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delcakoo · 11 months

Text

enha’s favorite petnames ´✩ˎ˗

requested <3

PAIRING ! enhypen x f!reader

WC ! 2.1k

GENRE ! tooth rotting fluff

WARNINGS ! lots of petnames ofc ^^

a/n: finally ot7 post woo! a bit shorter than my usual but hope u all enjoy <3

// LEE HEESEUNG !

if you’re the type to get flustered easily.. oh boy

you miiiight be in trouble

but even if you aren’t? hee WILL change that

this man will search a whole dictionary just to find a name that’ll get you shy for him

but on the average day he’s pretty chill yet flirty with pet names

its a bit unexpected.. the longer you’ve been dating the worse it gets

everything begins with baby

it just starts replacing your name like

“there’s my baby, how was your day, hm?”

before you can even get used to that he’s already gotten more confident

his other go to names for you are angel and occasionally pretty

mushy yet effective c:

for example if you’ve been having a rough day or just got back from work or school? healing gamer boyf hee to the rescue!

“missed you, angel. wanna come sit on my lap while i game?” with a kiss against your temple :c

it’s such a simple name that he’d only ever call you, n’ he always says it so absentmindedly as if the name was your own

the latter is commonly used when you’re mad at him

“m’ sorry pretty. can your boyfriend try and make it up with some cuddles? and i’ll let you pick a movie?”

or perhaps when he’s being evil and wants a reaction out of you

“hey pretty girl, can you pass the remote?” pArdon

where did that come from sir..

when your reply comes out stuttered he snickers

this is not to say he isn’t just as weak for you!!

make sure to get him back since IT ISN’T THAT HARD

hit him with ‘handsome’ and bros a goner

“morning handsome, how’d you sleep?”

“i just woke up, stop..” suddenly your smug, confident boyfriend is hiding the grin on his face in the safety of your shoulder

BUT proceed with caution because hee will never just let you win, nuh uh!

if you step up your game so will he, be prepared for him to hunt down any name in the book that can get you going <3

// PARK JAY !

cmon this man is the epitome of romance!

he doesn’t even nOtice the effect it has on you, as his s/o jay thinks it’s common sense that you should have all the special names ^^

“darling, want me to get you a drink? i washed your favorite mug.”

“sweetheart, should i cut up some fruit for you and the boys?” yeAh he’d literally be in the kitchen doing shit instead of joining in movie night (just like in sosofun T-T)

THE BOYS DON’T EVEN TEASE because it’s just so cute and pure

even if they did it isn’t like he’d care

brushes them off because nothing can stop him from showering you in love

after a while you soooorta get used to it

but like can you ever really get used to jay’s way of waking you up in the morning

“my love,” he mumbles, peppering kisses along the back of your head while holding you tighter against his sturdy chest, “time to get up, okay?”

you just ask how he expects you to get up when he’s holding and talking to you like that :c

either way pet names are quite important for jay

it’s a method to show how serious he is about your relationship, he doesn’t go around calling just anyone beautiful,,

so if you use them on him as well? his heart will MELT

literally anything you do makes him happy, even just baby would get him smiling

even if it’s over text,, “sleep well! goodnight, love” HE IS FAST ASLEEP WITH A GIDDY SMILE ON HIS FACE

all in all jay is a giver!

doesn’t expect anything in return for his labor, so having you call him such praising names like he does for you..?

just?! starts malfunctioning

his brain immediately goes to things like “how’d i get so lucky” “i don’t deserve her”

also why words of affirmation is one of his top love languages!! give him the affection he deserves <3

and and one time you tried to see his reaction by calling him husband on the phone with a friend

..bro didn’t even bat an eye

the real definition of husband material

// SIM JAKE !

now this one.. unironically uses all the playboy pet names

you see

he started calling you babygirl as a joke A JOKE OKAY

just teasingly or fake flirting as if you weren’t already together y’know

however.. the annoying name

kinda stuck

and now he brings it up every so often,,

bro’s lucky because it’d probs give you the ick from anyone else..

when you’d show off a new outfit or arrive at your date location?

“yoi! looking pretty, babygirl!” :)

his other favourite is princess! no reason just that you’re his princess

you rarely hear your own name any more it’s always just

“when’d you buy that, princess?”

“hey princess, is the food warm enough?”

not that you mind!

as for him.. jake literally loves anything and everything when it’s from your mouth

call him snookums for all he cares as long as it isn’t his boring old name

if you even try to call him jaEhyun or jake you’re getting the injured puppy eyes >:[

baby, love, handsome, literally anything makes him smile and mentally kick his feet like AUGHHH hes so in love with you it hurts!!

however this may seem oddly specific

‘cause it is but

calling him dumb things like my hero WILL GET HIM GRINNING SO FAST

jake loves! feeling helpful! and important! mainly for you!!

EVEN IF ITS JUST. he tied your shoe just go ‘my knight in shining armour! i would’ve tripped without you’ and mans will be doing a lil’ dance in his head <3

yes you could’ve tied your own shoe but heeee did that he’s such a good helpful caring wonderful boyfriend right?? right

let him have his moments,,

// PARK SUNGHOON !

he is. sort of sorry

listen.. hoon can’t help his shyness

even after dating for a while this man still blushes at the thought of calling you something besides your name T-T

he settles for.. babe

around others it’ll be your name

but in private he’ll just quietly go “babe, now that they’re gone can we continue that show?” awWw

sure when he’s being a teasing nuisance he’ll pinch your cheeks and start calling you cutie or my baby just to see your annoyed frown

but when you harmlessly ask why he doesn’t call you that at any other time he gets all fidgety and shrugs his shoulders

“i dunno! it’s.. embarrassing.”

so pretty much

the only real way to get pet names out of hoon is if you can muster up the courage to start using them first

just jump scare him like

“pretty boy, wanna go get ice cream?” he’ll be looking around the room pointing to himself going mE??!

then he’ll eventually start using them in return, maybe just baby or angel here or there

more specifically if he’s really missing you or needs something

“yah, angel~” he’d yell from your apartment’s entrance, “you look good and all.. but we’re going to be late if you don’t hurry!!”

“wanna come visit the recording room at break? baby i’ll cry from exhaustion if you don’t.”

synopsis is. you know he reaaally needs you when those names come out

but but! like mentioned before he feels most comfy with casual nicknames

and if you’re okay with it, your own name which sometimes feels even more special to hoon ^^

he just loves saying your name as much as he loves everything else about you

however if pet names mean a lot to you no need to worry, he’ll get the hang of em’ and soon this dork will have you a blushing mess 24/7 mwahaha!

// KIM SUNOO !

baby is.. more romantic than you think!

as he warms up,, his favourite is simply calling you his love :c

in fact, he doesn’t mind saying it in front of the members even if they’re sure to tease him later on

“my love!” he exclaims as soon as you answer the phone, “i’m on the way to practise with everyone, wanna visit at lunch? jungwon keeps mentioning some mario movie he wants to watch with you..” *eyeroll*

he’s very.. go with the flow

if you call him a specific name then he may use the same one on you too ^^

for example, it was a bit unexpected to hear him start calling you hun

but at the same time you’ve called him that a couple times before too

sunoo always tries to catch on quickly when it comes to what you’re comfy with!

you wrap your arms around your boyfriend's waist just as he drops his duffle bag on the floor, “sun, how was recording?”

“ahh.. the others were yelling and gave me a headache. but it’s okay now that i’m with you, hun,” despite his exhaustion, he squeezes you with equal enthusiasm <3

as for himself, sunoo can’t help but smile when you call him the softer stuff

AND sun of course, it’s cute but simple — his favourite!

despite being the oldest of the maknae line, he’s used to being coddled a lot and sometimes.. it gets annoying

especially when the younger members join in

however when it comes to you?? he couldn’t care LESS

“my baby looks so tired, wanna sleep in my lap?” yep he’s absolutely sold

sometimes you have to repeat yourself ‘cause he was too busy getting flustered over your names for him <\3

// YANG JUNGWON !

being known for copying things like ‘yoi’

wonnie sometimes gets his pet names by watching/reading things

he could be on the plane during tour, watching a movie when the main lead says ‘beautiful’ and his first thought is just

“ah, that’s a good name for y/n”

may or may not have a note tab in his phone dedicated to names for you..

he would even research ones in other languages because he LOVES seeing your shy reaction when he explains what it means

“yah, why’d you text me something in a different language?”

when his cat eyes turn to crescents and his dimple poked through, you know he’s proud of whatever it is

“it means ‘darling’ in chinese, jagiya.”

when your expression changes and you turn to hide your smile, he leans over to give you a victory kiss through many giggles <3

on a day to day basis though

he enjoys saying your name in a cute way, besides the classic jagi/jagiya

“y/n~ come cuddle!” c’mon how’re you gonna say no!?

“look jagi,” he says it absentmindedly, even with the members nearby, “you’re my lockscreen now!”

will think it’s cute if you use the same names back, but won doesn’t mind anything ^^

he just really enjoys matching with you whether it be petnames, outfits, jewelry, anything really

so if there’s a specific name you like calling him

he’ll definitely steal it..

“bub, wanna order something for dinner?”

cat boyfriend just tilts his head, “okay, but why am i bub now?”

“i dunno, it’s just a cute name.”

then a few days later he—

“bub! i missed you!!” as soon as you walk through the door <3

cutie T-T

// NISHIMURA RIKI !

creative boy likes being unique with it :0

also ‘cause using super mushy names simply isn’t his style bUt

perhaps when he gets older that’ll change,,

most of the time babe/baby is an exception though

its quick, sweet, and right to the chase which is perfect for your impatient boy especially when he needs attention

“babe, babe, babe-“

you push him away slightly, holding the phone closer to your ear, “can’t you see i’m on the phone, ki?”

before you know it his arms are wrapped around you as his head dips into the crook of your neck, “baby i’m bored..”

“just a bit longer, okay?”

sometimes you may need some patience T-T

he also enjoys finding ways to make his own personal nickname out of your name, it feels much more special to him even if it’s not as ‘romantic’

AND OH BOY if anyone

absolutely anyone tries to use HIS name for you they’re getting the coldest death glare >:[

especially if it’s one of his members

in that case he has zero shame telling them off

“ow! what was that for?” jake whines, recoiling from the punch the younger had delivered to his arm

“you used my name for y/n,” he explains with a shy yet scolding grin, “the only thing you’re allowed to call her is her name, idiot.”

poor jake had to retell his story from the beginning,, sigh

just because he doesn’t do it himself does noT mean he won’t want you to call him cute shit!!

his reactions are always so worth it

“love, do you see my phone over there?” you feel bad interrupting your boyfriend who was peacefully napping in the living room, but the stress of being late for work was worse

instead of looking around though, riki only peels his eyes over to you, smiling giddily

“what was that?”

“have you seen my phone, doofus,” you repeat

“no, the first part!”

“love…?” suddenly he’s running over, picking you up and pulling you right over to the couch with him happily

good luck escaping his grasp c:

if u enjoyed, reblogs n’ feedback is always appreciated!

perm taglist: @duolingofanaccount @strawberry-sunset-skies @scented-morker @koshinene @boowoowho @sultrybaby @yunjinlvrr @kynrki @yujiecho @monstaxdirtywonk @dekusgirl @taejays @luvhyun3 @yjjungwon @miou45 @rosie-is-everywhere @yenqa @rosenatorfirst @millsielovesgyu @syrxiee2 @ily-cuz-i @soobin-chois @wtfhyuck @hoonvrs @gyuuberryy @bucketofhiros @xtra-cheese @bitehee

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lvrdrafts · 9 months

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Crumbs of Cinnamon, Mended Hearts

Summary: You are in the hospital after an attempted suicide but you feel less alone than ever

Pairing: Bucky x f!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of suicide

A/N: Imma make a part 4 cus I wanna make Bucky suffer

Part 1 Part 2 Part 4

You were at an all-time low, you couldn’t imagine a life without Bucky and it made you miserable. You started to have fewer customers since the negative attitude in the bakery was not one that made people want to come back. You couldn’t go back to your family, they thought the bakery was a bad idea in the first place and you could already imagine the shame on their face. You were all alone with no friends, family, and work.

You didn’t have enough money to pay for rent for the bakery or your home and now you were forced to sell your dream store. You felt as if your whole world was crumbling from one man.

Bucky had noticed your bakery had now been for sale and he was seeing you in the apartment less and less. He was starting to worry about you but every night Diana helped him forget about those worries. So the worry became more of a task put on hold.

You didn’t want to bear the pain anymore so you decided to end it. You had went to the bridge at the park at midnight. You didn’t want to be saved or seen.

You felt the whole world slow down, the cold breeze hitting your shoulder. As you jumped you felt your life flashed before you. The instant your body was completely submerged, you froze. The panic talking a complete hold of you. You realized you didn’t want to die but it was too late. As your eyes were beginning to close but you saw someone ,a man with wings, an angel, dive into the water. Then it all went black and you feel as if your body has given up.

At the hospital Sam was pacing around, worried if he was not quick enough to save you. That’s when Bucky came in asking everyone where you were.

“I’m gone for two weeks and I’m flying back home to see my best friend committing suicide. How the fuck does that happen” Sam yells at Bucky trying to hold back his anger as much as possible.

“I fucked up. I fucked up so bad and I pushed her away and I acted like a dick and I-“ Bucky starts ranting on but Sam ignores him. Sam had finally gotten on good terms with Bucky but it all seemed to crumble.

As Sam was about to comment, the Doctor came in and said you are able to get visits. Sam rushes in to see you.

“y/n/n what the fuck where you thinking. You scared the hell out of me" Sam admitted, his voice cracking with emotion.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she replied, "I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't mean to put anyone in danger. I just... I felt overwhelmed. I don't even know how I'm alive, it's like an angel rescued me. I don't know if it was real or just my mind playing tricks on me." you chuckle laughing at that foolish thought.

Sam looked at you with a gentle smile, hiding the truth behind his eyes. "That sounds like quite an experience. Sometimes, our minds can create extraordinary things in moments of distress. But what matters is that you're here, safe and sound."

Sam cleared his throat, looking at you with a mix of relief and affection. "Y/n, I can't tell you how happy I am that you're alive and getting better. I was so scared when I found out what happened, and I couldn't bear the thought of losing you."

Sam's eyes glistened with emotion, and he squeezed your hand gently. "You're a strong person, y/n, and you've been through so much. But I want you to know that you don't have to face anything alone. I have a friend who has a friend who is willing to pay for your bakery and I can help around the bakery." Sam says putting his hand on your shoulder as you look in his eyes thinking how lucky you were to have him "You don't have to do this alone."

Sam's grip on your hand tightened, and he looked into your eyes with such intensity that it took your breath away. "Y/n, I can't bear the thought of losing you," he confessed, his voice trembling with emotion. "When I found out you got hurt I realized how much you mean to me, how much I care about you."

"I was so worried, and I couldn't stop thinking about all the things I wanted to tell you," Sam continued, his vulnerability shining through. "If something had happened to you, and I never got the chance to say it, I would regret it for the rest of my life. So, here it is: I love you, y/n, with all my heart. And I promise to always be here for you, no matter what."

"I... I feel the same way, Sam," you replied, your voice filled with emotion. "You've been there for me through everything, and I can't thank you enough for that. You mean so much to me."

Sam smiled, relief was evident in his eyes. "I'm so glad you feel the same way, Y/N. I want to be here for you"

Before the two of you could say more, Sam's phone suddenly rang, interrupting the moment. He gave you an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I need to take this call. I'll be right back."

As Sam stepped out to take the call, you were left alone in the room with your thoughts. That's when the door opened, and Bucky entered quietly. His expression was one of remorse, and he seemed to hesitate before speaking.

"Y/N, I... I'm sorry," Bucky said, his voice filled with genuine regret. "I should have been there for you, and I should have realized what you were going through. I didn't mean to push you away, and I'm so sorry for not being the friend you needed."

You looked at Bucky, feeling a mix of emotions. Part of you wanted to hear his apology and accept it, but another part of you couldn't forget the pain of his rejection. You remained silent, not knowing what to say.

"I know I messed up, and I don't expect you to forgive me," Bucky continued, his voice filled with sadness. "But I just wanted you to know that I truly am sorry."

Before you could respond, Sam returned to the room, and you could sense the tension between him and Bucky. Sam looked at Bucky for a moment, then at you, his expression softening.

As Sam noticed the lingering tension in the room, he gently squeezed your hand and looked towards the door. "Hey, I think Y/N might need some alone time right now," he suggested, giving Bucky an understanding look.

Bucky glanced at you, his expression conflicted, but he nodded in agreement. "You're right," he said softly, his eyes never leaving yours. "I'll give her some space."

As Bucky turned to leave, you felt a mix of emotions, unsure of what to say or do. Before you could say anything, Sam leaned closer, cupping your face gently with his hand, and pressed a soft kiss on your lips.

Bucky paused for a moment, his hand on the doorknob, and then he turned back to look at you one last time. His expression was a mix of sadness and frustration, and without saying a word, he slammed the door shut behind him.

The hours passed, and Sam stayed by your side, offering quiet companionship and support. Eventually, the fatigue of the day caught up with you, and your eyes grew heavy.

"I think it's time for you to rest," Sam said softly, seeing the exhaustion in your eyes. "I'll be right here if you need anything."

You nodded, feeling grateful for his presence. "Thank you, Sam. You've been amazing," you murmured, already feeling yourself drift off to sleep.

Sam smiled tenderly, brushing a strand of hair away from your face. "Sleep well, Y/N," he whispered, his voice a soothing lullaby. "I'll be here when you wake up."

Taglist

@marygoddessofmischief @666yourmomdotcom @openup-yourmind @almosttoopizza @maddieislost @kentokaze @floralwslokicjand10 @vicmc624 @sunset90 @cjand10 @matchat3a @blackwood-bodecker-housewife @blueraspberryreader @that1nerd-20 @chemtrails-club @marvel-fandom23 @mewmeoww @niyah834 @mrs-bucky-barnes-73 @christinesdemoness1958 @matchat3a @kentokaze @mayusenpai666 @smplymrvl @chemtrails-club @emerald-writer @zeysartzone

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader angst #bucky x reader #winter soldier x reader #winter soldier x reader angst

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arent-i-the-fairest · 2 years

Note

can I request something about the phantom bride event? You can really do anything for this, I just wanted to see what you could come up with!

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞

guy after guy rejected… after seeing eliza’s extremely specific and high standards, you didn’t have much hope that you would succeed. but hell, why not try just for the fun of it?

. . . she ended up saying yes to your proposal.

“another suitor? goodness, just when i thought they were gonna stop coming.” eliza looked you up and down. “well, go on. what do you have to offer?”

you gulped. the regret of volunteering to propose was really starting to kick in. she was irked and looking expectantly at you, already seeming ready to slap the life out of you.

the urge to run was strong, but you were already past the point of no return— so here goes anything.

“while i may not be able to sing, or own a dog, or go around riding on horseback, and i don’t fight monsters with a legendary sword, as sick as that would be— i love you. and i hope that despite all my shortcomings, you’ll accept my proposal.” you held out a small bunch of flowers you picked out just before arriving.

eliza was silent as she took the flowers from you, passing them to one of her guards. you saw her about to raise an arm and you immediately winced, shutting your eyes tightly and preparing for the sting of her slap.

but what came instead was a hug. puzzled, you opened your eyes and looked up at her. eliza was blushing and seemed ecstatic.

“nana? grampy? go and release idia— i’ve found my real true love!”

idia shroud

he was so relieved that someone was finally able to steal eliza’s heart— he was (internally) cheering, pumping his fist, ready to do backflips and cartwheels cause he’s so happy— then he sees that it was you. his crush. that’s when the party ended.

idia’s really honored you came to his rescue and all, but now he has to deal with the envy of watching you being adored and pampered by eliza. well, he’s used to seeing you being loved every day by, like, everyone else in the school, but it’s a whole different type of jealousy with eliza. he doesn’t know how to describe it.

“oh, idia, i’m so sorry! i can see how upset you are because i’ve found someone else. but surely you understand, don’t you?” eliza sniffled, draping herself over you for comfort.

“that is not why i’m in a bad mood!” idia opens his mouth to go on a tangent but closes it once he sees eliza isn’t paying a single bit of attention anymore.

she’s instead looking at you with stars in her eyes because you’re patting her shoulder in a halfhearted attempt to console her.

“oh, whatever..”

he’s grumbling complaints every second. he laments pretty much every day about how “this is the worst day i’ve had..…” but this one is actually up there.

eliza

you’re definitely not quite the type she was looking for. no lovely singing? no loyal dog at your beck and call? not even a legendary sword?? and you certainly didn’t have an air of nonchalance. your smile was more awkward than it was cool and charming— but she looked past all the missing qualities. your speech touched her, and now you’ve got her smitten.

you get to experience some of the things that idia did, which is neat~ examples are her singing you praises and dancing around. she’s looks so excited she seems like she could just burst!

“oh, how lucky i am to have a partner like you!” she giggled, floating around you. “our wedding will be just as wonderful as you are, my love~! you were worth the 500 year wait!”

about 10 minutes in, you were already feeling suffocated by love. but hey, on the bright side, you can rub your victory in the faces of all the rejected guys, which is pretty amusing!

“c’mon guys, what’s with the long faces?” you smirk. “a little down i was the true prince/ss of her dreams?”

“these aren’t ‘jealous’ faces,” leona frowns. “they’re ‘i’m tired and wanna leave’ faces.”

you chuckle, quickly checking over your shoulder to see if eliza was near. “just hold on a little while longer and you’ll all be free, okay?”

being the object of eliza’s affection was absolutely tiring, but all you had to do was get the ring sam gave you on her finger and this would all be over with. but you reached into your pocket and felt nothing.

shit.

“u-uh…. guys?”

#i know eliza’s supposed to be the antagonist of the event…. but i adore herrr~! ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´ω`ﾟ)ﾟ｡#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst #twst x reader #idia x reader #twst eliza x reader #gn reader

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rollinouttahere-writes · 5 months

Note

Kinda an ask but also just a question… would Sanji hurt a woman for lucky, in both normal and little lucky au?

My first, gut response to this question was no. That he wouldn't go against his character that severely, but after I thought about it some more... it got more complicated. Under the cut because I ramble a bit and this gets a little graphic.

For normal, adult Lucky, the answer does remain 'no'. Sanji's thing when Lucky is hurt or in danger is rescue. He removes her from the situation, and someone else will deal with the threat in question while he dotes.

Even for little Lucky, he typically will stick to just grabbing and running with her rather than confronting a woman.

But when it comes to little Lucky, she has an advantage over her adult self. Along with having his natural protectiveness and the yandere effects of the amulet, she also gets paternal instincts.

You don't fuck with those.

Sanji is good at keeping a level head, even in a crisis, but even he has his breaking point. If he were to walk in on little Lucky screaming and crying while actively being severely injured, well that would change things.

At that point, he isn't even consciously choosing to harm a woman, no. He doesn't even know what he's attacking. Some deep, instinctive part of him registers that his baby is now safe in his arms where she should be, but that same part is also telling him that she isn't truly safe yet. Not while this monster is still here.

All he sees is red, and not just because of how devastating each consecutive blow is. He enters such a hellish state of rage that he can't really "see" what is happening around him, and it doesn't end until the monster has stopped moving.

Given how severe the onslaught is, there is a very real chance he'll walk away from this none the wiser that the mass of gore beneath him used to be a woman. He'll assume it must have been a man, that's the only possible answer.

Everyone else agrees not to tell him. He's upset enough from seeing his baby hurt, he doesn't need to be grappling with breaking his vow on top of it.

#lucky break #little lucky au #sanji #black leg sanji #humanoid606

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teaberrii · 1 year

Text

Chapter Twelve: Not Alone

Alhaitham has the looks and the smarts. He will also be the stand-in CEO for his grandfather's company for a year.

But, he's been mysteriously cursed to turn into a cat every night since his eighteenth birthday… until he meets you, an employee at his grandfather's company, who rescues him as a cat and changes him back with one kiss.

Alhaitham/You

Notes:

Cross-posted on AO3

Female reader

Chapter index at the end of chapter one

You feel something brush against your leg. So, you look down and see Alhaitham walking around your legs, purposefully rubbing against you whenever he can. Then, as if knowing he has your attention, he looks up and meows with a little smile. That's when you hear your apartment buzzer.

As soon as you answer it, you hear Lumine say, “Oh, wow. She's really home.”

“Told you so. My hunch is always right.” Then, Childe looks into the camera and waves. “Hiya, sweet cheeks! May we come in?”

Alhaitham doesn’t need to look at the screen to know it’s Childe. Besides the voice, only one person calls you by that nickname.

As soon as you open the door, you ask, “What are you two doing here?”

"I went out for a drive, and fate brought me to Lulu"—Childe notices Lumine's small eye roll—"and now we're here!"

“That explains a lot,” you deadpan.

Lumine smiles at Alhaitham. “Hey! It’s Mr. Kitty!”

"Mr. Kitty?" Childe asks. "It looks more like a Mr. Cat to me." He looks at you. "I didn't know you got a cat."

“Yeah… I got him recently.”

“Well, he seems to really like you,” Childe says, watching Alhaitham gently rub his cheek against your leg.

You bend over and pick him up.

“By the way, how’d your date go?” Lumine asks. “Did anything… exciting happen?”

You aren’t going to spill that you and Alhaitham just had your first kiss. You can only imagine the details Lumine wants to hear, and having Childe around won’t help.

Alhaitham meows and Lumine smiles at him. "Ooh, don't tell me Mr. Kitty has all the juicy details. Did they kiss?" You look at Alhaitham just as he looks up at you. Your noses almost touch, and your heart nearly stops. "I didn't see this little guy the last time Mom and I were here… did you go back for him, or did he come back to see you?"

You smile. “I guess it was a little bit of both.” Then, you look at your sister. “Anyways, enough about me." You put Alhaitham on the counter. "What about you?”

“Me?”

“You two just decided to hang out together for the night?”

Lumine and Childe glance at each other. “It really was a coincidence that we bumped into each other!” she insists.

Childe chuckles. “I got lucky.”

“Hey, since we’re here…” Lumine claps her hands together. “Should we go say hi to Alhaitham? He’s home, isn’t he?”

You glance at Alhaitham. Yeah, you could say he’s home.

Childe smiles. “Lumine told me you’re neighbours with Mr. Hottie now. Look at you livin’ the life.”

"What can I say?" you say sarcastically. "It's like I'm the protagonist of my own scripts." Then, you quickly add, "But, uh, he's a bit busy right now."

“With what?”

“...Meetings.”

If Childe and Lumine are suspicious, they don’t say anything. You think it’s a believable enough excuse. The man is a CEO, after all.

Then, Childe walks over and leans over to stare at Alhaitham. “...Or, is he right here?”

You look from Childe to Alhaitham and back to Childe. “What are you talking about?”

Childe laughs and leans upright. “It’s a funny story, actually..."

“...What? Is that a story idea you came up with?” Childe asked, tossing him bottled water.

Ayato easily caught the drink. “It does sound like an idea born from fantasy, doesn’t it?”

“What I’m wondering is why you’re talking to me about it.”

“I was just curious if you’ve ever heard of such a thing happening in real life.”

“People turning into cats? Of course not!” Ayato opened his bottled water, and Childe couldn’t help but ask, “...Have you?”

Ayato’s mysterious smile only made Childe more curious.

"People turning into cats?" Lumine asks. "That can't happen!"

Your eyes meet Alhaitham's, knowing exactly what's running in each other's minds. It might just be a meaningless conversation. But is it possible that Ayato knows someone who's cursed? Or... is it himself?

"Wouldn't it be interesting if it can?" Childe asks.

"Well, I don't think you would be able to look at cats the same way again," you mumble. Then, you look at the clock. “Hey, it’s getting late.”

“I guess that’s our cue to leave, Lulu.”

"Well, I don't have to, you know," Lumine says. Then, she smiles at you. "I could sleep over!"

Before you can answer, Childe huffs. “And I thought we could grab some an evening snack together before I dropped you off.”

“You should’ve brought a snack before you came here,” you say.

Childe laughs. “I promise I’ll bring one for you next time.”

You look at Lumine. “...You should go with him.”

“Why?”

“...You have work tomorrow, don’t you?” you ask. “Your place is closer than mine.”

Lumine narrows her eyes. Childe pats her head and says, “Sis just wants some private time with Mr. Kitty.”

Well, that’s one way to put it.

Alhaitham nuzzles his head against your arm until you pick him up again.

“Or… maybe it’s the other way around,” Childe continues.

Lumine pouts slightly. “...Fine.”

As your sister leaves your apartment, you say, “Don’t keep her out late, Childe.”

“I won’t.”

Childe has just finished putting on his shoes when you ask, “By the way, did something happen?”

He turns around. “What makes you ask that?”

"...Do you remember the day you randomly showed up at my house?" Childe slightly looks away from you, and you know you're onto something. "It was the day you fought with your parents."

“I can’t believe you still remember that.”

“It was the first time I saw you cry.”

Something about that statement makes him stiffen.

Lumine pokes her head back inside. “Um, hellooo? Are we going or what?” She looks from Childe to you and back to Childe. “Is everything okay? Why do you two look kinda serious?”

"It's nothing," you say. "I told him to drive you straight home."

Childe smiles. "And I told her I wanted to keep you to myself for a little longer."

Lumine nudges him. “As long as there’s food.”

“You’re way too easily convinced,” you deadpan.

“Alright, we’re leaving,” Childe says with a wave. He also makes sure to wave to Alhaitham. “Take care of her, Mr. Kitty.”

You lift Alhaitham’s paw and make him wave, even though his deadpan expression says otherwise.

Once you and Alhaitham are alone, you put him on the couch. You'd like to tease him a little longer, but you'd like to ask about what he thought about the conversation between Childe and Ayato. So, you lean down and kiss his fluffy, little head.

Soon, Alhaitham is dressed, and you and he are sitting on the couch.

"Do you think we should talk to Ayato?" you ask.

"It would be a little strange if we grilled him on a conversation that might be meaningless."

That's true.

"But, with how things are going, I am a little curious if he really does know anything." When you look at him curiously, he says, "The timing isn't the only thing that's changed. The transformation back to my normal self was also different."

“You mean… you usually don’t just poof into a cat?”

Alhaitham shakes his head. “It’s a painful process.”

A painful process? Now, you’re imagining bones shrinking and breaking, and you aren’t sure if you really want to know. Maybe this is why he wanted privacy.

“Turning back isn’t as painful as turning into a cat,” he continues.

So, why are things different now?

Alhaitham pulls you close. “...We might be close to getting answers, but there’s one thing I want to make sure of.”

“I’m all ears.”

But, instead of talking, he leans in and kisses you, slowly and softly at first and then with a swift gradation of intensity that makes your world spin. Your back hits the couch with Alhaitham on top of you, his insistent mouth sending shivers through your nerves. Your body melts against his as your hands weave through his hair, pulling him closer.

Finally, when you two pull away, he says, “...Even when this curse ends, I want to make sure you are mine.”

You smile. This time, you say, “I’m all yours.”

◆◆◆

Back in the car, Lumine wonders if she should ask. She'd overheard the conversation between you and Childe. Your hunch is the same as hers. Something must've happened. But would it be intrusive if she asked? What if he got mad at her? What if—

“Is something bothering you?" The car roars to life, and Childe looks at her. “You've been quiet.”

Lumine’s not looking at him when she says, “...Well, I overheard what you and Sis were talking about.”

“Are you worried about me?”

Lumine turns to him. “Of course I am. You’re my friend.”

Childe smiles and ruffles her hair. “You’re cute, Lulu. Have I ever told you that?”

No. Never. Actually, Lumine had always thought he saw her as a kid or a little sister.

“...So, will you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Another time.”

Is it because he doesn’t think she would be mature enough to help him? Would… he have told you if you were the one who asked instead?

“Oh, fine,” Lumine says dramatically, “if you don’t want my godly advice.”

The car is back on the road now, and Childe glances at her. “Godly advice, huh?” Then, he chuckles. “...Then, let me ask you. Who is more important? Yourself… or your family?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“If you’re forced to make that kind of decision, would you choose yourself?”

"That's a terrible question!"

"Maybe that's the reason why I asked," Childe says.

Lumine sighs. "Well, I guess it depends on the context.”

“Context, huh?”

“It’s not like you to ask such serious questions."

Once the car slowly rolls to a stop, Childe lightly pinches her nose. “That’s ‘cause you don’t know me well enough.”

“I’ve known you for years,” Lumine deadpans. “Don’t give me that.”

Childe chuckles softly. “Just because you’ve known someone for years doesn’t mean you know every side of them.”

Lumine looks at him. Childe looks back.

“...What’s on your mind now?” he asks.

“...Nothing," she mutters, looking away.

“Oh? Really?”

“Why are you so curious?” Lumine asks flatly.

"Because you intrigue me."

Lumine turns back. “W-what is that supposed to mean?”

"It means what it means. You're interesting, Lumine."

"In what ways?" she asks skeptically.

"You used to have everything written on your face. I read you like an open book. Now, it's getting harder to read you."

"It means I'm not a kid anymore."

Childe smiles. "You're right. You aren't. So, would you like to be my date to Zhongli's wedding?"

"Yeah, I'm not, so"—her eyes widen—"Wait. What did you just say?"

"Would you like to be my date to Zhongli's wedding?" Childe drawls.

After regaining her composure, she looks ahead. "Why are you asking me?"

"Because I want to go with you."

Lumine glances at him, and he gives her a quick wink.

"...Let me think about it," she says quietly.

"Well, I guess I'll have to be patient."

"Maybe if you grabbed us some takoyaki, I'll come to a decision sooner."

Childe laughs. "Alright, but on one condition."

"Which is?"

"Your sister expects me to drive you straight home. Looks like we're taking a little detour. So"—he slightly smirks—"this little rendezvous is our little secret."

Lumine smiles. "You're lucky I'm good at keeping secrets."

◆◆◆

“It looks like you and Aether have gotten close.”

Not long after you and Alhaitham left, the group had also left his grandfather's room. Ayato spent the rest of the day with Ayaka. Of course, he also got to know your brother a little better. Now that Aether is back in his room, it's just the siblings.

“Are you jealous?” Ayaka teases.

“I’m glad you made a friend.”

Ayaka holds his brother’s stare, knowing exactly what he’s thinking.

“You should’ve told me how much she looked like her,” he says.

“...I didn’t think you would believe me.”

The silence drags on until…

“Are you going to tell her?” she asks.

“About?”

“Your curse.”

Ayato sighs softly. Should he tell you about his curse? You look so much like her, his late fiancée who supposedly cursed him. It happened spontaneously one night. An innocent kiss quickened his heartbeat. Then, a sudden sharp pain in his chest, and he knew something was wrong. He’d clutched his chest and doubled over in pain.

And then it happened.

Pointy ears. A tail. Four paws.

When the pain was over, his fiancée gasped. “Oh… My God.”

It's strange. Ever since that day, he'd become a cat without explanation whenever she kissed him. But even after she passed, it happened again, except with a new girlfriend who is now an ex. That's when he knew that the curse stayed with him. So, ever since then, he hasn't kissed anyone. Not even for his work.

"...I have no reason to tell her," Ayato says. "And I barely know her."

“But, aren’t you curious? What if… you don’t turn? Wouldn’t that mean the curse is broken?”

Ayaka's shoulders fell as she exhaled softly. "We can think of something then. Can't we?"

Ayato knows she's worried about him, but that doesn't mean he will ask you to kiss him. Aren't you Alhaitham's girlfriend? Besides, there's nothing to tie you to this curse besides that you look eerily similar to his ex fianceé, the person who started it all.

“That’s being selfish, Ayaka.”

Ayaka frowns slightly. "...Then, what are you going to do?" When Ayato looks away, his sister crosses her arms. "This might be the one chance to break the curse, and you're not doing anything about it."

Ayato sighs. Maybe his sister has a point. But… what is he going to say to you? Would you believe him? It sounds bizarre, like something out of a fantasy novel. He just met you. He doesn't need you to think he's completely bonkers by telling you he turned into a cat from a kiss.

“...I’ll think about it, okay? I just don’t want to scare her.”

Ayaka sighs. Then, in a voice just above a whisper, she asks, "When will you think about yourself for a change?"

◆◆◆

“Oh, my God! You look stunning!”

It's finally the Awards Night, and Candace and Dehya had come over hours beforehand to help you prepare. Dehya had convinced you to go for cat-eye makeup and a matte, dark red lip. It's definitely different and bolder than what you're used to, but it looks so good on you that you won't mind trying this look again.

“I actually didn’t think I could pull it off,” you admit.

“Well, anyone can pull off a look as long as they have confidence.”

You smile at Candace in the mirror.

Just as you and your friends leave your apartment, Alhaitham opens his door. When you see each other, both of you stop. Alhaitham can't stop staring. That black dress. That makeup look. He already thinks you're beautiful, but seeing this different makeup look on you takes his breath away. He instantly smiles and walks up to you. When he does, you catch a whiff of his cologne, which smells like a delicate mix of citrus and cedar. He's wearing a suit, but he adds a dark green tie and a jade diamond pin on the right side of his black blazer this time.

“Lost for words, are you, Haitham?” Candace asks.

You and Alhaitham meet each other's eyes. You've agreed to keep your relationship a secret, as his role as your company CEO will be publicly revealed. But as Dehya and Candace already have an idea, you and Alhaitham agreed to let them in on the little secret earlier today.

"Wait, wait," Candace said with a large smile. "So… Haitham made the first move?"

“Wait for me!” Dehya screamed from the washroom. “I need to hear the story, too!”

After you told them about the kiss, Candace clapped slowly, and Dehya’s jaw dropped. “Damn. That man knows what he’s doing,” she said.

“I’m happy for you,” Candace said, smiling at you. “You two look good together.”

Dehya put a hand on her hip. “We need a ladies’ night to celebrate!”

You and Candace look at each other. “Hey, it’s an excuse to celebrate,” you said.

Candace laughed. “Agreed!”

Alhaitham walks up to you and kisses your head. “...You look beautiful.”

You don't see it, but Dehya is shaking Candace. Candace has a slightly mischievous smile as she watches you and Alhaitham.

You chuckle. “You don’t look so bad yourself, handsome.”

When your eyes meet again, you’re thinking the same thing. You want to kiss him. He wants to kiss you. But, of course, there’s a time and place for everything.

“Alright, stop making the rest of us feel like single pringles,” Dehya says.

While waiting for the elevator, Dehya and Candace are talking amongst themselves while you and Alhaitham stand behind them. Then, he glances at you.

“You seem a little nervous,” he says quietly.

Tonight is the night you're changing Alhaitham back… in an almost public space. It's a little nerve-wracking as many people are supposed to be in attendance. What if something goes wrong? What if somehow you got caught?

You feel his hand in yours when you look at him and ask, “Aren’t you?”

You don’t get a chance to hear his reply as the elevator arrives.

◆◆◆

You and Alhaitham arrive separately. As soon as he does, he’s whisked away to meet important people. You head to the lounge, almost blinded by the expensive-looking chandelier. Then, someone taps your shoulder.

“You look lovely tonight.”

“Ayato!” you say. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

He slips out an invitation from his blazer pocket. “Here’s proof I didn’t sneak my way in here.” Then, he gives you a quick wink. You smile politely just as he looks around. “I thought you’d be coming with Alhaitham.” When he sees the look on your face, he lowers his voice and says, “Oh, I’m sorry. Is it a secret?”

“For now, yes,” you say.

“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.” But then, he holds out his arm. “However, as a friend, may I escort you inside?”

“My, everyone looks so flashy today.”

Ayato turns around, and you look past him to see Childe and Tighnari.

“How would you like to be escorted inside by not one but three good-lookin’ men in suits?” Childe asks you.

“Tempting,” you say. “But… I think I can escort myself inside.”

As Ayato watches you leave, he feels… conflicted. The more he looks at you, the more he’s reminded of her. Is there a reason why you two crossed paths? Ayato doesn’t believe in soulmates or fate, but the resemblance is uncanny. If his ex really started his cat curse, are you really the person to break it?

“Is something wrong?”

Tighnari’s voice snaps Ayato out of these thoughts. “No. It's nothing.”

“You were staring a little too intently at our award-winning screenwriter just now,” Childe says.

Ayato smiles. “Ah… well, she just… reminded me of someone I knew.”

“Oh?”

“...Care to share?” Childe asks.

“Perhaps another time,” Ayato says. “It’s not a story that should be shared during a celebration like this.”

“That’s fair.” Childe walks behind Ayato and Tighnari and puts a hand on their back. “Well, shall we go enjoy ourselves, gentlemen?”

Throughout the evening, Ayato has you and the conversation with Ayaka on his mind. There's no way you'd believe him. There's also no way to show you. This is getting a little annoying. Why did you have to look so much like her? Ayato is about to grab a chocolate-covered strawberry off a dessert platter when he hears someone approaching him from behind.

"Do you have a minute, Ayato?"

His heartbeat quickens upon hearing your voice. He turns around. "Sure."

You walk up beside him and grab a fruit tart. He turns back to the table just as you say, “I… heard from Childe that you asked him something about people turning into cats.”

He freezes for a second but ultimately grabs the strawberry onto his plate. “...It does make for an interesting conversation starter, doesn't it?"

“A little too interesting, I would say,” you say with a small smile. “Is that a story idea you’re cooking up?”

Ayato laughs. “You could use it if you’d like. I won’t ask for royalties.” Then, a little quieter, “What did Childe tell you?”

“Nothing much. He said you’d asked if he’d heard about something like that happening in real life.”

“Then, may I ask you the same question?”

You glance at him. "Would you be willing to answer my question in return if I answer you?"

“Certainly.”

You put the last piece of dessert on your plate. Then, you turn to him. “...I have.”

Ayato’s heart almost stops.

“...You have?”

You nod.

When you say nothing more, Ayato figures, you aren't going to elaborate on your answer. But he, of course, will also keep his end of the deal.

“Now it’s my turn to ask,” you say, “Do you know someone like that?”

Are you humouring him? Ayato never imagined that he would be having this conversation with you.

He looks you in the eyes and says, “I do.”

You're iffy to push for more. But you're dying to know. Who is it? And… how much does this person know about this curse? Your phone lightly buzzes, a gentle reminder that it's almost time for Alhaitham to turn.

You take a short, small breath. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to meet someone."

Right when you turn around, you feel someone grab your wrist. Startled, you spin back and see Ayato. But it’s his words that take you by complete surprise.

“Don’t go.”

Chapter Thirteen

Tag list: @suoshiii @lxry-chxn @seirenspinel @lordbugs @sakiimeo @ash-in-lavender @ceylestia @forsh4dow @deathkat657 @kalpie @elernity @sentieence @chichibleeps @sunsethw4 @hjjks @tanspostsblog @nqctre @just-simping-over-genshin @uchihaeirin @vynbin @ayanokomu @dksfl920 @alatus1808 @itztaki @thetwinkims @imkaaayy @angeilix @starlighttotheleft @letthewindlead

#genshin impact alhaitham #al haitham #alhaitham x you #alhaitham fluff #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham #genshin al haitham #al haitham x reader #al haitham x y/n #al haitham fluff

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matan4il · 2 years

Text

Eddie and baby trapping

Okay, so I remember when 505 aired, I made a joke in my weekly meta about Eddie smugly looking at Buck and saying, “you’re stuck with us,” because he KNEW his baby daddy wasn’t going anywhere. I think it was about a day or so after I posted that meta, I saw the joke about Eddie baby trapping Buck in reference to that same scene for the first time, and I laughed and thought it really says something if so many people understood the scene in more or less the same way.

Some time ago, I was talking to @toughpaperround about an old TV show I love (it finished airing before my parents even met, which is why it kinda feels redundant to name it, I’m just “lucky” to live in a country where, when I was a kid, they used to air old shows during the day). I got all nostalgic and ended up looking for it online. Turns out that as a kid, I only caught the second part of the show. So guess what? I knew back then that The Hero was raising a kid on his own after he lost the kid’s mother. What I didn’t know at the time was that the kid wasn’t The Hero’s biological son. And I’m actually kind of even more in love with the fact that he raised that boy so much as his own that I had no idea they weren’t blood related. However, seeing the first part of the show made it clear that The Hero WAS, in fact, baby trapped.

The shortest version of the story is that there’s a great disaster, The Hero is sent to save and get out as many people as possible, which happens to include this very beautiful woman (and she’s also kind of famous in that reality, I think) and her son. After everyone’s been rescued and goes on with life, the mom finds The Hero and tells him her son has been distraught since he lost his dog in the disaster. She said with how The Hero treated him while saving everyone, she’s sure The Hero is good with kids, and she needs his help with hers. Mind you, she’s the actual parent, The Hero is single, has no kids, is not a professional who is trained to help or has any kid experience in any way, is very handsome and brave, saved everyone, won a medal, and looks damn good in a uniform. Did I mention he’s very pretty? And as a guy who regularly puts his life on the line to save others, he’s also clearly someone who’s not gonna say no to people asking for help. Especially not when it comes to a kid. Long story short, he helps the kid, the boy expresses a wish by the end of this story arc for The Hero to be his dad, Hero and mom get married, she dies shortly after, Hero’s left emotionally scarred, I skipped to the second part of the show.

Because watching the first part, I was like... “Oh, she baby trapped him for real. Not as a funny joke fans tell.” And I came to realize, I quite detest when shows do that. When they’re too lazy to work on building a real connection between two characters, so they shove a damsel in distress with a kid into the path of a Good Guy, and the initial, deeper bond is between the guy and the kid. The damsel sort of... comes with the package of wanting to be the kid’s actual dad and all sorts of family feels that muddy the water.

And the beautiful thing about Buddifer is, that's NOT their story. During 201, when Eddie is trying to get into Buck’s good graces? He clearly never even thinks of bringing up Chris and using him like that. In 202, when Buck asks about the phone call, Eddie is hesitant when it comes to telling him about Chris and showing Buck his photo. We never see Eddie explicitly asking Buck for anything regarding his son, he never tries to dump a part of his parental responsibility on someone who isn’t a professional in a relevant field.

It’s Buck who in 202 chooses to go on consoling Eddie with why Chris is actually real safe, in 203 it’s Buck who chooses to right away alert Eddie that cellphone reception is back, in 204 Eddie still never asks Buck for help (presumably indicating that he also didn’t ask for any at the end of 203, it must have been Buck who offered to drive Eddie to Christopher’s school) and so it’s Buck who smooths things over with Bobby before any problems might arise, and it’s Buck who’s thinking about how to help Eddie when talking to Maddie, and it’s Buck who decides to set up the connection with Carla.

I just need to say how much I love Buck for being that person, not just the man who feels compelled to help when asked to because he’s a Good Guy, but the person who is sincerely interested, and who for real falls in love with Chris as well as with the way that Eddie loves his son. See, when they reach the school at the end of 203? It’s very evident that Eddie isn’t thinking about Buck for a second when he runs in to hug Chris. He’s not concerned about what anyone else might think, their hug is the most genuine expression of love, and relief and their strong, beautiful bond. And Buck just sits in the car with the biggest case of heart eyes ever observed on any TV screen.

And I also love Eddie for being that person, who can accept help when it comes to Chris (help for himself is a different matter) from professionals, but isn’t looking to dump his burden on others. He won’t actually baby trap anyone into helping him or being his friend or involved more than they actually want to be. He’s the man who hesitates before he shows his son’s picture to a relative stranger, because that’s a part of being a protective parent as well, but he’s not closed off to the point of being suspicious and rejecting Buck’s wish to be there and step into the mess with them. Eddie somehow manages to find just the right balance between not dragging Buck into Christopher’s life more than what Buck might be comfortable with, and yet not shutting off his new friend either. That’s not easy in this sensitive situation, especially for a man like Eddie, who has never had a good role model in terms of how to let people in and accept the right amount of help, how not to become extreme in either direction.

I still think the joke is hilarious! But if we’re being serious, I believe a part of Buddifer’s magic is that there was no baby trapping. They really chose each other and became a real family. The show took its time investing in them and building them up as a family. It’s at least a part of why I personally love them so much!

~ ~ Thank you so much to the wonderful @buckleyirondad for helping me with the gorgeous gifs for this meta! You’re a star! xoxox

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gabessquishytum · 10 months

Note

Spent the weekend pouring over your galaxy-brained posts, thought I’d toss an idea I’ve been bouncing around for a bit into the ring; after their 1689 meeting, Dream increasingly indulges in thinking up the occasional fantasy of what-ifs, in which he swooped in to rescue Hob from any number of the awful things he went through during that century. To be fair to Dream, they start out and often continue to be about simply giving Hob the food and shelter and compassion he’d been deprived of, magnanimously giving his human friend acquaintance some much-needed comfort and perhaps receiving a bit of gratitude and awe in return.

But at some point the fantasies turn and grow, in which Hob decides to express his gratitude with his body, or Hob swoons into Dream’s arms after being rescued from the witch mob and all but throws himself at his knight in black armor, or Hob becomes so sweetly pliant from the food and baths he desperately needed that he allows Dream to use his body as he pleases; when you’re the Prince of Stories, the list of scenarios to play with is varied and endless ;P

But then when 1789 rolls around, and Lady Johanna and her thugs show up, presenting Dream with this wonderful opportunity to make one of his fantasies a reality (and if he’s lucky, it’ll be one of the sexy ones), before he can do anything swoon-worthy Hob throws himself into the fray and-

Oh. Hm. Now that’s something to consider. “You need not have come to my defense.” But that’s okay, this is a whole new avenue to explore, Dream’s not gonna abandon his old fantasies, but he does need to leave immediately so he can go examine the many new ‘Hob coming to my defense’ ideas coming into his head.

(And maybe this possibly turns into a fishbowl rescue au, as Jessamy has read Dream’s diary or smth and thus knows the best thing to do is go find Hob Gadling, she can get her lord rescued and laid, it’s a win-win. The sleepy sickness was a strange phenomenon that was never adequately explained, but didn’t last very long in the grand scheme of things so the world shrugged and moved on. Hob doesn’t quite follow how a talking bird telling him that His Stranger was in trouble lead to the best sex of his long life and a relationship with the King of Dreams involving quite a bit of roleplay, but you won’t catch him complaining)

I’m so fascinated by the idea of Dream having fantasies and daydreams of his own!! How does it play out in the dreaming, I wonder? Does he get to participate in live-action fantasies, or see it all play out like a film in front of him? I can totally see Dream getting intoxicated and wound up in these intricate scenarios.

Poor Jessamy has to spend a lot of time overhearing Dream’s horny daydreams about this random human, but GOD she’s glad that she was paying attention, when Dream gets captured! When Hob actually comes to rescue him it’s a whole lot less sexy than Dream was imagining. Hob gets shot (twice), there’s blood all over the floor, Hob basically uses a crowbar to smash the glass and it goes everywhere - not a pretty sight.

So. Once Hob is sufficiently recovered and Dream has dealt with the circumstances of his capture, he basically scoops Hob up into the dreaming and announces that they’re going to roleplay the rescue all over again, but this time it’s going to be romantic and sexy and Dream is going to swoon in Hob’s arms without either of them being covered in blood and broken glass, thanks very much.

Hob (who is still very confused but very happy to participate in anything that Dream wants from him) gladly rescues his Stranger all over again, and this time he also gets lovingly pounded on the basement floor. He’s not totally convinced that he isn’t hallucinating the whole thing until Dream smiles at him, and then he somehow knows that it’s all real. Dream loves him, for some reason. All is right with the world.

#the sandman #dreamling #nsft

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docholligay · 2 months

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this was all @thoughtfulfuri's dream i just basically wrote it down. It's not great, but it's somethin, and I'm happy with that!

I don’t like to lie to you.

It’s not who I am, even to people I don’t like, and you’re one of the people I like very much. I never cultivated a real gift for it, though, like me and most things, I can manage, in a pinch. This is a pinch, if there ever was one.

“It’ll be fine. ‘Ow long ‘ave you know me? I can survive anything, it’s just that you need to ‘urry, right? Right, that’s all. I’ll be waiting.”

See, the problem is, you’re a bit of an idealist, when it comes to the subject of me. I suppose I don’t blame you, since mostly it works out. I can survive anything, because I’ve survived everything. So far. I’ve been ripped through time twice, shot, all sorts of things that were meant to kill me, and just didn’t. I lived, anyhow. I do.

Maybe I still will. Maybe I’m not lying. I don’t want to be lying, I don’t want to die, but I am fully capable of assembling evidence and coming up with a decent idea of the situation. Things have looked bad for me before, but Win, that’s the thing about flipping a coin. Coming up heads doesn’t make heads or tails more likely. It’s just..chance.

“I can’t leave you, Lena.”

“Well, you can’t take me neither. They ‘ave me CA. Couldn’t if we wanted to, love, so you just take the escape, and, and then you’ll come back.”

I didn’t lie, then. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. This cage is trapping me here, and keeping me alive. What’s that saying, between the devil and deep blue sea? Well, I’ve been to the bottom of the sea more than once, and it’s cold and it’s lonely and I spent the whole time wishing I’d died instead, so I might as well try the devil.

She will kill me, though. I’m done for. I’ll be lucky if all she does is kill me. Now that you’re gone she’ll be able to convince them it’s all can be done with me. That the risk is too high to keep me alive. She will get permission to dismantle me brick by brick, and I’m trying not to imagine what that’s going to feel like. I can’t imagine it, because I need you to go, and for you to go, I need you to think I’m not afraid.

“I can wait, I can work into the--”

“No! You can’t, Winston! This is the only chance either of us ‘ave! Please! You will just doom us both.”

I’m annoyed with you, right? I’m not afraid, just annoyed, because you’ll come back. And you will. I know you will, I’ve never doubted you, same as I knew you’d be looking when Doomfist sent me spiraling. It’s just I’ll be gone by then. The gravestone at East London has been carved for years, but I’ve never laid in it. So that’ll be a new experience. It’ll save you all the trouble of deciding what to do.

“Are you sure?”

You sounded so strained. The plastic at the wall of my cage is cheap and foggy, and I can just barely see your eyes. You’ve always taken care of me. I hope I’ve done the same. I put my hand up on the plastic of the wall, and gave a big grin.

“I’ve never been more certain of anything in all me life, Win. Go. Come back, quick as you can. I’m waiting and the food ‘ere is rubbish.”

“Okay. okay.”

It was almost a whisper. I looked up at the clock, at the time drawing in when the rescue crew would be in position, and Winston would be safe. I could know I’d done that at least, as well as sit and plan the thousand annoying and nasty things I would say while I was being tortured to death. I hope I die before she comes up with a single good comeback. I hope she gets angry thinking about it in her shower the next day. I hope someone is sitting in the corner writing them down so I can have a big article, maybe even a pamphlet, titled, ‘Lena Oxton Died Very Brave and Also Funny, One Liners on Page Eleven, Nation Mourns Star Pilot’s Sick Burns.’

“Win. It’s time.”

“I love you, Lena. I’m so sorry.”

I wanted to tell you so many things right then. I wanted to tell you I loved you, and to take care of Em. Let her take care of you. I wanted to tell you to watch after Fareeha, who will take this personally whatever she says, and how all that rage she just tamps down inside her is going to pop, and without me there, I’m afraid no one will be able to help her. To let everyone have fun at Christmas. I don’t want a ruined Christmas, never on my account. Tell the little ones I love them. It was a good life, tell everyone, even if I wanted a bit more time. I always want more, don’t I? Tell Florrie I wasn’t afraid, she’ll worry I was. I hope she hadn’t started on my jumper.

Tell Emily to find someone else. I’ll be offended if she doesn’t, tell her that, I wanted to say.

But I couldn’t say any of that. Because then, you wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t say goodbye, because you couldn’t say it.

“You can thank me by ‘aving some takeaway ready. I could murder an Indian right now.”

You smiled, a little and I’ll take that as victory. Then you did what I bloody well told you to and scuttled back to where the rescue crew was going to enter. There was a lot of noise, and fire, but the swearing I heard over the crackle of the radio tells me that you made it. I know that you’re safe. A guard has come to make sure I’m still here. I can hear voices in the hallway, and I hear ‘Tracer,’ and the unlocking of the laboratory next door tells me what’s coming next.

I don’t regret it. My only other choice was to let you die with me, and I would never do that to you. What a payment that would be, for everything you’ve done. I’m not built that way, and so I apologize for the lie. I knew they would never get here in time. I hope Ang lies too, I hope she tells you they killed me quickly. I’ve seen her do it before. Lies can be the greatest kindness some of us ever know.

I’ll tell you a truth here, though, in my head, where you won’t hear it.

I am a little afraid.

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heliads · 4 months

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'time to spare' - genya safin

Based on this request: "my beloved male Squaller is somehow stuck with Nikolai and they just… bicker and ma boi is just teasing him with Zoya like “I know you love her! Because you look like me when I talk about Genya! … and Zoya does too. When she talks about you.”"

masterlist

Keeping a king safe is a difficult and dangerous thing. The task is made exponentially more challenging when the king you’re meant to be protecting is even a little bit obstinate or hotheaded. When the king has lived a separate life as Sturmhond, one of the most infamous privateers to grace the True Sea, you might as well give up hope. Nikolai Lantsov may be the current king of Ravka, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped him from taking just as many risks as when he had commanded warships on the open ocean.

As a Squaller, you’ve been blessed with gifts beyond what a normal man could ever dream of achieving. Over the years, you’ve honed your ability to control wind and air to a knifepoint’s accuracy. You can hear intruders coming from leagues away. You can steal breath from a man’s lungs in the blink of an eye. However, there is one thing you can’t do, and that is to talk Nikolai out of a suicide mission when he feels it’s the right course of action to take.

You had tried, this time. Really, you had. While returning home from an important meeting with Ravkan nobles situated near Tsibeya, Nikolai had heard that some important hostages were being held in a keep just a short distance over the Fjerdan border. He had insisted that he would lead a charge to rescue the hostages, and despite your arguing that this was a terrible idea, the attack had been launched accordingly. You and Nikolai had gone along with maybe half a dozen other Ravkan guards.

Despite your best intentions, however, you were caught in the act of freeing the hostages. Nikolai had directed a couple of his guards to take the hostages and run. Seeing as you haven’t heard of them since, you can assume that they got to freedom, but you and Nikolai weren’t so lucky. A pair of other soldiers are imprisoned in a cell down the hall, and you and Nikolai share a similar block. Your hands are chained above your head, giving you just enough room to sit on the stone floor and lean against a wall for some semblance of comfort.

Since your hands are bound, you can’t summon your Squaller abilities and Nikolai can’t pick the lock from his angle. The only thing left to do, then, is to wait for the guards to get back to camp and bring reinforcements. Unfortunately, neither you nor Nikolai are very good at waiting.

Barely an hour or two has passed before the two of you start getting impatient. There are Fjerdan guards somewhere out in the hall, although they’ve been careful to keep out of sight so as to disguise their numbers.

Nikolai whistles quietly under his breath. “D’you reckon they’d give me a deck of cards if I promised not to break out of here?” He asks you. “I’m kind of bored.”

“Your hands are chained together,” you note. “How in the Saints’ name would you play cards?”

Nikolai frowns. “I hadn’t considered that. Maybe we could use our toes?”

“I’m not touching cards that your toes have touched,” you tell him.

Nikolai makes a face. “They’re royal toes. I hear some people would consider anything touched by my toes a holy relic.”

“I believe the fact that I don’t think that is a strong reason that you hired me in the first place,” you remind him. “You were afraid that I would sell off your used handkerchiefs or something.”

Nikolai nods slightly, accepting this. “It was a real concern. Of course, you could sell off my handkerchiefs even if you didn’t believe they were religious relics, but I appreciate you abstaining from that. It would be dreadfully difficult to explain to the palace seamstresses if I constantly needed new ones.”

“That would be awful,” you remark. “Also, keep your voice down. If these Fjerdans haven’t clued onto the fact that you’re the king, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Of course, my trusted guard,” Nikolai says. He attempts to salute you, but the chains make it difficult to fully complete the gesture. “I assumed they would have known by now, though. I saw them sending a scout out. Plus, they kept pointing at my face. I know it’s irresistibly attractive, but there’s no need to single me out like that unless they suspect something.”

You roll your eyes. “Maybe they were commenting on the fact that they’d never seen such a vain prisoner in their entire lives.”

“Or maybe they suspected a Lantsov,” Nikolai murmurs. “I’m out of royal uniform since we were traveling. Unless they’d personally seen me before, they’d have no reason to suspect I was anything more than a highly placed guard.”

You shrug as best you can despite the chains. “True. Then the only thing we can do right now is make sure we’re not here when they send someone who can recognize your face.”

Nikolai glances obviously at the chains securing both of your wrists, then the locked cell door. “That makes perfect sense to me. What’s your plan for getting out?”

You meet his stare unblinkingly. “I’m just the muscle, your highness. I believe you’re the one who’s meant to be coming up with plans.”

Nikolai mutters a few uncharitable curses, then adds on, “I suppose you’re right about that. Maybe Zoya will come and save us all. She’s prone to fantastic rescues.”

You can’t help but chuckle at the soft expression that comes over his face. “Of course your first thought goes straight to Zoya.”

Nikolai narrows his eyes at you. “What exactly is that supposed to mean? I am perfectly capable of referring to my second in command. I thought that was expected of first in commands.”

You bite back a laugh. “Of course it is. It’s just that you’re hopelessly in love with her, and that makes the whole affair rather amusing to watch.”

Nikolai’s jaw drops. He attempts to swat you on the hands for that sort of remark, but he just can’t manage it with the position of his chains, so he settles instead for sort of aggressively tapping your boot with his. “How dare you? Take that back at once.”

This time, you can’t help a proud grin. “Of course I won’t. You’re stuck in here with me, so I’ll say what we’ve all been wanting to say for a long time. You are in love with Zoya Nazyalensky.”

Nikolai’s brows jump comically. “Oh, all of us, huh? I want names, L/N.”

“I’m not going to rat out my own men,” you say exasperatedly, “Besides, I’d have to tell you the names of everyone in Os Alta. Except Zoya, of course. For some reason, she’s just as oblivious as you are.”

“Don’t call Zoya oblivious,” Nikolai says fiercely.

You fight the urge to groan. “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. You can’t go an hour without bringing her up or otherwise defending her honor. You’re in love, Nik. Admit it.”

Nikolai purses his lips, looking studiously out the bars of the cell door instead of at you. “I don’t have to do anything of the sort. This is pure speculation.”

“It is not speculation,” you insist. “I know you’re in love because you look just like me whenever I talk about Genya.”

Nikolai frowns. “I don’t talk about Genya. No more than my job requires, of course.”

For such a clever fox, Nikolai can be decidedly thick-headed when he puts his mind to it. You fight the urge to scream and instead carry on with your argument. “I should hope you’re not talking about my wife like that. I’m right, though. There are parallels here, Nikolai. Serious parallels. I’m in love with Genya and you’re in love with Zoya. Can we agree on that?”

Nikolai is silent for a moment. At last, the tentative peace in the cell is broken by his quiet question, “Do you really think she loves me?”

You snort. “You don’t even have to ask.”

“I do,” Nikolai tells you. He looks directly at you, as if he could tell your truth from lies by just the movement of your pupils. “Does Zoya love me?”

“Yes,” you say firmly. “She loves you just as much as you love her.”

Nikolai releases a breath, crumpling back against the cell wall again. “Saints. I didn’t even know.”

“You were scared to admit it was a possibility,” you correct. “But I think you did know.”

“Maybe,” Nikolai says. “Kings aren’t supposed to be scared.”

“Men are,” you say simply. “It’s not a bad thing. Saints know I was positively petrified to tell Genya how I felt.”

Nikolai chokes out a laugh. “Oh, I almost forgot about that. You were a mess for days leading up to it.”

You shrug. “And look where it got me. I’m a married man, Nikolai. Things work out.”

“Things work out,” he repeats slowly, going over the words like they were a mantra or a prayer.

Maybe he really did mean it as a prayer, because silence has hardly settled over the cell again before the door at the far end of the hall flies open, slamming into the wall with a deafening thud. The Fjerdan guards rise to meet the challenge, but they’re immediately forced to the ground by a mass of fierce wind so strong it might as well have been a solid wall.

A grin rises to your lips. You’ve only seen one Squaller quite so powerful as that. “Looks like you’ll get the chance to tell her sooner rather than later.”

Nikolai sits up interestedly. Seconds later, two women are standing in front of your cage door. The Squaller who had taken out the guards is unlocking the door, her sapphire kefta dotted slightly with ice crystals from the journey to the stronghold, but you can’t spare one glance at Zoya Nazyalensky, too interested in the the woman next to her, the one in the ruby kefta who’s beaming at you.

“Genya,” you croak out.

She smiles, flying into the cell the second Zoya gets the door open. She falls to her knees in front of you, hurriedly undoing your chains so she can take you into her arms the second the cuffs are off. You can feel the slow rush of blood and power returning to your veins, but that doesn’t feel half so good as being back with your wife.

“How did you find us?” You ask, cupping Genya’s face gently with your hands.

She smiles. “The scouts sent word as fast as we could. After that, we wasted no time saving you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Nikolai says. Zoya has let him out and they’re standing opposite each other, exchanging nervous and tentative glances. You know those sorts of looks, you’ve had your share of them with Genya.

You glance back at Genya, who’s smiling softly at the scene, and take her hand. “Let’s free the other guards,” you suggest quietly. “I think these two might want some time to talk.”

Genya nods, leading you back out into the hall. Once you’re free of the cell, you pull Genya in for a sweet kiss. “Thanks for the rescue,” you tell her.

She beams again. Alina Starkov may be the only known Sun Summoner, but you swear there’s pure sunlight in each one of Genya’s smiles. “Any time,” she says. “Just don’t make it a habit.”

“I’ll do my best,” you promise. It’s one oath you don’t mind swearing. Your favorite promise of all has already been made, but this one isn’t all that bad, either.

requested by @reinekes-fox, i hope you enjoy!

grishaverse tag list: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @mayfieldss, @eclliipsed, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000, @baju69, @crazyhearttragedy, @budugu, @aoi-targaryen

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#genya safin #genya safin x reader #genya safin oneshot #grishaverse #grishaverse imagines #grishaverse x reader #grishaverse oneshot #shadow and bone #shadow and bone imagines #shadow and bone x reader #shadow and bone oneshot #genya #genya imagines #genya x reader #genya oneshot #genya safin x male reader #male reader

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thephantomcasebook · 2 years

Note

As much as I find A+C=D interesting I don't know how they would fit Daeron's story into the series. He couldn't have a dragon. The same thing with Helaena and Aemond, I believe the series is creating "something" with them, but in the book there is Alys Rivers who is an important character and lover of Aemond. I know the series has changes and like it, but I wonder how far these changes are beneficial to the plot of fire and blood...

No, I see what you're saying.

But the one thing you need to understand is that "Fire & Blood" is not a real history book, or actual view of events. It is hear-say from different sources. A Green Maester and a Perverted Dwarf's account of events from over 100 years ago that is compiled by a Maester who is terrified of the Mad King Aerys who is breathing down his neck while he's writing it for baby Viserys and Dany.

It is completely biased toward the Blacks, because, if it wasn't then Aerys would roast him alive with wildfire.

To understand the book, you have to read between the lines.

Two examples.

1.) After King's Landing falls to the Blacks, Daeron marshals one of the finest armies that Westros has ever seen. In the book, most of the accounts say that Daeron is leading the army, that he is whipping the Blacks asses up and down the south on his way to rescue Alicent and Helaena, Meanwhile Aemond and Alys are a two team wrecking crew that is setting the Riverlands aflame so no reinforcements can come to aid Rhaeynra in King's Landing.

There is proven accounts that two of Rhaenyra's best Dragon Seed Riders turn cloak on the Blacks because they were absolutely petrified of having to fight Daeron and Tessarion. Which tracks, because, the Dragon Seed Riders nearly pissed themselves after capturing King's Landing when Rhaenyra informed them that their service to her wasn't done till they fought and killed Aemond and Daeron.

Which none of them signed up for.

But the main author of the book continuously assures the readers - aka Aerys - that it's not Daeron leading the army that it is Ormund Hightower. He was the real power and leader of the Green's main army after Criston's death.

However, that conflicts with what is said about Ormund Hightower earlier which was that the man was a terrible leader and battle commander that needed Daeron's last minute arrival to turn the tide of a battle in which he outnumbered his enemies.

So, as a reader, you're supposed to understand that the Maester is purposefully trying to cut out the narrative that Daeron was a hero and champion. That he is constantly placating to Aerys that he was nothing but a green mama's boy and only ever won battles out of being lucky - despite every account saying otherwise.

Then, later on, the Maester says that Daeron was killed in a passive and mediocre manner - his pavilion fell on him or that some random soldier smashed his face in with a morning star, not knowing who he killed.

Right?

However, in that same battle, Tessarion - and Tessarion alone - starts fighting Seasmoke and Adam Hull on it's own ... without a rider. That Tessarion starts doing all these amazing and complicated moves in the battle ... without a rider. That later when Vermethor breaks loose and starts killing everyone - both Greens and Blacks alike - that Tessarion altruistically steps in to fight to the death "The Bronze Terror" to stop him from killing everyone ... without a rider.

So, either this Tessarion motherfucker is the most honorable and sentient dragon there ever was ...

Or, Daeron didn't die like a bitch and fought the - then - largest and most vicious Dragon in the world to save the lives of both his men and his enemies when it went wild.

Then, for fifty years both Rhaenyra and Daemon's descendants and the Stark regents feared Daeron's return, many - including the common people - believing that he was not dead and that he would have his revenge for "The Brothel Queens" and for Helaena's children.

Why would they think that if there was confirmation that some random ass Riverland soldier smashed his face in?

Cause he didn't die that night nor any afterward.

2.) In the book it is explicitly theorized that the split between Rhaenyra and Alicent came in maidenhood and had everything to do with Criston Cole.

It is pointed out that Alicent had been in love with Criston from the beginning. That she grew angry and Jealous when Rhaenyra picked him to be her Sworn Shield, and that their falling out had more to do with Criston rejecting Rhaenyra ... which is why she moved on to Harwin Strong.

Point of fact!

For the next sixteen years, Ser Criston Cole wore Alicent's favor in every tourney and battle, was her sworn shield, that he was named Lord Commander by Alicent herself despite Rhaenyra trying to stop it. That Criston was extremely loyal to Alicent to the very end, never wavering once on being by her side.

Then, this joke ass crack head Maester actually spends time trying to question what exactly motivates him to be loyal to Alicent. Then, Maester Dipshit settles on that it was resentment against Rhaenyra.

No, dumbass!

It's cause he's been in love with Alicent since they were teenagers!

I wasn't even shipping them when I read the text and it was fucking obvious to me.

That's the problem with sticking to the source material. The writers of the show took that note literally and then made Criston's character be some one-note spurned lover till almost to the end of the season. But if you simply read between the lines, it's right there!

Criston was in love with Alicent, not Rhaenyra, the entire time.

By the time the writers figured that shit out, or George e-mailed them with the note, they had already ruined Criston's character by making him pine for Rhaenyra when all sources, except for the one bias one toward Rhaenyra, said that Criston said 'Begone Thot!' to her advances.

I'm not making a run at you, nonny. But what I'm trying to say is that you can't rely on the source material for anything but a guide line to events. When it comes to interpersonal relationship and quiet moments with characters, the book can't be trusted. It's like trying figure out what George and Martha Washington's marriage was like based on reading a High School History text book.

The stuff between Aemond and Helaena is probably coming straight from Martin himself. It fits with the rhyming history of Westeros of the unrequited or secret lovers between Targaryen Siblings. And more to the point, Targaryen brothers and sisters who are meant to be together often times share a psychic connection of some sort.

Alys Rivers comes after "Blood & Cheese" when Helaena loses her mind to the world ...

However, on the same day that Aemond dies, Helaena commits suicide that very night.

It's all there, nonny ... it's all there.

#House of the Dragon #Alicent Hightower #Criston Cole #Daeron Targaryen #Aemond Targaryen #Helaena Targaryen #alicent x criston #aemond x helaena #Helaemond #alicole

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bicycle4two · 1 year

Text

fine as we are, but we want more || Jason Todd x Female!Reader || Chapter 3 of 8

Summary:

all things considered, you're pretty lucky.

in all your years living in gotham city, you've never been mugged, never had your apartment broken into, never been held as a hostage.

until now.

it seems your luck has run out and there's nothing you can do about it other than wait for someone to come rescue you. . . .

or, jason and you reunite after a long time.

...

Read on AO3

...

Chapter 2

...

Chapter 3:

Jason hates his past self a little bit for being so secretive.

Because if there’s one thing he wished Dick and the others knew about him, would mention carelessly in his presence, talk like he’s in on the joke, it would be how he’s connected to her. But alas, teenage him kept his cards close, made sure that no one knew about her. And it’s biting him in the ass because without a name to go off on, he’s stuck.

And it’s aggravating.

His therapist would probably encourage him to talk to someone about this, maybe to simply vent out his frustration, or maybe help jog his memory. Talking, it seems, helps most problems. Helps people understand where he’s coming from and vice versa. Communication is key, and all that jazz. Unfortunately, Jason still has the habit of keeping things to himself, not allowing himself to be vulnerable as often as he should be.

The others would understand. Sure, maybe they’d tease him about her, but not immediately. They’d listen. They’d offer to help. She still has her tracker with her, and it would be easy, almost too easy, for Barbara or Tim to find her even if she doesn’t press the alert button. But Jason doesn’t want them to know about her, to know of her before he’s even figured out who she is.

So, he waits. Annoyingly so, he doesn’t have any other option.

The red triangles on their map don’t go away no matter how many days pass and they have bigger problems to deal with than Jason’s mystery girl.

Because the Court of Owls is real, and although Mr. Freeze is locked up in Blackgate again, his Regulators are still out there, decked out in fancy, stolen gear, and there have been sightings of Clayface mimics all over the city, and now there’s a website for a “Dr. Q” that they have to keep an eye on.

There’s still so much to do and Jason doesn’t have the time.

But that doesn’t stop him from thinking about her. In the spare moments when the city’s finally quiet, the criminals he’s taken care of being loaded into armored trucks heading to Blackgate. He finds himself hoping that she’s okay, that she would not need to use the tracker again, that she’ll never have to.

But something in him hopes that she does press that button, even if she’s not in danger, preferably that she’s not in danger, because maybe there’s a possibility that she wants to see him, too.

…

There wasn’t even a need to pull his guns out of their holsters. The priority wasn’t the fight, but the organ the Mob had taken from an unfortunate medic. There was no saving her, but if Jason does this job right, he can hopefully save someone else’s life. The organ is placed behind some sensors and it’s easy enough to find the panel that controls it. He disables that first, only taking down two unsuspecting mobsters before he sneaks his way to the cyrogenic container. That part, that part was much harder.

Because although he loves to make it look easy, it truly is hard on the knees to remain crouched for so long, taking small, quiet steps towards his goal. But a mission is a mission, and his knees will survive.

He gets to the organ easily now that the sensors are gone and packs it when he’s sure no one is looking. Once he has it in his possession, he has to move quick. No time for thoughts. Just speed.

“Belfry,” he calls, already running to the street, calling for the batcycle to make its appearance. “I need keep this thing cold. Where can I drop it off?”

“Dr. Thompkins is on route to meet you.” Alfred supplies as he mounts the batcycle, revving the engine up.

“Got it. On the way.” Jason replies and speeds through the streets, haphazardly avoiding the GCPD on patrol. He’s got a minute and thirty seconds tops before the organ expires and he makes it to the mobile clinic with twenty seconds to spare. Thankfully there aren’t any goons terrorizing Dr. Thompkins this time.

“Thanks for the delivery. I’ve got a medical team lined up who can use it.” Dr. Thompkins says when Jason hands over the organ.

“Glad I got here in time, then.” Jason replies before zipping away the moment Dr. Thompkins has her back to him.

He lands on the roof of the next building easily, tucking his grappling hook away. He accesses his map and sees that the others are tackling other major crimes in the city and according to Alfred, they’ve got it covered. All Jason can do now is to patrol, stop crime when he comes across it.

Calling tonight a quiet night is a stretch, but at least he isn’t in a middle of a fight, having to reload his guns in mere seconds, in between punches and dodges.

He thinks maybe he should head back to the hideout he came from, take care of the mob he left behind but if they’re smart, they would have already realized that the organ is gone and that they’ve failed their task. They should be long gone if they know what’s good for them.

So, patrol it is.

He jumps off the roof without hesitation and starts leaping into the air, using his own soul energy to spring him upwards. He doesn’t get far because he sees her sitting on the edge of the roof of what he can only assume is her apartment building.

He acts before he thinks, instinct guiding his next move.

His landing is soft, but he holds his breath just in case she’s heard him, tries to erase his presence. Luckily, the sounds and sight of the city distract her, she doesn’t even feel his gaze on her back, and Jason feels himself relax before sneaking towards her. Again, his knees will survive and, well, he has Barbara’s physio in his contacts just in case they don’t.

He’s behind her in seconds, arm already positioned to catch her because who knows what her reaction is going to be, if she’s going to scream or jump forward, or maybe even swing around to punch him. The whole thing is irresponsible, a dick move, really, but like in their previous meeting, there’s this need to tease her, to scare her in some harmless way.

If she falls, and that’s a big if because he’s not going to let her, he’ll catch her.

“Whatcha looking at?” He asks and the way her shoulders seize up is worth it. The squeaking noise that escapes her lips is so inhumanly adorable that Jason wishes that he had recorded it. She whirls around to face him, so fast that she would have tipped over the edge if Jason’s arm wasn’t already there to stabilize her. She leans into him, brows furrowed when she sees that it’s him.

“Jesus.” She breathes out, eyes looking up at him, pupils dilated from fear or the dark, maybe even both. “Hello to you, too, Red.”

“Something interesting out there?”

“Oh. Nothing. I just, I just like being out here some nights.”

“It isn’t safe.” He says even though she was doing just fine before he appeared. The need to lecture her is strong. Because now that he thinks about it, what if it wasn’t him who snuck up on her? What if she had stretched the wrong way and had fallen? The images playing in his head makes his jaw clench. That’s the kind of stuff his mind loves to give him nightmares about. “Never mind that you wouldn’t survive the fall if you lost your balance, but with all the criminals running amok right now, you could find yourself in another hostage situation, or worse.”

“I have to watch out for mischievous vigilantes, too, right?” She frowns, arms folded across her chest. He should probably find it ironic that she’s wearing a red hoodie over what he can only guess are her pajama bottoms. He doesn’t comment on it. That’s something Dick would do.

“Oh yeah. They’re the worst.” He says easily.

“Clearly.” She rolls her eyes, smoothing her hair when a gust of wind blows it into her face. “There’s always some kind of risk here in Gotham. I can’t let that keep me from enjoying the little things.”

She gestures to the view she was admiring, and Jason takes it in, sees nothing but streetlamps, smog, and the glow of police sirens in the distance. The pollution in Gotham keeps the night sky starless and although he can acknowledge that the city has its charm, has beauty in the places you least expect to find it, he doesn’t think it’s worth risking your life over just to see.

“Couldn’t you just look out your window or something? This roof doesn’t even have railings.”

“That stupid building over there blocks the view,” she jabs her thumb towards the offending structure. “But okay. Noted. I won’t stay so close to the edge.”

“That’s all I ask.” Jason feels himself relax, flexing his hands to relieve some tension. “So, what made you want to go out tonight?”

The annoyed look on her face is quickly replaced with a sheepish smile. She stuffs her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and looks everywhere but at him. The mannerism is familiar, again, she’s familiar.

“I was hoping I’d see you, actually.” She admits. “You were a whole lot easier to see back in the day.”

“The Robin costume is unnervingly bright.”

“It had its charm. You could still pull it off, I think. Although I don’t know about the tights…”

“No. Just. No.” Jason can’t even bring himself to create a mental picture of that. “So, we’ve met. Before the whole Freaks incident.”

The teasing grin she had on her lips softens to a smile.

“Yeah. We have.” The smile turns sad, pained. “And you don’t remember.”

Jason hates that he’s the reason for that look on her face and the immediate response is to blame himself, but he can’t, he knows he can’t. His therapist would quickly point out that this isn’t his fault. That he didn’t exactly ask to have amnesia, didn’t have a choice on which memories he got to keep. And he knows this.

It still feels like shit though.

“A lot happened in the past few years.” He says by way of explanation. Which isn’t much if anything at all. “Got into some shit, came out not as whole as I was.”

Sometimes Jason forgets that not everyone knows how to react to his cryptic lines, that although he tries to make light of his situation, tries to shrug it off because it’s been years, he’s only moved forward from it, the fact of the matter is that he still isn’t over it. Not completely. Sometimes, he can’t hide how much he’s still affected by it. Sometimes, he says the shit he says just so someone would ask, and maybe then he’ll be ready to talk about it.

“I’m sorry that happened.” She says after a tense silence. It’s obvious she wants to say more, to ask, but she decides against it, luckily. Jason wouldn’t even know what to say right now. “I’m happy you’re back though. I…I missed you.”

And Jason doesn’t know what to do with that confession. Because on one hand, who isn’t happy to know that you’ve been missed while you were away, but on the other, he didn’t even know he had someone like her waiting for his return.

The guilt is there, again, among other things.

“It’s okay,” she scrambles to say when he’s been silent for too long. Her face is open, allowing him to read everything she’s not saying, that she doesn’t need to say out loud because somehow, someway, Jason is able to read her.

It’s okay, she says, it’s okay that he didn’t miss her. It’s okay that he’s forgotten about her.

“I just, I just wanted you to know. We were friends before,” she bites her lip, hesitates to say her next words. “I, I think it would be nice to be friends again.”

…

“So, the old tracker signal. She’s your friend?” Barbara asks over coffee, her posture overly casual.

“Great. Who told you?” Jason groans, leaning back into his chair, his own mug forgotten.

He thinks that maybe he should be grateful that this conversation is only being brought up now, days after he agreed to rekindle their friendship, days after he’s finally gotten used to having her back in his life, after he stopped beating himself up for letting a civilian in.

(He has to remind himself that his world can’t solely revolve around being a vigilante. That he can’t only have contact with people who fight with or against him. That he isn’t just Red Hood, but Jason Todd as well. Work-life balance and all that.)

Keeping up with their emails took longer to get used to, surprisingly, but now he checks his inbox more often, doesn’t ignore the messages that don’t come from the others or villains who mysteriously have his contact information.

He’s used to her now, enough that he can say that they’re friends. Maybe not like before, but they’re getting there. It’s new, different despite the lingering feelings of familiarity. It’s nice and is something to share, maybe, considering that he and the others are getting closer together in the wake of Bruce’s passing, working together both in and outside of uniform. He has a solid support system here in the Belfry and he knows that these people are people he can trust—that they’re family.

That still doesn’t mean he’s prepared himself to talk about her with them though. He thought that maybe they’ve already forgotten about the old tracker signal, but he should have known better. Their group isn’t one to forget such things and it was only too easy to connect the dots once the information was out.

Still. He really would have preferred not having to talk about this because he doesn’t want this to be a thing.

“A little birdie,” Barbara smiles. “How long have you known each other?”

“As Red Hood? A few weeks, several days maybe.” He shrugs like its nothing, like he doesn’t know the exact date they two started talking again. “As Robin though, a few years apparently.”

“Apparently? Oh. She’s from before…”

“I died? Yeah. Seems like the Pit took those memories, too. Didn’t recognize her when I saved her from the Freaks that time.”

Which was probably for the best. If Jason knew who she was back then, he probably would have been more careless in the fight, probably more aggressive. The Freaks got lucky.

“But she recognized you?”

So, this is going to be a thing. Jason’s going to have to talk about it, about her.

He wants to shoot down this conversation, and maybe if it were anyone else asking, he would but this is Barbara and, really, everyone here has a weak spot for her. He knows that if he were to say so, she would stop asking questions, but he can’t bring himself to because maybe he should talk about her. Get someone else’s perspective on things because God knows he doesn’t know what he’s doing with this newfound friendship.

“Not at first,” he replies, thinking back on an email thread detailing how they met. Try as he might, he really could not remember, and it was eating at him. She was pretty vivid with her explanation on the night they met, the memory obviously important to her, but, again, he draws a blank. Regrettably. “I said something to her that sort of clued her in.”

“Yeah?” Barbara is encouraging, expression open, welcoming any information he’s ready and willing to give. It’s a trap. It’s the face that coerces confessions. “What was that?”

No matter what, I’ll come to you.

The memory makes Jason physically cringe, the action so strong that Barbara is now looking at him with more curiosity, eyes calculating. Jason grimaces and tries to erase the words from his memory, tries not to remember how he said them but, in that moment, he can’t help but just focus on it. Have them repeat over and over in his head until suddenly a memory hits him.

He sees a room that obviously belongs to a young, teenage girl—it’s small, tidy, and there’s a rug with distinct footprints on it. (Probably from him. But who’s to say.) There are posters on her wall, posters he remembers making fun of if only because it was so obvious who she preferred in the teen pop boyband. There’s a table tucked in the corner of the room, her desktop screen illuminating the dark room.

She’s there in the room, too, but much younger, eyes bright yet tired. She stands close to him, their features lining up perfectly thanks to their similar height. It’s easy to study her from this distance, taking note of the little things that make her her. The slope of her nose, the arch of her brow, the way her cheeks flare when she realized how close they’re standing together.

Only the blush is quick to fade, the embarrassed look on her face replaced with worry, her brows knitting together, lips turned down. He knows this look. She’s thinking, over thinking. The keychain was supposed to reassure her, to let her know that he’s there to protect her, but he can see that although she understood this, she’s spiraling now, the what ifs consuming her thoughts.

She’s scared. The possibility of having to use it is terrifying.

But Jason had to give it to her, because ever since he’d become Robin, he’d seen just how truly dangerous Gotham can be. Seen things that made living on the streets seem like a picnic. And he couldn’t imagine, didn’t even want to think about, what would happen if she found herself in a situation where no one was there to save her.

He couldn’t let her get hurt. Not her. Never her.

So, he made a promise, something that made him burry his head into his pillow in embarrassment when he returned to the manor later that night, but he didn’t regret saying because he knew what it meant to her, knew that with just those words, because she trusted him, because she believed in him, she’d be okay.

“Jason?” Barbara calls, bringing him out of his thoughts.

He shakes the memory away, knows that he couldn’t have possible spaced out for that long, only long enough for it to be obvious he wasn’t totally there anymore. He picks up his coffee, it’s cold now, but he needs a distraction, needs to do something with his hands.

“It’s, uh, it’s nothing, Babs. Don’t worry about it.”

...

Chapter 4

#gotham knights #gotham knights video game #gotham knights!jason #gotham knights fanfic #gotham knights fanfiction #jason todd #jason todd reader #jason toddxreader #jason todd/reader #fanfic #fanfiction #jason todd fanfic #jason todd fanfiction #no yn #red hood #red hood reader

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n7punk · 11 months

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"Superzero" Fic Notes

Superzero, my secret superhero AU, is finally done! As usual, it went way longer than predicted, but I had a lot of fun with it so thanks for being along for the ride. The fic notes are… long.

Epilogue Life:

Scorpia takes longer learning her powers than is “typical” as a result of the crack in the garnet, but it does slowly heal over in her care. Her powers are also just a particularly dangerous set, but she learns to aim them at the technology and weapons of those coming at her rather than the heart. It takes a bit of training, but eventually she joins them in the field. The entire Alliance considers her the most likely to compromise them, but she’s one of the fold, so they take her in.

Catra continues to train alongside her and eventually the papers pick up on a secret member of the Alliance between some odd occurences and the name Ghost being thrown around. It’s still just speculation that’s never confirmed, but Catra is a part of the plan.

With the Horde dissolved, they do still see the odd supervillain or group attempting to rise up in their place (the Crimson Waste, for once) so they still have superheroing to do, not to mention natural disasters to help out in, but they aren’t as busy as they were before. They have more time for each other. And also studying. Catra of course finishes law school and passes the bar, eventually becoming a lawyer. Adora is stupidly proud of her. She works in a clinic for a while before becoming a full vet herself, but she gets there too and they do end up with that bayview apartment she wants eventually.

Chapter 1: Chance Encounter

⦁ Adora was Going Through It™️ when she fought Shadow Weaver, as the breakup was still fresh and she needed an outlet, which ended up being Shadow Weaver’s face. The Alliance had been fighting her for years, and she was personally responsible for the incident that caused Adora to miss their date, so the next time Adora fought her, she was pretty much screwed. Years of terrorizing the Fright Zone and one interrupted date gave She-ra all the motivation she needed to take her down.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Melog’s capture was originally the button on this chapter, but I didn’t want them to be captured for that long so I decided to imply the library attack’s purpose earlier

Chapter 3: Overworked

⦁ “Catra can’t tell she’s looking at her cleavage” Well she couldn’t until Adora’s eyes snapped to meet her and then she felt the change. She didn’t know where she was looking but like, come on. She’s so lucky Catra was so tired.

Chapter 4: Movie Night/Return

⦁ The mentions of the kitchen light are a reference. Even if you have good taste you probably won’t draw the connection though lmao.

⦁ Originally, Adora was always supposed to use the window. In fact, in the first draft of chapter one (which ended up almost entirely rewritten), Catra’s backpack got left at the library so Adora had to bring her in through the window and that’s what established the pattern, but then I tried to write that and realized how logistically dumb that was. I still intended for her to switch to using the window pretty quickly, but I was basically just waiting for a good time for them to have the talk about her neighbors possibly seeing and by then I realized that my early idea for roof meetups just made more sense.

Chapter 5: Rooftop

⦁ Initially the fic was supposed to start here. I really wanted to write this fic for The Scene™️ (more on that later) so it kind of made sense to start the fic with Catra already friends with She-ra and then I’d get a chapter or two of these secret meetings and flirting, and then I would get into the kiss. When I went to write the fic, though, I decided I should show the initial rescue in a prologue kind of thing and then do some skipping forward through their friendship. I started writing chapter 2 though and it just kept continuing “in real time” and I absolutely couldn’t skip that angst because it was fun, so I ended up just writing the whole thing and having chapter 5 be more like what I thought 1 & 2 would be initially.

⦁ Catra assumed She-ra was stopping by when she had Alliance business in the area, and that is partially true, but Adora was also swinging by when she could disappear for a few hours without her roommate noticing/questioning it, which was easier said than done.

⦁ There was a line all the way back in chapter one that I cut for being awkwardly phrased, not realizing it was the establishing line for the fact that She-ra has been missing for a few hundred years. It was only when it came up again in chapter five that I noticed, and by then I had already posted almost everything leading up to it and there wasn’t anywhere to put it back in early. This is one of those things were, if this was a book, I would fix that on the second draft but you don’t really get a chance for that with fanfic. I had already posted chapter three by the time I realized so the earliest I could have added it was chapter four, and by then I decided to just wait until chapter five, since the part where that would actually become relevant wouldn’t be for a few chapters anyway, it just should have been set up sooner.

⦁ Adora immediately assumed Catra was talking about her when she mentioned a breakup, but she was also kind of worried she wasn’t and there had been another relationship in the interim that she didn’t know about. The whole conversation was rough for her. She was trying to comfort Catra while subtly encouraging her to think more about what could have actually happened, and she completely meant it when she said Catra deserved better (…than she had treated her).

⦁ While “breakup haircut” isn’t a phrase I’ve heard exactly, the concept of cutting all your hair off when you go through a big change — often a breakup — is definitely one I’ve seen around a lot. There’s entire songs about coming back into an ex’s life as a blonde. I mean, how many of us shaved our heads during the pandemic. Of course there was the added factor of not being able to get a haircut, but trauma haircuts — or hair dyes — are a definite thing.

Chapter 6: Mistake

⦁ As implied in the fic, the spell-storm was a side effect of Shadow Weaver trying to drain Melog’s magic. She couldn’t control it and it manifested physically in the environment.

⦁ Writing this fic was a really interesting challenge because of the unusual dynamic between Catra and She-ra. It was so weird to write Catra falling for someone who wasn’t Adora, but also was; not to mention She-ra backing off at weird times because she thought she might out herself to Catra, etc. Catra was wary of She-ra and she would have been way more so if she wasn’t a) a literal superhero and be) reminded her of Adora. The whole dynamic was really complicated, but it’s part of what made me want to write this in the first place, so even if it was really hard and I had to rewrite a lot, it was a good challenge

⦁ … That was part of what made me want to write this fic. The rest of was The Scene™️, which was the kiss and fall out in chapter 6. Pretty quickly Catra finding Melog and then the smug introduction with the Alliance became the “secondary” Ccenes that I also pushed towards when the rewrites were getting to me.

⦁ I had so many different ideas for how the reveal conversation could go I couldn’t possibly hope to fit them all into one and not have it be like twenty minutes of extended arguing, so after trying a couple variants, I settled on the lines that worked the best.

Chapter 7: Hindsight

⦁ This fic is interesting because, while I never really mention it or make it too explicit, it is partially nonlinear. The scenes with Melog, especially, were never intended to be signposted as taking place right where the other scenes were in the story. Another example is the kiss scene partially playing out twice from each perspective, and the start of chapter 6. Catra’s spiraling lasts well into the night whereas Adora’s following scene with Glimmer takes place earlier, right after Chapter 6 cut off.

⦁ Initially there was supposed to be an extended beat in this chapter where Adora thought she was being quietly kicked out of the Alliance (not completely, but that they were going to stop trusting her with anything other than punching). It didn’t end up fitting with the timeline, so it got dropped to like one line of speculation on her part in the Netossa scene, but the idea was going to be that the team gets called to another emergency like four days later and they don’t invite Adora. Now, that was actually because she was just recovering from being sick and walking around like a zombie, but she thought it was proof they were done with her and thus she went down to the Alliance sanctum to punch it out. A relic of this plan that I ended up keeping is when Adora says “I don’t care. I’m not doing this,” in the scene with Glimmer. The second half of the plot beat was, at the same time as Adora thought she was kicked out, the Alliance thought she might be quitting. They were giving her space both to recover and calm down, but with how badly she broke then, it seemed like she might have decided that she wanted to be done with the thing that had totally ruined her life. No one thought she would actually stay away, but they were giving her room to cool off.

⦁ Speaking of the punch-out scene, that was initially written all the way back in chapter 2. Basically I wrote the very beginning (Netossa tells her to talk and offering her the easy way, ending with the “drop the goddess act” part) with the idea being Adora was angsting over Catra, but pretty quickly I was looking at the set up and going oh this would be so much better later when she’s really angsting so I cut it out from there, tossed it in my Scrivener doc, and then reused the structure of it for this scene.

⦁ April 26th is the day season 2 of SPOP dropped. November 13th is when the show premiered. The other dates are made up bullshit.

Chapter 8: I Like the Idea of You

⦁ Which name Catra is using for Adora (Adora vs. She-ra) is important in this scene. She is considering how she knew them as separate entities and using each name depending on that at first, and then she’s trying to just sink into the She-ra fantasy, and then she starts losing herself. She uses She-ra when Adora is especially confident, flexes her strength/powers, or Catra can’t see her face to contradict it — basically whenever Adora plays into her initial She-ra fantasies — and she uses Adora when she is being soft/gentle/meek, when Catra has an emotional connection to what’s happening, or sometimes just because she’s seeing her face and that’s Adora’s face, not the mask she pictured for She-ra. A weird example of this is the, uh, you know, spit string moment, where Catra is actually having an internal reaction to seeing Adora debauched/debauching her like she used to fantasize about. She’s also looking at Adora’s face again for the first time after looking away. I know there’s a lot of name-changing in this scene, but it all has a purpose, and part of my editing was making sure the right ones were being used for each moment. By the time Catra was really getting into it, though, the scene/Catra were getting away from me and taking control, and thus using Adora for every name, and I had to fix that in a few small places.

⦁ At this point I’m writing things in smut just based off the if I haven’t done it before. I’ve always written a range of stuff , but when writing this I found myself just doing things because they were new without much other reason as long as it still served the purpose I wanted for the scene.

Chapter 9: Ripples

⦁ The glamor is actually lowkey a reference to an earlier version of the fic idea where the Alliance just straight up didn’t wear masks and it was a Superman situation. The idea was there would be a glamor (similar to the Mist in the Percy Jackson series) that would make it really hard to recognize someone for who they are, but could still be fought through. It was one of the contender ideas but I quickly settled on just having them wear masks. The way the glamor actually works in-universe is that it makes it hard to notice similarities. So before meeting She-ra, Catra straight up couldn’t notice “hey, the Alliance is led by a trio that matches the description of Adora and her friends,” but once she saw She-ra’s face she had enough to be like “that’s Adora.” Conversely, if She-ra had been someone she didn’t actually know well like just one of her classmates she didn’t actually talk to, she still might not have been able to recognize her without the mask on. The glamor is not inherent to the runestones, but is a manifestation of their power that has come over the last four hundred years of the princesses living in secret. If a princess chose to be open with her identity, the glamor would ease as the runestone learned it didn’t have to help her hide. Basically, it’s a learned behavior of the runestones, not innate.

⦁ Usually in canon fics I have Adora tend to refer to She-ra as if she’s a third person (because Adora has a lot of issues feeling like she’s not living up to what She-ra should be, or putting She-ra and her duties above herself) and Catra reacts like she finds that weird. The truth is Catra partially does, but she’s also training Adora to recognize she is She-ra, she doesn’t have to do anything more to be worthy of being herself, and she is the only one who gets to decide what She-ra’s duties are. This only really comes up in post-canon fics, where they both have had some Realizations™️. In this fic, Catra starts off trying to distance She-ra from Adora, so she reacts completely opposite to how she usually does and refers to She-ra as a third separate person for herself. Adora does this too, just like she always does. Catra only starts coming around slowly and changes her mind later.

⦁ Micah had his suspicions and he probably would have come even if he had known just because he would have been worried and felt like he could handle himself. The other princesses trying to comfort Angella with that at the time is part of why Angella turned to Castaspella. She also felt like she deserved to know the truth about how her brother died, even though that context really had nothing to do with it. At the end of the day, Micah made the decision.

⦁ When the comms are turned on, they’re constantly broadcasting to each other, but the microphones are set to be partially muted so they (hopefully) mainly just pick up the person who is wearing them talking. When the button is pressed, it turns up sensitivity and also bumps the broadcaster’s volume up so their orders can come through clearly. Catra could just barely be heard over the comms, but of course Adora caught something, and then she saw Entrapta when Bow fired his arrow, who she recognized in conjunction with Catra’s voice (her hair is kind of distinctive). She asked Bow “What’s going on? Is Catra here?” and that’s when he said not now. After the robots were dispatched, she immediately landed beside him and gave him her Firm Commander look and he explained the brief interaction. Once the scene was completely cleared and they had teleported back to the sanctum, Adora agonized over Catra before ultimately deciding to text her. If Catra hadn’t responded, she would have had Glimmer bring her over to her apartment (which Glimmer would have done with minimal complaint, because there was a real chance Catra had gotten injured trying to leave the scene) but Catra texted back fairly quickly. She didn’t respond to Adora’s second message, which she would have liked just to know what was really going on, but she took what she could get.

⦁ Guesses for who Melog actually was were really interesting. I thought that either people were going to be onto me immediately due to the pronouns or be completely unsure due to assuming I was using they/them pronouns to obfuscate it. I saw a mix, though I don’t think anyone really guessed Melog by name in the first chapter. For the first couple chapters, guesses seemed evenly split between Melog and being unsure. Other guesses were DT, Shadow Weaver/shadow spies, Micah, and the First Ones worm (or maybe elemental?) from Glimmer’s coronation trial. Sorry to everyone’s Melog comments I ignored, but I wanted to maintain the mystery.

⦁ On a similar note of future guesses, no one commented a correct guess on Catra finding out the exact way that she did. There were some interesting theories that I enjoyed, and a few more along the lines of how she would potentially join the Alliance that were exciting to see so early on.

⦁ Catra started to say “Good boy” and then realized that was wrong for several reasons and probably demeaning, so she just pivoted.

⦁ Catra finding Melog under the dumpster was the second Scene™️ for this fic. It was one of the first things I outlined for it. Actually it might have been the first because I never wrote out an outline for the kiss scene, I just pictured it in my head a dozen times starting back when I was still writing AMLAIT. The Melog scene was, in the very initial idea, taking place after a chance attack Catra happened to get caught up in, but as soon as I started writing the fic and used that plot device in the opening I didn’t want to use it again, so the Entrapta thing formed because I already had the technopath subplot set up for later. Very little changed about the scene except how Catra got there and a little dialog tweaking, but originally Catra was supposed to hide Melog in a backpack she was carrying. I didn’t want to write one into the brief “chase scene”, so I gave her a gay flannel instead and had her wrap up them in that.

Chapter 10: Cause and Effect

⦁ Normally I uppercase krytian, but for this fic it was a species name like “human” so I (un)capitalized it as such.

⦁ Melog doesn’t know a lot about krytians due to a mix of their age when they were orphaned and the language gap. Melog’s parent never said to them “We are krytians, we were victims of a genocide by a human religious sect” they said “We are us, but others are dangerous. They hunted us, and now we must live in secret.” Krytians think of themselves as we and everyone else as them. They don’t have pronouns because they are I, you, or us. It’s combination of their culture and their communication method that makes it that way. Melog had no idea what the world would know them as until Catra told them. Shadow Weaver called them it a few times, but again, Melog didn’t know what that meant. It wasn’t until Catra found them and helped with their memories that they understood their jailer was named Shadow Weaver.

⦁ Okay this is something I had to cut from Chapter 10 because the whole thing it was included in dragged on, but I’m really SAD I had to cut it because it is, well, sad, so here it is, to hurt you with for posterity: “Krytians forms are so reliant on magic, they don’t even leave bodies behind when they die. They dissipate back into the area when they die. When Melog lost their parent, their tombstone was a slowly fading well of power. Melog was the only one to ever know that they lived or died.”

⦁ For this fic, I considered having Shadow Weaver just be a supervillain and Catradora grew up in some Anonymously Rough group home together to set up the right experience for their current insecurities and mental issues — I even went back and forth on some edits early on to leave more possibilities open — but once I had the whole Melog plot getting Catra into the Alliance, it only made sense for her to have someone to fight with them, and setting up Shadow Weaver as a ghost from their past worked perfectly for that. Plus, I couldn’t resist the “I was raised by a supervillain” line.

⦁ A big part of Catra’s struggle with Adora in this fic, after she finds out the truth about what happened, is neglect. She knows that Adora didn’t drop her and she had reason to be busy, but it was still a pretty shitty way to treat someone even before you get to the ‘lying about it’ part. Catra (as she later demonstrates) is capable of understanding and even sharing Adora’s commitment, but it wouldn’t be fair for Adora to continue to put absolutely everything first aside from Catra, and the fear that she would do that again was a big thing keeping Catra away. Adora loves her and she makes that rather clear, assuaging one of Catra’s fears, but loving someone and actually treating them well — especially the way they consider treating them well — are two different things. I brush up on this a lot in my Catradora fics (BFM comes to mind) but I feel like it’s especially important for this one.

Chapter 11: Peace Talks

⦁ The Swift Wind thing came from a comment exchange on Chapter 4 where I said that I wasn’t planning on it, but the way I would work Swift Wind in would be for Adora to “deputize” a police horse in battle and for him to then work on freeing all the animals used by the police. It would kind of be a random thing to include in the fic, but I really liked the idea, so it was kind of in the back of my mind and I formed the idea of it being a story the Alliance tells rather than a scene on its own. I was really happy to be able to work it in. I think sometimes I go “that’s a distraction/irrelevant to the fic” but like… it’s fic. “Regular” media can have one off jokes and this is fic where I can do whatever I want so communist horse it is.

⦁ As is… just expected at this point for my fics, half of the contents of chapter 11 were supposed to also be covered in chapter 10, but that thing hit 8k before they even explained anything, so it had to be broken up.

⦁ Chapter 11 is basically the end of my main planning for the fic. After that point, it was all new stuff I came up with to serve the ending of the story that had been written so far. My big outline point for everything after chapter eleven was basically just “take down the horde. Be superheroes. Kiss & make up.”

Chapter 12: Movie Night?

⦁ Given that I just said 11 was the end of my planning, it feels weird to say “12 wasn’t supposed to exist,” but it really wasn’t. My planning by then was for the story to shift into Catra and Adora cautiously taking up texting while she set Entrapta on the Horde’s scent — basically, Chapter 13. The first scene of Chapter 12 started as an ending button scene for Chapter 11, but then I got the idea for the movie night (which actually originated back in Chapter 10, where the initial draft of the chapter included them explicitly planning the horse movie thing) and — more temptingly — the secret kisses during it, so then I had to write it. The scene with Glimmer was also unplanned (when I first tried to write it, the idea was that Catra actually stayed the night because it was “too late” to go all the way back home, but then the gap between the movie and the morning was too big for conversations to not have taken place), but showing Catra open up a little to more members of the Alliance was important for when she joined them later, so I wrote it.

⦁ Catra says the new place “wouldn’t work with Melog” for two reasons: 1) it was another studio, and she needed more options for privacy, especially with Adora around, and 2) it didn’t allow pets. Now, she had no intention of paying the pet fee or ever revealing Melog’s existence, but if a neighbor was to hear Melog meowing or pawing at the door, they would just assume Catra had a cat and had paid for it, instead of possibly snitching about her sneaking one in.

⦁ “Princess isn’t a thing for her” *proceeds to immediately outline why it’s a thing for her when Catra says that*

⦁ Obviously Catra was worried about She-ra finding out Entrapta was a technopath before because her entire apartment looks suspicious as hell, but knowing it’s Adora, she knows she’ll listen to her if she says Entrapta isn’t with the Horde. Otherwise, there’s a very real chance of somebody thinking she’s the one building their bots.

⦁ If you’re capable of not crying during the train scene in Spirit then you’re heartless.

Chapter 13:

⦁ The line “[Trust] can be lost in [a year], too” is in reference to Catra and Adora, not the Alliance.

Chapter 14:

⦁ Glimmer stalled telling her mom because she wanted school to be busy so Angella couldn’t say or do much because it would distract me from finals, mom.

⦁ Shadow Weaver ran the home for every reason Catra listed and more. Maintaining a secret identity (as long as absences didn’t become conspicuous) helped her fly under the radar. It also made her not entirely reliant on the Horde (she didn’t trust Hordak, though if anything he shouldn’t have trusted her). When the kids hit their late teen years and were about to age out into the world, she knew exactly who, when, and where to target them (as Shadow Weaver, or via proxy with another member of the Horde) for a recruitment pitch. She was especially looking for magic children who might have a future in the Horde — or who might be capable of becoming princesses and inheriting/fixing her runestone, or using another one if they ever managed to track down She-ra and Spirit Ember (both runestones clearly lost, but Shadow Weaver didn’t know if that was permanent or a situation like how she acquired the Black Garnet and thus she hoped to find more). She saw that opportunity in Adora, which is a reason why she targeted her and Catra in particular. Finally, Catra is kind of right that she did it for her own “enjoyment”, but it was in a very different way — at least to her. Shadow Weaver legitimately saw herself as helping the kids who crossed her doorstep and thought the world needed her and people like her to prepare these poor, unloved, unruly children for the future. She thought she was a hero and any sliver of remorse she had for the Horde’s more extreme actions she could dismiss with “well look what good I’m doing with this home, it balances out.”

⦁ “It’s a nice dream” Yeah Horde Prime’s line like that still fucks me up and I had to slip it in.

⦁ There’s a dampening spell centered on the door so other people in the archive don’t hear it opening and closing (all the secret tomfoolery would be pretty ruined if people heard a bookshelf being dragged around in the next room all the time) but it also lets me surprise Catra, which is a rare opportunity.

⦁ The alarm at the computer goes off at the same time as a mid-level priority message to all their phones so someone will check the news/hub to see if it’s something they need to deal with, but since they were in the room with the alarm, no one heard/cared about their phones buzzing.

⦁ Melog’s ability to warp the world around them as they travel the paths is inspired by Little Nightmares 2 and that’s all I’ll say on that because it’s not a game that should be spoiled. I thought it fit well with their illusion magic, though. I think the official power is called something like object distance manipulation but relativity manipulation sounded like a better fit to me.

⦁ I was kinda surprised people asked about Netossa and Spinnerella’s codenames (which is a fair question) but no one asked for Bow since they’re all in the same spot as not having a runestone in canon. For Bow, I came up with the Cupid thing Catra mentions early on in the fic as a joke, and while I do think it’s a plausible thing for Bow to consider given his very “I love love” attitude, I don’t think he would actually pick it and it felt a little diminutive. Apollo was a late contender thank to the historical connection with his dads and his association with archery, but I thought about other bow/arrow symbolism and remembered one of the Zodiac had a bow and arrow and thus went with Sagittarius once I realized it was Glimmer’s zodiac. This meant I had to spell Sagittarius. So I fucked up there. For Spinnerella, I never ended up saying it in the fic so I kind of got away lucky, but her runestone is an amethyst. I had been calling her just “Cyclone” in my head, which of course didn’t match with a runestone so I had to add some kind of gem/mineral thing in there, but there’s a big range from the simple “Moonstone” to the slightly more descriptive “Sea Pearl” to “Fractal Flake” which is… nothing. I tried for a while to make some kind of alliteration with “Cyclone,” but there aren’t a lot of gems that fit that, so in the end I went with just Amethyst despite being a little unimaginative because I couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t cumbersome to shout in battle. I really tried to work some kind of “Air Amethyst” type alliteration in there but it just didn’t happen. For Netossa, I thought about making her sapphire early on because blue, but that’s a Steven Universe character so I wanted to either find something else or add a modifier onto it. Coming up with modifiers related to nets is… hard. Star Sapphire and Cerulean Sapphire (bit of an oxymoron, but it felt like it fit with the naming conventions lol) were in contention. It was just hard to relate anything to nets of all things so I followed the simple route a la Moonstone and just went with Star Sapphire (the star pattern of which could represent the intersections of the ropes in her nets? Maybe? Listen that’s the best I’ve got). For Catra things were… more complex. Catra very well could have picked anything she wanted, similar to Bow, which made it a lot harder. I considered Wildcat immediately (especially with Scorpia suggesting it later and then Catra ends up stuck with it after the others pick up on it) but I didn’t want a name that reveals she’s a magicat, so I tested out a lot of things until I just settled on Ghost for the invisibility. Tiger’s Eye was my other immediate instinct for the runestone theme, because, well, obviously, but while that felt exactly like what SPOP would call the magicat runestone, I wasn’t naming “Catra’s runestone,” I was coming up with a superhero name for Catra while runestones also exist. Her name only had to match as much as she wanted it too, and it didn’t feel like she would want that. As soon as I decided on Ghost I looked up to see if there were any “Ghost something” crystals, which is when I found Phantom quartz and added it into the conversation. When I was looking at gems/minerals/elements for inspo, I saw Mercury and I thought that fit really well with Melog’s shifting powers, and as something related both to geology (okay, listen, it’s an element and that’s close enough) and astrology. Other contenders were things like Silver, Bismuth, and a red theme for/with Catra (I literally looked up a list of red shade names. Naming things is hard). Then I had to come up with joke names that were still something the character might come up with (for themselves and others), so I just made things worse for myself. I got to acknowledge that initial Tiger’s Eye instinct though, so that was good to fit in.

Chapter 15:

⦁ Sideloading an app is basically downloading it on your phone without using the system’s app store.

⦁ After Perfuma suggested Phantom, I thought “you know what, that sounds cool” so I went back and forth on using that instead, but there’s no way Catra would pick it knowing the context, so I played with it a bit more in the scene where they decide her official codename — as well as giving her perspective on that bit, and introducing the beginning of Netossa kind of being Catra’s superhero mentor, which is a relationship that develops after the fic ends — but ultimately let Catra decide. It also let me introduce how the system was coded around their aliases, keeping Entrapta from instantly realizing their identities when she hacked them, though it’s obvious once you start sifting through the general channel and see them talking.

⦁ Bow lives with his dads still since they’re close enough to campus for it and that way he doesn’t really need a job on top of school and (secret) heroing. That means he spends a lot of time in Glimmer’s dorm, though, because it’s the only private place he has to go on campus. He can go to George’s office, too, but students come and go from that so it’s not really any better than a student lounge.

⦁ Adora’s voice is strained after saying she loves Catra because she’s convincing herself that Catra just isn’t ready to say it back yet. She’s in total denial that hearing it is important to her.

⦁ Kadroh is, of course, Wrong Hordak, and the guy who runs the front counter.

⦁ Entrapta was basically shouting for the entire conversation with Scorpia, but since Scorpia also tends to talk loudly, she didn’t really notice it.

⦁ The scene with Scorpia is actually the first I conceived for the fic from a different perspective, which would eventually influence my decision to switch perspective around however I saw fit.

Chapter 16:

⦁ Adora mentions her academics a lot in this fic because I was playing with the idea of her dropping out and just becoming a vet tech to reduce her stress and wanted to leave that option open, but she was so close it didn’t end up feeling right, especially after the Horde became less of a threat with their scrambling following the arrest.

⦁ Someone on crew (pretty sure it was ND) joked that Catra’s “real name” was Elizabeth, so I pulled that as the bullshit name Scorpia said. I went back and forth on her actually saying Catra’s name in hopes of being able to tell if the Horde recognized it (and thus had at least seen her) but that would have been a whole thing to Shadow Weaver as soon as she heard it and there was too much going on in the scene already to throw that in. Plus, it risked endangering Catra’s secret identity even more than Scorpia’s mere presence already did.

⦁ Okay, so obviously my instinct when giving Scorpia an alias was to use… her fucking alias, lmao, but Linda is her mom and D’Ream is her last name already, so Lynda wasn’t going to work. Lynda D’Ream was originally a reference to Scorpia’s voice actress in the 80s (Linda Gary), so I used her SPOP voice actress’s name, Lauren Ash, and threw a fucking y in there because that’s how they did it lmao

⦁ Every runestone calls out a little differently to its holder (in the circumstance where it’s not immediately passed to them). Adora saw lights in the edge of her vision, just ephemeral enough to now be there, that led her towards the stone and then it pulled her in with a mental call. Scorpia couldn’t feel the mental call with the stone cracked, but it sparked to beckon her.

⦁ Scorpia’s mask looking kind of like Shadow Weaver’s was temporary. I don’t know if I ever squeezed the joke in because I’ve been writing this fic for like two months and have forgotten, but the first time Adora transformed, it was into her season one outfit. Both she and the runestone kind of freaked out and it was only on subsequent transformations, when she knew what was happening and could exercise some control over it, that the season five/current She-ra costume appeared. Scorpia is in a similar situation where her mask will eventually take a vaguely scorpion-like theme, with the hooks down her cheeks mimicking stingers and similar ones hooking up her forehead and back over her ears.

⦁ Scorpia didn’t notice any of Catra’s attempts to touch her. Catra kept them light because she was worried about startling Scorpia and giving away their best shot at getting out of this, but that just made them easier for Scorpia to miss them.

⦁ Melog was reliving some trauma and hiding out under the table made them feel better, so when Catra was okay they were busy taking care of themselves by hiding to recuperate.

Chapter 17:

⦁ Shadow Weaver genuinely isn’t entirely certain what happened that day. She remembers Lauryn showing up, but details are fuzzy. When Black Garnet debuts, she remembers that Lauryn was the new Black Garnet since it was Kind Of A Big Deal to her, but she doesn’t remember many details about what she looks like that aren’t already public, and she doesn’t remember her transforming because it all happened so fast and then she was electrocuted and unconscious. That electrocution caused her some issues beyond her memories of that day, and between that and having no magic herself, she isn’t much of a threat when it comes to breaking out of jail or something. With the overwhelming evidence of her involvement in the Horde and no evidence she was blackmailed as she claimed, she goes away for a long time. Everybody arrested turns on Hordak trying to get a plea deal, and between the testimony and physical evidence he was the only one who could have built the robots, he gets convicted of a lot of things, especially as an accessory because that’s easier to prove.

⦁ The rooftop scene was actually initially planned to go earlier in the fic, before the big confrontation, but even though I had been planting the seeds for it, I wanted a bit more hinting and I felt like Catra running off on her own would make Adora worry even more about it, so I pushed it back.

⦁ I ended up using gender neutral pronouns for Horde members a couple times because they often wear helmets or masks that make it hard, but sometimes I chose to use gendered pronouns because I tend to default to they-them pronouns and a nebulous appearance for rando NPCs and I didn’t want it to seem like I was doing that rather than it being a part of the plot that they were disguised and ambiguous. And of course physical appearance isn’t always and indicator of pronouns etc (it certainly isn’t for me lol) but it is usually the assumed default without indicators otherwise. Also sometimes it was just easier to have a random NPC gendered, which is why I had rando Horde members be male a couple times because it just made it easier to distinguish who was who during the fight scenes LOL.

⦁ The “I’ll stroke your ego if it shuts you up” “Wow that didn’t take much convincing” exchange was in my notes before I even started writing the fic. I didn’t have a place for it planned and it only ended up coming up here at the end, but I’m glad I got to use it finally.

Misc Fic Thoughts:

⦁ I’d written a little here and there, but I really got my fanfiction start (both reading and writing) in the comics fandom. I never had a superhero AU “planned” but it always felt like an inevitable thing I would do one day when an idea occurred to me. Superheros befriending(/rescuing/romancing) people they know in their real lives but who don’t know about their secret identity is something I’m a SUCKER for, so when that idea occurred to me in early March it was like of course. I absolutely have to do this right away. I had another thing I was excited for but this jumped the line as soon as AMLAIT was done. I was actually writing this simultaneously with editing that ending.

⦁ I’ve referenced the playlist a couple times and it’s linked below, but I wanna actually talk about it for a second. If you weren’t around for it, 8tracks was a website that was basically the Tumblr version of spotify playlists. It wasn’t affiliated with Tumblr or anything, there were just a lot of Tumblr people populating it and it had a tagging system, so you could hunt down all the playlists associated with your fandom. There were some licensing/copyright issues, and they had a profitability problem anyway, I think, so after a few years it closed down and no website has ever been able to capture the kind of playlists 8tracks hosted and the quality there. With it gone, I can’t go back and find the playlist that this AU is named after. However, it was a Young Avengers playlist (it was called something like “superzeroes — a young avengers fanmix”) that I still vividly remember the cover art for. I believe it was around 11 songs long (a pretty normal length for an 8tracks playlist), and the only two songs I’m pretty sure were on it were Superlove by Charlie XCX and Kick Ass by Mika. I think there might have been a song by FUN on the playlist too? But that — like both of the other songs, really — could have come from one of my other comics-related playlists too. I did my DAMNEDEST to find a tumblr post linking to this playlist again (and in doing so, dug up some nostalgia holy shit) but in the end turned up nothing. Shockingly for how long I’ve gone on about it, I wasn’t particularly attached to this playlist. I mean, I listened to it, but it just came up as a memory when I first got the idea to do a superhero AU, so when I created a file for it I named it “Superzero AU” just intending for it to be a play on superhero, and then that Became the AU’s name in my head and I couldn’t change it after this. I need to stop doing that to myself. The name does, however, have meaning, which is kind of two-fold. First, superzero is an insult aimed at Adora. I considered having Catra say it to her face when they were fighting, showing that she can try to be a superhero to everyone else but she is still a failure, because she failed Catra (they didn’t end up fighting a lot so that didn’t make it into the fic, but the idea of superzero being a term Catra snidely thinks about Adora when they were fighting is still there). Second, Catra is the superzero, specifically a superhero with zero powers. She’s using Melog’s, yes, but she has none of her own and yet she eventually joins the Alliance in throwing herself into danger.

⦁ POV for this fic is interesting because when I was originally coming up with the concept, most of the scenes where from Catra’s perspective, but I knew I wanted the kiss scene specifically to be from Adora’s perspective. I also knew, by the time I started writing it in earnest, that this was going to a long fic so sticking to one POV was going to be impractical. I then thought about switching POV by chapter and just having the Catra chapters be longer, but there were too many scenes I wanted both their takes on. I then considered something weird which was alternating Catra POV chapters with my usual back-and-forth POV chapters, but by then I knew I wanted a scene from Melog’s perspective and maybe even one from Scorpia’s, so I decided f**k it, free POV whenever and wherever I want. This is the first time I’ve really used a POV like this in a long fic, though I did it here and there in one-shots like the soulmarks AU and ‘dawn after the long dark’ in OotW.

⦁ I had fun with this fic, but it was also Struggle Bus to write (for various reasons, from plot-related, to meta, to my own indecision, to life). All my fics (at least long ones, and it can still happen in one-shots) include rewrites somewhere, but I feel like it’s something invisible to both readers and other writers. You only see the final result, not the six tries + editing it took to get there, but this one took a lot of rewriting. I think the final result is fun though so I’m really happy with it.

Original Outline:

The original idea for this fic was very brief. She-ra would have already saved Catra in the past and they were in the weird friendship phase, there was some will-they-won’t-they and attempted friendship tension, then the kiss and the reveal, then the booty call which would start turning Catra around and they would repair their relationship from there.

Then I thought “hey this is a magical realism au, I could have Melog in here” and immediately had the idea for the scene where Catra found Melog. Everything spiraled from there. Below is the entire outline for the fic by the time I finished drafting the first chapter (during which I had ideas about Shadow Weaver’s place in this AU and such).

- meet - friendship (adora learns theres a chance of rebuilding next semester) - return (health insurance, kiss it better) - “just checking in again” (law student) - rooftop - kiss/fall out - booty call - in limbo, find melog - bring melog to BMU - priorities conversation - some fight with the horde, taking down shadow weaver

In the end, the fic followed the outline, though not always the way I thought, mostly at the end where it was more ambiguous. I don't have much to say about it (beyond what I said in earlier notes) since it mostly turned out how I planned, but I thought sharing what one of my overarching outlines looks like might be fun.

Meta:

Superzero playlist

Upcoming:

Okay so I have like, four fics I’m weighing at the moment and I’m not sure with one is going to win, so it’s hard to say which will be upcoming. If I had to guess, though? City of Angels.

#superzero #ficmeta #fic notes #i can finally read those superhero au fics i drafted ages ago because i knew i would want to write my own eventually lmao #if i know im doing an au i avoid reading others of that au to avoid being influenced or whatever #also ive been low spoons for a while and lost control of replying to comments but i will try to catch up on the last week or two if i can #ive just been prioritizing actually writing over that

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kimwexlers-brownhair · 1 year

Note

Oh back to Yellowsuccess! I think after the plane crash Logan would become obsessive trying to arrange a rescue until enough time passed for him to "cut his losses" and shut down, and things would get even nastier between him and Kendall because of how it seems that he's brushing off the disappearance of his supposed favorite child like it's nothing and Kendall takes out his own feelings of guilt for being a shitty brother onto him. He's also the first to recognize that Shiv is probably dead while Roman is the last, coming up with elaborate scenarios in his head for what she might be doing and maybe for a while believing he's got some kind of psychic connection with her. And then of course things gets Very weird when it turns out she's been alive after all.

Logan is not an idealist. He never claimed to be.

Look, life's not a walk in the fucking park. It's a rollercoaster that goes off the rails onto the crowd below. If you’re lucky, you scramble over the crushed bodies beneath you out of the wrecked train, bleeding all over the cotton candy squeezed in a dead fist. It's a shitstorm.

Terrible things happen. People die.

You can't make it to the soccer match that gets your daughter's team into Nationals. There have been too many whispers about cruises lately, so you need to be at that board meeting. To make up for it, you hire a few nonunion mechanics to spruce up one of your recently decommissioned private planes so your daughter and her teammates can fly to Seattle in a little luxury. The thing's no hunk of junk, just a little smaller and more delicate than the top of the line, newest models. It's not like they're flying to fucking Hong Kong. Compared to the far flung cities Logan regularly flies to, a quick trip over Canada from New York to Seattle is a mere hop, skip, and a jump. It'll be fine.

But no, actually, because the fucking plane crashes somewhere in the Canadian rockies.

Terrible things happen. People die.

But Siobhan --

Siobhan's not People. Siobhan is his.

It is nearly four in the afternoon. Logan skims over another damn contract about some obnoxious port problem off the coast of Brazil. ATN drones on in the background about Dubya's daring new Medicare cuts. Outside the glass doors he suddenly hears hurried feet, rushed whispers. He glances up and a PA is darting here, another darting there, and here comes Gerri looking pale as if she's about to lose her lunch. Frank and Karl follow, looking about the same. The new press girl Karolina trails them, speaking rapidly into her phone.

"What," he barks as they hussle in. God, don't tell him there's another NRPI situation he needs to sign away discreetly while deliberatey avoiding the written details. On top of this fucking Brazil thing --

But no, Gerri's pallor, Frank's stony expression --

"Logan," Gerri's voice is weaker than he's ever heard it, but as always she's keeping it together. "Logan, it's Shiv."

It doesn't occur to him. Not yet. But Gerri's face.

"What about her?"

Her tongue darts over her lips quickly and he's never seen her like this.

"The plane" --

Karolina cuts in, shifting her phone away from her mouth. "It's leaked. I've given Cyd the go-ahead so ATN can announce it first."

Gerri closes her eyes.

Fear, fear Logan is mostly able to keep at bay, rushes in like a flood from the creek Rose drowned herself in --

"Someone fucking tell me right now or you're all fired!"

Before they answer, from the TV comes, "We're getting word now that a private plane carrying a high school girls' soccer team to Nationals in Seattle has lost contact with airport authorities after being overtaken by a storm surge over the Canadian Rockies. It's early hours yet, but authorities fear the plane went down --"

Water, rushing water all up and down inside him, plummeting.

Nothing's quite real anymore.

Rose....

But Siobhan is not Rose. Siobhan is a scrappy fighter like him, a survivor. She has Ewan's annoying habit of disagreeing with him. She has her mother's acid tongue, his mother's grit. She has none of Rose's vulnerability. They don't even look that much alike outside of the coloring --well, okay, that's not strictly true, they look a little bit alike, okay, now that Logan thinks about it, they look a lot alike -- but they're not the same.

No. Shiv's tough. Shiv's tough. She's a survivor. She's his whip-smart Pinky with the wicked smile, his little hell-raiser confidant. His girl.

Logan doesn't believe in any of that woo wee woo, cosmic bullshit about feeling whether someone close to you is alive or not, but...Logan would know.

Shiv is his blood, his self. Add Shiv and her brothers up and they equal Logan. Ken, Rome, and yes, Connor -- sometimes they make up the parts Logan loathes about himself. But not Shiv.

So he would know if she was -- he would feel it, no matter how much he disavows that spiritual shit.

He doesn't feel it, not now. He didn't feel this coming at all. Shiv is alive. Shiv is alive.

Shiv is alive, so he has to act, now.

"Call DC," he says to no one in particular and so that means everyone. "Tell Cheney we need a search party. Top of the line military OP types, no bleeding heart volunteer morons. If he flinches, tell him we've been sitting on that story about the Chump-in-Chief falling off the wagon in Key West. Tell Laird to pucker up and suck off whatever Canadian officials we need to get full access beyond the border. Who's overseeing this? Get me on the line with them, now."

This is different from Rose because he is in control now. Total control.

Evening. The door opens and Roman is there in the study. His eyes are more haunted and frightened than Ken can ever remember them being, and Rome often wore that look in his childhood.

They embrace.

"Like, what the fuck, man? What the fuck," Roman asks into his shoulder.

Ken gives him a squeeze. "It's going to be okay, Rome. Shiv's too much of a bitch to go down that way."

Roman hiccups a laugh. "Yeah, she probably pushed the pilots out of the way and landed the thing herself. She's going to get those poor bastards fired."

They don't separate until Connor arrives. He wraps them both in his arms.

"Hey, guys. Whatever happens, it will be okay."

Both secretly resent him saying that, since it implies something might happen.

The door opens and here comes their father. He whispers a few words in Gerri's direction and for once shuts her and the rest out to address them.

Sill, when he speaks, his voice is as impersonal as the one he uses when trying to boost morale amongst hired underlings. Almost light, airy.

The only difference is his eyes. They're glassy. Unfocused. He doesn't meet any of their gazes.

He claps, starts. "Boys, uh, glad you're here. Glad you're here. Thank you for coming. Uh, it's all good. All good. We've got search parties setting off now. And we're getting word they've picked up a signal from the plane's transmittor. So it won't take long now."

He hasn't once said even her name.

Still, not just for Logan, but for Roman, Kendall says, "Yeah. Yeah. Of course. It's, like, impossible for a plane to completely go missing these days. They'll find the signal and pick them up."

"Right." The briefest of nods from his father, a rare sign of acknowledgement, thanks. He takes in a breath and finally brings her up. "Your sister's tough, now. She's tough. She's going to be just fine. Isn't she, Connor?"

Connor's sitting on the back of the sofa, and his face is grim. Still he nods. "Sure, Pa. Sure."

Roman's too much in shock to notice what they're doing. It's for him. With Shiv gone, Roman is the baby. It's a show for him.

The youngest son says nothing, just gives a weak smile behind the fingers covering his face. His shoulders are hunched upward like a dog mincing away from the whip.

"Uh-huh. Okay." Logan's eyes wander over the room. If they didn't know him, they'd think he was a confused old man who doesn't quite remember where he is. But Dad's not old, they all tell themselves. He's not. And he knows what he's doing. He's just a little...unsettled. "Thank you, boys. Thank you."

"Uh, dad," Kendall clears his throat. "Is there...is there anything I - we can do right now? Like, does the search party need volunteers?"

"Huh? Oh, no, son. We've got top of the line -- it's taken care of. "

"Okay. How about, how about Mom? Does - she knows, right? Or --"

"Ah? Oh, your mother. Uh, yes, I'm sure she knows by now. Someone must have...I mean, if you want to call her..."

"Sure, dad. Sure. I can do that."

Logan's gaze finally rests on Kendall, and there's true warmth there. "Thank you, Kenny. Okay, boys, I'll keep you posted." Then, without another word or glance, he leaves the boys behind him, their haunted eyes on his retreating back.

It's about five in the morning when Logan's bedside phone starts ringing. He's only been in bed for three hours, and been asleep for just about one. He'd just been dreaming of a campfire, and girls were laughing. Shiv's face is covered in soot but she's smiling, eyes sparkling as she knocks shoulders with one of her teammates --

However, he's awake instantly and answers. "What? Siobhan?"

Gerri. Her voice is very quiet, which means there's bad news.

Logan listens.

His veins are on fire. He's sitting on the edge of the bed and the darkness of the room turns red. "What? How? How can they lose the fucking signal? Those boxes are supposed to be goddamn indestructible, aren't they?...I don't fucking care that they're doing their best, Gerri, I need them to...well, don't they fucking know by now where the signal was coming from before it went away? Didn't they have jets going there?...oh, don't give me that garbage about the storm, I fucking know about the storm, that's how the plane -- interference? Fucking...what the fuck good are those fucking boxes if they can't give you the correct location through a fucking storm? Don't give me any shit about interference, Gerri!"

He listens a few moments more, breath chugging out of his nostrils like a bull ready to charge. "Well, you tell Cheney and the air force that I don't give a fuck. Tell them to keep pushing. This isn't some run of the mill commercial flight with some hodunk assholes from Iowa flying to Florida for vacation, this is my daughter. In fact, there are a lot of fucking important daughters on that plane. Tell that reptile that if he wants his braindead idiot reelected, I better not hear one fucking word about the operation slowing down. Fucking got that, Ger?"

He slams the phone down. His nerves are open and raw, and the darkness is too close and Shiv is out there, she's out there and the signal is gone.

From below, Richard, giving the morning's instructions to staff, hears a roar and the phone crash against Logan's bedroom wall.

Eleven-and-a-half months later, Kendall has to see it on the news like everyone else.

He doesn't give Richard any time to warn Logan before he bursts into his father's home office. His father is not at his desk but sitting on the couch holding a scotch, staring at nothing.

"What the fuck, Dad? What is this? You're fucking calling off the search?"

His father doesn't move, doesn't look at him. "It's been almost a year, Kendall." His voice is a thousand years old.

"So? That's it? We're done? You're not gonna fucking..."

"Not gonna fucking what, Kendall?" At last his father turns to face him, and his glazed eyes are even older than his voice. "We've done everything. Searched everywhere in that damn wilderness." His eyes are on the amber liquid in his glass. "Nothing."

"W-well," Ken's stammer is back. "We-we-we can"--

"Kendall," his voice is sharp, commanding. "It's done. There's no going back. Your sister..." Kendall must be rocking on his feet, because it looks like his father is swaying. "Your sister is gone." His voice cracks at gone.

But Kendall won't hear it. "Come on. Come on, Dad. It's not like you to give up like that. We"--

"The shareholders aren't going to want anymore money going to a search party that isn't finding anything."

"So that's what it all comes down to? Fucking money? Dad? Again? That's all that matters to you, now even?"

He sees the storm cloud gathering in his father's face. "We can't keep throwing resources" --

"Throwing resources? That's what you call funding the search party to find your fucking daughter? Your alleged favorite?"

"Don't fucking push me, son."

"No, this is -- wait." Ken's eyes cast about the room. "What...where?" He cranes his head all around, checking every end table, every surface. "Dad, where..." his eyes focus back on his father. "Dad, where are her pictures?"

Logan says nothing, stares into nothing, his face saying nothing. The only horror is in his wide glazed eyes.

Kendall points to the hutch against the wall. "The picture of her and Rome as kids? Her yearbook picture on your desk? The team on the wall? Where...where the fuck are they, Dad? Where did you put them?"

Logan's voice is as low as it is ever capable of being. "They're in her room. Which is locked."

Ken is too numb for a second, but then the pain and anger burst out. "In her room? Locked away? Like she never even fucking existed? Jesus fucking Christ, Dad"--

Logan is all at once on his feet, the drink slammed down on the coffee table. "And what the fuck have you been doing, Kendall? Hm? What have you been doing to find your sister? All this time, playing with your dick in your overpriced dorm room at that Ivy League dump instead of joining the search party?"

Kendall doesn't know whether to laugh or scream. "You told me not to volunteer, Dad. You told me not to interrupt my education. You said I wouldn't know what I was doing and I'd only get in the way"--

Logan's red face is inches in front of his. "Oh, you needed my permission, hm? My permission to go out and find your baby sister?"

"That's not fair" --

"GO ON. FUCK OFF. Your sister is gone, Kendall, and no amount of mewling about her pictures is going to bring her back. So, GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE AND STOP WASTING ANY MORE OF MY GODDAMN TIME."

Logan turns away and marches over to his desk. His back is to Kendall, but Ken sees his arm go up over his face. Blocking everything out.

A stab of love. "Dad, I" --

"Go on, Kendall. Go on. Go and see to your brother. I can't right now. I need...I need some time."

Roman's sitting on the stairs when Kendall comes out. He's been home since everything started, "for Dad", he says. As if Logan has noticed at all. He's insisted throughout that Kendall stay at Harvard, but he's never given a serious shit about what Roman does.

"Is...is it true? He's called off the search party?"

"Yeah, Rome. Yeah, it's true."

"But why?" His voice breaks. He's trembling. "Why would he do that?"

Ken feels empty, like a clockwork man. He parrots his father. "It's been close to a year, Roman."

"So?" Roman is on his feet, arms wrapped around his slim body. He's been losing more and more weight recently. "That doesn't mean anything. If...if they're close to water, if there's game, they can still be..."

"Roman." Kendall closes his eyes, breathes. "Roman, she's gone."

A jolt shakes Roman's body. "Oh, fuck you, Kendall. You don't know that."

"Rome" --

"You don't know that. Anything could have happened!"

"We would have heard by now."

"Not necessarily! There's a lot of fucking wilderness out there."

"Right, so the chances of them making it this long"--

He stops short as Roman suddenly shoves him hard in the chest.

"Shut up! Just shut the fuck up, man! You don't know shit!"

"Hey, hey, Roman" --

"No! Fuck you! What, they teach you about surviving in the woods in your fucking Harvard business classes?" Another shove. "You're just fucking useless."

Kendall can't take it and he spits back. "Oh, yeah? Well, at least I'm not delusional."

"I'm not delusional."

"Yes, you are. This whole time you've never even considered that she might be" --

"Because"-- Roman cuts himself off and turns away, hands on the back of his head.

Kendall frowns. "Because what, Rome?" His shoulders slump. "Not because of your dreams. Bro, please don't tell me that."

Rome's arms are crossed again, still turned away from his brother. "Fine, I won't," he mumbles.

"They're just dreams, Roman," Kendall says for about the millionth time.

They started soon after the plane went missing. Shiv almost burning up on the crashed plane, but Roman tore off the seat belt so she could escape. Shiv happily splashing her friends in a lake they just discovered. A creepy cabin in the woods. A dark-haired girl wailing over a frozen body as the first snows fell.

Roman would never meet Ken's eyes when telling him, usually as they sat on his bed in the evening. He'd stare at his bedspread and say, "I don't know, they just feel really...real. Like I'm actually in front of her. Sometimes she sees me and gets really shocked but we..talk and stuff."

Ken never said much in reply.

He didn't want to say he'd been having the same dreams.

And now, he just won't put up with it. "You don't have some kind of psychic connection with her, okay? Like, you're not even twins, you're Irish twins." Born barely a year apart. Logan liked to throw the term around because he knew it bothered their old-English mother who deep down carried an ancient bigotry against the Irish like the rest of her family.

Roman finally faces him. "Yeah, I fucking know that, okay? But they feel more like visions than dreams"--

Kendall now shoves him hard, because he just had a flash of his own dream from last night, of Shiv stumbling in the snow and sniffling. She looked so relieved when she saw Kendall standing there in the cold, ready to help her up.

Another shove, and Roman whimpers. "You're fucking delusional, Roman. She's gone. She's dead, all right? She's fucking dead."

He doesn't wait to take in his brother's tears. He storms out of the house, pushing past Richard.

Roman collapses on the steps.

Logan can hear his youngest boy's sobs through the closed door. He's relieved. They're covering the choking sounds he himself is making. He's slouched over the window seat, clutching the curtains.

He can't stop it now, tears cloud everything.

Just last night he was sitting by Siobhan on the bank of that frozen lake again. She was wrapped up in that patchwork coat made out of bear and deer skins. He could see scars on her face. That wolf nightmare was true. His arm was around her, and he was telling her stories about how he and Ewan used to ice fish.

A little over nine months later, the call comes. Crash site found.

Survivors found.

#yellowsuccess #yellowjackets #succession #shiv roy #logan roy #kendall roy #roman roy #connor roy #gerri kellman #rose roy

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