#just need to rewrite my rules and stuffs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

buckymorelikefuckme · 2 months

Text

and baby makes three

(the reboot)

bucky barnes x fem reader

words: 11.3k

warnings: **18+ ONLY** friends to lovers, pining, smut, oral (f receiving), breeding kink, pregnancy kink, cockwarming (kind of??), trigger warning for having troubles with getting pregnant. it's still super fuckin soft despite all of that though, i swear.

a/n: okay so it's currently 6am as i'm typing this and i haven't been to sleep yet bc i decided to just heavily edit this instead of rewrite it bc i'm lazy i guess idk. this was posted originally back in 2021 i believe and it's still on ao3 it's just orphaned rip. i promise i'll be writing and posting new stuff soon ok pls have faith in me and cheer me on bc it's hard and scary and i don't wanna disappoint anybody :( ANYWAY, as usual, any and all mistakes are my own. if i've missed anything important pls let me know so i can correct it. feedback is encouraged (pls) and appreciated (i am begging...)

The idea of you having a child one day always seemed foreign and very unlikely. Sure, you liked kids well enough, but having one of your own…

It’s a thought that’s sat in a corner deep in your mind, buried beneath a million other impossible concepts; a thought that you’ve only ever glanced over and never gave your full attention, having ruled it out ages ago as something you just couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do.

And then, on a day like any other, it pushes its way to the forefront of your mind, making itself known and unwilling to leave.

You’re going into the clothing store to find a new cardigan after your most favorite one got eaten by the dryer. Usually you’re a single-minded shopper, walking into a store with tunnel vision and on a mission to get what you need and that’s it.

Today, however, you make the mistake of letting your eyes wander on your way to the sweater section. Your gaze just so happens to land on the baby clothes… and your steps falter. It’s there that you see it, a tiny, pink onesie with a sleeping teddy bear printed on the front, displayed on an even tinier hanger. There’s matching pants with teddy bears all over them and ruffles on the butt and all your brain can muster up is cutecutecutecutecute.

Your feet carry you closer and before you realize what you’re doing you pick up the outfit, letting out a coo when you realize the teddy bear is fuzzy, softly rubbing your thumb across it. Somehow, you walk out of the store, not with a new cardigan, but with the cute baby outfit and a bow you thought looked adorable with it.

It’s not until you get home that it hits you, that you bought baby clothes for a baby you don’t even have.

The feeling that rushes through you is hard to describe. Shame? Embarrassment?

...Yearning?

No. Definitely not. Nope.

There’s absolutely no yearning going on here, not for a baby. You’ve never even had that desire before and you certainly don’t see yourself having it now. You shake your head to clear it, telling yourself you’ll take it back tomorrow.

Except you don’t take it back. You conveniently “forget” and it stays shoved on the top shelf in your hall closet. You pretend you don’t pause in front of said closet throughout the following days—weeks—chewing on the inside of your cheek and staring at the door like you can see through the wood at the evidence of your impulsive purchase.

It gets harder to ignore, though, when you start getting ads for baby clothing brands. And baby toys, bottles, handy little gadgets for new parents, nursery decor… It’s endless.

Then, as if it wasn’t already bad enough, all of your childhood friends start popping out babies like it’s a brand new trend. You don't think you've seen your social media this flooded with pregnancy announcements and baby arrivals, ever. Your emotions are mixed; happy for them, and for their excitement, but there’s also a weird discomfort settled in your stomach.

You hesitate to be that person who thinks the universe is trying to tell you something, but you do wonder. Why else would you suddenly have these feelings? Why else would there be baby stuff everywhere you look now?

It brings on other thoughts, as well. In this day and age, it’s not too unusual for women to have babies without being married, or without a significant other at all. There is the pressure, still, to at least be in a relationship, but considering you’ve been practically in love with one of your closest friends for the last two years, it’s safe to say that you’re tragically single, so having a baby with someone is out of the question.

And god, do you even want a baby?

As soon as the thought crosses your mind, with a sudden clarity that hits you like a ton of bricks, you realize you do. It feels like a freight train has slammed into you. Your mind’s eye supplies you with images of a swollen belly and wide smile, a precious baby wrapped in a soft blanket, cradled in your arms, a gummy grin and happy giggle.

Emotion consumes you then, longing like you’ve never felt in your life, chest aching with how badly you want that.

It’s not as if you’re too young. You’re plenty old enough and you’ve got a secure job. You don’t subscribe to that whole biological clock nonsense, but you do feel that if you are going to potentially have a baby, it might be better to do it now while you’re still in relatively good health.

You groan, dropping your face into your open palms, the movie you'd been watching to try and distract yourself long forgotten as it continues to play on the television.

This is a lot to think about, you ponder to yourself. Taking a deep breath in and releasing it slowly, you decide the mature thing to do is give yourself more time to ruminate on it. Having a baby is no small decision. You need to be absolutely certain it’s what you want. It’s going to change your entire life, everything, and you’d be responsible for a new life. So, you’ll have to give yourself a few months to decide and then you can go from there.

***

You’re scrolling through yet another article on your laptop, engrossed in every detail of the process of artificial insemination and the symptoms and side effects that come with it. So engrossed, in fact, that you don’t hear the key turning in the lock, the door opening and closing, and the heavy footfalls that follow.

It’s only when Bucky asks, “Whatcha reading?” that you are even aware of his presence.

You startle so hard that your knee slams into the underside of your table. Ignoring the throbbing pain in your knee and your wildly beating heart, you close your laptop with a snap and turn to Bucky.

“You could knock,” you grouse.

“Why give me a key, then?” he retorts, unapologetic.

You roll your eyes and grumble under your breath, “Clearly, it was a mistake.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

Brows furrowed, you ask, “What?”

He gestures to your laptop. “What were you reading? Your nose was nearly smushed against the screen.”

You blink, trying to think of a reasonable excuse and coming up empty.

“Nothing,” is all your brilliant mind can supply.

Bucky’s eyes narrow for a few seconds, and you pray to every higher power and all that is holy and good that he won’t press further. You remain frozen under Bucky’s suspicious stare, hearing that Old West shootout music playing in your mind.

Thankfully, it seems the deities are feeling indulgent, as Bucky chooses let it go.

He holds up the bags he carried in. “I brought lunch.”

You perk up instantly. “Did you go to that one place—?”

“With the fried rice you like so much, yes,” he finishes for you, smiling.

“You’re the best,” you sigh, stomach rumbling eagerly.

“I know,” he replies, solemn and dramatic like the idiot he is.

He begins taking out the styrofoam boxes and chattering on about something dumb Steve did the other day, and you mean to listen, you really do. It’s just. That article is still lingering in your brain. There’s so many steps and hassles. Plus, it’s not cheap. It would be a hefty investment.

You’d only researched it because, after months of contemplating the pros and cons of having a baby, you determined the pros far outweigh the cons. But then the problem was: how to even make it happen.

Your first thought was that you didn’t think you’d let just any man come inside you, for many obvious reasons. You’d shuddered to think of it. Then there was surrogacy, which is admirable and wonderful, but you’d quickly dismissed that idea as you realized you wanted to actually carry the baby yourself. So that led you to artificial insemination. You weren’t sure how you felt about it yet. There was something a little too clinical about choosing a random man’s sperm to have injected into your uterus.

Bucky’s still speaking as he grabs plates and forks, unaware of your inner monologue. “And then he got Sam involved,” he’s saying, scooping out food onto the plates, “which, as you know, I always think is a dumb thing to do.”

“I want to have a baby,” you blurt, eyes widening at your outburst.

Bucky fumbles with the spoon, sending fried rice flying, muttering curses as he tries to catch it with no luck as it lands with a dull clunk on the table. The silence that follows is loud. It feels like your heart is in your throat as you wait for him to just say something, anything.

“This is… quite a mess I’ve made,” Bucky finally observes. His voice is a bit higher than usual. “Where’s your vacuum? Actually, do you have one of those mini ones? Or would Clorox wipes be better? You know what, I’ll do both.”

He nods decisively then turns an expectant look towards you. His eyes look a bit wild, but you wisely keep that to yourself.

Wordlessly, you direct him to your hall closet. You realize your error a second too late when he opens the closet and reaches for the vacuum on the top shelf, where the purchase you’d made months ago also rests. His fingers get caught in the plastic bag when he grabs the handheld vacuum and its contents spill out. He goes to catch them right away, but once it registers what they are, he lets go of them like they’re on fire and nearly drops the vacuum on his foot.

Heat has been steadily creeping up your neck, but now your whole body feels aflame with embarrassment. The two of you stare at the baby clothes lying unassumingly on the floor for a long moment, until Bucky quietly walks back to the table with the vacuum clutched tightly in his fist. He flicks the switch on and it whirs to life, sucking up the bits of rice scattered around the table.

There’s another lengthy silence after he turns the vacuum off and you're unable to find the right thing to say to break it. Bucky does it for you.

“So… You’re serious.”

You meet his eyes and sigh heavily. “Yeah.”

He blinks a few times before clearing his throat, schooling his expression carefully. “I didn’t realize you were seeing someone.”

You cough lightly and start picking the peas out of your fried rice. “Well, that would be because I’m not.”

“I don’t think I follow,” he admits slowly.

You sigh again, lowering your gaze to your lap. “Look, I’ve thought about this a lot, okay? I’ve given myself months to really make sure it’s what I want. I’m in a good place in my life to have one, Bucky, and I don’t want to feel pressured to wait until I might get married.” You lift your gaze to his. “I want to have a baby,” you repeat firmly. “And I don’t need a partner to have one.”

You’re not sure why you feel the need to defend yourself. It’s not up to Bucky what you decide to do. You don’t need his approval, or anyone else’s. Maybe it’s because, even though you know it's not true, it feels like you're making too hasty of a decision.

After a beat, Bucky amends, “Well, I mean… You do…”

“Oh my god, shut up, you know what I mean,” you groan as you smack his arm, glad that he's not calling you crazy or trying to talk you out of it.

He doesn’t even flinch, the jerk.

“Wait, so what were you reading when I got here?” he suddenly questions, brows furrowed.

“Nothing,” you say too quickly, guiltily.

“Let me see your laptop then,” he counters as he crosses his arms over his chest.

You flounder for a second, scoffing. “What? No!”

“It can’t be that embarrassing, just show me,” he wheedles.

“Absolutely not.”

“Let me see!”

“It’s private!”

“Don’t be a chicken.”

Your eye twitches. “I’m not a chicken.” Bucky smirks and before he can even open his mouth you interject with a finger pointed accusingly at his face, “Do not start clucking at me, Bucky. I’ll kick your ass,” you threaten, though it's weak and you're not the only one who knows it.

You glare when his smirk only widens. Slowly, he moves his arms like he’s gonna flap them like chicken wings.

“Ugh! God, fine! You wanna know what I was reading?” You open your laptop and slide it over to him, turning it to where he can read it. “There.”

Bucky scans the page, then scans it again, eyes flicking all over like it’s in a different language. His cheeks grow redder and redder as he reads and you get a small sense of satisfaction at the sight.

“Wow,” he mutters finally. “You’re turkey baster serious.”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” you say, pinching the bridge of your nose.

“What?” he asks innocently.

When you make eye contact with him, you purse your lips to keep the laughter threatening to bubble out at bay, but the ever growing smile on Bucky’s face is hard to resist and you find yourself snorting a laugh that leads to uncontrollable giggles. Bucky’s laughing with you, his eyes crinkling on the sides. The tension you hadn’t realized you held in your shoulders loosens and you nudge his knee with yours in silent thanks.

“So,” he says after you've both calmed down.

“So,” you repeat, dragging it out, drumming your fingers on the tabletop. “I’ve been doing research, checking out all of my options, and while artificial insemination seems like the best choice… I don’t know, there’s just something too clinical about it,” you reply, voicing your concerns, “It doesn’t feel right. I know I said I don’t need a partner, and I don’t, but… Having absolutely no connection is weird.”

You shrug, waving a hand as if to say oh well, putting an end to the conversation, and pick up your plate to carry it over to the microwave. You reheat Bucky’s food while you’re up, and then you both start eating in comfortable silence. He gets halfway through his meal before speaking up.

“Have you… I mean, did you think about… I’ve heard that, uh. Some people ask another person…”

He trails off, clearly frustrated that he can’t just spit out what he’s trying to say. You think you understand what he means, though.

“I read up on surrogacy,” you say, biting your lip. “But I don’t think I’d want someone else to carry my baby.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t suggesting, uh, that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it!” he rushes to say.

You tilt your head. “What did you mean then?”

“Well,” Bucky starts, stilted, licking his lips. “For the artificial insemination, have you considered… you know. Asking someone you’re close with?”

You frown, not following.

“For—for the sperm,” he clarifies, shifting in his seat.

“Oh,” you breathe, blinking rapidly, surprised as you think of how to reply. “Um. No? I wouldn’t even know who I could ask, to be honest. That’s quite the request, you know? Who would—“

“Me,” he interrupts, determined and cheeks flushed, “I would.”

Your own face heats. “Oh,” you say again, quieter.

You can say, with full confidence, that not once did it cross your mind to ask anyone to help you, but you especially would have never given thought to asking Bucky.

For a list of reasons, really, with “it’s Bucky” being right at the very top. Like—sure, yes, you’re in love with him, but after two years of no signs of reciprocation you’ve learned to stop dreaming, to stop hoping. If the attraction was mutual he would have shown it by now, right? And on top of that, his friendship means the world to you and you wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it. You'd never forgive yourself if you ever managed to fuck up the one good, constant thing going for you.

“Bucky,” you start, slow and careful, “this… This isn't something you can just jump into. It’s something you should think about for a while.”

He contemplates that for a second. “You’re right,” he concedes with a nod. “But…” He purses his lips, glancing away for a minute before turning back to you, leaning forward. “Okay listen, this is important for you. It’s going to change your whole life. You said it yourself, not having a connection to the sperm donor feels wrong. You’re my best friend, alright? I—care about you. You should pick someone you can trust.”

He clenches his jaw after he finishes speaking. You sort of hate the way your heart both flutters and plummets at his words. It’s nice to know you matter to him, just not in the way you’ve wanted for too long.

And if you’re really honest with yourself, Bucky would be a great choice as a donor. He’s in great health, has strong features that would look wonderful on any gender. But would you be able to handle the repercussions of having his child? Would you be able to look at your baby and see those features without it sending a pang through your chest every single time? You can’t say for certain.

Yet, the chance to have that type of connection with him, selfishly, sounds too good to pass up.

“At least think about it for a few days,” you murmur reluctantly.

It’s the most acceptance he’ll get and he knows it. A smile blooms across his face and you have to swallow down the warring emotions rising within you.

***

With the amount of research you do on the subject now, it doesn’t take long for you to find out that there are at-home kits for artificial insemination that are much easier (and cheaper). It’s easy to settle on that, clicking on the info to order your kit with butterflies fluttering in your stomach.

You read through the instructions online and it all sounds simple enough, until you get to the part where it says that having an orgasm after injection helps increase your chances of conception.

Blinking, heat crawling up your neck, you read that step several times, hoping you read it wrong, but it doesn’t change.

You… You can’t masturbate with Bucky’s sperm inside you. That’s a line you refuse to cross.

And besides, he’s a healthy man in his thirties who exercises regularly and eats fairly healthy food! You probably—definitely—won’t need to take that step. It’ll be fine. Probably.

Once the kit arrives, you call Bucky and ask him to come over so you can explain the process to him. Since he’s only across the hall of your apartment building, he’s there a moment later, letting himself in with his key.

“Let’s make a baby,” is how he greets you.

“Hold your horses,” you reply, fighting back a laugh. “I gotta walk you through everything first.”

He plops himself down next to you on your couch. “Fine, fine. Go ahead.”

Squaring your shoulders, you begin telling him how it all works, and what parts he is key for. You speak through your awkwardness, avoiding eye contact, when you explain that he’ll need to masturbate into a clean, sterile cup. You leave out how it’s suggested for you to also masturbate, deciding it’s not pertinent information for him to know.

“When do we start?” he asks once you’re done.

“I have to take an ovulation test first to find out the best days for me to conceive, but once I do that we’ll be able to, um.” You gesture vaguely. “I’ll be able to do the injections.”

He nods. “Alright.” He looks at you then, taking your hand in his and giving it a squeeze. “I’ll be here every step of the way, okay?”

“I know,” you say, smiling. “Thank you, Bucky.”

“You’re welcome,” he returns softly.

“No, really, thank you,” you assert. “This is a lot to take on and I can never fully repay you.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I want you to be happy, and I can see that having this baby is going to do that. I’ll do whatever I need to do to ensure it happens.”

You pull him into a hug, willing yourself to not cry. You’re not sure he’ll ever understand what this means for you, personally, or that you’d ever find a way to express it. He’s giving you so much more than just a baby.

***

The first injection time comes and you find yourself fidgeting where you sit as you wait for Bucky to bring over the, uh… sample. You do your best to not think about what he’s doing in his apartment, to not think about exactly how he’s collecting his sperm.

Now is not the time, you mentally scold yourself. Get it together.

A timid knock at your door alerts you to his presence. The fact he’s knocking says a lot about his own level of embarrassment about the situation.

His cheeks are pink when you open the door. “Uh, hi.”

“Hi,” you return.

He clears his throat and lifts the small cup in his hand. “Here’s… well, you know.”

You gingerly take it from him, not knowing what else to say, but when he smiles somewhat crookedly and turns to leave, you find yourself asking, “Will you stay?”

Bucky’s steps pause. “Huh?”

“Will you—I mean… Would you mind staying?” You shift on your feet. “This is a big moment for me. I-I don’t want to do it alone.”

“Are you asking me to…?” He trails off awkwardly.

“Oh! God, no, I wouldn’t—no,” you assure, huffing a laugh, “I’m doing the injection, I just need a little moral support. That’s all.”

Bucky smiles. “Sure, I’ll stay.”

Relief floods through you. You step aside to let him in, closing the door behind him. He follows you to your bedroom and just before entering you stop in your tracks, nearly causing Bucky to bump into you.

“Um,” you mutter, turning to him. “You’ll have to, ah, sit out here,” you explain. “I have to be lying down…”

Understanding dawns on him. “Oh! Right, right, of course. Sorry.”

“I’ll let you know when I’m done,” you promise.

He nods and watches you close the door. You walk over to your bed and sit down, glancing at the syringe you’ll be using and biting the inside of your cheek.

This is it. There’s really no going back after this. Sure, you may not get pregnant the first time, but Bucky’s already said he’d help you for as long as it takes. It’s just… very real now. You don’t feel any doubts, though. You want this.

Inhaling a large breath and slowly letting it out, hands shaking, you take the lid off the cup and pick up the syringe. You remember the instructions, making sure there’s as little air sucked in as possible when you draw out the semen, and getting rid of the few air bubbles that you see. You grab your pillows and lie down, propping them beneath you to lift your hips.

“Here I go,” you mumble to yourself, taking another deep breath and releasing it.

A couple minutes later, the syringe is empty and you’ve got your legs pulled up to your chest. You cover yourself with your blanket and call out Bucky’s name.

“You okay?” you hear through the door.

“Will you come here, please?” you ask.

He walks in cautiously, making sure you’re decently covered before entering fully, wisely not commenting on your position. “Well?”

“I did it,” you whisper.

He stays quiet, letting you parse through your thoughts. You blink when you feel tears threatening to gather in your eyes. He’s beside you in an instant, crawling in the bed and lying down, taking your hand in his.

“Congratulations,” he says softly.

“Don’t congratulate me yet,” you reply, sniffing and wiping at your eyes.

“Still,” he presses. “You’re one step closer now.”

He pulls your hand up and kisses the back of it. You give him a watery smile. The two of you lay there in silence for a moment before Bucky breaks it.

“This isn’t how I pictured myself making a baby.”

It startles a laugh out of you and Bucky grins, pleased to have helped ease the tense atmosphere. He distracts you with idle conversation after that, talking about his plans for the upcoming weekend, asking about yours, tells you about the newest stupid thing Sam did; he talks and talks and talks, until your anxiety is gone, and then he stays to cook dinner for you.

Your hug when he gets ready to head back to his apartment lasts a couple minutes longer than usual. Bucky quietly allows it, dropping a kiss on your forehead when you pull away.

“Same time next week?” he jokes, making you crack a smile.

“Goodbye, Bucky,” you reply exasperatedly as you close your door.

“Bye, sweetheart,” he returns over his shoulder.

***

Weeks pass. More injections. Pregnancy tests taken.

But nothing happens.

All of your tests come back negative.

When reading up on artificial insemination, and pregnancy in general, you’d understood that there was a chance it wouldn’t happen right away. You thought you were fine with that, that you’d be alright with the waiting and all. Looking at your growing collection of negative tests, however, has a sense of dread building within you. You do your best to quell it, telling yourself there’s no need to stress over it. Yet.

Besides, your mind supplies in an overly cheerful manner, there’s still one more method to try!

***

The next time Bucky brings over his sample, he lets himself in, like always, and passes along the cup with an encouraging smile. You try to smile back, but it feels more like a grimace. He either doesn’t notice or he at least pretends not to, thankfully.

But when he goes to make himself comfortable to wait, you’re reminded that you haven’t told him about the, uh… change in procedure, so to speak.

You clear your throat delicately. “I don’t think you’ll need to stick around this time.”

Bucky frowns. “Why not?”

“Because…” You trail off, cheeks pinking, yet not finishing the sentence, because how do you explain this?

“I promised you I’d be here every step of the way,” he recalls. “I intend to keep that promise.”

You wince. “I really appreciate where your heart is, Bucky, I really do, but I literally cannot let you be here for this injection.”

“Why not?”

You look heavenward for mercy. “I have to…”

When you don’t finish your sentence again, Bucky raises a single brow, gesturing for you to go on. “You have to… what?”

You huff, throwing your arms out. “I have to orgasm, okay?”

His eyes go a little bit wide, but you can tell he tries to control his reaction. He swallows, shifting where he sits on the couch.

“Oh,” he mumbles. “Have… have you had to do that before?”

“No. Well, I mean, it was suggested, but I never…”

His eyebrows furrow. “Does it help or something?”

You absently scratch your neck. “They say it increases the chances of conception.”

“But you haven’t been doing… that.”

“I didn’t think I’d need to.”

Bucky inhales like he’s going to say something, but then doesn’t.

“Yeah, so, I don’t think you should be here,” you utter, quickly adding, “No offense.”

“No, yeah, that’s fair, um. I’ll just—I’ll head back to my apartment,” he states as he stands. “You can—I mean, if you still want me to—I can come back over? After you… uh…”

“I’ll let you know,” you reply, voice tight and high.

He nods, looking lost and like he wants to say more but thinks better of it. Finally, he mutters a soft bye and is out the door.

Alone now, your stomach feels like it’s tying itself in knots and your heart is doing its damnedest to beat out of your chest. You try to tell yourself that it’s just another injection, that this is the same as any other time you've done this, but you know it’s not. It's really, really not.

Laying down on your bed, syringe in hand, is much more nerve wracking than before. On your left lies a new addition to your routine. You don’t know why you’re acting like such a prude all the sudden. It’s not like you’ve never masturbated before. Though, you suppose the major difference is that you didn’t have Bucky’s sperm hangin’ out in your vagina all those other times while you did it.

“Quit being such a goober about this,” you tell yourself.

This has to be done for a reason. If you want to have a baby—and you do, very badly—then you’re gonna have to deal with the process.

Once you’ve injected the sperm, you reach for your bullet vibrator next to your left hand. The instructions say not to insert anything, only to stimulate your clit. You try to clear your head, think of it as a chore or something, yet it’s hard not to think of a certain someone.

The vibrator buzzes with the press of a button. You adjust your hips, making sure they’re tilted, then bring the vibrator to your clit. The first touch makes your stomach tense and thighs spasm.

You close your eyes, running the toy along your slit. You really don’t want to drag this out, would prefer to get it over with as quickly as possible, but your mind begins running away with images.

Bucky, settled between your spread thighs, one hand resting on one of them, the other controlling the vibrator. You imagine he’d tease you, slowly trail it along the crease of your thighs, over your hips; everywhere but where you wanted it.

Bucky would probably give in once you whine and beg enough, once your desperation bled into your voice, and hold the vibrator directly to your clit, drink in your cries of pleasure like they’re the finest whisky.

He’d mutter soft but firm encouragement, tell you how good you’re doing, how good you sound. He’d start circling the vibrator, going from quick to lazy swirls, then he’d change the setting to a higher one just to hear you whimper. His free hand would run up your torso to pinch at your nipples for added stimulation.

When you imagine him leaning down to add his tongue into the mix, your mind blanks as your climax hits you, a ragged moan forcing its way out of your throat. You’re quick to turn the vibrator off and toss it to the floor, deciding you’ll worry about cleaning it later, chest heaving as you pant for breath after an intense orgasm.

Shame and embarrassment consume you, mock you for using Bucky to rub one out. You’d given in to the fantasy so easily.

Truthfully, it’s not the first time you’ve thought of him while pleasuring yourself, but the context this time is completely different, and you feel immediately guilty. Admittedly, it’s probably irrational.

That doesn’t stop you from cringing at your actions.

***

You’re sure you’ve bought out the entire pregnancy test section from the convenience store down the block. Currently, there are six different brands in front of you, all promising the most accurate results.

Bucky is sitting in your bedroom, quietly waiting for you to pee on all of them so you can both find out what they say. You chug the last bit of your third bottle of water even though your bladder is fit to burst at any moment. Turning the faucet on for modesty, you make quick work of the tests, then wash your hands.

And wait.

You call Bucky into the bathroom with you. The two of you quietly sit on the edge of your bathtub, counting down the minutes. Part of you wishes Bucky would say something dumb to break the tension, like he usually does, but you're also kind of glad he's just here, next to you, a silent comfort.

It seems like hours have passed when you’re finally sure you can check them.

The first one is negative, and so is the second. The third, however, reads positive. Your heart begins racing, clutching at the counter, but before your hopes get too carried away you read the rest. To your dismay, they are all negative. You stare down at them all, eyes falling on the loan positive test multiple times, knowing that it’s likely a false positive, yet stupidly hoping otherwise.

Your chin wobbles. Bucky hugs you from behind, resting his cheek on your shoulder.

“What do I do, Bucky?”

At your broken whisper, he sighs. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

Neither of you know what to say or do after that. Bucky continues offering quiet support, his solid presence at your back, and you’re grateful. Eventually, he leads you out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, sitting you down at the table as he starts preparing dinner.

When you’re both eating the spaghetti he made, he breaks the silence.

“Do you think…” he starts, pausing to think of how to phrase his question before carefully carrying on. “Are you going to stop?”

“I don’t want to,” you answer, the implied but hanging heavy in the air.

Bucky sits his fork down. “I know you want this, very much.” He pushes his hair out of his face as he leans forward, elbows settling on the table. “But I hate seeing how sad you get when the tests come out negative. I feel so… powerless. Like I could be doing more or something.”

“You’re doing all you can, Bucky,” you assure.

“That’s the thing, though. I don’t think I am.”

You frown. “What do you mean?”

He licks his lips, locking his fingers together. “I think we should have sex.”

Your fork drops to your plate with a clang, eyes going wide.

“I apologize for how blunt that came out,” he states with a wince. “But, I mean, think about it. You’ve only been using my sperm from a syringe, and up until the last time, you hadn’t been, um, orgasming with it.” You look away, bashful. “I just wonder if maybe trying the old-fashioned way would give you better results.”

“Bucky,” you start, opening and closing your mouth a couple times before shaking your head. “It’s one thing for you to offer your sperm, which I’m thankful for, truly, but… Having sex?”

“I’ve already told you I’m willing to do whatever I need to do,” he retorts earnestly. “Your happiness means a lot to me, okay? I hate sitting around and watching your heart break every week. You’ve tried it your way, now I think we should try mine.”

“I-I don’t know,” you hesitate, chewing on the inside of your cheek, knee beginning to bounce under the table.

His hand slides onto your knee, stilling the movement as he ducks his head to meet your gaze. His eyes are impossibly sincere and your resolve crumbles in an instant.

“It won’t… It’s not going to change anything,” he assures. “I won’t allow it.”

You swallow roughly. He may not, but your heart is going to take its toughest beating yet. It’s going to be hopeless trying to overcome the inevitable emotions that come with sex.

Even so, somehow, your longing for a baby eclipses all of this. Now that you’ve imagined holding your child in your arms, raising them and loving them, you can’t go back. Not anymore.

“Okay,” you allow, softly.

Bucky’s shoulders relax, lips tipping up into a devastating smile.

You’re so fucked. (Pun intended.)

***

Two nights later, you’re pacing in your bedroom, impatiently waiting for Bucky to arrive. You’d been unsure whether or not you should dress up. You didn’t see the point, honestly. Still, a small part of you wondered what his reaction would be if he saw you all done up in lingerie. At the moment, you’re in an oversized t-shirt and pajama shorts.

It’s Bucky, you think, and this isn’t a normal situation, it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing.

You hear his key turning in the lock then and your heart begins hammering away. He calls your name as he enters.

“In here,” you reply, twisting your fingers nervously.

He walks into your room looking just as on edge as you are. He also seems to have had the same idea about his attire, comfortable in his white tee and sweatpants. His feet are bare and for whatever reason that feels way more intimate than it has any right to.

“Hey,” he greets.

“Hi.”

You bite your lip, eyes flitting around your room and coming back to settle on Bucky. He huffs.

“This is ridiculous,” he declares, “It’s just us.”

“Right,” you nod, biting the inside of your cheek.

“It’s not gonna be weird.”

“Nope.”

His jaw ticks. You stare back at him. It only takes a moment for you to realize that somebody has to make the first move, so you steel yourself and turn on your heel, walking towards your bed.

“I’m keeping my shirt on,” you announce as you unceremoniously drop onto the mattress, grabbing your pillows to stuff them under you.

Bucky follows at a sedate pace, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He pauses next to you, taking a second to roll his shoulders, then he climbs in and settles in front of your bent legs. He gingerly places his hands on your knees.

“May I?” he asks.

Mouth suddenly dry, you nod. He moves his hands to the waistband of your shorts and tugs. You lift your hips to help him slide them down and off, along with your underwear. Gently, he spreads your legs.

Your breathing has picked up considerably, eyes firmly trained on the ceiling. You know you’re already wet and are blessedly thankful he doesn’t mention it.

The first slide of his fingers has you inhaling sharply. He slowly gathers your slick and trails it up to your clit, lightly circling it. Your mind recalls your fantasy, but you quickly shove it back to the depths of your thoughts, lest you do something idiotic like tell him about it.

He spreads your legs more, adjusting his position between them. His fingers move down until he can sink one into you. You gasp, hands shooting out to grasp your sheets. He wastes no time and begins thrusting his finger inside you.

It becomes quickly apparent to you that it’s going to be very difficult to hold back any noise or reactions. Goddamnit, you will try, though!

When he decides it’s time to add another finger, you feel yourself clench around them, and his soft fuck does not go unnoticed, evident in the way your pussy traitorously clenches again.

“Can I…?” he asks, voice cracking, but doesn’t finish his thought, making you have to break your staring contest with the ceiling and look at him.

He’s not even looking back at you, he’s staring at his fingers, watching them pump in and out of you, half bent over with a slack jaw, like he wants to…

He meets your eyes then, licking his lips.

Oh.

Swallowing around the sudden lump in your throat, knowing you’re probably going to regret it, you nod.

He’s leaning over and sucking on your clit before you can even blink. You cry out, thighs trying to clamp around his head, but his free hand shoots out to hold you open. It makes you squirm, fisting the sheets even tighter. His fingers curl inside you as his tongue licks around them and you whine, high and needy, and then mouth is back on your clit, tongue swiping over it, sucking on it with loud, obscene noises.

His hand comes up to grab the hem of your shirt, shoves it upward until it’s bunched underneath your breasts. Those fingers ghost back down your torso, goosebumps erupting in their wake.

He speeds up his thrusts and your hand flies down to grip his hair. You don’t think you’re meant to hear the quiet grunt he lets out, but you do, and it has you panting even harder. Your orgasm is building, fast, and you pull on his hair in warning.

“Bucky,” you say on a gasp.

Using his arm to hold you down, his free hand joins, thumb swiping over your clit now as he dips his head to slide his tongue in alongside his fingers. It draws a yell out of you, the ever expanding pleasure within you bursting into the hardest orgasm you’ve experienced thus far in your adult life. You know you’re moaning, bucking into the sensations coursing through you, and you’d feel abashed if you didn’t feel so fucking good.

Before you can become too sensitive, Bucky withdraws his fingers and sits up. You can’t even really catch your breath, though, because in the next second he’s whipping his t-shirt off and shoving his sweatpants down far enough to free his cock.

Your thighs do clamp closed then, at the sight of how thick he is, and he tries and fails to keep his smirk hidden.

“Oh, shut up,” you wheeze.

“Didn’t say anything,” he counters.

He doesn’t let you argue, choosing that moment to shuffle closer and line up with your opening. Cautiously, he eases himself inside, inch by inch. Your mouth drops open, brows furrowing as he fills you, stretching you so perfectly. When he’s in as far as he can go, the breath wooshes out of him, his head falling back. You know he’s trying to be polite and let you adjust, but—

“Oh my god, move,” you demand, impatient.

He huffs a laugh, dropping his heavy lidded gaze to yours. “Bossy.”

“Did you really expect anything else—oh!”

The grin he aims your way after grinding into you is downright sinful. You mentally tell yourself to kick him for that later.

He grabs your hips and the pillows and settles you closer to his lap, changing the angle, then pulls out and glides back in, creating a painstakingly slow rhythm.

You have to close your eyes. You can’t look at him anymore. You knew he was probably a god in bed, but to now have firsthand experience? There was no way you’d be able to fuck anyone else without comparing them.

His grip on your hips tightens, the only warning you get before his thrusts turn sharp.

“Fuck,” you cry out, your hands reaching up to grip the pillow beneath your head.

The sound of your skin meeting his is harsh in the otherwise quiet room. Well, okay, you’re not exactly being quiet, but you can’t be blamed for that.

Bucky, however, is nearly silent. The only thing you hear from him is heavy breathing. You wonder if he’s holding back, the thought crossing your mind for a split second, and then you’re clenching around his cock, trying to see if you can gain a reaction. And boy, do you get one.

He grunts and sucks in a breath, lips parting as his eyes squeeze shut. His hips pick up their pace and hair falls into his face. You find yourself wishing he was closer so you could brush it out of the way.

Stop it, you scold yourself.

He pauses to grind into you again, your walls fluttering around his throbbing cock, and you both sigh. Bucky leans forward, hooking your legs into the crooks of his elbows, and resumes his brutal pace.

“O-Oh,” you whimper.

The new angle is heavenly, his cock dragging along a spot inside you that you thought nobody else could find. Unable to help yourself, you clutch at his arms, nails digging in.

“Shit,” he groans, thrusts faltering.

He lets go of one of your legs to slip his hand between you, rubbing at your clit and sending you that much closer to your second orgasm. He can tell you’re close, but you’re gonna need something to push you over the edge. He leans down even closer, breath fanning out against your cheek.

“C’mon,” he pants. “Let go.”

You shiver when his tongue flicks your earlobe and sucks it into his mouth, keening as the pressure builds. He thrusts harder, faster, and when you grasp his hair and pull, he growls and latches on to your shoulder, biting down. You gasp from the added pain and then you’re coming, shuddering and whining through your release. Bucky isn’t far behind, raising up and fucking into you savagely before pausing abruptly, groaning as he finally comes. He lazily thrusts a few more times to draw it out, then stops, stilling with his cock inside you.

Your hair is sticking to your forehead, as well as your shirt to your clammy back, breathing in lungfuls of air. Bucky is softly caressing your thighs, letting out shaky breaths as your pussy continues to flutter around him.

It takes several moments for you to gather your wits, for the rest of the world to come filtering back in. You are truly and completely fucked now, in every sense of the word.

“Well…” You trail off, voice scratchy.

“That was…”

“Mhm,” you mumble.

Bucky sighs heavily. “Let’s hope it worked this time.”

You hum. “Thank you for your service,” you reply with a lazy salute.

You yelp when he pinches your hip, kicking at him in retaliation. The jostling reminds you, with a gasping groan, that he’s still buried balls deep inside you.

“Um.” You cough lightly. “You wanna, you know… pull out?”

He looks down where you’re connected like it hadn’t even dawned on him. “Oh, uh. Well, I thought maybe it could, like. Help.”

His gaze stays locked, fingers flexing on your hips, and you feel like squirming again.

“I think it’s good,” you say quietly.

Bucky finally glances back up at your shy tone, cheeks pinking. He clears his throat.

“Right.”

Carefully, he eases his softening cock out of you, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from making a noise.

You can’t hold back yours, though, gasping once he’s gone. You feel unbearably empty, but refrain from voicing that incessant thought.

Bucky’s intense eyes stare at your pussy until you reach for the throw blanket next to you. He watches you throw it over your lap, drawing your legs up to your chest, and takes that as his cue, jolting into action.

“Okay, so.” He starts, then stops, climbs off your bed and pulls his sweatpants back up. “This was—I mean, if it doesn’t take this time, we can… try again.”

“Yeah,” you mutter. “Sounds good.”

He nods, bending to pick up his discarded t-shirt. “Great. I’ll just, um, see myself out, I guess.”

You nod, sending a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes in his direction. He seems to contemplate something for a second, then leans down to kiss your forehead before saying a quick goodbye and leaving.

As soon as you hear your apartment door shut, you let your tears fall.

***

It’s not really like you mean to avoid him after that.

Honest.

You simply become busy, that’s all. You definitely don’t go out of your way by taking the stairs in your apartment building to avoid possibly bumping into him in the elevator. No, you take the stairs because you could use the cardio. It’s important you stay healthy right now. And when he texts you to ask if you want to have dinner, you can’t help that you’ve got boatloads of work to catch up on—all five times he asks.

Okay, so, that’s a lie. You’re totally avoiding him. But what on earth are you supposed to say to him now? You don’t think you’d even be able to look him in the eye anymore, not after the fuck of your goddamn life.

That night confirmed what you already knew for the last two years: Bucky absolutely ruined you for anyone else.

More than anything, though, you were angry with yourself. He’d only offered because you weren’t getting your desired results the other way. You should have been able to separate your feelings and emotions from all of it. After all, none of this was about whatever you feel towards Bucky. This was about trying to conceive a baby.

You try telling yourself to get over it. He’s your best friend, you can’t just cut him off because you’re a spineless pansy.

I just need some time, you reason. You can give yourself a few days to wallow over what could have been and then you can reach out to him and pretend like everything is fine. Because it is.

***

Flash forward two weeks to you attempting to sneak into your apartment, only to jump out of your skin when you turn around and find Bucky sitting on your couch, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Oh, good, you’re still alive,” he drawls.

His tone suggests annoyance. You suppose you deserve that.

“Hey,” you say after a pause.

He stares at you for a moment longer before speaking again. “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t let it get weird.”

You agreed, you almost say, thankfully biting it back. You drop your purse on the entryway table, sliding your shoes off and making your way over to sit next to him.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble. You tug your sweater sleeves down and tuck your feet beneath you. “I haven’t ever… I’ve never been intimate with a friend before. It was just… a lot.”

It’s a half truth, at least. You haven’t had sex with a friend before. Or, well, not one you had feelings for.

“You could’ve just told me,” he replies, reaching for your hand.

You nod. “I know, and I should have, I just. Things are all out of whack lately with the whole… trying to get pregnant thing.”

“If I overstepped in any way—” Bucky starts, but you’re quick to interrupt.

“You didn’t,” you promise. “You’ve been nothing but fantastic throughout this whole ordeal. Honestly, Bucky, you’ve done way more than anyone else would have in this situation. I just had a lot going on in my head and let it get the best of me. I’m fine, I swear.”

He searches your eyes and must find what he’s looking for.

“Don’t shut me out again,” he pleads.

Heart cracking in your chest, you can only nod, shuffling closer to pull him into a hug. He buries his face in your neck and holds on tight.

***

Another week passes.

Bucky is with you as you wait for the results of the latest pregnancy test. He’s reassured you that you’ll keep trying until it happens if it didn’t work this time.

When the timer on your phone goes off, you release the breath you’ve been holding. You take tentative steps over to the sink and gingerly pick up the test.

Positive.

Your stomach swoops. It’s positive. You check again, reading the digitized screen, but it stays the same. Positive. Holy shit.

“Okay, wait, no, I need to do more. I can’t get my hopes up again,” you mutter, rushing to open the cabinet under your sink to dig out several more varieties of tests.

You don’t even wait for Bucky to leave before you’re peeing on the other sticks. He’s seen it all at this point anyway, and he doesn’t seem to care, sitting on the edge of your tub with an anxious expression. The downside is that you have to wait another few minutes for these tests to finish and you can’t sit still, pacing back and forth in the small space of your bathroom.

The timer goes off again. You feel like you’re going to throw up when you finally work up the courage to look down.

Every single one of them… Positive.

A shocked, happy laugh escapes you. You cover your mouth, turning to Bucky with wide eyes.

He rises to his full height, coming closer and peering down at the tests, then back to your teary eyed expression.

“Did we…?”

Words failing you, you nod, giggling in astonishment. Bucky’s face breaks into the biggest, handsomest, most gut-wrenching smile. His happiness is palpable and you’re suddenly so overcome with emotion. Your hands are gripping his face and angling it to align your lips to his before you register what you’re doing. He freezes and you hurriedly pull away, taking a few steps back.

“I’m so sorry, I-I don’t know why—”

“Shut up,” he cuts you off, closing the gap between you in a single stride.

He kisses you like his life depends on it, pressing your bodies as close as possible, his hands cupping your cheeks. You clutch his shirt desperately, never wanting to let go. He steals the breath straight from your lungs when he swipes at the seam of your lips with his tongue, moaning happily when you allow him access. A feeble whine from you after he flicks his tongue against yours makes him break the kiss.

“I have a confession,” he breathes into the miniscule space between your mouths.

“What?” you question distractedly.

“I’m in love with you.”

Your gaze shoots up to his, astounded. He brushes stray hairs off your forehead, runs his thumbs softly under your eyes.

“I’ve been selfish this whole time,” he reveals. “I couldn’t let you choose some random stranger to be your sperm donor, to father your child, couldn’t bear the thought of you carrying their baby, because I’ve been in love with you since the moment I met you. I wanted to be the one. And I’m sorry for not telling you sooner, but I’m not sorry I did it.”

You’re hearing the words, yet your brain can’t seem to make sense of them. Surely you’re hearing him wrong. You can’t possibly have this too, right? You can't have Bucky and have his baby…

But he’s here, very real and solid beneath your hands, looking at you like you’re his entire world.

“Bucky…” You trail off, struggling to find the right words, at a complete loss. “I-I’ve loved you for so long now, I didn’t think you…” You shake your head, a giggle escaping you as you stare at him in wonder. “I couldn’t let myself hope.”

He grins, relieved, planting a few chaste kisses to your mouth. “I know this entire circumstance is totally backwards, but I want you, and I want this baby. I meant it when I said I’m not going anywhere.”

Fresh tears gather in the corners of your eyes. “Are you sure?” you still ask.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

You have to kiss him then, uncaring of the tears that trickle down your face. The only thing you are focused on is the way his hands trail down your back, pausing to squeeze your ass, then grip underneath to lift you. Your legs wrap around his waist, arms locked around his neck, as he heads for your bed. He makes a point of throwing your extra pillows on the floor before settling between your thighs and kissing the hell out of you.

He pulls away only to undress you and himself, but he’s always back as quickly as possible, lips pressing kisses wherever he can reach. You impatiently tug at him until his lips are attached to yours again. The way he fucks his tongue into your mouth is nothing short of indecent and it sends a rush of pure want all the way to your core.

When you bury your fingers in his hair, gripping it tight, he grunts, biting your lip. You whimper and he grins as he pulls away.

“You make the most beautiful sounds,” he praises, his hands beginning to sweep down and up, tickling under your breasts.

His thumb and forefinger pinch one of your nipples and you gasp, back arching off your mattress. He repeats it on the other side, just to hear the same noise.

“Bucky, please,” you beg.

“Please what?” he prods. His hands drift further to the creases of your thighs, spreading them open. “What do you need?”

You whine, canting your hips up. “You, I need you, please.”

“You have me, sweetheart.” He tilts his head and you make a noise of frustration. “Use your words, darlin’.”

“Fuck me, please,” you burst out, feeling your pussy clench around nothing.

Bucky smiles, slow and torturous. “Yeah? Want me to fuck you? Fuck this perfect pussy until you’re so full of my come that it drips down your beautiful thighs?”

“Oh god,” you mumble.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he teases.

His fingers slide down your slit, gathering your slick then thrusts two fingers in at once. You groan brokenly, shifting your hips to try and get more friction, but he holds them down with his metal arm. Agonizingly slow, he begins fucking you with his fingers. It’s good, it’s amazing, but it’s not enough. Not when you know what his cock feels like. He takes his precious time fingering you and you’re sure you’re going to lose your mind before the day is done.

“You have no idea how incredible you felt around my cock,” he tells you in a ridiculously conversational tone. “I was trying to think of any excuse I could come up with to have you at least one more time.”

He shifts until his mouth is directly above where you’re dripping for him, and he waits until you make eye contact with him.

“But now I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making you come apart on my cock any chance I get.”

You hardly have any functioning brain cells at the moment, but even if you could form a coherent sentence you wouldn’t have been able to say it aloud, because then he’s descending and all you can feel is the wet warmth of his mouth.

He definitely doesn’t hold back this time, that much is apparent in the way he devours you, lips and tongue drawing out noises you’ve never heard yourself make, pressing his face so far into your pussy that he has to come up for air. His mouth and chin shine when you chance a look down, and when you clench on his fingers his smile goes smug at the corners.

He plants kisses along your hips, the insides of your thighs, around where his fingers are buried within you. He curls them, in search of the spot he found last time. He knows he found it when you try to close your thighs around his head and cry out. Now that he's found it, he angles to brush it on every thrust of his fingers and attaches his mouth back on your clit.

You chant his name, nearly sobbing as you approach your climax, until finally you fly over the edge. Your vision blurs and you’re not sure if you’re making any noise now, unable to hear past the blood rushing in your ears. Bucky helps you ride it out until you’re shuddering from sensitivity.

He kisses your thighs again, trailing them up your stomach and between the valley of your breasts.

“So good, did so well,” he mutters.

Weakly, you lift your hands to trace them down his toned stomach and around his back, down further so you can cop a feel of your own, smiling at his grunt of surprise.

“That was great and all,” you say, arching your back so your chest presses against his, “but I do believe I asked you to fuck me.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Who said I was done with you?” It’s apparently a rhetorical question, as he continues before you get a chance to reply. “I’m gonna fuck you until you come, and then I’m gonna keep fucking you until you come again, and only then will I come so deep inside you there’ll be zero doubt I’ve put a baby there.”

Your legs are lifted and thrown over his shoulders in a blink, his cock pushing into your pussy, dragging out a high-pitched moan from you. There’s barely a pause and then he’s fucking you, just like you asked. The pace is brutal right from the start, a steady rhythm that has you mewling and writhing in pleasure. Bucky is watching his cock as he thrusts in and out of you, his mouth hanging open slightly as he pants. He hikes your hips up a little higher and you jolt through your startled moan. This angle is divine and the telltale signs of your second orgasm start tingling at the base of your spine.

“Can feel you,” Bucky says through panting breaths, “so close. C’mon, let me feel you.”

He pulls you down on his cock, grinding into you, his thumb reaching to rub tight circles over your clit. You sob through your release, shuddering against Bucky as you clench around him. He groans, still barely moving as you come down from your high.

“Fuck,” he grunts. “Come here.”

He helps you sit up, still seated on his cock, making you both hiss from your movement. Your arms automatically wrap around his shoulders and his around your waist. He kisses you so sweetly, a stark contradiction to the way he just fucked you. When you pull away, resting your foreheads together, he grins.

“Hi.”

You crack a smile. “Hi.”

“Ready for more?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

“You think you got it in you?” you tease as you play with the hair at the nape of his neck.

The light smack to your ass startles you and you let out a soft sound of surprise, hands tugging his hair harshly. Bucky’s eyes light up.

“Interesting,” he muses.

Another slap, a little harder than the first, and you’re whimpering, your walls clenching around his still hard cock.

“I’ll play with that later,” he promises, voice breathy.

You bury your face in his neck and start shifting your hips. He takes the hint, gathering you as close as he can and thrusts up into you. He can’t pull out as far this way, but the snap of his hips more than makes up for it. You mouth at his collarbone messily, kissing and licking your way up to his jaw, biting marks wherever you see fit. You make it up to his mouth and he kisses you, wet and filthy. You suck on his tongue and a ragged moan claws its way out of his throat. The need for air eventually has you pulling away.

“It’s a good thing you love me back,” you whisper in his ear. “Nobody else could ever compare to you.”

He growls, fisting your hair and yanking your head back to look him in the eye.

“Nobody will ever compare,” he corrects.

You moan. “Yes,” you agree, whining, “No one else could’ve given me a baby.”

Bucky thrusts harder and faster at your words. You’re picking up on a few hints and you can’t say it’s not doing it for you either.

“Filled me up so good, fucked me so well. Gonna be round with your baby soon.”

“Fuck, fuck,” he keens, hurrying to lay you flat on your back so he can fuck into you easier.

The sound of skin meeting skin fills the room, your cries of pleasure mixing in with Bucky’s grunts and curses. His grip on you tightens almost painfully as he chases both your and his orgasm. You’re sure to have bruises tomorrow and you already know you'll be poking at them to remember this moment.

“C’mon, baby, wanna feel you too,” you beg.

His thumb finds your swollen clit once more. It’s beyond sensitive now, feels like a shockwave coursing through you, and without any warning, you come. You spasm around Bucky and he swears under his breath, thrusts going sloppy. With a final groan, he comes inside you, his hips moving seemingly on their own as he draws out both your pleasures. Slowly, he comes to a stop, but he leaves his cock buried in you like he did last time.

You know you’re gonna feel too empty when he does pull out, so you don’t mind sitting like this for a while. Bucky softly runs his hands across every inch of your skin he can touch and you bask in the affection. You card your fingers through his sweaty hair, smiling when he hums happily. It takes only a minute for you to notice the way his hands migrate to your stomach, and when you do you kiss his shoulder.

“Maybe we should go again later,” you suggest faintly.

Bucky grins. “We can do it a hundred more times if you want.”

“Guess I better enjoy it while I can.”

His smile goes soft at the edges.

It’s not lost on you how incredibly crazy all of this is. There will undoubtedly be a conversation, a much needed one that isn’t going to be simple or easy, but it’s necessary.

For now, though, you bask in Bucky’s warmth and loving embrace.

***

Keys jingle as they unlock the door and you perk up where you’re sprawled on the couch. Bucky enters, arms laden with bags from the convenience store.

“They didn’t have the banana ice cream you asked for,” he announces, continuing before your pout fully forms, “but they did have the double chocolate brownie kind you love so much, so I got that, as well as the sour gummy worms, beef jerky, and fried pickles from the deli on your list of demands.”

“What about—”

“And your strawberry Fanta,” he adds with a fond, slightly exasperated smile.

You’re unable to stop your expression from going soft and dreamy.

Ever since you and Bucky figured out where to go with your relationship, he’s been even more attentive and accommodating (and that’s saying something).

You expressed your worry about the possibility of something going wrong, that one or both of you would get bored and leave, or there’d be a big fight that neither of you could forgive. He was quick to reassure you of his commitment, told you there was no way he would ever get bored of you, and that as long as you both promise to talk things out in a calm, mature way, then you’d be alright.

It all sounded so easy when it was put like that. The more you thought about it, though, the more you realized he was right. It wasn’t fair to either of you to already give up before you’d even started. So you’d taken a deep breath and leaped.

Now, you’re five and a half months in, your belly steadily growing and making everyday life increasingly uncomfortable. The changes to your body were physically and emotionally draining, to say the least. Moreso the emotional side. You’d hoped you wouldn’t be one of those pregnant women with strange cravings, and for the most part they were pretty tame, but you do like to dip your sour gummy worms in banana ice cream. Bucky didn’t attempt to hide his disgust over that.

“What did I do to deserve you?” you ask on a pleased sigh.

He places your small cornucopia of goods on the coffee table. You sit up, huffing for breath during the struggle. You go to reach for the ice cream first, but Bucky catches your hand, lacing his fingers with yours and kissing your knuckles as he kneels in front of you.

“You were yourself. Smart, kind, selfless, unbelievably sexy.” You snort at that, but he’s undeterred. “And you’re giving me the best gift I could ever dream of. A family.”

Instantly, you’re crying. He’s grown accustomed to the mood swings by now, taking it in stride as he wipes away the tears with gentle hands.

“Stop being so disgusting,” you blubber through your hiccuping cries. “You’re such an asshole.”

Bucky laughs. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

You sniffle, kissing him. “Love you,” you grumble.

He leans down and plants the softest of kisses to your belly. “And I love you, little lady.”

The idea of you having a child one day always seemed foreign and unlikely, but life has a way of turning out exactly how it’s supposed to… And you wouldn’t change a thing.

#avengers fic #marvel fic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky x reader #bucky x you #i can't remember how to tag bye

2K notes · View notes

alpaca-clouds · 4 months

Text

How to actually heal Astarion's vampirism

Okay, I have been asked this often enough to answer it like this for once.

I keep saying that actually in the Spawn Astarion ending it is not going to take an eternity to cure Astarion of his vampirism, which is after all something he wants. And the reason is fairly simple: This is still the DnD world - and the changes to vampire lore that BG3 made, are removing the usual hurdles.

Basically, there are two main options to heal a vampire of vampirism in DnD Lore.

Number 1: Wish

Number 2: True Resurrection

Wish is harder to optain (with Djini, High Level Wizards and Gods being able to cast it) but even within DnD Lore it basically is like: "Wish rewrites reality." So, if you wish for a vampire to not be a vampire anymore, Wish can do that. Sure, rule-wise there are some limitations, but those mostly maintain to balancing, not to lore questions like this.

With True Resurrection it is a bit more complicated within the DnD Lore, because for True Resurrection you gonna need the soul in question and usually undead creatured lose their souls - and the longer they are undead the harder it is to return the soul.

But BG3 lore explicitly says, that vampires actually do have their soul. At least the spawn do, because Cazador is going to sacrifice their souls - which he could not do, if they did not have them any longer. So, given that Astarion has a soul, you can just cast true resurrection and fix it.

Yes, True Resurrection is a high level spell as well, but... It is common enough that it is not gonna be that hard to obtain, really. Not if you are actively looking for a way to get access to it.

Like, depending on the edition there are also other ways to cure the undead, but these two are the main ways to go about it.

In my stuff... Well, my stuff involves doing a quest for Tymora and obtaining a very rare item from 2e through it that can be used to repeatedly cast True Resurrection. Mostly because I was looking for a way to offer the other spawn a way to get healed as well.

But yeah... Given that death in general is something that you absolutely can recover from in this world... It is not that complicated.

#baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #vampires #vampire spawn #bg3 #dnd #dungeons & dragons #astarion #astarion ancunin #cazador szarr

170 notes · View notes

copperbadge · 6 months

Note

Hello, Mr. Badge, I seem to remember that you once posted about your processes and systems for staying organized in life with Excel spreadsheets etc. I’ve been struggling a lot with depression and executive dysfunction issues and don’t want it to impact my work.

Do you use the same processes at work? I get overwhelmed with the amount of documentation we have and the exceptions to the rules in our processes.

I'm so sorry you're struggling! It's really rough, and the more complicated the task feels, the more fraught it seems, the harder it is to even get a start. I feel that hard.

As for organizing work like my home life....well, it's sort of the same. I don't make a strong distinction between life and work simply because a lot of what needs organizing in my life IS my work, so it's tough to talk about them separately.

For example, I use Google Tasks to build a to-do list each day, but that to-do list starts with "stuff I'll do before work" then "shower" then all my work stuff, then "evening" and then all the stuff to do after work, ending with "7pm chores" (because I have a lot of stuff to do right around 7pm, which I need to post about elsewhere). Then the stuff I've pushed off to next day is below that, and that just bumps up the next morning. What's important isn't really how I keep the list, but that I keep it in a way that is constantly accessible, and I've trained myself to 1. put everything on it, even stuff like "grocery shop" and 2. check it whenever I feel lost. I don't find google calendars very helpful, however, so while work makes me use one for meetings, everything else goes on a calendar I made in Google Sheets that I'm just super used to by now.

It sounds like you're having a fairly specific issue, which may not even be related to your mental health (though assuredly the mental health issues aren't helping). If you have a lot of confusing documentation and exceptions in the stuff you do at work, that can be legit stressful even for someone who isn't dealing with other stuff, so I just want you to know that this may not only be a You Problem. My problem is usually the opposite, in that I'm often the first person doing something, or the only person who's done it in a while, so there's no documentation at all. But when I do have documentation I often will simply rewrite it.

After all, just because you have a handbook doesn't mean you have to use it. You can copy it over into another document and make yourself a step-by-step guide and/or a checklist. Like, I do our holiday cards every year, and my "HOLIDAY CARDS" document says "Here's the first thing you do, here's the second, do this before going past that, check this before asking for that". Literally at one point the document says "Stop. Before you go any further, do this step. Even if you don't understand why, do this step" because in the past I've disregarded that instruction ("Why on earth would I do it this way?") and lived to regret it.

Making the guide really, really sucks. Often it will take me four or five passes at a project before my guide is comprehensive (this is my fifth year doing the holiday card project and the document still has some steps missing at the end). But once you have it, it's invaluable, and often in the past I've found other people want my guides because they're fairly clear and precise about what needs doing when. For example, you might say, "Open the file and move column B to in front of column A. NOTE: THERE IS ONE EXCEPTION, THIS IS THE EXCEPTION." Or "Once you've saved the file, save a second copy to your backup folder so you can go back to it if you delete something you shouldn't. Stop and check: is this file from before or after October? If after, remember, you have to also rename it." If you find that there's a mistake you make frequently, figure out what would stop you from making it and add that in.

(We had a guy at work whose last name was VERY long and Italian, and so when I was working phones he got a special entry in the directory document I made -- the first line was all his directory info and the second line was just the phonetic pronunciation of his last name. He found out, which I had never intended him to do, and lost his shit laughing. "No wonder you're the only one who gets it right!")

So my recommendation to you is to create your own handbook, your own templates, and your own way of doing things and just slip that back into the system you have at work. Draw a diagram by hand if you need a flow chart. My approach to all my organizational issues has always been "What would make me do this correctly / prevent me from doing that thing wrong / remind me what to do / make it easier for me to start".

I think of this nowadays as the "Take the cupboard doors off" school of organizing, because to really make full use of my kitchen in a way that I liked, I had to take some of the cupboard doors off. It looks messier and kind of cheap, but it's actually a much more organized system now, and who's in my kitchen other than me?

#sam has adhd #adhd #organizing

208 notes · View notes

bonefall · 1 month

Note

a couple of leafstar questions! 1) is the process of selecting her to be new!skyclan’s leader changed at all by the fact that brokenstar is now firestar’s travelling buddy? 2) is billyleaf sticking around as a ship, and how will it change, if at all? 3) is leafstar going to be as… notably dumb in her reactions to everything happening so far in ASC?

The list of SkyClan changes is probably longer than the list of things that are staying the same. Cultural expansions, a very different culture, unique politics, even an alternate Warrior Code. Real fans of SkyClan want them to be completely different <3

Leafstar's not an exception. I HATE canon Leafstar. Every action they've taken with her has felt absolutely awful since Firestar's Quest so I'm just overwriting her completely.

SkyClan's Leadership

The part of Firestar's Quietus where Firestar and Brokenstar actually CHOOSE who the new leader is going to be is a bit up in the air. I have the beginning and end with the rats figured out-- but the middle has been evading me.

I know that Brokenstar prefers Sharpclaw, at first. Probably because Sharpclaw is so aggressive and dedicated to the old ways.

So it makes sense that Firestar prefers Leafdapple. She's making him realize things about his own way of ruling, parts of Clan culture he's come to accept uncritically.

She straight up blows past his thought-terminating cliches;

Firestar: "You see, Leafdapple... you can't live with a paw in both worlds."

Leafdapple: "Pardon? I don't understand what that means?"

Firestar: "It means... um... hmm ._."

In the end, she's probably chosen exactly because she's not committed to bringing back the past. SkyClan has not been the Clan of Skystar for a long time. It's the Clan of Skywatcher.

It is no longer the Clan-in-the-Canopy, it is the Clan-in-the-Stones.

I feel that the first Leader and Deputy were chosen by Firestar and Brokenstar. Though Brokenstar's mind changes over the course of Firestar's Quietus, I think they ultimately still agree that there were two "sides" of SkyClan that should live in balance.

Leafstar, committed to fairness, abides this. Until Sharpclaw ultimately betrays her for The Kin. (Repeat link from above but if your eyes just popped out of your head it explains everything about how PROFOUNDLY differently I'm approaching The Kin lmaoo)

I hadn't planned explicitly for the deputy system to work a bit differently here, BUT it does also feel in line for Leafstar to decide it on a whim after regrouping. Surrounded by the remnants of her Clan, deputy having just turned half of their warriors against them, SkyClan's protector oak ripping itself off the cliffside and destroying their camp, she jumps up on top of a rock like, "Ok team, that sure was a doozy. Let's try to pick a better deputy this time 8)"

It feels better that deputies are popularly "elected," or at the very least nominated by the Clan. Might make for a nice climactic moment in a rework of Hawkwing's Journey.

Is Billyleaf sticking around?

Yes! But it's actually a bit different.

First of all, Leafstar is actually in a constellation with Billystorm and Echosong, the Cleric. Leafstar is mates with Billystorm and a partner of Echosong. Echosong is not romantically involved with Billystorm. SkyClan actually split off from the main Clans before the Cleric's Vow was codified by Larkstripe's strike. They don't have the same taboo against Clerics having mates or raising kittens.

Billystorm is also a massive himbo now lmao, I'm not a huge fan of him in-canon. I'm still reworking stuff here though-- I'm planning to change SkyClan and the Stranger into Sol's Game, a darker story diving into Sol, the Entity, and Harry, the vessel it courts.

But it's been a while and I need to revamp my old drafts, so that's on the backburner for now.

Is Leafstar going to remain an idiot?

absolutely not. christ. I Don't Rewrite Arcs Until They Are Done but if I ever produce something as brainless as "An entire society believes that a child is lying because her accused murderer says he heard her mother snoring evil manipulation plans in her sleep" then explode me to bits with 10000 pounds of nitroglycerin

instead of just having her and everyone else be dumb, it's an easy enough small change to just have Splashstar already be in power and show the beginning of his reign having gone smoothly. Everyone's desperate for RiverClan to have a leader again. Have Leafstar's bias be against ShadowClan specifically, because Heartstar's nephew Juniperclaw mass-poisoned her entire Clan.

Even before then, too. I don't like how the Erins seem to treat Leafstar as this "unreasonable" character who's usually some shade of wrong. I don't like how she just has to accept that Sharpclaw was undermining her for her own good in SkyClan's Destiny. I don't like how Dodge dragged SkyClan into his stupid conflict. Or how she went back to the Gorge after Juniperclaw's poisoning, only to be herded back by the noble Clan cats when a sudden flood makes their old home unsafe for some reason.

I don't like how she only seems to get a "win" when she's accepting or asserting that the Clans have the perfect way of life and she should resemble it more-- see the opening of AVoS, where it's strongly implied that Daylight Warriors being unable to fight to defend the camp at night was how The Kin was able to throw everyone out, and thus the practice has been abolished since then. I think these conflicts are frustrating in the way they're written and presented.

So quite frankly I'm tossing a lot of it. First and foremost, SkyClan's primary conflicts should be trying to keep its unique cultural identity. Secondary conflicts should be based around its political interactions with the other Clans at the lake, particularly ShadowClan and ThunderClan, which it shares borders with.

BB!Leafstar's personality is that she's assertive, fair, and polite. In my head I lovingly imagine her always speaking in the tone of a corporate manager trying to keep control of her team as the office goes up in flames around her. While she always tries to consider all perspectives and stay approachable to all her warriors, she's often misinterpreted as being passive-aggressive or not genuine.

In a nutshell: I am personally making sure she's not the sort of dumb she is in canon. I have a vision for this version of SkyClan.

#better bones au #BB!SkyClan #BB!Leafstar

113 notes · View notes

torchship-rpg · 4 months

Text

Dev Diary 13 - New Subsystems

Alright, it’s been a while since our last Dev Diary, because we’re been doing a lot of rewriting (and because medical stuff delayed my ability to write a lot for a while). We’re currently working on writing up a new playable draft of the game incorporating lessons learned from the hasty Metatopia rewrite, building new systems to achieve what the first draft did in a smaller and better footprint.

With that in mind, I thought I’d talk about two new subsystems added to the game to make running things smoother in response to playtests, which helps mechanise some of the more abstract issues and sticking points in test games; sensor rules and factions.

Sensors & Scale

In my experience, an issue that arises in almost any Star Trek inspired roleplaying game is that most players are naturally much more cautious than the protagonists of your average television show, and correspondingly are more likely to sit snug in their spaceship for longer and roll lots of scanning rolls when the exciting story thing would be to go and take a look directly (and thus get in interesting trouble). This was a problem that occurred in some of the old playtest Torchship quests, in the metatopia games, and even in some of my brushes with Star Trek Adventures and other similar RPGs long ago.

To get around this, we’ve written up a system for sensors in Torchship which makes it very explicit what they can and can’t discover called Scale. Every sensor has one or more Scales it operates at, in a scale from 1 (microscopic) to 8 (interstellar telescope). This gives both a range you can see things from, and what information you can discover from that distance.

Under this system, a scanner which can gather information from farther away will, inherently, gather less specific information than one which scans closer. A Scale 4 scanner which works on ranges of tens and hundreds of kilometres is also one which lacks the resolution to easily recognize individual people or tools, so if you wanted to find a specific person you’re going to struggle doing it with that Scale of scanner. Fortunately, your hand scanner is a Scale 2-3 device which is perfect for that sort of work, thought limited in range to metres and kilometres so you’ll need to actually get off your butt and into the adventure.

These are soft limits, not hard stops; you can take penalties to scan beyond your normal range or for finer detail than you can normally identify, and higher-tech scanners are better for this because they roll more dice to absorb those penalties, but these limitations mean that gathering the information you need to fill out Checklists and complete objectives will often require you to go down and point a hand scanner at it, or even gather samples to take back to the microscope lab on the rocket.

Of particular note is the ‘orbital gap’, a deliberate hole in the system between Scale 4 and Scale 5. When you’re in low orbit trying to scan the surface of a world, you will almost always be doing with at least one Range penalty, and probably more because high-tech Scale 4 sensors are uncommon on most large spacecraft. This very purposefully makes it inconvenient to just wait upstairs until you roll good enough to see what you want to see; at the very least you will want to take out your shuttle to get close enough to use it without penalty.

You get to choose which scales your spacecraft’s sensors have when you do character creation, which has lots of interesting implications as you try to fit it into the limited options. Do you leave a gap in your sensor coverage in the midband for wider coverage? Do you mount smaller sensors you have to get very close to use? Do you sacrifice some of your short-range detail for long range resolution?

This also makes it easy for us to build sensors into other tools, sensors you can repurpose. Your point defence turrets might have lower-tech specialised radar emplacements at Scale 4 for picking up and tracking incoming missiles, for example, and when you encounter something invisible to your tachyon sensors it makes perfect sense to repurpose it!

A Star Patrol vehicle with a massive tachyon sensor pickup ideal for scanning other star systems across interstellar space, but which is probably going to have a bit of difficulty focusing on something tiny right in front of it.

Factions

The other portion of new mechanics has to do with the diplomatic and political side of the game. As we sat down with the new draft, we made a bunch of notes as we looked over what, exactly, this game needed from first principles before re-adding things, and we came back around to the conclusion that the game should explicitly and distinctly focus on three spheres of Exploration, Politics, and Combat, each of which should have dedicated subsystems which could carry an entire campaign on their own.

We had a strong scientific element in the Checklists and we have interesting combat mechanics, but Politics was lacking in that; while we had ways for players to interact with groups, we didn’t have much mechanical distinction for what those groups were or how they related to one another. This is where the new Factions mechanic comes in.

When you visit a society in conflict, you will find multiple Factions there. Each Faction is a simple mechanical framework for a movement or ideology inside the society that wants something, with a defined membership and a reason they want to have power over their society. Key to this is the Faction’s Influence, a single arbitrary number that tells you how much power the Faction has over their society.

The faction with the greatest Influence is the Ruling Faction, and they matter because the Ruling Faction is the only one whose promises to Star Patrol get kept at the end of the Episode. You can negotiate trade deals for a planet’s titanium reserves with the labour unions all you want; if the Labour faction isn’t in charge by the end of the episode, you don’t get anything from it.

This is coupled with the fact that every Faction has a simple binary opinion of Star Patrol; either they like and trust you or they don’t. Factions are like pilots in that way, though unlike pilots they do have object permanence in the sense that they remember Promises. Promises are mechanically binding agreements to give things to one another, though they only get upheld if the Faction likes you at the end of the Episode (and, again, if they are the Ruling Faction).

If you want to negotiate with a Faction, you have to exchange Promises; Factions don’t do anything for free no matter how well you roll, though you can still negotiate with communication rolls to get better deals. Promises can be immediate aid, like getting supplies for your rocket or their support in a mission, but they can also be resources over long terms at the end of the Episode, in the form of Credits from you and valuable resources, political alliances, or military aid from them.

What makes things interesting is that a Ruling Faction which does not have the majority of the Influence in play with all the Activate Factions is unstable. When things are unstable, Factions have a tendency to make lots of big promises to Star Patrol in exchange for help, often blindly agreeing to trade away things they really need because having the local superpower arbitrate their conflict and hopefully decide in their favour (or even just put the issue to rest, honestly) is worth more to them now than material riches or obligations that are currently meaningless to them.

An unstable society is a big opportunity for the Star Union, but one you have to navigate with care.

#torchship ttrpg #dev diary #ttrpg #torchship #rpg

74 notes · View notes

bordysbae · 1 year

Note

Being Luke’s twin but secretly dating eddy

“truth or dare”

ethan edwards x hughes!reader

warning: gets a little angsty but gets better at the end, cursing, underage drinking

also i’m so sorry i totally got carried away with this, and i feel like i wrote a lot more about luke than ethan?? so i apologize for that! i hate this if i’m being honest but i’m not rewriting all that sooo… sorry if you hate this

word count: 3.1k

you and luke have always been extremely close, so you were happy to be going to the college with him, until now. luke is seriously everywhere, and you have a love-hate relationship with that. you’re secretly dating not only his teammate, but one of his best friends. you guys have always had a ‘no dating teammates or friends’ rule, and you broke that. but what’s worst of all is that you’ve been dating ethan for 2 months, and still haven’t told luke.

—

your attention is drawn from your laptop to the sound of your phone ringing. you answer it, confused as to why luke was calling you at 5pm on a friday. “hello?” you say. “y/n! me and the boys are going out tonight. practice just ended so we’re all gonna go shower and pregame at our house around like 8. you wanna come with?” you groan, “luke no, i have homework. plus i don’t want to spend my friday night with my brother and his teammates”

you hear luke sigh through the phone, “cmon please! you’re friends with all of them anyways! it wouldn’t be weird i promise, you can even bring a friend too. just bring maya!” luke pleads. “luke.. fine. i’ll ask if maya can come. she isn’t home right now but i’ll text her. you said the guys are coming over at 8 right?” “yeah we’re gonna pregame, and then go out to the club around 9.”

you sigh, and look in the mirror on your wall. your hair is in a messy bun, sweats on, and one of luke’s old high school hoodies loosely hugging your body. “i’m only coming if maya can come” “yeah well you know she’ll be all in when she finds out adam is coming” luke snickers. “oh shut up luke. i’m going back to doing my homework” “bye you little nerd” he says before ending the call. you then text maya and ask if she would come with you, and of course your party animal of a roommate agrees. instantly you facetime ethan, and also text luke to tell him that you’re coming.

“hey babe!” ethan exclaims. “hey e, me and maya are coming over tonight. you gonna be on your best behavior?” you wink at him. “the hell does that mean?!” “you always try and flirt with me or make sly moves when luke is around! it’s so risky ethan, i’m begging you don’t do anything tonight. i’m not ready to tell him yet.” “fine fine fine, i won’t try anything tonight.” he groans in annoyance. “you better not try anything edwards! anyways, i need to start getting ready so i’ll see you later.” you smile, and he smiles back as you end the call.

eventually you and maya make your way to the boys’ shared house. you can hear all of the guys loudly shouting and laughing through the door. you were given a spare key by luke, so you unlock the door and just walk right in. the groups boys cheer as you walk in, nolan greeting you by shoving a bottle of titos in your face. “maya, y/n! take a shot with me!” nolan exclaims. you can already tell that the boys have had a few shots, which means tonight was going to be very chaotic.

and it in fact did get very chaotic.

you all made it to the club about thirty minutes ago, and everyone is on their first actual drink of the night. you’re all buzzed from the shots taken earlier, but now it’s time for the real stuff. you’re on the dance floor with maya, when suddenly ethan’s arms snake around your waist. maya takes this as her cue to leave, so she chases down adam fantilli, her so called “man.” aka the guy she’s been sleeping with on the down low, yet everyone sort of knows about it.

“ethan stop! luke is here!” you say attempting to wiggle out of his grasp, failing due to his strong arms. “oh relax, he’s over there at the bar ordering a drink with mark. you don’t think i’m that stupid to do these things when he’s looking, do you?” “i don’t know! you can be a little dumb sometimes babe” you laugh as you readjust yourself so that you’re standing facing him. he fakes being upset, and releases you from his arms. mark walks over with luke, handing you a refill of your drink.

“oh thanks mark! you didn’t need to do that!” you exclaim. “oh i didn’t, your brother paid.” mark smiles. “of course he did” you roll your eyes. luke always pays for your drinks at the bar since he doesn’t trust anyone else to handle them, he always thinks you’ll get roofied or something. “guys cmon, rutger found a table and were all gonna play a drinking game. nolan got a bunch of shots for us to use!” luke exclaims. you all follow him to the table where all of the guys and maya are sat. you sit in between maya and dylan, ethan sat cross the table from you next to luke.

“alright guys, it’s truth or dare but if you chicken out you take a shot. it’s really simple” dylan explains. “easy enough, who’s starting?” luca says. “i will, ethan truth or dare!” johnny says. “i’m not a wuss, dare” he smirks at johnny. “i dare you to go up to some random chick, and use the absolute worst pickup line ever” johnny chuckles. “johnny that’s so lame!” adam groans. “not so fast there bud, i get to pick the girl.” johnny says, as ethan’s eyes go wide.

you basically feel your heart stop. absolutely no one besides maya knows that you and ethan are dating, so there’s nothing you can do to stop him. before you even realize it, ethan is standing up from the table and walking over to some random blonde girl wearing the most revealing outfit you’ve ever seen. you feel tears brim at your eyes since there’s absolutely nothing you can do about the situation. you can’t go over there and pull your boyfriend away from her, you have to watch in silence. so you do the next best thing to stop yourself from crying,

“i’m uh— gonna go to the bathroom really quick.” you say, quickly standing up and pushing past people in the crowd. you pass by ethan and the unknown blonde girl, and see her arm resting on his forearm. you watch as ethan’s eyes look into hers, then accidentally glance over into yours. his eyes go wide at the sight, and this only makes your blood boil even more. you speed up your beeline to the bathroom as ethan abandons the blonde girl. ethan begins chasing after you, leaving the girl utterly confused.

“y/n!” he calls out, pushing past people in an attempt to catch up with you. unfortunately there’s a line for the bathroom, so there’s no more avoiding ethan. he grabs your arm to turn you around, and sees you holding back tears.

“i’m so sorry.” he says, his eyes soft. “don’t be ethan, no one knows we’re dating anyways so there’s nothing either of us could’ve done” you say softly, yet loud enough for him to hear over the music. “i should’ve just taken the shot, y/n. i’m so sorry. i promise i wasn’t even interested in her!” “ethan just stop apologizing, i’m sorry for overreacting like this. please just go back to the guys, okay?” you say as you enter the bathroom, leaving ethan alone with his thoughts.

suddenly ethan feels marks hand on his shoulder. he turns around to face him, and sees luke on his way over as well. “what happened?” mark asks. “where’s my sister, edwards” luke asks, very much concerned. “she’s in the bathroom, i saw her hurrying to the bathroom so i thought something was wrong. plus that girl was weird and i wanted to leave.” he shrugs trying to play it cool, and i mean technically he wasn’t lying.

meanwhile you’re stood at the mirror looking at yourself. you’re not upset at ethan, you’re just disappointed in yourself. tonight was the biggest reality check ever. luke has absolutely no idea you guys are dating, and it’s eating you alive. he’s going to be so heartbroken when you tell him, because if you and ethan break up things will be weird, and you know luke will end up taking your side, meaning losing his best friend. but you don’t want there to be sides, you just want luke to be happy.

maya then walks into the bathroom, and helps you recollect yourself before you both head back to the table. the guys are still playing the game, and ethan gives you a pitiful ‘i’m sorry’ look. you smile at him letting him know it’s okay as you sit down again. you notice a few empty shot glasses, wondering what would’ve happened if there was one more empty glass from when it was ethan’s turn. you’re snapped from your thoughts when luke calls on you to answer a question.

“y/n/n truth or dare?” he snickers, plotting his next sentence. “truth” you say, afraid of luke’s idiotic dares. “damn it! i was hoping you’d pick dare, i don’t have any truth questions!” he rolls his eyes playfully. “i have one, i was gonna ask one of the guys but it’s still a good question.” philippe shrugs. “alright, shoot it at me flip” you say, calling him the nickname you’d given him.

“who’d you lose your virginity to?” he asks, making your eyes almost bulge out of your head. all of the guys start laughing and oohing, making your cheeks flush red.

you definitely couldn’t answer that question since it was in fact, ethan edwards.

you grab a shot off of the table and down it, the familiar warm sting flowing down your chest. “woah woah woah, why did you answer that missy!” luke scolds you. “probably cause she’s a little virgin” dylan teases, making you hide your face in maya’s shoulder from embarrassment of the topic. suddenly, a drunken ethan blurts out something you’d never expected to ever be said.

“oh it’s not because of that.” he blurts. you then hear the boys around you go quiet, and your mouth falls agape. he instantly covers his mouth, in shock of what has just slipped out of his mouth. “ethan, what do you mean by that.” luke turns to face him, anger written all over his face.

“i uh— um—“ he stutters on his words. “ethan. fucking speak.” luke says, nothing but seriousness in his tone. “yo uhh i think we need more shots! who wants to come with me!” mackie nervously chuckles. the entire rest of the group says “me” in unison, before quickly rising from the table. you look at maya hoping she’ll stay, but he gives you a pitiful look and scurries off.

“fucking speak edwards! did you have sex with my twin sister?” he yells, startling both you and ethan. “luke stop!” you cry out. luke then realizes what’s going on due to your guys’ silence, and chuckles out of anger. “i cant believe either of you. especially you y/n. fuck both you!” he shouts, before storming away from the table and you assume out of the club.

—

the rest of the night is a blur, but all you can remember is taking another six shots and getting shit face drunk. somehow maya got you both home, and now you’re sat in bed on a saturday morning with the worst hangover of your life. you haven’t spoke to both ethan nor luke since last night, and you’re dreading checking your phone.

you drink the water and pills maya left you on your nightstand, and face your fear of powering your phone back on. you see a few texts from ethan, a couple from mark, one from dylan, and none from luke. you and ethan text back and forth for bit, and you learn that he’s staying at nolan’s place for right now. he continues to apologize and you reassure him that it’s okay, luke had to find out eventually anyways.

you decide to be brave and write out a text to luke. you know you’re in the wrong, but you also know that luke isn’t the guy to hold a grudge, especially when it comes to family. you’re just hoping he’ll hear you out.

to: lukey

hey lu, can we talk? i’m really sorry, honestly words can’t even describe how sorry i am. i promise i was gonna tell you, you weren’t supposed to find out like this. can we catch lunch today and talk? i love you.

to: you

cant. i have practice sorry

your heart falls to your stomach when you see this. you try your best to hold back tears, but you can’t help it when you realize just exactly what you’ve done. you and luke bicker often, but never have you ever been in a fight this bad since middle school, when luke kissed your best friend in a game of truth or dare.

seems like truth or dare games aren’t the best for you and luke’s relationship.

quiet sobs escape your mouth, and you curl up into a ball still laying in your bed. you grab your phone and do the best thing you can think of, calling quinn. he surprisingly answers quickly despite the time difference.

“hello? y/n are you okay? you never call me” he says. “quinn.” you choke out. “are you crying?! what’s wrong?” he quickly speaks up. “me and l-luke. we got in the worst fight ever. i don’t think he- he’ll ever forgive me” you sob, just wishing you could take everything back. “don’t say that, luke will forgive you. he’s your twin, there’s no way he won’t. what happened?” he asks.

you take a deep breath and wipe the snot and tears from your face before you explain everything. “oh y/n/n. me and you both know that you’re in the wrong, i’m not gonna lie to you and try to sugarcoat that. but i’ll try to talk to him, i won’t tell him i know anything. you guys need to talk, just give him time. this is a lot for him. but i promise you aren’t a bad person. he just needs time, y/n.” “you’re the best quinn.” you smile, even though he can’t see you.

“love you y/n. i’ll talk to him, but don’t be afraid to call me if you need anything. maybe don’t tell jack yet since he has a temper, but i’ll tell my coach to let me check my phone at practice incase you called, mkay?” “mkay. love you quinny” you say before he ends the call. you decide to leave your room, and you see maya on the couch watching love island.

“hey, how are you?” she asks you. “a mess” you chuckle, gesturing to your puffy face and tear stained cheeks. “oh lovey c’mere” she says as she gets up and pulls you into a hug. she gently rubs your back, the same way ethan does.

—

you invited ethan over for a bit, and as you’re cuddling in your bed, reality hits again. you sigh loudly, grabbing ethan’s attention. “it’ll be okay, i promise you baby.” he says as he traces shapes on your back. “i just feel like a shitty person, eth.” “you aren’t a shitty person, you can’t control who you’re attracted too” he says pressing a gentle kiss into your hair. “ethan maybe this is too early and bad timing, but i love you.” “i love you more, y/n. this whole situation really showed me that.” he smiles down at you, making you forget about the whole thing for the slightest moment.

eventually ethan leaves, and you cry some more, and then you decide to call luke. of course he doesn’t pick up, so you leave a voicemail since you have absolutely nothing better to do. “luke call me back, please? im sorry. i love you, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” you pause to let out a chuckle, “god i’m a mess i’m sending you a voicemail? this is embarrassing, anyways please call me back? or text me, just please talk to me.” you say before ending your ramble and pressing the end button.

after practice he listens to your voicemail, and can hear the genuine pain in your voice. he decides to text you back, since he hates this just as much as you do.

to: you

still down to meet up for a late lunch?

to: lukey

absolutely, meet me at our spot at 2:30?

to: you

okay see you there

read: 2:05 pm

you arrive at the hole in the wall cafe you and luke discovered as soon as you arrived in ann arbor last year. you see luke sitting at a table near the corner, and you slowly make your way over there. you sit down and you both look at each other in silence. you decide to break it, since technically this is your fault.

“i’m so sorry luke. i was going to tell you i promise.” “are you guys dating? or just hooking up?” “dating..” you say quietly. “well that’s better than i thought, i was worried that you guys were just gonna end up ghosting each other after a booty call or something, and then be all salty or whatever. i’m just glad that the girls who i hear in the guys’ rooms aren’t you” he chuckles, lightening the mood. “ew, gross luke” you groan, not needing to know how many girls get brought over to the house.

“how long have you guys been dating?” he asks, bringing back the serious topic. “two months.” you say awkwardly. “oh wow, okay” he says, shocked that it’s already been a bit of time. “so he took your uh- vir-“ “i’m not talking about this with you luke!” you groan hiding your face in your hands from embarrassment. “sorry sorry! but i think you guys are cute, i just don’t appreciate secrets being kept from me.” “it won’t happen again i promise luke, im really sorry.” “but you better tell him that if he ever hurts you i’ll beat his ass, like seriously.”

you chuckle, and text ethan telling him everything that just happened, showing luke your screen from across the table as you do so.

to: e <3

luke forgives us!! but he said if you hurt me he’ll genuinely beat you up 😅😅

to: you

tell him i have no intentions of hurting my favorite girl ;) ❤️

“you guys are so cringe! i’m gonna be sick, you guys can’t show any pda in front of me or else i’m gonna vomit” he exclaims, pretending to fake gag. “no promises lu” you chuckle, making him groan and put his head on the table.

#ethan edwards #ethan edwards x reader #ethan edwards imagine #hockey blurb #hockey imagine #umich hockey #michigan hockey #luke hughes

491 notes · View notes

amusingmusie · 3 months

Text

At the Risk of Being a Weiner

Hello all, Musie here!

Just a super quick announcement- I am insanely thankful and lucky to have so many wonderful people supporting me! Don't think this post is me denying that.

But, I've started to get more asks and messages that make me uncomfortable and I need to say something now instead of simmering in the discomfort. I'm saying this because I had a lot of issues with people ignoring my boundaries and making me extremely uncomfortable in the past, which is part of what made me decide to take my hiatus.

Please don't ignore me when I say that I'm uncomfortable or dislike something. Please don't actively encourage someone to do something that makes me uncomfortable because you want them to do it. Please don't rewrite my fic or ask me to change things to your preferences. Please don't encourage people to do that. Please don't randomly send me gory or potentially triggering topics without a warning. Please don't be rude and demand that I update my fic.

I AM NOT MAD AT ANYONE. I'm not punching the wall Kyle style. I'm setting some ground rules for my sanity's sake so I don't lose it and go back into hiding. Generally I feel really terrible about being anything beyond a doormat and I feel like a bitch for even saying this stuff but when coming online is beginning to make me uncomfortable again I have to speak up.

Thank ya thank ya.

#I like being silly but I have boundaries y'all #y'all are cool and I love you just please remember that I am a person behind the screen not just a content farm #musie musings

54 notes · View notes

ageofzero · 4 months

Text

Yuna is the antagonist of a potential Final Fantasy X-3, thank you for coming to my TED Talk

edit: okay I'll put it under a read more since it'll be a long post (but not as long as my entire conversation was), but what's promised is due.

Now that I have to make the post for real I had to do some wiki reading on what the actual Things going on in the novella were, and… well, a lot of my theorycrafting was based on incomplete and kinda inaccurate information. BUT I can’t read Japanese, the book was never released here, and I am going to go with rule of cool for a little bit of this even as I keep the stuff that sounds kinda dumb on the surface. I’ll be the first to say that Tidus exploding from a bomb he thinks is a blitzball is dumb (true), and Chuami thinking she’s Auron’s daughter is a dumb plot beat (petty), but I’m weaving this bridge and I’m not going to rewrite those. I am going to change some contexts and make them exist in a narrative that I hope is compelling. That’s my disclaimer, now I’m gonna get into it.

SO.

The scenario from the novella and audio drama is thus: Tidus died again in an accident, and Yuna brings him back. But he’s not back in the same way that the Fayth gave this dream a real living body at the end of X-2. The official term for it is “beckoned”, but I probably won’t use that to describe him based on my previous understanding. No matter if he’s beckoned or not, or whatever terminology you want to use, the thing is that Yuna summoned him back. She’s holding him to life, and he can never know. It’s been a year since the moment Tidus died, and Yuna has seemingly regressed into patterns that put her into what was once Yevon’s circle. Tidus is looking injured/weakened (“Chuami: It wasn’t just [Tidus’s] words that felt hollow. When I shook his hand, his grip felt weak and lifeless... I think he’s injured. Or maybe he’s sick or something.”), and people are looking to Yuna for help or information regarding the strange not-quite Unsent (the beckoned) that are appearing in places in Spira. Help she is not capable of giving. Wakka and Lulu are protecting her as she prays in Besaid Temple. The world is seemingly acting out, with a second shoopuf appearing in the Moonflow and its energies overflowing and drawing more illusions into reality. (“Yuna: The Moonflow energy is responding to the will of the living. It’s as if… we’re in the Farplane.”) And it’s more vivid than what the Farplane is capable of, even breaking the rules of “beckoning”. This is something new, something worse. Something worse enough to bring back Sin (which I thought was just me extrapolating a potential, but they actually mention it in the audio drama that it happens). Yuna promises the people that she will defeat Sin, but Wakka tries to keep her from being made to promise such a thing at first, which is an interesting choice (“Wakka: Yuna, let’s go back to Besaid. They’ll push this all on you… Sin is for summoners, in their minds.”).

Where does the world go in this present circumstances? Why IS Yuna seemingly content to do what chafed her in the Eternal Calm short movie and stay praying in Besaid and helping the elders who are lost now that Yevon as they knew it is in shambles? Why are Lulu and Wakka enabling and protecting her in that? Why is Tidus looking injured and weak and why is Yuna keeping him at arm’s length? Why does she tell him that she’s fallen in love with someone else?

I know the typical story beat interpretation is “Yuna told him that and pushed him away so he wouldn’t be in danger for what she needs to do, bc defeating Sin caused his death last time”. But hear me out. Yuna knows Tidus isn’t alive. She knows that revealing that information to him will cause him to disappear again. She’s actively summoning him back to life and he has no idea (but he must suspect something is wrong, even before Yuna formally pulls away from him, he’s weakening and he probably doesn’t feel right in his own skin). I posit that her maintaining Tidus’s life is what she’s really doing praying in the Besaid Temple. She doesn’t want to get involved with the Moonflow situation, the shoopuf or the overflowing energy of the Moonflow itself. She doesn’t even really act when seeing all the ghosts in the crowd, and actively stops Kurgum from acting (plausible deniability: she and everyone else decide that sending them in that moment would be the wrong call and riots would break out, but that density of ghosts means that’s a significant amount of pyreflies that could become fiends at any moment).

I posit that Yuna’s powers are working, that people close to her think her powers aren’t working (Lulu and Wakka), and she’s hiding it from everyone else. That her powers aren’t working because she’s currently using them to maintain Tidus’s existence. And this maintaining is breaking the Farplane in half, because she’s powerful but has no idea what she’s doing. (Why would she really know what she’s doing or the consequences? Who has any information of what she’s doing and what will happen if she does it?) I posit that Yuna’s love for Tidus is so strong that it corrupts her sense of right and wrong. X-2 is Yuna largely going on a personal quest, and incidentally helping people but separating herself from the title of High Summoner and doing something she wants to do. Rikku encourages her to do something for herself for a change right before she agrees and runs off to become a sphere hunter. She still saves the world, this time from an ancient danger Old Yevon buried and an Unsent is threatening to use (for love, notably), but she did it in the course of looking for Tidus. Who the Fayth return to life, who she hugs and is so so relieved to have in her arms again.

She’s not going to let him go, she couldn’t let him die again so much that she called him back to life.

(side note: I never truly knew how this happened so I had to consult the wiki page on the novella, and I suspect what original information I was working with was misrepresented and misinterpreted. I openly admit that the wiki page doesn’t really help me fully understand what happened, aside from explaining how Tidus ended up in proximity to a bomb. My understanding from someone’s explanation was that an Unsent summoner on the island Yuna and Tidus got washed up on after a storm told her she could call back the dead if she wanted, as a summoner. They’re all made of pyreflies, Aeons and Fiends and People and Unsent alike, and summoners are in the business of manipulating pyreflies. Either calling them from the Fayth to form an Aeon, or Sending them to the Farplane so they do not become Fiends. A summoner with enough power could summon someone back from the dead, could they not? And this Unsent summoner knew how it worked, and told Yuna how to do it. But I don’t know how real that scene could be, or how accurate it is to what’s written in the book. It’s my rule of cool moment, though, and I worked with that as my understanding when I made this theory. We have to make our peace with that, if you’ll allow me this extrapolation of Spira’s rules and a summoner’s powers.)

(The meme is Tidus kicking a blitzball and it turned out it was a bomb and his head gets blown off, but wiki says they ended up on a vision of a Besaid from 1000 years ago, and the bomb was something neither Tidus or Yuna had seen before and to them it looked like a blitzball. So, Tidus approached what he thought was a blitzball, wondering who’s ball it was, and it exploded as he reached it. I still think that’s really dumb but I’m not editing it out bc Tidus’s death creates very interesting consequences.)

So, if Yuna is summoning Tidus back to life, and she desperately doesn’t want him to find this out so she avoids him and pushes him away through any means necessary, but he’s still weakening and fading enough to be noticeable by people… perhaps also himself… Yuna returning to Yevon in some capacity could just as likely be her looking for a means to keep feeding power to this summoning she’s doing so she doesn’t lose him. And what kind of consequences does it have to do this? He’s being summoned, but he’s not actually an Aeon. He’s not an Unsent, he’s not just being beckoned. He wasn’t even real, he was a dream in a summon held together by the raw power of Yu Yevon turning into Sin. The Moonflow overflowing and seeing a long-dead shoopuf is the least of the consequences. The Farplane is delicate, it requires careful maintenance, and here Yuna is shoving her foot in the door and holding it open for a solid year! And no one knows she’s doing this! Spira’s past is full of history, some of that long-buried secrets that no one was supposed to find again. Sin wasn’t supposed to be able to come back, but the ghosts aren’t staying ghosts anymore (“Lulu: I mean Sin came back, right? What’s to stop anything else from coming back?”).

Even people who only know her by reputation seem to think she’s acting strangely (“Kurgum: I thought Lady Yuna was… a righteous person.”), because something is wrong and no one can put their finger on what. Who would have the pieces to put any of this together, and who would even suspect Yuna in the first place? She’s actively not getting involved in politics, she’s locked herself in Besaid, she seems reluctant to answer someone she worked with and should be amicable with now (Baralai).

I think the story should follow down this path, I think it should find Yuna at the end of it, once savior and now destroyer. She’s willing to let the world rip apart in order to keep Tidus, and I think that’s a compelling premise for X-3. The past surging forward like ghosts, vengeful and lost and wanted and terrifying. Who sides with Yuna (Wakka, Lulu) and covers up the problem? Who bands together to face down the High Summoner (Tidus, Rikku)? Who doesn’t know where to place their allegiance, or who changes sides when they realize the extent of what Yuna’s hiding? What does she do when she’s faced with her friends, and the person she loves so much, telling her to stop?

There’s a line in Eternal Calm where Yaibal (named in X-2 but not in the movie itself), after asking about whether or not she’d be joining one of the factions, if she’d be making a faction of her own. And I think in this potential X-3, she’s making her own faction through the actions of becoming antagonist. She’s made Wakka cover for her, she acts in a way that make Lulu and Wakka both protect her regardless of whether or not they know what she’s doing. I think it would be so fascinating to make this a conscious decision on her part. Things have broken so utterly, and she’s desperate to hold them together, and becomes the antagonist in the process.

Squeenix would never do it, they’d never be so bold as to make Yuna the antagonist and follow through on this trajectory of her lying to people to hide that she’s the one breaking the world in half (up to returning the ghost of Sin itself to terrorize Spira). Sin isn’t the final boss in this one, it’d have to be Yuna, we have to stop her and fix what went wrong. It’s not ever gonna happen, but I still think Yuna should be the antagonist of X-3.

#Final Fantasy X #Final Fantasy X-2 #Final Fantasy X-3 #FFX #FF10 #meta #theorycrafting #personal #Let me weave you a really compelling bridge out of the malarky I know of post X-2 content #I promise you that Yuna is the antagonist in this scenario and Squeenix are cowards who’d never do it #Tega writes #it's under the read more #I did not go whole hog into the entire plotting out I did I've just introduced the premise #I had a deep conversation with my RBB writer involving my interpretations #He introduced other ideas that were rad #I don't have an exit strategy though #as in I have no idea how the game would resolve in this projected scenario #or how I would WANT it to resolve #I came up with a ''good'' ending that's tailor made to feel bad about your choices lmao #but that's not what I think the true ending would be #anyway none of that is specifically about how Yuna should be the antagonist #it's more like the delicious possibilities while the plot leads you to that conclusion #there was a lot and I already wrote nearly 2k words just to explain this much #I have to sort out the rest still it's stream of consciousness discord messages

59 notes · View notes

theladyofrosewater · 17 days

Text

So I was browsing the MCD wiki (which sidenote thank you @/lggy for maintaining the wiki you are a godsend) and I noticed that because of the sepia or whatever filter they used, Zianna and Aaron's wife Lilly look really similar so I thought "what if I made them sisters"

THINK ABOUT IT FOR A SECOND. If I make it so that Lilly and Aaron get married early that would effectively make Zianna the sister of the Lord of Falconclaw and a pretty valuable person to marry in terms of alliances so Zianna would make the decision to marry Garte and therefore O'Khasis would never move on Falconclaw and hey if Garte died early (most descendants of Esmund have a habit of dying young in my rewrite) that would effectively let Zianna rule O'Khasis as long as she had an heir that could wield Esmund's relic.

It also would make Aaron more involved in the plot because I will be honest, while I do not hate Aaron because I can separate him from Jason enough. Aaron feels like a character who would have been a one-off character or at least one who was a side character to the level of say Lucinda. I know the Divine Warriors and Irene are supposed to be the kinda main story but I will be honest with you the Ro'Meaves and their absolute chaos are way more interesting to me. Zane was the season one's villain, Garroth and Vylad were mysteries that we got to upwrap with both Ru'aun as a whole and some stuff about the Shadow Knights. In making Aaron Zianna's brother-in-law and the uncle of Garroth, Zane and Vylad to me, besides just making him more connected to the main plot, does two main things.

Aaron in current MCD canon is really only connected to two characters Aphmau and Zane. I'm changing his relationship to Aph to be more of a mentorship one because I think he sees the young daughter he and his wife wanted to have but never got too because of Zane. to me it makes the massacre at Falconclaw be that much more personal because instead of this random priest just killing your wife, child, and entire village for no real reason imagine this. You're a lord of a village and relatively recently two of your nephews have died and one of them quite gruesomely, you've got one nephew left and he requests a family visit and you accept because hey the kid has always been a bit weird but he just lost both of his brothers and he probably needs support right now so you extend an invitation for him to visit. He gets there and he somehow got to be the head of the major religion in your area and the kid's not even 19 yet and looks like he hasn't slept in days so you rush the tour and send him to your home, maybe your wife can get him to eat something, or your son might cheer him up for at least a little while. You think nothing of it and keep doing your job until you hear screaming and see so many dead. Your wife is dead, your son is dead everyone is dead and the only one alive is your nephew and when he looks at you he fucking smiles and says it "it was necessary but don't worry I'm sure you'll join them soon enough" before walking off leaving you to bury bodies for years. Making Aaron be related to the Ro'meaves in my opinion changes his story from just a fridging backstory to a classic tragedy because it becomes a betrayal bathed and forged from blood.

I think it would give him a better motivation to risk his life to get Garroth back and it would make him interact with the other characters because he wants to know what kind of man his non-evil nephew turned into. That causes him to be more and more social with everyone. Maybe he spars and trains with Katelyn, He teaches Dante and his kids how to fish because Aaron never got to teach Jacob how, but still wants to pass on that skill. Maybe he knows things about shadow knights that most people don't, and he promises to teach Laurance in case he might help him. Maybe he takes Travis hunting because Travis never got to go on hunting trips with a parent. And then he sacrifices himself. Katelyn ignores the painful feeling she gets when she looks at the spare chalk and wrappings she has for spars. The fishing poles in Dante's house get covered with dust and cobwebs, the strings rotting away and snapping. Laurance and maybe Vylad struggling with being shadow knights as the call gets stronger and wondering if Aaron would have known how to deal with it. Travis out of anger snaps his bow in half before realizing what he did and breaking down. I want Garroth to be horrified when he finally is home and realizes just who they lost to get him back. I want them to care about him and I want his sacrifice to be more than love triangle fodder

#theladyofrosewater #minecraft diaries rewrite #minecraft diaries #mcd #aphmau #aphblr #aaron mcd #aaron lycan #I did not intend for this to be an aaron rant #but uhh yeah #tw death #I want character to be important and I want them the mourned when they die #I could rant on this more but I wanted to get my point across

35 notes · View notes

uncouth-the-fifth · 6 months

Text

pythia, a supernatural rewrite. phantom traveler, p.3

read it on ao3.

words: 14k notes: hello!!! on the wings of an absolute ARMY of betas, here is a fresh new chapter for you!! since the last one was a little short i took the time to really flesh this one out. I'm a shy idiot who is SO bad at responding, but i see your comments and they mean the world to me. i literally have a folder on my computer full of the sweet words this fic has been given, and i think i've re-read the comments in that folder at least a million times over by now. ty so much for reading, and i hope you enjoy!! bloody mary is next! a very special thank you to my beta readers, bear, M, venice, feeb, and daff, who easily made this my best chapter yet. thank you specifically for keeping me coherent and sane lol <3

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 4th.

You don’t have to be psychic to know precisely what your mother is going to say when she answers the phone. She’ll pick up on the fourth ring with an occupied, scathing drawl and say, Look who finally has cell service.

Alright. So you’re not the best, most communicative daughter in the world. You call when you can, you honestly do, but there’s not exactly loads of emotional bandwidth to spare on the road. Peeling off all the layers of case anxiety and Winchester grief takes a while, dammit!

Maybe you’d feel less guilty if you vented to Sam or Dean, but it’s kind of lousy to bitch about Mom-stuff to, uh. Yeah. The boys. You could use a simple, uncomplicated statement like, talking to my Mom reminds me of how much of a disappointment I must be to her, and Dean would hear matricide instead. Sam’s blank, uncomprehending look wouldn’t be much better. Looks like you’re alone on this one.

When there’s a natural break in the day’s long research-fest the three of you are riding, you slip away, pace beside the Impala for a while, then finally bite the bullet and call her. Cars whisk through the slurry of snow on the road. Your phone charms rattle in the icy breeze. One ring, two rings… She knew you were going to call, she could sense it, but of course she has to torture you… three rings, four.

“I didn’t know cell service was so hard to come by in Pittsburg,” Beth greets you, sounding preoccupied. Damn, do you know her well or what?

“Hey, Mom,” you sigh. The wind is loud, so you pull your phone further down your face and try to come up with an excuse that is even halfway reasonable. “Sorry I haven’t called. It’s been ages since I’ve been around the boys, and I guess I get a little caught up with them sometimes.”

This is objectively true. She used to have a rule about you getting your homework done before they came over, purely because you forgot about everything and anything else the second Sam and Dean entered the house.

“Forget those losers. You’re my baby, I love you most,” Beth gushes, and you understand that this is her way of saying that you’re forgiven. Both of you have fallen victim to the Winchester spell before, so she can’t exactly blame you.

You’re a little embarrassed by her mushiness, but a relieved, bubbly laugh jumps out of you. “Alright, consider them forgotten. Now… I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m gonna ask you a question, and I need you not to freak out or overthink it, kay?”

Beth snorts. “You mean my two jobs as a mother? Go ahead, shoot.”

This is not the kind of question that you just “shoot,” though. It takes you a moment to string together how you’re going to ask this, and of course, you’re nothing but graceful and delicate about it. “...What do you know about demons?”

Your mother doesn’t say anything for a long, yawning second. Still, you can sense her rising swarm of questions and outrage all the way from Pennsylvania, and you try to stop her onslaught before it starts. “Hey! No questions! Just answers. I promise I would tell you if this was outrageously dangerous.”

“Then you’ve already broken your promise,” Beth utters, slipping into her Sage Grandmaster Psychic voice. Just hearing it makes you deflate. She predicts, “...Let me guess. You’ve felt nauseous. Suffocated. Hungry, but everything you eat comes right back up again.”

You toe a chunk of ice on the asphalt with your boot, grumbling, “...Yeah.”

“Then you’re lucky,” she reveals, her words still ringing with the same crystal ball clarity from your childhood. “That means you haven’t come into direct contact with it yet. I’d hope you never would, but… you are your father’s daughter…”

You know your mom. You know that’s just her way of warning you about the kind of danger you’re in, here, but all the comment does is bolster your resolve. Damn right. You are his motherfuckin’ daughter.

“Tell me,” you push.

Beth sighs through her nose. There’s a squeak on the other line, and you can imagine her at home, dropping heavily into the massive, millennia-old armchair she always took her readings in.

“Demons… well, I won’t explain to you what you can already guess. They’re unlike most legends we know of, because everything that’s written about them is utterly true. Most spirits that walk the natural earth are here to feed—vampires, werewolves—or to take care of unfinished business. But demons… they come to earth to steal, kill, and destroy.”

Welp. Your mother is truly a pillar of optimism. You’d been hoping she’d say something along the lines of, don’t worry, sweetheart, they’re just really messed up ghosts. Instead of, y’know. The most evil creatures man encountered in the bible. Bible, capital B. An uncomfortable, existential shiver rolls down your spine. Now this was something you could bitch to Dean and Sam about.

You’d grown up surrounded by the idea of demons. Even before you’d fully understood that monsters were real, sometimes you’d slip into your mother’s reading parlor while she was gone and play a game with the strange, segmented star pattern on the giant worn-smooth carpet. Don’t hop on any of the lines! Only step in the points of the star! Or, jump from sigil to sigil!

The one time you’d gotten carried away and played for too long, your mother had appeared through the beaded curtain with a stiff frown on her face. Don’t play on the devil’s trap. It’s not a toy.

There was the fraying devil’s trap in your mother’s parlor room, which was one of the hundreds of sigils burned into your mind at a young age. You’d shaken hands with demon hunters before. Most of the rituals your family practiced were in Latin; and the list went on and on into oblivion. You’d always known demons existed, but as you pace the parking lot and take in what Beth is telling you, the ramifications start to stack. Demons. Actual, literal demons. The thing that took down flight 2485—the suffocating, unimaginable presence from your vision—was a real-life demon. When you’d stood in the skeletal remains of the plane and reached out with your Gift, you’d been sensing the lingering presence of a fucking creation of Lucifer. What the actual fuck.

In a strange, backward way, you’re kind of relieved. Anyone would be fainting all over the place in the presence of an actual, real-life demon. Especially somebody like you, with all their senses turned up to 100. It makes sense that you were having such intense reactions before.

What the fucking fuck. You’re suddenly grateful to be on the phone with your mom.

You wandered toward the Impala, (checked first that you weren’t wearing the kind of jeans with the little studs that would scrape the paint), then leaned against it. “...Um. Okay. That’s just… awesome… How do they get… up here, then?”

“I’m not sure,” your mother hums, thinking. “Your great-great-aunt Miriam wrote in her records that they find their way top-side on their own. Bugs through cracks, that sort of thing. Apparently, there used to be a whole lot more of em’—in Miriam’s day it was a Proctor’s job to shove them back where they belonged, but… I dunno.” Beth helpfully jokes, “Maybe we got most of them.”

You huff out a laugh, but it’s not the most sincere. “Maybe we did,” you cough. “But, um, do we have any Proctor family secrets that could help me out here? Did great-great-aunt Miriam have a trunk somewhere full of demon-killing grenades or something?”

Beth smirks. “Great-great-aunt Miriam turned the house into a brothel and carved terrifying sigils in all the ceilings. That’s all we got from her.”

Of course. How could you possibly forget? “Oh, huh. I was wondering why we have old chains and whips in the basement. That fills in a lot more for me, thank you.”

Your mom barks out a laugh at your joke, which gets you laughing too. The sound trails off. There’s that funny pause where you both remember what you just said, then start giggling all over again—and man, does it feel good to just have a moment with your mom. The boys both have an unforgiving radar for “bonding,” and the second they realize that you love them and they’re your friends, they creep right back into their shells. Neither of them were very good at absorbing that sort of thing.

Your mom is just as skilled at spoiling the moment.

“But, seriously…” She stresses. “Please be careful. Avoid contact with these things at all costs, especially with your Gift. It’s made to find the truth, and demons are made of lies. Not a good mix. They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to. This is a lot more hands-on than you should ever be with your Gift, ____.”

“...Right,” you say through your teeth.

This is the part where you start awkwardly shoving in a goodbye without coming across as an asshole. You open your mouth, about to say something stiff and unsure, when you sense a spike of alarm ripple out from where the boys are still researching in your motel room.

Phone call forgotten, you jolt off the Impala and whip towards the door. Not a second later, Dean’s slipping out onto the stoop and sweeping the parking lot with a calm, guarded stare. He doesn’t look at you—just gestures you inside, holding the door open. Even from the parking lot, you can make out the insane amount of notes and papers Sam has coated your motel room with.

“Jerry just called,” Dean utters. “The surviving pilot from 2485? Chuck Lambert? …He just went down in a plane crash.”

You snap your phone shut and follow him inside.

The three of you head to the site of the next crash as fast as you can. But first, you have the pleasure of watching the boys play Winchester Telepathy when you insist on coming along. They’re still worried. You would be too, in their position. (In fact, if the roles were reversed, you’d probably chain Sam to a radiator and call it a day.) But Chuck went down in a twin plane, not a massive, two-hundred-person graveyard, so your Gift should have the legs to handle it.

…And knowing what you’re dealing with has steeled your confidence. You weren’t slashing at the dark anymore, even if what was in the dark was, um. Proof that hell exists. After days of being totally screwed over by this thing, you finally had even the slightest leg up on what was going on. You were going to take that win and run with it.

Chuck’s twin plane was hardly a twin anymore; both the engines had been shredded, the white body of the cockpit twisted like a wrung-out washcloth. The plane had dove so hard into the farmland that the snow around it had melted. You still kind of felt like tossing your lunch, but more out of sympathy than psychic backlash. People had been in that plane. The thought made you taste bile.

Sam and Dean only hover a little bit (a lot) while you open your Gift to the wreckage. You take your glove off with your teeth and touch your right hand to the ashen, snow-soaked remains of the pilot’s chair… and there it was again, the leeching, seeping, violating presence from the vision that’d brought all of you to Pittsburg. A demon.

Your Gift wrings out another scraggly, disconnected vision for you. Chuck was beyond anxious to get back in the saddle after 2485. The co-pilot, Lou, had pep-talked him like any good friend would, reassuring him that the flight would go smoothly. After that, everything—gassing up the engine, takeoff, and the brutal, horrific crash—was blotted with poison ink. Every time you tried to steer towards Chuck with your senses, it was as if the strip of film playing your vision had been burned away. His face had been scratched out of every frame. He had become something else; something terribly familiar.

The research Sam had compiled began to link with what you’re seeing. You could feel, even through the leftover wisp of the demon’s presence on the plane, that it had done this many times before.

You jolted to your feet, scrubbing the palm with the eye tattoo off on your slacks. Dean and Sam reeled back, since they’d both been looming an inch behind you as you worked.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Dean said, bracing himself.

You turn from the wreckage and bee-line straight for the road, eager to avoid a repeat of last time. The boys follow your lead. They fall into step on either side of you, and for once you feel like the specialist Sam always said you were, complete with stern-faced bodyguards.

“Full-on Pazuzu, just like last time,” you confirm, cursing. You shove your glove back on and stomp through the snow. “I-I get it now. God, it feels so fucking obvious. It’s—it’s playing. It finds these disasters, or it makes them, and then it picks off all the survivors one by one. Chuck Lambert, George Phelps. It possessed them. Like some sort of twisted cosmic-order thing.”

Sam pulls a face. “Final Destination style?”

“Minus the hot girls and the tanning beds, apparently,” Dean pouts.

“It’s trying to finish them off, boys,” you say, swallowing hard. “That’s something we can work with. If it’s only using disasters to do the job, then…”

“...then we need to see if any of the survivors are flying soon,” Sam realizes, finishing your thought.

The second the Impala’s on the road again, Sam is fishing out the passenger manifests from the first flight and chasing down any phone numbers he can find. There is a part of every hunt where your run is forced to become a sprint, and this is that turn-over moment, tensions ramping high. What once was seven people is now five.

As Dean hauls ass back to Pittsburg, you and Sam get to calling. You thank the Mother Goddess above for shitty, awful customer service, because posing as some lousy Delta Airlines representative has Dennis Holloway sitting in seat 21A and Kathleen Willard (seat 25E) swearing off flying for good. Sam uses a similar tactic on Blaine Sanderson (seat 14D). The two of you take the safe bet that the parents of Ava Struder (seat 1C), an unaccompanied minor, aren’t fucking idiots dumping their kid on another flight the second she survives one. That leaves you with Amanda Walker. A flight attendant on 2485… because of course, this job can never be easy.

Sam tries her phone. While it rings, you cross your fingers and hope that she has quit her job and started a new life as a dedicated couch potato. Sam’s forced to leave a message. He snaps his flip phone shut with a curse and throws it into the footwell, where it clatters against his boots.

You curl a cold hand around Sam’s shoulder, soothing, “Gimme the list, baby. I’ll try her emergency contact, at least find out where she is.”

Sam sulkily passes it to you, never once shifting under your hand. You do get a small, grateful look from him over his shoulder, and the urgency and anxiety there makes your gut twist. It would be more than easy to comfort him, to stroke your fingers through his hair, to rub his collar and tell him everything’s going to be fine.

But you’re a shit liar, so you open up your phone and make the next call. Sam’s lingering gaze ducks back down into his lap.

Of course, your luck continues to flourish. Amanda doesn’t answer her phone. But her sister does, and she informs you that Amanda, being a flight attendant, is in fucking Indianapolis for a flight. Indianapolis. As in, a good five-hour drive from Philly—and in the complete opposite direction of where you were going. Dean barely waits until the road is wide enough to turn the Impala around. The u-ey he hits sends you, and all your stuff, careening from the right end of the bench all the way to the left.

The drive is not fast. Staring ahead and silently revving yourself up can only waste so much time, so you pull out the mini sewing kit from under the seat and do your best to patch a rip in Dean’s jeans, struggling to thread the needle even more than usual. You feel a bit like a bad hunter distracting yourself from what’s ahead, but just one of you stuffing the car with anxious brooding is enough. Sam passes back a sudoku booklet for you and then goes straight back to his thousand-yard stare.

He used to be excellent when things came down to the wire like this. After years spent in empty motel rooms, counting pennies and waiting for John and Dean to come home, Sam’s patience was unimaginable. But losing Jess… had tilted his axis. These last few hunts, you’ve noticed how crazed he gets on the last couple steps to the finish line—when none of you are sure if there’ll be anybody to save. It happens. But you’re scared of what another round of it could do to Sam, even with a stranger like Amanda; he cared so much…

Dean isn’t happy, either, but he at least has something to do. He alternates between playing brain-melting Metallica or forgetting to reload the tape, so the drive is a strange mix of music you can feel in your eardrums and silence that’s just as loud. The first piece of levity you get is thirty straight minutes of Dean over-explaining the album to you. And, thank god you ask, because Dean rattling on about the “bass and drums feeding off each other” and the “musical integrity of a locked-in rhythms section” bring Sam out of his trance. He pries his eyes away from the rolling fields of snow, scrunches up his face, and sighs, “Can we at least listen to ‘...And Justice for All?’”

You’re an excellent tactician, so you use this opening to nudge them both toward the most surefire argument starter in the Winchester handbook: What’s the best album of all time? It would’ve been harder to lure flies into honey. Dean argues more with himself than he argues with the two of you, dancing indecisively between Zeppelin II, Dark Side of the Moon, and at least twenty other albums that you are vaguely aware exist. Sam outlines that there is a difference between someone’s favorite album (Californication in Sam’s case) and the best album objectively by sales (Thriller).

All three of you play into the argument more than usual. Guess you’re not the only one desperate to think about something other than the two hundred other people who might die tonight. By the time there’s enough of a break in the conversation for you to throw your hat into the distraction-ring, you’re thirty minutes from the Indianapolis International Airport.

“Both of you are wrong,” you decide. “There’s only one reasonable answer to that question, and it’s Rumours.”

Dean audibly grumbles, and when the Impala jams to a stop in front of a red light, he dramatically points at you in the rear-view mirrors and declares: “You are obligated by hippie, witchy-girl bullshit to love that album, Proctor. And it’s good, but it’s not the best. It’s mostly…” he flashes you a mean, big-brother smile, “girly music.”

You know you’re right, so his comment rolls right over you. Cooly, you remind him, “Nuh-uh. Sam loves Fleetwood Mac, too.”

You’d figured that was a good counter-point, since Sam was hardly girly. The hand he was using to keep his notepad on his knee was all kinds of veiny and calloused, and on top of being taller than Dean, he was a lot more comfortable with his masculinity. He didn’t have mile-long lashes or glazed donut cheekbones, either.

Sam hums in agreement, like you knew he would; the two of you listened to Go Your Own Way and The Chain endlessly before he left for school. Sometimes he’d even dance around the attic at home with you.

Dean side-eyes his brother, then barks out a hearty laugh. “Case in point.”

Sam elects to pretend he didn’t hear that, and instead turns around to talk straight to you: “I mean, the end of Silver Springs alone…”

…Maybe if Dean listened to more “girly music,” he’d have more women melting over him the way you melt when Sam says that. Even though you’ve gotten used to having him in front of you again, there are moments like these where you’re stunned by how similar the two of you still are. Dreams would play in your attic and Sam would already be offering you his hands, gangly and shy and bright red for you and only you…

You listened to Silver Springs a lot after Sam started dating Jessica.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 4th, night.

All three of you must’ve been hyper-planning what to do the second the Impala parked, because you fan out as soon as Dean jams the break.

Sam uncaps the travel-sized hand sanitizer from your purse and empties it out onto the pavement. You’re a little sad to say goodbye to pumpkin cupcake, but then he starts pouring as much holy water as he can into the teeny bottle, and you’re reminded how clever he is. When Dean gives him a weird look, Sam explains, “3.4 ounces or less per liquid item, dude.”

“Shit,” Dean curses. Right. Travel size restrictions. That cuts your only physical weapon against the demon in half—or into a fucking fifth, I guess. But it’s something. “At least he’ll fuckin’ smell good when we send him to hell. Great.”

You give Sam the marshmallow pumpkin latte sanitizer, too. You’re going to look painfully suspicious walking into an airport with nothing but hand sanitizer and an occult journal, but there’s nothing you can do. There’s no time to check bags or trudge through security lines. Hopefully you won’t have to board, but knowing your luck…

You’re about to go peeling out of the parking lot at top speed, when you turn your boot and feel the warm piece of metal pressed against your ankle. Shit. “God, this is stupid,” you curse, and drop onto a knee. You lose the pocket knife in your boot, then dig around for the loose rock salt shells rolling around in your pockets. There’s a visible pout on your face when you abandon your iron knuckles. Anything that’d be caught by security or picked up on a metal detector goes straight into the trunk.

When you pull your butterfly knife out of your bra, Sam is suddenly very interested in the color of the sky.

The boys follow suit. By the time you’re through the doors and among the harried, criss-crossing crowd of travelers, you’ve lost ten pounds in weapons each. Dean grumbles the whole way about feeling naked. Everything in the airport is overstimulating, even at this time of night. The long, endless squares of glass looking out over the runway reflect the too-bright lights in big glossy spots, and the air is flooded with a constant stream of intercom updates and civilian chatter. You duck and weave all the way to the departure schedule, which is just the right font size to make you anxious.

Sam scans the chart. “They’re boarding in thirty minutes.”

Shit. You wrack your mind for something that could coax Amanda off her flight. But the gears in your head are suddenly muddy, and Dean’s faster than you, anyway. His eyes dart around the floor of the airport. “Okay… we still got some cards to play. We need to find a phone.”

Sam and Dean dart off like twin bomb-sniffing dogs. You move to follow them, but something tethers you in place. The buzzing, bustling commotion in the air pitches up, and then your ears are ringing, and your whole body is stinging with the ugly leeching feelings from before. The demon. It’s close.

You blindly walk in the direction your internal Winchester compass gives you, and just when Dean’s about to take a courtesy phone off its hook, your body extracts the phone from his hand on autopilot. For a brief flickering moment, you’re not yourself. Your powers talk through you.

Your Gift foresees, “That won’t work. Your only option is to board the plane.”

The boys exchange an unsettled look. For a second you’re confused why they’re giving you their Freaked Out faces, then you feel the hollow plastic of the phone in your hand, and you realize you’re a whole twenty feet from where you started. Man… you hate the whole psychic-possession thing. Just for fun, your Gift loves to take over and course-correct you when it thinks you’re being stupid. You drop the phone back on its hook with a heavy click. It takes Dean a second to answer, and he’s still giving you that look. After a long pause, he knocks up his chin and not-so-happily mutters, “...Uh, okay.”

Sam, at least, has learned to roll with your weird psychic bullshit. His voice is soft with conviction. “Fine. Plan B, then. We gotta get on that plane.”

You run your palms down your face, then steel yourself. There’s no other way, and no time to second-guess. Even your Gift has decided it’s your best plan. “Okay. Fuck it.”

The usual authority in Dean’s voice hikes up with a note of panic. “Uh, woah. Let’s just hold on a second–”

“Dean,” you wince, and your hands drop heavily at your sides. “We gotta. I’m sorry.”

Sam, per usual, reads Dean’s hesitance as something else. “That plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board. And if we’re right, it’s gonna crash. We have to–”

You watch as they have their usual back and forth; Sam, eager to throw himself at this, and Dean gnawing on the inside of his cheek. It’s easy for you to sense the steam of real, nail-biting terror radiating off your best friend. You feel Dean’s fear all the time–and even then it’s hard for you to picture him being afraid of much of anything, much less planes. It’s even harder for Sam to look past his little brother glasses.

“...Flying?” Sam puts it together. His voice is understanding, but super confused. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Dean flails. He fists his hands as he talks, swaying back and forth to try and work up the nerve. He glances at you, the only other witness to his weakness, just once. “Why do you think I fuckin’ drive everywhere, Sam?”

Sam is genuinely stunned. Slapped-in-the-face stunned. But he takes it in stride, and, also glancing at you only once, he blurts out: “Alright. Uh, I’ll go.”

The anticipation of boarding the flight is making your skin prickle with anxiety, and you can’t help but inch back toward the ticket counter as they talk. But when Sam says this, without question or complaint, you’re instantly stepping up to his side and demanding, “Then I’m going with you.”

You brace yourself to shut down the argument you know is coming, but this Sam continues to be different from the guy you knew four years ago. This answer is just as easy for him, too. “Okay.”

Not, you’re staying here, or even, I won’t let you risk yourself like this. Just a plain and simple, okay. It bugs you. You don’t even have time to dwell on it, though, because Sam’s blatant courage tugs Dean over his fear.

“Man…” Dean utters, face twisted with nervousness. He gives in with a helpless scrunch of his shoulders, and taking that as permission, Sam twists around to buy your tickets not two seconds later.

You both watch him rush off, neither of you over the moon about this situation. Dean’s so anxious that his hands are clammy, and you can tell because he clutches at the sleeve of your jacket like a little kid. He knocks his forehead down on your shoulder with a groan, and your palm automatically loops around to give his back a soothing rub.

“This is fucking… awesome,” Dean gripes. “No guns. Can’t even bring a damn bottle of holy water. Is there some kind of psychic Xanax you can give me?”

Maybe some of your Gift drains into your voice when you promise, “We won’t have to worry about that. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dean doesn’t make his Freaked Out face this time. He does, however, bump his forehead against your shoulder again, and sink into your touch with a rough sigh.

FLIGHT 424 - Dec. 4th.

You’d felt bad for Dean the whole time he’d struggled to get on the plane. Now, you kind of felt like choking him with your bare hands.

So many people crammed into one space was enough to flatten your Gift with the weight. Adding Dean to the mix, shoved shoulder-to-shoulder against you with his jitters ramped up to eleven, made you feel like picking your brain out with a fork. Your Gift ping-ponged between Dean and Sam, making you bounce between chattering your teeth with fear and thinking things like, wow, I just love the Dewey decimal system.

Maybe it was a good thing. You’d much rather be in one of their heads than yours.

All day, you’d done a pretty good job not obsessing over the things your mom had said over the phone. It was hard with so much time to marinate in the car, but the massive weight of the existence of demons only slammed on top of you once or twice. Boarding had managed to keep you occupied, but then the colossal body of the plane had shuddered and heaved its weight off the tarmac, leaving all chances for escape behind on the ground.

A part of you was resigned to it; it is a simple fact of your life that evil things are real. So what’s one more, right? But at the same time, you thought about the cross Sam wore under his shirt… you thought about being one of those things, being “made of lies,” like Mom had said. That, too, had been gnawing at you—what had she seen to learn all that? How did she know that a demon would “tear into your mind?” The Vague Psychic Thing is fun, until you’re on the receiving end.

“Can you sense who it’s possessing?” Sam’s smooth, calculating voice interrupted your thoughts.

…Oh, right. You’d gotten so swept up in your own head, no doubt influenced by Dean’s incessant foot-tapping, that you’d totally forgotten to scan the plane. Tilting away from Dean and his panic, you subconsciously shifted toward eerily calm, level-headed Sam. Just catching a wisp of the clean cologne he wears cools you down a little bit. Okay. No more freaking out—it’s game time.

You’d hoped that the white noise of the flight would settle your nerves, but the air tasted painfully sterile, dry, and cottony against the back of your throat. Everything felt like cold metal touching an open nerve. If the demon’s influence wasn’t making your powers touchy, then the woman across the aisle definitely was, oozing with homesickness as she watched Indianapolis shrink far below—or maybe it was the guy two rows back, replaying an argument again and again in his head—or maybe the other two hundred fucking people stuffing the plane with their boredom and their tiredness.

You push your knee into Sam’s. He pushes back.

After a tense beat, you whisper to him over the chatter of passengers, “Too many people. There’s no way I can narrow it down to one person—not unless they’re right in front of me.” Sam’s gaze turns expectantly to Dean, who’s still in full-on dissociation mode. He’d spent the whole boarding process humming tracks from St. Anger, and you knew he was really going through it, purely because he’d stopped and restarted Some Kind of Monster three different times now. Poor guy.

One of the things that made the three of you such a natural team was your ability to rotate leadership. In moments like these, with Dean way too wigged out to take charge, you’d usually step into his shoes without much trouble. But Sam has fielded your fainting spells and panic attacks all week, so he’s already got a pep-talk prepared for the two of you.

“...Okay.” Sam checks his watch. His voice still has that touch of classic Sam softness, probably because he knows how hard this is going to sound: “Stay focused. We got thirty-two minutes and counting to track this thing down, figure out who it’s possessing, and perform a full-on exorcism.” You’re about to make a comment about how blissfully easy he makes things seem, but Dean beats you to it. He snipes, “Yeah, on a crowded plane. That’s gonna be easy.”

You snap one of your bracelets against your wrist a few times, thinking. “Who would it want to possess?”

This gets Dean’s head in the game. Easily, he recites: “It’s usually somebody with some sort’a weakness, y’know, a chink in the armor that the demon can worm through. Somebody with an addiction or emotional distress.”

As he explains this, you unlatch Dean’s claws from their death-grip on your arm and give the top of his hand a little soothing pat. Your gaze remains fixed on the pattern of the seat in front of you. “For a regular demon, maybe. This thing might not even need a chink. It wants maximum damage here—so maybe it’d go for the pilot?”

This is not a soothing thought. Checking his watch again, Sam suggests, “Or Amanda… Surviving a crash like that? I’d be pretty messed up if I was her. We should check both.”

You’re happy to spend the little time you have left wisely, so you’re quick to push out of your seat and get moving. Dean puts on a brave face and follows your lead. There are only two ends of the plane to check—this thing can’t hide forever. Just when you start to do an awkward side-shuffle to nudge Dean out into the aisle with your hip, the whole plane thrashes top to bottom, and there he goes, dropping like a rock back into his seat. His spike of panic is so genuine that you end up dropping with him.

“Come on!” Dean hisses through his teeth. “That can’t be normal!”

You and Sam immediately get to shushing and soothing him, and suddenly you understand how married couples feel when their kid starts crying on a flight. Shifty eyes in other seats pretend they’re not glaring at you. Summoning as much strength as you can to share with him, you drop a hand on Dean’s shoulder and order: “Breathe, dude. You’re okay.”

“I’m not fuckin’ four,” Dean whisper-shouts, sulking flat back into his seat.

“She’s right,” Sam whispers back. Should it be worrying you how much he’s been agreeing with you lately? Stern, he says, “Listen—if you’re panicked, you’re wide open to possession. So you need to calm yourself down. Right now.”

A weird part of you is grateful that Dean is having a rough go of it, because it’s giving you something to focus on. You’re usually pretty good with planes. But for a minute there, when the turbulence had hit, your mind had defaulted to oh shit, this is real, we’re all going to die. A slideshow of the last crash had blitzed through your thoughts. Thoughts that had nothing to do with the anxiety you were picking up from Dean.

You know you despise it when Dean uses his Parent Voice on you, so you try not to use it on him when you urge, “C’mon. I think Amanda’s in the back of the plane. I’ll check up front.”

Dean gives an unconvinced, “I’ll go talk to her,” then makes grabby hands at Sam’s pockets, “pass me one of the hand-sanitizers. Fuckin’ uh, pumpkin latte—don’t gimme that face, _____, not all of us can tell with just a look. What if it’s in her?”

“It’s a bit more than a look—” you begin to clarify, but Sam stops your back and forth with a shake of his head. He pulls out the little orange plastic container of your pumpkin cupcake holy water and passes it to Dean.

“We should try to conserve what we got,” he warns, passing you the only other weapon against the demon (marshmallow pumpkin latte). “Go more subtle—if she’s possessed, she’ll flinch at the name of god.”

Now that you’re running out of both time and options, the second Dean unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out into the aisle on coltish legs, you take the opening and bolt out of your cramped middle seat. Anything you can do to get closer to finding this thing will make you feel loads better.

You start down the aisle. As the chatter of the boys fades into the all-encompassing thrum of the plane behind you, you take slow unhurried steps past each row of seats, soaking up what you can get. A girl listens to music in her headphones. A businessman clicks away at his laptop. Each of them you comb over with your powers, and each pass feels like scooping your hand into a bowl of tacks and waiting to get stabbed.

They’ll rip into your mind… take you apart if they have to, Mom had said. You waited for that moment, steeling your nerves the closer you came to the cockpit. If the demon’s on this side of the plane, and it sensed you, would it immediately press into your mind? Would just being near you snap its presence to you like a magnet? You didn’t like the mental feeling that gave you; the stark secret-seeking white of your Gift clashing with the black choking smoke that’d been chasing you all week. When you spoke to a spirit through your Gift, it felt like you were touching fingertips through a curtain. Would it be like that? Would this demon press its claws through the veil and dig around for something to tear, to grab?

The other flight attendant on board pushes past you with her cart, leaving no barrier between you and the cockpit. Behind you, bobbing in a sea of blurry people, your Gift could distinctly make out Sam (practicing the exorcism) and Dean (talking to Amanda). You’re just a few paces from the front exit of the plane when a man emerges from the bathroom cabin, and—

He twists to meet eyes with you. Expecting you.

You’re flashed a clever, haunting smile, then—a set of glossy void-black eyes.

You wait for it. And in its own way, the presence of the demon does overpower you, bringing the heavy-as-the-sky, parasitic feeling from your visions into the real world. For a long ringing moment, you are blasted with dark leeching power hot enough to singe the entire front of your body—like a nuclear bomb had dropped down just a few steps from you. It is spidery and vicious and knowing and awful—

…but the conquering sensation never comes. Beth had said that it would root into your mind, that just feeling it with your Gift, as you are right now, would tear you to pieces. Yet all that really happens is you staring at it and it staring at you, before it shoulders its way through the cockpit door and disappears inside. The only thing you really experience is the shock of seeing it in somebody, puppeting around a person with dreams and thoughts and memories.

For a few moments, you suck down heaving breaths through your nose and stare at the closed door.

Something about it nagged at you. Besides the obvious—how different it felt compared to what your mother had described—you swear you felt something else, some ringing sense of strangeness that you just couldn’t put your finger on. Maybe it was the fact that you’d just made eye contact with a real creature of hell, an evil spirit, whatever. But you made eye contact with evil spirits all the time. This was… closer to home than that. Underneath the writhing mass of bloody, black ink that made up the demon, your Gift had recognized something unimaginably familiar.

Sensing the demon in person had reminded you of… of a sensory memory, almost. It smelled like… warm static. The old staticy TV in your house, the ancient one that sat square and unattractively on your Mom’s slanting sideboard in the living room. You remembered her crystal ashtray propped up on the top, the fizzy sound the TV made when you’d shut it off…

On the nights when it was just you and Sam home, and the house felt so big and empty that the silence throbbed in your ears, the two of you would set up a fort in front of that TV and watch old horror movies well past your bedtime. The silly effects and the dated acting were easy to tease together. You’d much rather watch movies on the newer screen in your Mom’s room, but for whatever reason, Sam insisted on the clunker in your living room.

Y’wanna know somethin’ cool? He’d asked you once, running a finger through the film of static bubbling on the surface of the glass. A little bit of the static in TVs is actually radiation leftover from the Big Bang. How weird is that? Something so old and powerful, picked up by this random piece of junk.

Sam always crashed first, leaving you alone with the white static the TV defaulted to when the movie ended. You could vividly remember how your shoulders bumped against the hard floor through the thin sleeping bag the two of you had shared—how Sam’s warmth had seeped into your shirt where he was curled up behind you, his soft sleepy breaths tickling your hair.

When you’d pulled his arm around your waist to snuggle, a spark of static had shocked you through his touch. When you’d closed your eyes and tried to go to sleep, you swore that the ancient, cosmic hum of the static in the TV ebbed and flowed at the same exact time as Sam’s breath.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh. Crackling as he breathed.

It wasn’t the demon you were scared of anymore. The ancient, ever-present sting of static you’d felt deep down inside it… that scared you a million, a billion times more, because—

You felt that static every time you felt Sam.

It’s like trying to describe the smell of your childhood home.

Logically, you know your house must smell like something. But when you’re in one place long enough your brain filters it out as background noise, and it becomes something you can only notice after a long time away.

You’d known Sam since you were in diapers. Back then, the meager threads of your Gift were already taking him in and absorbing him into your memory. Eventually, you felt him so often that all the pain and optimism in his core, all the stuff that made Sam himself, had smoothed out into warm, familiar background noise to your Gift.

Then he’d left for Stanford. Four years passed, and the only exposure your Gift had to him was the flimsy thread stretched two thousand miles down to California. Because it’d been so long since you’d sensed him in person, hugging him outside his apartment had been like stepping into your home after a long time away—for a brief moment, the filter over your psychic perceptions of him had lifted. You’d sensed for the first time what had always been there, buried deep. The Static.

At the time, you’d gotten so swept up in Sam, Dean, and the adventure of finding their Dad, that it was easy to get sidetracked. Things came up. You got used to Sam again, and his Static faded to background noise.

Until you’d felt that demon with your Gift.

A demon. A creation of Lucifer. You’d always remember what Sam felt like—you’d never forget the smell of home—but in one of them?

Your mind whirls with so many questions that it flat-out pops, failing you. Pulled along on a cloud of white noise, you somehow manage to turn away from the cockpit and start back down the aisle. The demon is possessing the pilot. You have forty minutes, less than, to exorcize it and save the two hundred people on this flight. These are all truths floating around in your head, but no matter how much you try to circle back to one, the static of the demon overcomes you again.

Static. You think of Sam, the crackle of his soft raspy voice through the phone. Your heart is pounding in your ears, thudding away in your chest like a piston. The static had burned in the demon, burned like busted speakers and smoking plane wreckage. Little pins all over your skin pressing in. The space you have until you make it to Sam’s seat seems to yawn, your footfalls sluggish and shivery. Why do they feel the same? Why does he feel the same? The static of the demon worms under your fizzing skin, bubbling, boiling—

You stop in front of Sam’s row, and he’s already looking at you when you get close. He asks you a question. You stare at him, the whole world filled with that awful roaring buzzing, the air tight and dessert dry in the back of your throat. Even though he’s right in front of you, you feel like you barely see him—just the vague burning outline of him in your powers.

Sam reaches out to grab your wrist, tugging it away from the long marks you’re viciously scratching into the flesh of your arm. The touch of his hand causes a literal static shock to jolt from his fingers to yours. You yelp in surprise, but it’s—

It’s different. There’s a similarity, definitely, between what you sensed in the demon and what’s always been in Sam… but his Static is hot chocolate warm and fuzzy and so good. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Your surroundings filter back in, and there are his soft, worried eyes looking up at you under his brow, and his big hand soothing over the irritated skin you’ve scratched raw. Sam. The same Sam he’s always been.

…Whatever it is, whatever weird connection you’ve just made, you’re sure there’s a lot more to it than Sam having something in common with a demon. Right?

Sam takes one look at you, your insane reaction, and your mysterious reappearance, then easily puts two and two together: “One of the pilots?”

“Co-pilot,” you tell him, and one of your absent-minded hands drifts up to scratch at your arm again.

And again, Sam fishes his fingers around your wrist and pulls it away. Now that you’ve noticed it, you can’t un-notice it. His touch makes your fingertips and the ends of your ears tingle, and not completely in the boy-crush way. In the psychic way.

He asks, “You gonna be okay? We got twenty-two minutes.”

That jolts you back to life. Twenty-two minutes until this plane is smoking ashes in a Pennsylvania cornfield. Though the last ten minutes have easily overcomplicated all twenty-four years of your life, you won’t have a life period if you don’t see this job through. When Dean returns from investigating a very un-possessed Amanda, he feels the exact same way.

Your resolve hardens, and you manage to give Sam an absent-minded smile. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s no time for arguing. Dean and Sam unanimously agree that the only possible place to exorcize the demon would be in the back, where Amanda is, since you can’t exactly jump the guy in the middle of economy. You don’t exactly like the idea of roping her into this, but Amanda’s the only one who could potentially lure that—thing to the rear of the plane. It is the world’s shittiest ambush. But by the time the three of you decide what to do, you’ve burned ten whole minutes on anxious chatter. A shitty ambush is the only plan you’ve got.

Dean starts down the aisle for the back of the plane. You stare at nothing for a beat, and only remember to get out of your seat when Sam nudges your elbow. He presses his lips together like he wants to ask you the million-dollar question (“Are you sure you’re okay?”), but there is literally no time. In a haze, you shuffle out of your seat after Dean and make a feeble attempt to get your head into gear. Sam does not make it easy. One of his broad hands brushes against the small of your back as you both squeeze out of the row, and you feel like you’ve just gone down one of those static-charged plastic playground slides.

Your Gift is exaggerating it. It has to be, right? Making big connections out of little things, picking at a fresh bruise. For weeks, you’ve been crammed into a little car with Sam, into teeny motel beds with him with no room between you. Why hadn’t you felt it? Why now? Not when you were four, napping in the same bed after playtime—not when you were twelve, and Sam was the first person outside your family that your Gift had connected with. Had it always been there, living inside him? Had you missed it?

You reach the back of the plane. Amanda is there, a pale, blonde flight attendant straight out of a commercial. You are dully aware that you have twelve minutes left before the demon makes its move, always on the forty-minute mark (...and you don’t like the line suddenly drawn between Sam and such an old, biblically evil thing).

The boys talk. A familiar conversation occurs over your head, which might be why it’s easy for you to tune out. Your mind returns again to thoughts of Sam, so intense and loud in your head that it all fizzles out to nothing, and you’re left standing there with the air pressure making your ears ring. Sam. The demon. It’s stupid and intangible and you’d have no fucking clue how to explain it out loud, but your Gift is made to find the truth. Something inside that demon exists in Sam, too. Something.

You try to reassure yourself that maybe, just this once, your Gift is wrong. Maybe this is the demon getting into your mind—learning your deepest fears and bringing them to life.

Sure enough, Dean’s charm and Sam’s earnest face must win Amanda over, because she flits out of the back room like a frightened bird. The boys peer through the curtain to watch her go, the two of them as still and sharp-eared as twin watchdogs. You’re slapped back to life by the sudden tension in the room, and quickly scuttle up behind them. Right. Amanda’s getting the co-pilot. These next ten minutes will determine the rest of your life.

In the same beat, you and Dean ready your holy water, and Sam gets the written exorcism from their dad’s journal out in front of him. There’s no need for the three of you to say a word. An understanding passes between each of you, hammered in from years of hunting as a team. Sam slides up next to you and Dean gives you a firm nod, squashing your last wisps of fear. You’re here to do a damn job.

A man’s voice floats toward the closed curtain to the back room, followed not-so-closely by Amanda’s. You’re glad she’s not the first one into the room—because Dean instantly slams a fist into their face.

The co-pilot—or really, the thing inside him—goes sprawling. You’ve got a strip of duct tape bridled over his mouth before he even fully collides with you, and for the blissful moment you have him pinned, Dean gets another fierce hit in.

While he’s still stunned, you whip the co-pilot to the grated metal floor. Dean clambers on top of him and keeps him there with a firm fist twisted in his rumpled button-up.

Amanda panics, “W-what are you doing? Y-you said you we-were gonna talk to him—!”

“We are gonna talk to him,” Dean grits.

Then, you’re hosing him down with holy water, splashing it brutally in the man’s pain-twisted face. Your gut clenches with empathy. Did the demon leave his body already? You’re terrified for a moment that you got the wrong guy… until you smell the smoke. It’s not just sulfur, but full-on dead body bloat, steaming up from the big black boils that spring up where the holy water hits skin. You get a mouth and noseful vile enough to make you gag. This thing fighting you? This is definitely not a man.

Amanda watches the demon’s skin sizzle, the usual terror and confusion on her face. “O-oh my god, what’s wrong with him?”

You pour all the psychic clarity and calmness into your voice when you whip around and tell her: “It’s going to be okay. Be calm, go outside the curtain, and don’t let anybody in. Can you do that, Amanda?”

You don’t stop to listen to her answer. Sam’s already tearing through the opening to the exorcism at ninety miles an hour, his pronunciation punchy and fatally clear. That had been one of the less exciting parts of the five-hour drive here; when Sam had run through it over and over, re-training himself. One misspoken word could get everyone on this plane killed.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

The demon thrashes viciously in your grip, twisting and contorting under Dean in ways the human body can’t bend. Bile rises in your throat as you hear a snap, then two, as the demon does everything it can to buck Dean off. By the time you go to stun it with another splash of holy water, it’s more of a dribble. That’s your first mistake.

Two people are not nearly enough to keep this thing down. It gets a hand loose that instantly sends Dean flying, and before you even see where he lands, it cranks your head all the way to the left in one vicious slap.

Your whole face is blasted with red, stinging pain. You go down hard, smashed sideways into the cramped wall.

The pain stuns you out of the headspace you built to distract yourself, and all at once the presence of the demon is thrust upon you. The black, molten psychic power of it crackles through your body, filling your nose and mouth with the same terror hanging in your visions all week. Until you realize— It fucking backhanded you.

Trying to see past the dots swimming in your vision, you mindlessly shove off the wall, snarling with rage. No fucking way.

And then it speaks (to Sam?), and in the fizzing noise of pressure in your ears you hear it promise, “I know what happened to your girlfriend!” The constant stream of Sam’s exorcism stops cold.

When the demon speaks again, its voice, a spectral twist of the co-pilot’s and something older, drooled with pleasure. “She died screaming,” it rasped, “Even now, she's burning.”

A lot happens in the next precious seconds. First, the little circular light flushed flat to the back cabin’s ceiling explodes. Just—bursts, in shock, spraying sparks and glass all over the little room. You’re stunned enough as it is getting hit in the face, so one more thing to fuck up your vision doesn’t help. But you heard what the demon said to Sam. Through the suffocating evil flooding your mind, you feel the sharp spike of hurt and rage and grief in your best friend—and that’s the precise moment when you decide that you’ve had e-fucking-nough.

These last few days have not been winners. And though you live a pretty shitty life with an impressive amount of shitty days, even before you got to Pennsylvania, your streak of bad luck had only just gotten started. This demon has screwed with your Gift on an unimaginable level. Your last few nights have been plagued with nightmares straight from hell, and your days haven’t been much better, riddled with useless visions that get more and more disconnected every time you faint. It made it even more obvious than usual that you’re deadweight for Sam and Dean. They had to handle your boiling water burns and your freakouts, not to mention your mood swings and your unhelpful visions.

The demon hurt Dean, which is enough to get your teeth grinding. And Sam—it had cut him much deeper.

You wanted to tear it apart. You wanted to reach into it the same way it had reached into you, dig in with your nails, and rip something out. Your mom’s words buzz in your head: contact, truth, lies, rip, apart. Rationally, you know you should listen to her warning. If just looking into its eyes has forever changed your view of the man you’ve loved since you were little, then looking deeper could kill you—scramble your mind. You know that. But beside the rage and exhaustion fizzing under your skin is this desperate need to know.

Demons are made of lies. What if it was lying about Sam? What if it had screwed with your Gift in some new way, tweaking the image of him in your mind? It had to be lying. The Static in him, as warm and as good as you swore it was—it came from something evil. Sam. The man you love, the boy you’d fallen in love with, his soft sleepy breaths as he lays on the floor beside your bed, his freckly arms swimming in his too-big sleeves. How could any part of him be evil? He couldn’t be. N-not your Sam. How could he ever have something like that inside him?

You need to be sure. Consequences be damned.

As the demon rears up to keep snarling in Sam’s face, you slap a hand over its forehead—reach in—and start ripping.

She died screaming.

Sam can’t pull a full breath in. The words burn through his body like a syringe of poison, spreading from limb to limb. The demon snarls up at him, its foamy spit hitting Sam’s face and its teeth snapping around Jess’s name—until.

_____’s hand seals over the demon’s face. The demon’s jaw snaps shut. There is a terrible hanging moment where Sam’s brain struggles to connect the touch to what she’s doing; she never, ever psychically connected with the full face of her palm tattoo. Even with her mom Sam knew she put up a barrier, reading Beth with the smooth back of her knuckles instead.

Shit. Another fresh shot of horror lances through him. What the hell is she doing to it?

The effect is instant. Whatever button _____ had just hit, it activates every horror-movie, Exorcist-level instinct in the demon’s body. Surprised yelps echo down the back of the plane as the lights violently flicker. In electrified, strobing flashes, Sam sees it. The co-pilot’s body is diagonal on the floor one moment, and then it’s arching its back three feet in the air, lurching up into ______’s palm like she’d hit it with a defibrillator. The demon floats up and stays up.

…Until Dean brings it smashing back to the floor again, throwing his weight on top of the co-pilot. He barks, “Sam!” Right. Whatever she’s doing to it, it’s the only working distraction they’ve got. Slapped back to focus, Sam stutters out where he left off: “...O-omnis congregatio et secta diabolica—” It’s a blessing that he makes it through the next lines of the exorcism. Sam pours all of his willpower into keeping his eyes on the stained notebook page it’s written on, no matter how many times his gut begs him to check on her. All he can do is have faith. This is what she does—when Dean’s not strong enough and Sam’s too weak, she finds a damn way, come hell or high water. Sam has always had endless faith in that. So when the whole plane gives that terrible shudder that he was expecting, and then tips, and tips, and tips into a full pitch forward, Sam grips that faith with both hands. The demon’s power ripples through the rest of the plane. Everything descends into chaos. Past the curtain, the lights go out in one silent burst, followed by the explosive, concussive screams of the passengers as the oxygen masks drop. Movies are unfortunately good at capturing this precise moment, but nothing could ever replicate the way Sam’s belly swoops as all five hundred tons of the plane heads straight for the ground. Sam and Dean both go flying, crashing sideways into the walls of the back cabin. The turbulence rips the journal from his hands, and of course, with their fucking luck, it goes skidding through the curtain and down the aisle to ricochet under the seats. “Grab it!” Dean screams.

Sam can’t hear him. He staggers into the open doorway of the back cabin, clutching the frame for dear life. A terrifying, unnatural howl whistles through the cabin, even louder than the wails of the passengers. Its wind flutters his hair around his face and sends luggage toppling out of the overhead bins. For a moment, Sam wonders if the plane’s been hit or the demon has done something—but no. It’s her. He flattens himself to the floor—or rather, gravity flattens him—crawling on his belly towards the shadow of the journal under the seats. The passengers sob and shriek. The air is singed with smoky fear, and riding that same fear, Sam surges ahead, lunging for the book where it’s lodged between tossed luggage. He has to twist to get his hands on it, and it’s then that he feels it.

Down the aisle behind him, the wind drags luggage and loose papers into the void-like darkness of the back cabin—where the great, cleansing, sweeping power of her is fighting the demon. Sam believes in what he’s seen; Sam believes in angels.

She’ll buy him enough time. He knows she will.

Sam’s hands don’t shake as he pries the journal open to the right page.

“Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus,” he shouts, and the words ring as clear and clean as a bell. The plane tries to toss him again, but Sam grits his teeth and persists, “audi nos!”

He waits. Sam sees it more than he hears it. Deep in the blackhole darkness of the plane’s cabin, something red and fiery flashes to life… flickers… and dies.

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he swears he feels the demon fizzle out. The heaviness in the air melts away. The lights, which Sam realizes had been snapping on and off, turn on for good. The hissing of the turbines spins to its normal hum. The plane swooshes back up with a slow coasting motion, then sets itself back on its peaceful forward track.

Gasps and sobs of relief chorus all around Sam, and sprawled in the middle of the aisle, he finds himself doing the same. Overhead, the pilot’s voice crackles reassurances over the intercom. As big wuffs of air cycle in and out of Sam, he waits for the moment for his heart to stop thumping, for the big “we won” moment to wash over him—but it never really does. It sits with him. For a long terrible moment, he is on the bed in his apartment in Palo Alto, Jessica’s blood boiling holes in his neck.

Even now, she’s still burning.

INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Dec. 5th, early morning.

Somehow, amid all the noise of swarming paramedics, feds, airline authorities, and stunned 424 passengers, Sam manages to remain lost in his own head. He clenches his jaw til’ his ears pop. How had it known about Jess?

The terminal is quickly packed. He’s not in airports often enough to know whether they should be packed at one in the morning, but he’s gonna guess not. It is all background noise for him. Passengers whirl past, getting cleared by cops to go home, and Dean subtly nudges the three of them into the leaving crowd. Sam has a vague notion that he’s putting one foot in front of the other, but everything feels distant and hazy. His neck blazes with that terrible tingling feeling, and he digs into it with his nails until Dean stops him.

“Sam,” Dean orders, dipping his head towards the direction of the parking lot. Apparently Sam isn’t cooperating well. “Let’s get the hell outta’ here.” For a brief moment, the awful burning feeling covering him in a fog parts long enough for him to think, and Sam realizes that he doesn’t know where _____ is. Panic lances through his chest so fast that he sobers all at once, and he opens his mouth to panic more—until he sees her, scrunched up behind Dean.

Well, clutching Dean. Left shameless by whatever she saw in that demon’s head, she’s got Dean’s hand and wrist in a deathgrip, trailing him so close that her shoes catch the heels of his boots. She does not look good. Her eyes are big and wide and she looks straight through everyone and everything, still tethered to the other dimension her powers live in. She’s got her elbows pressed into her ribs and her body bunched up so tight that Sam can almost feel her psychic overstimulation from where he’s standing.

“S’okay, sweetheart, ” Dean hushes, the first in a long, quiet string of reassurances.

Sam stares at her. Even if she’s in her own world, she must be able to feel it, ‘cause she physically leans out of his way. That should hurt him—should make him burn with sympathy—but instead, all he can think is, she would know. She would know if the demon was lying. Sam’s connected with her like that—there’s absolutely nothing to hide, even if you wanted to, so there’s no way she couldn’t see if the demon had been telling the truth.

The line of people seeping through security to get out of the airport slows to a stop, making way for the pack of paramedics hauling 424’s copilot away on a stretcher. The black boils from the holy water have left his body entirely.

He’ll ask her once. He has to try. Sam lets the two of them in front of him, Dean, then _____, almost pressing her face into Dean’s back. When they’re stopped in line, Sam lifts a hand to touch her—but stops himself, not wanting her to feel any worse. “_____,” Sam swallows, trying to keep his voice even. “What did you see? H-How did it know about Jessica?”

Before she even has the opportunity to answer, (if she can even hear him), Dean swings around to shoot Sam a pained look. “Dude, look at her. Now is not the fuckin’ time. Let her get a full breath in before you start with the interrogations, okay?”

Sam recoils. The gnashing, rebellious fire he usually saves for Dad pours out here, instead, and before Sam knows it he’s snarling back, “I can’t ask one question about my dead girlfriend?”

It lasts only for an instant, but Sam gets to watch in real time the way that hit lands. He’s aware that it’s deeply fucked up of him to enjoy throwing Jess in Dean’s face, but it is his backward, comforting reminder that she was a real person; not a four-year-long fever dream he invented to escape. No one says her name but him anymore. At least, when he talks about her, someone else is forced to feel something too.

Dean sets his jaw. He makes the mistake of trying to turn towards Sam, which _____ thinks is an attempt to shake her off—and she lets out this awful, hoarse sob sound that stops them both cold.

Sam feels like a rail spike has been driven through his chest. Dean gives him a look, then mercifully drops it.

Immediately, Dean’s wheeling her back in and soothing her. The angle at which she’s clinging to him is awkward for all three of them, so he endures her trembling and hitching little sobs as he peels off her hands and re-arranges them. Dean loops an arm around her back so he can stroke her shuddering shoulders, uttering, “S’okay, kiddo, s’ all over… ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you…”

And of course, because Sam can never exist in peace, he watches the way ______ drops all her weight onto Dean and feels his chest squeeze. Suddenly, he’s very aware of what four years have changed between her and his brother.

The rush back to the car is silent, but for _____’s little sniffling breathes. After making it out of the blistering lights of the chattering airport and out into the peaceful snowy parking lot, things calm down.

Four separate times Sam thinks about reaching out to comfort her. The Gift always leaves her freezing cold, and early December in Indiana on top of that has her making audible little shivering sounds as they walk. Sam’s boiling under his coat. He unzips it, then zips it up again, unsure if she’d even want it. Dean gets her in the car and puts a warm blanket around her before Sam can get over his indecision.

They just saved two hundred people. In hindsight, that’s a massive win. Maybe if the demon hadn’t said what it’d said, and maybe if it hadn’t reduced her to this, Sam could celebrate. Seeing her so messed up always throws him. Less than an hour ago, she was the powerful psychic that used to have Dad clutching his telepathy-blocking charm under his shirt.

Sam scrubs his hand down his face, staring blankly at the trembling lump of blanket lying across the backseat. Now, she’s… whatever she saw in that demon.

Dean tucks her feet up onto the seat, then nudges the door closed with his hip. Sam stares past him, through him, at her silhouette in the Impala’s dark glass, because that’s somehow easier than looking at Dean.

The smattering of snow growing on the asphalt makes the whole world sound muffled. Sam feels like he’s talking to empty air when he croaks, “It knew about Jessica.”

“Sam,” Dean calls, softer this time. Asking for Sam to look at him. When he manages to heave his head up, Dean’s face is firm and reassuring. “These things—they read minds. They lie, just like Beth said. That’s all it was. Don’t let that thing get into your head, okay?”

Sam forces himself to nod. They both spare the shaking shape in the backseat one more look, then Dean’s rounding the car for the driver’s seat, and Sam’s sliding in next to him without another word.

PITTSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA - Dec. 5th, night.

Green. It had to be the ugliest color a motel room could be, Sam thought as he stared at the empty room. The walls were this sad limey green color that managed to look awful even in the dark, some parts made even limey-er by the huge neon green vacancy sign right outside their window. Their room was parked right next to it, so there was no escaping the sign even with the curtains pulled shut.

You and Dean, who were positioned right under the ugly green light, had somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. The only sound in the whole world was your soft breathing across the room and the crackle of the ancient TV.

Right now, it was playing a rerun of some televangelist in a big shiny white suit. He paced the screen on mute as Sam watched, curled on his side, laying diagonal to face the screen. Nightmares were so common for him now that the hardest part of the battle was getting to sleep in the first place. His strategy was to get so bored and so tired that his body would simply have nothing else to do but crash. Bored was the key word—Sam had tried reading, sudoku, and counting cars as they whisked by, but all of that occupied his mind too much to work. Tonight was another night where his mind was just too full to sleep.

He hoped Dean was right. He prayed that the demon had just been lying, lips pressed to the cross he kept under his shirt. Most days, Sam dropped into bed and sent off a brief prayer before the fight for sleep began. Tonight, though—tonight was one of those nights where he clasped his cross in both hands and poured his heart out. Sam prayed for his brother, his Dad, and for you, like usual, pleading for protection and strength. Sam prayed for Jessica, too.

(But never for her forgiveness—he knew he didn’t deserve that).

When Sam had first started getting comfortable with prayer, he’d always worried that he was being greedy or selfish by asking for so much. Health, food, lunch money, for Dad and Dean to get home okay. Now, it’s a natural comfort to him. To open yourself up to something higher than you, to give up your pride and ask for help—that is a mark of holiness. Goodness. Sam closes out his prayers and feels clean.

Across the room, Sam hears the covers in the opposite bed shift. He squints sleepy eyes at your silhouette, and even sluggish and drained, the shifting colors from the TV and the vacancy sign illuminate you like something not entirely from this world.

You pad over to his bedside. A soft, ice-cold hand shakes his arm. When you get up close and realize Sam’s awake, you scuttle back in surprise. “Uh.”

Sam shoves his face into his pillow. With his mind still on Jess, it’s hard for him to look at you right now. “What is it?”

It’s funny. From the moment you got off flight 424, you’d been glued to Dean’s side. Sam had kept his teeth pressed together through the entire thing, watching from a distance as you reached for Dean, spoke to Dean, took the food Dean gave you. If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d figure you were avoiding him. Now you’ve decided you want something from him?

The second you touch his arm, every wisp of jealousy in Sam dries up. Not at all in the mood to be touched, he squirms out from under your hand and hoarsely repeats, “What?” You speak to him for the first time in hours. You sound rough and broken, and the edge of that awful sob from earlier today threatens to tip into your voice. “Can I…?”

Sam keeps his face planted in the pillow. At first he’s unsure what you’re even asking for—until you drop a hand on the mattress and he feels your weight tilt closer, wanting to… to lay with him. Like when you were little. When you share beds on the road, there’s often space left between you. That’s not what you’re asking for. If that’s what you wanted right now, you’d be in Dean’s bed.

The soft, choked little voice he can’t resist begs, “I just need to feel you.”

The last sliver of guilt and self-loathing that Sam has been holding onto instantly slips out of his grasp, hearing that. For the millionth time since this morning, he’s reminded of how awful he was to you. You’d been brought to the brink with your powers in a way they hadn’t seen in years, and Sam chose that precise moment to freak out. He wished he’d been better to you. Maybe he can’t pray for Jess’s forgiveness, but he can work to earn yours now.

Sam shuffles back on the mattress and opens the covers for you. “C’mere.”

As quiet as a mouse, you duck under his arm and slip under the covers. Sam immediately realizes that he should’ve fucking braced himself or something, because holy shit, you are so close. He accidentally gave you very little room in the already small bed. To keep from tumbling off the mattress and onto the questionable carpet, you reasonably and logically slot right up against him, your back against his chest and your heads on the same pillow. Holy shit, he did not think this through. Sam has very few gentlemanly places to lay his arm. And even if he found one, your icy cold hand picks up his warm one and—right, okay, you take it and wrap it right around your middle. That’s fine too. Cool. Awesome.

Okay. Forgetting every way he could sabotage this for himself for just a moment, Sam realizes that he missed this. God, he missed it so much. You wiggle back into his body and Sam gives you a big, indulgent squeeze around the tummy, earning this watery little sigh that makes his already racing heart zing out into orbit. Friendly snuggling became a lot less friendly when you were pushing seventeen instead of nine, so Sam hasn’t allowed himself to properly, um… cuddle you… in ages.

That isn’t even the best part. That little squeeze makes him realize just how pleasantly cold you are, a wonderful ice cube in blazing hot soup. Sam’s practically cooking under the covers—and that must be perfect for you and your chilly hands, because you make the same pitiful happy noise that Sam does as you get comfortable against each other.

Maybe if this were any other moment, after any other day, that would be something you might laugh about together. Instead, Sam’s prayers are filled with you and your incredible burden. He hesitates to go all in and hold you like he wants to… until your breath makes that tight, hitching sound again, and Sam’s sure you’re holding back tears. Screw it, Sam thinks. He’ll take care of you this time. Sam presses his face into your hair and entwines your hands on your belly, unsure of what to say and yet wanting to say so much. Dean can’t hold you like this—this is something you only want from Sam.

You both go still. Sam feels you hold your breath. His legs are itching to shift under the covers and your hand awkwardly holds his, the two of you afraid to disturb the magic.

Your thumb slowly caresses along the flat side of his hand. His heart leaps into his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to relax. You need this. Finally, it’s his turn to comfort you.

Sam swallows hard. There’s no way you can’t feel his heart thudding away, inches from popping clean out of his chest. Neither of you are stupid. If Dean were to wake up, you know exactly what this would look like to him—to the cleaning lady, to the strangers out on the street. But right now, in this frozen moment, there’s no one awake in the world but the two of you and the TV. It is so, so wrong. But when you touch him, Sam feels clean.

Bit by bit, you adjust to one another. Your breath syncs up. The whole time, your eyes never move from the TV, but if Sam focusses he swears something washes over him—that same great, sweeping, cleansing power from the plane, as light as moth wings on his skin. He has to bite back his smile. If you did that to anyone else, they’d find you creepy as hell.

After what feels like forever, you plainly croak, “It was lying about her. It was made of lies.”

That hits Sam like a slap to the face. That’s… yeah. That sounds right. He absorbs the impact as best he can, because although his faith was thin, Sam trusted Dean’s word and he trusts yours, too. There’s—so much that he feels about that, but he doesn’t want any more of his grief to overwhelm your Gift. Sam’s not naive. No matter how good of a person you are, no matter how considerate and understanding and empathetic you can be, Sam knows that talking about Jessica brings you some level of pain. It hurts him, too. And he has zero clue where that conversation would even begin, so he stores his shame and his loss and gives a shaky nod.

Instead, Sam asks, “...What did you see? When you looked into its head?”

Right. Cause’ that was such a better question to ask her, Sam.

You go silent. It’s a weighty, knowing silence, one that chokes the whole room. Sam readies himself for whatever you’re about to share with him. Admittedly, he’s curious. When the Gift was something new in your life, Sam used to pile on question after question about what the world felt like to you. ‘What does it feel like when Dean’s happy?’ A car motor turning on. ‘What does my happiness feel like?’ Dimples and a mystery being solved. ‘You’re joking.’ Not even a little. It fascinated Sam—how does a demon feel in comparison to a regular spirit?

“...It was just an evil spirit, Sammy,” you dismiss. “That’s all.”

Sam highly doubts that’s true. If it was just a spirit, then why did it screw with you so deeply? What had you seen in its head that had scared you? You, of all people, who was built for this? He knows there’s something more here, but after this week and all the ways you’ve fought to avoid being a burden, the fact that you’d crawl to Sam for comfort is a sign of surrender. You’ve given up. Clearly, you don’t want to talk about it. Sam isn’t going to push you. God knows he’s done that enough.

When Sam doesn’t push you, you shudder out a wet sigh and pick up his hand. At this point, Sam expects you in this state to do something weird—and sure enough, you do. You pick up Sam’s hand and you just stare at it. Just stare. Your thumb presses into the meat of his palm, almost like you’re looking for something. Feeling him. Sam’s heart gives another pathetic, noticeable throb. Feeling him and being close to him is, after everything, still a source of comfort for you. His cheeks burn.

Just to fill the silence, Sam whispers, “I’ve lost a lot of my calluses.”

Per usual, his little creep says nothing. You’re still feeling him. Your other hand comes up to investigate too, adding even more soft gentle touching to Sam’s already overloaded system. Your thumbs press into the center of his palm (reading it, maybe?), then over each bump, confirming for yourself that Sam’s real.

Maybe he’d be a bit more resilient if you were doing this to him in a crowded diner or a rowdy college party. Instead, Sam can feel the rise and fall of your breath through your thin shirt, and it’s the only sound in the dead world besides the buzzing static on the TV.

Your gaze turns to the TV. The fingers caressing his hand stop cold.

Sam says your name. He can feel your heart thud thud thudding deep in your chest, like rabbit’s feet hitting snow.

Again, absorbed completely in your own task, you don’t answer him. You roll over very suddenly under the covers. Sam hopes for a minute that being face to face with you will give him some answers, but the flash of your face he sees only serves to scare the shit out of him. You give him no time to process before you’re full-body hugging him, shoving a hand between his side and the mattress and fisting one in his shirt to bodily haul him against you. Sam sputters out a sharp noise and awkwardly slopes his hands down your back. The sudden intimacy gives him a whole world of shameful butterflies and freaks him out enough, but…

You looked terrified. The same bone-deep horror you had on your face after you saw the demon in person—when you trudged up to Sam with those haunting Proctor eyes, staring straight through him and right at his future. What had you seen in that demon?

Sam tries to speak, but you talk over him, just as haunted as you’d been on that plane.

“I love you. So much, Sam. You know that?”

It’s not a sweet, reminiscent kind of question. It is a genuine, unironic, please-tell-me-the-truth, You know that?

Sam’s brain stalls. “...Yeah. O-Of course.”

In case that wasn’t worrying enough, your hands needily grasp at his back, refusing to let Sam go as you duck your face into his shoulder. Sam can feel your entire body trembling from head to toe, can feel your hot breath on his neck choking back tears. “You’re a good person,” you tell him, insisting. “The best to me.”

“That’s—”

“I can feel it, okay?” You snap. One of your hands slips up his chest to smooth over Sam’s heart, and you squeeze him against you, promising, “Here. Right here.”

…Okay. Consider him officially freaked out. Sam manages an unconvinced, “...Thank you.”

You’re so wound up that you’re gritting your teeth, digging your nails into his shirt and clawing him as close as possible. This has to be an effect of what you saw. Which is strange, because that… whatever that was, did not feel like psychic possession or a psychic panic attack or any kind of psychic anything. It felt like you, trying to convince Sam that he’s a good person. It strikes a cold, dark chord somewhere deep within him that he doesn’t like. You’re just… you’re just reacting to what the demon showed you. You’re overwhelmed from stretching your Gift so thin. T-that’s. Yeah. Regardless, you’re scared. You need him. That, at least, is something he can work with.

“Shh,” Sam coos. He rubs a warm hand from the base of your scalp all the way down your back, then up, and back again, repeating the soothing motion until his arm goes numb. “You’re tired. Let’s go to sleep.”

You mumble something non-committal under your breath.

Sam hushes you, blindly reaching for comforting things to say. “S’ okay. You’re okay, baby. You can fall asleep on me.”

Maybe the demon showed you visions of Sam getting hurt. Something. That would explain this, maybe. He fixates on it, purely because it’s a problem in front of him that is much easier to think about than how scared he is for you, and worse, how much he loves this. Being your person. It’s a stupid, selfish thought to have in a moment like this, but—Sam wishes he could take care of you like this all the time.

As your frantic breathing smooths out into a clear, easy in-and-out, Sam wonders, wherever Jess is, what she would think if she saw this.

He closes his eyes and tries to steady his own breathing, the TV still crackling away on the dresser.

In. Bzzzsh. Out. Bzzzsh.

- tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration @stoneyggirl @urm0mmmbbg @mulattomoon @poeticsorcery @deansapplepie @rennydennyy @babydollfoster @badlandsbrunette @hallecarey1 @pplanetcaravan

#uncouthspn #spn #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #sam winchester x reader #pythia #sam winchester imagine #supernatural rewrite

86 notes · View notes

madameminor · 1 year

Text

In More Ways Than One, Part 8 - Bad Batch x F!Reader - ...Punishment

Summary: You did the crime, now you have to do the time.

Tags: 18+ smutty mcsmutterson, porn with plot, basically, all the good stuff

Warnings: Light bondage, polyamory, oral (m and f receiving), p in v, anal, 'punishment', spanking, voyeurism. pet names, lots of pet names.

Notes: Like I said, my doves, here you are! Chapter 8. Hoof, this was a balancing act, and I really hope I did it justice (mostly for myself so I don't come back in a year going OMFG I need to rewrite this whole thing.) Thank you once again @dumfanting for reading and encouraging me! And thank you to everyone who has reblogged or commented. It seriously means the most to me.

Word Count: ~7k

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 3.5 Part 4 Part 4.5 Part 5 Part 5.5 Part 6 Part 6.5 Part 7 Part 8 Part 8.5 Part 9 Part 9.5 Part 10

With an audible smirk, Crosshair pushes you forward onto the table, letting your arms free so you can catch yourself against the surface.

“Keep your hands there until you’re told to move them.” He starts removing the top part of your kit. You look up to see Wrecker watching with that big grin, (“Heh - sorry babe, you did this to yourSELF.”) and Echo sitting on his bunk to the right, still sporting that damn amused smirk. (“It’s for your own good, cyare.”) Something about them watching you being stripped makes you shiver and buck involuntarily, eyes falling back to the table, heat rising to your face.

Crosshair pushes you down firmly between the shoulder blades, newly bare breasts startling against the cool table. “Needy already? Oh, that’s going to make this so much better.”

DAMmit.

You hear the door slide open as Crosshair starts to remove your lower kit. Tech walks into view, placing a regulation duffle on the table in front of Hunter with one hand, his datapad in the other, eyes trained on you. “Ah, you’ve begun. Then I shall set up quickly.”

He moves off to his bunk, removing his pack, pulling out wiring and small, mobile monitors, setting up a strange little station atop the blanket. You whimper in your throat - until your attention is pulled back by Hunter throwing a magnetized set of cuffs to the ceiling. They stick with a solid *clang*, immovable for even the strongest Wrecker.

You look back down to see Hunter pulling out rope… made of gauze? Is that where all your gauze went??? What was he thinking?? No wonder you were out, that would take an unbelievable amount to- They could have been seriously injured and you'd need-

“Wrists.” Hunter’s voice snaps you from your quiet outrage.

You bite back your retort, remembering the rules (and the consequences). You present your hands forward and together as meekly as possible. Without looking up, Hunter ties your wrists together, carefully, methodically, with a rather large lead at the end. He tugs it forward.

“Up.”

It takes you a moment to process what Hunter is asking you. Up…? Up where? He lightly tugs the lead forward. What onto… onto the table???

Your cheeks burn as you contemplate disobeying. You can't. You just can't! It's so embarrassing. B-but, if you disobey...

Hunter smirks and tugs on the lead, enjoying your turmoil. “I won’t say it again.”

Without making eye contact with anyone, you slowly clamber onto the surface of the table, grateful that Crosshair slid your knee pads back into place.

You keep your eyes down as Hunter threads the rope through the cuffs on the ceiling, artfully (and effectively) tying your hands up to leave you just short of dangling from the ceiling. You can almost physically feel all of their eyes on you, fully on display for them to admire.

“WOoow,” Wrecker murmurs, “Nice job, Sarge. She looks great.”

Your embarrassment is palpable. Fuck, you are so wet right now, aren’t you. You silently pray that Crosshair doesn’t notice- right before gloved fingers start tracing along your labia, gliding over your clit before moving through your slick.

“Love an audience, don’t you, kitten?” Cross smirks behind you.

Dammit.

Hunter stays silent as he sits back down, this time against the wall. He looks at the genius still tinkering over on his bunk.

“Tech?”

“Yes, finished.” Tech walks over to where you hang and places a slim metal device around your waist, closing it with a click.

You shiver at the cool metal, voice cracking with uncertainty. “Tech, what is that?”

“A device I’ve created to monitor your physical reactions to sensual and sexual stimulation. Tonight’s edging will be a perfect opportunity to test its abilities.”

Edging???? All of them were edging you???? You thought you were in for some teasing, or some overstimulation…not… not… waaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!

“Tech, please,” you whimper quietly, begging for his attention. “Please don’t let them do this, o-or at least, not for too long, I’ll be good from now on, I promise.”

He doesn’t even look up from his data pad. “I believe you, my Queen, but these are the natural consequences, as you are always warning us about. You must learn to accept them.”

Oh he WOULD throw your own words back at you, wouldn’t he? Jerk. Beautiful, smart jerk.

“Trying to plead your way out?” You hear an amused hum from behind you. Crosshair leans in next to your ear. “Naughty girl. And you know what naughty girls get?”

Your head shoots up, trying to look behind you. “No, Cross, please - “

Your ass is pulled back, torso pushed forward.

“The question is, how many? Echo?”

You look over at the once-arc trooper, eyes pleading. Echo wasn’t a sadist, he wouldn’t let it be too bad. Three, four, at most five-

He thinks for a moment.

“Ten.”

“T-Ten??” Your gasp, Wrecker and Crosshair both chuckling at your surprise.

“You earned each one of those, cyare.” He sounds like he’s scolding a child! “I know you can handle it.”

Crack.

You yelp in surprise at the sudden sting on your ass cheek. Crosshair smooths his hand to soothe the reddening mark before ordering, “Count them. Out loud.”

You clench around nothing. Not only are you being embarrassed on a table for everyone to see - but now he wants you to contribute??

Crack, yelp.

“Out. Loud, mesh’la.”

You whimper, pushing back against the soothing touch of his hand. “O-one.”

“Good girl.”

Crack “NN!! T-two.”

Crack “Three!”

As Crosshair continues, you watch Echo stand, removing the top portion of his kit, finishing by one-handedly pulling off his under armor shirt. Its like opening a present, the slight distraction pulling you away towards memories of him glistening with water, thrusting into you with his groans ringing in your ears-

Three smacks in quick succession bring your focus back. “AHhh, seven, e-eight, nine!”

“Heh heh, make this one count, Crosshair.” Wrecker rumbles from his seat at the table. His grin hasn’t faded a bit since you were strung up.

There is silence.

You can only hear your own breathing, your own heart beat.

Oh no, come on, you plead to yourself. The anticipation is almost worse than the spanking.

What is he….

Why doesn’t he just…

CRACK

“AHAAA!!” Oh, that one is going to leave a handprint- the thought makes you shiver. “T-Teeen.”

“Good girl. You took that so well.” He massages over your cheeks, relieving some of the burning. His voice purrs menacingly in your ear. “Don’t make me do it again.”

Your can’t help the defeat in your whine. “Y-Yes sir.”

Echo starts towards the head of the table. “Tech? You ready?”

Tech doesn’t look up from his monitor. “Yes - a baseline has been established. You may continue.”

________________________________________

Echo stops just before you, taking a moment to admire what he sees - his cyare, all strung up and ready for his personal use. Your eyes are glazing over as you sink into submission, pleading and longing for touch, for relief. Karking hell, he just… you just make him…

He clasps your chin between his thumb and forefinger and kisses you, feeling your relieved, longing whine through your throat. His cock stirs at the contact- he missed you. Misses you whenever you aren’t somehow in physical contact.

He deepens this kiss, hotter, heavier, tongue demanding entry before you let him in, plundering you for your sweetness, for his pleasure. He pulls away, an arc of combined saliva trailing between. Add the kiss- crushed lips to the whole ensemble… kriff, his cock is more than stirring now. He places his forehead against yours.

“I finally get to taste you.” His voice is huskier than normal.

He feels you shiver in his hand.

“I couldn’t wait to be inside you last time, but now…” His nose nuzzles against you.

You look up, eyes pleading, so desperate, so needy. “Echo…”

“Don’t start now, mesh’la. We’re just getting started.” He kisses you again, taking your lower lip between his teeth, before he releases your chin.

_______________________________________

Echo slides himself under you like he’s working on a speeder, which would be funny if you weren’t so turned on. You feel his warm breath against your inner thigh as he tenderly kisses your fevered flesh, bucking slightly at the sudden feeling.

You feel his rumble of excitement through your core, sending shivers and moans up your spine. “So sensitive already? Ah, mesh’la, what have I been missing?”

And all slow gentleness is gone.

“Ech- echo!” His tongue takes you moments before his mouth does, sucking your clit into a heated pulse straight out of the gate. Oh no… he is GOOD at this. You buck gently, panting whines escaping as you watch him claim you, trying to keep up with his intensity. His amused hum sends vibrations through your clit and up through your core. You groan as you work your hips against his tongue, searching for enough friction to sate-

And then he stops. He KRIFFING STOPS!!

“How’s it looking, Tech?” He grins up at your glare.

“Excellent, just as I expected. You may continue.”

You gasp at the ravenous return of Echo’s mouth to your cunt, making up for the lost moments. You try to keep your heart rate down, try to focus just on the pleasure instead of the build up - anything to keep his mouth RIGHT. THERE.

“Mmm, cyar’ika, you taste so good. The boys told me you were divine, but I didn’t know just what they meant until now…"

You clench at the idea of them comparing notes, whimpering as you look back down at him.

“Like that, hm? Knowing we talk about you? Share intel, all the ways to make you wet?” His eyes seem to flash as he watches you slowly lose yourself. He nips at your inner thigh before pushing a finger against your entrance, sliding in to stretch you, pushing out a needy moan from your throat.

“Fuck, E-Echo, yes, more, please, yes.”

He slips in another and starts pumping you full, his tongue teasing along your clit.

“I could stay down here for days, cyar’ika. Make you cum and cum and CUM while they all watch you lose yourself. All while drinking you til you drown in pleasure.”

“Y-yes Echo, yes. Please. I want to cum for you. I want to cum for you while they all watch me.”

Oh his growl travels through your clit and up your spine and he only pumps you harder. Has he changed his mind? Is he going to let you cum after all, even if the others don’t allow it? Your hips buck, desperately searching for the relief against his tongue, imagining the feeling of cumming like this in front of all of them just like he said-

“Stop.”

DAMN! You whine as Echo pulls away from your clit, his fingers still scissoring inside your tightness. He chuckles against your thigh. Your high fades, making you whine again as you shoot an angry look at Tech.

He doesn’t notice. “Returned to baseline. You may continue.”

Echo slides himself backwards until his hips are under yours, sitting up so he’s pressed against your chest. He gives you a sheepish grin.

“Probably for the best - any longer and I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from pulling that scream from you.’

“E-Echo…” you whine in your need and frustration.

He brushes your cheek with his scomp, “One day I’ll wring orgasm after orgasm from that delicious cunt of yours. But tonight - is a team effort.”

Then he does something strange - he pushes you up by your lower belly so your knees are on his metal thighs, your ass out just a little bit. He slowly starts kissing your neck, down along your shoulder. You close your eyes to enjoy his lips against your skin…

You feel gloved fingers trace over your labia. Three of them dip into your slick hole, eliciting a gasp while coating themselves thoroughly.

Crosshair’s hiss is amused- and hungry.

“So wet already, princess.”

Just as you groan, about to beg for more, his fingers leave your pulsing pussy-

-and start lubing your tighter hole with your own arousal.

You buck in surprise… and need. “C-Cross…!”

He chuckles darkly. “You knew this was coming, princess. I’m finally taking what’s mine.”

One finger gently pushes through your ring of muscle, a whole new stretch, a whole new sensation, pushing into his second knuckle.

“So tight here, aren’t you, kitten?” Crosshair rumbles as Echo’s hand on your waist steadies you, allowing Cross to pulse his finger deeper… deeper…

You whimper as Echo kisses back up to your neck, almost overloaded with all of the attention. He smirks, nipping lightly at your exposed skin. “You’re doing well, cyare. I know you can take it.”

Echo gently lets your knees back down to the table. With a final kiss to your neck he leans back on his scomp elbow, starting to pull his cock through the slick of your folds.

“So beautiful like this, cyare.” Fully coated, he positions himself at your entrance, laying back and gently pushing himself into your concentrated heat. You groan at the size of him - after almost a week of no sex, he feels… this feels… FUCK…he’s so BIG.

Echo’s voice is a feral groan. “That’s right, precious, stretch to fit me. Love watching your face as you take all of me like that. KRIFF, cyare.”

You look down at him, bliss bubbling through you as you watch him come undone. “Echoooo… Echo, NNnnn.”

He gives a few strokes, guiding you along your stretch. “So TIGHT. So hard not to make you cum all around me until I spill into you.” His scomp rests on your thigh, his hand on your waist.

Crosshair’s finger pulls out slightly, then gently pushes back in, further, further… You whimper, not looking away. “E-Echo, it feels so strange with both of you.”

Even through his pleasure, he checks in with you. “Do you like it, cyar’ika? You can always use your word.”

You bite your lip to keep from groaning too loudly. “Y-yes. I just feel so FULL.”

Echo smiles and rolls his hips, making you cry out in alarm and arousal.

Crosshair snickers from behind you. “Not nearly as full as you’re going to be.”

Echo groans as Crosshair’s words make you clench around his cock. He starts to move, slowly to get a rhythm with Crosshair. The new sensations together are almost too much- but perfectly so.

Echo’s eyes are drinking you in while you dangle over him, hardly able to hold yourself together. He moves faster, gripping your hips, doing his best not to push down too hard with his scomp. “Kriff, cyare. Best kriffing pussy In’ve ever had, I swear to the stars.” He’s almost losing himself i his reverie.

Crosshair’s pulses speed up, leaving you bent over and open. You can’t keep yourself quiet, feeling noise pushed from you with every double thrust.

Hunter’s voice rumbles from the far wall. “Wrecker, she’s getting too loud - why don’t you help her with that?”

Wrecker hops up from his vantage point like he’s been waiting for his cue, undoing his codpiece and pulling himself out. You gulp. Thank goodness you’ve practiced with him a bit since last time. He lines himself up after a few pumps, his hand laying on your head. He groans as he pushes past your lips, letting you take him halfway down. You swallow around him, trying to take more. “KARKing hell, babe. Still hungry, huh?” He grunts as he pushes in a bit more. “Look so kriffing good taking three of us at once. Like you were born to be our little bunker bunny.”

Both of your holes clench, and you know Echo and Crosshair felt how much you liked that. Fuck.

With his cock in your mouth, you can moan all you want, muffled by the length pushing into your throat- a good thing too.

Echo has planted his feet, pushing up so each thrust pushes his cock further, deeper, pushing out cries of ecstasy and need that vibrate along Wrecker’s cock, making him moan in return, thrusts fucking in farther as he ravages you for his own.. The feeling of the cool metal of Echo’s thighs against your burning backside combined with Crosshair’s finger stretching, filling- its so much, its so good. Your pants become moans become cries as you rocket towards your height, so full, so FULL, please just keep-

“Stop.”

No, no NO. Echo slows with his own groan, Wrecker pumping his cock twice more down your throat before pulling out with a reluctant groan. You desperately try to move yourself down on Echo’s cock - but the gauze and his grip don’t let you.

He grins through his panting. “Be good, cyare. Not yet.”

You practically throw a kriffing tantrum. “BUt EchOOooooOO.”

Wrecker chuckles, pushing his cock back between your lips. “Should have thought of that before you decided to make trouble, babe.”

“You may continue.” Tech says decisively, before speaking quietly to himself. “This is excellent.”

Echo slides back into you slowly, adding himself back to the cacophony of sensation between Crosshair and Wrecker. You see Hunter out of the corner of your eye - you can only imagine what you look like. Fuck, the idea of him watching his men all taking you in various ways, using you like the play thing you are right now-

Echo groans through clenched teeth. “Kriff, she keeps clenching. I don’t know how much more I can give boys, she’s squeezing me so tight. Fuck, you look so pretty with a cock in your mouth, cyare. Tech, am I clear?”

“Yes, now is an ideal time. I will alert you if things change.”

With a curse, Echo starts to pick up his pace. “Alright, cyar’ika. Be good and let me cum inside you, hm? Are you going to be good and let me cum without you?”

You can barely answer around Wrecker’s cock sliding its way down your throat. “M-mm-h-mm.’

With a groan he fucks into you faster, chasing his own high, pushing you far enough forward you’re choking on Wrecker’s cock, earning a lecherous groan from the big guy. You hear Crosshair chuckle darkly behind you, pumping his finger all the way in and leaving it there to let Echo set the pace he needs.

God it feels so good you wish you could CUM!! You whine and cry in your need and frustration, tears running down your cheeks from chocking on Wrecker just adding to the effect. “MmMmMmmm!”

Echo groans as he fucks himself with your pussy. “KRIFF, I know, I know cyare, but you’re doing so good. You’ll be so full when you cum for us, it will feel so good. Now be a good girl and let… me….cum....”

His hips stutter and you can feel him empty himself into you with a soulful groan. You’re so sensitive you can feel every spurt of his cum against your walls, can feel him dripping down as fast as he tries to thrust it all in you. You feel him slowing, whining on Wrecker’s cock while your hips involuntarily move for more.

Wrecker pulls himself from your mouth with a groan, squeezing the base of his cock. “Fuck that was so hot. You almost got me.” He steps back, breathing to get ahold of himself.

You feel first Crosshair, then Echo pull out of your dripping holes, leaving you panting and clenching around nothing. Echo sits up to meet you, kissing your cock-bruised lips to wet his own, his hand holding the side of your face as his lips explore yours.

“So good, cyare. You feel so good like this, letting me fuck myself with your pussy like that.”

“I want to cum Echo, please…”

“I know,” he smirks into your kiss. “But we aren’t done using you yet. If you’re good and let us all take you how we want, we’ll let you cum. Good girls get to cum.”

You can’t help the desperate, pleading look you give him before resigning to your fate. “Yes sir.”

You feel the poking of something firmer than a finger at your tighter hole, lubing up against the dripping combination of you and Echo. You gasp, trying to look behind you.

Crosshair.

“Relax, princess. Let me finally use my new toy.”

Echo smirks, propping his legs against your thighs to put your ass on display again.

You glance towards Hunter. You gulp, take a deep breath, and relax - hoping he’ll see his good girl trying to make his men happy.

A small smile, a nod. You feel a bit less whiny.

The plug slides in, pushing out a whine as you stretch to accommodate. You hear Crosshair remove a glove, thrown to the side, his now bare hands firmly massaging your ass cheeks.

“Kriff, princess. Can’t wait to fuck that tight hole of yours. So soon now. Going to make you cry with how good it feels.”

Your hips buck at the lust in his voice - you can feel it like velvet, caressing you along your skin. You glance around - everyone totally saw how much you loved that idea, all of them staring at you. You feel the heat in your cheeks as you look down and away.

Wrecker seems to have regained his composure - and he’s looking at you like you’re a full buffet on Coruscant. “So Tech, can I kriff her now?”

“Yes, readings are at optimal levels - her walls have reached a new level of constriction without stimulation.” Tech’s voice sounds a bit… deeper than usual. “Fascinating.”

“Heh, still tight, huh? Let’s see what we can do about that.”

________________________________________

Wrecker has never thought of adding more to sex than just the sex part, so this whole tieing-you-up to the ceiling thing was a little weird - and totally a turn on. Watching you trapped in place, squirming under his gaze, can’t get away from how good everything feels, the bonds on your wrists the only thing holding you up - like a fruit, ripe for picking. Oh he could just bite into you, and… Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

Sex isn’t usually rough for him - well, not all of it. He likes holding you close. He likes kissing your neck and hearing your happy sounds while he touches your body. But something about you tied up like this…He wants to let you have it. He wants to USE you the way his brother just used you. And cum so far in you that he gets you-

Whoa. That was new. UH, and maybe for thinking about later.

Can you handle him? He hesitates - memories of his strength going too far, cries of pain from allies unintentionally caught up in his exuberance.

But the others are here. His brothers, who have guided him through everything. They know what they’re doing, they’re sharing this weird new world with him. They’d explained what ‘the word’ was, and ‘colors’, and he’d heard them talk to you about some of the things you like; He can trust them. And he can trust you to take care of what you need.

Right?

__________________________________________

Big, callused hands grip your hips, pulling you back against a broad, warm chest. a rough voice low in your ear. “Babe, you look so good right now. I want to just…Can I just…”

Its the lust that gets you, weakens your knees, quickens your pulse. He’s trying to warn you, trying to give you the chance to say stop, or at least slow down-

“Wrecker…” You don’t have to try to sound needy.

His voice is waiting. “Yeah?”

You hope he can feel the shiver that runs through you as you say - “Yes, baby, please.”

“Fuck.” You feel him buck in turn on at your words. There’s a hand in your hair, digging in and moving your head to the side, teeth finding the junction where your neck meets your shoulder. He bites down while he sinks inside of you, spearing you, pushing you to stretch around him. You cry out with near pain, but mostly pleasure, arching your hips back towards him.

“MM thats right. Gonna fuck myself so good with this kriffing pussy.” You feel him playing with your ass cheeks, gripping them firmly so he can watch himself going in and out of your dripping pussy, pulling himself all the way out before slamming himself in again.

Once your whines become moans, he picks up the pace a bit, pulling you back by your cheeks, watching his cock emerge glistening from your cunt with each thrust, swearing under his breath. “Kriff, kriff, kriff.” He speeds up, losing control faster than he normally allows, already pushing his full length inside of you. You bite your lip to keep from screaming out his name.

“You like that, baby? Like me fucking you on your knees like this?” He grabs at the back of your neck, holding you in place as he starts to come undone, fucking himself with your sopping wet mess, his balls slapping your clit in a delicious rhythm-

And then, with a growl, he SPANKS you.

Hard.

And its fucking bliss.

A cry escapes you, loud and needy, savoring the fading sting of his handprint on the other cheek from Crosshairs - oh, they’re competing, aren’t they? KRIFF they are, see who can leave a better handprint- gods, the idea brings you right to the edge, each subsequent thrust about to send you flying, so close, so close, so-

“Stop.”

That mother fucking-

“Come on… Tech!.. feels so-”

“If we are to teach her properly, we must be consistent. Stop.”

With a groan Wrecker slows, still not pulling out entirely. You whine in your throat and against your bitten lip, panting into the bonds at your wrists. Your hips move back greedily, trying to take him deeper, harder, anything, just anything. You can feel his grip tighten- oh he’s working so hard not to keep fucking you, not to cum in you while you cum around him you’re so close- maybe you could get him to just-

You feel the wave fade, bringing you back down to square 1. Fuck. This. Machine.

Tech murmurs to himself on his bunk. “Hm. That slight delay allowed me to gather further data then intended.” You glance over to your genius. He’s focused, his pupils are dilated, his goggles slightly fogged- this is one of his fantasies, isn’t it? That thought makes you clench again around a stilled Wrecker, who groans into your shoulder. He starts moving again, unable to resist it any longer.

Every few pumps he smacks your ass, the sting making you cry out in painful pleasure, making you squeeze around him. Fuck this is AGONY, to feel so good, so GOOD with no build up to release the tension, the need building in your walls again. You let out a particularly frustrated whine of need, of frustration.

“Yeah, regrettin’ teasing me now, huh, babe?” OOooo there’s a sadistic note in his voice that just makes this all WORSE. “Gonna mark this ass up, make it so no reg will ever doubt you’re our girl.”

“I-I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry I won’t do it again, I promise.” You can’t care that you’re begging again, you just need it so bad. “Mark me all you want baby just please let me cum. I want to cum so bad. I’ll be good from now on, I swear I will. Just please let me cum.”

Wrecker bucks inside of you, groaning at your words while picking up his pace. Oh he wants you to milk his cock dry while he cums inside of you. He just needs a little more convincing...

“Please baby, please.”

Wrecker’s practically pleading himself. “Can… Can she?”

But Hunter’s eyes still aren’t satisfied. He levels his gaze at you. “Not yet.”

DAAAAAMMIT! Needy tears start falling down your face as Wrecker slaps your ass one more time.”FUCK, sorry babe.”

Crosshair’s chuckle makes your hair stand on end. Shit. You thought he was going to let you get away with it.

“Trying to play to the soft one, are you? Just for that...”

Suddenly, the plug in your ass starts vibrating.

Echo gets to you with just enough time to cover your mouth before you scream, grinning down at your crossed eyes as you squirm against your bonds.

“KARKing hell Crosshair,” Wrecker swears, losing his rhythm for a moment. “WARN ME NEXT TIME.” Echo chuckles as he steps back out of view.

Too much, oh gods in the firmament, its too much- and you can’t get away. You fall limp in your bonds, completely giving over to the pleasure arcing through your body, clenching and craving around Wrecker’s cock, letting the vibration from the plug light you up. Wrecker’s thrusts become more frenzied, more needy, his balls hitting your clit at an even faster pace, all the rivers of pleasure building up into a massive wave that you desperately want to flood you.

“KRIFF, you’re so tight, babe. That’s it, I can’t… I’m gonna fucking cum, I’m gonna fucking cum.”

You can only whimper in return, feeling the tidal wave flooding your senses as he pounds into you.

“Wrecker…”

“No way, Tech… I’m finishing… this time.”

“Her muscle contraction is continuing to dangerous levels-”

“I’ll handle this.” If you weren’t so far under, you’d care about how mischievous Crosshair sounds right now...

...but you’re a little preoccupied.

“Please please please don’t stop Wrecker please just a little more…” You’re so so close…

Until…

…the vibration in your plug stops.

It robs you of just enough sensation to leave you short of your promised release, just as Wrecker’s hips stutter, painting your walls with warm ropes of his seed. You whine in protest, desperately trying to fuck yourself just a LITTLE BIT HARDER on his cock - please, please, PLEASE-

-but its no use.

You feel Wrecker riding out his high, pushing in as far as he’ll go.

“Want all of that to stay in there, babe. Want to still be dripping out of you when we walk out tomorrow.”

You clench again, your moan pitiful in its need, looking to find the culprit who foiled your plans.

Crosshair’s smirk is particularly smug. And soon blocked by Wrecker kissing along your shoulder and behind your neck as he pulls out of you, groaning against your skin.

He pants as he rests his forehead against your shoulder. “So…hot… babe. Just so…”

You stubbornly whine and buck against him, beyond words. Wrecker chuckles. “Yeah, I know, I know.” He gently slaps your ass. “Alright, who’s next? Tech?”

The Genius talks like he hasn’t heard him, slightly quicker than usual. “Excellent. I’ve gathered enough data to make this a fruitful session. This will record her levels across the board when she finally orgasms.”

“Tech.”

“Hm? Oh yes.” He pauses and walks up to you, kissing your bruised lips. “Thank you, my Queen. You will not regret this.” He says earnestly before turning back to his datapad.

“Well, not ALL the time.” Came Crosshair’s chuckle from behind you. The feeling of the plug slowly pulling out is a torturous relief - so foreign and strange, but so empty now.

_____________________________________________________

Tech cannot remember a time in his life where he's felt as aroused as he does at this exact moment.

Its intoxicating, watching the arousal of his Queen translated into loggable data on his screen - her heart beat, her slickness, her walls constricting - all recorded and stashed away for his personal analysis, his pleasure- keeping you close to him, opening you up to him in a way no one else will know you. Expansive heavens above, even your data is gorgeous.

That. Is EXTREMELY. Arousing.

Now he gets to claim the rest - the remaining data to complete his first of many trials, watching you cum apart in binary, in stats and readings, all while HE’S taking his pleasure. He gets to physically see how he makes your pretty pussy feel. Fuck, the shiver that goes through him at the thought.

He’s so hard its uncomfortable against his codpiece. So he takes that off. Along with everything else that separates your skin from his, all while watching a gloved crosshair removing your plug and opening your ass just a bit more.

He walks to the table where you hang, panting and whining for attention as Crosshair milks your moans from you - and your eyes open to meet his.

He reaches out, gently tracing his hands down from your collarbone along the outlines of your breasts, coming to rest just above your hips, enjoying the curve where your hips meet your waist, thumb tracing the device that connects you to his datapad, and therefore, to him.

“Would you like to cum now, my queen?”

Your whine is so desperate his mouth waters. “Yes, Tech, p-please.”

___________________________________________________

Tech’s moan as you slide down onto him is the most erotic thing you’ve ever heard - at least, until Crosshair starts pushing his cock into your ass. His groan almost makes you cum then and there: Deep, hungry, excited, ALMOST satisfied. His hands tighten on your waist to keep himself from losing control. You’re grateful, because you’re so overwhelmed by the two cocks filling both of your holes that you can barely make noise. Its so strange, and so good. Mother what have you been missing up until now…

“KRIIIIIIFF Princess, you’re so tight.” Cross pants close to your ear, teeth finding your shoulder, eliciting a cry. You’re already so full, so INCREdibly full. Its…its so much and you’re so full and you have two men you care for stuffed inside you and now he’s biting you. You look to Tech, a mirror of how you feel, his lips parted, eyes feverish, but still observing, watching you as you relax for both of them, thumbs massaging into the crease above your thighs.

“That’s right, my queen. Let go.”

You can’t even think about what that means - which is probably for the best as your body takes control. You feel yourself sink down closer to tech, letting him support you.

With a groan, Crosshair starts to move. In, out, in, out. His pumps are achingly slow, working you open to fit him one inch at a time.

“Relax for me Mesh’la. That’s it. Let me in.” His words travel up your spine with the same velvety effect, pushing out your whimper as you clench around him and Tech.

“C-Crosshair.”

He thrusts sharply into you, reacting to his name. “KARking hell, yes, that’s right mesh’la. I’m so hard right now, NNNnnn can feel you squeezing me.” He sheaths himself again, easier than before. “KRIFF.. Tech, you can start moving, she’s ready.”

Then Tech moves, a small thrust up into you to test the waters.

And your nerves liquidate into molten pleasure.

Its invasive, you’re so open, feeling like everything you are is out for all to see. You have to relax to take them both, have to let them take control so you can take them both inside of you. Tech’s thrusts start to match Crosshair’s, both entering you with firm thrusts to accompany their moans. You fall into your bonds, useless, nothing but feeling and moaning and stretching to fit more, please, more. Balancing between the two of them, feeling them both sliding inside of you, taking their pleasure while you thrive off of theirs.

“Yes my Queen, you’re so wet. You feel so good,” Tech pants. You feel Tech’s thumb start to circle your clit. You cry out a whimper with each circle, unable to control it, reacting purely on instinct. You feel a warm chest on your back: Crosshair leaning in to slide his hand to your throat, thrusting in you that much faster.

“Been wanting to fuck you like this for so long, kitten. Watch you take my cock in your ass while someone fucks your pretty little cunt. Kriff I don’t think I can last much longer, this is too good.” He’s practically growling through his clenched teeth, trying to hold himself together. “Does it feel good, mesh’la? Taking two cocks at once in your tight little holes? Feeling me take what’s mine?”

“S-o g..ood…s…oh… gooood!” You can hardly speak for the tears running down your face, the pleasure finally building to a greedy crescendo amidst clit, ass, pussy, wrists.

“That’s right princess. Can feel you getting close. KRIFF can feel you squeezing me. You’re close, aren’t you? Beg for it.”

“P-l-l-l-e-e-a-s-e…?”

“KARKing hell. Yes, pretty girl, you can cum now. Cum for us. Kriff, cum while I’m finally cumming in your ass. FUCK.”

You feel two of Tech’s fingers slide between your lips, clamping down around them as they lightly press against your tongue. A makeshift silencer. You look down to him and meet his curious, hungry eyes as he watches you. His husky command is quiet and simple.

“Cum with me, my Queen.”

And everything crashes together like a symphonic crescendo.

It hits you like a droid popper, radiating out through your body and along your limbs. You moan against the fingers in your mouth, your muffled cry in sync with your convulsing walls, two cocks pumping their loads inside of you while you milk them dry. You feel them fill you, one in each hole, pushing their seed in further with each thrust. They both slow, working you down from your high as your panting cries begin to slow and quiet. You slide down again, gasping at the familiar motion with the unfamiliar addition in your ass.

You clench around Tech as Crosshair slides out of you with a groan - before he pops in the plug from earlier.

“So all the mess stays inside.” He whispers, kissing along your shoulder. “I’ll clean me out of you later, precious. Once Hunter’s done with you.”

You buck at the idea, taking Tech a bit deeper, eliciting a gasp from him. Tech sits up slowly, kissing you firmly, but gently.

“Thank you, mesh’la. You did so well, taking all of us. The first of many... experiments.”

You whimper, feeling the gauze holding you up shift. You pull away from the kiss to see Hunter untieing his knots.

“Lean on me, my Queen,” Tech murmurs along your neck, pressing kisses against your glistening skin. “Let me hold you up.”

You relax against him with a groaning sigh, feeling his cock still softening inside you, letting his trailing kisses along your collarbone ground you while Hunter undoes your bonds, massaging your wrists as they're freed from the confines of gauze.

Hunter’s voice is close. “I've got her from here.”

Tech murmurs in your ear. “Are you ready to move, my Queen?”

You nod into his shoulder and he kisses your check tenderly.

You’re lifted up against a warm body covered in fabric, legs wrapping around instinctually as you’re carried away. You’re placed down on a bed, lips beginning to explore your neck, warm hands firmly massaging along your waist, your torso. With a small gasp, you feel the fire alight in your pussy. You’d think that the edging and the orgasm would have left you sated-

-but nope, it just made you hungrier.

Hunter's voice whispers by your ear, holding you while hands massage along your weary muscles, working you back into a frenzy. “That’s my good girl.”

______________________________________________

It’s so easy to slide into you now. And fuck does it feel so good.

He watches you come back to him, settling from that high and back into his good girl. He was ravenous for you right now, a way he didn’t know he could feel. Watching his squad all take you one by one, at his orders, under Crosshair’s direction - he thrusts into you involuntarily. So hot. It had been so. hot.

Your whimper brings him back - and your buck against him drives him forward.

“My good girl took all of my men, didn’t she?” he growls in your ear as he starts to thrust. “Took all of my brothers and didn’t cum once. Just like I knew she could.”

Your little cries are driving him crazy with need. “Daddy…”

Something in him clicks- he loses a small amount of control, chasing this feeling with abandon and need. “That’s right, my good girl, Daddy’s going to make you cum all over him, got it? Make you cum good and hard.” His pace is nearing relentless. The warning of her orgasm peels from Tech’s machine before it’s quickly silenced.

“Yes Sir, please, please I’m going to cum again.”

And again. And again. Your moans are silenced as someone stuffs something into your mouth.

“That’s right. Let them hear how good your Daddy makes you feel, as loud as you want now. Tell them to watch you cum on Daddy’s cock. “

He feels you start to squeeze around him, and its bliss. He fucks into you with more need, more hunger, riding out your wave and letting it feed his own.

“That’s right, my good girl. Nnh, NNH. TAKE me. FUCK it feels so good when you cum. Cum around me like that again.”

It's impossible to stop this relentless pace as he pulls one, two, three orgasms from you, your bucks finally weakening, lessening, til he knows you’re satisfied, you’re done right. With a growling cry he spills into you, biting between neck and shoulder to practically draw blood, leaving his mark in and on you at the same time.

You both lay there panting against each other, him nosing against your neck to imprint your scent again- you smelling like all of them, but him most recent of all. Your body relaxes against his, settling down once again, one hand weaving into his hair and holding him close.

He hears a small, amused huff above him. He smiles against your neck. Always the last word.

“So… do you forgive me?”

He can’t help but chuckle to himself. “Yes, pet. I forgive you.” He grips your arm where his hand lays, firm, serious, but not painful. “But next time… talk to me. Please. I’ll listen.”

“Alright,” your smile becomes a yawn as you stretch to get comfortable. “I won’t do that anymore…” You trail off.

Wait for it.

“…to you.”

Hmph. He smirks into your shoulder.

“That’s my good girl.”

______________________________________________

Extra note: SOO guess what? I got into grad school!!! I'm so so very excited about it, its definitely a path of my dreams. Here's the thing- Grad school and work are going to take up a LARGE part of my life. What I want to know is, how many of you are actually invested in me continuing this series? If you are seriously a fan and really want to read more, please reblog and/or comment on this and/or other chapters. Likes to me say 'oh this is nice, but I'm not super invested', like you're just passing through (which is cool, just won't be enough for me when I'm that busy). So if you're invested, you want me to keep going, then please reblog/comment to show me you're serious. That way I'll know I can set this as a priority without feeling dumb. ("Like who even reads this?" You know.)

If not, then the next chapter will be the last one, since its got a good stopping place.

Thanks everyone for reading this far :)

_______________________________________________

What up, tag list?

@nunanuggets @mywheezingisalertingtheguards @allhailkingboba @valiantlyminiaturecreature @ladykatakuri @ben-is-a-hoe @klay97 @kaitou2417 @dumfanting @kuromisheart @koifish08 @echo-is-worth-more-than-2000 @badbatch-simp24 @pointy-sharp @rainytears2 @gabile18 @nedxwynert @chopper-witch @nexxxxxxxxx @nightscissor @corona-one @babypandasugar22 @pumpkinkpatch @oohyesplease @princessclaire2 @just-a-shit-ton-of-trama @badbatch-simp24 @foreverhockeytrash @unholy-t-rin-ity @reeny26 @smurderous @xxeiraxx @discarded-beskar @just-an-anxious-ball-of-flesh @mybigfatspoonielife @whore4rex @andyoufollowyourheart @lokigirlszendaya @captain-splock-you @darkangel4121

#in more ways than one #tbb in more ways than one #tbb smut #the bad batch smut #the bad batch x reader #the bad batch x you #the bad batch x f reader #madame writes #sergeant hunter x reader #tbb tech x reader #tbb echo x reader #tbb wrecker x reader #tbb crosshair x reader #the bad batch #tbb hunter x reader

316 notes · View notes