy, there’ll probably even be some po’ boys.”

Pride turned to face her. “Are you sure? I can—”

“I’m sure. Positive. Go sleep.”

He raised his eyebrows at the commanding tone her voice had taken on. “You do remember that I’m your boss, right?”

“Yep. Always. Now get out of here.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “All right, you win. I’m goin’.” He took exactly five steps before turning back. “If you find anything—”

“We’ll call you. Go. Sleep. We got this.”

“Alright. Okay. Okay, I’m goin’.”

Gregorio stepped out into the courtyard and watched with arms crossed and eyebrow quirked until his door closed behind him. Then she fired off a jubilant fist-pump and pulled out her phone. “Hey, Percy. You’ll never guess what I just pulled off.”

+1. Gregorio

“Hey, you seen Gregorio recently?”

LaSalle looked up from the sea of paperwork his desk was drowning in to see Percy standing in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips, face scrunched in the way that made her nose crinkle a little. He straightened out the smirk that tried to form on his face at the sight. “Not since I got back from Miss Loretta’s. Why? What’s up?”

“Nothin’s up, really, I just wanted to get her opinion on Arlan Kyle’s file. Let her work her profiling magic and jazz. But she’s not in the kitchen, she’s not in Patton’s office, the courtyard is a ghost yard.”

“You check upstairs?”

She sent him a Look and the smirk threatened to resurface. “Of course I did. I even checked the interrogation rooms. Zero. Zilch. Nada.”

“Huh. Maybe she’s out chasin’ down a lead, or something.”

Percy looked doubtful. “Without telling anyone? That’s not Gregorio.” Her eyes took on a mischievous glint. “You, on the other hand...”

“That was one time.”

“Yeah, and Brody and I almost shot you that one time.” She put air-quotes around the last two words.

“One could argue that I almost shot you and Brody.”

“Yeah, okay. Believe what you want to, Country Mouse, but the point is, taking off alone, without telling anybody, is a monumentally dumb idea and Gregorio isn’t monumentally dumb.”

LaSalle squinted at the implied insult. “Somebody’s playing hardball tonight.”

“Aw, sorry. You’re not always dumb.” Her tone changed abruptly from condescending sugar to bored chagrin. “But when you are, it’s monumental.”

LaSalle rolled his eyes, but couldn’t quite stifle his laugh. “Yeah, okay. I’ll give you that one. But you better watch yourself, City Mouse. Next time you do somethin’ stupid I’m gonna be on you like buzzards on week-old roadkill.”

Percy made a face as she sat down at her desk. “Well, that’s a lovely mental image. But you’re gonna be waitin’ a while, Country Mouse. You got nothin’ on me.”

“Yet.” Chris rooted around in the desk’s top drawer and came up with an empty box. “You got a paperclip?”

“Ran out this morning. Check Gregorio’s?”

LaSalle rose and stretched, ambling over to Gregorio’s desk and pulling open a drawer. His eyebrows shot up as he took in the haphazard tangle of office supplies. “She’s got a whole danged arsenal in here!” Boxes of staples, spare pencil leads, scotch tape, zebra pens, and there—paper clips. “Think fast.” He chucked a box at Percy, slinging it far enough that she shot back in her chair to catch it, barely slamming her feet down in time to save herself from toppling backward.

She held the small package aloft, a triumphant smirk on her face. “Read ‘em and weep, LaSalle.”

“Can’t blame a guy for tryin’.” His grin abruptly turned to a frown when his shoe brushed against something hard under the desk. He moved his foot around a little. Whatever it was, it was large. He braced a hand on the desktop and crouched to take a look. The grin returned full tilt as his head popped back up. “Pssst. Percy!”

She looked up. “Why are you on the floor?”

He held a finger to his lips and beckoned her over.

She crossed to the desk, a frown gathering on her face. “Why are we whispering?”

“Look.”

She stepped behind him, bending a little to follow his gaze. “What are you—” She broke off when she caught sight of Tammy Gregorio curled beneath her desk, face resting on prayer hands. Percy clapped a hand over her mouth, but LaSalle still heard the giggle that bubbled free.

He grinned back at her, mouthing “busted.”

“She’s gonna be so embarrassed when she wakes up!”

“Yeah. There goes all her ammo for teasin’ us about our sleeping habits. Hey, toss me my jacket?”

She tiptoed away and was back a moment later, pressing the cool leather into his hand. He spread it over the newbie as warily as if she were a poisonous snake that might strike if he moved too quickly. But she didn’t stir. Gaining confidence, he rearranged it a little, trying in vain to find a way to fully cover her. Despite her all-but fetal position, his best efforts still left her socked feet exposed. He ran a hand over his mouth and nodded. “I guess that’ll have to—”

“Think fast!” Percy’s voice hissed across the bullpen and he looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of her wicked grin before his head snapped back and his face was engulfed in denim. He peeled it away and did his best to keep his unimpressed glare from cracking as she threw her arms in the air and shout-whispered, “She scores! The crowd goes wild! Ahhhhh!”

His laughter got the best of him as he shook his head and tucked the jacket over Gregorio’s exposed feet. “You’re some kinda special, you know that, Percy?”

“Oh, come on. You know you love me.”

LaSalle was suddenly very grateful for the desk that concealed his face.

A/N: This one was so fun to write!!!! I’d never written a 5+1 fic before, but...I think I’ll have to write more. That was FUN. Didn’t feel like work at all. But that may be due to how entertaining the characters are? I love writing for them. Fun fact, Sebastian’s “pretzel position” may or may not be based on my favorite way to sleep. Kudos, props, and candy to anyone who caught the VeggieTales reference!

Feedback always, always appreciated. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, lovely soul! It means more to me than you’ll ever know. Don’t forget to drink water today! And maybe eat a cake. Or an apple. Something to make your heart happy. I love you. Jesus loves you. Have a marvelous day, you!

Author out.

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thebestestboyo · 4 years

Text

Based on @loveceit 's P!ATD Prompts!

"I lost a bet to a guy in a chiffon chiffon skirt."

As I like it call it:

How Remus Ended Up Working For Patton

Masterpost

(Warning of: Drug mentions/alcohol/drinking, Remus making bad decisions)

(if I need to tag anything else, please do tell me)

As the resident disaster man of the Driftwood apartments, it was common for him to come stumbling into the complex at insane times of night and early morning, out doing who knows what. Remus himself only remembers half of his ventures, often told to him by his roommate Vee, or known by most, Virgil.

Most times, he'd come home around two in the morning. Four was much more rare. And very occasionally, he'd show up at nine, passed out in front of the door, due to him being so exhausted that he couldn't even take his keys out. But no matter what he did, or how long he stayed out, he'd always come back. While it was always followed with a killer headache and potentially some injuries, he always came home. Sorta like a stray cat that you're not really sure exists when you aren't looking at it.

Yeah. He was that kind of person.

At this point, Vee was just focused on making sure he made it back in one piece. The two of them had been friends longer than either of them could ever remember, and if Virgil had to babysit Remus sometimes, it wasn't as if it was anything out of the ordinary.

So, when he had the time (and the patience), he'd go out with him, mostly to make sure he didn't pick too many fights with the gangs or their city. Downtown especially was the worst place to be when it was dark out, they were like hyenas, just waiting for someone to set them off. Vee kept him out of that area, and usually, back by eleven if he was lucky.

As much as Remus loved his childhood friend, the fact that he needed someone to look after him often rubbed Ree the wrong way. He was an adult after all, he should be able to keep himself out of trouble well enough right?

Wrong.

Now, it wasn't as if Remus didn't know that it was dangerous, but this particular night, he just didn't care. Pent up from work and needing to go out somewhere, he struck up all his usual places to unwind, but nothing was working like it usually did. Not even the weird scientist's lab on 24th Street! And he let Remus play with pig intestines! That usually always cheered him up!

So, like any force of nature, Remus decided to head downtown. He knew Vee thought it was dangerous going this late, but it wasn't like Remus was drunk or anything! And Virgil wasn't home either! So if he got back home ok, he'd never know!

These thoughts were what kept him from internally combusting (an interesting thought, Ree wondered what it would feel like) over the idea that Virgil would be worried about him doing this. It was flawed logic, but he wasn't exactly known for his straightforward thinking.

His attention was drawn almost immediately to the bright, dizzying lights of a bar, the neon sign spelling out 'What Do We Have Beer?' It was cheesy, and stupid, and yet, he couldn't NOT stop at a place that had a pun right in the title!

Stepping in, he didn't flinch at the reek of alcohol, nor the too-loud thump of the bass at the edge of the dancefloor, and not even the people practically eating each other's faces off in the dim corners of the bar. What did catch his eye, was a curly-haired man sitting on one of the edges of a table, his eyes closed as he listened to the music.

Now on any other day, he wouldn't have been drawn to this man. On any other day, he'd have probably looked past him to go cause havoc on the dancefloor, or sip something much too strong for him at the bar. And yet, today wasn't a typical day. So, he indulged himself in this man's company.

That was his first mistake.

The guy didn't open his eyes at Remus's approach, too enraptured in the music, which gave Ree plenty of time to take his image in. He seemed out of place in this loud club, his skirt, what Remus assumed to be chiffon (if Vee's fashion rambling served him correct), flowed down to his knees, while his sweater was clearly handmade, as evident from the several loose stitches in the material. It was odd, seeing someone so innocent-seeming in this sort've place. Though, Remus had seen much more naive-looking people in clubs, going nuts for a high.

"Can I help you kiddo?"

It was jarring to hear the guy talk to him, especially with that voice. Why was it so sugary? Who the hell calls a grown man kiddo??? This guy couldn't be older than twenty five! Not that Remus was much older, barely twenty six as it was.

"I'm not sure yet! First time coming here and I'm not exactly amazed." It seemed to Remus like any other nightclub, minus several guards and Remus having sneaked several seagulls in moments before. (Even Dee was impressed by how silent they were until Remus let them go and terrorize the guests.)

"Oh? Is it not intoxicating enough for you?"

"Mm, nah. Mine usually includes more chaos." Remus stared off at the dance floor, before realizing what exactly Patton had said. "Did you just make an alcohol pun?"

"Yep! I'm surprised you heard over the music! It's bass-ically deafening with how loud it is."

This time Remus noticed, laughing as he leaned against the wall next to the guy, intrigued. "You like puns huh?"

"How pun-ctual of you to notice!"

"So what's a bunny rabbit like you doing with a bunch of pirahnas? This doesn't seem too much like a thing you'd be too into."

"Mm, it's good for a business point of view. Get to know people, you know?"

"Usually my getting to know people ends up with something going haywire, like...oh! Like that one time I got a bucket of squid ink and I was planning on dumping it on this one assbutt's car, but I ended up getting it all over myself instead. So I decided, why waste perfectly good squid ink, and just threw myself into his car instead! Vee made me take a shower before I could touch anything after. "

The guy glanced up at him in confusion, but he wasn't scared off yet, so this was considered a success in Remus's book. "Squid ink?"

"Yeah! My nerdy pal Lo gave it to me! He was studying something or another with squids, and he didn't have any use for it after, so I got it! It dyed my outfit grey!"

This time was even more successful, considering he laughed at Remus's antics, and prompting Ree to continue on his train of thought. "Why was he studying squids?"

"Well, I think it was because squids can change colors, and he wanted to see if that could be replicated. I think it would be more interesting if the tentacles could be grown on humans! Imagine, you could do so much..."

Remembering that this guy didn't even know his name, he elected to change that immediately. "My name's Remus! I should have started with that actually."

"Patton!"

"No! I'm Remus!"

"No, I mean, my name's Patton!" He smiled, giggling again at him. It was almost mesmerizing to listen to, even if it was soft under all the background noise. "Its nice to meet you!"

Remus had to pinch himself to snap out of staring directly at Patton's mouth, enchanted by his smile. "Nice to meet you too. Can I get you a drink?"

"Sure! I know the bartender actually, so we can go together!" Grabbing Remus's arm lightly (and nearly causing to jump at the easy touch), he led him over to the counter, his hand still resting on Ree's arm even when the two of them had sat down. "Can I get a blueberry mocktail please? Remus what do you want?"

"Mm...surprise me."

That was his second mistake.

Remus wasn't exactly sure what was in the drink, but it got him feeling fuzzy, and that's all that mattered. "So how do you know this place?"

"My brother has business deals here, so he started bringing me along sometimes."

"Business deals? What sort've business would have place in a club?"

Stirring his drink with the straw, Pat looked off into the haze of people. "Oh, just normal stuff."

"That's pretty vague Patty."

It was clear he didn't want to talk about it, even as Remus continued to get drunker (despite his previous ideas). "Well, it's boring! I'd rather play a game than talk about business!"

"Aaaaaand what kind of game would that be?"

"A bet."

Nearly snorting his drink in surprise, Remus burst out laughing. "A bet?"

"You heard me!"

"Sorry, it's just-" He gestured to how out of place Patton looked, his eyes glinting with mischief. "What sort've bet were you thinking? Is someone gonna end up puking or attacked by rabid animals by the end of it?"

"Mm, depends on how well you can hold your liquor. I bet you can't beat me in a drinking game. Winner gets to choose his prize."

"You're on."

That was his last mistake.

Remus lost. By a lot. For the guy who ordered a mocktail right off the bat, he definitely wasn't a lightweight.

"I, I gotta say-" Remus was bent with his head against the table to steady himself. "I am surprised!"

Patton was a giggly mess even in spite of winning, leaning into Remus. "Yep! You-" His sentence was cut off by a hiccup, in which caused another fit of giggles. He didn't even seem to notice that his sweater sleeve was slipping off his shoulder, or that he had somehow lost one of his sandals.

Remus sat up dizzily, attempting to fix the sleeve, only to remember too late that his motor skills weren't exactly in the best conditions while drunk, so it was more like Remus fell into Patton instead, causing the two of them to tumble to the ground. It was a good thing that it wasn't too far of a drop, but even so, Remus was pressed into Patton in an awkward position.

A stern voice interrupted the two of them before Remus could get his thick tongue to apologise to Pat, edged with something sharp.

"Patton...what are you doing on the floor with this...man?"

"Oh hey Dee Dee! How was your-" he wiggled his eyes playfully, clearly showing this Dee how drunk he was. "-meeting?"

"It went fine, but I don't think the best use of your time is getting drunk with random men at the club while I'm working."

"He's, not random!" Patton had by now began to play with Remus's hair, not even bothered by the fact that the two of them were still on the floor. "His name is, Reeeemus. He's my new friend! I won him!"

Even though Remus was drunk, he could still tell that it was probably not the right way to explain how they ended up there to this big, probably dangerous guy. He couldn't see much of him considering his head was resting on Pat's chest, but his boots looked awfully nice.

"I like your boots."

This...Dee? Was it Dee? Snapped his attention down to Remus, picking him up easily by the back of his collar. "So you won this...mongrel? In a bet I suppose?"

Pat was too busy trying to grab Remus back to be paying attention, so Remus got a face full of Dee's words. "I suppose he could be useful...fine. You can keep him for now." There was a sudden pinch at Remus's ear, and he could feel something metal dangling from what seemed to be a new piercing??? Wtf???

"You're too drunk right now to be of any use though. Pat do you know where he lives?"

"On a mountainnnnn with fairies and unicorns!"

"Ok so that's a no."

Remus felt he ought to be part of this conversation, considering that this Dee was asking about him, after rudely lifting him up. "Why do you wanna know tall guy?"

"Oh you can still speak. That's good. Tell me where you live and you can go back there to do whatever it is you do to not be drunk."

"I ain't telling you! You don't know it's Driftward....wait that's not right. Driftwand? Drift...drift..."

"Driftwood?"

"Yeah! You don't know it's there! And that's how it's gonna stay!"

Unfortunately, this plan did not go as Remus intended, because sooner than the drop of a hat, he was put in a car along with Pat, driven to his complex, and left out by the entrance. When he tried to look back and see exactly what this Dee guy looked like, he could only see Patton, waving to him drunkenly through the window, before Remus blacked out.

He was having a lovely dream about gore and destruction when a sudden voice caught his attention. Or, well, tried to anyways.

"Remus?"

"Hey, Remus."

The sound was annoying to what he assumed was the beginning of a headache, so he tried to tune it out.

"Remus wake up."

Was it his alarm clock? No...his alarm clock didn't scream his name to wake him up...and it usually didn't sound so pissed off.

"Ree!"

Aaaand now he was awake he supposed. "Yeah...?"

Virgil stood above him, hands on his hips. "Where the fuck were you??? I come home and you aren't here until five hours later? And did you go and get a new piercing? And...throw up on the front step of our apartments?"

His memory was still pretty fuzzy due to how much alcohol he drank, so he seemed just as surprised as Virgil was that he was in this situation. "Hey, quiet down if you could. My head hurtssss."

"Your head wouldn't hurt if you weren't out however late. Seriously though, where were you?"

His hand went to his temple, trying to soothe the pounding in his head. His fingers caught on something jangly, surprising him. "What the-"

It was definitely a new earring. Gently attempting to take it out, he looked at the words on the dangling part, confused. "Who the hell are the Andacondas?"

Virgil stiffened, seeming scared. "Remus, what did you do?"

"I lost a bet to a guy in a chiffon skirt?"

#ts remus #ts patton #gang au #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides #ts deceit #intruality #remus being remus #drug mentions #alcohol mention #ts virgil #platonic intruxiety #platonic moceit

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ghostly-cabbage · 3 years

Text

Frigid (Chapter 2)

Genre: Horror, Angst

Chapter Rating: M (Language, gore)

Word count: 4,391

AO3 FFN

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Today is really stressful, but hopefully this makes someone out there feel better. Enjoy and tell me what you think!

Danny flew through every room in the school, even the basement, but the unidentified ghost was gone. He pushed a gloved hand through his hair and swore under his breath. Just his damn luck. At least he’d caught the mountain lion ghost in the thermos. At first glance he’d thought it was Bertrand and Spectra, but that theory had been dashed. The big cat had got him good but it didn’t seem to have any intelligence beyond a wild animal.

He’d looked long enough that the ghost alarm had been turned off and people started heading back into the building. It was also long enough that his wound had melded together, and the stains on his gloves were the only evidence he’d sustained an injury in the first place. That too would be gone the next time we went ghost.

He slipped through the wall of the bathroom and dropped down into a stall to transform back. He poked his head out through the door of the bathroom to make sure no one was paying attention. Everyone was too busy trying to figure who’d seen the ghost to care. It was normal for people to hide in the bathrooms during an attack anyway. Right. First things first, he had to put the thermos back in his locker. Classes would resume in a few minutes.

Sam and Tucker were waiting at his locker when he got there. They perked up when they saw him.

“Who was it this time?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know, it was a new ghost,” he said, trying to seem less troubled than he was.

“Ghost Gage readings put it at a level six,” Tucker reported, turning his phone around to show Danny the readout graph that did in fact place its power level around a six.

“What was the reading on the other one?”

“Let’s see…” Tuck fiddled with his phone for a second before finding it. “Four and a half? A five at first.”

“A new ghost, huh? That hasn’t happened in awhile,” Sam pointed out.

“Tell me about it,” Danny unlocked his locker and set the thermos on the top shelf, safe until after school when he could flush the ghost back into the Ghost Zone. “She didn’t seem to know who I was, which is a good thing I guess.”

“Well, hopefully they won’t come back after you send ‘em back into the Ghost Zone.”

“Yeah…” He rubbed at the back of his neck as he closed his locker. “About that. I sorta only caught one. The level six hightailed it before I could get her pinned down.” Danny started to walk towards his next class.

“So what’s her deal?” Sam fell into step on his left, and Tucker on his right.

“I don’t know, I didn’t get much from her. She had one of those stick things that sheep farmers have though.”

“A shepherd's crook?” Sam supplied.

“Yeah, that. She didn’t say anything to me either, just... screamed.” It wasn’t that odd that a ghost wasn’t very talkative, but something about her was rubbing Danny the wrong way.

“Creepy,” Tucker said. “I’ll start a file on the ‘Shepherd’ then.” He tapped on his phone as they walked, not even bothering to watch where he was going. Danny reached out and grabbed Tucker’s elbow to phase him through a trash can just before he toppled into it. “Wait, was the scream anything like your wail?”

Danny shook his head. “No, that’s the thing guys, she didn’t directly attack me. Just her lackee mountain lion.”

“Huh. Well, with any luck, the next encounter will get us some more solid data. Cause right now we’re lookin’ pretty sorry. She wasn’t around long enough to get a read on her core type either.” Tucker's face was wrinkled in concentration.

“We’ll take what we can get, thanks Tuck.”

“I should really start charging you for my services. You know how much work all this is?” He waved his phone at them.

Danny laughed. “You wanna do my job instead?” Tucker was quiet for a second.

“Yeah, not a chance.”

“You sure? I could go find Desiree for old times sake,” Danny suggested with a shit eating grin. Tucker narrowed his eyes at him.

“Dude. Low blow.” His tone was good humored and easy. One of the perks of being friends so long. They shared a smile and Tucker punched his shoulder. “Alright, I got History, see you guys,” he gave them a two finger salute and peeled off.

“Did you do the algebra homework for today?” Sam asked as Tucker left. Danny felt his breath seize in his throat.

“There was algebra homework already?” He squawked.

“Relax, I’m kidding,” she laughed.

He put a hand over his heart and let out a huge breath. “Sam, don’t do that! Gave me a heart attack, are you trying to kill me again?”

________________________________________________________________

After algebra Danny had chemistry. He said goodbye to Sam in the hall and headed to the science lab. When Danny got to class Wesley was already there. He was sitting at their table staring a hole into the white board at the front of the room.

Danny thought back to the last time he’d seen him, cornered against a locker and eyes filled with terror. He dropped his textbook on the table and Wes jumped so violently Danny was surprised he stayed on his stool. His expression morphed from fear to annoyance as he looked at Danny.

“What’s wrong, man? You look like you saw a ghost,” Danny said. A part of him almost felt bad for going for such an obvious jab, but Wes had made it clear on day one that he didn’t like him. So why be nice? Danny used his foot to drag his stool out and he slumped onto his seat.

“Ha ha,” Wes replied, voice brittle. He resumed his staring contest with the whiteboard. Danny shrugged, unbothered. Kids came in and took their seats in small groups. Valerie was in this class too, and came in two minutes to the bell. The two still had an unspoken truce that translated into mutual respect. It was pretty close to a friendship. At least when he was Fenton. She came up to stand next to his desk, books tucked in the crook of her arm.

“Hey, Danny. Did you see the ghost today?” From the corner of his eye he saw Wes glance towards them. Val seemed to notice the attention too. “Just curious, from what I can tell not many saw this one. Which is weird for us.” In his last class all the students had been buzzing about the ghost attack, it was the first one of the new school year after all. Everyone had been speculating on which ghost it was and whether Phantom had shown up.

Danny shook his head. “Sorry, Val. I was on the other end of the building and evacuated with everyone.”

“Hmm. Okay, thanks.” Danny could see the gears turning in her head, probably frustrated she didn’t get her hands on it /or/ him, but she didn’t say anything else, and went to sit down at her table. Danny could feel Wesley’s eyes on him, and he sighed, turning on his stool to look at him. He was probably going to regret this.

“Lemme guess, you have questions.” Wesley looked reluctant but no less pissed.

“Everyone just… Accepts that ghosts are a thing here?” He said it in a low voice, like he was afraid of being overheard by someone.

“Uh. Yeah? Pretty much. Most people anyway. It’s been like this for like two years so… Yeah, people are kinda used to it by now.”

Wes looked confused and conflicted. He was silent for a beat, before he asked his next question. “What can you tell me about this Phantom guy?” If Danny had been drinking something he probably would have choked on it.

“Uh. I don’t know, what do you want to know?”

“Who is he? Why is he here? What’s so special about him?”

Danny blinked at the barrage of questions and struggled to find words. “Well, he’s—” the last bell rang and Mrs. Merriweather stood up from her desk. Danny almost sighed with relief. She pushed her rounded glasses up, and soothed down her pencil skirt.

“Alright kids, find your seats and settle down. We’re going to review lab safety today, and tomorrow we’ll be starting our first lab. Also the scheduled ghost drill will still be taking place, and because I detest the regulations I’m going to go ahead and tell you it'll be around 2:15 during this class.” She walked across the classroom and flicked off the lights. The projector hummed from its place hanging from the ceiling and Mrs. Merriweather wasted no time hopping to her powerpoint presentation on proper lab etiquette. Danny took the opportunity to shoot a text to Sam and Tucker about the ghost drill. At least this way they didn’t need to be on high alert. Besides, Danny had practically grown up in a lab, he knew this stuff backwards and forwards.

Wes glanced sideways at him, but said nothing. Danny shoved his phone back in his pocket and slouched forward onto the table. He stifled a yawn and struggled to keep his eyes open. A nap sounded fantastic at the moment, he’d been up half the night trying to talk Kitty through her recent fight with Johnny. Jazz said he should try and be helpful and build trust so they were less likely to take out their lovers' quarrels on him. Not having to get smacked around was all well and good but he wasn’t a ghost therapist. That was way more Jazz’s wheelhouse. He’d never say it out loud, because he’d never hear the end of it, but he missed her.

“Mr. Fenton.” Mrs. Merriweather had her hands on her hips. Crap.

“Yeah?”

“What did I just go over?”

“Uh… eye protection?”

She sighed. “Danny, what part of this seems unimportant?”

“None of it! Er, I mean, all of it? It is important, but I mean it’s not like I can even use any of this stuff anyways so…”

Mrs. Merriweather pinched the bridge of her nose. “And why do you think that is?” Annoyance squirmed in his stomach. “Not because I don’t know anything about lab safety. I know how to be safe in a lab, it’s not rocket science.”

“Well, since you know everything there is to know, then you’ll be happy to hear that I’ve just decided to give the class a quiz tomorrow on this powerpoint.” There was a satisfied twinkle in her eyes, and Danny swore she loved to torture kids, and being a teacher was the only legal way she could do it. The class broke out into groans.

“Nice going, Fenton!” Someone spat from behind him. He wanted to phase through the floor and just go home.

“Pay attention or get detention everyone!” Mrs. Merriweather warned them. It was her favorite thing to say. She turned back to the slide show and continued her spiel.

The ghost drill was nothing unusual. Despite knowing it was coming, most of the class still jumped when the alarm started, Danny and Wes included. They all evacuated the building and stood outside in the school yard the exact same way they would a fire drill. It was a waste of time, especially since they’d already had a ghost attack today.

Thankfully, Wes had slipped off to stand with a guy that looked like his older brother, if the resemblance meant anything. Wes probably didn’t want to be seen talking to him if there was any other option. Danny had to hand it to him, he caught on fast. What that also meant was he didn’t have to try and fumble his way through an entire conversation answering questions about Phantom. Danny just hoped Wes ended up asking someone who had a more progressive opinion on him, someone like Paulina, or hell, even Dash.

Danny spent the last of the drill hanging with Sam and Tucker. The obnoxious sirens had shut off at least. Danny hated those things, his parents had recommended and got approval for the installation at the start of school last year, along with a state of the art ghost detection gadget. After the third “false alarm”, courtesy of him, they got rid of the ghost detection in favor of the manual alarm buttons. That had been a rough week. Danny hadn’t known a peaceful ghost fight at Casper since.

Eventually the drill was over, and the teachers started ushering kids back into school for the last period.

“So, what’s going on after school?” Sam asked as they were funneled into the entrance.

“I’ll probably swing by my house to drop my stuff off, then I’m gonna look around town, see if I can’t find that new ghost hanging around anywhere.”

“Pizza at my place after?”

“Aw hell yeah, Sam! Wings too?”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Yeah sure, Tucker, you can order wings. Just keep them away from me, will ya?”

Danny snorted. “Sounds like a plan, I’ll text when I’m on my way.”

“Or if you need help with that ghost?” she added sternly.

“Yeah yeah, fine. That too.” He waved a hand dismissively at her.

_______________________________________________________________

Tucker and Sam walked home with him like they normally did, exchanging goodbyes and “see you later”’s at his front steps. They continued down the street as Danny pushed into his house. He took a deep breath, relaxing into the familiar smells of home. It was weird, not seeing Jazz on the couch with twelve open textbooks taking up all the space on the coffee table. He headed for the kitchen, his empty stomach not willing to wait for pizza later. He dropped his bag by the banister so he could pick it back up on his way to his room later.

When he walked into the kitchen, his mom looked up and brightened. She had a bunch of papers all laying out on the dining table, some in piles and some splayed out in an order that probably made sense to her at least. She didn’t have her goggles on, instead she had them pushed back like a headband.

“Hi, sweetie! I didn’t even hear you come in. How was your day at school?”

“Fine,” he said with a noncommittal shrug. Danny walked past the table to the fridge. As he passed he noticed that the papers were readouts and raw data sheets. Some looked like her own notes which featured the words “ghosts”, “core”, “ecto-signature” and the like about a dozen times. It wasn’t exactly abnormal for his parents, but it did peak his interest.

He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of strawberry soda and an apple, enjoying the feeling of the cool air on his face. He nudged the fridge door closed with his foot and turned towards his mom.

“So,” he took a bite of his apple, “what’re you workin’ on?” Normally his parents kept all the research down in the lab, unless of course they were close to figuring something out, and were running out of counter space down there. He walked back over and pulled out a chair to sit.

Over the years he’d gotten somewhat closer to his parents. Well, he was more confident in his secret keeping ability now, which was what it boiled down to. Plus, it was advantageous to try and keep track of whatever ghost obliterating tech his parents had come up with this time, which was easier to do if he acted interested in their work. Especially now that Jazz was gone.

His mom’s grin got even wider at his question and he could tell she was bursting at the seams to talk about it. She put her pencil down, and swept up her mug to take a quick sip. It was white with Fenton Works plastered across the side.

“Ghost cores!” She set her mug back down, and pulled her goggles off her head. It let loose a few locks of her red hair that she quickly tucked behind her ear. “So, as you know all ghosts have power cores,” she shuffled around in her research, looking for something in particular. “Except, all ghosts have different power core ‘types’.”

“Uh-huh,” he nodded along as if it was all new information. He took another bite of his apple.

“So! Your father and I are working on not only a better method of categorizing ghosts that takes into account their power level but also the type of elemental core they possess. We think if we can find more commonalities and differences it will help find more exploitable weaknesses.” She found the page she was looking for and offered it to him, standing to lean over the table. Danny set his snack down and took the page to skim over it. It looked like a bunch of data on ghost’s with their power measurement, core type, temperature, ectoplasmic density, each a value that was plugged into an algorithm that spat out a number for a final threat level.

“See, before, we would base an ecto-entities power level solely on the output of the ectoplasmic energy, but with this algorithm, we can have a more in depth understanding of the possible damage a ghost could do and how to counter it.”

“Hence the ‘threat level’ rather than just ‘power level’?” he said glancing up at her.

“Exactly sweetie!” Her eyes softened as she looked at him. “Oh, you and your sister, you’re both so smart.” She came around the table to brush his bangs out of his face, and squish him in a one armed hug. “I couldn’t have asked for more perfect kids,” she said and kissed the top of his head before releasing him. He forced a smile. She said that now, but she didn’t know what he was. Who he was.

“Now, the issue is trying to find all the core types.” She leaned a hand on the table to look over his shoulder at the paper he was holding. “So far we know about fire, electricity, ice…” She held her chin thoughtfully. “And despite what the core may be, that doesn’t always mean their powers are a direct derivative, the applications of a core type can be extremely varied with only a thin connecting thread,” she muttered. Danny almost didn’t know if she was still talking to him, or just thinking out loud. “I’m doing research on what determines a ghost's core type. So far the leading theory is based on how they died. We think it’s the main contributing factor but I need more subjects to find anything conclusive.”

If that were true, he’d have an electricity core. The thought made his breath stick in his throat and a cold sweat break on his forehead. Danny went to open his soda— or he would have, had it still been liquid. Instead there was a thick layer of frost on the outside of the aluminum where he’d been holding it, and the contents were frozen solid, bulging the top and bottom of the can. Yikes. He shot his Mom a panicked look, but she was thankfully too absorbed in her thoughts to notice. He handed her back the paper before he froze that too.

“Sounds pretty cool, Mom. Welp, I gotta go do some reading for class so—”

“Danny-boy!” Boomed his dad’s voice. He winced and turned to see his Dad coming up from the lab.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Helpin’ your Mom with some good ol’ fashioned ghost research are we?”

“Actually I was—”

“Maddie, I did what you asked! I tore the whole lab apart, but I still didn’t find the Fenton Ghost Gage anywhere.” Uh-oh. Danny slowly got up from the table and went to make for the door.

“That’s odd, I swear I left it by the control panel a few weeks ago...” It was quiet for a moment. “Danny—” he turned back around, feigning ignorance with every ghostly molecule of himself. “—have you seen the Ghost Gage sitting around anywhere?”

The New and Improved Fenton Ghost Gage was a relatively new invention, which actually worked pretty well. Except of course for the glitch that registered a level ten plus ghost in the house. His Mom had theorized that it was because of the proximity to the Ghost Zone that it was giving the off the charts false reads, and left it sitting in a tub of inventions to be tweaked. It was now safely placed between the drywall and plumbing of Casper High, sending it’s readings directly to Tucker's phone. Of course they’d already made the modifications for it to read core types, thanks to Tucker.

“Nope, sorry. Have you checked the couch cushions? Or the fridge?” he suggested.

“Of course! The couch! Good thinking, Dannio!” His Dad clapped him on the back with so much force the soda can flew from his grasp, and promptly exploded on contact with the tile floor. Right. Frozen soda explodes. Idiot.

The outside had been completely frozen, but apparently on the inside it was slush, which was now all over the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the three of them. It looked like a sugary crime scene. He quirked a nervous smile.

“Oops?”

________________________________________________________________

Thankfully the soda caused only minimal damage to his parents research papers, but by the time he was done helping clean, the soda on his clothes had dried and gone sticky. Looked like there was no easy phase clean for him. He excused himself upstairs under the false pretense of doing homework and was gone the next minute.

Time to find that ghost.

The wind whipped through his hair and whistled past his ears. It was getting colder by the day and he loved it. The leaves on the trees would start turning soon, turning Amity into a collage of colors. If it weren’t for school, he’d love fall.

He made it to Casper in a minute flat, and started his search there. The weight of the thermos was a constant reassuring weight on his hip as he circled outward. If she was lurking anywhere, his ghost sense would let him know. He flew up and down streets, block after block, but he was getting nothing. Well, unless he counted the people on the street that whooped and pointed at him as he flew past.

He’d just gone by the Nasty Burger when a crackling bolt of energy zipped past him and punched a hole through a billboard. He recoiled and adrenaline flared through him; or whatever the ectoplasmic equivalent was. He flipped around to see a familiar ghost hunter.

“You never learn your lesson, do you, ghost?” Valerie growled.

“I’ve never been the best in school, so I’m gonna say no,” he said with a grin. Another blast shot past him, but he didn’t give her the satisfaction of flinching.

“Shut up, I know you were at Casper today. What can you tell me about the new ghost?” Danny huffed. He and his friends weren’t the only ones that had the school bugged.

“You probably know about as much as I do, Red. She was gone almost as soon as I got there.”

“Like, I’d buy that!” Despite her helmet he could tell she was just as pissed as ever. He splayed his hands in a placating manner.

“Honest, why else would I be out here combing the city?”

“How should I know what you’re planning? You’re probably out here waiting for the opportunity to ruin someone else’s life.”

Danny groaned. “Seriously Red, I said I was sorry like two years ago, you need to learn to let stuff go.” Danny liked to think that deep down she knew he wasn’t there to hurt anyone. She certainly didn’t like him, but she had at least started giving him an opportunity to explain himself before trying to waste him. Baby steps he supposed.

“Back at’cha, ghost.” She lifted her blaster and it whined as it charged. Welp, decorum was over for the day. He went intangible and rocketed through the billboard. Once on the other side he went invisible and tore off in a different direction. He knew she could track him, but it was worth the few seconds it bought him. The sound of her jet sled roared as she gave chase.

Pink charges of ecto-blasts peppered his flight path, near misses and wildly inaccurate alike. He zig-zagged, holding onto his invisibility and intangibility as he slipped through buildings. This was the easiest way to lose her, she had to take the time to skirt around huge objects, or waste the time to go straight up allowing him to widen the gap. Not to mention, while intangible the lack of wind resistance put his speed at around 130 Mph. Last time they’d checked at least.

Once he was sure he was far enough away from Val to have dropped off her radar, he turned and headed for home. He phased through his window and transformed back, flopping onto his bed. He’d been all over town and hadn’t got a single whiff of the new ghost. At least Valerie was on it too. Still, it didn’t make it any less frustrating.

He glanced at the clock on his nightstand which read 5:10. He’d check for the ghost again after dinner with Sam and Tuck, maybe then he’d at least be able to avoid Valerie. For now, he could really use a break.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #fanfic #danny phantom fanfiction #phan phic #phandom #frigid #my writing #wesley weston #wes weston #kyle weston

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leam1983 · 4 years

Text

Cyberpunk 2077 Thoughts

Having perused Dark Horse Books’ The World of Cyberpunk 2077 over the past few days, I’ve gotten a better feel for the various basic hooks that structure V’s inception as a protagonist. The short of it is the Polish wizards are on the right path to nailing Pondsmith’s treatment the same way they nailed Sapkowski’s works.

Consider the following as half a brain dump, half a series of prospective spoilers, and also half projection, so either skip this, find some other entry to read, or come back to this come late November.

I know I mentioned three halves, but it’s late and I don’t give a shit.

I’m serious - DO NOT PRESS ON IF YOU’RE THE TYPE TO BLOW A GASKET IF YOU’RE INADVERTANTLY SPOILED.

The latest Night City Wire as of August exposed three incipient “life paths”, or starting branches of V’s path. I’ll tackle my personal narrative approaches to them in the order of my choosing.

Nomads: CP2077 is set in a world where much of what we understand to define a family has been blown up, tossed around by climate change and nuclear fire and then stitched back together using grit, resourcefulness and the last dying embers of human decency. Nomads are less a group of people defined by blood relations and more a cadre of individuals that share something more significant than mere genes. It might be a common history, a set of shared hardships, a yen for similar automotive and engineering-related projects - whatever it is, that something pulls people together in ways Corpo rats and street kids will never experience.

This seems to define even the average Nomad’s degree of education. Surprisingly, Nomads are the most well-read group in Coronado Bay’s greater area, some caravans reportedly including entire RVs packed with books. Nomads generationally elect teachers and record-keepers and seem to care for those cultural remnants of the old world, before Pondsmith’s paranoid alternate sixties kicked off more than a century’s worth of technological progression and rampant dehumanization. To a Night City native, a Nomad’s speech patterns appear precious and uselessly florid, while they might appear almost normal to us - maybe slightly touched by the fact that Grandpa Joe or whatever really wanted you to have your Greek classics down before you were old enough to repair your first CH00H2 carburetor on your own.

That new, mega-clustered version of family matters immensely to the Nomads. You identify to yours the same way Orcs in Shadow of War might refer to their clan, or the same way a Scottish clan might design specific visual cues identifying its members. In normal circumstances, Nomads live, thrive and die in service to the clan - and the opening segment for V’s Nomad origins suggests that something happened to his clan. They’re gone, or so the narration says, without going into further detail. Is V responsible? We don’t currently know. As it stands, however, he is a lone Nomad in a clan of one, and soon finds himself pushed out of the Californian wastes and into Night City’s neon-drenched streets.

Seeing this, I considered the narration as an admission of guilt on V’s part. He feels responsible, and hopes that grinding his way to success will in some way atone for what he’s done. Consequently, my Nomad V would be as gruff as could be, but as moral and upstanding as the setting allows. He considers himself as having been invested with an example to set, and would intend to set his sights on more than just filthy lucre. Honest filthy lucre is what matters to him, if that concept even is possible: he might deal in unsavory types and illicit activities, but he always does so with a certain moral rectitude - as a tough and gruff, lean and stringy type you can occasionally catch in his battered Thornton pick-up truck with his feet up on the dashboard and a dog-eared copy of Plato’s Republic in hand. Jackie honestly wonders how he can put up with that Greek pendejo’s endless words and the lack of scrolling animations, while V keeps his Kiroshi optics’ News ticker locked onto grassroots Leftist RSS feeds that stoke a bit of an ignored Rockerboy ethos in him. Quoting Marx in Night City might feel like trying to teach lab rats in the finer points of string theory, but it at least feels genuine to him, compared to the predigested sociopolitical pap Militech, Arasaka and their ilk are more than happy to spew on the airwaves.

There’s a lot to be pissed off about in Richard Night’s failed utopia, a lot of fat cats to gut and buildings to burn. Still, he leaves the glowering act and the churning rage to Johnny Silverhand’s imprinted ghost. Being more of a down-low, gun-toting choomba than a classic Street Samurai, Vincent “V” Carson thinks first and strikes second.

Vinnie isn’t much for electric guitars and anarchy in the UK, much less in the Free State of Southern California; but he does love the occasional Leonard Cohen ballad or the occasional shot of Johnny Cash’s melancholy. Having picked up something of a Northern Texas drawl while cruising, he might feel like Harry Dresden’s Good Ol’ Boy cousin, magic tricks here pushed aside in favor of a measure of dermal plating and a good ol’ fashioned twelve-gauge and revolver combo. Not being much of a techno-fetishist, he considers his optics and his skull jack as being begrudging concessions to an era that looks down on fully “ganic” types. Having grown up with TV serials and the occasional visor-based Braindance all depicting cyberpsychosis as something vile that utterly dehumanizes its sufferers, he’s naturally wary around anyone who seems a little too giddy with the prospect of taking a few scalpels to perfectly decent muscles and bones.

His Thornton is where most of his Eddies go, and yes, he’s named his truck Suzie. Suzie’s done right by him, and he’ll do right by her - unless someone else with a pretty smile and a working moral compass makes him swoon.

Street Kids: if you weren’t taught on the highways or in corporate arcologies, odds are you became a positive blip in an otherwise grim statistic, one of the myriad fucked-up kids raised by other fucked-up kids with more seniority than you. With no roads and paid-for nannies, you survived off of grifts, grit, violence, deceit, smarts and gumption - and that, in its own screwball way, creates its own blood ties. You’re wise by Heywood’s standards - streetwise, that is - and you speak the back-alleys’ lingua franca of threats, insinuation and casual intimidation like no other.

If only Jackie hadn’t fingered that Rayfield, huh? This beaut could’ve been paydirt! Well, at least for a week or so, judging by the fact that hundreds of car thefts are reported across Night City on a daily basis. At least, Dean - who also goes as “V” - got to make a new friend while out in the pokey, and managed to shake a few proverbial trees... They’ve got a short-lease in with Trauma Team’s frequency and could maybe hook themselves up with a sweet finder’s fee for anyone who’s on the verge of death at the hands of the city’s Scavengers...

Little does V know, that’s selling Trauma Team as well as their clients painfully short. Shows of gratitude don’t mean anything if you’re not packing the right social status. He barely remembers his birth parents as it is, and grew up the fifth grubby prospect of one of the Valentinos’ “school clubs” (hence the nickname) - where the points of study refer to the proper observances to be held in Jesus Malaverde’s presence, intensive Chicano and Spanish immersion, as well as the handling of common types of weaponry.

Vincent and Dean would be likely to shoot one another, if placed in the same room. One clings onto nearly-lost value systems, while the other commodifies what can be discarded like so much flesh - only inasmuch as his efforts to pacify his unofficial five or six abuelas force him to forego extensive modifications. His knives and wrist-mounted data port are his main tools of the trade, although Dean keeps his hacking creds along the bare minimum. Why bother, when melting an ATM’s ICE wall and whacking the cops with a baseball bat is all you need? There’s a type of gun for nearly anything else, if someone knows where to look...

Dean has no last name, and is consequently registered as “Dean Smith” in the city’s Census records. That doesn’t suggest, however, that he wouldn’t want to make one for himself. As he’s less focused on the city’s legends than on its kingmakers and pawn-movers, Dexter DeShawn strikes him as someone to emulate, watch and learn from - all with a decent degree of caution.

Being on top matters a little less to him than eventually pulling Heywood’s stings. With a little fear and a lot of persistence, Dean “V.” Smith knows that one day, he won’t go hungry on a weeknight. To that end, he’s certainly a hearty eater, here paired with extensive free-weight training regimens and the use of anabolic stimulants. Oh, sure, he’ll speak of family and blood like the best soldier festooned in Santa Muerte visual codices, but his friend Jackie’s got a mind like a slow and steady steel trap.

Either Dean blows his new fellow Street Samurai out of the pond, or he does. Unlike Jackie, however, Dean isn’t realistic about it. Friendships are a rare gift in Heywood, if not the rest of Night City, and Dean’s convinced that Jackie could conceivably look past his final betrayal.

Corpo: nowadays, we’re mostly familiar with the idea of one-percenters creating a bubble of affluence for themselves. Boarding schools, private villas, prebooked vacations across the globe’s priciest spots, access to the hottest trends on the minute of their inception - what this tends to forego is the level of social disconnect that’s required in order to stay relevant. We’re only just waking up to the consequences of letting an aging, crusty first-generation Yuppie be crowned the ruler of the free world, and even someone who’s behind on their Bret Easton Ellis could tell you that Donald J. Trump is a sociopath and a narcissist.

Take that mindset, and cultivate it into an ethos that’s taught to children from a very early age - children who live, eat, shit and breathe in accordance with their parent corporation’s tenets. The more placid, mid-tier lifers in the genre are called sararimen, in reference to William Gibson’s use of the term to designate low-level company workers in Chiba City. A bit like Shenzhen’s factory workers and execs, everything in a corpo’s life is in service to the corporation.

In Night City, as of 2077, two major players have installed this culture of total obedience in their roster. Their names are Militech and Arasaka. One is a juggernaut in the field of military-grade personal defence, the other has a wider grasp and reach, but is more fragile. Arasaka owes that fragility to the last fifty years having involved its re-establishment and reconstruction. Fifty years ago, Night City’s Corpo Plaza was blasted open by a thermonuclear discharge that sent the Japanese giant packing. The charges had been set by three Edgerunners: Rogue, Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand - accessorily a well-respected Rockerboy and front-line member of the band SAMURAI. Only Rogue survived that fateful night, or so the street lingo goes, having gone on to start a legitimate consultation business as well as a fruitful career in the hospitality business. Her bar, the Afterlife, is Night City’s hotspot for every techie, script kiddie and accomplished cyber-spelunker.

Our gal Vivian knows this. She knows this, because Vivian “V.” Banks lives two lives.

In one of them, she’s a lean and hungry Junior Executive in Arasaka’s Counter-Intel division. In that line of work, you either fuck someone’s prospects or protect your own, or ensure that no up-and-comer just out of the company’s Law School program manages to push you off the board. She knows full well that in centuries past, corpo-speak was made up of mild euphemisms that at best referred to destroying a rival’s prospects or lifelihood. Taking a life was something that required careful deliberation, especially when tossing a fat severance bonus into an aging CFO’s three-piece pockets and letting your erstwhile rival snort cocaine off of the rolling hips of Tahitian dancers was so much cheaper...

Nowadays, zeroing someone is commonplace.

You’re born for Arasaka, and chances are you’ll die for Arasaka just the same. Viv’s killed, lied, cheated and even stole her way to her position, remorse being this vaguely churning sense of coldness in her gut that keeps one-night stands coming in and out of her bedroom. She only remembers her parents as being credit-chip enablers and personal enhancement drug addicts, cutting ties with them so completely on the day of her official hiring that it felt more like a tacit understanding.

On most days, sex and booze keep the cold at bay. On most days, Vivian Banks is a class-act of a sociopath. The stronger she gets, however, and the more paranoid her targets become - which reinforces her own paranoia. Before long, playing the part of one of Arasaka’s several poisonous flowers won’t work anymore.

Unfortunately, she trusts no-one. No Fixer could put her in contact with any hacker she’d trust, no rando fresh off the street with a retro-tinted National Arms plinker would satisfy her. To climb up the ranks and maybe share tea with Old Man Saburo himself, she needs a spotless performance record. She needs skills.

More importantly, she needs a reputation. That means leaving Arasaka Tower and mingling with the experts in their own field - and it means filling out her back book of successful hits. The drinks at the Afterlife are decent enough, but what she’s after is an official in.

If she can get to Rogue, or maybe even hook up with a ripperdoc not bought and paid for by the company, she might be able to score both new skills and increased performance...

If it were as simple as slitting Janet’s throat in HR and diving her way to an orgiastic performance review quite innocently left on the department’s server, she would’ve done that already. Viv is my obvious Pure Stealth build candidate, my main-line hacker and would-be engineer with a thing for black power skirts and designer offensive augments.

With that said, we’re months ahead of schedule, all the good shit’s already come out, so we’re stuck playing the waiting game...

What are your own character or build ideas for Cyberpunk 2077?

#cyberpunk 2077 #spoilers #build ideas #characters #roleplaying

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izuochaweek · 4 years

Text

Vacation

For the life of him, Izuku could not figure out what was wrong. He and Ochako were on vacation with her parents and she was quite happy the entire time. It then turned one eighty once they arrived on I Island. So here he was in front of her parents who seemed to be as confused as he was.

“So you have no idea either?” Izuku asked the tall burly man and his wife.

“Sorry son,” Mr. Uraraka answered. “The moment we got off the plane, her mood just turned sour.”

“Did she say anything about why?” Izuku continued.

“Nope,” Mrs. Uraraka said. “Though I did hear her grumble something about wanting to get this part of the vacation over with. I wonder why? This place seems nice and lively.”

‘I’m on my own on this one,’ Izuku thought with a sigh. ‘Hopefully I can figure this out.”

The entire day he tried talking to Ochako but she found some excuse to get away or not talk. It was not helping the hurt and confusion that he was feeling. There are also the times she suddenly appears when he was talking with the opposite gender. The icy glare while she smiled was both unnerving and terrifying.

“What did I do wrong?” Izuku asked himself with a defeated sigh. Accepting the dark thoughts that had been plaguing him since they arrived. “It can’t be helped. I am just a deku after all.”

Unbeknownst to him, Ochako was hiding behind the corner. Tears flowing from her eyes as she finally realized what she was doing to him. That one sentence conveyed all the emotions that he was feeling. His confidence that took years to build, she was tearing down in a day. His body language receding back to that scared nerdy boy that could not talk to people without flinching. It was painful to watch and she felt her heart shatter seeing him return from what he was before.

“I’m sorry Deku-kun,” Ochako whispered as her legs lost all strength.

Izuku laid on his bed. Looking up at the white ceiling of the hotel room. He still had no idea what was wrong.

“What could have happened that would make Ochako act like this?” He mumbled. “Was she not enjoying the trip? But with the way she was before, that shouldn’t be the case? Is it her…”

Lost in his thoughts, Izuku failed to notice that someone had entered his room. The brunette that had been haunting his thoughts stood in front of him.

“Deku-kun,” Ochako said but did not get a response. She called him a few more times but still no response. Waving her hands in front of his face. “Earth to Deku?”

“Maybe it’s her time of the month,” Izuku mumbled but was clear enough that Ochako went scarlet when she heard his hypothesis.

“WHAT!?” She screeched in embarrassment. Pulling the boy out of his thoughts.

“Ochako!?” He shouted as he sat up and jumped back a little from surprise.

“Uh…hi,” Ochako greeted shyly. “I…”

“I’m sorry!” Izuku apologized. Effectively cutting her off as he bowed. “I’m not sure what I did that made you so upset but I’m sorry. I’m oblivious when it comes to these matters. I will try…”

A soft padded finger was on his mouth. Silencing him. Looking up, his eyes widened and his body stiffened. Ochako was crying.

‘Oh no! What did I do!? What can I do!?’ His mind racing to find the reason for Ochako’s current state.

“You don’t…”

Sob.

“Have to apologize, Deku-kun!”

Sniffle.

“You never did anything wrong.”

Blubber.

“This entire problem has always been because of me!” Ochako admitted as she lost strength in her legs and fell to the floor.

A pair of strong arms wrapped around her. Letting herself be engulfed in the protective embrace as she cried into his chest. His hands gently stroking her back was helping her calm down.

It felt warm. Like being in front of a fireplace in the middle of winter. Deku’s arms wrapped around her. She felt comfortable, safe, at home. Slowly Ochako opened her eyes.

“Feeling better?” A voice she recognized as Izuku asked.

Looking up, Her eyes met his emerald ones and without words the couple communicated. The emotions that they were feeling, their insecurities, their innermost thoughts and their secrets. Some found it odd that they could convey so much to each other yet say very little. Some like Bakugo were annoyed at the wordless communication. Still, it showed how much their bond had grown since they met each other.

“I’m sorry for making you feel that way,” Izuku apologized.

“It’s ok,” Ochako said meekly. Her cheeks turning a few shades darker. “I was the problem to begin with.”

Izuku smiled. His worries finally leaving him as understanding settled in its place. Pulling her closer so that her back was against his chest and placing his head on her shoulder.

“You know you don’t have to worry about that,” Izuku said. His voice was soft and caring. “I love you.”

“I know,” Ochako responded. Putting her hands on top of his. “It’s just… I can’t help it, ya know.”

“I do,” Izuku said empathetically. “It happens to me too.”

“It does!?” Ochako asked in surprise. Breaking away from the comfortable position she was in to see his face.

“It does,” Izuku replied as he rubbed the back of his head. Slightly embarrassed. “Do you know how many times I’ve had to restrain myself from ripping someone away when he or she became handsy with you. Not to mention the urge to kill perverted villains they tried something.”

“Oh I see,” Ochako said smiling as butterflies lingered in her stomach.

“Hey,” Izuku said as he placed his forehead on hers. Their eyes, so close to each other that they can’t look away. “No one is going to take me from you.”

“Promise?” Ochako asked.

“With all that I am,” Izuku replied before moving his lips on top of hers.

Like always, it was intoxicating. The warmth, the softness, the love and longing that he felt everytime they kissed was like a drug to him. Her tongue felt like velvet on his. It took his breath away. She tasted sweet like mochi, bitter like coffee and everything in between. Ochako was addicting.

Pulling back only when the need for air arose. He placed his forehead back onto hers. Brown eyes met green, locking in place as their respective owners stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.

“I’m telling you, Izuku’s going to be fine,” Mr. Uraraka said as he and his wife burst in the room.

“Still, I’m worried about ‘Chako,” Mrs. Uraraka countered. “We’ve never seen her act like this.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve raised ‘Chako well and our son-in-law is a good man,” Mr. Uraraka said while putting a reassuring hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Whatever issue is happening between them, I’m sure they’ll sort it out.”

Mrs. Uraraka chuckled. Taking her husband’s in her own. She gave him a smile that told him that she had been convinced. Her smile then turned mischievous as her hand moved onto his chest and began poking him.

“Son-in-law?” She teased. “Aren’t ya jumping a few steps ahead dear?”

“Bah,” Mr. Uraraka waved her off. “With how their relationship is going, they might as well be married. It’s only a matter of time.”

“My… my such claims,” Mrs. Uraraka said. “Aren’t ya supposed to be scaring men away from our precious little girl?”

“Are ya kiddin’ me?” Mr. Uraraka asked her in disbelief. “The boy’s the number one hero. He’d mop the floor with me. Plus, I can tell that he really cares about Ochako. She’s in safe hands.”

The older couple finally arrived at the young couple’s room. Entering it, they were met with a sight that caused their eyes to widen and their cheeks to turn a few shades redder. There sat on the bed was Izuku and Ochako. Looking back at them like deers caught in front of headlights. Their faces were red as tomatoes. The string of saliva still connecting them.

“Ahem,” Mrs. Uraraka coughed. “Oops, I guess we intruded on a moment. Come along dear.”

She gave the two a sheepish smile before she took her husband’s hand and exited the room. Leaving the young couple staring at the door. After a few minutes, Ochako finally giggled.

“We better go,” Ochako said as she rose to her feet. Breaking Izuku from his stupor. “Before they think we’re doing something else.”

She was answered with a hug from behind. The warmth and emotions that were emanating from the action caused her to squeal.

“I couldn’t of anyone else that I rather be with than you,” Izuku whispered into her ear. “Because you’ve had my heart from the first time we met.”

With a kiss to the cheek, he released her. Taking her hand and guiding them both to the door. They walked in comfortable silence towards Melissa’s lab. Before entering the building, Izuku turned back to her with a smile.

“Anyways, Melissa’s our friend,” Izuku said confidently. “She would never do that.”

“She’s not mine,” Ochako hissed darkly. Her words, barely audible.

“Sorry what was that?” Izuku asked.

“Nothing!” Ochako half screamed and half whispered after realizing what she said. Rushing forward in an attempt to escape further questions. “Let’s go! She’s probably waiting for us.”

“Right!” Izuku responded. Allowing his lover to practically drag his weightless body to their destination.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #izuochaweek #IzuOcha #midoriya izuku #uraraka ochako #Day 1: Going Abroad / After Work #day 1 #fanfics #submission #chsubmission

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marvelandimagine · 5 years

Text

In My Home

Series summary: After Wakanda opens its borders, you begin working in Shuri’s lab as part of an all-women STEM program, and you meet a certain White Wolf. What starts out as mutual bonding over science turns into much more than you ever could have anticipated.

Pairing: Bucky x scientist reader

Word Count: 3,400

Warnings: Language, PTSD

A/N: I think this is the longest first chapter I’ve written in my life oops guess that’s what happens when you’re gone for two years!! I regret nothing. Bucky POV coming in part 2! Loosely inspired by “In My Home” by Young the Giant.

“Please, you powerful little receptor, I am BEGGING you to bind with this epinephrine, BEGGING YOU.”

You cross your fingers and peer into the microscope, only to be met with what feels like the 100th disappointment this week. No positive binding. No responsiveness. Nothing.

Your foot connects with the side of your lab table, increasingly faster with every syllable you yell, causing Francesca, the new program recruit from Spain, to quickly inch her chair away from your adjacent work station.

“GOD DAMMIT YOU MOTHERFU—“

“Good results?”

You halt mid kick and turn to face Shuri, her eyes lit up in amusement as she surveys you over the rim of her Starbucks frappucino with a loud slurp––they’ve been her new obsession ever since Wakanda opened the borders and built one two blocks from her lab. As much as you’ve grown to bond with her in the time since she invited you to work in Wakanda as part of her new all-women biotech research program, in this moment, you have to truly fight back the urge to slap the drink out of her hand.

You collapse into a desk chair, trying your best to joke as usual with your new friend but find your words coming out gritted anyways:

“What, no coffee for me?”

As if on cue, three handmaidens appear holding recyclable trays of various caffeinated beverages for the team, who cheer and abandon their current projects for a moment to collect their drinks in a flurry of movement.

One of the handmaiden approaches and you sheepishly accept your cold brew, grimacing at Shuri in a way that you hope reads, “Sorry, I’m an asshole.”

Shuri snorts and rolls her eyes, but her tone is light:

“Colonizers. Always so impatient.”

She nods over to your desk.

“And not just with Starbucks orders.”

You let out a frustrated exhale.

“Shuri, I’ve been here for two months. I have the most advanced resources and tech on the planet at my fingertips, and yet I still have nothing concrete to show for it––nothing to show you for it.”

Your tone gets quieter but maintains its intensity.

“Look, you brought me here because I know you know that, if I can get this, we can change lives everywhere––and not just soldiers, but anyone trying to work through PTSD or severe trauma. Being able to de-intensify the physiological response to triggers to shorten dissociative periods or even get rid of them so we can get a stronger sense of normalcy back, to lessen that fear and strain even a little -- that’s worth the long haul, I know it’s a long haul, one that’s worth the setbacks and sleep deprivation and madness because that’s science and I love it, but, I don’t know.”

You sigh before taking a sip of your coffee.

“I just thought I’d be farther along, that’s all.”

Shuri grabs a chair and wheels it to face you.

“Do you know how many trials it took before I got the nanotech working seamlessly in brother’s suit?”

“Knowing you, probably three.”

“Four, actually.”

You groan and cover your eyes but Shuri drags your hands away from your face, clasping them in her own.

“Let me finish! Do you know how many trials it took for me to get the remote access functioning in the Kimoyo Beads?”

“More than four?”

“759 to be exact, and they still have much room to improve. My point, Y/N is to not be discouraged.”

She looks at you seriously.

“I would not have brought you here if your body of work was not excellent. The work we’re all doing” — she turns and gestures around the room of women who have all returned to their respective stations, coffees in hand and intently focused on various glowing blue projections of statistics and diagrams hanging in the air, the sound of rapid keystrokes and odd hisses and bangs echoing around the room. “we can only know so much until we know more, yes?”

As if on cue, you feel a rush of heat move past you as Francesca hurls the flaming, mangled remains of what looks like a helmet into the sink, flinging on the spray faucet and wiping her brow as her ruined demo piece hisses with smoking finality.

You turn back to face Shuri.

“Point taken.”

You rest your chin on one hand, shaking your head slightly.

“Why are you so wise?? You’re 13 years younger than I am and dropping some real life truths.”

“The real life truth is that I think you need a break.”

You laugh and take another sip of your coffee.

“I can’t say I disagree with you.”

Shuri grins, her eyes lighting up with mischief.

“You know who else needs some fun in their life?”

“Who?”

“Bucky!”

You swear internally as your heartbeat immediately quickens at the sound of his name, averting your eyes as you spin your chair away from Shuri, but she scoots herself closer.

“I’m sure he would loooove to spend a whole day with his favorite scientist.” Her grin widens. “And I’m sure you would loooove to spend a whole day with your White Wolf.”

You roll your eyes, trying to stop yourself from smiling and failing miserably, which only seems to delight Shuri more as you shake your head with a half-assed:

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re friends.”

“More than friends!” Shuri yells, poking your shoulder in quick succession. “You do not look at friends the way you look at each other! I took that broken white boy all over the city, show him my lab, and he says maybe three sentences—to me, the girl who saved his brain —but for some reason, he has no problem asking the American a million questions about science and tech and how her work is coming.”

You feign as much nonchalance as you can in your response, but you can’t help how light your chest feels at her acknowledging Bucky’s supposed eagerness to talk to you.

“You said it, we’re both American, maybe he just feels more comfortable--”

“Comfortable enough to spend hours sitting with you while you work, hmm? And you, letting him, you, the same woman whose shouting made W’Kapi look like an antelope in headlights when he came for my tech upgrade and got too close to your samples!

“Hey, I apologized, but I was not about to redraw 10 vials of my blood that got contaminated all because some border security chief decided -”

Shuri presses on.

“The first time I saw Bucky smile was when he was with you, and you two go on walks and eat lunch together,” Shuri crosses her arms with a broad grin as she delivers her final piece of what she evidently deems as damning evidence, “and I know you are the only person besides me and brother who has gone out to see him.”

You open your mouth and close it, your brain firing on all cylinders to come up with some kind of argument, any kind of argument, to deflect away from your relationship with Bucky. Because thinking about it, talking about it, made the way you felt whenever you were together that much harder to try to ignore.

But you’ve got nothing because, while you can’t speak for him, you know Shuri’s right. You don’t just like him as a friend. You like him way more than that, want him way more than that. But you aren’t sure you’re ready to deal with all of that.

You didn’t anticipate catching feelings -- you didn’t even anticipate meeting this quiet, attractive stranger. It was a few months earlier, only a few weeks into your stay in Wakanda. The combination of excitement and anxiety and the time change had meant you weren’t sleeping much, so you went into the lab early to get some work done. You were in the zone — with the lab all to yourself, you were able to comfortably spread out your work across tables and even onto the floor, blaring your “productive playlist” at full volume as you ran through your latest brain scan videos and blood samples.

Your phone pinged and you checked it to find a message from Shuri:

“Gonna be in late -- Bucky is supposed to be in at 6:30 for his scan, so just tell him I’m behind.”

Shuri had briefly explained the situation with Bucky to you last week, and while you found yourself being fascinated by the logistics of how Shuri deprogrammed decades worth of conditioning, you also felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and empathy for what he had been through. When Shuri suggested bringing him as a data sample and to see if he’d consent to participate when your clinical trial took off, your head instinctively agreed, but your heart won out, telling her that you still weren’t close to a full-fledged medication, and, besides, you thought the guy had been treated as an experiment for so long—you didn’t want to add to that, not when, based on what Shuri said, he was finally in a semi-stable place to heal.

You were still definitely curious to meet him, though, so you texted back an “ok” but found it odd that she didn’t just tell him herself. The thought faded, though, as you quickly became absorbed back into your work.

You didn’t even realize the time that had passed until you heard the gentle woosh of the lab doors sliding open, barely audible over the growling, fast-riffed Rise Against track that was currently playing:

“Do you still believe in all the things that you stood by before?

Are you out there on the front lines or at home keeping score?”

Would you care to be the layer of the bricks that seal your fate,

or would you rather be the architect of what we might create?”

Bucky didn’t see you at first, but you saw him. Even just from his side profile — his hair, his beard, the muscle clearly prominent even underneath his dark clothes — you thought he was gorgeous.

You did your best to keep your cool, though, as you walked out from behind your lab table in the back corner, turning off the music with two taps of your fingers in the air.

“Hi, Bucky?”

He whips around to face you, and your initial impression attraction to him was only heightened as you were met with a pair of brilliant blue eyes, but you were also thrown by the panic you see in them, how fast his posture shifts to defensive.

You held up your hands.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you — I work here.” You gestured to the back corner of the lab, his eyes following.

“I’m Y/N, Shuri’s latest recruit. She told me to tell you she’s gonna be late for your scan.” You smiled, hoping it would ease his tension, and it seemed to work because he unclenched his fist. “You can hang out wherever, and don’t worry about bothering me— as you can tell by the sound from when you walked in, I thrive in chaos.”

He just stared blankly at you, seemingly uncertain of how to respond.

Uncomfortable in the silence, you turned away to go back to your corner, but stopped as he asked quietly, but with genuine curiosity:

“What are you working on?”

You looked back and he actually gave you a small smile, and you were surprised to find your cheeks warming up.

Your panic about feeling all kinds of things over a solitary smile must have read on your face, but Bucky misinterpreted it as reluctance, and so he quickly backtracked:

“You probably get asked that all the time, I’m sorry, I don’t want to distract you.” He averted his eyes and your brain finally caught back up to speed.

“What? No, it’s totally fine!” You sat down at your desk, wheeling over another chair. “C’mere. I’ll show you.”

And that’s how it started. For whatever reason, as you went on and on in excitement about your project, about how you collected 500 data samples back home, about how you were now working with binary augmented retro framing, Bucky got more and more relaxed around you, asking questions and laughing at some of your jokes. And you felt more and more relaxed with him, falling into a rhythm that felt both comfortable and utterly exhilarating. You were pleasantly surprised by his sense of dry humor that matched his own, and any man who openly admired your work got an automatic extra few points in your book.

And when Bucky paused and asked why you were doing all this work on PTSD, you still felt somehow just as comfortable as you were joking around with him as you were then candidly sharing about some of the things that happened to you. You were normally pretty open about the trauma in your story, but you were usually pretty brief, even in the support group you went to. But here, with him, captivated by this newfound connection you felt, it was easy to not just share, but to truly open up, and not just about what happened, but what you had been doing to try to heal and move forward. And you were floored when he reciprocated—Shuri told you he was pretty shy, but here he was, telling you some of things that kept him up at night, about how he felt like, even with Shuri’s work, what he had been through still felt like it was always pressing on him, like it would always be engraved into his bones.

You hadn’t even realized that an hour had passed by the time Shuri came into the lab, apologizing for being late but saying she was glad you two had finally been introduced.

“So am I,” Bucky had murmured quietly to you, and you smiled in a daze and nodded in agreement, trying to still maintain your composure because what in the fuck was happening here between you two already, this felt like it could be something, even though you had no intention of looking for something when he walked into the lab. It was dizzying and overwhelming but it lit you up from the inside out, beaming back at him as he asked if he could come back to see you—see your work, as he adjusted quickly, and so you gave him your number and said he was welcome to come up anytime.

And he did. And you weren’t an idiot, you had a pretty good sense of when a man was interested in you, and it certainly felt like that as you kept spending more and more time together -- the way he looked at you sometimes made you feel like passing out and grabbing his face to make out at the same time. But still, there was that hesitation, the uncertainty and anxiety -- what if you were wrong? What if he genuinely just appreciated your company, liked having someone who had been through similar shit to talk to? What if that was it and nothing more?

All of this runs through your head as you sit there, and you realize there’s it’s pointless to try to refute a fact backed by evidence. You liked him. You really, really liked him. And if there was a chance he felt the same, if an objective third party like Shuri even sensed something romantic between you two—maybe it was time to stop hiding behind your fear.

“I --” You run your hands down your face, knowing you’re going to feel both defeated and liberated by your admission, “fuck it, yeah, ok you win. I like Bucky.” You sigh, the words rolling off your tongue seeming to solidify how you felt inside, making it even more irrefutable. “Goddammit.”

Shuri throws her fist in the air.

“HA! You admit it, more than friends!”

“Shhh, Jesus, I can’t speak for him, but yeah, maybe, I don’t know, just keep your voice down!” you hiss, pushing your palms toward the floor as you crane your neck to see if anyone is paying attention, but they’re all too absorbed in their own work.

“Not maybe, definitely!” Shuri grins, resting her chin on her hands. “So, take the day off, go spend it with him. I’m sure one of you will crack and finally break the sexual tension.”

You groan and cover your eyes, shaking your head. “Oh my god, we’re not having this conversation.”

You look up, your anxiety getting the best of you.

“But I don’t even know what we should do for the rest of the day.”

“Ah, but I do! You should go to echibi elikhulu -- the great lake. Baba used to take mother all the time when they were younger.”

You frown, confused.

“Where is there a lake in Wakanda?”

Shuri chuckles.

“Well, technically, there isn’t one -- not on any map, anyways. Just because we opened the borders doesn’t mean we gave away all of our hidden treasures to the rest of the world.” She smiles, clasping your hands, “But I will certainly tell you about it in the name of true love! Only if, and I mean, if, you tell me EVERYTHING that happens.”

You laugh and shake her hands emphatically, touched by her willingness to share this piece of her home with you, with Bucky.

“Deal.”

You still feel nervous, but it’s mostly excitement now as you think about not only getting to enjoy the beach, but to be able to stop dancing around your feelings for Bucky -- if you had the courage to finally admit it to him, and he reciprocated, it would absolutely be worth the time away in the lab.

Shuri jumps up from her chair. “Then no time to waste! You can take my Jeep, I’ll program the GPS to get you there and back.” Her tone changes suddenly to businesslike. “You go home, shower, change, and get your things ready, and I’ll meet you outside in 45 minutes.”

You tilt your head to the side slightly, trying to work out the final aspectt hat’s puzzling you.

“Why do you care so much about us getting together?” You pause, quickly adding,” And I don’t mean that to sound shitty, I’m just curious.”

“Y/N, when I know something can be improved, I want to help. You both have suffered, and you each seem to find peace in each other -- you’re good for each other. I think you’d be happier together and could even heal better together then just as ‘friends.’” She smiles, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “And, also, then I could say I set up the cutest colonizer couple in the country.”

You smile back. “I appreciate it.” Your tone softens. “Really, I do. Thanks for the push.”

“You’re most welcome. Now go! I’ll see you in a bit.”

You quickly grab your backpack from your lab table, shoving in notebooks and folders before you swipe your coffee of the counter, give Shuri a wave, and power walk out the door.

You laugh out loud at the absurdity of it, how agitated you were this morning compared to how you were nearly bouncing down the street in anticipation now, the prospect of exploring a new and beautiful place with Bucky and finally telling him how you felt buoying in your chest.

You felt determined, you felt like you might throw up, but above every emotion and thought racing around inside you, you felt hope.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky fic #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes angst #bucky imagine #bucky barnes imagine #marvel fic #marvel imagine #james buchanan barnes #white wolf

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ihatecoconut · 4 years

Text

Other, Intelligent.

Certain things come with living alongside a child genius and nobody was surprised when she blew up the toaster. Or the microwave. Or the oven. Or the panini maker. Or any of the other kitchen appliances she decided needed investigating. Looking back, my parents must have been paying out weekly for new pieces of general home technology, and even if they never complained or told her to stop, it must have been annoying- and expensive. For me, it was an endless source of excitement, entertainment and information- Alice never meant to end her ‘experiments’ with explosions, but we loved it when it happened.

My parents were never strict, they were shockingly relaxed considering I was training to become a world class dancer and my sister was smarter than everyone else in the house combined and, between us, we successfully reduced the value of the house significantly over the course of our childhood. Myself through jumps and leaps and kicks and spins that didn’t end well in my dance shoes, which had hard enough heels to leave dents in many of the walls, and my sister through damaging the electrics, the water pipes, and anything around them, through her attempts to fix them. To her credit, she did end up improving things around fifty percent of the time and that number only increased as we got older. Anyway, my parents weren’t strict, but they did have one rule that was completely enforced and punished severely if we even thought about breaking it- we weren’t allowed to go into the second half of the house where our mother’s lab, and our father’s surgery lay.

Their rule made sense, even when I was young. My father was a plastic surgeon and my mother was a scientist who seemed to specialise in everything, so it was an incredibly dangerous place, and we didn’t care about them anyway- our house was huge and there were basically hundreds of rooms with things we were allowed to touch. That was my thought process, even as we matured into teenagers, and I assumed my sister agreed because she never gave any indication she thought otherwise. Or at least, she hadn’t up until yesterday, when she burst into my room with the same panicked expression that normally preceded the fire department being called.

“I need to show you something.” she said, and then turned around and walked out with obvious expectation that I was going to follow her. I did, because what am I as a sister if not moral support and partner in crime?

She led me to the entrance of the surgery, which also marked the boundary of where we were not allowed to go, and bit her lip. We looked at each other and I felt a sense of doom creeping down my spine to settle, uncomfortably, in the pit of my stomach. I cleared my throat until I could speak again,

“Alice...”

She placed her hand on the silver doorknob and looked at me with a hint of fear in her eyes.

“Alice, what have you done?”

Her only response was a tight smile as she turned the knob and pushed the door open, I followed her through the door because I had followed her this far and couldn’t see the point in leaving then. And, if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to see what it was that was making her act this way and the dread in my stomach had twisted into a sick excitement at the prospect of entering somewhere forbidden. Alice then proceeded to navigate the corridors with the confidence of someone who had been there many times before, and I wondered when she had found the time to familiarise herself without my knowledge- we had grown apart slightly as we aged but I’d have never thought she was able to do something like that without me noticing or suspecting something.

There’s a recovery section in the clinic where father’s patients sleep off their anaesthesia and rest after their surgeries. It contains ten beds in two rows down the two walls, each with a green curtain that went all the way around to give the occupants some semblance of privacy. I had been in there once before, when I was younger and very ill, so I recognised it. The room was empty since mother and father were away for a month and therefore there were no patients booked, but the curtain was drawn around the bed furthest from the door in a way that stood out in the emptiness and I turned to Alice as soon as I noticed. She was already looking at me, chewing on her bottom lip in a way that told of her inner emotional turmoil. And her guilt. I didn’t bother asking what she had done again, I just prepared myself for the worst possible outcome, strode the length of the room with more confidence than I felt and yanked the curtain open.

When I turned back, my sister hadn’t moved, still standing a foot from the doorway and chewing her lip guiltily. She didn’t look like she would answer any questions, so I turned back to the bed. There was a girl, lying there and hastily clothed in a combination of mine and Alice’s clothing, she seemed to be a similar age to the two of us but there was some odd innocence in her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. She was asleep, or potentially unconscious and she was also beautiful- something that I noticed almost immediately- with with the smoothest, clearest skin I had ever seen, sharply prominent cheekbones that were somehow also still as soft as the rest of her face and eyelashes, the colour of a black hole and longer than any I have ever seen. For several moments the room was silent, I stood and stared, mesmerised by the girl’s beauty and on the cusp of starting a new religion. And then, of course, Alice spoke and I watched my new religion crumble before me as I whipped around to stare at her,

“She’s what?”

Alice shifted uncomfortably under the weight of my stare, “She’s an AI. Artificial Intelligence.”

“Where did she come from?” I demanded, even while I knew the answer in my heart; there was only one place an AI- a real one- could have come from and she was standing in front of my looking increasingly sheepish.

We sat down, on the bed next to the one the AI was asleep in, and I listened as my sister quietly explained to me how she had seen an article several weeks back that had detailed how research funding for AI level technology had been stopped in so many places due to the work of a group claiming that AIs would threaten human existence. She showed me some of their writings and, I have to admit, they have some persuasive arguments. The ‘red button’ argument was particularly interesting, and argued that if you created an artificial intelligence that gained pleasure through having a red button on its side pressed, it would eventually evolve to make sure the button was always being pressed and to make sure nothing was there to prevent the red button being pressed, including removing (killing) anything it deemed to be a threat to the button (humans). That was the one that made their argument the most clear to me and I could understand why people wanted this research stopped, what I didn’t understand was why or how that had led to the creation of the girl currently lying on the bed. Alice sighed when I asked her and told me she had just wanted to prove them wrong by creating an AI that wouldn’t bring about the downfall of humanity and who could fit in with humans and learn from them because then their arguments would be useless. As I sat there, on a bed in my father’s clinic, I felt more like the older sister than I ever had, I felt like there was that divide between us for the first time in my entire life.

We sat, side by side and stared at my sister’s creation for long enough that I began to consider the consequences of playing God and then the consequences that would come after our parents found out. The clinic was that certain level of quiet in which your deepest darkest thoughts think they have permission to come out and make themselves thought. I know where my mind went and how awful those thoughts were, so I cannot even begin to imagine how bad Alice’s were or even what she was thinking of. Eventually, something else occurred to me and I cleared my throat, pitching my voice just loud enough to be heard in the quiet room without completely destroying the silence that hung between us.

“Alice,” my voice cracked slightly but I carried on regardless, “why does she have skin?” That wasn’t exactly the question I meant to ask, I meant to ask why she was humanised, why she looked like us, but that was what came out. Alice raised her head and looked at me, and then at the bed with the AI, and then back at me and for a second, and awful second, I thought she was going to cry. But, she threw her head back and started laughing instead- hysterical laughter, but laughter nonetheless- and after another few seconds I found myself joining in. To anybody looking on, we must have made the strangest sight; two teenage girls, gasping for breath through their laughter, leaning on each other for support while the metal, hospital-like bed creaked under their moving weight, alongside a third girl who lay, unconscious in the bed next to them.

I don’t know how long we sat there, gasping and giggling, but eventually our laughter naturally died down and we wiped the tears from our eyes. Silence returned, occasionally broken by a hiccup or a stray giggle, but this time it was the comfortable silence Alice and I normally spent our time together in. Alice sighed, a gentle, happy sound and dropped her head onto my shoulder.

“I wanted her to be like a person,” she began, and I could feel her jaw moving against my bare skin, “so I built her like a person, out of the metal in mummy’s lab.”

She paused and so I made a humming noise of acknowledgement, which seemed to be what she was waiting for,

“But it just looked creepy, you know? I mean, it was just a metal skeleton, so I made a proper skeleton- one shaped like a human- and brought her here to cover that in skin with daddy’s equipment. And then I added the extras, the eyes and hair and now she’s...” Alice gestured at the bed vaguely with her hands in lieu of finishing that sentence and then looked up at me. I nodded because, much like the anti-AI arguments, it made logical sense, even if I never would have thought of it.

Those last few moments, before the AI woke up, were the most peaceful I had experienced in a while. I sat there, with my sister’s head on my shoulder, our fingers laced together, and I was allowed to just be.

#writers #writer #my writing #writing #writblr #writeblr #writers of tumblr #writing prompt #writeaway #my work #my words #inteligência artificial #artificial intelligence #ai #spilled in writing #spilled in words #spilled ideas

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greysgonnawrite · 5 years

Text

The Ladies and Gentlemen of N.O.B.L.E.

Before we begin I’d like to give credit to the wonderful @8bithouseoffun for his work on editing this

“Time of death is calculated at 5:23, approximately an hour and a half ago.” The taller of two men said, looking at a holographic projection of his own face, subtly making an effort to emphasize his good side for the recording. “We’re still looking for a cause of death, but as you can see here,” he made a motion of grabbing the edge of the floating screen, and it followed his hand as he pointed it to the cadaver lying on the table, “the body appears to be in a state of severe anatomical shift. There seems to be no external wounds, but once we shave off the fur that’s already grown, we’ll get a better look. Once we have more information, we’ll continue recording. In the meantime, Dorian, stop recording functions. Keep the camera up, though. I’ll want to get a better look at this guy.”

“Yes, Doctor.” A mechanical voice came from a phone resting on another table, next to several medical instruments. The display floating in front of the man went through slight alterations while still in his hand, and after several more gestures, he had given himself a sufficient closeup of the body.

“You can stop hiding in the corner,” he said to his companion, “you’re not going to get caught on tape.”

The shorter man, despite being nowhere near a corner, had been keeping his distance from the camera’s vision, and was making himself as quiet as possible, lest a cough be heard in the background of the notes. “You don’t have to film your notes, you could just record them and not have to worry about how you look. Or better yet, just write them down.” Not in the business of being a hypocrite, in his hands rested a beat up notebook with an equally aged pen, one of many located on his person, filled with lines upon lines of notes.

“As fun as that looks, I think it’s better in the long run if people know what the hell I’m saying.” The tall man motioned to his coworker’s notes, which, to be honest, were quite indecipherable to anyone but the man who’d written them. “Besides, I don’t ‘have to’ worry about how I look. I get to take an opportunity to show myself off.” To this, the other man didn’t even acknowledge he’d said anything.

The men stood in a cramped lab, both wearing long white coats and making their own notes on information being displayed on holographic screens floating around them. Between them rested a medical table with the corpse; it looked like it used to be human, but its features were warped and misshapen. The two had been silent for some time when the taller man finally spoke up. “So we’re not going to say anything to each other until we have to?”

The shorter man removed his glasses and wiped them off. “You want a conversation? What do you want to talk about?” His eyes never left the displays.

“I don’t know, I just can’t stand the professionalism. Two of the most brilliant doctors in the world, finally in the same room, and they just work quietly? Sounds pretty disappointing.”

“And that brings us back to the first thing I said, what do you want to talk about?” The shorter man had yet to shift his focus from any of the screens, his mind racing to make sense of the information he was writing down. He seemed rather poorly put together, like a man who’d forgone some of the more advanced aspects of personal hygiene. He adjusted his glasses and stared at a particularly odd portion of data.

“We could talk about you.” The taller man, by contrast, had put a great more deal of effort into his appearance. Better posture, maintained hair, and immaculately clean shaven, every movement was precise and calculated to make himself look good. “Specifically, we could talk about my theories about you.” He waved his hand and several of the displays in front of him shrunk away to give him more room to think.

The shorter man winced, but took a deep breath and did his best to sound polite, “And what, may I ask, are your theories?”

“For one, I think you’re holding him back.”

Now it was the other man’s turn to wave away his displays, letting his opposite see the frustration on his face, “You think I’m holding him back? Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’d rather not let him destroy and kill whatever he comes across.”

In the time it took him to make his statement, his partner had taken his phone and brought up two more displays, one of which was a picture from a news site, the other a list of measurements for a large, human shaped creature. “Look at the way everything’s destroyed in these photos. With his musculature, everything here should look way worse. Believe it or not, I know a thing or two about what the human body is capable of. He’s clearly not being aimless in his destruction; everything is just roughed up, not crushed to bits.”

“Look, Victor, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. I already said, I try my best to keep him under control. Edward still does whatever he wants, I just… make sure he doesn’t crush everything, I guess?”

“But that’s what I’m talking about! You’re focused on stopping him, but the way you talk about it all, you shouldn’t get any say in the matter. I don’t think Eddie is as out of control as you think.” Victor tapped his phone and projected several more screens with news stories between them. “I don’t think his targets are random; shady vampire nightclubs, gargoyle poachers, several of these people have been trying various ways to replicate your formula. Did you ever find it strange that he only goes after things you personally don’t like?”

“You know what? I think we’re done talking.” The smaller man had already brought his screens back up and went back to work. “Let’s just get this finished so we can go home and we never have to talk again.”

“Oh, there’s not much we can do now, I’ve had a sample of the fur sent for analysis. We just need to wait for the results.” Victor gave a smile that was dripping with smugness. “Which means we get to talk more about you, Hank.”

“Hold on,” the other man said, once again waving away his holograms. “First, I told you to call me Henry. Second, why did you bother getting the fur analysed? This looks like a pretty cut and dry case of lycanthropy. Probably killed in the middle of his change.”

“But it’s not cut and dry!” Victor ran around the table to Henry’s side and, lifted the body’s right hand, which was as grotesque and out of proportion as the rest of the man’s body; the mere act of picking it up required the full effort of both of Victor’s arms. “Look at this! If we compare it to his left hand, which has barely changed at all…” he ran back to his side of the table and raised the hand, which seemed mostly normal by comparison, outside of the fingernails being twice the size one would expect them to be.

“Yeah, it’s bigger and messed up, that’s what happens when it turns into a claw.” Henry said, annoyed by his colleague’s antics.

“Yes! But there’s no way it’d get this big.” Vic shot back, unceremoniously dropping the hand back onto the table. “If this poor bastard was just suffering from regular lycanthropy, it’d be at least a fourth of its current size. Something’s way off about this, so I took a sample of fur and I’m getting it checked out.”

Henry looked at the body, then at his notes, everything Victor said about the hands was true, but something was bothering him. “When did you get a fur sample? You haven’t left that spot since I’ve been in here, much less left the room for analysis.”

“Oh, I took care of that before you got here, I noticed it a few seconds after I first saw the body, I’ve just been killing time waiting for the results. Should be almost done, actually.”

Henry sighed, “Then what have you been doing the whole time I’ve been working?”

“Reading up on you! I had you scanned as soon as you walked through the door. I have to say, your physiology is incredible!”

“You scanned me?”

“I scan everyone, don’t feel special. Hey, new theory; You still have to let Eddie come out and play every now and then, don’t you?”

Henry was stunned. He’d worked so hard to keep that a secret, and Victor had found out within an hour of meeting him. He stammered slightly before finding the right words, “How did you find out?”

Victor brought up more of his displays and turned them so they faced Henry. “It wasn’t that hard, not for me anyways. A lot of your organs, particularly those in your circulatory and cardiovascular systems, are pretty out of proportion. They likely shouldn’t function for longer than a few weeks. I’m guessing around the time that Eddie stopped being an angrier version of yourself and started being an actual monster was around the same time this started happening; your body couldn’t totally handle the strain of shrinking back. What’s interesting is that these effects would’ve reverted on their own if you stopped juicing up. But I was under the impression that there wasn’t any addictive components in your formula, so either I’m wrong- unlikely- or you’re having fun and don’t want to admit it.”

“It’s not that simple!” Henry snapped, a twinge of panic leaking through his voice, “If I stop drinking it cold turkey, then my oversized organs run the risk of failure. Putting an end to becoming Edward needs to be a carefully measured process; if I don’t drink enough, then it kills me, and if I drink too much… I’m not really sure what happens there, but none of the simulations show any promise!”

Victor put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder, “I get it-”

“I doubt you’re going through the same thing.” Henry tried to push his hand off of him, but Victor ignored his efforts.

“Hank, neither of us are here because of what we’re proud of. Our greatest accomplishments are specifically rooted in ruining our fucking lives! I may not turn into anything or lose control like you, but I made a god damned monster. I still have nightmares of its face staring up at me as it was confronted with the existential horror of being alive. So yeah, I might know a thing or two about what you’re going through. Now, we don’t have to continue this line of conversation if you want, that’s fine, but if you want to keep talking, know that I’m prepared to.”

Henry stared in silence, unsure of how to respond. Seconds later a disappointed looking Victor shook his head and went back to making notes.

After a moment of quiet that lasted far too long, a small voice came from Victor’s phone. “Doctor, your analysis of the fur has been completed.”

Eager for the shift in tone, Victor happily spoke up. “Don’t know what I’d do without you, Dorian. Go ahead and bring up the results.” Victor had barely finished talking when several screens reappeared with lines upon lines of new data scrolling on them. Once again, Dorian’s voice chimed in.

“I’ve taken the liberty of marking particularly unique portions of data for you.” True to his word, multiple lines of code stood out in red highlights.

“Could you cut out the middleman and just show those portions?” Victor said, his mind racing with the implications of what he was reading.

“Of course, Doctor.”

Henry adjusted his glasses again, pushing the previous conversation to the back of his head so he could focus on the results. “None of these readings are making sense, this isn’t like any case of lycanthropy I’ve ever seen.”

“Probably because it isn’t like any case of lycanthropy that’s ever been. Check out the genetics.”

Henry’s eyes darted to another screen and he skimmed through its data until a glaring detail stood out to him. “That can’t be right. These sequences don’t make sense.” His words trailed off as he brought his hands up, signaling for a holographic keyboard to appear under them. He ran several searches through a genetic database until he found what he was looking for.

“What the hell’s going on?” Victor asked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “None of these results line up with any known species of wolf, much less any known werewolves!”

“That’s because they aren’t lupine,” Henry started, gesturing for one of his screens to be copied over to Victor. “They’re ursine. Whatever’s going on, this guy was on his way to becoming the first known werebear.”

Now it was Victor’s turn to be stunned. He read over the screens several more times before he finally accepted the reality that Henry had laid out for him. “This is… incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“If I had to guess, cause of death is the same thing you saw in me, but on a larger scale. This guy’s insides got way to big way too fast, and his body couldn’t handle it.”

“You’re half right,” Victor started, his head slowly turning towards the window. “That definitely happened to him, but it didn’t kill him.” He calmly walked away from his work station and began packing up several items.”

“You mean something else killed him?”

“I mean nothing killed him. I know more about the dead than anyone else on on the damn planet, and I can say that that man’s not dead yet. I should’ve seen it before, but I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Those changes were brought on by an artificial full moon, probably a UV light with a lunar prism on it, it lead to a slower, uneven change, until the poor bastard couldn’t function. No blood flow, no breathing, stuck mid change, obviously he’d be pronounced dead.” He scolded himself as he finished grabbing his things. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“So now what? The great Doctor Frankenstein solves a medical mystery and now he’s on his way? Why don’t you stick around, see if we can’t change him back?”

Victor snapped around to face him. “Because he’s past the point of changing back, the transformation can only proceed. You should get going too, seeing as our wonderful little laboratory has a nice big window with a great view of the city!”

Henry looked out the window that took up most of one of the lab’s walls. Sure enough, it did offer a great view of the city, but it also gave the viewer a breathtaking sunset every night, much like the sun setting right now. An overlay projected on the corner of the window contained a helpful display that informed the viewer of various details such as the date, time, weather, and, most worryingly, the phase of the moon that would be in the sky that night. Without missing a beat, Henry began packing his things as well. “So what, you were just going to leave me in there if I hadn’t asked?”

“You wouldn’t have been helpless, I’m sure you keep some formula on you wherever you go. Don’t bother grabbing all the pens just go.”

Despite Victor’s protests, Henry did grab his pens and shoved theminto his pockets before hurrying out the door, just in time to hear unsettling cracks coming from the table. “I don’t think having Edward and that… thing interacting would make the situation any better.”

Once they were both out the door, Victor pulled out his phone. “Dorian, put Lab 7 into lockdown, and get Captain Talbot on the line. Actually, turn the video recording in the lab back on while you’re at it. Might as well get some data out of this.” As he spoke, the Lab’s blast doors began descending, eventually blocking out the sounds of pained groaning that had started emanating from the subject on the table. “Larry, glad to hear your voice. I need N.O.B.L.E. Forces on Floor 15, silver armements. Subject was incorrectly pronounced dead and is a pretty heavy security risk. Yes, Dr. Jekyll and I have evacuated the area and we are making our way towards the elevators. Stairs? You sure? Alright, but that’s our blood on your hands. Got it. Tell your men they’ll need heavier ammunition than they’re expecting, but I want that thing captured, not killed. Well tell them to try to capture it. Thank you.” On that final note, the Doctor finally put his phone away as the two men made their way towards the stairs.

“He’s right, you know. In an emergency, stairs are generally the safer option.” Henry said after Victor hung up.

“What ‘I know’ is that I’m right, you should let Ed deal with that. He’d be way more useful in restraining that thing then a bunch of armed goons.”

“Why do you want to catch it anyways?”

“Because I would kill for an interview to figure out what the hell lead to a man turning into that. A mutation to that degree doesn’t happen in nature.”

“What, you’re saying someone made that?”

“I’m not only saying that, but I’m saying that if it was in such a state that I thought it was dead, then whoever’s behind it probably thinks it was a failure when they dumped the body.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Henry said, taking a second to catch his breath on one of the landings.

“How many iterations of your formula did you have to go through before Ed came out? If whoever did this is anything like us, which I’m willing to wager they are, then a perceived failure is just a setback, they’re going to try something like this again, and soon, if they can.”

Henry paused for only a moment as the full implications of what he was just told sunk in. “We have to tell the Director about this! Get a whole investigation launched.”

“We’ll tell Rose everything we can after this is all dealt with. In the meantime, our only option is to get somewhere safe and get ready for whatever’s next.” Despite the confidence Victor spoke with, his head was racing with a thousand different questions, none of which he could properly answer. Normally, being like this just made him uncomfortable, but in this moment, for the first time in decades, he was scared.

#writing #fiction #Noble

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cyberneticlagomorph · 5 years

Text

The view is breathtaking to say the least, the ever revolving waltz of the cosmos plays silent witness to your approach, your breath misting on the thin, cold air as you glide through the starless patch of emptiness, known only as the Lawless. You have a ranch here, if you could call it that, a full lightminute’s worth of outer space to call your own.

Something is singing somewhere, beckoning, wheeling through the dark, and dusty strip of a far off asteroid field, a Shooting Star perhaps? You pay it no mind, you just circle the collection of awkward, chitinous spires anchored to the shattered remains of a long dead moon by the shed shell of a young Courier. Something bitter unfurls inside of you.

The ghosts of memories, not yet dead, seek to torment you. White rooms and examination tables. Text redacted, reformatted. That facility was hell, more than any others you’d been in. And it’s going to stay with you, for the rest of your life, while she gets off scot fucking free.

This is way more than she deserves.

Dust swirls lazily around your ankles as you land, wings tucking against your back so tightly they disappear completely. There is a walkway, leading up to what’s left of the Courier’s shell, a doorway sits snug in the chitin, easily missed by untrained eyes. Absently, you think about painting or carving it into something pleasing, maybe even homey. You stop yourself, fingers running over the chitin, imagining what it could be, and frown. You open the door, eager to stop wasting time in the cold. It’s warm inside, and brightly lit by glass bulbs full of bioluminescent algae.

The floor shimmers, sections of chitin and polished stone Shaped together haphazardly with the use of your Amalgamy, a quick and dirt mosaic to break up the monotony of the interior’s design. Beneath the vaguely blue glow of the algae-lights, the walls and floor dance with cool colors brought out by tender fingers. There are swirls of violet coursing through the gleaming black of the chitinous walls, hints of blue too, all coaxed out of hiding by your hand.

The interior of this place, if your own creation, every room hand sculpted by you and your Amalgamy. The Red Science, the study of Shaping and Being Shaped, of breaking the Chain. It’s a forbidden science, one you’ve taken very well to, considering you yourself are an aberration Shaped by science. A different science, but science nonetheless.

Motion further down an empty corridor interrupts your thoughts. A flash of red hair, gangly limbs, all turning to smoke. You stiffen and walk faster, your prey finally in sight.

Moira.

Internally, you kick yourself, hate yourself for the moment of weakness you showed back at Avalon. You had her there, life in your hands, blood on your knuckles. You could have ended her, ended THIS. But you hesitated, you remembered the days before she hurt you. So you let her live, you brought her here, where no one would find her, and you started building her a home. You can lie to yourself all you’d like, but that’s what it is, a gallant mansion of chitin and stone in the deep, beautiful reaches of space. Call it a gilded cage if you want, but there’s too much love poured into it for it to be a proper punishment of any kind.

She’s a mess when you find her, a bruise-mottled specter of herself, wrapped half-assedly in bandages and misplaced bravado. It’s a miracle she’s conscious, let alone standing. But there she is, defying the odds in that arrogant, stubborn way she always does. Everything has to bend to her will, even her own broken body. It’s infuriating, even more so than the way you instantly fall into the role of caregiver. How you instantly fall over yourself to please, to coddle, to love.

Moira is, and always will be the object of your pity, something long misconstrued as love. Your expression must have changed, must have melted into that warm, stupid stare you used to give her, because she narrows her eyes and she fucking sneers. That alone pushes all thoughts of comforting her out of your mind.

“Look at you, already wasting away without me.” The words fall out of your mouth before you can stop them. It’s mean, and a bit ironic since you’re the one that kicked her ass, but it’s (sort of) true regardless. That’s what drew you to Moira, her inability to care for herself, oh sure she’s dangerously clever, but she can’t cook to save her life. Or remember to eat, or sleep, especially when she’s knee deep in her work. So you’d remind her, you’d help her along, leave her things in the fridge, drag her to bed by the tie if you had to. And it had worked, for a little while, until she hurt you and you left.

Her sneer twists into something vaguely amused, “Oh, I am wounded.” She coos sardonically, “Does the little bunny think that his care is still needed? Nevermind effective?”

Ah, she hit a nerve. Of course she did, she’s always known how to get under your skin, figuratively and literally. Your ear twitches, betraying your neutral expression, “My care has always been effective, all my other partners have benefited from my care, you’re just an outlier.”

A grin, all sharp teeth and black gums, bruise-purple glows in the back of her mouth as she speaks, and flickers among the abyss of her sclera, “Oh? So your little experiments have come to fruition at last. We’re not so different, you and I, Jack.” She takes an unsteady step closer, and you flinch, “Misunderstood scoundrels of different areas of knowledge… but both oh so good at our thing. Oh so passionate.”

A rip-saw snarl tears its way up your throat, your own biolume igniting with icy fire, making you look otherworldly. It frames your teeth and lights up your eyes, burning you up inside just as much as the anger Moira’s barbs have stoked, “I am NOTHING like you.”

Moira tucks her hands behind her back, suddenly looming over you. Smoke leaks from her mouth and nostrils, lending weight to her words somehow, “Is that so, Jack? But were you never curious? Wanted to know something about someone? ‘Can I fatten them up? Change them? Make them to my liking?’ Have you never planned how to try it and wordlessly put it into action? Nevermind the consequences, you must know.”

She leans forward, bringing herself to your eye level in the most demeaning way possible. She smells like blood, like herbal cigs and shitty, stale coffee. You used to love those smells, but now they just make you sick. She tilts your chin up with one of her claws, her face is way too close to yours. You feel sick, so sick. Stop touching me stop touching me GET AWAY GET AWAY GET AWAY

“Was I not your darling pet project? Much like you were, and forever will be mine.”

You teleport without thinking, blinking several feet away, just out of her reach. You’re shaking, shaking so hard. Don’t throw up, DON’T THROW UP.

She seems smug, more than her usual aura of general smugness. “Keeping me here, won’t do you any good, I had reasons for keeping you in the lab, reasons that would benefit humanity. You on the other hand, have nothing.”

“Oh but this will benefit others, you’ll never hurt anyone, ever again.” It sounds like a lie coming from your trembling lips, but you try hard to believe it’s true, that keeping her here was a good idea. She scoffs, but you’re not all together here anymore, no, you’re drifting away, viewing all of this from behind the mask of your own face as the numbness sets in. Moira saying something about how this hurting others thing is nonsense, sacrifices are always made for the greater good.

You flinch as if struck. That struck another nerve, you’ve been told that verbatim by every researcher, every medic, every anything that’s ever hurt you for science. For the greater good of humanity.

“We are creatures that hurt, Jack. We hurt each other endlessly. Porcupines huddling together. All we can do is choose how we are hurting one another and why. I picked genetics. Picked to use my sins for a greater good. Cures for diseases, prosthetics with new technologies, ways to offer everything available to regular people today to the magical folks like you. To see how magic and technology can mesh together. To open up possibilities like never before.” A pause, a smile, “Is that not great, Jack? Not incredible?”

“Why are you choosing to hurt your loved ones? There is little more to this than revenge. But your satisfaction. And I won't complain- oh, no. But not because this is fair or just. Because I love you dearly. And love all data you've given me. And all I've become from you.” She means it, in her own little twisted way, she means every word that spills from her chapped lips. You hate it, and it’s very hard for you to hate anything, anyone, but you do. In that moment there is nothing in this universe, or any other, than Moira and her words. You move without realizing, hand at her throat, lifting her off the floor to slam her into a nearby wall hard enough to make the contents of the cabinets rattle. You’ve grown, stretched into a physical testament of your hatred.

Moira remains stoic. The only change in her expression is a faint hint of annoyance and a quirked eyebrow, it doesn’t change, not for a long time, not even when your snarl and start to squeeze.

You both know that she could Fade out of your grasp if she wanted, but she doesn’t, she lets you put her hands on her and seems to savor your touch in a way that makes the violence you want to inflict seem almost erotic. She smiles at you, with those unnaturally sharp teeth, the faint purple tint of her lips make her look more corpselike than usual, a smug banshee on her deathbed. Dancing on the knife’s edge of fate.

"For all your wisdom, your incomprehensible IQ and all the data at your disposal, and you're still dumb enough to think that I still love you?" Your voice sounds strange, deep and menacing, "That I ever loved you? If anything I pitied you and your obvious inability to take care of yourself, your astonishing ability to cling to those that no longer want you. If you were my loved one, I'd've given you the mercy of a quick death, but all the hatred I have for you refuses to grant you that kindness "

A snort, a flash of teeth and a wheezing attempt at a laugh, "Allow me a fantasy, won't you?" But otherwise, her tone is unshaken. Her expression is vaguely amused. "I think, Jack. This little tirade is one of the most precious bits of information you could have ever given me. Our little talk is over. Play with me as you will- I am done here."

You could kill her, you could finally END THIS.

You should.

You want to.

But you won’t, because she’s right. Every last fucking word out of that ugly maw of hers is right and you HATE. IT.

You drop her unceremoniously to the ground, and deflate back into your normal self. You are broken, shards of a person thrice mended, struggling to come together. Logic dictates that if you want to stop being something people break, you should turn those shards outward, use them like armor.

But you refuse, you always refuse.

To grow back sharp and hard would be the death of you, in a world already so jagged, who needs one more knife to cut themselves on.

You are soft, you respond to those that hurt you with kindness you know that they do not deserve.

You FORGIVE.

Something that should be beyond you by now. But it isn’t, and it never will be. You swallow the inferno of your ire, until all that’s left is dying embers. You run your hand on your scalp, wincing at the peach fuzz that greets you, it will grow back, softer than before. Just like you.

You look at Moira, long since dragged herself to her feet, rubbing her throat idly, and you sigh.

“You really are pathetic, aren’t you? You aren’t some scientific martyr, Moira, just a sick impatient woman, who’s lived her life precariously piling up crates of exciting toys you’ve made for yourself. Someone who could never cooperate with others to gain even the slightest scientific footing, before jumping into whatever your whims dictated.”

That wipes the amusement from her face, leaving her stunned enough for you to continue uninterrupted, you sat there and listened to her dissect you, now it’s YOUR turn to show her what it’s like, “You’re just a spoiled child tinkering with what you don’t understand, someone with too much power and too little sense.”

She flinches, and oh how delicious it feels. You don’t stop, you can’t stop, not now, “So this,” You gesture at her new home, “This is your due. A room where you can play scientist, your very own padded cell.”

Moira opens her mouth to spit what you’re sure is a venomous retort but you cut her off before she can utter a syllable, “That’s what you really are, Moira, you may talk about the greater good and the advancement of mankind-- but you’re really just making excuses for yourself.” Now you’re the one looming, five feet small and she’s shrinking back from you like you’re on fire, “You want to do this fun thing you love, and you want to do it without feeling guilt for all the pain you’ve inflicted on others, on me.”

Still, she tries to reply, tries to talk back, but you aren’t listening, “You try to justify your atrocities, by casting yourself as some misunderstood crusader of great things, but you’re just an idiot putting the cart before the horse.” Your voice becomes hers, a sharp and bitter mimicry, eerily accurate, “Why, yes! Put cybernetics on magical beings! When we don’t even know what a magical being is, really, or how they exist! Surely the magical part of it won’t affect our data at all!!” It’s your turn to scoff, your voice your own again but no less bitter, “You really just cherry pick what to apply the scientific method on. You act on this hedonist whim, but never acknowledge it. You over indulge in it, and lose sight of everything else… and that was your downfall. Not me, not Avalon, all you and your inability to exercise moderation… maybe you’ll find some out here, in the solitude, we both know you’ll have plenty of it.”

#ic #action post #enclosures #abuse #body horror #manipulation #ask to tag #THIS GOT AWAY FROM ME IM SO SORRY

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phantomphangphucker · 5 years

Text

I’m Friends With The Monster Outside Of Me - Phic Phight

Prompt Creator: @lunagalemaster Prompt: Phriendship or Pitch Pearl- After very long and heartfelt discussions, Fenton and Phantom decided that they would live their lives as their own people. Years later, Fenton has grown up, but Phantom is still 14. Summary: Just because he’s you, doesn’t make him a good friend

Warning: extreme violence, violence, torture, gore, mass murder, gang violence, drug trade, abusive friendships, character death, murder, ocular trauma, trauma, stabbing, mature

Fenton pours blue wax on the envelope, letting it sit and spread for a second before pressing his stamp into it. Wiggling the stamp out of the dried wax he puts it to the side and taps the envelope on the cherry oak desk. Standing up he smooths out his suit and walks out the large doors. Heading over to his secretaries desk he puts the letter down in front of her and lightly traces a finger across the back of her neck and left shoulder. He doesn’t look at her but he does catch her slight blush out of the corner of his eye. Smirking to himself over toying with the girl, his fake hints of affection always help her to turn a blind eye. As he walks out his lobby he sees the tv playing some clip of Phantom, saving some kids. “Well isn’t that nice of him”, Fenton chuckles at how he used to waste his time with such things. Muttering to himself, “I don’t know why parents even bother with them, they’re not even worth the tax breaks”.

Phantom flies lazily, a bit exhausted after the fight and catching that bus. It always bothers him when the more dangerous ghosts show up. Phasing into the apartment Valerie lets him stay at. “What’s up Phantom, you were on tv again”, Valerie calls from the kitchen. “It happens, I’m just glad no one was hurt. Heck, a few kids even seemed to be having a good time!”, Phantom laughs as he floats his way to the kitchen. He plops down in a chair and lazily rests on the table while Valerie sips her tea. “That’s Amity for you, no ones got flight responses anymore”, she pushes a tea to him knowing he likely hasn’t had anything. “You know ghosts don’t need this right?”, Valerie just shrugs and smiles over the rim of her cup.

A few days later, Valerie is tinkering with a gun as Phantom is floating in circles with an ankle over his knee. “I wouldn’t mind actually looking like an adult. Still getting called a child is pretty damn annoying”, he mutters to the ceiling and Valerie grunts at him. She knows the little ghost gets annoyed by his stature, “honestly, it probably makes people trust you more. Looking filled with childish innocents”. Phantom points at her on one of his passes, “and it makes bad guys think I’m some weak pushover”. At that Valerie just shrugs before she remembers the mail.

“Oh yeah, almost forgot you got mail. Pretty sure it’s from Fenton”, she gets up and grabs the letter sitting to the side and walks to Phantom. “I know you guys split up or whatever, but it’s nice you staying friends”, Phantom laughs and rolls his eyes at her as he eagerly takes the letter. While he’s opening it, “you make it sound like we were dating”. Valerie giggles as she watches him open up the letter, “well, were you? I really have no clue if you two were just secret friends or secret lovers. Still kind of amazing a Fenton being so close with a ghost either way though”. Danny coughs in surprise a fair bit, he had elected not to tell her the full story in case it hurt her but he told whatever he could, “friends, Val. Jesus. Strongly connected friends and nonromantic partners in ghost fighting, nothing more and we still are. Even if he’s moved away”. Phantom can’t help but frown at the letter, for the past while he hasn’t really liked the way Fenton writes. Something about it is just not right, cold or even like thinly veiled insults. It makes him want to drag him back here and go to the movies, or try to get him and Valerie on another date.

Fenton sits at the head of the table and listens to his lackeys plead their cases about what policies should be modified or added. He can’t help but smile faintly as he watches them rip into each other’s ideas, doing everything they can to beat each other down and win. It’s really the only reason he even bothers himself with listening to their ideas, they all sucked after all, but it was incredibly pleasing seeing them fight to appease him. Plus his attention made them feel needed and like he had some kind of loyalty or care for them. People who feel unneeded or unimportant are less controllable, they won’t keep their mouths shut. Some guy who’s name starts with L, Fenton can’t be bothered with names, is the only one with a slightly useful idea. Checking his gold watch, “well, let’s go with the children’s police updates, that one will avoid more losses in the current climate”. They all go silent and nod, instantly falling in line and accepting his choice; as it should be. He lets them see themselves out, chuckling to himself, “I’ll have to give it to Phantom, all his child saving is sure making it easy to scam parents into useless policies. What a useful friend indeed”. Smirking to himself, he fixes his collar as he heads out for coffee and fine cakes.

Fenton finds himself being approached by a larger man in a black suit, while he’s sitting checking over obituaries and reports for ways out of paying out any or all of their insurance coverages. “Fenton?”, the man asks with authority as he sits down. Fenton smirks, folds his papers over once and crosses his legs. He doesn’t dignify the man with a response. The man pulls out some papers, puts his elbow on the table and holds them out to Fenton. “I think we could be of use to each other”, Fenton grabs the papers with two fingers only, making a show of not really caring. Folding out the papers single-handed, he smiles; faint and cruel, “consider me curious”.

“I think Vlad might be up to his shit again”, Phantom groans at the little camera screen. Valerie laughs, “told you the bugs were a good idea”. Phantom rubs his neck, “yeah well it makes me feel like a creep. Anyways it looks like he’s trying to build nanotech, again”. Valerie rolls her eyes and checks over one of her guns before flying out the window, turning to Phantom, “well I’ve got business in California and we both know you can deal with that loon, have fun”, with a little salute she’s off. Phantom shakes his head as the phone rings.

“Dude, it’s been a while”

“Busy life busier future, it would seem”

“Oh please don’t tell me ghosts are popping up in New York now too?”

“No, but it would seem that Vlad is sticking his nose where he shouldn’t”

“Ugh, what the hell does that frootloop want with New York?”

“Testing grounds I think, he really should learn to sow his pets mouths shut”

“Um ew, even I think that’s pretty dark for a joke. But I’ll come down and check it out. Vlad’s supposed to be my problem, not yours”

“Indeed, you’re the hero. I’m the simple businessman”

“Uh...yeah”

With that Fenton had hung up.

Fenton snickers at the phone as he fiddles with the point of a bloody needle, “who said I was joking”. Behind him, a large man in a now bloodied black suit sits crying with bloody thread stitching his lips shut.

Fenton folds out the papers again after wiping his hands off with a silk handkerchief. “So Vlad’s getting himself into the drug industry? Well, I’ll be glad to show him the ropes”, Fenton chuckles as he burns the paper; knowing full well he’ll remember it all just fine. “Can’t have Phantom sticking his nose in what’s mine after all”, he slams the large metal door shut leaving the man to die.

It takes Phantom only two days to arrive. Fenton smirks as he sees Phantoms little icon appear on his scanner, “looks like things can get moving now”. Phantom phases into the centre of the room, Fenton chuckles as he turns his chair to face him, “well haven’t you changed”. Phantom rolls his eyes and crosses his arms, “that joke is so old, you want me to start calling you old Man”. Fenton smirks and puts his chin on his hand, elbow on the desk, “38 is hardly old, at least I’m not the one with white hair”. Phantom flushes green, “isn’t there a problem with Vladdie you should be telling me about?”.

Phantom watches Fenton grin, its a warm looking one but seems almost fake. “Of course, I’m not in the business of wasting time. Simply put, he's sent some of his pets here to scout the area for some kind of test”, Fenton says as he straightens up. Phantom's forgotten just how tall he’s grown, “do you have any clue what he’s testing or testing on?”. Fenton shakes his head and sighs leaning back in his chair, “if I did I would have started with that, seems like that would be more important”. Phantom flies over to the side of Fenton who doesn’t even turn his head to acknowledge him but does look at him. Phantom flips out a tablet and powers it up, showing Fenton the inside of Vlad’s lab. “Well, that certainly seems odd. I’m surprised at you, spying doesn’t become you”, Fenton snickers at Phantoms clearly guilty face. “It’s all Valerie”

“And you’re all complacent, imagine what Vlad would say”, Fenton knows pushing his guilt will keep him up at night enough to not spy on him as well. Phantom glares at him, “I’m nothing like him and we both know that”. Fenton smirks and gives Phantom a (fake) friendly pat on the back, “sure we do”. Looking back to the screen, “well I guess our old friend is playing with some of those samples he got from us back in the day, again”. Phantom blinks and squints at the screen, eventually seeing what his human half already did, “how did I even miss that?”. Fenton shrugs rather amused to see that he still has the unkeen eyes of a child, “I’m certain you were quite busy. You’ll probably want a sample of whatever that is. The fellow I overheard mentioned Dresker buildings”. Fenton clicks open his left side drawer and pulls out some papers as Phantom looks down at them, “I’m not about to let this be a one-sided friendship just because you’ve got the powers. So I went to the liberty of looking them up, new property of DALV it seems”. Fenton taps the company name for emphasis incase his little friend missed the obvious. Phantom nods and grins goofily, “it never will be and I guess I’ll do my hero duties and get this fixed right up”. With that Phantom phases through the roof with a wave, completely missing Fenton snicker and mutter “man, he is still such a child”.

It takes Phantom all of an hour to get there and he is disturbed by what he sees. There are people strung up by blue rope all over the ceiling. In varying stages of complete mutilation, and Phantom feels that if he still had a human stomach he would likely vomit. “Sweet Phantom, what the hell happened here? Did Vlad do this?”, Phantom shudders, seriously hoping that Vlad hasn’t become so twisted that he’d commit mass murder like this. Phantom floats about invisibly and cautiously, looking for anything that might be nefarious; other than the corpses. He does find some papers with test results on them, all positive, “so he’s having the nanobots react to something or maybe the other way around? Well whatever it is, it works and that’s not good”. Shaking his head he decides he’s not going to find anything else here, leaving an anonymous call to the cops with one of the desk phones before leaving.

Fenton is spinning some vials in his fingers as he sees Phantom show up on his sensors. Quickly slipping away his new toys, he begins rifling through papers. And that’s how Phantom finds him when he comes through the ceiling. “Back so soon? Should I be saying good job or be worried?” Fenton looks up to Phantom when he doesn’t respond immediately and sees his rather disturbed and disgusted facial expression. Raising an eyebrow, “worried it is, he didn’t create some dissolving clone of us again did he?”. Phantom shakes his head and shivers, “there was a lot of dead people, it’ll be on the news. I just, I really hope Vlad hasn’t gone this far for power or whatever”. Fenton makes a show of looking displeased, grimacing deeply, before shaking his head and pinching his nose. “Well, hopefully, the officials will figure that mess out”, looking back to Phantom, “I’m guessing you’ll be seeing Vlad about this mess of his?”. Phantom nods but floats down to him and hands him the test results he found, “Maybe you’ll see something I don’t and this is your city so I hope you’ll want to be involved in helping it out”.

Phantom laces his statement with worry, he’s genuinely unsure of Fenton’s feelings about his own city and that worries him. “I’m not a ghost Phantom, you know humans aren’t so protective over their cities. However, you’re right about me wanting to see this through. That and I’m always available to help out if you really need it”, Fenton gives him a nod before looking through the papers. Phantom can tell he meant what he said, sometimes he does forget that humans aren’t as protective as him but he’s glad Fenton cares.

Fenton, however, does not care. Not in the way Phantom thinks he does, anyways. He wants what Vlad has and this is an easy way to get it, besides he’s the one with the means to distribute the sneaky little obedience drug, not Vlad. Fenton sighs to himself and shakes his head, he’ll let the child think what he wants. “Well, he’s definitely dealing with nanobots based off us or more so halfas. I’d say he used some combination of himself and what he had left from us”, Fenton taps the paper and leans back. Turning to Phantom he continues, “this other stuff though? Can’t tell you there. But the reaction it’s having seems like mind control or complacency of some kind”. Fenton intentionally accents his half-lie with a heavy frown. One which Phantom falsely reads as one of worry and disgust, “I don’t like the sounds of that myself. I’m definitely going to have to pay Vladdie as visit”. Both of them frown then, though the gears are turning in Fenton’s head and Phantom never catches the small smile, as Phantom talks, “we both know I can’t get in there with his ghost shield. So, think you’re up to being the hero again for a bit?”. Fenton makes it a point to sigh exasperatedly, “I can’t promise to be light on my feet but very well. Though really, I already told you I would”. They both grin widely, and Phantom is looking forwards to making some jokes at his others expense. While Fenton’s looking forward to making himself that much more dangerous and in control. Drug-induced complacency is something he can work with quite nicely indeed.

Phantom lays on the cherry oak desk as Fenton dusts off the ectoweapons he kept with him. Phantom mutters to himself while rapidly clicking a pen, “I really wish I knew what happened to all those people, though I’m glad I didn’t see it”. Overhearing Phantoms mutterings Fenton smirks, remembering his little phone call and what came of it.

—Flashback to yesterday—

Fenton flips through the papers his secretary had delivered to him and of course he had made sure to eye her short skirt when she was looking, he had seen her blush and giddly walk as she’d left his office. Sufficiently kept under his thumb.

“Dresker huh? Well I can work with that”, still flicking the papers, he gets the phone from under a secret compartment and makes a call.

“Consider yourself busy today”

“Of course”

“Dresker is ready for pick up and needs their paperwork filled”

“Pick up car or pick up truck?”

“Pick up trucks and no idle chitchat”

“You don’t have to worry about anyone mouthing off sir”

“Indeed I don’t”

Fenton hangs up with a smirk on his face, Vlad might be powerful but Fenton dealt in death.

He spends about ten minutes finding clients for his secretary to call and give them the bad news, bad for them at least. Then flips on his secure live feed to the cams his lackeys have; courtesy of an unaware Tucker. “The government really should fear that man”, Fenton’s smile deepens as he watches one of his lackeys shove a pair of pliers through some poor pets eye and some other pet gets strangled with her own necklace. “Well, isn’t this quite a lovely mess”.

Eventually, it seems they’ve found what he’s looking for. He pushes a blue button on his screen to indicate to them his intentions. He can see one lackey pick up the vials while another looks at them and smirks, “now I wonder just what these will do”. Fenton watches as the lackeys string up every person in the building, after killing them of course, can’t have anyone talking after all. Turning off the screen, feeling quite content with himself; he waits for White to come make the delivery drop off.

—Return to present—

“Ready?”, Fenton asks as he tucks his ectogun into a hidden belt, next to his own specialty one. Phantom springs up off the table, putting away the pen as Fenton humorously shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re ever going to grow up”, Phantom rolls his eyes at that and flies them both through the ceiling. It takes them a bit to get to Vlad’s mansion and Phantom never feels the plasma cutter strapped to Fenton’s back.

Landing on the ground, Phantom hands Fenton a Spector deflector; which Fenton eyes with amusement, “yes of course, don’t want things to get handsy”. Phantom grimaces at what he thinks is yet another off-putting joke, “How is it that your humour is darker than the half of us that literally fights the dead”. Fenton snickers, “Oh I don’t know, I’d say my days are murder”. Phantom rolls his eyes and taps on the anti-ghost shield, “poor taste jokes aside, if you can just find the deactivation switch then I can deal with Vlad. Ghostfight and all that jazz”. Fenton smirks, “yeah, sure thing. While you’re up to that I can snoop for anything questionable”. Phantom holds his fist up for a fist bump and Fenton chuckles but decides to humour his friend. Fenton’s sure Phantom wouldn’t be so keen if Phantom knew just how much blood was on his hands.

Fenton walks casually smirking all the while through the force field, Spector deflector on and both guns charged. Though he has no intention of using the regular anti-ghost gun, because today really is going to get handsy. While he slips inside the door he mutters, “who said I was joking” as he cracks his knuckles. He can’t help but smile, it’s not too often he gets his hands messy so directly.

Heading down to the lab first, as it doesn’t take much more than some cutting to get through the floor into it, “man, Vlad isn’t even trying”. It doesn’t take long to find all the research, samples and machines to make more of both the drug and nanobots. Promptly climbing out of the hole in the ceiling, Fenton cuts a hole in the wall as well to get through the back of the building. Leaving everything but the plasma cutter in a box, which he had stationed years back, outside and hidden from view. White will pick it up come the morning. Waltzing back through the hole, he makes his way to the main objective.

Phantom sits fiddling with his thumbs and shooting leaves with ectorays, “we so have to go for some good New York pizza after this”. Even though he seems relaxed he can’t help but worry about Fenton, “Vlad’s known for violence and even with ghost powers he’s hard to beat or hold off”.

Fenton doesn’t even bother with looking for the deactivation switch, knowing full well it would be in the old man's desk. Muttering as he approaches the man’s office with his hands in his pockets, “it would be pretty foolish to put it anywhere not within his easy reach”. As he’s pushing in the doors Vlad lifts his head up and raises an eyebrow, “Why Daniel, what a nice surprise. I haven’t even seen you in human form for a while. I was starting to wonder”. Fenton chuckles, “don’t waste the effort old man”. Fenton goes and sits straight down on Vlad’s desk earning a puzzled and slightly concerned look from Vlad, as Fenton speaks, “you know I live in New York now and since you can’t seem to keep your little pets mouth shut, I had to sow it shut for you”. Fenton smirks at the clear shock and heavy concern lining Vlad’s face, “Daniel whatever do you mean, I can clearly see you all over Amity news? And while I approve of your suit, I’ve never known you to wear them”. Fenton laughs and it’s a rather cold one, he’s going to enjoy this, “Oh don’t you know? There’s two of us now. One plays hero down in Amity and the other runs the largest life insurance company in New York”. Danny waves off Vlad shocked expression, “as for the suit, well tricking people out of their money is quite lucrative. Though running the entire illegal drug trade helps too”. Fenton slides off the desk, walks around to Vlad’s side and bends forward so their faces are next to each other, “your pet seemed quite eager to please you, thought that I could help with the whole distribution of your little drug. Which is quite true and I do fully intend to do just that. Didn’t really turn out so well for him though, judging by the date on the calendar he’s probably dead by now”. At this point, Vlad gets up and puts some distance between the two of them, while Fenton puts his hands in his pockets and smiles. “If it makes you feel any better the Dresker pets didn’t fair any better. Phantom got to see that for himself”, Fenton laughs as he steps closer to Vlad, “funny thing?! He thinks you’re the one who did that! He’s genuinely concerned you went too far”. Vlad finally speaks up as Fenton shakes his head, grinning, “you’re not Daniel”. Earning a single laugh from Fenton as he tilts his head back, “Oh but I am, I’m full Fenton and he’s full Phantom. The only reason I’m here is because he can’t get through the shield, being full ghost and all. It’s so nice to be needed, not so nice for you though”. Fenton slowly takes off his suit jacket, folds it and smooths it out as he lays it over the back of a chair. Speaking while taking a few long strides towards Vlad, letting his height and muscles show,

“But I’d think you’d be proud, one half of your little badger manipulating the other half. I turned out pretty damn good at chess”. Fenton has Vlad backed up against a wall, nearly touching him and towering over the skinny older man. “He hardly even knows about the drug, just the nanobots. Doesn’t know that you need both. That the nanobots give a person control over anyone with the drug in them. I sure do though and made sure he didn’t”.

Vlad phases through the wall and appears behind Fenton, “so that must mean you’re all human then, meaning you’re sorely outmatched here. I’m guessing you want to strike a deal then. Though boy, you should know by now that threats are wasted on me, I know you too well for that”. Fenton turns around casually and grins at Vlad, “you’re right about the human thing. Perfectly normal human living a perfectly normal human life. Your pet was pretty interested in setting up a deal for you, so what makes you think I’m looking to strike a deal with the old man himself?”. Fenton nonchalantly picks at his fingernails not even looking at Plasmius while Plasmius furrows his brows, “a normal human can hardly do anything to me and again you’re all hot air, like always. Why else would you be here?”.

“All those dead little pets of yours, strung up like puppets, would have to disagree. I don’t do people’s dirty work Vlad, people do it for me. And you will too, you’ll fall in line like a good little dog. Though all I really need from you is for you to be dead”, Fenton smirks as Vlad lunges to grab him. “Your jokes have gotten weak, Daniel”, just before Vlad manages to touch him Fenton laughs. “Oh no, I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, Vlad grabs him anyway and gets promptly shocked. Fenton kicks the downed halfa part way across the floor with a smirk, “Now that wasn’t very smart of you, was it?”. Vlad gets up and glares with a smirk, “I don’t have to touch you to hurt you, you know this so what will you do now; chess player”. Fenton grins and speaks laced with venom, “ooo I’ve earned my own nickname, how special”. Fenton goes and sits in Vlad’s chair before continuing, “well I could just let Phantom in, that was his plan after all. But that would make it kind of hard to get what I want, now wouldn’t it? Well, not really I guess. I already had your little drug so the only other thing I really needed was the nanobots, well that and the tech plus the resources to make more. On that note, you really shouldn’t underestimate humans so much”. His statement is accented by a sudden explosion down in the lab.

As Vlad spins around facing the direction of the explosion Fenton springs, instantly landing a punch clean to the back of Vlad’s head. That combined with the belt electrocuting him sends him to the floor. Fenton waste no time in slamming his steel-toed dress shoe into his chin, sending Vlad’s head slamming into the wall. “You know I’m impressed that your little nanobots will not only strengthen a halfa but also give a regular human ghost powers, I think I’ll find that quite useful”, Danny says as his footsteps glide towards Vlad. Who quickly manages to phase through the floor, reappearing by his desk looking a little worse for wear. At the sight of Fenton turning his head to him with a playful smile, “unfortunately for you, it won’t be very useful to a deadman”. Vlad, officially deeply concerned for his own safety, slams his hand on the shield deactivation button.

Phantom leans on the shield as he waits, “jeez, Vlad must be getting better at hiding things. Or at least that’s what I hope is taking him”. When he suddenly falls backwards as the shield is deactivated, “spoke too soon I guess”. Phantom launches himself off the ground straight through the front doors and starts his search of the house. Not clueing in that he should have gone to the office first.

Fenton laughs, “not really sure that’s going to help you, old man. We’re both Danny’s after all, and you’re the arch enemy. Pretty easy to see who he’ll believe, if he makes it here quick enough anyways”. Vlad shoots a couple of ectoblasts at Fenton, but Fenton never did fall out of practice. Easily dogging the blasts, he throws a chair at Vlad’s face and immediately jumps at him. By the time the chair is no longer blocking Vlad’s sight, Fenton’s fist collides with his face. “I’m definitely fine with things getting handsy!”, Fenton chuckles as he pulls out the plasma cutter; which just so happens to also be made to cut through ectoplasm. “Phantom might get a kick out of this! A plasma cutter for Plasmius!”, Vlad flies across the room and glares at the crude tool before firing at both it and Fenton. Fenton rolls out of the way quite easily though and kicks a globe at him, Vlad simply flies backwards a bit to avoid it, “you’re wasting your time! You can’t get me long distance and you know it!”. Fenton laughs and reveals the ectogun but instead of grabbing it he pushes a button on the belt and the wall behind Vlad explodes. Sending Vlad flying across the room and landing right next to Fenton, who promptly hacks off his legs with the plasma cutter.

Phantom snaps his head to the left as he hears an explosion and screaming, “Oh Phantom no, is Vlad trying to blow him up?!”. Turning he bolts towards the office, by the time he gets there and phases in. He’s met by the sight of an unconscious Vlad missing his legs and what looks like a weird skinny blow torch in his eye socket. With Fenton holding his shirt with one hand, punching him on the plasma-cutter-free side of his face with the other hand. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”, Phantom yells, as he is too startled to do anything other than float a few inches in.

At hearing Phantoms voice, Fenton drops Vlad in a heap on the floor. He turns to face Phantom and steps sideways away from Vlad and towards Phantom, blood and ectoplasm splattered all over him. “I could say I used whatever I could find to fend off a psychopathic halfa, but that would be a pretty pointless lie”, Fenton chuckles as he wipes his hands off on his pants. Finding that, since they’re already covered in gore, they aren’t sufficiently cleaning his heads off; he bends down and picks up one of Vlad’s books. Tearing out a few pages to clean his fingers and palms. While Phantom gapes at him, “did you? Did you attack him?!”. Fenton laughs cruelly, “Oh come on Phantom what did you expect, child? You were always the good one, I well”, Fenton chuckles as he pulls out an unusual gun with a faint glow, “I was always the liar”.

Fenton lazily points the gun and shoots Vlad’s slumped body, in the head; never even taking his eyes off Phantom. “WHAT THE HELL!”, Phantom cries as he shoots himself towards Vlad. Fenton shoots him again purely because Phantom had the audacity to question his actions. “You can leave now if you want, he won’t be doing anything anymore. Though I must say, we really are the best friends we’ve ever had”, is all Fenton has to say to Phantom, as Vlad’s heart stops.

End.

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boymeetsweevil · 6 years

Text

Hoping for the Best - NSFW

Grouping: Lifeguard!Reader x Lifeguard!Hoseok

Word Count: ~24.3k lmao

Warnings/Themes: Friends to enemies? to lovers, SLOW burn, Descriptions of bullying, unrequited love???, Making out, Cunniligus, Fingering, Penetrative sex, Dom!Hoseok if you squint, spanking, use of the epithet brat ;), Lack of communication, Idiots who don’t talk about their feelings

Summary: “He knows you two are linked though. You must know it too. It’s impossible to deny when you both reach climax at the same time during your first time, the breath leaving him like you knocked it out and your eyes rolling into the back of your head like he scratched stars there for only you to see.”

A/N: This piece is for the BSC 1000 Followers Writing Project! based off prompt 14: Pretending to drown to get a kiss from the hot lifeguard / “Actually I’m drowning please save me.” ALSO! the coffee shop joke makes a little more sense if you think about it in chinese but oh well

Even after four years of coming and going, the gentle warmth that you feel seeping into your tired bones when your shuttle returns you to your hometown every summer never seems to dull. Certainly, you will never tire of the smell of the household laundry detergent, weaved into the threads of your parents’ clothes, after two long semesters away. The same scratch of threadbare sheets across your skin as you lay in the bed you’ve had since you were 9 is always a welcome feeling to wake up to on the first morning back. The smell of porridge, a dish you’ve come to appreciate, greets you as well.

“There she is,” your father smiles at your stumbling figure over the newspaper. His eyes crinkle and he holds you in his gaze for a long few beats. There’s something bittersweet about the way the eye adjusts to the film that time lays over loved ones that have been away. Despite this, he can still clearly see the outline of your past self, much smaller but with the same bedhead and swinging feet at the dinner table. “The princess has finally awakened and decided to grace us with her presence.”

“Good morning, dad,” you yawn widely.

Your mother passes you a steaming bowl of porridge and a plate of cut fruit. She sits down with the mail and begins to sort through the small mountain of bills. Half of them she waves at your father for him to appraise as well. This reminds him.

“Say, kiddo,” his tone is careful and it wakes you up from your dreamy haze quicker than you would like. “You thinking about doing work at the marine lab again?”

“Honey, she just got back yesterday. Let her rest. You can talk about all that later, can’t you?”

“Talk about what?” Pushing your bowl back, you straighten up in your chair and turn to your father. He looks a bit guilty now that you’ve pinned him with your stare.

“Your mother and I were just wondering if you were going to renew your internship with them. They paid you the last couple of times and…If we’re being honest, we could use a little help this summer.”

“Are you guys in trouble with the house?” Alarm colors your voice and for the first time since you’d arrived, you look around carefully.

The house doesn’t look like its changed. It’s still cozy with its warm-toned exposed wood and painted cabinets. Your parents haven’t changed either. They don’t look much older than they did when you were home last. Your mother wears her favorite cardigan to protect from the chill that creeps up on her when she wakes with the sun. Your father wears a simple pair of khakis and a short sleeved polo, a regular work outfit. Perhaps it’s because you haven’t cast off the last vestiges of sleep that you don’t immediately realize it’s odd for your father, a retired school teacher, to be working in the summer. A divot forms in between your brows and you wonder how long they planned on keeping you in the dark about money troubles while spoiling you after graduation.

“Of course not, baby.” Your mother lays a soothing hand on your shoulder and pats. “Things are just a little tight lately. Your uncle needed money again, this time a little more than usual.”

“Now that you’re all grown-up, we thought you might like to try and help out a little more around the house. Fun, right?” Despite the gravity of the subject, your father still manages to smile softly at his own joke with a deep laugh.

“I actually got an email from them a weeks ago,” you return to your porridge in hopes that it’ll dislodge the tell-tail lump you get in your throat before crying. “They’re giving priority to the PhD students this year, so they won’t have any funding for interns not already affiliated with the college.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, dear. We both know how much you loved that place,” your father frowns and your expressions mirror one another. But while his face expresses sympathetic disappointment, yours shows resolution.

“No. No, it’s totally fine. This is good. I should probably keep on applying to real jobs now, anyway. And I need to be able to pay rent somewhere, so I should get a summer job too.”

It’s your mother’s turn to frown. “Oh, baby, you know you could stay here, if you want. We wouldn’t ever dream of charging you for rent.”

“No, mom,” you stand up from the table, “I should start taking responsibility. I’m gonna go out and find something simple so I can focus on job apps, but I’ll bring you whatever check I get.”

Silence falls over the room as you wash your dishes at the sink. Over just the sound of the running water, your parents exchange meaningful glances at one another. You press a kiss to both of their heads before you ascend the stairs to your room to get ready. Your father’s hand envelopes your mother’s. You’ve grown well.

The first thing you do after you’ve finished getting ready is head over to a local coffee house. It’s the most student-friendly place in all of your sleepy suburban town. What can only be described as an acoustic/hip-hop hybrid flows from hidden speakers, drowning out the sound of the bell on the front door tinkling when you step inside. The cafe is full of other enterprising 20-somethings, so no one’s eyes raise to follow you as you find a seat by the shop window.

You open your laptop and pull up your resume file. Luckily, you’ve been diligent and it’s been looked over and updated. Opening up a webpage, you begin to fill out applications for various companies looking for new hires. Some of them are just companies you think you could handle the workload at, but a few of them are positions for doing research to improve and preserve marine life, which is a passion of yours. Time passes you by quickly and you’re so involved in emailing your research advisors at your place of internship and professors who praised you in undergrad that you don’t see the man who enters the cafe; nor do you see the way all the staff behind the counter hurry to greet him.

Jin goes to retrieve his apron from the back room before coming out again to start work. He does a visual sweep over the cafe, looking for any customers who look like they’re not enjoying their experience, any spills, or display sets that are out of order. He walks over the small side table that houses a meticulously stacked set of shining chrome thermoses with the minimalist cafe logo embossed at the bottom. One of the containers is leaning precariously out of alignment and threatening to spill the entire arrangement on the poor girl working studiously nearby. Quietly, he walks over, making sure not to walk too loudly and startle the customer.

It takes a careful hand, but he manages to organize the display pyramid once more without too much clanking. A quick glance to the side informs him that you’re not a regular customer. He’s come in to work every single day since the cafe open 15 months ago, and he’s certain he’s memorized all the familiar and loyal faces. Another glance tells him that you haven’t bought anything—judging by the lack of pastry crumbs, crumpled soiled napkins, empty drinks or characteristic ring of perspiration on the table surface. But you’re clearly deep enough into your work that you can’t have just arrived either. Jin shakes his head with a reminiscing smile. College students and their desperation for a place to work. He debates going over having one of the baristas tell you that loitering isn’t allowed, but since you’re new and still a potential customer he leaves to go brew a cup of coffee instead of shooing you away.

The sound of a text notification from your mother inquiring about how you’re doing disrupts your tunnel vision. You finish uploading your CV onto an online application to a research facility in the nearby city and shoot her back a text telling her you’re at the new cafe in town. Her responding notification comes quickly, the first few lines asking “isn’t that where your friend-” before cutting off. Before you answer her, you figure you should stretch your legs as an excuse to buy a sugary drink. You stand up and push out your chair, about to turn around and head to the counter, but your chair bumps against something. The something yelps and takes a few shuffled steps back. You turn with imploring hands already out, ready to apologize and curse yourself for being too in your own world. You’re not expecting to see Kim Seokjin standing behind you with a takeaway coffee and fixings looking equally shocked to see you.

“Jin? Oh my god, I haven’t seen you in so long!” A smile splits your face and you gesture towards your table while clearing some of your stuff to the side so he has some room to put his things down.

“I know. I was wondering if you were gonna be one of those people who skips town forever after they leave for college, but I guess you’re not.”

“No, that’s not quite me,” you duck your head bashfully, “What about you? Do you work around here?” The takeaway coffee sits in front of him, steaming. He looks to be on his way out. “Or is that where you’re headed now?”

“This is actually for you,” he chuckles. “But if I’d known the free-loader sitting out here without buying anything was you, I would'vr run down to a Starbucks and got you one of those candy drinks instead of this blonde roast.”

“I see you’re still a coffee snob.” You take the coffee anyway, though. A rigorous four years at college made you less discriminatory about your caffeine choices. If it would keep you up, you would drink it. That being said, you still hate the taste of plain coffee and are immediately grateful when you notice the sugar shaker and tiny cream pitcher that Jin brought to the table as well.

“I see you still have the palate of 4 year old.” His nose wrinkles as he watches you ruin the perfect coffee he made for you with too much cream and a heinous amount of sugar.

You stick your tongue out at him before taking a careful sip of the hot drink. It tastes like hot, coffee-flavored ice cream, so you’re satisfied.“If you’re not going to work, what brings you here?”

“This is my work. I own this place,” he says with a smirk and grand sweeping movement of his arm towards the rest of the cafe. You look at the store’s logo printed in metallic yellow characters throughout the space—GoldJin Coffee. Your eyes widen and you look back down at your blonde roast. Blonde roast…golden coffee…GoldJin Coffee. You groan at the horrible pun and his sudden squeaking laugh tells you he’s delighted that you get the joke.

“I see your sense of humor is still terrible. Good to know,” you deadpan.

“But the coffee is good. You gotta admit it’s good.”

“It is,” you nod as you take another sip, eyes closing partially at the taste and partially at his awful dad-sensibility. “I guess it has to be if you’re going to found this place on such a shitty joke.”

He leans in conspiratorially, making you lean in too. “If I’m being honest…when I explained the joke on the company instagram page, we lost 20 followers. But the sales never dipped, so I’m fine.” He waits until you’ve put your cup down before asking, “What about you. Are you working?”

“Yeah. Well, actually no. I’m trying to find some work for the summer, but I was also applying for longer-term jobs before you came over.”

“I heard you were working at the BTU marine department,” he says with furrowed brows. You sigh at the mention of the internship again.

“I was, but they’ve decided to give actual BTU students priority. Which I totally understand. But I need money, so I can’t really afford to do a free internship right now. Hence the frantic job applications during my precious summer break.”

“Oh, well why don’t you work at the country club? My dad says that they could use some help over there. He still remembers you, I’m sure.”

“What kind of work?”

Although you’re fairly equal-opportunity when it comes to jobs, you’re not about to spend your break picking up after rich people, even if they produced people like your high school friend Jin. He picks up on your wary tone and laughs.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing too degrading. They need help at the children’s pool. Can you still freestyle like you used to?”

He grins at you fondly, fairly sure the answer is yes given that you became friends because he recruited you himself to the swim team in your freshman year. As one of the handful of upperclassmen there, he was assigned to you as your practice and tournament mentor.

Memories of the smell of chlorine saturating the air and sunburns on your shoulders dance across your mind’s eye. Almost as if it were happening right then and there, you remember the sound of Jin yelling at you as you pushed your body to slice through the water faster and faster during practices. You remember the feeling of pressing a cold pack to his shoulder after he pulled a muscle training in the weight room too hard and couldn’t make it to the very tournament he’d been prepping for. You remember Jin cradling your tear-stained face and laughing with you after you beat your record by more than you could have ever imagined. You remember the two of you sharing a seat and blanket on the bus during winter meets. You remember Jin sneaking into the girl’s bathroom to bring you the tampons you left in your locker only to get caught by Lisa, the girls team coach, and forced to do 50 laps.There’s no way you could forget any of that.

Your eyes get a little misty. “Hell yeah, I do.”

“Great,” he says after a beat. “If you pass the lifeguard test and get picked, it pays 20 an hour and some of the parents leave tips.”

“Are you serious? Since when do people tip lifeguards?”

He shrugs. “It’s the country club. They do it because they can. They’re testing today at four, you know.”

You check your phone and see that you have just enough time to run back to your house to grab some swim stuff and get to the club in time for the test. Pulling out a 10 dollar bill, you thank the universe for sending Jin to you in this hour of financial need.

“Here’s a 10. I don’t know how much this coffee costs, but knowing you it’s probably overpriced.”

“You don’t have to pay—” he gapes before you cut him off with a smile and dismissive hand wave.

“Just take the money, Jin. I’m going over there right now. Wish me luck.”

He can only nod, picking up the empty sugar packets and wiping down the few stray droplets of cream you left on the table while you pack. You’re out the door before he can actually get any words of encouragement out, but he’s certain you won’t need it. It’s not until he comes back with a spray bottle to properly clean the table and sees the 10 dollar bill that he realizes he probably should have warned you who you might see at the pool.

The pool, as it happens, has its own sector at the club and its own parking lot. Both the regular pool and the kiddie pool look onto the rolling green of the golf course that is rumored to have won national gardening competitions. The parking spaces are ample and you are glad for this. For some reason you feel it would be doing your vehicle a disservice if you were forced to park it next to what looked like a 2020 Bentley. Driving in your father’s two digit year-old compact car past the valet makes you realized it’s been a while since you’ve been on the wealthier side of town.

You reminisce as you follow the signs that lead you to the lifeguard test. The last time you were in the area, it was for Jin’s graduation party. There had been a large, beautiful, and somehow legal bonfire in the backyard of the Kim residence. It was probably one of the most genuinely entertaining parties you’d gone to, beating out nearly all of the drunk raves you’d attended during college. Most of the guests were family friends of the Kims, but the rest were swim team members. Given that you’d all become comfortable with one another while in a near-constant state of wetness and undress, there were no awkward party jitters. You all drank from red Solo cups and bonded over stories about Jin since he was the man of the hour. It would have been a perfect party if not for one person. Almost on command, you can feel your heart-rate spike at the thought of the most annoying boy you had ever encountered. He had been invited to the party as well and spent the whole night trying to get your attention, not unlike how he behaved when you were in classes together. You try to remain calm before the swim test and force the annoying memories back to the corner of your mind. Lucky for you, he wouldn’t ever bother you again.

When you finally make your way out of the winding women’s changing room, you’re greeted by the sight of crystalline blue water ebbing gently within the large outdoor pool. A gathering of about 8 other people are chattering amongst themselves while a single lifeguard looks over a clipboard. Most of them turn as you approach and you nod a bit shyly before the lifeguard checks the time and decides to begin the test. Any other time, you would be nervous but this isn’t an ordinary test environment. The only feeling swimming and being in water can give you is a sense of deep calm. This proves to give you a leg up because not even 5 minutes into the directions two people leave after the lifeguard says the pressure of the job isn’t for those who freeze up while stressed. More people end up getting cut when they ask you all to tread water without using your arms for 5 minutes. Suddenly you are glad that you kept a regular swim schedule in college to maintain your stress. Your arms are burning by the time they ask you to retrieve a brick from the 10 foot portion of the pool floor, but you make it through. By the end, there are only 3 other people who have finished with you.

You’re blotting at your skin with the towel you brought, waiting for your legs to stop feeling like lead so you can go back to the car, when the head lifeguard approaches you.

“I was paying special attention to you out there,” she says. Her voice doesn’t sound indicting, but it doesn’t sound laudatory either. She’s a stern looking woman, probably in her mid 30’s. Her nametag reads Stella, but you have a hunch that’s not her real name. “Have you done this before?”

“Yeah,” you wrap yourself protectively in your towel, her gaze making you feel transparent. “My highschool coach used to make us take this test every year if we wanted to get on varsity and stay there. And I was the gym lifeguard during the weekends in college.”

She’s silent for a beat and squints, taking in your open expression. “Were you one of Sun’s pupils?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Of course. He was my coach too. You can always tell when someone has trained under him. It’s like their stress is water soluble or something.” She finally cracks a grin and you smile, relieved that she doesn’t have a bone to pick with you. “You know CPR?”

You nod and she smiles wider before lowering her voice to a whisper. “I like you. I’ll tell you a secret. We already had the first lifeguard picked out, but we needed a second one to meet pool standards.” You nod with understanding. “You just got hired.”

“Thank you so much. You won’t regret it.” Stella tosses her head back at your earnest confessions. “When can I start?”

“Tomorrow, if you can. But first come meet the other guy that way you all can start building rapport. You might know him. He’s another one of Sun’s kids. Small world, huh?”

She walks over to the lifeguard lounge and calls into the back.

“Hey! Send Jung out, will you? We found another Sun kid for the little pool, I want them to meet.”

A few moments later a guy with bright orange hair stumbles out of the lounge, wearing the standard red trunks and a matching life vest. When he’s only a few meters away your heart plummets into your stomach. Jung Hoseok’s eyes light up in recognition and he gives you a bright smile.

“Hey, long time no see,” he chirps. When you don’t say anything Stella raises a brow and coughs a little awkwardly. You speak up, remembering the job at stake.

“Hey, Hoseok.” Stella claps a heavy hand on your shoulders, sensing the tension in the way your voice shrinks over the syllables of his name.

“Well, clearly you kids know each other. Hoseok here can tell you about the hours and the jobs you have when you’re not on the chair. If there are any issues, come to me.” No one says anything, so she adds, “I’ll leave you both to it,” before heading to the lounge.

You watch her leave to avoid making eye contact with him, but when she disappears into the lounge Hoseok pipes up.

“This is really crazy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it really is.” A headache is building in your temples at the sound of his voice. Despite the fact that it’s deepened after nearly a decade, it still elicits the same curl of annoyance under your skin. “Stella said you can tell me about the hours and stuff?”

He doesn’t seem to pick up on your clipped, overly polite tone. “Totally. So, we come in at 7am, six days a week, and open up the little pool and put out the ropes.You know, stuff coach Sun would make us do if we were on our phones during practice, remember?”

You nod, eyes closed and the pinching the bridge of your nose.

“Then we’ll be up in the chairs for 90 minutes at a time. If no one gets hurt, then we can take 20 minutes to swim or take sun breaks. We close 3 hours early on Sundays, though. Oh yeah! They have sunblock and water in the lounge that we can use whenever so you don’t have to—what’s wrong? Are you ok?”

It seems easier to let him escort you to a bench by the poolside than to yell at him about personal space. Besides, under the clean scent of his deodorant, he smells like the the pool and sunscreen and sun warmed skin. The smell actually settles your nerves a bit and your migraine wanes enough for you to open your eyes.

Unsurprisingly, Jung Hoseok is leaning too closely into your space, but it’s been so long that the instinct to bark at him seems to have died away. Up close you can see, from a purely objective standpoint of course, that time has been kind of him. The faded orange of his hair tells you it must have been been dyed a while ago. The water probably also took its toll on his hair judging by the way his hair waves. Clearly, he’s already spent plenty of time in the sun because his hair has somewhat natural looking, almost blond, highlights and his skin is a smooth expanse of warm brown, free of the pimples he had during adolescence.

The bright red life vest doesn’t hide much of his upper half, which is lean and sculpted, the hint of abs visible as he curls towards you. But this is Jung Hoseok, so you quickly stop your clinical appraisal of his body and go back to politely looking at his face. The first thing you notice is that the characteristic set of braces he wore all through high school are gone and leave only a straight, white smile in its wake. You note that the little beauty mark that rests above his lip is still there. Duly noted. His face is still as annoyingly not-ugly as it has always been, though his jaw has filled out more along with everything else that’s broadened with age. You suppose you shouldn’t be surprised that Jung Hoseok had to grow up eventually. At least physically. Emotionally and mentally speaking, his growth has yet to be determined.

A water bottle suddenly appears in your face, nearly poking you in the eye. His grace, you decide, has not improved at all.

“Seems like you still get headaches if you push yourself too hard in the pool,” he says with a soft smile.

“What would you know about that,” you grumble, tone on the verge of impolite.

“You always used to get them when you were trying to shave your times. It was always kinda sad to watch.”

“Yeah, well…” You can’t think of anything to say. Clearly, he was observant, because you were good at hiding your ailments from the team. “What were you saying about swim breaks?”

He starts up again, telling you about where you could order your swimsuit and where you could get free snacks in the country club and that playing with the kids was the fastest way to get tipped. Your headache lessens as you continue to drink and let him chatter on in the background. After a while he exhausts all the knowledge he acquired after being on payroll for a week and your legs feel sturdy enough that you can walk back to the car. You stand, towel forgotten until it falls at your feet revealing your bathing suit clad figure. Fortunately, you wore one of your more conservative swimsuits since this was technically a job interview of sorts, but even in your one-piece you feel exposed in front of Hoseok. Nothing is subtle about the way his gaze follow the curves of your body or the way his mouth and eyelids drop slightly while staring. When he finally makes his way back up to your face, your fiery gaze and hot cheeks are enough for him to avert his eyes quickly.

“Guess you haven’t changed at all,” you mutter before pulling the towel back around you more securely and marching back to the car.

Jin has just served his last Goldilatte of the day when you coming bursting through the door. The bell alerting that a customer has arrived rattles shrilly and he curses himself for not just sending you a warning text, but he thought he had more time. He opens one eye cautiously to see you seething in front of him with dripping wet hair and a damp looking hoodie. There is still a little comfort for him, knowing that you’re not tall enough to climb over the cake display and throttle him.

“Did you or did you not know that Jung Hoseok was also taking the lifeguard position? Answer truthfully and I won’t cause an even bigger scene in the middle of your cafe.”

Knowing you, you probably wouldn’t actually cause a scene but he still checks behind your shoulder cautiously and sees that some patrons have taken off their ever-present headphones to eavesdrop on the conversation. With the poise of a businessman, he silently removes his apron and comes from behind the counter to guide you to his office for some privacy. You sit back in the chair facing him, pouting at him expectantly.

“I did know. My father mentioned it while we were having dinner last week.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me.”

“Honestly…I just forgot. The cafe is busy and it had been a week since he told me, so it was kind of just old news. I certainly wasn’t expecting to run into you. If you had let me know you were back in town sooner, I would have probably remembered to tell you.”

“So this is my fault now?”

“No, but I don’t think anyone is really at fault. How bad was it? Seeing him, I mean.”

Your mouth is open and you’re ready to complain about Hoseok just like the old days, but you can’t think of anything he’d actually done wrong while you were at the pool. In fact, he’d been welcoming...in his own way. He’d always been a close talker, even in high school, and if it weren’t him you wouldn’t be bothered. He’d even offered you water after noticing your headache.

“Do you remember the headaches I used to get,” you blurt out. Jin startles a bit at your outburst.

“What headaches?”

“I used to get really bad exertion headaches during practices.” Jin’s confused look has you brushing it off. “That was random, sorry.”

“Okay. Well, it sounds like he didn’t ask you out a million times, so maybe he grew up.” His hands spread in the air like the problem has dissipated into the atmosphere.

“B-but he still checked me out today when I dropped my towel. I had a bathing suit on and he looked like his eyes were going to fall out. What well-adjusted grown man acts like that?” You purposely leave the fact that you gave him a good look over as well. But that’s because what you did was different…

“Look,” he says, laying a sympathetic hand on yours, “He’s probably just going through all the feelings he had last when you were around. I’m sure he’ll get used to your presence and then realize the feelings are old and move on.”

The finality of the idea should be comforting to you, but something about the edges of it gnaws at you unpleasantly. You can’t figure out what it is about the idea that bothers you so much even as you drive your car back to your house, taking the scenic routes so you have time to ruminate and can stay out with the sun a bit longer. Breaking the news about your new cushy job at the country club pool gives your mind a break from the emotional puzzle because the relief that washes over your parents when you tell them your rate of pay makes you proud. But once you’ve had your fill of scrolling through social media and are tucked away in your bed, you can’t stop thinking about Jung Hoseok.

It would be less confusing if hindsight wasn’t 20/20. Looking back, you realize that maybe you made Hoseok out to be a bit more of a nuisance than he actually was. You’d gone to the same elementary school once upon a time. And you’d had quite a few play dates at each other’s houses when you were really young, but that changed when you turned 12. He moved away for middle school because his parents wanted him at a new place where he could dance. On the night before he’d moved away, you’d both cried in each other’s arms and when your father finally came to pick you up, you’d kissed his cheek and told him not to forget you. He’d squeezed you hard and said he wouldn’t. Two years later, you were starting high school and heard rumors that he had come back and was staying. You remembered your wish and hoped then that he hadn’t forgotten, but it seemed that he must have. He was a completely different person.

On the first day of each year, an assembly for all the students was held so that new students who didn’t come from the local middle school could come up and be seen and welcomed.

He’d been up on the stage and he’d looked so different that you almost didn’t recognize him as he crossed in front of your spot on stage as one of the new student tour guides. As he passed you, he made eye contact with you, making hope bloom in your chest. After everyone was seated, each new student was asked to come up when their name was called and stand so the student body could see them. At the sound of Hoseok’s name, a deep and raucous applause coming from a few of the boys in the audience sounded. You could recognize the voices of some of the boys in the crowd, the rowdier ones that caused trouble for teachers but remained like idols in the eyes of many students. That they had taken Hoseok in surprised you. He didn’t seem like their type of recruit—he was too open and caring. The principle then asked the student tour guides to come up to the front of the stage and introduce themselves as well, and you suddenly worried you’d stutter or do something to make the kids in the audience act up again. Your clothing choice, your hairstyle, your gait all suddenly became potential areas for critique as you walked to the microphone, but it was too late then. You just had to make sure you gave a normal introduction.

“Hello. I am one of the student guides. If you have any questions and you see me, don’t be afraid to come up and ask.”

A false sense of security settled over you when you just got regular polite applause. It was a short introduction, and it was ordinary enough that no one could say anything. You gave a quick curtsy to the audience, as was encouraged of students when they were on stage, and a long low wolf-whistle sounded out. Blood rushed to your face and you turned quickly to find the source. Hoseok froze mid-whistle, not expecting you to turn around before he was through. At least he had the decency to look ashamed, but it didn’t do anything to assuage the rolling laughter that was coming from not only the rowdy boys in the back of the auditorium, but most of the students below. With flaming cheeks, you rushed back to your seat with the other guides. One nice girl assured you that your uniform skirt more than long enough to cover anything and that you didn’t actually flash anyone, but that wasn’t your concern. Instead, you were dealing with the fact that your last words to Hoseok as a friend hadn’t meant anything.

After the speech, he tried to find you. But he couldn’t. You were lost in the sea of students leaving the assembly and his new friends were too excited about how well the joke went to let him go. He endured a few playful headlocks and punches until he made up a solid excuse about not wanting to stick around for the principal to find him. They all dispersed after that, but he never got the chance to tell you it was just a joke, that it was just what he needed to do to get into their clique. He never got the chance to apologize, to tell you that he still remembered what you told him. He was certain that if he could just get a moment alone with you, he would be able to right his wrong, but you were determined to never give him the time of day again.

Because you hadn’t given your name in your introduction speech, no one really knew it was you on the first day of school who seemingly flashed the new students, but you still couldn’t shake off the other conflicting feelings. It seemed that from that moment on, the universe was determined to put you near Hoseok so you could never get peace of mind. He was in so many of your classes, always trying to be desk partners, study buddies, lab mates and you’d thwarted all the offers that you could. When you couldn’t avoid him, you tried your best not to chat to him. You would hiss at him if he attempted conversations, about movies you liked or music you listened to, or asked you if you still liked things he remembered from when you were both young. Every time you would shut him down, but he seemed fueled by that. He followed you everywhere. He even followed you to swimming.

Two weeks later, on the day of tryouts, you saw Hoseok sitting on the bleachers next to your recruiter and went back into the changing rooms immediately to put on a t-shirt, knowing it might slow your times and keep you from getting on the team. But it was worth the protection from him wolf-whistling or any other form of public humiliation he had for you. The shirt worked for a few laps since you were pushing yourself to go harder than usual to make up for the drag in the water, but the coach pulled you aside and told you that there was nothing to be ashamed of and that the shirt was slowing your times and there were no shirts allowed at races. Averting your eyes from the rest of the students watching the drama unfold, you pulled off your shirt and swam your heart out for the rest of the day, putting all your anger and embarrassment into the laps until you were gasping. You’d made it onto the team, but it almost didn’t feel worth it when you saw that he would also be on the team with you.

Your phone chimes, alerting you that you should go to sleep soon if you want 7 hours before getting up with the chickens the next morning for your first day of work. Sighing, you turn over in your sheets, suddenly too hot. When you wake up in the morning, you realize you dreamt of something, but the only thing you can remember is the very end. You recall being 13 and running from something in your high school hallways and into a pair of warm brown arms. The clock on your phone tells you that you have 6 more minutes of sleep, but you resist the tease of a micro nap and hop in the shower instead. It’s not until you’re back out and clean that you realize your work uniform isn’t coming until the next day and your only one-piece is still wet because you forgot to switch the laundry loads. Groaning, you hunt for your most demure suit and find some high waisted bottoms and a sportier cut top from your dresser and hope for the best.

The sun is out and high when you arrive at the little pool. You’re already sweating in the hoodie you threw over yourself as last minute effort to cover up. On the other side of the lattice gate separating the two pools, Hoseok sees you walking in. He gives you a big wave and runs back inside to come greet you, bangs bouncing when he runs over. He’s amazingly chipper for someone at 7 in the morning but tones it down a bit when he sees that you look like you had a rough night.

“Ready to lay out the ropes?” His eyes are big and bright, and most importantly, on your face.

“Sure.”

You follow him through the lounge, taking in the stacks of boxes of pools supplies and the senior lifeguards drinking coffee or dozing off since the larger pool doesn’t open until a little later. Stella gives you a thumbs up from her little glass cubicle where she’s on the phone. Hoseok jumps into the water, already in his typical red board shorts with the club logo embroidered onto them, and swims with the dividing rope across the width of the pool.

“You should come in. The water feels great and it’ll be the only time today its not filled filled with people’s pee.”

Trying to remember Jin’s theory, you push down the instinctual suspicion towards him wanting you to get in the pool with him. To aid some of your nerves you turn around before stripping out of your hoodie and jump quickly into the water before swimming a casual distance over to him. Not too close but not too far.

“So, what made you—”

“About yesterday—”

The corner of your mouth tugs up in spite of yourself when you both start talking at the same time. You gesture for him to go first and he looks at you a bit nervously before continuing.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine,” you assure him, focusing on the silly way his hair lays flat against his head to diffuse the tension. “It’s only natural to look at stuff for a second when it just…appears.”

“No, no. I mean, there’s no real excuse for it. I guess I still—”

“I get it, it was a knee jerk reaction to something you’re used to doing. It’s cool. It’s been years. The slate is clear. Let’s just forget about it and make this not awkward.”

“But it wasn’t just—”

His cryptic speech sends you into a panic and you do the first thing that comes to mind, which is curl into fetal position so you can dunk yourself underwater. You drop a few feet to the bottom of the pool, knowing that he can still completely see you and reach you. A hand curls around your arm, surprising a few bubbles out of you, and pulls with an impressive amount of strength. At the surface you gasp out of indignation and wipe your eyes.

“Shit! Sorry, that was a lot but I really would like to explain—“

“I swear to god, Jung, if you don’t—“

“I didn’t forget about you,” he says suddenly with a small voice. The water around you appears to have nearly frozen in response to the tension in the air. Not even the smallest ripple dares tip the tenuous balance of the moment.

Your breath hitches and you wonder if maybe you both stayed up thinking about the same thing last night. But that couldn’t be it. That would be too much of a coincidence.

Hesitation has his arm trembling as he reaches out towards your stiff form. Maybe you won’t run away this time and he can get everything out. But the movement of his arm breaks your stupor and sends you stumbling back a foot in the water. The palms of his hands come up as a sign that he’s not trying to hurt you.

“Do you remember before I left for middle school? What you said to me that night? Because I do. And I didn’t break my promise, I didn’t forget you.”

“You sure about that?”

“What? Of course I didn’t. Don’t you remember all the times I tried to talk to you and start where we left off?”

“You may not have forgotten about me,�� you practically spit the words at him, “But you broke your promise to me the minute you pulled that shit at the student assembly.” He winces and you feel emboldened. “And let’s not forget that stunt you pulled in the cafeteria in the front of literally everyone.”

Hoseok enters the lunchroom with his friends and automatically scans the room for you.

“You looking for your girlfriend, Jung?”

“No need. I already know where you mom lives,” he says lightly, still searching for your a glimpse backpack or the blue tracksuit you wore that day for the race you had later.

He finds you in the lunchline, debating between milk and water while the student in front of you haggles for an extra serving. Running over, he uses the intimidation factor of him and his two larger friends’ presence to cut in front of the student behind you.

“You should pick the chocolate milk. It’s your favorite.”

He can practically see hairs on your neck stand up when you hear his voice and he’s certain that if you had claws they would be out and poking holes through the little cardboard container in your hand. You put the carton back down in its ice bucket and take a water.

“Coach said dairy will slow us down,” your answer is curt as you move forward in the line. The lunch lady loads up your tray how you ask and you run to the cash register to pay before he can even pick up the milk.

Steeling himself with determination, he follows behind, trying to make sure he doesn’t lose sight of you. When he gets to the register, all he sees is your ID card where you left it in your hurry. Quickly he retrieves it and looks over the cafeteria, watching your head bob away. He finds you soon after, seated at the end of the swimming table next to Jin. His two friends follow behind more slowly, one carrying his tray.

“You ready for the race, squirt?” Jin puts chicken strip on your plate as he usually does, worried about your protein intake.

“I think so. If I get to the gym early to stretch it should be fine,” you mutter thoughtfully around your fork.

“I’ll go with you and we can do some circuits together.” You look to your left to see Hoseok smiling brightly, his braces glinting in the fluorescent lighting.

“This table is full. You’ll have to sit with your mob boss at his table,” you snark. Jin is about to intervene and give you both the talk about team inclusivity when Hosoek playfully brandishes your ID inches away from your face.

“Come sit with us and you can have this back.” At sight of the plastic card, you pat the pockets of your suit frantically before coming up short. You stand up. You’re sick of Jung Hoseok always bugging you.

“Give it back,” you say lowly so only he can hear.

You’re already making a scene by standing in the middle of the cafeteria, but people don’t notice just yet because the lunch period has just started and plenty of others are still getting settled.

“Come sit with me, and I will.”

“I don’t want to sit with you. Just give me the card.”

“Not until you sit with me.”

The way your heartbeat picks up probably isn’t healthy, but you’re so frustrated that you’re ready to burst. You try playing his own game, seeing if embarrassing him will get him to comply.

“Why are you always following me around, huh?” Your voice cuts through most of the chatter and people quiet down to turn ans watch the two of you. “Do you have a crush on me or something?”

A hush of low murmurs runs through the room and you can hear people giggling to themselves. Even though it was supposed to target him, you face still feels hot.

“Yeah, I do.”

The crowd erupts at his boldness. The same boys from the day of the assembly cheer him on. You stand there, shocked and humiliated. Being inexperienced when it came to crushes meant that you were completely unaware that all of Hoseok’s constant bothering might have been him trying to get you on his arm. Angry tears rapidly fill your waterline and you have to work hard to keep a straight face so you don’t completely break down in front of the student body. You keep your face turned towards him so as not to let anyone else know that you’re crying. Hoseok’s expression goes from proud of finally confessing to you to horrified at seeing you cry. The smile he had slips off immediately and is replaced with terror and he can only look up at Jin helplessly as he comes up behind you. The upperclassman holds out his hand, in which Hoseok places your ID. Jin silently takes your tray from you and lets you bury your face in his matching tracksuit top to hide from the gossiping onlookers.

“It’s okay,” Jin says softly. Hoseok only hears a pathetic high noise leave you before you’re back at your table, clutching at Jin with your shoulders heaving from embarrassment.

His friends tug on his sleeve until they get him to stumble blindly over to their table.

“Didn’t know you had it in you, Jung.” One of the boys says, eying your table with a mean smile.

“How come you have two milks,” another asks before quickly stealing the brown carton marked ‘chocolate’ off his tray.

Thanks to a great deal of suppression, you hadn’t thought of that fateful day in the cafeteria for years. But it’s crystal clear in your memory now. Your hands are balled up under the water’s surface and they’re shaking with unresolved rage and pity for your 14 year-old self.

“I can explain that too.” He runs a hand through his hair, wetting it again and turning it a deep russet.

“Of course you can. Nothing is ever your fault.”

You swim away from him before stalking to the lounge. The sound of a second set of splashes lets you know that he’s following after you, but you don’t care. Stella has finished with her phone call by the time you make your way to her cubicle. You knock harshly on the glass door and several other life guards can sense something is wrong as they watch Hoseok come dripping over.

“What is it, kid?” Stella looks quickly between your thunderous expression and Hoseok’s defeated one.

“Something’s come up. I have to go. I just wanted to let you know so someone could cover my shift. Maybe I can come back some other time and cover a shift at the big pool.” You turn on your heel and leave, not even bothering to rinse off in the showers or pat yourself dry with a towel.

Stella and Hoseok watch you storm off. When the sound of your car’s engine starts, she turns to him.

“Explain yourself. Now.”

Usually, you would have your phone connected to the car’s speaker system with an aux cord to listen to some music while driving and enjoying the scenic small town roads. But bumping heads with Hoseok like old times calls for silence instead.

Rumbling in your stomach reminds you that you skipped breakfast to get to work on time—a bad habit that college had instilled in you. You decide to head to the grocery store and pick something fast up for lunch before heading home and taking an anger nap. Sleep probably won’t solve your problems, but your sure that about 8% of your irritation is from having gotten up so early after such a shitty night’s sleep.

Halfway to the grocery store you see your mother walking on the sidewalk, carrying recyclable shopping bags. You honk and pull over so she can ride with you.

“Well, isn’t this a nice surprise.”

“Hi, mom."

The smile you give her is small, but genuine as her cheery mood lightens yours a bit. Being your mother, though, she can still tell something’s wrong as you drive through the narrow roads slower than normal. While playing hooky, no less.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re not at the country club for your first day of work or would you rather I talk to you about the weather?” You sigh, but decide that it’s better to rant instead of keeping everything bottled up.

“It’s nothing too big, really. There’s just a classmate at work that I—”

“Oh, yes! Little Jung Hoseok, right? Poor thing. I just saw his mother this morning while I was mowing the lawn and she stopped for a chat. She told me all about his-,” she stops to search for the right word, “his rough patch when he was younger.”

You chuckle dryly. “She told you about that?”

“Yes! She told me all about the hard time he had when he moved away. I can’t believe they bullied him out of the dance academy. All because they were jealous he was a presidential scholar invited from outside the district. Poor baby. Frankly, I can’t believe you knew and didn’t say anything all this time.”

The light changes from yellow to red faster than you’re ready for and you hit the brakes a little too hard as you process what your mother told you.

“I, uh, thought you were talking about something else. I didn’t know about that part.” You try to sound as casual as possible, knowing that with the right prompting tone, your mother will let out all the secrets like a floodgate. “What else did Mrs. Jung say?”

“She said that was the reason he came back to the neighborhood high school. Apparently, he would cry himself to sleep. Said he knew he couldn’t do the rest of the program at the high school, but they begged him to stay for middle school. And he did, but as soon as it was over he transferred back here.”

You pull into the parking lot slowly so you don’t have to devote too much attention to parking correctly and can listen to all the details.

“But it sounds like things didn’t get better right then. He fell in with some of those wild kids. I think one of them was that Kim Taehyung’s older brother. Gorgeous boy, ugh. What ever happened with him. Did he go to college?”

“Mom, wait. What about Hoseok?” You drag her by the arm into the lobby of the store, carrying the basket on your other arm.

“That’s right. Hoseok. What was I saying?” She turns to look at you after she throws some lettuce in the basket.

“You were saying he got involved with the wrong crowd?”

“Right, right. Well she said that when he came back during the summer he started hanging around with them. At first it didn’t seem so bad because she and his father were just glad he finally had friends and he didn’t seem to be misbehaving much. Just following them around because he was invited. You know, stuff like that.”

She hands you the grocery list while gesticulating with the flow of the story and you scramble to grab the items from the aisle you’re in while she wanders off. You have to chase her without spilling the contents of the basket.

“But once school started, she said he started acting out. He would get pulled out of class with those kids for being disruptive, and she said one particular student was always asking the teacher to separate them because he wouldn’t leave her alone.” You blush, realizing she’s describing you. “If it weren’t for the fact that most of the teachers knew what he was really like from elementary school, I’m sure they would have locked him in detention for the whole four years.”

You feel sad for Hoseok, but there’s also a pang of guilt forming in your gut. “Did she say why they didn’t? Punish him, I mean.”

“I think she said something about when they asked him why he kept bothering that student, he said he was just trying to get them to remember him. They felt bad because he was trying to get his friend back. So they just gave him warnings.”

“Well,” you say, trying to keep your voice sounding light and uninvolved as you play devil’s advocate, “Even if his intentions were good, shouldn’t the teacher’s have taken stricter action? Since he was making that girl uncomfortable and all?”

You mother stops her stroll through the frozen food aisle to turn back at you and fix you with an unreadable look.

“Normally, I would right there with you on that. But I remember little Hoseok when you all used to play on the rug in the living room. He would come in from outside and put the flowers he picked in your hair and tell you that you looked like the fairies in his books at home. Bullying can sure harden someone, but I don’t know if it can completely change who they are. At least, it doesn’t sound like that’s what happened here. Seeing as, once he came back, he made a beeline straight for his favorite person. Every chance he got.”

She plucks the list out of your grasp and steps forward to stand in front of you. When she lays a hand on your cheek, you can’t meet her gaze. Instead you look down at the way her loafers point directly towards your sneakers.

“How is Hoseok, by the way?” She turns her back to you and looks for the frozen bags of fruit that you always use in your smoothies.

“He seems a lot better,” you answer back honestly.

After arriving back at your house and helping your mom, your hands itch and you find yourself feeling restless. Talking things out with your mom would probably help, but you don’t want to feel small and fourteen again while you do it. Jin’s work schedule is still a mystery to you, but you guess that he’s the type of boss to come in most days, if not everyday, and drive over there to see if he has time for you.

Jin takes in the way your shoulders hunch as you walk into the door and immediately starts up on a warm drink he knows will cheer you up. It involves too much milk, cocoa powder, a disgusting amount of whipped cream and chocolate shavings. He has to pull back his coffee snob persona while he makes it. But the way you immediately run a finger through the mountain of cream, eating half of it in one breath, tells him that you’re not broken beyond repair.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you think that…maybe I was, I don’t know, too hard on Hoseok when we were in school?”

“Absolutely,” he says with zero hesitation. When your eyes widen with uncovered guilt and your mouth drops open, he’s quick to amend his statement. “I mean, you have every right to be mad about the times he put you on the spot. But I think there’s things you don’t know that would have made it so you both could have been friends in the end.”

“Are you talking about the bullying thing at his middle school?”

“What the—he told you?”

“No,” you whine and drop your head onto the table, covering your head with your arms. “I found out an hour ago. From my mom, of all people.”

“Wow. Moms really do know everything.”

“I know. It’s annoying.” Jin lets you sulk for a moment before steering the conversation back in the direction it needs to go.

“So I guess you know about how he kind of fell in with the wrong crew after coming back as a protective strategy, right?”

“Yeah, I mean…I wasn’t sure? But it seemed like that’s what that was because those kids really didn’t seem like his type of friends. I could tell even back then.” You play with the little cardboard sleeve around the still warm cup. Made from 100% biodegradable materials, it reads.

“Without giving too much away—because this isn’t really my secret to tell—let’s just say that they knew he wasn’t like them, but they were intrigued enough and wanted to test his loyalty. So to speak.”

You prop yourself up on your elbows, gears turning. “What, like frat hazing or something?”

“Bingo,” Jin shoots finger guns at you. “That’s all I’m gonna give you, though. I’ve already said too much.” He reaches forward and takes a sip of your drink before immediately spitting it back into the cup. “It’s a wonder you still have functioning tastebuds. God, that’s disgusting. I can’t believe I created a monster.”

“That was my drink, asshole.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t pay good money for it.” He smirks and you roll your eyes before putting your phone and keys back in your pocket. “You’re really leaving because of the drink?”

“No, you narcissist. I’m going back to work.”

“Oh. Gonna go have a Nicholas Sparks moment in the middle of the kiddie pool?”

Confusion pinches at your features. “Who’s Nicholas Sparks?”

“No one,” he says quickly. “It’s just, uh, an old saying. Go to work.” He pushes you out of the door quickly before you can ask why he has his lying voice on.

The drive back to the pool feels completely different from the one you took this morning. You don’t feel happier, necessarily, but you feel less weighed down by some invisible and perplexing force. For the first time in 48 hours you feel like you can name your feelings a little more clearly. Like you made a mistake, but you also feel like you can fix it.

You make it to the lounge before Stella ambushes you with a firm grip around your arm dragging you away from the entrance to the kiddie pool.

“I see that you’re back and I’m not going to question you for leaving, because I’m pretty sure I know why now. You go out there and try and do your job, and I’ll understand if it’s tough for you. But if you pull something like leaving work because it’s hard being star-crossed lovers again, I will give your job to the next person who knows what a pool looks like. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” you breathe, not even bothering to correct her assumption that you and Hoseok are star-crossed lovers even though it’s not 100% true. The first step you take is a hesitant one, but when Stella doesn’t say anything, you head out to the pool.

Hoseok and some other lifeguard are seated in regular pool chairs because the pool is small enough and shallow enough that they can survey the layout and the tiny swimmers without the added height of the usual chairs. Normally, Hoseok would be chatting away with his shift partner while watching the children swim, but he’s silent as he watches with a hand squishing his cheek, deep in thought. His shift partner looks so bored out of their mind that when you tap their shoulder, they don’t even bother looking to see who is replacing them before running to the lounge. He turns when you’ve settled and his eyes grow impressively round.

“You came back?”

You look out to watch a mother sitting at the edge of the pool dunk her baby’s feet in the water. “I needed to talk to you. Or I guess listen and then talk.”

“So...you’ll let me explain?” Incredulity making his words come out slowly.

“Yes. But you should know that, uh, your mom told my mom some stuff. And my mom told me. And then Jin from the swim team told me some stuff.”

“How much do you know?”

“Just the vague things. I heard you had a hard time at the dance academy and that kind of sparked everything.”

“I should still probably start from the beginning, though.” You nod.

“I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to continue dance, but I didn’t want to leave all the people I met behind just because the school was willing to pay for my tuition. My mom thought it would be big and they convinced me that I could still have friends, while practicing, so I said okay.

But it turned out to be a boarding school thing, so I never got to see anyone from home and when I got there, the instructors treated me special. None of the students there liked that. If I’m being honest, they kicked the shit out of me a few times. And when they weren’t doing that they were putting nails in my dance shoes or locking me in supply closets and the teachers just wanted me to ‘use the pain to power my dancing’. My parents only found out because I started dropping weight really fast and wasn’t sleeping enough to be able to make it through the daily practices without fainting. Of course they were mad, but they also thought it was something that would eventually go away when the other kids grew up a little. They thought that it would stop when the high school program begun, but no 12 year-old getting bullied is that patient. I made them a promise that I would wait until the middle school program ended and then I would decide. But it just got worse as time passed.”

“Hoseok,” your voice breaks and you realize tears have been threatening to roll down your cheeks without even realizing, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I couldn’t have been that brave when I was 12.”

“Yeah, well, it was all thanks to you. I kept thinking that if I kept dancing, maybe I could get famous and come see you and make you proud. But obviously I didn’t make it that far.”

He gives you a bitter smile that’s so hollow and empty, you almost don’t recognize him. It’s then that you realize every smile he’d given you before this one was genuine. Even the ones he gave you when you when he was bothering you in school.

“W-what happened after the program ended?” It takes a great deal of effort to drag your eyes off his face and go back to looking after the swimmers, but you have no choice. Remembering that you’re at work, you wipe your arm across your eyes quickly so you can see clearly.

“I’d changed, I guess. I think if I stayed any longer I would be a completely different person. I got really dark and kind of mean. Sometimes I would surprise myself with the thoughts I would have, even at that age. Even when it was towards people who had done me wrong.”

“Is that why you started hanging out with those guys?”

He sighs, not proud of himself at the moment. “Yeah. I knew that high school would be just as hard for me if I came back with open wounds, so to speak. But I couldn’t stay and just keep rotting away. So I made myself a compromise. I would do what it took to get protection so I could eventually get better and not need it anymore. I figured...what better way to do that than to basically get myself a security team? I knew no one would mess with me if I could just find a way into that group.”

“I was wondering about that, to be honest. It didn’t make sense that did a kid like you would fall in with kids like them. Like even after all you went through, you still weren’t a bully like them.”

“Well, they told me that I would have to prove to them that I had the balls to be in the group. They said it had to be big. The first thing that came to mind was causing a disruption of some sort. At an important place.”

“A place like the center stage of the annual new student assembly,” you whisper as the pieces of the puzzle connect. Anger automatically rises at the memory of the day, but you clamp down on it with a few careful breaths. He senses your automatic reaction and winces.

“I hope you know I’m not telling you all of this so you feel guilty, like you have to forgive me. If it makes you feel any better. I’ve never stopped hating myself for that day.”

You smile darkly. “That doesn’t really make me feel better. But tell me about it anyway.”

“When they realized I would be on stage that year, they wanted me to flip a girl’s uniform skirt while I was up there to prove that I could be one of them. I hated the idea. I couldn’t even fathom doing it but I said yes at the start because they wouldn’t budge on the idea.”

“That...makes sense. Why me, though?”

“It wasn’t logical. I didn’t think you would be up on stage, and when I saw you looking at me, I thought maybe it was worth a shot using you instead of some random girl. Somehow it seemed better to do it to someone I knew than with a stranger.”

“You’re right. Doesn’t sound logical at all,” your tone holds almost palpable annoyance. “But I can see why that would make sense when you’re stressed and 14. I guess.”

“But that’s also why I couldn’t go through with the whole skirt flipping thing once I realized it had to be you. I couldn’t do that either. I still remember how in fourth grade you would cried every time the teacher called on you and you didn’t have the answer. You hate being the center of attention.”

You hum, neither in agreement nor in disagreement. You’re not quite ready to speak as you consider the situation from his point of view.

“It was a huge risk. Both not pulling the whole prank and pulling the prank, but it was just enough that they let it slide and let me in. I figured that maybe I could explain it away to you right after, but I couldn’t find you.”

“That’s because I was in the bathroom. Crying my eyes out.”

“God. I’m so sorry. You have to at least know that.”

“No, I know you are.”

“I thought about laying low for a while and giving you some time to cool off, but then we had so many classes together. And I was still planning on giving you some space then, but I—” he trails off.

“Then you what?”

“Then I saw you up close for the first time in two years and I just couldn’t stay away,” he says quietly.

“Oh, come on. Aren’t you laying it on a little thick?” You roll your eyes and sneer, ignoring the way your heartbeat picked up at the tortured rasp in his words.

“I mean it!” He turns in his seat to you but you nod your head at the pool and then he’s turning back sheepishly. “The only reason I got through middle school was because I thought about seeing my best friend every day. It had been two years and I was so curious about you and how you’d changed. And I remember thinking how pretty you were. I felt like I was going crazy.”

“You should have just left me alone. I’m sure I would have gotten over it after a few days if you gave me some space and we could have talked civilly. Could have avoided all of…this,” you gesture with your hands to the tense air between you.

“I realized that a little too late, I think. When you didn’t want to talk to me—which was completely understandable and I deserved it—I was worried you hated me. So I thought that if I just acted like we were 12 again and everything was normal, maybe it would go back to being normal. I guess even though I hadn’t changed too much I did get really selfish.”

Part of you agrees that it was kind of selfish for Hoseok not to give you the space you needed. But another part of you thinks back to all the times he ‘bothered’ you and you have to ask yourself if you really minded it.

“Hoseok, I,” you lower your head so you don’t have to face his piercing gaze, “owe you an apology as well.”

“For what?”

“For snapping at you. Not the first few times,” you amend. “Not when the embarrassment was still fresh. But after those first few days passed and I was still angry. I wasn’t angry about the assembly then. I was angry because I wanted you to tell me sorry and why you would pull such a stupid prank on me. I think it was the waiting that made me resent you. Granted, I was waiting for an explanation you decided you didn’t want to give me in the end. An explanation that you owed me.”

“I get that,” he says quietly. “Look, I was stupid not to realize you didn’t want to talk around it.”

“It’s not all your fault. If I had just told you that I wanted to talk it, things probably wouldn’t have gotten bad like they did. I shouldn’t have shut you out.”

Your throat feels tight at the end of your confession as you think of all the times you must have unknowingly broken his young heart. Every time you’d denied him when he tried to carry your books. Or walk with you to your locker, to swim practice, to wait for your dad to pick you up at the end of the day. He still attempted all those things, but he did it with you turning to snap at him for doing them every step of the way. How he managed to smile brightly every morning is still a mystery to you. The good thing is that now your chest feels more open and light than it has in years. It feels good to finally understand everything and not hide your frustration. He must sense the new lightness because when he laughs this time its full of mirth, no bitterness weighing it down. You’re secretly grateful his laugh is still the low hiccuping sound it was when you were children.

“Hell, if you’d told me that you wanted the moon, I would have given it to you. If it would bring you—my friend back to me.”

Clearly, all the issues hadn’t been addressed just yet. There was still the fact that he developed a crush on you despite all your snapping during those four years. You feel awkward again, but now its because you don’t know how to address his old feelings for you. It would be a shame to let that fester between you as well, so you go straight for the jugular.

“What about the day—”

“In the cafeteria?” You nod.

He’s about to hunker down and explain when a two year old whose mother signed them in about an hour ago waddles up to your chairs wordlessly. You move to get up and try and guess which person to call from the sign in sheet but Hoseok simply scoops the child up and plops them in his lap before bouncing a foot so the child bounces with it. The kid laughs and claps, sprinkling some of the pool water dripping off them onto your arm. Despite the heavy conversation, the high, bubbly sound has both of you smiling on command. He removes his sunglasses and gives them to the child to play with.

“I was telling the truth. I knew you were trying to call my bluff, but I was being honest because it had been eating at me. Plus, I was mad, you know?”

“Why?”

“Because I knew you hated me. But I just—I couldn’t find it in myself to leave you alone at that point. And I knew. I knew you weren’t mad anymore about the assembly. I mean it had been years and I knew you didn’t care about it at that point.”

“Were you mad because I didn’t like you back?”

“No…I really don’t think so. I think I was just mad because you were becoming more and more amazing every day and I just sat there and watched. I couldn’t—couldn’t grow with you. You were pretty and athletic and studious and nice… when you wanted to be.”

You chuckle and let yourself look at him for a brief moment. He’s smiling at the child who has now decided to stand in his lap. Hoseok’s orange hair baffles the baby and a chubby hand goes to grab at the strands out of curiosity. He looks handsome, you can’t deny it.

In another timeline, in some alternate universe, maybe he could be your best friend and boyfriend today. Maybe seeing him interact with the little kids would have you blushing and thinking about a not too distant future together. Maybe you would be trying to earn money to save up for an apartment together in the city. Maybe this would be a regular day for the two of you and after work he would take you out to dinner and you’d buy him ice cream afterwards and then maybe after that you would…If it weren’t for everything that happened maybe you would…you would.

“What’s wrong?” Concern mars his delicate features before he looks over the child to see if the problem lies with them.

“Nothing! I was just thinking. I’m kind of ready for all this to be old news.”

His smile is slow and warm, but subdued. “You’re not just saying that because my stupid crush made you feel awkward right? It’s okay if it did. I don’t expect anything from you. I know you don’t like me like that.”

A protest rises in your throat, but you clamp it down before it can leave you. You’re not sure what you’re protesting.

“No. I just want to start over again,” you say after a beat.

You go home that day with a $40 dollar tip that technically wasn’t even intended for you.

Almost as soon as you both called for a truce in your near decade war, the child in Hoseok’s arms quickly started crying after realizing their mother was nowhere to be found. You deftly swept them into your arms and rocked them around the pool for the rest of your 90 minute shift, letting them whine quietly into your neck until they dozed off. While Hoseok herded the rest of the children and a few mothers out of the kiddie area, you managed to get the child to tell your their full name so you could narrow down the list of parents to call. Eventually you found the right person and handed the child back to Hoseok so he could distract them further by drawing shapes on his belly with sunscreen. The child’s mother came soon after you hung up and pulled out her wallet as soon as she saw Hoseok playing with her child. He thanked her for the tip and, once she left, went and curled the bills into the palm of your hand, saying “That was all you”.

The day closes off quietly. You pack up your things and go to clock out in the lounge, only to find no one else looks like they’re leaving despite the fact that both pools had closed 20 minutes prior. When you ask what everyone else’s plans are, Stella informs you that the staff often go to visit the people working in the kitchen to get a free meal in exchange for keeping the pool open for an hour after all the club members left. It was a nice little arrangement that took place every day during the summer.

“You’ll come, right? It’s free food directly from the chef and his team,” Stella says as she locks her cubicle office.

“I don’t know. Aren’t they sick of cooking after doing it all day?”

She huffs, “They cook after the last customer leaves anyway so they can eat too. It’s not that much trouble to cook for us. Especially when they get to take a swim after being on their feet all day.”

Hoseok steps behind you as people begin to file out of the lounge and head to the club restaurant. “You’re not avoiding me, are you? I thought we were friends again,” he teases good-naturedly.

“Of course not! I meant what I said, I just…” He looks down at you thoughtfully when you trail off. “My parents are probably waiting up for me, you know. They wanna know how my first day went and all that.” You say your goodbyes to everyone before heading back to the car knowing that your parents will be out late seeing a movie.

The next morning, you get there before Hoseok, but you have a key to open the gate. So you get ahead on getting the ropes set out on both pools. To kill the time still left before the kiddie pool opens, you try to remember the combination to your employee locker so you can try on the company suit you ordered. It fits well, and the red will go nicely with your skin as the summer progresses and your tan deepens. You do a little spin for the lifeguards laying around the lounge and they humor you and clap sleepily. Stella gives you a thumbs up, busy on the phone in her cubicle as she always is.

Boredom compels you to go and sit in your seat early. With the extra time still left you put on sunscreen. Very carefully. You put on a visor, then decide you don’t want to deal with it if it gets wet by chance. Then you put it back on again because why not. You’re starting to worry that you’ll have to do the shift on your own when Hoseok stumbles in with a few parents coming to sign their kids in to the pool.

“Sorry,” he throws himself into his seat.

An apologetic frown twists his mouth, but the plushness of his pout goes unnoticed because you’re focused on the smear of white near the hinge of his jaw. You reach out on instinct to wipe it off, but stop midway and gesture to it instead, reeling your hand back in slowly. He wipes at it roughly.

“Why were you late?”

“Got in a fight with my mom last night. She took the car keys from me so I had to take the bus here. Were you waiting out here long?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

He grimaces guiltily and looks up at the sky directly because there’s no nice, big beach umbrella to shield your heads from the heat like there is for the guards at the adult pool.

“Geez. That must have sucked in this heat.”

“Not really. The sun’s not at its strongest yet. Maybe in a few hours I’ll get mad at you,” you joke.

“Promise?”

“Nah. You thought I was mean in high school? You better hope you don’t want to see me mad now. Completely different animal.”

“I don’t know,” he drawls, a fox-like grin coming out. “I think, if anything, I might have developed a taste for it.”

“Eyes on the pool, horndog .” The banter elicits a small smile from you. It’s only small because you’re working to contain it. You can’t believe how easy it is to be around him when you’re not at each other’s throats.

The day passes by quickly in companionable silence until around noon, when the heat gets almost unbearable. Hoseok suggests then that you move to sit in the actual pool and watch from there. If it’s really just an excuse to watch your red-clad figure move in its entirety for a brief second, you can’t tell. The next string of shifts is spent with both of you seated in adjacent corners to let the water lap at you and calm your heated skin. Occasionally a child will make their way over to one of you and you’ll play with them for a bit until they get bored or their parents return. The sight of the babies climbing Hoseok to grab little fistfuls of wet, orange hair is heart warming. And the way he scoops them up to blow raspberries against their round cheeks makes something clench in your gut a little, too intense to be the fluttering wings of nervous butterflies. As a distraction you let one curious child attempt to chew on the whistle around your neck. Not like you’ll be using it anyway.

“You gonna duck out again and skip dinner today, too?”

His question comes out of nowhere and startles you from watching a young girl of around 4 years old try to doggie paddle on her back.

“I don’t know. I just feel like I don’t know anyone enough to be very good company while I’m there.”

“You don’t have to be a hostess, you can just sit there and eat.”

“But then it looks like I just came there for the food. I don’t want to seem antisocial.”

“You kind of are, though.”

“Yeah, but I don’t need the others to know.”

“You could just talk to me, you know. I mean…it would make you look like you’re there for the social activities in addition to the food. And it would make sense if you talked mainly with me since we’re shift partners and have a, uh, history.”

“I guess when you put it like that I don’t have much of a choice.” You’re not quite sulking, but the little waves you’re making with your hands under the water nearly knock a toddler over.

“No, you don’t. Guess you’re stuck with me.”

“Guess so.”

Once the sun sets, you get out of the pool first, worried that you’ll have permanently pruny fingers and toes if you sit there any longer. You don’t bother toweling off and instead get to work on stuffing the tips you made in the pocket of your hoodie. Hoseok locks the pool from the inside and jogs to catch up with you as you make your way to the gathering of lifeguards and Stella.

The interior of the country club dining room is incredibly lavish and it feels like a crime to walk on the shining wood of the polished floors with some drugstore flip flops you bought and used as shower shoes for the last four years. There’s even a table that’s been freshly cleaned and set that the kitchen staff has laid out for you. A lanky boy who apparently goes by the name of Namjoon comes around to take everyone’s orders and you stiffen when you realize you don’t know the menu.

“What are you getting,” you hiss nearly into Hoseok’s armpit as you try to remain calm. Namjoon is leisurely taking people’s orders and chatting people up, but you want to be ready when he gets to your end of the table.

“I’m getting the pork cutlets,” he whispers back, to which you hum thoughtfully. Meat seemed like a basic dish to get at such a fine establishment. He seemed to sense your hesitation. “You might like their shrimp tacos. Still like seafood, right?”

“Y-yeah, I do.” He smiles to himself, proud that he still remembers all these little things about you. “I don’t know which to get. Shit.”

He chuckles at your frantic tone. “There’s no need to panic. I’lll let you have some of mine if you feel like you’re missing out.”

“Thanks,” you let out a sigh, head slumping to the side and nudging his arm lightly in the process.

You tell yourself that if it weren’t for the way the sun zapped your energy you would be sitting up properly. And you do once Namjoon comes around to your end of the table. You stutter out that you’d like the shrimp tacos and when he responds that there’s only trout left, you panic and say that’s fine instead of getting something you know will be good. Like pork cutlets.

“Calm down, I can feel you overthinking things from there,” he whispers after Namjoon returns to the kitchen with the table’s orders.

“Screw you. I’m not overthinking.” You burrow further into your artfully upholstered chair and look away from him.

He fixes you with a stare that tells you he doesn’t believe that lie for a second. “Whatever. Have a drink and stop stressing.”

You’re grateful as the person on your right offers to fill your cup with wine. It’s red wine, but you can’t complain because its’ free and you’re not really drinking much anyway seeing as you’re still in possession of your dad’s car as a means of getting home. However, due to unforeseen circumstances—that is due to the fact that you actually don’t like trout—you follow the half taco you eat with more wine to fill your stomach. Hoseok raises an eyebrow at your wine consumption, but doesn’t say anything as he carves out a healthy portion of one of his cutlets and plops it onto your plate. He follows it with generous spoonfuls of the rice and vegetables that came along with his dish to make sure your stomach is lined with a barrier if you drink more. And much to both his and your chagrin, you do drink more wine.

Once everyone has finished eating, you pour out of your seat to follow the kitchen staff and lifeguards out to the pool once more. Before you came in, there was still light in the sky that came from the last strong rays of setting sun, bathing everything in pink and orange. Now, the sun has set and everything is bathed in blue; even the lights lining the inside of the larger pool that are usually reserved for night events thrown by the country club glow a soft, pale blue.

Although you’re tipsy, you’re still somewhat practical, so you opt to sit by a well-lit corner and dip your feet in the water. It’s too cold and you’re too out of it to be able to swim safely or comfortably. For the few moments that you’re alone, you find peace in watching the chefs and waitstaff who’ve now changed into their swim attire frolic in the water. Someone brought a beachball and it’s being bounced around the pool. It takes all of your concentration and hand/eye coordination but you manage to give a successful volleyball inspired hit and keep the ball’s momentum. Hoseok’s feet appear next to you a beat later.

“Did you see that? That was a good spike, right?” You look up at him standing next to you. “You look like the pillsbury dough boy from this angle,” you say, prompting him to sit down.

“Is that something you’re into?” He smiles at your profile. The dim lighting does wonders for your features and he’s secretly glad he gets to see you in what he thinks may be a rare state.

“I like bread, but not that much.” He snorts at your joke.

You turn to look at him as best you can. This is the first time in a short while that you’ve gotten to really take a good look at him since you’re whole job is about looking away from him and at the children in the kiddie pool. If you squint, you can kind of see what he used to look like still there, under the surface. His cheeks were a bit rounder and softer, even when you were seniors in high school and technically ‘adults’. His hair was different too. For the majority of high school it was dark and laid flat against his foreheard. While it didn’t look bad, it didn’t do anything to flatter his face. It wasn’t until the end when he started experimenting with product and color. Even when you were younger and hated him, you were still able to appreciate the day he came into class during one winter morning of junior year with it parted and swooped messily off his forehead and dyed a warm brown with golden highlights. You and 30 other classmates had appreciated that day very much. It suited him and the brooding badboy thing he had going on.

“Thanks,” he says, surprise coloring his voice.

“W-what?”

“I didn’t know you liked the brown so much.”

Sober-you would have been having a conniption at the idea that Hoseok might get even the slightest whiff of your teeny-tiny attraction for him. The wine running in your veins has you relaxed enough to just concede the compliment to him, but steer the subject away from you.

“What made you dye it red?”

“Ehh, it was just a kind of coverup for a bad blond dye job my ex gave me last year.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Why? Do you think I should I dye it brown again?” You pause and look him over, trying to imagine the color from before on him now.

“No. The way you are now is fine.”

Your comment makes him sit back, a little stunned. When he looks back at you, you’re eyes are drifting closed. He’s pretty sure you drove yourself, so he lifts your arm and helps you stand up before hobbling over to Stella to let her know that he’s going to take you home.

“Alright,” she says, clearly enjoying her game of Marco Polo with the head chef. “But you had better get her home in a condition no worse than the one she’s in right now. And don’t think I won’t ask her tomorrow what she remembers happening after she left here, Jung.”

All he can do is salute her as your head lolls forward and you try to go back to being less upright.

Taking you home is more effort than he thought it would be. First, it takes a while to get you awake again so he can tell you he’s taking you home and ask you where your stuff is. He manages to get your locker open but only after waking you several times to get each number of the combination because you were too sleepy to give it to him in full. Then, he has to get you in the car without looking like he’s kidnapping you because at that point he’s carrying your dead weight. Just heaving you over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry would be easier, but he’s worried you’ll throw up down his back. Once you’re in the car, the hardest part is over. From there it’s just pestering you again to get your seatbelt on and have you remind him of your parents’ address. Another bolt of pride shoots through him when you sleepily mumble the street and house number and it’s what he thought. After that it’s pretty smooth sailing. He finds your house with ease, the front light illuminating the number and the doorway.

Your mother comes to the door, father wandering in behind her to see why you’re coming in so late. When they see a pair of silhouettes walk across the lawn and up to the door, they quickly come out to see what’s going on. Your dad realizes you’re the one slumped over and moves quickly to take you off the stranger’s arm. Soon he realizes that the stranger is Jung Hoseok, the boy his only child used to play with.

“Do I want to know what happened?”

“Nothing bad. There’s just dinner for the lifeguards after the pool closes everyday and I think she filled up on wine instead of her food. I worried about her so I just drove her home. I hope that’s okay.”

“Well, it’s not ideal, but I’m glad it was you and not someone with an ulterior motive,” your father says with a pointed look at him.

Your mother holds the door open and looks on in sympathy at your clammy, sleepy face and ushers your father inside before ushering Hoseok in as well. As much as he would like to be able to carry you up the stairs to your bedroom like he used to when you were small, your father’s back can’t handle that much rigor and he opts for trying to lay you out onto the couch. He accidentally drops you on your face, but it’s not a steep drop and the cushions break your fall, so he just makes sure you’re facing to the side with a foot on the floor to keep you from rolling off and hurting yourself or choking on your vomit. He moves into the kitchen to find his wife pouring Hoseok a glass of water.

“I can’t thank you enough for bringing our baby home safely, Hoseok. You know, I was just thinking about you yesterday.”

“Is that so?” He politely sips at the water, very uncomfortable.

“Yes. I saw your mother recently. We were talking about how both of our nests have stopped being empty for the summer,” she laughs.

“Yeah, she told me she saw you.”

“It’s been a while, son,” your father says as he goes to stand next to your mother. Both of them pin Hoseok with stares filled with different emotions.

“Oh, it really has. You’re grown into such a handsome man. I suppose it makes sense, since you were such a beautiful boy.” All he can do is chuckle awkwardly before downing the last bit of water.

“Well, I better get going. I have to get up early to make it to the pool on time. It was nice to see you all.”

“It was nice to see you too, sweetie.” Your mother hands your father the car keys. “Drive Hosoek home, honey?”

“Sure.”

“It’s really no trouble, I was just gonna walk. I don’t live that far away.” His eyes widen at the thought of having to spend more making awkward small-talk with your parents and no way of escaping.

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to lose any more sleep than you already have. I’ll drive you and you can do us a favor and swing by and pick up our baby, alright? She probably won’t be fit to drive that day, and it’ll be an opportunity for me to drive my wife to her doctor’s appointment.”

He stutters a bit, looking for a way out that won’t offend anyone, before giving up. “Okay. Thank you, sir.”

“No problem, son.”

To say that the morning following Hoseok driving you home is the worst mornings of your life is probably an exaggeration, but it’s most likely a slight one. First, you had wake up with a bit of a hangover, which wouldn’t be so bad if you could get more time to sleep it off. Instead, you’re forced to roll off the bed at the sound of your alarm and shower. Your stomach is killing you, but you know you can’t skip breakfast and still make it through a whole day of sitting in the sun. The worst part of the morning by far is dragging yourself downstairs only to find Hoseok drinking coffee with your mother at the kitchen table.

His eyes brighten at the sight of you shuffling down the stairs looking half dead, but he’d much rather deal with you and your hangover than sit there and listen to your mom make thinly veiled attempts at asking him if he’d confessed to you yet. Your mother ushers both of you out the door with a fruit cup and spoon and you barely have any time to process the situation.

Five minutes into the drive to the pool is enough time for the cool early morning air and periwinkle skyline for you to wake up and take back the reigns from your lizard brain.

“Why were you in my house?” You poke a soft piece of syrup covered peach with your spoon and lay back in your seat. Mrs. Jung’s car is newer than your father’s so you don’t have to wind a crank to get the seat to recline.

“Do you remember last night?”

“Of course, I do.”

“Well, that’s why.” You pout for a minute, embarrassed that Hoseok saw you in such a state even though you were only a little past tipsy.

“Did my parents put you up to this?”

“Absolutely. As much as I’d like to be able to get you to voluntarily ride around with me, it’s not worth having your dad drive me home and spending the morning with your mom.” You snort at his candid tone. “No offense to your parents. They’re wonderful people.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. What did my mom say to you?”

“Nothing much. She asked me how college was and if I had a job lined up. Asked me if I had a girlfriend. Asked me if you had a secret boyfriend. Then asked me why I hadn’t asked you out yet. You know. The usual.”

“Are you serious?” The pieces of fruit you had been half-heartedly munching on and get stuck in your windpipe. It takes a couple firm pats on the back from Hoseok but soon you’re eyes stop watering and you are able to look at him gravely. “Did she really ask you that?”

“She did,” he smiles self-deprecatingly, but it’s still a warm smile.

“W-what did you tell her?” At the sound of your quiet inquiry his expression sombers up quickly.

“Don’t worry. I just told her I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable, though.”

“Well, I’m sure you would be if I was chasing you around like I used to.”

“Things are different now,” is all you can say without your face heating up too much.

He chances a look at you and the way you fiddle with your hoodie reminds him of the way you played with the hem of your school uniform whenever you were talking with guys you liked. After a few deep breaths, he decides to take a risk. The little booth where the parking lot managers sits to monitor employee traffic is visible at the end of the street once Hoseok drives past the country club gates. He drives straight past the attendant because he has an employee sticker on his car window. There’s a vacant spot in the far corner of the lot that he takes before parking the car so he can turn to face you.

“How are things different?”

You find it hard not to feel warm under Hoseok’s stare. Though it’s not the first time you’ve been the object of his hungry gaze, all the previous times were more diluted because he was just a young boy searching for just ounce of the comfort he once found in you as his childhood best friend. Those were the days where you were mad at him and could easily deflect the power of his stare with your own anger. Now, though, the air has been cleared, the slate wiped clean. He’s no longer a 14 year-old boy hoping you’ll forgive him. He’s 23 and wants nothing more than to strip you of all your pretenses and get as close to you as possible simply because he wants to be able to feel all you can offer and give you all you’ll accept.

When you can’t meet his eyes or answer him, he squares his jaw and leans into your space. He’s tired of this game of cat and mouse. Maybe it’s because he couldn’t sit back and pretend he didn’t still feel anything for you. Maybe it’s because he knows that in this situation he’s not really a cat or a mouse. He feels more like a beast with a strange amount of patience. But everyone knows patience has to run out sometime. Slowly, he brings a gentle hand to your chin and lifts your gaze towards his.

“Why are things different now?”

“Because…you don’t make me uncomfortable anymore,” you say, knowing that you’re being overly cowardly and vague.

He knows the desperation is clear in his voice, but he really thinks he’s been correctly reading the room and the way you look at him when you think he can’t see. He just wants confirmation. “Why are you comfortable now?”

“It’s not that I’m exactly comfortable with you,” you trail off looking for the right phrase. “I still feel like my whole body is tensed up when I’m around you.”

“Oh,” he says, trying to swallow down the sudden wave of disappointment.

“But I like it.”

His head snaps up and suddenly he’s laughing. It sounds a bit too high and crazed to be anything other than manic laughter. You watch his shoulders shake and his hands rake through his hair before he sighs and turns to smile at you.

“Can I kiss you,” he blurts out. The surprised look on your face must be comical because he laughs more naturally this time before leaning over the center console to pin you to your seat with a softer, molten look. “Can I?”

Somewhere in the back of your head, a part of you wonders if kissing in the car is even allowed before 10 am, but you figure that the only way to know is to try. You hum affirmatively, not trusting your voice, but he shakes his head at you and retracts a little.

“No. I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes. Are you happy now,” you huff. He rewards your half-effort with a warm hand wrapping around the nape of your neck, but doesn’t move any closer.

“‘Yes’ what?” His smile is dark and teasing. Almost mean.

“For fuck’s sake, Jung, just kiss me.” It’s too early for teasing and your hands come up to scrunch in the fabric of the front of his t-shirt like they have a mind of their own.

“There’s my girl,” he whispers before swooping in and crushing his lips to yours.

Kissing Jung Hoseok is not at all like you pictured it. Then again, you’d spent the last 8 years pushing away the mere possibility that it could happen, so it’s not surprising that he passes all your expectations given that you had none. That’s not to say that your standards are super low and that he’s just a mediocre kisser, because he’s most certainly not. The moment your eyes close, his lips caress yours slowly and firmly. He opens your mouth with a few well-timed nips to your lower lip followed, wetting your entrance with a subtle swipes of his tongue. As he eases you open, your hands move to feel his torso and map out the planes and dips of his defined arms and toned chest. The hot glide of his tongue against yours has you reaching up to card your fingers through his hair. It feels slightly damp with the shower he must have taken before coming to pick you up and you scrape your nails lightly against his scalp as you comb through the russet waves. He groans into your mouth and presses forward, his nose brushing your cheek as he turns his head to kiss you more deeply. From there, you can’t stop your hands from roaming up his arms, his sides, his back. Eventually you settle on wrapping your arms around his neck and letting one hand wriggle under the collar of his shirt so you can rest your palm against the smooth skin of his back.

The feeling of your hand on his bare skin feels hot like a brand and pushes him to work harder to draw moans from you. Soft sounds of breathing and your lips meeting again and again fill the car. The cooler temperature of the outside morning air means that the car starts to fog up quickly. His free arm doesn’t stop moving. First he wraps it around your waist, then strokes your thigh before digging his fingers into the meat of it. Finally he settles on cupping your face with both hands to bring you impossibly closer as he ravishes your mouth. You let out a long breath that ends in a hitch when he decides to test out sucking kisses onto the column of your neck. His name leaves your mouth in a breathy sigh and suddenly he’s cursing and pulling back.

He looks fucked out with his hair a coppery mess from your fingers running through it, shiny, swollen lips, and a dreamy expression on his face. You drink in the picturesque curves of his profile, especially admiring the slope of his boyish smile as he grins to himself with his chest heaving. The neon numbers on the digital clock in the dashboard let you know that you’re 10 minutes behind schedule to opening up the kiddie pool.

“We’re late,” you mumble when you’ve caught your breath and the windshield isn’t so foggy anymore.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Listen, why don’t you, uh, go in first, okay?”

He’s still smiling but he’s hunching over himself a little strangely, hands resting unnaturally splayed out in his lap. You’re suspicious, but nod and take your bag with you out the car to go get ready for the start of the shift. Stella and the other lifeguards are standing by the tiny coffee machine in the lounge when you come in, your hair is still a bit of a mess. Stella gives you a knowing smile after giving you a once over.

“Glad to have you back,” her voice lilts and a couple people sticker.

“Uh, what do you mean? I didn’t go anywhere.” Trying not to not look guilty proves difficult when you can’t even manage a normal smile and can only give something that’s 80% teeth.

“Easy, lightweight,” one guard says, “We just didn’t think you’d make it here after how gone you were yesterday. Much less on time for your morning set-up.”

“I’m not a lightweight, I just didn’t end up eating any of my dinner,” you sniff, but relax the set of your shoulders a bit once you realize they’re snickering about your tipsy antics from the night before and not your amorous behavior in the parking lot just now.

Hoseok shows up while you’re in the middle of setup and doesn’t say much as he helps you with the rest of it. The kiddie pool opens like it normally does at 8am and young swimmers trickle in. Some more frequent guests waddle over to your chairs to show off their new floaties or to ask if you live at the pool. Your shift partner is still unnervingly quiet for the first few hours, not even complaining when the temperature steadily increases to an annoying high. He still doesn’t say anything as you move your safety equipment to the edge of the pool so you can both dip into the shallow water for relief. Quickly, you realize that you’re rather fond of his talkative nature and snap as soon as the toddler that was repeatedly jumping into his arms gets picked up by the last parent and you can break for lunch. You say a silent goodbye to your pride and finally turn to him once the gate to the kiddie pool is closed.

“It’s really warm, huh?”

His neutral expression breaks into a private smile to himself. “Yeah, I suppose it is. You’re gonna eat lunch right?”

“Yeah,” you say, still frowning at his short answers as you move to get up from the pool wall.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get yours too. We can just eat out here.”

You nod for lack of anything better to say. When he comes back with one sac you remember that you didn’t pack a lunch for yourself like you normally would the night before work. He sits next to you and opens his lunchbox silently.

“I forgot to bring a lunch. I’m gonna head to the tip jar and then run to the vending machine really quick.”

“No need,” he says, “Your mom packed this for you this morning and gave it to me.”

He hands you a plastic bag out of his own larger container before opening a hand-made sandwich and chowing down. You open the bag cautiously, not expecting the normal salad that you pack yourself usually. Instead, you find something that may be exactly the same lunch she used to pack you when you were in elementary school.

“I guess this is punishment for getting too drunk to take myself home,” you mutter down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carrot sticks.

He peers into your bag.“What’s wrong with carrot sticks,” he pouts and holds his own container of carrot sticks and hummus.

“At least you had the decency to pack hummus. She thinks I still eat the same way I did when I was 8.”

“I’ll trade you for your fruit punch.”

“What are you offering,” you give him the side-eye of a seasoned businesswoman.

“Just your favorite,” he shrugs, pulling out a small cardboard carton of chocolate milk. Even at your age, you still love chocolate milk, though you don’t indulge in it often. “Bet you haven’t seen this since we were kids.”

You nod frantically, remembering how you used to drink it whenever you could if there wasn’t a race that day. “Deal.” you say, tossing the tiny bottle of fruit punch and snatching the milk like he might not keep his promise.

The two of you give each other a look and break down into laughter at your childish behavior.

“Just like old times.” Your voice and eyes are soft as you watch him open the fruit punch with a little difficulty. Huffing, you nudge his hands out of the way before snapping the no-spill opening so he can drink from it with one hand.

“Almost.” He inches his face toward yours until you can almost count his eyelashes. His hand comes to run up your arm and lay on your shoulder blade, trying to get you closer.

You meet him halfway, turning a bit awkwardly at the waist so you can wrap your arms around him. If you’re being honest, you were worried that he was being so quiet because he regretted kissing you in the car and was trying to think of a way to take it back. But it’s clear that’s not the case from the way he coaxes your lips open with his own so he can lick into your mouth with a slickness that has your face heating. The reminder that your coworkers could see you at any moment has you beginning to pull away, but he knows you too well to let you escape.

“No one’s gonna see,” he whispers against your mouth before going back in to work your lips. Your eyes flutter shut again and the worries seem to dissolve a little.

“What if they do, though?” Somehow one of your hands always makes it back to his hair and you give it a slight tug when he sucks lightly on your earlobe. “This is unprofessional.”

“Yeah, it is.” He grins but still pulls back after pressing a somewhat chaste kiss on your frowning lips once and then twice.

“I haven’t even touched my lunch and the break is almost over,” you mumble. “Good thing there’s dinner after the last shift.”

“Don’t get drunk again,” he tosses his head back at his joke and you can only glare at him as you steal some hummus.

The rest of the day goes by without a hitch. You and Hoseok manage to keep your hands off each other during dinner. And surprisingly during the ride he gives you home, which quickly becomes a daily routine. Your parents gave you a knowing look when you told them why you would no longer need to borrow the car to get to work, but they didn’t say anything.

The summer passes by quickly and slowly. Quickly because you have fun talking with Hoseok and time seemingly passes by faster when he’s making you laugh or smile while he plays with the babies. Slowly because he still manages to find moments to get in your face and steal a few kisses that seem to halt time itself. It seems like you blinked and then there were only two more weeks left of work at the pool left.

There’s about an hour before the pool closes and Hoseok has migrated over to a farther corner of the pool to engage little Jungkook, a pool regular who keeps gazing up at him with hero-worship in his eyes. You let yourself look over for a brief second before continuing your perusal of the other swimmers to make sure no one needs help. Sudden splashing gets your attention and Jungkook comes running into your field of view.

“What’s the matter? Did you drop your goggles again?” You let him take your hand, though you have to crouch so he can reach it.

“Lifeguard Hoseok is playing dead and it’s scary,” he looks up at you with big eyes and brings you to where Hoseok is managing to float on his back despite the low level of the pool water.

“Hoseok,” you put on an admonishing tone for Jungkook, “Are you playing dead and scaring the swimmers?”

He cracks an eye open at the sound of your voice and looks up at you. “Actually, I’m drowning. Please save me.” Jungkook watches him close his eyes again and stick out his tongue, imitating a body.

“He keeps doing that scary face. Is he dead?” Jungkook squeezes your hand and you kneel down so that you can look him in the eye.

“No, he’s just pretending.”

“Make him open his eyes, then.” You raise an eyebrow and he tacks on a ‘please, Ms. Lifeguard’.

“Hoseok,” you stage-whisper to appease Jungkook, who’s looking on with distress in his eyes, “You need to wake up. You’re making your friend here nervous about you.”

“Then you should save me so I can wake up. Right, Jungkook?”

“Y-yeah. Give him PPR to wake him up!”

“Yeah! Give me that sweet PPR, please.”

You roll your eyes. Clearly Hoseok is childish enough to know how to get actual children on his side. To make sure no funny business happens, you treat it like the training sessions you’ve attended and pinch his nose closed. His eyes crack open to glare at you but stay closed for the most part like a good faker. You lower your head and place a chaste kiss on Hoseok’s waiting mouth. He springs up and gasps like all the life force he lost has entered back into his body all at once. His hands come out to clutch you to him in a fierce hug.

“Thank you for saving me, Ms. Lifeguard.” He shouts into your hair, soaking your top half despite the fact that you’d managed to keep your hair dry all day until this point. “Look, Jungkook, she saved me.”

Jungkook is clearly smarter than Hosoek thinks and pouts at the two of you. “Hey! You weren’t really sleeping, you were just pretending so you could get a kiss!”

“How did you know,” your mouth drops open and a genuine laugh tumbles out. Jungkook attempts to cross his little arms but the floaties he’s wearing get in the way.

“Because my Dada always does it to trick my Papa when we go to the beach.”

“I’m sorry Hoseok tried to trick you, Jungkook. But, I hope that you’ll still listen when people tell you they’re hurting because it might be true next time.”

He nods and you reach up to ruffle his dark hair. He skips off to go play and you make sure no one is looking before you break the no-splashing rule and send a wave up at Hoseok’s face.

“What the hell was that?”

“What? I’m bored. I just wanted to play,” he pouts at you.

“Play later. We still have 45 minutes of work left.”

“Will you play with me,” he asks in your ear. You shiver a little at the feeling of his breath on your neck but push him away.

“Fine, but later. I’m not gonna get caught goofing off and lose this job. I really need it.”

“Did you not have a job lined up after school ended?” He sits down for real and adjusts his visor to shield his eyes.

“No. Do you?”

“Yeah. I’m start working at a JYP Banks city branch this fall.”

“Oh my god, ew. Were you an econ major?”

It’s hard to imagine Hoseok as one of the boys who used too much hair gel, smoked too much weed on the weekends, and wore suits to their business and math classes on your former campus.

“Yeah, why not? I’m good at math.”

“Since when,” your nose wrinkles.

“Since high school. It was one of the only classes I always had without you. So I actually ended up paying attention.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” he gently tweaks your side, “You weren’t there at the board with your too-small uniform skirt for me to stare at.”

“Too small? Those uniforms were specially ordered for each student, asshole.”

“That doesn’t mean anything if you were a late bloomer and got the measurements taken when you were 13 and built like a grade-schooler.”

Your mouth gapes open and there’s a lot to unpack in that statement. The fact that he called you out for being flat as a board at the end of middle school. The fact that he called you out for not suddenly having boobs and ass when you were 15 like everyone else. The fact that he had bee paying attention to you well before puberty hit you like a truck in senior year, unlike other guys.

“I’m not a stick now, though,” you say and sit up a bit straighter to confirm to yourself that no one would confuse you for a child with your figure now.

“Nope,” he agrees, “You’re certainly not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Again with this?”

“We can’t all have the same metabolism that we’ve had since we were teenagers. You were skinny too, if I recall.”

“Yeah and there’s nothing wrong with that. But that old string-bean Hoseok is gone.” He’s half joking, half serious as he brings up a tanned arm to flex, showing off a surprising sized bicep. You reach out and squeeze the swell of firm muscle. “That’s gym and dance gains right there, baby.”

“You’re an idiot,” you toss over your shoulder fondly as the final few parents and children leave the pool.

The two of you putter around and clean up the pool so its ready for closing. Hoseok goes ahead while you stay back to make sure none of the kids left any precious toys or swim gear behind. When you enter the lounge, the last few lifeguards are heading out towards the restaurant employee entrance while Hoseok waves to them.

“You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.”

Carefully you turn the sticky lock on your locker, trying angrily to get it open so you can put your things away and go eat. One of the chefs told you the day before that the final shipment of mango for the summer was coming and you’d be damned if someone else took some of the portions they promised to save for you.

“You said you’d play with me,” his voice is low as he presses against you. You let him close your locker for you and turn to give him a placating kiss.

“What about food?” He presses wet kisses along the skin of your shoulder before sliding the strap of your suit down with his teeth. His hand runs a course down to your ass. His fingers toy with the elastic hem of your one-piece, cheekily catching against the skin there underneath.

He lifts hooded eyes up to yours. “Are you hungry right now?”

“Maybe not now,” you say as you swipe your thumbs across his cheekbones, “But I would be by the time that they finished taking people’s orders. That’s not a super long time.”

“So maybe we should just get food later.” His tone is reasonable and the way he’s pressing against you is distracting. If you shift the right way, you can feel him through his shorts.

“Where are we even gonna go?”

“It turns out,” he takes you by the hand and leads you through the other exit in the lounge, “There isn’t a view of the adult pool from the windows in the dining area. We’re alone here.”

He hops into the water, dunking his head under before coming up right after. His hands slick back his hair and you’re suddenly disappointed that he only wanted to swim. You go in after him, electing to do a lap or two to stretch your limbs after hours in a chair. When you come back up he claps.

“Nice form,” he says as you paddle over.

“I’m missing mangos for this.”

“Don’t worry, I told them to save some for you. You’ve been talking about them all day.”

You beam at him, disappointment appeased now that you’re still going to get your fruit. He pats the wall of the shallow end of the pool.

“Come sit.”

You swim over and hoist yourself up on the edge. He wades up to the edge to rest his hands on your thighs. The smile on his face is wide and brilliant as he looks up at you and you can’t help but card your fingers through his hair. The red is fading and you’re a bit sad to see it go.

“Are you gonna dye it back again or are you gonna let it grow out for work?”

“Yeah, I think the red might have to go. But I might be able to do brown. Or even blond if it’s done well. What do you think,” he asks, laying his cheek on your knee.

“It’s up to you, I mean. I won’t even be there to see it, so you might as well do what’s best for the office.”

With the end of the summer nearing, what would happen between you two became a common topic of conversation. But the conversations never get too far because you still haven’t defined what it was that you are to each other. The idea of having split after all that you’ve been through, including everything before finding one another at the pool, makes your stomach feel cold and empty. This isn’t your average summer whirlwind and you both know that. But neither of you wants to be the one to end the fun.

“Who knows. You might be in the city for work. Or you could come down on the weekends. Or I could come up.” He looks up at you, eyes swimming in some emotion you can’t name. “I just don’t want to stop seeing you.”

“Can we not do this right now? It’s depressing and there’s still a little while left, anyway.”

“Okay.”

He nuzzles into the flesh of your thigh, mouthing against it even when your leg jumps up against the ticklish sensation. Leaning back, you watch him pepper your thighs with kisses in earnest. The higher up he moves, the slower they get until he’s only a few inches away from your core and your arms are protesting from holding yourself up so you can watch. You endure it because the sight of the faded auburn of his hair moving as he switches to the other knee and works his up is enticing in and of itself. His hands come to your hips and move you closer to the edge, his nose brushing against the hem of your suit.

“Here? Are you kidding me?”

“Why not?” His voice is muffled from where his mouth moves to suck a bruise high up on your inner thigh. “Don’t you think it’s a little fun? The idea that someone could see?”

“I think mini-golf is fun. Grocery shopping is also pretty—shit,” you lose your train of thought as he presses the flat of his tongue hard against the the crotch of your suit. Your thighs clamp shut on either side of him and you whip your head around to check your surroundings.

“Will you relax, please? The cleaning crew doesn’t come until after 9 and they’ll be in there for at least an hour.”

“But I smell like the pool.”

“I do too. Don’t worry, baby.” He sucks a kiss onto the apex of your thighs before looking up at you through dark lashes. “Is this okay?”

You stutter for a moment before steadying yourself once more and nodding. He uses one hand to creep up to the singular strap holding your suit up and slides it down to get access to your breasts. He kneads a globe in his hand before plucking your nipple and rolling it between his fingers. The other hand rubs at you over your suit with his thumb circling around what he hopes is your clit. Eventually the friction gets you swollen enough that he can better locate it. Dampness begins to pool at your center, forming a dark spot on your suit as you cant your hips up in time with the figure eights he rubs onto you. The wet material of your suit begins to bother you and you slide the top half down further, the evening air causing your nipples to pebble. With the suit now lax, he slides the crotch to the side and inhales deeply. The scent of chlorine is there, but he can still make out your natural scent underneath. Your arousal glistens subtly in the dim light and when he runs a finger through the slick to taste, you groan.

“What’s taking you so long? Put your face in it already.”

“You just want me to hurry up so we don’t get caught.”

“Maybe. But I want you to eat me out too.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

He dives in quickly, collecting all the arousal he can on his tongue. Licking from your entrance up to the top, he makes sure to hollow his cheeks, and sucks your clit into his mouth. Your leg kicks out to the side of him, splashing water up quietly. Pulling back with a smack, he maneuvers both your thighs over the broad expanse of his shoulders and moves in closer. He laughs when you whine for him puts his mouth back on you.

“Is it good so far,” he asks, carefully sliding a slender finger into you.

“Mmm, it’s good. Add another finger, I can handle it.” He adds another finger and scissors them after a beat.

“You wanna feel stretched, baby?” You bite you lip, arms quivering until you have to lie on your back. “I bet you’d rather take my dick, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh my god, I want it so bad.” He twitches and hardens further as he watches you reach down to fondle both your breasts roughly.

“You’d take my dick so well, I know it. I wish I could have you bouncing on me so I could play with your tits myself. But you keep playing with them and imagine those are my hands.”

“Hoseok,” you whine, “I need more. Need your mouth again too.”

Determined to make you cum hard, he adds a third finger and presses down on your pelvic floor before thrusting them into you over and over, his wrist twisting sinuously. Once you start squelching from a sudden onslaught of wetness, he assaults your clit again. With the body of his tongue, he licks shapes onto your core. A particularly hard flick of his tongue as you gasping out, back arching and pushing into his face. The change in angle causes his fingers to press harder into the spongey patch on your walls.

“Fuck, just like that. Don’t stop. Please!”

He crooks his fingers and grinds them into the spot as best he can while still scissoring his fingers so you feel full. You’re a sight to behold in front of him. Your legs part to reveal the your swollen and slick center. Your back arches beautifully and your breasts spill over your suit as you shudder through the orgasm he rips out of you. He withdraws his fingers carefully and marvels at the crystalline strands that stretch between his spread fingers. He sucks them into his mouth one by one with the other hand petting your thigh comfortingly.

“How do you feel about burgers?”

Hoseok can’t stop staring at the dewy glow on your skin and his burger sits unwrapped but unbitten as he watches you pluck a curly fry from the pile in the center of the table. Your eyes seem brighter and while he supposes that having an orgasm does that to a person, but he can’t help the swell of pride that rises up when he thinks that he had something to do with it.

“Your food’s gonna get cold,” you pick up a fry and bring it to his lips. “Aren’t you hungry?”

His lip graze your fingers slightly when you feed him the fry. “I already ate, remember?” His wry grin makes your heart flutter a bit.

“Well, you need your strength.” When his forehead crinkles in confusion, you clarify, “For dessert.”

“Look if you want it, I’ll give it to you, baby.”

It’s moments like these where he’s flexing in the middle of a diner and touching himself like he’s hot shit that you think it’s hard to tell if he’s being serious or not. Your phone rings, giving you an excuse to stop the show he’s giving the rest of the patrons as he grinds into the booth.

“Cool your jets, Hoseok, I have a phone call. Hello? Yes, that’s me.”

“Who is it,” he mouths.

“The research company,” you mouth back. “Yes, I could definitely do that. Within this month, even. Yes, of course, I’ll look for it. Thank you very much. You too. Goodbye.”

Your phone clatters against the table and you cradle your head in your hand, fingers of your other hand coming down to drum on the table. Hoseok looks on in worry, stooping to better read your expression.

“What did they say?”

“They said that if I move out there before the month ends, I have the job.”

“You got the job?”

“I got the job.” Your cheeks hurt from how hard you’re smiling and the relief that washes over you takes a weight off your shoulders that you didn’t realize you were carrying.

“I wish I had suggested a nicer place so the rest of the dinner could be celebratory.”

“If you hurry up and finish your burger, we can still have some fun.”

Hoseok jumps at the feeling of your foot running up his leg under the table. Rushing up, he goes to pay the bill, taking his burger with him so he can just finish it later. Once the bill is paid, you clear off the table and drag him through the parking lot, eager to get him to the car and driving to a spot where you don’t have to worry about being found. This turns out to be the very back row of the huge parking lot behind the strip mall. All the big summer block busters have already come and gone, so there isn’t much traffic. As soon as you park, you and Hoseok make a beeline to the back seat. To congratulate you, he tells you that he’ll listen to whatever you say. Even though it’s supposed to be about you, he doesn’t think he can’t possibly lose in this situation.

“I want you on your back,” your eyes are dark as you shirk the clothes you’d only changed into less than an hour ago, putting them on after you showered to go to the diner.

“Sounds good,” he says, lifting his hips so you can slide his shorts off.

“So I can ride you.” you supply. You slip off your underwear.

“Great.” He’s already imagining the view he’ll have of your ass, and his dick twitches eagerly at the thought.

“But you can’t touch me until I let you. And I might not let you.”

“What? Why am I being punished?”

You roll your eyes and grab his shaft a little rougher than necessary when he continues to huff about the lack of justice in the world. He quiets down when you slide down on him, still wet from the when his hand wriggled down your own shorts earlier while you were looking for a spot to park to tease you. His hands automatically come up to rest on your hips and get you started on rocking over him, but you grab both his wrists and pin them both above his head. Ignoring his pout, you use his wrists as a handhold for leverage and begin to grind your hips in slow circles. Once the rhythm is right and you’re wetter than before, you start to really lift yourself up off him and then grind back down on him.

It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy the pace you’ve set, because even through a latex barrier you’re hugging him snugly and slide down him like a dream. But it’s a pace clearly set for you, helping you increase precision so you can use his pelvis as a way to massage your clit. Every time you fuck yourself down on him, you let out a little whine and squeeze his wrists. He groans and throws his head back in frustration, arms and abs flexing with the effort it takes not to wrestle his hands over to you.

“Fuck, just let me use my hands, baby. I just want to make you feel good.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. I feel pretty—ahh—good by myself right now.”

Hesitantly, you release your grip on his wrists, giving him a look that tells him to keep them obediently pinned above his head. For a few moments you lean back and use his legs behind you as support so you can drop yourself more forcefully down onto his dick. After a while of watching him grit his teeth and letting out choked out moans, you give him a cheeky smile before turning and repositioning yourself in the opposite direction.

“Be a nice boy and bend this knee, hmm?”

Hoseok plants his foot firmly on the seat so that his knee is bent. It takes some wiggling on your part but soon you’re able to grind against his thigh as you move up and down. The moans you let out get louder and louder but your legs start to burn with exertion and eventually you have to resort to merely humping his leg. It’s not enough and when you curse lowly he sees his chance. He’s a good team player so he’s willing to help you out if you’ll let him.

“If you just let me use my hands again, I can help you out.” You mutter something under your breath. “What was that?”

“I said fine. As long as you get me off, you can see whatever limbs you want.” Your tone is somewhere between whining and snapping but the sheen of sweat coating your back and arms lets him know how tuckered out you really are.

He sits up once he has your permission. His first order of business with his hands back in use is to land a blow down on one of the globes of your ass. You let out a pained moan and clutch his thigh tighter to your core.

“Did you have fun using me like a toy?”

“I did. It was fun seeing you so mad you couldn’t touch me.” He can’t see your whole face, but you look back at him over your shoulder with a feline smugness in your eyes and a smile in your tone.

He spanks you again. “Should have expected this from you. Always thought you wouldn’t know how to act once you finally got the fucking you’d been looking for.” You merely whine in response so he gathers your hair into a makeshift ponytail and pulls. “Why should I let a brat like you cum, huh?”

“Because I just got that new job in the city and you’re proud of me.” You push back on him as best you can when your legs feel like jelly.

“That’s a good answer, baby. I’ll let it go for tonight,” he says as he peppers your shoulder and the parts of your back that he can reach with kisses. “Get on all fours. Hurry.”

You scramble forward on your hands and knees, arching your back for him. He swats your butt again just because he likes the view. He pushes in with no warning, but you’re stretched sufficiently enough that it doesn’t hurt to be so full so abruptly. His hands come to grab both your hips and immediately he pistons forward and fucks you like a machine. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the blue balls he’d been harboring since work started this morning. Perhaps it’s because he has a hunch this is what you wanted the whole time. Perhaps it’s that you’re leaving to some mystery city soon and some part of him believes that if he fucks you deep enough, you’ll take a piece of him with you and that will mean you’ll be together again someday.

Hoseok is certain that this isn’t the last time he’ll see you. But he doesn’t know if it’ll be like this. Like a sort-of summer fling that has a long prologue and a confusing epilogue. He knows you two are linked though. You must know it too. It’s impossible to deny when you both reach climax at the same time during your first time, the breath leaving him like you knocked it out and your eyes rolling into the back of your head like he scratched stars there for only you to see.

He turns you around carefully, so as not to slip out of you, only so he can hold you as you both come down from your respective highs. Neither of you say the words that would probably be most appropriate for a moment like this one. But your hands do automatically wind around him to play with the hair at the nape of his neck and trace secrets into his back. And the skin behind and below your ear is in fact where you smell the most like you, so he presses his nose into the spot and just breathes. Hoping for the best.

(3 months later)

Hoseok carried the habit of waking up early from his lifeguard job to his real job in the city that’s a 2 hour drive north of his childhood town. With this extra time he likes to explore the different districts, taking a different way to work each day when he can. In doing this, he’s also able to sample all the different coffee shops that are en route to the office and pick up orders given to him by his seniors in the analytics department.

Today his phone is on the fritiz and didn’t finish loading the details to the coffee shop that he was supposed to visit today. Instead, he wonders the streets, still with a bit of free time on his hands before he’s supposed to arrive. A few people have passed him now with steaming take away cups of what is presumably coffee. It takes some intuition, but eventually he makes it to a bright, butter yellow sign and laughs. GoldJin Coffee. Somewhere in the back of his head he remembers liking a tweet from Jin saying that he opened up a second branch, but it didn’t register that it was in Hoseok’s new city until now. It’s unclear whether this was the place his phone intended for him to go, but he steps inside anyway. He knows the coffee here, having come to the original location a few times. With you. As ‘friends’.

Before the memory can rear it’s head, he shakes his head and moves to stand in line. Most of the other people in suits with briefcases stand in line as they wait for their liquid start of the day. The remaining few seem to be an older, graying couple deliberating over pastries while they wait their turn and another young person looking for fuel. The more he looks over the other people in line, the more Hoseok’s stare his stare lands on the other young person. They look familiar, but he’s not sure why. They’re not wearing a suit, so they can’t be working for his company. He must know them from somewhere else.

The older couple orders their pastries, and someone in a suit orders their drink, then it’s the young person’s turn. They come up to the counter and the barista hands them a drink already made. They thank the barista and move to the side to greet the cashier. Something about the way this person moves grabs Hoseok’s attention to the point where he doesn’t realize it’s his turn to order. He flashes the list of drinks at the barista, having learned from his mistake from trying to recite the flashy drink names himself. The young person moves to a table and as if their bodies are celestial ones, Hoseok gravitates towards the empty table behind them. He watches as they take out a large three ring binder and flip through it while taking sips of their drink.

“J. Hoseok? 6 drinks for J. Hoseok,” the barista calls, shaking him out of his singular thought process.

He gets up from the table to claim his drinks, feeling a little silly for getting so invested in a stranger so rapidly. When he turns around, you stare up at him with wide eyes full of recognition. He walks over to you.

“Hey, long time no see,” his voice is suddenly hoarse.

“Hey, Hoseok.”

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