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berrynarrybanana · 3 years

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My Only Angel

A/N: A rewrite of one my favorite pieces that I’ve ever done. I added an entire extra part onto it and I hope that you all enjoy the new addition.

Warnings: Smut, alcohol use, mentions of drug use, tiny bit of a daddy kink

Word Count: 5k+

I promise to edit this later, but for now, I am posting this as is!

Masterlist

The bass was shaking the sticky floor of the club, shooting straight up your spine as you swayed on your sore feet. It had been a long night and you were slowly starting to fade. The party was dwindling down, some of your friends trailing off to the bathroom to do lines before they moved onto the next party that would surely be held at someone’s flat. You were leaning heavily against Harry, his large (and deliciously warm) palm resting on your side as you sipped at the water in your hands. Your head found his shoulder almost an hour ago, the soft tendrils of his curls tickling your bare shoulders and collarbones as he chatted with one of your mutual friends.

Harry had been trying to get away from the conversation for the last sixty minutes, squeezing your side sympathetically every time Nick brought up a new topic to chat about. It was only after someone pulled Nick’s attention away that you were able to escape from the elitist bar with Harry’s blazer draped over your shoulders. His fingers easily tangled with yours as he pushed the front door open, flashes greeting your heavy eyes aggressively. You knew the drill better than you knew most of the people Harry considered friends. Keep your head down, eyes on your feet, let Harry lead the way, and don’t talk. It wasn’t hard to do in theory, but in practice it proved to be a little bit harder than it sounded.

Harry shut the door behind you, jumping as a pap started to smack the glass. Harry’s driver, Benny, was quick to step on the gas at Harry’s command. Harry’s right hand slipped over your knee as the fingers on his left hand started to toy with his bottom lip nervously. You gave him a soft, reassuring smile when he looked in your direction with concerned eyes. He let out a shuddery sigh of relief before leaning over to kiss your forehead. You tucked yourself into his side once more, letting your eyes drift shut as Harry pulled out his phone.

When you finally made it into his newly renovated home, you let out a content sigh. Lifting one leg at a time, you pulled at the straps of your heels until they fell in a heap by the front door. It wasn’t like you wouldn’t pick them up later and pack them away again. You were only here for a few days before you traveled off to another destination for work. As much as you hated it at times, you owed your demanding and stressful career for giving you Harry. Without a work trip to Amsterdam, you wouldn’t be sitting on his kitchen island while he kissed your lips.

“Missed you.” He brushed his nose against yours as you let out a soft hum, your chapped lips curving into a smile. “How long ‘ave we got?”

“Four days.” You brushed your fingers against the crisp, white fabric of his button up. “But I don’t intend on leaving this house for anything.”

“S’that so?” He chuckled, ducking his head down bashfully. “Not even to visit Mum for a night?”

“Doesn’t sound half bad, I have to admit.” Your legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer as you peppered kisses over his forehead. “I do miss her sangria.”

“I’ll let her know to make a batch.”

Your head tilted back, a breathy sigh of pleasure escaping from your lips as he sponged kisses over your collarbone. You felt it in your core first, the soft aching reminding you that it had been a while since you’d last been with Harry. If you remembered correctly, it had been at least six months since you’d last had him in a tiny Paris hotel room. It had been six months since you’d felt him, really felt him give it to you like you needed. Just as your fingernails dug into his broad shoulders, the doorbell rang out loudly. It made you jump, causing Harry to laugh into your neck before he pulled away.

“Ordered us some food.” He pressed a fleeting kiss to the corner of your mouth. “I’ll be right back, angel.”

You watched him walk away with a pout on your lips and an unsatisfied throbbing between your legs. Had he been quick enough, he could have had you on the countertop before the food arrived. A quickie was better than nothing, and right now that’s what you had - nothing. Impatiently you waited for Harry’s return, gripping the edge of the counter with puffed out cheeks as your feet swung back and forth. Your heels tapped against the sleek cabinets softly as you looked over his kitchen, The remodel was finally done and you were so proud of what Harry had done with his London home. It was undeniably him, from the cabinets to the paint in his bedroom. A smile graced your lips when you noticed a picture of you and Harry hung in a cluster of photos on the wall.

You were sandwiched between a picture of Harry with the band, and a picture of Gemma and Harry on the beach. You were so enamored with the pictures on his wall that you almost didn’t notice him walking back into the kitchen. Without the light flipping on suddenly, you probably wouldn’t have noticed him. A groan left your lips at the sudden brightness, and a chuckle left his at the sound of your annoyed noise. He set the takeout bag on his countertop before turning towards the cabinets opposite of where you sat. Two plates later and Harry was by your side, scooping chips onto your plate with his nimble fingers. He handed you the white, ceramic plate with a quick peck before he turned back to make his own plate up.

“Sir,” You hummed out, popping a chip into your mouth, “Where is my malt vinegar and tomato sauce.”

“It’s comin’, angel.” He snorted, shaking his head before he lifted his thumb to his mouth.

Your face paled and your lips parted as you watched him suck the salt off the tip of his finger absentmindedly. He turned around on socked heels, moving towards the brand new fridge to retrieve the condiments you requested. He held the bottles between his fingers, reaching out for his plate with one hand before he nodded towards the doorway of his kitchen.

“Let’s take this upstairs and get comfortable.” He suggested. “I’m dying to get out of these bloody jeans.”

“They keep getting tighter and tighter, don’t they.” Your eyebrows moved in a suggestive manner as Harry rolled his eyes, turning his back towards you as you hopped from the countertop. “I do have to say I’m enjoying it.”

“You already know how big my dick is, there’s not really much left for you to imagine.” He snorted out a laugh as you both walked down the hallway, towards the staircase.

“Your bum looks really fucking good in them though.” With a soft pinch to his rounded cheek, you proved your point.

“Oi!” Harry jumped, shooting a playful glare over his shoulders. “Keep your hands to yourself, missus. I don’t need my house smelling like malt vinegar because your grabby hands made me drop the bottle.”

“You love my grabby hands.” You giggled as you followed him up the staircase. “Have I told you that I love the remodel yet?”

“Mentioned it once or twice.” He chuckled lowly. “Thank you for all of your very strong opinions on the color palette, by the way.”

“You’re very welcome.” You hummed out, reaching for a chip as you cleared the last few steps of the staircase. “I think it looks really nice.”

“I really like the darker tones that you picked.” He pushed his bedroom door open with his elbow, revealing the emerald, burnt orange, and blush tones of his bedroom. “I especially love your idea for the bedroom.”

“It’s almost as if people pay me to write about this kind of stuff.” You snorted, setting your plate down on the side of his bed that you claimed over a year ago. “Wild.”

“Piss off.” He rolled his eyes, setting his own plate on the velvet comforter. “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you something comfy to change into.”

“Mkay.” You effortlessly lifted the hem of your little black dress over your head, dropping the garment to the floor before you slid under the emerald sheets.

The rich, jewel tones combined with the blush and light tan created the perfect seventies rockstar vibe. The shapes and artwork on his wall brought pieces of his favorite time period to his everyday life, fueling his inspiration as continued to embark on his musical journey. After Harry returned, already dressed in his pajamas, you took the vintage band shirt he offered with a smile. You slipped it over your body as he climbed in bed next to you. The two of you settled into a comfortable silence, eating your late night fish and chips with content hums and greasy fingers. You felt your head start to come down from the high the tequila brought you, the dizzy cloud hanging over your head drifting away with each bite you took. When you were finished with your food, Harry disappeared with your dirty plates before returning with two large glasses of water. He turned the lights off in the bedroom, handing you a glass with firm instruction.

“Drink up.” He started to sip at his own water as you rolled your eyes, tipping the glass back like you were asked.

When your water was downed and you were finally laying down next to Harry, you reached up to brush your knuckles over his cheek with a sleepy smile.

“Hi.” You whispered.

“Hello, lovely.” He turned his head, kissing your wrist softly. “I’m glad to have you back for a while. It’s been far too long since we’ve caught up.”

“I know.” Your hips wiggled until you were nearly flush with Harry’s front, your legs slotted between his as your hand brushed over his side. “I missed you.”

“I missed you.” He mumbled against your forehead. “Don’t leave me for so long again.”

“If I recall, you left me in Los Angeles.” With a tilt of your head, you capture his lips with your own in a tender and slow kiss.

Everything was innocent until your hand slipped between your bodies, subtly palming his cock through the plaid of his pajama pants. Harry gasped when you bit down on his lower lip, palming him with a little more enthusiasm than before. It didn’t take long for Harry to have you on your back, his hips pressing yours into the mattress with little rolls and grinds. Desperate hands pushed under soft shirts, grasping at clammy skin as Harry started to kick the duvet towards the end of the bed. When his lips started to trail over your jaw, and down your neck, you started to lose the patience you had stored up.

You didn’t want to wait any longer.

Impatiently, you tugged at Harry’s shirt until it was over his head and on the floor alongside your dress. Your shirt was the next to go, falling in a heap with the other fabric as Harry sponged kisses over the swell of your breast.

“Harry,” You gasped as his tongue swirled over your nipple. “Please, baby.”

“M’getting there.” His voice was low and hoarse as he moved to your other breast “Let me take my time, angel.”

“Please, Harry.” Your fingers scratched lightly against his back as your hips lifted up. “I can’t wait.”

He lifted his head from the crook of your neck, looking down at your face with a smug grin.

“You need it that bad, angel?” Sparse kisses were left over your warm cheek as Harry waited for your answer. “Need to hear you say it.”

“I need you.” You whispered. “I need you to fuck me.”

“There’s my good girl.”

His lips pressed into yours hungrily as your hands pushed his pajama pants down.

You gripped his bum, making sure to dig your nails into the sensitive skin softly. Your giggle was drowned out by the groan that vibrated against your lips. He didn’t stop though, his tongue slipping over yours as he pushed your panties to the side. Your hand worked over his cock in long, slow pumps as he panted against your lips. Soon, he was the one who was desperate to be inside of you. His hips were rutting into your hand, the leaking tip of his cock bumping against your soft thigh as you continued to tease him.

“Thought you needed me.” He let out a breathy chuckle, glancing between your naked bodies to watch your hand stroking over his cock. “Let me in, angel.”

“I’m having fun.” You whispered, adjusting your head on the mound of soft pillow behind you as Harry looked into your eyes.

“I’m not.” He grumbled. “Promise to make it so good for you, angel.”

“I know it’ll be good.” You lifted your chin, puckering your lips out. “Kiss me.”

When his lips met yours, you guided the head of his cock towards your entrance.

It took him no time at all to sink into your velvety walls.

When you initiated this, you assumed the movements between you would be fast and desperate. You were both tired and sobering up, the clock reading well past three a.m. on Harry’s bedside table. In theory, you should be trying your best to rub one out before passing out in a heap in the middle of the bed. But Harry refused to let your first time after six months apart be rushed and desperate. His thrusts were planned and deliberate, sharp and precise as he hovered over your body with hungry eyes and a clenched jaw. His curls brushed against your neck and your chest, causing you to giggle and shrink away from time to time.

“I swear to fuck I’ve never felt anything so heavenly.” Harry gasped against your cheek before his head tilted down. He watched his cock, coated in your combined arousal, plunging in and out of your needy walls. “So tight and wet fo’ me, aren’t you angel.”

“Yes.” Your fingernails dug into the slick skin of his sides, searching for something to keep you anchored to this earth. “I’m close.”

“Can feel it.” He nipped at your bottom lip. “Squeezing me so tight.”

“Are you close?” A whimper followed your question, the head of Harry’s cock nudging the perfect spot in your walls. “Fuck, H.”

“Yeah, angel, I’m right there.” Nimble and calloused fingers started to circle your clit, moving in the direction that never failed to push you over the edge. “Cum fo’ me, love. Cum on your favorite cock.”

Your lips parted, breath catching in your throat as you clenched your eyes shut.

The tight knot in your lower belly exploded, causing your toes to curl into the sheets and your hips to lift off the bed. Soon, they were pushed right back down as Harry grunted into your collarbone, his hips pushing forward as his cum coated your walls. The skin of his chest against yours was tacky and warm, sweat shared between you both as his arms wrapped around your torso to keep you close as your walls milked his cock.

When all was said and done, you were sprawled over Harry’s chest.

Your fingers trailed over his butterfly tattoo as you tried to keep the blissful smile from your lips.

“I love you.” Harry’s nose nuzzled into the hair at the top of your head, his words causing your finger - and your steady breathing- to stop. “I love you so fucking much and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t. I’m tired of going to these parties and spending our nights out with those people. I’m tired of acting like this is just something we do when we’re bored of everyone else, Y/N. I love you and I need to know if you feel the same way.”

Your eyes watered, a happy emotion bubbling up in your chest as you tried to process his words.

Harry loved you.

“You were never just something to pass the time when I was bored.” You croaked out, lifting your head up as a few tears fell onto his chest. “I’ve always loved you, Harry, and I don’t ever want to let you go.”

“M’yours if you’ll have me.” His voice was gruff as he lifted a hand, brushing his thumb over your soft cheek to catch your tears. “I promise.”

“If you’re mine, them I’m yours.” You pushed forward, connecting your lips. “S’about time you made a move. You’ve been calling me missus for years.”

You snuggled back into Harry’s chest as he let out a tired chuckle.

“Always knew you’d be my missus one day.” He mumbled. “Gonna keep you around forever, angel.”

🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊

You had the string of the tea bag twirled around your forefinger.

Slowly, you dipped it into the mug of steaming water, humming along to the record you put on Harry’s vinyl player in the corner of his kitchen. Even after your very late, and very active night, you couldn’t find it in yourself to stay in bed past seven, no matter how hard you tried. That was something you had in common with Harry. You were both early risers, your natural body clocks pulling you out of slumber as the sun started to rise in the sky.

After laying in bed for an hour with open eyes and a silly smile, replaying Harry’s words from the night before, you decided to stumble out of bed for a cup of tea. You slipped Harry’s discarded pajama pants, pulling the red and black checked flannel up your legs and over your hips before you grabbed his shirt. It was one of your favorite shirts he owned and you knew that he would have some choice words to share with you when he saw the fabric hanging off your frame.

You set Harry’s mug aside as your tea steeped, leaving the bag in his mug without any added water. If you were going to get some work done while you could, you didn’t want his tea to go cold on the counter. Blowing the steaming liquid in your mug gently, you turned towards your laptop on the kitchen island, pressing your hip against the edge of the granite countertop. Your mug found it’s home by your left hand as you powered up your laptop.

Harry liked to joke that you were a workaholic and that you needed to learn about work life balance, but you would always snort at his words and roll your eyes. He knew he was being hypocritical, but he loved getting a rise out of you from time to time. If you were being honest, you loved letting him do it. When your laptop was on, you started to move the wireless mouse around the granite countertop, squinting your eyes at the picture your editor sent you. As you lifted your mug of tea to your lips, you heard the shuffling of socked feet against the hallway floors. A happy smile pulled at the corner of your lips when Harry’s lips pressed into the back of your head, his fingers curling around your shoulder to stable himself as you put your tea down.

“Woke up this mornin’ and I couldn’t find my pajamas.” His voice was still thick with sleep, his words cracking on every other syllable. “But I guess I’ve found the culprit.”

“Guess so.” You chuckled softly, tilting your head back as you lifted your hand to squeeze his fingers that rested against your shoulder. “Kettle is still hot.”

“You mean to tell me-” His arms were quick to slip around your body, pulling you close as he whispered in your ear. “You stole my pajamas, left me in bed all alone, and now you’re not even gonna fix me a bloody cup of tea? How positively rude of you, my love.”

“Harry!” You giggled and squirmed as he began to nip playfully at the skin of your neck.

“What love?” He teased, squeezing you hard as he moved you back from the counter. “Can’t handle a bit of scruffy kisses.”

“More like toothy kisses!” You squealed as he lifted you a little, your toes brushing against the hardwood floors. “You’ve got no scruff!”

“Take tha’ back!” He laughed loudly, his arms loosening around you before he flipped you around. You were facing him now, his sleepy smile creating little wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, and his lips raspberry red. You glanced down quickly to see him in only his boxer briefs, his tattoos on full display. “Take it back right now.”

“No,” You giggled before pressing your lips together, shaking your head defiantly.

“Take. It. Back,” He said slowly, backing you towards the counter with a sinister smirk on his lips. You shook your head again and he returned the gesture with a soft chuckle. “You’re a brat.”

“I am not.” You smirked. “I’m an angel.”

“An angel?” He snorted, rolling his eyes. “You’re a little devil, that’s what you are.”

You tossed your arms around his neck, gripping his hair as he ducked his head to your neck again, nipping at your skin as your back hit the counter. “Harry,” You said in a soft warning.

“What?” He mumbled into your skin. “Can’t take it?”

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” You whispered, rolling your lips in after you’d said it. He lifted his head, his eyes narrowed playfully.

“You think I won’t finish this?” He asked, tilting his head to the side. “You think I won’t take you right here?”

“I know you won’t,” You taunted him, biting your lower lip. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, but I would,” He chuckled, his fingers already digging into the band of his own pants on your hips. He snapped the band softly before leaning in to brush his lips against yours. “Turn round love.”

“Make me,” You whispered, quirking your brow up with a smirk of your own.

Harry laughed softly before spinning you around.

Your hands slapped down on the countertop, steadying you as your knees began to quake ever so slightly in anticipation. He quickly pulled your pants down, your panties sliding with them as he kissed over your t-shirt covered shoulder. Your lower belly clenched from the swift movement and you nearly moaned out as his hand gripped your bare bottom, squeezing softly as he sighed out. With a pained moaned, Harry’s thumbs spread you apart, baring you for his hungry eyes to feast upon. The cool air has you clenching, your eyes fluttering shut as you inhaled.

Soon, his fingers skimmed around your hip to part your clenched thighs, slipping between your legs in a teasing manner. He brushed the tops of your right thigh with his nails in a light scratch as he pushed your hair aside with his free hand, kissing over the back of your neck. You were practically thrumming now. You didn’t know you were ready for him until he’d started teasing you so charmingly. That man could make you wet within seconds just with a look.

“Do you want it like my shirt says love?” He whispered in your ear, causing the hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

You were confused for a moment as he pushed your feet aside with his own, spreading you a little more as his right hand pulled your hips back towards his, his left hand pushing your lower back until you were in place with your ass up and your knees knocked to the countertop. You felt so vulnerable and open, the cool morning air brushing past your soaked lips as Harry put you into the perfect position. You gasped when you finally felt him, the leaking tip of his cock brushing over your ass before he moved it between your legs. He brushed his tip over your lips, the sound shooting straight to your core as you wiggled your ass just a little for him in the form of a desperate plea.

“Yeah, my angel wants it hot n’ hard this morning.” A devilish chuckle caused you to whimper before your teeth sunk into your lower lip. “Isn’t that right?

“Fuck, Harry.” You keened out as Harry sunk into your waiting walls, bottoming out swiftly.

“You didn’t answer my question, angel.” He tutted, settling his hands on your hips as you felt your walls flutter around his shaft. “Tell me how you want it.”

“I want it,” You gasped out, nodding your head. “I want it just like that, Harry. Please fuck me like your shirt says, please.”

“See,” He grunted, pulling back out to the tip before pushing in again quickly, knocking your hips forward. “You’re no angel.”

“I am,” You whimpered as he started his rhythm, desperate whines pulling from your lips as he continued his torturously slow thrusts. “M’an angel, H. I’m your angel.”

“Prove it love.” He gritted out between clenched teeth as you clenched around him. “Be good for me, my love. Be the sweet angel that I know you are.”

“I’m your angel, I- I promise,” You cried out as his hips started to pick up speed. He still pulled out, holding his tip in your entrance for a moment before slamming back in, but it was quicker and a little sloppier than before. You could tell that he was close. “Harry fuck, please.”

“Please, what?” He gasped, pressing his chest into your back as his right hand slipped up to fondle your breast, his left hand sliding down to your clit. “You want me to make you cum?”

“Oh,” You cried out as he started to roll his hips, his thrusts deeper with the new angle he was fucking you at. “Yes, please make me cum around your cock. Please make me cum, daddy.”

“Such dirty words from such a pretty mouth.” His breath was hot against your ear for just a second, his hips knocking yours flush against the countertop with harsh thrusts. “Thought you were my angel?”

“I am!” You cried out as he lifted his chest slightly, his right hand gripping your hip tightly as he held you in place. “M’your angel.”

“Not with a dirty mouth like that,” He chuckled darkly as your torso fell to the countertop. “My beautiful girl, you want so bad to be good for me don’t you? You want to make daddy proud, don’t you?”

You nodded eagerly as he grunted, dropping his forehead to your shoulder with a low curse.

“Then cum for me,” He growled out the order, moving his fingers faster against your clit. “Cum.”

By some miracle, his command had your body slipping over the edge just moments later. Maybe it was the sound of your hips smacking together in a place that wasn’t meant for sex. Or maybe it was the grip he had on your hip, holding you in place while he fucked into you without mercy. Or maybe it was just your body wanting to prove that you were his obedient little angel. It was like you belonged to him in the sweetest and most sensual way.

Your ograsm hit you like an earthquake, causing you to toss your head back as your knees turned to jello. He stilled inside of you, crying out as he fell into you, pressing you harder into the countertop so that you both had some sort of support as he released himself inside of you just like he did last night. Nothing felt better than going bare with him, nothing felt better than him cumming deep inside of you this way, claiming you as his own in some sort of primal way.

“Fuck,” You cried out, your voice hoarse and your throat dry. “Just wanted a bloody cup of tea you animal.”

“This was all you,” He snorted out a laugh, kissing your shoulder repeatedly as he slowly slipped out of you, trying not to hiss as the chilly morning air hit his softening cock. “You taunted me.”

“You were being mean to me,” You pouted, turning around slowly to look up at him. “Called me a brat and everything.”

“You know you’re my angel.” He rolled his eyes playfully. “You always will be.”

“Thank you,” You hummed softly as he gripped your hips and pulled you closer for a deep kiss before peppering his lips over your cheek. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” He mumbled into your lips, smiling at the new sentiment that you now had the chance to share with each other. “But I am tired and I would like to spend the morning in bed with you.”

“I’ve got some work to do.” You whispered. “I’ll make you some tea and you can snuggle up on the couch?”

“S’not the same.” He pouted, whining softly. “I want you next to me, my love.”

“Fine, I’ll sit with you for a little bit.”

“Thank you,” He smiled happily. “Can you bring me cereal too?”

“Yes, master.” You snorted, rolling your eyes again. “Right after I finish cleaning myself up and putting my clothes back on.”

“I have an even better idea though,” He whispered lowly, brushing his nose against yours. “I take you upstairs and clean you up with my mouth and we don’t put clothes back on at all.”

“Fucking hell.” You whimpered as he dipped a hand down between your legs again, plunging his middle finger into your walls. “Harry, I’m-“

“Shh, let me clean you up,” He smirked, kissing the corner of your mouth. “Let me have a taste of us. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day after all, angel.”

#harry styles smut #harry styles one shot #harry styles writing #harry styles fic #harry styles fluff #harry styles #harry styles blurb #harry smut #harry fluff #harry one shot #harry writing #harry fic #my writing

477 notes · View notes

uponrightful · 3 years

Note

Hi! I’ve just finished Welcome Company-it was so good, your writing is amazing! I have a question about one of the last scenes if that’s OK? Partly about Pups point of view, because a lot of what happened to her post Order 66 is clearly in her mind, but seems to read differently emotionally later if that makes sense? I’d also like to know why you decided to include the scene of Pup having to fight one last time. -RebelMedic99

“Wolffe! Please!” She sobbed through the pain and fear, whimpering when the kid pulled her own arm around her throat, locking in a chokehold she was unable to break from. He laughed dryly in her ear, yanking on her broken wrist to elicit another scream.

“He’s not coming back you little slut.” He fell into another fit of laughter, “And even if he did you’ll be so used he won’t even want to look at you.” His evil words cut right through her. She was already broken, and yet another piece was about to be taken, and smashed on the floor right in front of her. She felt the pain of his remarks, feeling just as useless as he’d appraised.

She wanted to fight anyways.

The pain in her wrist didn’t subside, but it wasn’t going to stop until she got his filthy hands off her. And without that blaster, she really didn’t have a chance at getting off the ship, or keeping the ship safe until Wolffe got back. She struggled to keep her breath even, fighting to pull her broken wrist out of his grasp so she could get free.

Think fast…

Get him off guard…

“You really want me?” She choked out, wincing from the abrasive words cutting at her tongue. If he was that young, there was a chance he’d fall for it and drop the -hopefully- act long enough for her to grab the upper hand.

“You’re a fucking slut! Already turning towards the closest man you can get in your pants!” He snarled, yanking her wrist again. The girl held back her cry, again repeating the question for him, praying it would make a bigger impact this time.

“I’ll behave. I promise.” She faked convincingly enough through her tears. The kid’s grip faltered just for a second before retaining its unflinching need to inflict pain again. Yet, by miracle, he released her wrist and stepped back with the blaster dropped down at his side. Miraculously, his anger suddenly disappeared, and a look of disbelief came over him.

“Pick me.” He ordered harshly, as she turned to face him.

Everything moved so quickly.

Commentary Track for Welcome Company

Copy 500 words -or more- of any of my fics and I’ll give my thoughts/rambles on what was going through my head -or the character’s- when I wrote it!

*send one in here*

This one is challenging, but we'll see if I can explain it without sounding like a complete dumbass... 😅

***

We'll start with addressing her emotional shift towards Order 66 first, and that will help set up the reasoning why she had this "last stand" at the end. (This won't be from her POV, it'll make things a little simpler.)

Pup's true knowledge of what Order 66 is comes in small bits and pieces after she flees Coruscant. It's obvious right away that something changed, but it's not for a really long time that she finds out that there might be something "unwilling" about the whole situation. In this time frame -of a couple years- she's actually left to her own devices and thought-process to make sense of it all. And a couple of years can really take a toll on someone's perception of what is really going on.

There is talk of manipulation, and how 'robotic' the clones are. All of it culminating in a bunch of half-assed theories as to why they suddenly have this unbending will for the Empire when they fought for the Republic for so long. (The bar fight Wolffe was in, is where I tried to explore this a little bit with the Cerean.) But Pup only hears rumors, and those weak excuses aren't enough to dissuade her fear of seeing troopers again. Because ultimatley, there are hundreds of them who'd been to her home, and in her mind, it's possible that they could come after her and punish her for that. It's not a realistic fear, but if you combine it with her last experience with a clone, it's one that would easily create a serious emotional trigger.

I meant for it to be a tad bit confusing when reading her emotions. Pup wants to love the clones -and she still does- but seeing one of them in real life would be fucking terrifying. Their sweet memories are always there, and she does her best to only think of those. However it's easy to be reminded of why she can't still see them, when she's living on a backwater planet to try and reassure herself that she'll never have to risk seeing a clone again. Because all of the love that they'd given her -in her mind- is completely gone the second she's shot by one.

And her entire being is damaged assuming that Wolffe is no different than the rest of them. Pup knows all the clones are acting this way, and Wolffe is really no exception. So even though she loves him dearly it's really scary when she sees him for the first time after all these years. Is he safe? Is there something still wrong with him? Does he want to take her with him, back to the Empire? These are all questions she has, because she's never seen a clone after Order 66 without a functioning chip.

The reason her change of heart is so sudden, is because Pup didn't let go of the good memories she had of her troopers. That integral part of her character is to forgive and be patient -even if she's been damaged by something or someone. Yes, she keeps it bottled up. But that was because she couldn't get rid of her base traits. You can't wholly change your personality very easily, and Pup never really wanted to in the first place. She was just forced to create this harder persona so she could survive. Then after Wolffe comes back, and he's painstakingly careful in trying to prove that he's not under influence any longer, it makes that desire to care for him -like she's always had- come back much smoother.

(It's a continuity error that I never gave a proper scene dedication to it; But I did have a draft that included an Order 66 conversation with Rex and Pup during that scene in Chapter 14.)

I chose not to include it because I wanted someone to focus on Pup's traumas faced during the transition period of planet-hopping. It might sound cruel of me to not include his struggles, but they've been covered so many times in other fics, that I gave the assumption my "Initial Implementation" scene and "Chip Removal Scene" would be emotionally sympathetic and exploratory enough of how Wolffe felt during and after, without needing to express it to you directly. Not to mention, after Pup and Wolffe are reunited, she's not stupid enough to not infer that it was against his will. She quite frequently notes throughout that his guilty looks and hesitancy to make physical contact with her are very noticeable and telling of how he feels about his time with the Empire.

All of this said, now her fight scene:

Right before they leave the cabin, she's feeling a little loss of home. But really, Pup never had too much of an attachment to her house on Takodana in the first place. What's really getting her emotional at this point is the realization that she finally has Wolffe back. It's security she's wanted this whole time, and although the boys aren't letting her help with the bounty, she's willing to do whatever they want because she understands that they've got the experience here. Plus, she's really not physically able to do a whole lot after her slight hypothermia exposure.

I wanted her weak for this: Emotionally, physically, mentally. It had to be that way for a reason.

Until this point, Pup hasn't ever shown a real motivation to fight for anything, other than making the trip to the outpost to save her friend. BUT. That's risking herself to save someone else. Pup has never done anything for her own benefit, without it being equally helpful for someone else. Even when she got Wolf, it wasn't just for herself. Iahcen was getting something out of it as well.

I know it's cliche, but her last moments alone on that ship waiting was where her character development needed to reach and end. Because I made the overarching plot of fighting for love, but I needed that same lesson to be learned in-story, as well to round it out. It had to be Pup, because she's been running this whole time. Wolffe can't learn it, because he's been fighting the entire time.

The kid is a symbol of kindness not being returned. This is key, because Pup has always been nice -even when she didn't need to be. And he attacks her for that. He comes in as the tool to show her that being kind doesn't always work; And sometimes you have to stand against something, instead of running or letting someone run over her. I also made certain to have the kid attack Wolffe's character. This was essential, because Pup has nothing else she wants to fight for. Wolffe has always been her one essential thing, and he was what made her realize that being a little selfish and desiring something isn't a bad thing. This kid is a product of her sympathetic nature, and he's willingly insulting and threatening her chance at having the one thing Pup has always wanted.

Pup needed fight or flight, and the only time her 'fight mode' kicks in, is when she realizes there's something she wants. On Coruscant, she had nothing, so she ran. Pup wanted to live for Wolffe, in the hopes that he might still be alive, and that was the first time her fight response kicked in. Then her friend was in danger of dying, that was the second time she chose to fight.

Her love and security in Wolffe was being threatened, and that was Pup's final character development, and why she needed this fight scene without Wolffe -or anyone else's assistance- in the matter.

***

I hope this wasn't garbage 😅 and I explained it decently... If not, please let me know. I'll do anything I can to answer your questions!

Much Love, Rightful 🤍

#commentary track #welcome company #commander wolffe #Pup #uponrightful #uponrightfulwrites

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aellynera · 4 years

Text

Mors Non Est (Nathan Bateman x Reader)

MORS NON EST (Nathan Bateman x Reader)

(so. um. this was inspired by a dream i had? because my brain does weird things at night and then sometimes i write them.)

Word Count: almost 4k oops

Summary: “Of course, you don’t die. Nobody dies. Death doesn’t exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world.” — Henry Miller, author

Or, what my brain offers as alternate theory on why Nathan made AIs.

Warnings: Leaving this mortal coil (sort of), angsty musings, maybe a swear or two. Okay there’s definitely a swear or...several. (also a disclaimer that I finished this at like 3am and there was a bunch of stuff out of order but I think I got it all worked out now and proofread and all that, but apologies if anything is still wonky)

The rain fell steadily against the wall of glass that faced towards the forest. Sometimes it was soft, like the tickle of a feather, the softest caress of a kiss on your hair, the skim of fingertips against the velvet red petals of a flower. Other times it was harsh, a violently crashing wave on the rocky shore, electricity ripping the sky asunder, an unbridled fierceness like a wild animal frightened and possessed.

It changed without warning.

Soft, hard. Quiet, loud. Calm, violent. Back and forth and back again.

How long had it been raining?

He turned as he heard your footsteps fall on the wooden patio planks behind him. You watched in slight fascination as he unwrapped his hands, used the cloth to dry them, and stuck a hand out to you, your attention half on him and half on the pure beauty of the surrounding scenery.

“You must be the new assistant,” he said, sounding friendly enough although his smile stayed a bit reserved.

He wasn’t expecting you to just show up on his deck. Yes, he was expecting you to be dropped off by the helicopter, that had all been arranged, but for some reason he had...he realized he wasn’t even sure what he was expecting. But you had clearly followed the pilot’s (and soon after, the house’s - that the house told you what to do amused him in the strangest way) instructions and here you were.

He knew his new assistant was more than capable (he had seen your resume, reviewed your coding and debugging history, had meticulously poured over every single little detail of work you had done for his company for the past three years not that he was obsessive about it or anything) but he wasn’t prepared for the person that now stood before him, an intriguing combination of impressed, unsure, interested, and underwhelmed.

You were fucking beautiful.

You nodded. “That’s what they tell me,” you replied, shaking his hand and supplying your name, even though you knew he already knew it. You knew enough about Nathan Bateman to know he knew everything about you before you even heard the head of HR back in the corporate office announce that you got the job.

You later admitted you didn’t know what to think about him either, and you hadn’t really expected anything, since you didn’t know much about him. He was a genius, everyone knew that, and he lived all the way out here by himself. And...that was about it. That’s what you knew.

And you thought he was...kinda hot.

And also an asshole, you liked to point out as the days went on. Nathan didn’t really mind.

It was an odd feeling, this feeling of dissonance and uncertainty.

There was so much that needed to be done. There was so much that he didn’t feel like doing.

He came to the door and paused. He spent most of his waking hours in this room - and to be honest, most of his hours were waking at this point, he rarely slept anyway and for as long as he could remember now he had barely slept, except when all that whiskey and vodka kicked in - and yet there was always a moment, the briefest flash of time, where forward momentum paused and he wondered if non-linear time was reality and he would find something different when he opened the door.

It wasn’t, and he never did.

He wandered into the lab and over to the table at the farthest end. Components were spread out before him and he idly reached over to the single chip laying in the center of the mess. It was the last piece of this particular puzzle, the last bit that had to be installed and configured and then…

Then suddenly it became too quiet and too loud all at once. Thoughts were screaming through his brain and he just wanted it to be quiet for a moment.

Quiet so he could go over his calculations in his head. Quiet so he could double check his math. Quiet so he could concentrate on his theories and his expected outcomes. Quiet so he could revel, just for a moment, in his monumental achievement.

There was a sweater hanging on the back of the door. He’d forgotten it was there, even though he had just seen it mere hours before. No, not forgotten, he realized. Blocked. He didn’t forget, he just purposely didn’t remember.

The silent noise became a full-blown cacophony.

Was it still raining?

“So how exactly are you going to solve it?” you asked one afternoon, idly twirling your pen in your hand.

“How would you do it?” he bounced back.

You sighed. His behavior was so typical. The man was a certifiable genius but that was usually the problem and not the solution. It was never straightforward. “The AI. How are you going to solve the issue of making it able to have an actual conversation with you?”

“How would you do it?” he asked again.

Shrugging your shoulders, you kept twirling the pen. “I dunno. I guess you’d have to have some way to...maybe cross-reference a database of expressions and emotions and an actual dictionary.”

Nathan paused and considered you, deep in his own forest of thought. He wheeled his chair over to his computer desk and started rapidly tapping keys. “How do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” you huffed. “Like...like some kind of mass well of every available, possible interaction. Honestly I would try to figure out the mechanics of everything else first, like motion and movement, You know, walking and running and sitting and standing.”

“Hmmm.”

“But since there are literally infinite combinations, I don’t even know how you would go about even attempting that kind of data pool.”

“I did actually have an idea about that,” he muttered. Nathan didn’t even turn from his multiple computer monitors and his fingers never stopped clacking away at his keyboard. “But you’re not going to like it.”

This time you groaned instead of sighing. He knew you could feel it coming before he asked - he always told you that you weren’t going to like it before he asked you to do something incredibly stupid that in any other circumstance would get you arrested and you’d never see daylight again.

But this was Nathan Bateman, and of course he was going to ask anyway. And of course you would say yes. You always said yes, it was one of the things he enjoyed most about your company, and even when you did say no, it gave way to a lively debate and a genuine argument over facts and merits, downsides and advantages, and it was fucking amazing.

It had been that way from the start, grown steadily over the weeks and months, and neither of you could really complain. Nathan quickly found that you could keep up with his train of thought even when the track switched abruptly and it was so engaging. Captivating. Enticing.

But this man. This amazingly intelligent (if almost insufferably arrogant) man was going to be the death of you. You told him that at least once a day. He took it as a personal challenge to give you a reason to keep living.

“What did you have in mind?” You doubted you wanted to know.

“What if…” he replied, clicking away, not looking up from the screen as he spoke, “we used the video and audio coding in Bluebook, and patched it through all the cell phone carriers, and rerouted all the satellite signals back here into the lab.”

Before you knew what was happening, your pen flew across the room and connected with his shoulder with a small *thwap*.

“What?” he finally looked up, mock annoyance in his voice.

“Are you absolutely fucking insane, or is this just an extra special occasion?”

He left the lab with no real idea of where he was going.

Okay, that was a lie. It was his house. He knew his way around and he knew where he needed to be next. There was an actual agenda but his focus was off.

He walked past the living room and noticed the chess set was still set out on the coffee table. The pieces were still fairly evenly matched, his green dragons maybe just slightly at a disadvantage to your purple ones (because, as you had mentioned at one point, why have a standard chess set when you could have a fun one? And Nathan knew you were anything but standard.)

He knew it was his turn and contemplated the board for a few minutes. No matter how he strategized it, how he worked it out, how he tried to plan it, you had forced him into a checkmate. Again. For at least the sixth time in a row, and probably at least the eight-seventh time out of the last hundredth you had played. He chuckled, softly, briefly. He could do anything with technology and science, but he rarely could beat you at a centuries-old board game.

He made his final move for this round, sacrificing his king to your queen.

He grabbed the notepad setting next to the chess board, and your pen that lay nearby on the table. He scrawled a quick note to you - checkmate - and placed it on your side of the board, next to your fairly gained draconian horde, even though he was certain you were never going to read it.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a drink.

He stared out the window wall, out past the deck, to the running river and the dense groves of trees, off into the distance towards the waterfall.

He should be heading to the room. He should be taking care of the final chip install and making sure everything was online. Instead he simply stood in the kitchen and stared out into the rain.

It occurred to him that the agenda was more of a guideline and his knowledge of his surroundings was merely functional.

Nathan briefly considered that standing at the doorway to your bedroom was the last place he should be, but then decided he didn’t care. But that wasn’t true either.

He could just walk in, it wouldn’t be the first time - once you had been wearing only a towel, having just gotten out of the shower and that hadn’t been awkward at all - but that small bit of his conscience that he usually tried to ignore, told him to be polite.

He knocked.

“What do you want, Nathan?” You sounded muffled, like you had your face partly covered by a pillow. You were probably in bed. He shouldn’t be bothering you.

He had to bother you, just this once. “Can I come in?”

He could picture your face on the other side, eyes rolling and the sigh as it left your lips, and even though he heard the door hiss quietly as the latch released, his feet suddenly stuck to floor outside your door and his body made no further move.

“I did open the door, so if you’re going to, do it before I change my mind,” you called after a few minutes.

Nathan got his feet to cooperate and entered your room. You were in bed, face half-behind a pillow, your visible eye glaring at him. He stopped at the edge of your bed. His brain started calculating risk factors for the current situation, gains, deficits, advantages - anything it could think of, there were always factors involved, no matter what the situation was, it was just that some factors were more complicated than others. Some required more delicate, cautious manipulation to solve the equation and…

“Are you just going to stand there all night and look at me? Because I swear I really will kick you out, and then change all your passcodes.”

Of course, you teased him later about how much fun it would have been to watch him try to get back in. You swore you were going to do it one day, just for the hell of it. He didn’t mind.

“Do you regret what happened after dinner?” he finally asked.

Your glare softened and you moved the pillow away from your face. Dinner was fine. The company was pleasant as usual, the wine was frequent and flowing. The two of you had started a very animated debate about gender and sexuality as it pertained to artificial intelligence and if any of it were a necessary component or if it was just something you would prefer (he would later tell you how wonderful the expression on your face was when he told you he would be ready to start building a prototype in the next few weeks) and then.

“I don’t regret it at all. Do you?” you arched an eyebrow at him.

Nathan blew a long breath out from his nose. Did he regret kissing you? Nope. Not in the slightest. Did he regret that you might regret it (he was slightly relieved that you said you didn’t) and that nothing would come of it? Yes. And he couldn’t calculate the actual result, just potential outcomes with no concrete denouement, and that made him extremely uncomfortable. He didn’t want this to be an experiment. He wanted an absolute, not a thicket of random. Not in this case.

“No.” He still didn’t move.

“Frankly we should have done it months ago.”

He shook his head and turned just the slightest bit before your reply registered and he processed it. “Wait. You...what?”

You exhaled and sighed as you rolled over, facing away from him and trying to get comfortable in the bed again. “You know, Nathan Bateman, for being the smartest man in the universe, sometimes you are a complete idiot.”

“I’m not going to argue that. This time, anyway.”

“Thank you, because it’s nearly three in morning,” you replied. He could hear the smile in your voice. “Can we talk about this in the morning? Like, later in the morning. I’ll see you for breakfast.”

He nodded and really did turn to leave this time. He was still trying to process. “Okay. Yeah, sure. I, uh...I’ll see you then.”

“Good night, Nathan.”

The rain had finally stopped.

He looked out over the landscape, now reflecting and refracting tiny bursts of sunlight in the lingering blanket of droplets.

Trees crowded both sides of the rushing river, leading towards the top of the waterfall. There was a small clearing there, one that almost wouldn’t be found if someone wasn’t looking for it. It was one of your favorite spots.

Nathan found you there fairly often, after he had shown you where it was. If the weather was cooperating, and you weren’t in the house, then nine times out of ten, that’s where Nathan would find you. Sometimes you were reading a book, sometimes you were just stretched out in the grass, looking up at the tips of the timbers as they reached to the sky.

Sometimes he would join you. Those were times that deep conversations would happen, about the projects back at the house and technology and your odd fascination with disco music, which Nathan truly did not understand but tried to humor.

Sometimes he would just smile and let you have your peace. Those were times he would go back to the house and quietly await your return.

He knew that’s where he would find you now.

“I’m back from Anchorage,” you called as you came in the front door.

Nathan was in the kitchen and poked his head around the doorway. “Hey. Perfect timing,” he said, brushing his hands off on his pants and flipping a dish towel over his shoulder. “Dinner is almost ready.”

A tired sign escaped your lips as you flopped down on the couch, taking one of the throw pillows and covering your chest and half your face with it. “Thanks. Not hungry.”

“How was the trip?”

You snorted softly. “Wet. Raining. Absolutely miserable.”

It wasn’t what you said that made Nathan stop. It was the way you said it. Your voice sounded so tired, so empty. It didn’t really sound like you, not the voice he’d come to expect to hear every day. It was not the voice that engaged him in conversation, that drew him into theories and concepts and philosophies. It was not the voice that argued about codes and programs and why that would not work no matter how much he insisted it would (to be fair, you were usually right, but he wasn’t going down without a good fight, and neither of you would have it any other way.) The voice that was leaving your body through your mouth wasn’t you.

It sounded hollow.

He leaned against the doorway. The air in the room suddenly felt heavier and he couldn’t quite get his feet to move forward to the couch where you sat. “What did they say?”

Nathan noted that you didn’t look at him. You looked everywhere but him. Like you were trying to keep everything from falling to pieces, maybe? You were definitely not acting yourself either. Suddenly he wanted to take himself outside and kick his own ass. He should have gone with you. You’d been talking about it, for weeks now, he realized.

How tired you were. How you were never really hungry. How things felt like they were getting harder when they shouldn’t have been. How you couldn’t go quite as far on the hikes you loved taking so much, together.

He should have gone with you.

Your face did not move from its half-protected shield behind that tasteful throw pillow.

He doesn’t register most of what you said. He remembers the words “bad” and “already done everything” and “months, maybe”. Maybe. No definite conclusion.

He finally managed to take a few steps towards you.

His brain was kicking into overdrive but not a single one of that rush of thoughts would make an appearance on his tongue. There had to be another answer. Another answer that wasn’t the one he could already see in your eyes.

Your eyes. His favorite feature (at least from the neck up), the ones that showed how much life you had, your spark, your fire.

And he realized the hollowness of your voice had traveled up into those beautiful eyes.

Words stopped making sense in an instant. Everything around him got fuzzy, jagged at the edges, but also intensely focused at the same time.

He finally crossed the room and sat down carefully, warily, on the couch.

Neither of you said another word. His arms slipped around you and you curled into his chest, pulling your knees up to your own. No tears from either of you. No sounds. No words.

He didn’t know how long you stayed on that couch.

The next thing you knew you were in bed, Nathan’s arms still wrapped around you. He must have carried you to the bedroom at some point. You felt the coolness of the sheets contrast with the warmth of his body; you mustn’t have been out for long. You were about to drift off again when Nathan finally broke the silence.

“We’ll figure out a way.”

A sigh escaped your lips, half drenched in sleep.

It was the last place he wanted to be. It was the only place he wanted to go.

He slipped into a hoodie and pulled on a pair of shoes and stepped out onto the deck. The air was still somewhat saturated, humid, but the rain was holding off for now. It was warm but he wasn’t, so the hoodie stayed on.

His feet took him down the deck stairs and onto the path paralleling the river. He followed it slowly, breathing in the summer air but not really seeing his surroundings. Like in his house, he knew where he was heading, and this was just the agenda.

At some point (minutes, hours, he really didn’t know how much time had passed) he came to that small clearing of trees.

And there you were.

Nathan took a jagged breath and sat down next to you. His pants were soaked in an instant, but he didn’t care. He was more annoyed that you were cold and wet (he briefly considered how funny you would find the double entendre, and probably tell him that you were definitely wet but he never made you feel cold) and chuckled again when he could hear your scoffing insistence that you were fine here in your special spot.

You weren’t fine. He knew this and wished desperately that you could tell him, tell him anything, say something.

He wasn’t fine. And he definitely did mind.

Nathan didn’t know what else to do, so he just started talking.

“So, uh...I know it’s been a while. I’ve just been really busy, trying to get the AI just right, and...I’m sorry I’ve been away. That’s not what I meant to happen. I’ve been working pretty much non-stop, I know you would be nagging me to get some sleep and eat better and all that shit. And...I wish you would. I would listen to you, for once.”

Silence and the far-off chirp of a bird were his only reply, so he continued.

“I know I shouldn’t be working so much, but I kinda have to. It’s the only way I feel close enough to…”

His throat was acutely, suddenly dry. He did his best to clear it. He was only marginally successful.

“So anyway, that idea I told you about, with all the cell phone data rerouting it here? It worked. Please don’t be mad at me, I know it wasn’t your favorite idea, but I’m pretty sure that’s what finally broke this open. Well, that and all the ideas we worked out together. I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me, and I know I never really did, and I probably never will…”

He had remembered to grab one thing before he left the house, stashing it in the pocket of the hoodie. He pulled it out now, a single red rose. Cliche, maybe, but they were your favorite flower.

Nathan placed it gently against the stone on the edge of the clearing. The stone with your name. It only had your first name, no dates. He could never bear to put any indicator of time on it; it was too final. Conclusive. Terminal.

He stood and started walking back. He never could stay here very long. It was absolutely ridiculous, but he usually had the feeling you would pop out from behind a tree and tease him about how impressive your joke was and he would never top it.

It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t funny, and he wished he could prove you wrong.

But there was still something he might be able to prove. To make a few things right.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing.

“I have someone else coming to the house this week. He works for the company, he’s a coder...he looks like a good kid. I’m gonna use him to test this model. This really could be the breakthrough we’ve...I’ve...been looking for.”

Nathan turned his head back briefly, to say one last thing before he headed back to the house, before he had to get back to his work.

“I promise I’ll come back soon and tell you all about it.”

The rain started softly coming down again.

~end~

tag list: @anetteaneta @darksideofclarke @girlwiththemostcake @rosemarysbaby13 @spider-starry @writefightandflightclub (tags are always open if you want in just give me a holler and say so)

#oscar isaac #oscar isaac character #nathan bateman #nathan bateman x reader #ex machina fic #ex machina #angst train #thanks subconscious #writing

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electro-elemena · 3 years

Text

Random thoughts I just had about death note

this is very stream of consciousness and was written in google notes, so sorry for the format and grammar but I just need this to be out there. Also if some parts sound like they're spoken out loud it's because they were lmao

- media needs to be interesting (check)

- if you disagree with me go look at Ryuk and then come back

- love the concept of death note. Very *chef's kiss*

- tickles the part of my brain that likes unlikely and outlandish theories and scenarios

- however enjoyable media also has to be:

- not insufferable... Sufferable you could say

- OR insufferable enough to make it funny

- death note accomplishes the condition of the second

- never finished it, realized i was running out of fucks to give and looked for a reason to give more fucks or stop giving fucks

- spoiled the ending for myself, if you've seen the ending you know why

- spoiler alert for an old ass piece of media... Y'all have your reasons and if this bit doesn't fervently convince you to watch it then it will do whatever the opposite of that is

- misa dies too. Which is unfair

- she's a boss ass bitch and a whole model??? Like

- okay tangent

- light is not a good protagonist

- I'll take a potato chip... And eat it

- he's supposed to be one of those gradual unreliable narrators

- but past the first episode you immediately realize that he is in fact a horrible person

- you could argue that the capacity to kill people without consequence given to a teenage boy was destined to corrupt him

- and that's a cynical and bleh boring take

- (but likely)

- but tbh it takes a dormant god complex in the first place for him to turn out the way he did. He obviously already thought he was better than others

- loners are only loners if everyone thinks they're worse than everyone else or they think they're better than everyone else

- chicken or the egg first sometimes y'know

- so like if you have the death note to a kind person they'd like write down Jeff bezos or something and then hand it back

- or! They could be like "i don't trust you with this" to ryuk and just keep it (but secretly be like saving it for later in case they want to kill someone else with no consequences)

- or maybe they're just in love with ryuk. Which like. I'll squint at you, and judge you silently for, but won't say anything, because I'm a nice person and not because you possess the ability to kill me without consequences whenever

- anyways so he's a bad protagonist and objectively evil

- i say this even though I usually like the villains. I love the hero but I like the villains too

- i won't condone their actions but I'll think they're hot or cool or something

- cuz i always side with the protagonist, when they're not insufferable (wonder who that could be)

- but mass genocide is one of those rare things that's not "oh this is good but it could be gray if done for the wrong reasons" or "oh this is bad but it could be gray if done for the wrong reasons" it's very "no. This is not ambiguous. Throw the whole person away"

- far less forgivable than mass genocide, however, is how he's not down bad for misa

- like??? The only reasons I can think of for him to have been written like this are

- 1) he's gay or ace and they wrote him like that as queer coding and secret representation

- cuz i know that there are many characters like that and you will never KNOW if he is or isn't

- unless like the mangaka... What's his name... Comes out on Twitter and says so

Mini tangent

- i can not for the life of me remember asian names

- i was practically raised by anime and i still can not remember them

- does not matter how much I love the character or person. I will forget it at least once or twice

- every time someone mentions a mangaka i have to check the database

- i think it's mainly because I haven't learned any asian languages, and that's the only reason I'm referring to them as asian and not specifying, because asian languages have a lot of common denominators that they don't share with western ones

- anyways I can't pronounce them so I can't remember them

- or i think I can pronounce them and then the real pronunciation is just waiting to pounce on me and make me feel like an idiot

- had that ever happened to you? I mispronounced the word cicada until I was... 17

- i was walking with my best friend outside

- which never happened because we were hermits and we never left the cave

- and I'm like "oh you can hear the ciSAHdas"

- and he was like "..."

- "you can hear the what?"

- and it's funny that out of the two of us, the AP student was the one that didn't know how to pronounce ciSAHdas

- did i just say that right? Fuck

- ciKEIdas

- anyways Carson did not do well in school, because he's the type of person that, if he does not give a fuck, he simply will not do whatever you ask

- no matter what reason you have

- so the old ass institution that "educated--

- mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!

- "educated" millions of people crumbled at his feet, like the true being of chaos that he is

- although you could argue that it didn't do me any favors either, since, well, here i am

- and at least he knew how to pronounce cicadas! Damn!

Death note (ctd)

- anyways back to death note because we weren't FINISHED

- so he's gay or ace. My vote is for gay because of his relationship with L

- and L was another character that was treated poorly, he's way better than the early death that he got because he decided to be kind and less suspicious and i HATE that they did him like that

- for a show called death note they really did get death wrong

- funny how everyone around light ends up dying horribly

- you could argue that's because of the death not but I like to think it's because he's just that shitty of a person

- so back to light and how he's super fruity, there's actually a scene where misa is throwing herself on him as usual

- and i don't remember what she's saying, like i can't remember most of her lines

- and i don't know if that means I like her more or less than i would have

- anyways she's saying something suggestive to him looking hot as usual and he starts thinking about L

- like LMAO

- bestie, the closet is made of GLASS

- it is transparent. We can all tell

- 2) reason he could be written to treat misa like that is because it's a ha ha funny that he can't be bothered to give her the time of day, when she's a model

- he's murder sexual. He wants world domination, not pussy

- this is also a reason he could be considered ace but I just think an enemies to lovers with L is more interesting so that's my personal favorite

- anyways there's another scene where she's once again chasing after this toxic ass man

- which. Her main flaw is her absolute dog water taste in men

- so she's trying to get him to like her

- and he thinks

- LMAO

- he thinks "never before have I been provoked to HIT a woman"

- and he says it exactly like that

- which is hilarious for many reasons

- first of all

- i don't BELIEVE you

- you mean to tell me?? That with HIS PERSONALITY?? no woman had ever pissed him off as much as one being in love with him

- which, by the way, gay

- i would like to think this is possible not because of the previously mentioned "maybe he was a good person before given this power" bleh bullshit

- but because all the women had understood he was a fuckwad before interacting with him

- like they sent it to the group chat. The group chat? Yeah the group chat

- they were like bro. This dude? Bad news

- walk parallel to him at all times. Do NOT intersect

- cross the street if you see him walking towards you

- this is also why i like to think incels exist

- like they were already going to be bad and women just knew that and avoided them

- an alternative theory to the group chat phenomenon is that women instinctively knew. Like an edm... That's not the right word

- i know the word and that's not the right word

- e d... e p...

- like the thing you throw out as like a pokeball and it just makes all the electronics stop working

- like they take a break

- electromagnetic... Pulse... EMP!

- so that was sent to every woman's brain instinctively and they just avoided him

#death note #death note misa #death note light #this is objective garbage but i need someone to be forced to read this

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berkblockman · 4 years

Text

Cheater // Dave (Hot Rod) x reader

Pairing: Dave (From Hot Rod) x reader Word count: 1908 Warnings: Cheating, fluff Summary: It’s a boring Friday afternoon when your little brother asks you to take him to the ice rink. You accept, not knowing what is waiting for you.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

It was just another Friday afternoon and you were on your house, watching TV and eating some chips. Usually, you liked to go out on days like this, but you had no plans for today but to keep sitting on the couch and wait for something interesting to happen. It was starting to get boring when your little brother came to you to ask you to take him to the ice rink.

Any other day, you would have probably refused that invitation, but since you had nothing better to do, you grabbed your mom’s car keys and drove him there. It had been a while since the last time you had been there, you didn’t quite remember. You were probably still in high school the last time you had gone to the ice rink, but since you were now a college student, you didn’t usually have the time to go to these kind of places. You had enough being able to pass all the subjects and still manage to have both love and social lives.

Parking the car outside in the parking lot, you and your brother walked inside the building. It was smaller than you remembered - or so you thought - but it was pretty much the same as always. Kids spending money everywhere, people ice-skating clumsily and awkward couples on their first dates. You couldn’t help but smile when you thought about your first date with your boyfriend on that exact same place, now you had been dating for almost 3 years.

“So, do you want to do some ice-skating?” You asked your brother, but he seemed to have other plans.

“Actually, James and everyone else are over the arcades. Do you mind if I go with them?” He asked, in a pretended innocent tone. You should have figured out earlier that all he wanted was for you to give him a drive.

“Just go.” You sighed. “But we meet here at 20:00 pm. If you arrive a minute later I’ll make your live a living hell.”

Without even answering, he ran to the place where his friends were. You rolled your eyes and sighed again, realizing you had 3 hours until you could get your spoiled younger brother and drive back home. Seeing yourself by your own, you decided to walk around the place to try and find something entertaining to do. You got closer to the rink, thinking about renting a pair of skates when suddenly you distinguished a familiar face in the crowd.

It was your boyfriend you saw, skating with a girl you recognized as one of your closest friends from college. From where you were standing, you watched them as they talked and laughed. You didn’t know they were that close, in fact, you had never even seen them together. You thought that maybe they were there because they were hanging out with mutual friends. But if that was the case, why hadn’t they invited you? That theory of yours immediately was turned to pieces when you saw them kissing passionately.

For the first seconds, you stood there, watching them in awe as the tears began to form in your eyes. Your first instinct was to confront them, but when you tried to walk in their direction, you felt your legs shaking and a weird ache in your stomach. Not being able to hold back your tears anymore, you ran to the bathroom, locking yourself inside one of the stalls and starting to cry bitterly.

In the meantime, Dave was watching time go by as he popped some bubble wrap. It was just another boring afternoon of working when his co-worker, Derrick, handed him some cleaning supplies.

“It’s your turn to clean the girl’s bathroom.” He informed him as Dave sighed with laziness. Cleaning public bathrooms was stuff that came out of nightmares. “Last time I had to do it, I got traumatized. There’s too many blood in there, dude.”

Wanting to finish that awful task as soon as possible, Dave grabbed the cleaning supplies his co-worker handed to him and dragged himself to the bathroom. He didn’t want to spend more time than necessary in there, but when he got closer to the door, he began to hear what seemed to be some whining. Frowning, he opened the door and got inside of the bathroom, trying to figure out where the crying was coming from. He supposed it was coming from the only stall that was occupied. Confused but curious, he got closer to the stall’s door and knocked slightly. You tried to hush yourself as you heard the sound, trying to calm down your breathing.

“Hey, umm… Are you okay?” He shyly asked. He had definitely heard you, so you couldn’t pretend that you weren’t there. As you tried to let out some words you wondered why was this guy in the lady’s bathroom.

“Y-Yes.” Your voice cracked when you talked back and you got mad at yourself for that.

“That doesn’t sound like ‘okay’ to me…” Dave said, wondering if he was doing the right thing or if it would be better to leave you alone.

“Why does it matter to you?” You asked, hopping that you’d be rude enough for him to leave you alone.

“Well, I work here and I simply came to clean the bathroom.” He explained. “But if you’re not okay, I guess I should help you.” You tried to grab some toilet paper to wipe your tears, but there was none there. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Actually, do you have some toilet paper?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

Dave searched within the cleaning supplies he had brought with him for some paper to give you. He was still looking for it when you opened the stall door. He gave you what you had asked and, as you wiped your tears away and blew your nose, Dave couldn’t help but to stare at you, amazed. Even though you were a mess in that moment, he thought you were the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Oblivious to what was going on inside his mind, you threw the paper you had just used into the bin.

“What happened to you?” He asked after a few seconds, worried.

“I just saw my boyfriend cheating on me.” You decided to tell him. You felt that you needed to get it out of your chest and right now, that ice rink worker was the closer you had to a friend. “With a friend of mine. And I wasn’t brave enough to confront him, I just ran here and started crying like an idiot.”

“I don’t know the dude, but he seems like a douche to me.” Dave considered, looking at you in the eye. “And you’re not an idiot just because you cried over it.”

“Well, I feel like an idiot.” Your voice cracked again as you talked. “On our first date, he took me here, you know. And next month it will be 3 years since we got together. But now I feel like I’ve been living a lie. All the times he told me we couldn’t meet because he had to study, all the times he stood me saying that he was too busy… How long has it been going on?” Feeling the tears falling again, you looked down. “He played me and I was an idiot for not realizing earlier.”

“He’s the idiot for playing you, not the other way around.” You heard his voice trying to comfort you and smiled slightly, thinking that it was actually incredibly sweet of him to worry for you even through you didn’t know each other at all. “If he did that to you, he didn’t deserved you at all.”

“I just want to confront him about it, but I am not brave enough to walk to him and do it in front of everybody.” You bit your lip in desperation.

“Don’t think about it now.” The kind stranger tried to calm you down. He had just met you, but he instantly knew he hated seeing you cry. “Let’s do something. Let’s get out of the bathroom. You can stay in the staff’s place for a while if you want. Is that cool?” You nodded with your head at his proposition. “I’m Dave, by the way.”

You introduced yourself to him and he guided you to his place of work, where he offered you a sit and handed you a bottle of water. You kept pouring your heart out to Dave, feeling better now that you had the chance to share what you were feeling to someone. Also, Dave was an unbelievably good listener, as he was able to both understand you and comfort you.

“Hey, remember what you said earlier about wanting to confront your boyfriend?” He asked after a while. “Well, I may have an idea, but we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to…”

After hearing Dave’s plan, you decided to start working on it. For the first part of the plan, you and Dave grabbed some white paint and went to the parking lot to find your boyfriend’s car. When you found it, you started writing the word ‘CHEATER’ in capital letters, just above the trunk. Then you went back inside.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Dave asked you one final time before starting the second part of the plan. You nodded and then he started to speak through the loudspeakers so everyone could hear him. “Attention, please. To the owner of the car with number plate HDS 932. Apparently, you have been caught. There’s a message for you waiting in your car, but I’ll sum it up for you: She’s dumping your cheating ass. Thank you.”

From where you were standing, you saw your confused ex-boyfriend getting out of the ice rink and rushing to the parking lot as everyone stared at him. He was clearly embarrassed and you couldn’t help but smile as you completed your little revenge. Dave stared at you in silence, glad that you were feeling a little better now.

You spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with him, sitting on a corner and popping bubble wrap as you talked and got to know each other. Dave told you that he and his friends liked to do stunts and he invited you to go and see one of them someday, which you happily accepted. By the time you could realize, it was almost 20:00 pm.

“I have to take my little brother back home…” You got up as you started to say goodbye.

“It was rad to spend some time with you.” He said as he adjust his cap, causing you to smile. Neither of you wanted to say goodbye.

“I had a great time too. Thank you for everything.”

“Don’t thank me, it was my pleasure.” He laughed. “Maybe we could hang out some other time.”

“I’d love to.” You assured him and waved at him.

He waved you back as you got out of the room and went to look for your brother. When you found him, you two headed back to the car.

“I’m meeting James next Thursday on the ice rink again.” Your little brother said as you were driving back home. “Can you give me another ride?”

“Yeah, sure.” You answered as he gave you the perfect excuse to go see Dave again.

#Dave hot rod #Dave hot rod x reader #Dave hot rod x you #Dave hot rod imagine #Dave hot rod one shot #Hot Rod 2007 #Bill Hader #Bill Hader x reader #Bill Hader imagine #bill hader x you #Bill Hader one shot

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ellana-ravenwood · 5 years

Text

The Ex - Jason Todd x Single !Mom reader part 3/5

Hi, my name’s Ella’, and I’m here to fuck up absolutely perfect families. Hope you’ll like this new chapter of Jay x Single!Mom, I think there’ll be only one more part after this, and um...yup, hope you’ll like it ! :

FINISHED SERIES : PART 1, PART 2, PART 4, PART 5 NEWLY ADDED EPILOGUE : PART 1/3

My masterlist blog : @ella-ravenwood-archives

__________________________________________________

******

“Hey (Y/N).”

He dares to say, a wrapped package in one hand, and flowers in the other.

“…Jess ?”

You whisper, not quite believing your eyes.

Jess. Him. How ? After all this years, why ?

Jess. Him. Viggo’s father.

You don’t think. As soon as the information of who this is finally reaches your brain, and the shock passes, you walk straight to him.

Jason, who knows who “Jess” is, looks at you with a pained look as you rush to your ex, as if you’re about to give him a hug.

And Jess ? Oh Jess. He has an infuriating smile on his face, the kind that means “I’m gonna get exactly what I want and I know it”, and he opens his arms as if you’re about to give him a hug.

Only you don’t.

Oh no. On the contrary. Years of pent up feelings and resentment against him explode inside you, and as you reach him...You punch him right in the jaw with all your might.

Everyone gasps. Jess grunts in pain. You grab your fist and swear because fuck punching people actually hurts ! Viggo, who went to stand next to Jason, lets out a laugh, apparently delighted that you just hit his father.

Your boy knew about who his dad was.

You kept ONE picture of him to show him what he looked like (and Viggo was very happy to see that he looked NOTHING like his father, but resembled you a lot), because you knew the importance of knowing your own identity. Knowing where you came from. Even if it meant knowing that your father was a total fuck up, at least...you knew.

Viggo knew that he left. Right before his birth.

He knew everything you knew, in fact. Because you never refused to answer his questions. You thought he had every rights to know about the man who abandoned him. At the same time, you tried to not be biased and give your son only the truth, the facts.

You never spoke ill of his father.

You always said you and him got along very well, and that you really were in love with him. You even talked about the good times you had with Jess, after all, you two dated for years before you got engaged and you got pregnant...You never spoke ill of his father, but you stated the facts.

Jess left. There was no beating around the bushes. Viggo deserved to know the truth, and you weren’t about to make up some lie about his dad having to leave for some reasons. No. He left, of his own accord, just like that.

Even if at the time you were in love, and even if he was always sweet and nice to you...he ultimately broke your heart by leaving. By not even having the courage to face you to tell you so, only writing a note saying everything was “too much”.

Jess left Gotham city the day his son was supposed to be born. A few months before you were supposed to get married. That was a fact. And maybe he used to be a nice guy, and you used to be in love with him and all of that...but in the end, he still left.

And though when he was younger Viggo couldn’t quite understand what everything meant, and why his daddy decided to not even see him, wondering if he did anything wrong...Now, at the very wise age of eight, he figured things out. After all, he was quite a smart kid.

Actually, Jason coming in yours and his life helped him understand. It had been just a little bit over six months since you started to date Jay, but it was everything Viggo needed to finally get it.

Jess wasn’t his father.

A father doesn’t leave his kid because he suddenly freaked out about becoming a dad ! A father doesn’t abandon his family, just leaving a short note, not even facing them ! A father, a real one, doesn’t run away at the first sign of trouble ! A father takes care of his kid, no matter what.

To Viggo, the concept of a “dad” was kind of a foreign one. He saw dads on TV, in some of his favorite shows and such. He saw his friends’ dads. But...it was always just a theory to him.

Dads were suppose to be there, to play catch with their sons, to help them do their homework, to kiss their booboo and read them bed times stories...But his dad wasn’t there. And you had to fill in and do everything.

Viggo never thought it was a bad thing, not having a dad. Because you, his beloved mom, were absolutely the best !!

But then. Then Jason came in the picture. And suddenly...Suddenly Viggo understood that having a dad was also awesome !

Your son knew since the beginning, since Jason took care of him when he was sick, that night you were suppose to have your first date, that Jason was definitely “real father material”. He instinctively took care of him, even though he didn’t even know him that much !

And though he was yet too shy and unsure about really calling him that, although he was still kind of afraid Jason would freak out if he did...Viggo realized, as his biological father dared to barge in today, that in his heart, Jason already became kind of his dad.

Not that Jess guy.

Not the one who abandoned him and left his mom in a deep struggle all those years ago ! But the one who didn’t actually “have to” stay and yet spend a night taking care of a sick kid he barely knew, and eating nacho chips and guacamole on the floor of a small living room as a first date. The one who didn’t have to stay, and didn’t run away at the first sign of trouble.

And so, seeing you punch Jess’ goddamn lights out was highly satisfying, for the little boy. He knew violence wasn’t a good answer, but honestly, in this instance ? He didn’t care. Because he too, was mad at his “father” for never even wanting to know him. For never taking news about him, and suddenly reappearing right now, as if nothing !

The flowers and the wrapped object Jess was holding went flying in the air before falling on the ground with a loud noise.

“How dare you ?! How dare you come back ? Today, on his birthday at that ?! Who do you think you are ?”

You scream at him, holding your painful fist in your uninjured hand. Fuming. Viggo has never seen you that angry before. It’s kind of scary. Without thinking about it, the boy grabs Jason’s hand. For comfort. And Jason ? He squeezes back, reassuring Viggo immediately.

Your ex straightens back up, and massages his jaw. it’s definitely gonna bruise. Damn, you had a mean right hook ! He looks at you, eyes narrowing a bit, and his next words make your blood boil :

“Who do I think I am ? I’m his dad, that’s who I am.”

Jess quickly realizes his poor word choice as your eyes turn a couple shades darker and you grab him by the shoulder...To violently bring him towards you and headbutt the hell out of him.

He joins the flowers and gift he brought with him, on the floor, as you take a few unsure step backward. Ok, well headbutting someone also hurts. You see stars for a few seconds when...Jason. Of course.

Jason is by your side now. And Viggo is too (you don’t see him, but he harbors a rather satisfied smile, as he sees his father shaking his head, down on the floor, trying to regain his senses after you basically beat the heck out of him).

Your boyfriend lays a supportive hand on your lower back, and you kinda fall against him as your head spins a bit...It only takes a few seconds for you to get back to normal, but you stay against him. You feel as if he’s lending you his strength, and oh god you need it right now. It’s pretty incredible really, how he manages to soothe you in such a situation.

Jess gets back up once more, and, keeping his distance with you this time, says :

“Ok. I’m sorry. I’m aware I just...I...I’m an asshole, ok ? I know. I shouldn’t have left. And I’m sorry I just assumed right now...I know I have no rights after what I did. I know I fucked up. I came here today to try and...fix things ok ? Glue the pieces back together. My sister just got a kid. And I went to see her in the hospital, and when I held my nephew it...Well it just reminded me that I...that I...That I screwed up. Big time. And so here I am. I know I should’ve called, I’m sorry. But I thought coming back on his birthday would...I don’t know, be nice.”

“You thought wrong.”

You say, your voice cold and harsh. Not an ounce of forgiveness in your tone. Tt. What was he thinking ? That because he suddenly realized he was an ass, you’d forgive him that fast ? That you’d forget YEARS of trying to make ends meet ? Of working multiple jobs just to feed your kid ? That you’d forget how much he broke you, when he left you ? Not even saying where he was going ? Or why, exactly, he was leaving, except that it was “too much” ?

Damn right he was wrong.

“Listen (Y/N), I...I’m not playing tricks or anything ok ? I really had an epiphany, with my sister’s kid. I...I want to be part of his life ? Of our kid’s life ?”

“Our ? Buddy, you lost the right to be his dad when you left eight years ago. As I was about to give birth to him.”

There’s a small silence. You completely forgot that Jason’s family was here, as you’re entirely focus on that asshole that basically ruined your life (though the fact that his existence brought Viggo into your life was a blessing..the only good thing left in your heart about Jess, really).

Your ex lets out a frustrated sigh and you think about hitting him once more for a second. How dare he get frustrated with you right now ? But then he takes the flowers and the gift back from the floor, and says :

“Ok I see now is a bad time. Mea Culpa. I guess I didn’t think. I thought...I thought you’d be happy. That I want to be more in his life, you know ? I guess I really should’ve called. Ask for forgiveness before coming over. I’m sorry. I can see you’re busy so...I’ll go now. We can talk alone, later, right ?”

You don’t say anything, and glare at him some more. You don’t take the flowers and the gift he’s trying to give you either. He sighs once more and says :

“Listen, we really need to talk ok ? I’m sorry I didn’t expect you to react that way ok ? Now I do realize you have every rights to. And I’m a total ass for barging in like this. But...in my defense, I didn’t expect you to have any...Company.”

The way he looks at Jay makes your blood boil once more, and you’re about to punch him again but you feel your boyfriend’s hand on your lower back, caressing you soothingly and...It works. You exchange a look with him, and you can see in his eyes that...yes. Yes you understand.

You should probably stop hitting that jerk in front of your son. No matter how big of a jerk he is, you’re really not giving a good example right now (oh but if only you could see the highly satisfied smile your son had on his face right now !).

But it seems that Jess doesn’t quite learn his lessons fast enough, because he has the guts to say :

“So um...I guess that’s my replacement, uh ?”

You narrow your eyes back at him again. Did he just call Jason a “that” ? And what was he even insinuating right there ? Oh my god he had NO rights even making this kind of comment ! But before you can get to him again, and this time kick him in the balls, Viggo says :

“There was nothing to replace, really. You weren’t there.”

You often cursed your son’s smartassness, but in this instance ? You can’t help but smile proudly at him, even if you know you might be a bit petty right now. Eh. Who cares ? You deserve to be petty. Plus given the look on Jess’ face, your boy’s words hurt him more than a kick in the balls would have.

“Outch...But I guess I deserve it uh ? I’m sorry about what I just said. About the replacement. I realize it’s not my place to...I’m sorry. I keep screwing up but...I really didn’t expect you to have company.”

“Oh yeah ? Were you expecting me to wallow forever while waiting for you ? Because I wallowed for about ten seconds, until I realized I had no time for self-pity because I had a kid to feed. All on my own. All of our plans to make it work pfioush, gone into flames.”

“Ok. Ok (Y/N), let’s take a break in the bashing ok ? You can lash out on me later. When we won’t have an...audience. Please, let’s just meet later ok ? Give me a chance to apologize at least ? To explain myself ? Give you my side of the story ? No wait, don’t speak. I’ll um...I’ll call later ok ?”

“I won’t answer.”

“I’ll still call. And hope that when your anger will go down, you’ll give me a chance. I know I don’t deserve it, believe me I do. But...I’ll try anyway.”

He shoves the flowers in your arms, and you catch them by reflex. He then turns to your son and says :

“Happy birthday...Um...uh...”

“It’s Viggo. My name is Viggo.”

“Oh, Viggo uh ? Like the actor ?”

“No. Not at all. You’re completely wrong.”

He’s not sure quite why, but Viggo doesn’t want that guy to know that you named him after the actor indeed. He doesn’t want that guy to know anything ! He should have given him a fake name...Ugh, what kind of father doesn’t even know his own kid’s name ?! It’s not like you stopped him from coming to see him...he just didn’t seem to be interested until now !

Jess looks at your son for a few seconds, and then smiles sadly.

“Well...happy birthday, Viggo.”

Your son reluctantly takes the gift his “father” is giving him in his hands, as Jess turns one final time to you and says :

“I’ll call you later. Sorry again, truly. I hope...I hope you believe me. Talk to you soon, hopefully...Bye (Y/N). I’m sorry. And um...bye buddy.”

Jess finally leaves, and there’s a few more seconds of you not being able to let go of your anger. Of wanting to run after him, and push him down the stairs. But then...Then your son moves, and your eyes follow him.

Viggo walks back in the apartment, passes Jason’s family, and goes into the kitchen. Without saying a word. Worried, you follow after him. Jason does too, so is the rest of his family.

He climbs on the kitchen counter, and opens the window. He looks down in the street, his father’s present still in his hands. There’s a few seconds of confused silence. You’re still so shocked and moved about your ex’s appearance that you don’t even think about going to your eight years old son and scolding him about looking out the sixth floor window like this !

And apparently, Jason, his dad and his siblings are just as confused and lost, because they don’t do anything either.

And then, after a minute or so, Viggo put the gift his father gave him out of the window, dangling it into the air for a few seconds...before letting go of it.

There’s a second of silence, followed by a crashing sound and a “JESUS CHRIST !”...It’s Jess’ voice, you recognize it.

Your son close the window, and looks at you with a disappointed look before saying :

“I missed.”

You don’t know why, but all of a sudden, all your stress, pain and anger from the past few minutes vanish and you start laughing louder than you ever did before. Quickly, the rest of the fam follows.

He missed. Oh my god. That boy...

************

“...it wasn’t a very heavy gift anyway, even if I hadn’t missed it would have just like, knocked him out or something, nothing too bad.”

Viggo was saying to Damian, as he was helping Jason’s brother to put his actual gifts away. Damian was chuckling, listening to your boy. They were in the living room, while you were in the kitchen with the rest of the family.

“I’m...I’m so sorry Mr. Wayne. I realize this isn’t a great...first impression...”

“Please, call me Bruce. And then...It really wasn’t your fault.”

There’s a small silence. Not an awkward one though, as you look apologetically to Bruce, and he looks back at you with a reassuring and paternal look.

You smile back at him and feel strangely appeased. And when you turn to the rest of his Jason’s sibling, and they all smile to you. When you see Damian talking with your son about what does he think he got in his presents ?

You’re reassured.

You turn to Jason and...is that a troubled look on his face or are you just imagining ? Oh yeah no, you did just imagine it, as he brightly smiles at you and comes to wrap a tender arm around your waist.

“We can...leave if you want, you know ? To let you process everything ?”

He says in your ear, and you turn to him, panicked as you answer :

“God no ! I..need to think about something else right now ok ? And it’s Viggo’s birthday, he invited you guys, you can't go !”

Jason nods, quite relieved, to be honest. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay and see Viggo’s cute smile as he blows his candles and open his presents.

But the arrival of Jess kind of...threw him off. Because no matter how much of an asshole that guy was, he seemed sincere when he said that he truly wanted to be part of Viggo’s life. And that was a good thing, right ?

But as Jason’s gaze was drawn back to Viggo, he couldn’t help but feel a big pang in his chest. If Jess was back in yours and his life, what would happen to him ? Jason was already in too deep in love with you, and head over heals for your little boy, to just move on...

************

The rest of your son’s birthday went perfectly well. Better than you ever expected actually, even with Jess coming to ruin everything.

Well, actually your ex didn’t manage to ruin anything in the end, because this party was a true success ! And one of the main reason for that was your son himself. He seemed to have completely forgotten about his “father” coming back, as he took his spot at one end of the living room’s table.

“Time for the candles !”

He chirped happily, and you all sung him the traditional “happy birthday” song.

“Make a wish baby !”

You tell him, and...Yes. You know exactly what he wished for. You can see it in his eyes, as he goes from looking at you to Jason, and then to the rest of Jay’s family. You’re pretty sure you know what he wished for

He blows his candles, making a wish that he doesn’t say out loud because if he does, it won’t happen, right ? And then he turns to the pile of gift on the couch...

“Ya don’t want to eat some cake first ?”

You ask, knowing perfectly that he won’t be patient enough for that, but also will want to be polite and will ask his guests first. Which is exactly what he does :

“Um...You guys want...cake ?”

“Yes.”

They all say unanimously, and Viggo’s face falls. He really was expecting them to tell him he could open his gifts first. He looks absolutely crushed, and slumps back in his chair. He looks pitifully at you, and nods to the cake...and it makes the entire “bat family” feel bad that they made this little joke.

Bruce looks utterly panicked, and it’s kind of a feat, to see THE Bruce Wayne that worried about hurting a kid’s feelings ! You quickly wonder if he was a dotting father to Jason, when he was younger...Probably.

Damian, who’s the only one who actually didn’t answer “yes” glares at all of his family members. How DARE they make that sweet child sad ? And sure, being sad because he has to eat cake and can’t open his present yet is kind of very childish and...Oh but he IS a kid right ? So allow him be bummed out ! And therefor, Damian glares some more.

Tim and Cass are properly mortified that Viggo didn’t seem to understand their jokes. It makes Cassandra want to speak soothing words to him, forcing herself to get out every words she can muster, while Tim freezes, not sure what to do or what to say because now he’s afraid he’ll only make the situation worst...Dick quickly says :

“Oh kiddo, we were totally joking ! Of course you can open your gift now, the cake can wait !”

Viggo’s smile comes back at once, and it turns into a mischievous grin as he says :

“Got ya ! You should see your faces, hilarious !”

And then he jumps off his chair to rush to his presents. You and Jason (who by now was used to your son’s antics) roll your eyes as you witness Bruce, Dick, Tim, Damian and Cassandra’s “shocked” face as the kid completely played them, making them think he was actually sad. Damn it. Smart one. They really thought this little boy was...oh, all of a sudden all of Jason’s stories about this little smartass made sense !

************

“...That’s fo-for me ?”

Viggo asks, not quite sure he can believe his eyes as he holds a brand new PlayStation 4 in his hands, staring at it as if it’s the greatest thing he ever saw.

“Um, yes, yes it is. Jason said you didn’t have one...R-right ?”

It kind of totally adorable, to see Bruce Wayne stumbles on his word in front of your son, unsure if he did the right thing or not.

It’s funny, as Jason looks at his father, he has a flashback at when he first arrived at Wayne’s Manor. Back then too, Bruce was quite stressed about doing the right things. Dick and Jason exchange a knowing look. Both of them “experienced” that shy side of Bruce...By the time Tim and Cass came in, Bruce kinda knew what he was suppose to do.

But with Dick and Jason ? Oh he was so often confused. “Alfred, they can have ice cream for dinner, right ?” It was a lot of questions and not many answers.

Jason looked fondly upon Viggo and his father interacting, and he was pretty sure he heard his heart slowly bursting when Viggo calmly settled his new PlayStation on a side, got on his feet, solemnly walked towards Bruce and asked politely :

“May I hug you ? Please ?”

You were pretty sure you “awed” aloud too. Your son was such a sweet little man...You know that he wanted to rush to Bruce and hug the hell out of him, but since he didn’t know him very much and wasn’t too sure either of how to ask...It was just so cute, how he was being so serious while asking for a hug !

“Um...Yes. Yes of course.”

And oh Bruce was in for a treat because when your son gave a hug ? He gave a hug. Your little boy says “thank you, sir” a bit formally and then...he lunges at Jason’s father with all his might, and circled his arms around the man’s neck tightly.

“Thank you so much for the PS4 I love it, oh my god thank you it’s too much I can’t accept it, thanks a lot for it ! I don’t think I can get it because it’s too much...but thank you !”

Bruce answers to the hug by wrapping his own arms around your boy, and is even more confused than before as your son keep saying he can’t accept the gift, but that it’s also the best gift ever and he can’t wait to try it, while not being able to accept it...You chuckle and once again, you’re so proud to have raised such a cute little one, who understands the value of things.

Of course, he’ll accept the PlayStation (you’ve never been able to afford one for him...), but you’re just so proud of him right now, for even thinking about refusing the gift because it’s a bit too much. You’re too happy he can finally have a console though. Of course, he wasn’t a poor little boy cause he didn’t have one, but it was nice, that for once, he could have the same things his classmates had.

Viggo hugs Bruce for two long and cute minutes, and you can see the man slowly relaxing in your son’s arms. Too sweet for this world. When your boy finally let’s go, he smiles widely and then goes to hug his new PlayStation, repeating “I love it I love it” multiple times before he realizes it’s a bit rude to not open his other gifts...

He stands up and takes another one.

“That’s from me !”

Damian says with a smile, clearly eager to see the boy’s reaction. And when your son tears open the box...

“OH MY GOD !!”

He yells, and then all you see is your little eight year old kid running around the living room screaming happily and...the hell did he just get ?

When your son finally calms down, and puts the box on the floor to then proceed on literally jumping on Damian, you finally see what’s the matter.

“Cheese Viking VR”. A virtual helmet with the entire “Cheese Viking” game saga. It was suppose to be sold out, and new production for it was running slow, as the company didn’t expect to sell that many sets...It was probably a pain to find. No wonder, Damian looked so proud of himself !

Jason couldn’t believe his eyes, as he saw his bratty little brother hug Viggo back gladly, and smiling fondly at the kid. He knew they somewhat bonded when you meet them at the arcade room, but it was still a surprise. A pleasant one.

Viggo finally calmed down a second time, and went to sit on the couch, saying :

“Ok guys, if you have any more of this kind of surprises, you need to tell me. Because I don’t think my heart can handle it right now...” your little one says, but it seems like Dick, Tim and Cassandra don’t think their gift will outmatch Bruce’s or Damian’s.

But they’re wrong. They don’t outmatch it, no, but they make your boy as happy as the PlayStation and the Cheese Viking VR set.

Tim gives him a “little chemist set”, and coincidentally, it was exactly the one that your son always wanted but that you could never afford...You had to tell Viggo to be patient, or he would have started experiencing there and there, forgetting the world around him.

Dick gives him an electric skateboard with all the safety gears, and your son just couldn’t believe that this was just for him. He never saw that many toys and such in the same room ! All for him !!

And when Cassandra gave him basically every single action figure in existence about his favorite TV show, you were pretty sure your kid was gonna faint right in the middle of the room.

He gave away many hugs, and said the sentence “I can’t believe this is for me !” a hundred times. This was the first time in your life that you saw your son not having a smart come back ! It was quite something, really ! And oh it was so nice to see your son’s personality making everyone around him beam !

When you saw everyone together, gathered in that tiny living room, you wouldn’t believe that just a few hours ago you were all almost perfect stranger ! That this was your first meeting !

In fact, it felt like you’d been a family since the beginning of time. That Viggo was yours and Jason’s son, and that you were having his uncles and aunt, and his grandfather, over for his birthday...It really REALLY felt like it.

It kinda freaked you out, when you realized this, but also made you incredibly happy. Because your boy ? He deserved to have great uncles and aunt, and a grandfather like the goddamn Bruce Wayne ! And most of all...a dad like Jason, who had absolutely no intention to ever leave (he made that clear on your first date).

But for now, you shook those pleasant thoughts away, a bit afraid you were getting too carried away, and turned to Jason and your boy as it was your boyfriend’s turn to give him a present. Finally.

“Um, seeing what everyone got you, I’m not sure my present will be that great...”

He says shyly, and you know it was a big deal when none of his siblings teased him about it. The wasn't as big as what his sibling’s or dad got for him, but you were pretty sure it made Viggo almost cry.

It was just a simple notebook. At first, Viggo was very confused about it...until he opened it. And discovered that inside, all the pages were covered with “personalized gift cards” Jason drew himself.

It almost made YOU cry too. It was so sweet, and personal, and Jason clearly put a lot of work into it ! It was full of little actives Viggo could do with “The Jason”. Some were simple, like just “a game of catch” or “an afternoon playing Cheese Viking”, while some others were rather big like : “going to see a Baseball match of your fav team at Gotham’s Stadium” or “A week-end in Disneyworld” !

Your son gave Jason the biggest hug he ever gave, and refused to let go for quite a while. And when he finally took a few steps from Jay, Viggo whispered :

“Thanks, dad.”

Which made Jason freeze. He was pretty sure he was the only one that heard Viggo used this word, and that the boy himself didn’t even realize what he had just say. What he had just done to Jason’s heart.

Jason hadn’t felt this happy since before his death. Of course, you and Viggo made him extremely happy those past few months but right now, as the kid called him “dad” in the most natural way in the World...Jason’s heart just couldn’t stop beating. He felt the same way than that day Bruce told him he was going to adopt him.

But his happiness was cut short by a dark thought slowly casting its shadow in his mind...

Jess.

************

Laying next to you in the bed he found himself sharing with you more often than not now, Jason couldn’t sleep.

Probably because you went through a lot of emotions today, you were completely out and were lightly snoring next to him, unaware of his inner turmoil. Unaware that he was overthinking everything. Clinging to his arm sweetly.

Jess’ arrival today, he realized now, touched him more than he initially thought.

He didn’t want this jerk to slowly crawl in his thoughts, but he couldn’t help it.

It was all because Viggo called him “dad”, and made him realize that...He wanted to be that kid’s dad. But he couldn’t really, could he ? Because he actually already had a father, and this father came back today, and was finally willing to come into his kid’s life.

Jason couldn't stop thinking about one thing...What if...What if his own father repented ? What if his own father decided to come back in his life, and start anew ? What if his own father didn’t get into the wrong criminal businesses and got killed, and came to Wayne Manor to ask for his son back ?

Jason was pretty sure he would have forgiven him, because it was his dad. Sure Viggo’s and his situation were different. Jason did live with his father for a while when he was a kid, and with his mother, before leaving for Wayne Manor because they got killed.

And both his parents were abusive and mistreated him...But still. If Viggo had the chance to have his dad back in his life, shouldn’t he take it ? No matter how much Jess screwed up ? Didn’t he deserve a second chance ?

Jason couldn’t stop but think about “what if” his own parents got cleaned and came back for him. What if his own parents actually wanted him, and begged him to come back...What would Jason have done ?

What would he have become ? Would his life get so fucked up ?

Probably not. He wasn’t mad at Bruce anymore, and he knew that his adopted father loved him deeply...but if eight years old Jason had the choice to have a normal life, with normal parents, and to avoid this world of pain that he had to go through...Wouldn’t it have been fairer to take this chance ?

If his parents came for him, if they did everything to get better and go on the path of redemption...Jason was pretty sure that he would have gone back to them, and it was a fact that then, he would never have died. He would never have been so angry. He would...

Ugh. It was so complicated. On one hand Jason viewed Bruce as his father, and only him, because he was the only one who ever acted as a father towards him. But what if his own father came back ? Wouldn’t have it been better for him ?

Jason couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking over and over again about how genuine Jess looked. And how hurt Viggo looked when he threw that gift out of the window.

Jay was pretty sure he was the only one who noticed it, but for a micro-second, Viggo looked like he was about to cry. Looked like he regretted throwing the gift away. And during his birthday, when he thought no one was looking, the boy kept looking back at the entrance door with a thoughtful look.

“What if my own parents came back to get me and take care of me ? Would I forgive the years of abuse and would it be best for me to leave with them to avoid the world of pain Bruce’s life brought me ?”

Sure, Jason willingly jumped into Bruce’s night life. Because for the first time in his life, he found someone that actually cared about him ! He wanted to make him proud ! Plus it was fun...but we all know how that ended.

He kept thinking over and over again. He knew for a fact that Viggo could NOT come into his vigilante’s world. Ever. But then again, Jason knew he would never stop fighting crime.

Maybe Viggo and you were better off without him, and instead would have a better chance at a normal life with...Jess ?

It hurt like hell, to realize that maybe that was it. That maybe it was better for both you and your son to stay away from him.

It’s funny. So far, he had been kind of lying to himself, always thinking that he’d talk about this all Red Hood ordeal one day, in the future. Always saying he’ll tell you all about it “one day”. But never doing so because he knows that as soon as he says the truth, things will forever change.

You and Viggo will be in danger all your life, just for being associated with him and...goddamnit what was he even thinking ?! That he could just have a family with you ? Be a dad to Viggo ? After only six months of relationship ?!

He clearly didn’t think any of this through. He wanted, to be that kid’s dad. For the first time in his life he knew he was in love, he knew he wanted to spend his life with you...Six months or six years wouldn’t make any difference, he just knew his feeling would never change. He knew he didn’t want to touch anyone else but you. Kiss anyone else but you. Make love to anyone else but you.

He knew he didn’t want to give his heart to anyone else but you...You and Viggo. He didn’t want to say anyone else’s name the way he said yours. He didn’t...He knew he would never love again the way he loves you.

But this wasn’t about only him now, was it ? He couldn’t be that selfish, and thrust you into his dark world like that. What would you say, if you knew how many people he killed ? If you knew he actually died himself, and came back to life ? If you knew...the him from the night ?

So far, things were blissful. Things were peaceful. Things were beautiful.

Whenever he came over to your place, it felt like you, him and Viggo were a little family. It felt good, and so easy.

But...Oh god ! He couldn’t believe he allowed himself to be seen THAT MUCH in public with his BROTHERS that day at the arcade ! When it was just you and him, or you, him and Viggo, it was fine, because he became an expert in being able to hide the fact he was Jason Todd-Wayne, one of Bruce Wayne’s heir.

But Damian and Tim ? Everyone knew who they were wherever they went. Especially Damian, who looked so much like Bruce and had such amazing feature like his eyes or darker skin !

Apparently no one saw you all together that day, as no picture had been released but...what if ? Then you would have become the face of every single newspaper in Gotham. Worst, Viggo would have been plastered everywhere !

That alone would put your life and your son’s life on the line ! Being associated with such a powerful family was quite something...but then if it turned “Gotham Official” between you two, he would HAVE to talk about Red Hood and then the threat would be doubled...

Jesus. This was all so painful. Everything. This all realization.

The fact that Jess was now back in the picture and was really Viggo’s rightful father. And this all Wayne/Red Hood thing...He...he couldn’t do that to you, he couldn’t be that selfish...could he ?

You moved closer to him in your sleep, and threw one of your leg over his waist. And it’s with a heavy and painful heart that Jason softly kissed the crown of your head. Tenderly showered your face with peppered kisses...And resolved himself to take a harsh decision.

************

The next day, you woke up to an empty bed.

Which was odd. Usually, even if he would he awake before you, Jason would always still be in bed with you...Weird.

You stood up and went to the kitchen and...here he was. He was making breakfast for Viggo. Cute. But...when he looked at you, did you see a flash of pain going through his eyes ? Or did you just imagine it ? You weren't sure.

But when you went to kiss him to say “hello”, his kiss back felt strangely distant. Very unlike him. Usually, he would be so into it, and smile widely afterward...

“Ok I made some breakfast for you too. I’m sorry I have to run, I have important business back at home, see you later ?”

“Um, ok...”

He leaves with a quick “See ya Viggo”. No kiss goodbye to you, as he always gave you. And no kiss on your son’s forehead either.

Odd. You and Viggo exchange a knowing look...

************

You tried to remember everything you did with Jason in the past few days that could have changed his mood that much.

Jesus (Y/N) think, THINK !

But you couldn’t recall doing anything to Jason that would justify his behavior...Why, all of a sudden, was he always too busy to see you ? Why would he refuse to go out in public ? Why was he coming over less and less ?

He kept telling you that is was because there was a lot of work back at Wayne inc but, so far, he always managed to make time for you...or were you just being jealous and too selfish because he spend less time with you ?

Yes, that was probably it. You were being a kid, this was defenitely nothing and he would eventually stop being so busy.

************

Jess called you back a few days after Viggo’s birthday, and you told him to fuck off. But he kept calling and calling and calling...

“Maybe you should give him a chance, you know ?”

Jason’s words surprise you, and you turn a confuse look to him :

“I told you what he did to us, right ?”

“Yes, but I’m a strong believer in everyone deserving a second chance.”

His words kept fighting in your head, over and over again...

************

And Jason kept being busier and busier. Having less and less time for you and Viggo. It got even worst when you finally accepted for Jess to come and see you (not Viggo yet) and talk.

Viggo was at school, and you were talking with Jess in your kitchen when Jason came in...He immediately apologized and though you said Jess was about to leave, Jason still left.

And oh you hated that judgemental look Jess gave you, as if he was saying : “wow, great boyfriend you got there” !

Because Jason was great. He really was ! He was the damn best. He was the perfect boyfriend. He cared for your son, and was always so affectionate towards you ! He always had great thoughts, and was just so sweet !

He was perfect !

But...you guessed perfection didn’t exist, as you felt you and him were slowly growing apart more and more.

************

You still refused for Jess to see Viggo, and to be honest, Viggo had no intention to see his dad anyway !

Jason heard you guys talk about it, as he came by one night...And the way Viggo’s face brighten when he saw Jay, and how he rushed to hug him finally gave Jason a good idea of what he had to do.

For yours and Viggo’s good.

************

He had to. He just had to.

IT didn’t mean it made anything easier, but he knew it was the only way.

He had to leave you..both of you.

He had laid the ground work for a few weeks now, coming to see you and Viggo less often, and being much less attentive and affectionate to you both.

It particularly tore his heart apart, to see Viggo’s cute little smile fall every time he said “not now buddy” when Viggo asked to play with him !

The worst was that time he refused to give him a hug because he said he was “late for work” (a lie), and that other time he said “can’t right now” when Viggo, full of hope, brought his little notebook he got for his birthday and basically tore a random “gift card” from it, clearly not caring what it was, and only wanting to spend time with Jason.

It really, really hurt, that he had to do that...But at the same time, it was the only way. Because if Viggo was getting to attached to Jason, then he would never want to get to know his real father, Jess.

If Viggo decided that Jason was his father...then he would eventually get dragged into this dangerous vigilante’s life. And that...Jason couldn’t let it happen. He’d rather die, than putting this little boy’s life in jeopardy. Or yours.

And though it hurt more than anything in the world, acting that distant and cold toward both you and Viggo, he knew he had to.

He had to...lay the ground work...To make you guys hate him.

Make you realize he wasn’t actually a great boyfriend. Purposefully doing things he would never do usually, but doing them just because he knew it annoyed you.

And yet, he couldn’t quite seem to achieve this goal to make you guys even dislike him. Even when he pushed away on purpose; or when he was a bit rude.

The truth was, he was never able to completely push you two away, or completely be heartless with you. Because he loved both of you with all his heart.

He was deeply in love with you. And Viggo ? Oh Viggo, he found himself thinking of him as his “son” so many times !

But this was dangerous ! You both could never have a real life, if he kept going ! And Jess really seemed to want to get back in your life, and participate in Viggo’s upbringing. And even if he screwed up..maybe he had the right to have a second chance and get to know his own son ?

Yes. Jason had to do it now. And quick. Rip the band-aid...

***********

“Jason, what are you saying ?”

Your pained look almost convince him to backtrack. To not go forward with it. To tell you it’s just a silly joke and to kiss you with all his might.

Oh and the look Viggo gives him, sat at the kitchen table, a bowl of cereal in front of him ? It tears him apart. It makes him wish he was still dead. Those innocent eyes slowly realizing that something bad is happening.

But he can’t go back now. He has to go through with it. For your own good. To both of you...so what if you hate him ?

“It’s just too much for me, ok ? Too much at the same time, all this.”

He gestures at you and Viggo, and once again, he has to fight against himself not to go to both of you and give you a hug, apologizing profusely for what he just said and insinuated.

But he knows...he knows that by using the exact same word Jess used in his letter all those years ago, he’d really break this bond you formed with him.

“Too much ?”

You ask, obviously trying to fight tears as you were understanding what the problem was more and more every seconds.

This was what you feared since you started to date him. What you were terrified of as you realized you were completely in love with him, and that Viggo was getting very attached to (you were pretty sure he almost called him “dad” a few times by now).

This was your worst nightmare. All over again...The man you love leaving you because a family is too much for him.

“Yes. You and Viggo. And Jess now too..”

“What about Jess ?”

“Well it’s a bit too much ya know ? He’s part of your lives again and...”

“He is not part of our lives. Plus you’re the one that told me to give him another chance !”

“Yes exactly ! And you did ! Now he’s part of your life wether you want it or not, and he wants to know Viggo so...”

“I don’t want to get to know him Jason, I don’t want to !”

For the third time, he almost cracks. The tone his little boy just used...”his”. No. No he wasn’t his. He was Jess’s. And it was going to be better for him if the bond between him and Jason was cut.

“Well you do whatever you want buddy, but ultimately he’s your dad and he wants to know you ! You know, I wish my dad came back for me when Bruce adopted me ! I really do !”

This was a lie. With all his thinking, Jason came to the conclusion that he would never want another father than Bruce Wayne. No matter how easier his life would have been...But this was his choice, and he already came from a fucked up family and was a delinquent. While Viggo ? Viggo had a bright future ahead of him.

He was cute and intelligent. He couldn’t come into the vigilante’s world...

“Where are you getting at with all this, Jason ?”

You already knew, of course. But you wanted him to say it. You wanted him to spell it out. To face you and tell you.

“I’m getting at...I mean...I think...I think we should break up.”

It’s as if someone just threw a bucket of freezing cold water over your head. And without realizing it...You fall on the nearest chair (Jason has to resist like hell for not suddenly running to you and see if you’re ok) and start to cry.

You don’t even hear what Jason says next, but you know it’s all bullshit. Whatever he says. You know. He’s just trying to be nice and ease the break up, but if you’re being honest, you realized a while ago that he would leave. Because he became suddenly so cold...after Jess’s arrival, really.

A few weeks ago.

Since that day Jason became more and more distant. It was weird. It was so different from those past six months ! And you just couldn’t understand why the sudden change of heart...did he think you were going to leave with Jess ? Because he was your first love ?

But you realized you had never loved anyone before Jason...

Why was he suddenly...like this ? Didn’t he see you had no intention of ever going back to Jess ? And sure maybe you’ll let him see Viggo because after all yes, maybe he deserves a second chance at that “father’ thing but...couldn’t Jason see that your kid already decided who his real dad truly was ?

You don’t even realize your son came to you until he presses his small smooth hands on your cheek, and wipe away your tears.

“I think you should leave.”

You hear Viggo say to Jason. And you wish you could say something but...you knew it. You knew since day one that if Jason Todd broke your heart, you would be a total mess. Worst than ever. And you really were.

Damn. You felt so pathetic, moping on your kitchen table while your eight years old son tried to cheer you up. Took care of you.

“Viggo I...”

Jason was about to say that he still wanted to see the kid. Still wanted to be friend. He just couldn’t cut all ties, it was impossible...he knew it was a bad idea, but he just couldn’t let you two go. IN fact, he was slowly starting to regret his decision.

But Viggo, looking up at him with eyes full of unshed tears, and clearly furious, made everything easier for him :

“I said you should leave. You’ve done enough, don’t you think ?”

He points at you, who seemed to not even be aware of what is happening around you right now. And oh geez you feel like such an idiot for ever even believing in all this...For believing that a perfect man like Jason could be with you, and help you raise your son the last of the way. For believing that you had another chance at love and at having a normal family.

“And please don’t come back. Thank you.”

This is it. This is the day Jason Todd dies a second time.

He can feel it in his heart. He’s not alive anymore.

He wants to reach for you, he wants to reach for Viggo...But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes his duffel bag that he prepared the night before, and leaves. Without even turning back once.

And it’s good that he didn’t, because if he did, his resolve would have shattered. He would have thrown himself on the floor and beg for yours and your son’s forgiveness, say that he wasn’t thinking straight...or tell you the truth ! The all truth ! Why he was leaving right now !

Because it’s better for both of you...It’s to save your life...

Oh but if he had turned to look one last time at you, he would have realized he wasn’t saving anything. On the contrary. As you softly cried uncontrollably, not able to get a hold of yourself while you were known to never wallow in self-pity...You always got back up on your feet. Always moved forward.

For your son. But today...today, even as you see that your tears are really distressing him, you can’t stop crying. Because you feel it in your heart, in your bones...you just lost the love of your life.

And Viggo ? Viggo, for the first time in his short eight years on this earth, he realizes how painful it is, to not have a dad.

____________________________________________

Hope you liked this ! It is currently 7 am and I stayed up ALL night to finish this...(while watching the oscars so I got distracted, but said oscars were over two hours ago so...yeah). I hope it’s not too...bad. I must admit, I’m VERY scared to disappoint you...In the end, I’m glad I stayed up so late (or early, depends on the point of view), cause I’m gonna now go hide in my bed.

So. Yeah. Blahblahblah the usual about feedbacks = life, as well as reblogs.

#Jason Todd x Reader #Jason Todd imagine #Red hood x reader #Red hood imagine #Jason Todd #Batfam #Batfamily #Batfam x Reader #Jaybird deserves love #Jason Todd fanfic #Jason Todd reader insert #Red Hood fanfic #Red Hood reader insert #Batfam imagine #JASON TODD IS GREAT OK ?!#Batfamily imagine #angst #angsty fanfic

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dovechim · 5 years

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the singularity theory 03 (m)

➾ 11.5k yoongi x reader ft taehyung

➾ the singularity theory posits that privilege of anonymity, combined with the element of restricted physical contact, has the ability to foster an emotional intimacy between two strangers that is genuine and non-forced.

➾ summary: in your last year of undergrad, you find out what a gloryhole is at the expense of your final year thesis. it’s a classic example of a psychology experiment that went way, way wrong.

but how were you to know that a certain min yoongi would be sticking his dick into your life?

➾ warnings: gloryhole use, degradation, blowjob, impreg kink, mentions of cumplay

➾ a/n: happy new years!! after what feels like a million years, it’s finally here. i struggled a lot while writing this, and i am so so so relieved to finally wrap it up. thank you for waiting so patiently, and i hope you enjoy!! love, addie

01 | 02 | 03 (complete)

Literature Review

This project was named after the astronomical phenomenon of a gravitational singularity, a one-dimensional point in the centre of a black hole that contains an infinitely huge mass in an infinitely small space. Here, gravity and density become infinite, and space time curves indefinitely. It is also commonly referred to the point where all laws of physics cease to operate. When an object falls into a black hole and approaches the singularity, it is presumed to disappear completely and irrevocably. However, from an observer’s point of view, the object appears to merely approach the black hole with an ever decreasing speed, never actually disappearing inside.

The author believes that there are significant similarities between this astrological theory and the experiment. The conditions of anonymity and restricted physical contact seek to mimic the attractive forces of the black hole’s irresistible gravitational pull that ultimately culminates in a single point of no return; a point where the forces that govern typical societal interactions break down and cease to exist entirely. It is also the author’s belief that anonymity acts as a vacuum space where private information can be disclosed without fear of shame or judgement.

There is a dick in front of you. It is Mr Cheetos’s dick.

Strangely enough, it doesn’t look as much like a Cheeto as you remembered. His voice sounds far away, as if you’re hearing it underwater, and a kind of fascination grips you as you reach your hand out to touch it. Ignoring your notes on the table and switching off the voice recorder.

The dick that presents itself through the gloryhole in front of you is dripping with precum, and before it can hit the floor, you curiously stretch out your tongue to catch one of the drops. It is salty on your tongue, not altogether bad. You bring your tongue closer to the tip, and as if he can feel your breath on him, Mr Cheetos shoves his dick further into the gloryhole, and you can feel your core ache when you imagine how he must look like on the other side; balls pressed against the wall in desperation, straining to get every inch of his length through the hole for you.

You let your tongue lap at the tip; the man on the other side rewards you with a guttural groan. He is hot and silky on your tongue, and you circle it around him a few times before letting it come to rest just below his tip, curling your tongue around him as he leaks more precum onto your tastebuds.

Mr Cheetos thrusts once, a futile gesture because he is already at his limit, thighs pressed against the wall. You control how deep he goes, and the realisation of it thrills you when you slide your tongue forward just a tad, and he groans. Closing your mouth around him, you placate him with a few sucks, swallowing down the taste of him.

“Stop,” he chokes out suddenly. He withdraws his cock slightly from the hole, as if he is gripping his base on the other side. “Gonna make me cum.”

The room is hazy, all you can see is the hard cock in front of you, and you inch forward on your knees to coax him back into your mouth. “Then cum. On my face.”

A choked whisper on the other side, followed by a few curses. It sounds like Yoongi is struggling to keep his composure- wait, did you just say Yoongi? Your addled brain backtracks a few steps only to find your memory completely hazy. This is Mr Cheetos, you remind yourself. Mr Cheetos needs a servicing before you can proceed with the experiment, and Yoongi-

“Want your pussy, please,” the voice comes again, begging, pleading. “Turn around and slide yourself on my cock. Please.”

His cock is dripping again. A random thought crosses your mind; you can’t let the floor be stained with anything, or else people are going to find out about this. You get to your feet slowly, eyes trained on his cock and that drop of precum that is dangerously about to fall, hiking your skirt up, and-

The wet, blunt head of his cock brushes your folds, and you feel him drip down your inner thigh. Smiling to yourself in triumph, you spread your thighs and take him in your hand, rubbing your clit a few times before you guide him back to where he needs to be; to where he belongs. He sinks inside of you deep when you push back onto the gloryhole, and this time you swear as if you can feel the rumble of his chest through the thin wall when he moans.

Your ass is flush against the wall as he begins to thrust shallowly. The stretch feels good, better than your small fingers.

“Fuck yourself on my cock.”

He stops moving, his cock is buried deep in your pussy. You obey him, beginning to work your hips as you scramble for the table in front of you to help you keep your balance, sinking all the way down to the base of his cock every time. You can already feel the wall that separates you and him getting wet and sloppy with your combined juices. Reaching down for your clit, you tighten around him immediately, fingers pinching and stroking.

“Let me hear you. That’s it, let me hear you as I imagine what you look like fucking yourself on my cock. You’ll let me cum inside you right? You’ll let any random stranger like me cream your pretty pussy through a gloryhole. I want you to show me your pussy after I fill it with cum.” The voice on the other side is getting slightly breathless now, and you can feel him starting to take control with his thrusts now.

You push your ass back against the gloryhole so that he can go as hard as he wants and needs.

“Answer me. Are you just a cumslut who wants men to fuck her through gloryholes and cum inside? You love it, don’t you. Random men fucking you full of cum. Even better if they knock you up.”

“N-no… just…” Your voice sounds small and fragmented to your own ears. Your vision is going hazy. Everything in the room is a blur, everything is spinning. But the one thing that remains clear is his voice.

“No? Don’t lie to me.”

“I-just want your cum. Just yours, please.”

“Whose cum do you want? Say my name. Say it as I cum inside your pretty pussy and make it mine.”

He is going so hard now that you can feel every thrust smack your ass, his balls are hitting the gloryhole, and you wish it was hitting your ass instead.

“I’m gonna cum. Fuck, oh please, right there,” you beg him to keep going, feeling your thighs tremble and your walls start to quiver around him.

“Say my name and I’ll let you cum like a good girl.”

“Mr Ch- Mr- oh fuck, I’m coming, Yoongi, I want your cum!”

The man on the other side responds with a pleased chuckle that you can feel radiating all the way up your spine as he gives you a few sloppy thrusts before he groans, burying his cock deep as he-

Warmth seeps through your panties, and you gasp, eyes flying open.

Suddenly, the world presents itself to you in 1080p quality as you are met with the view of your ceiling. Drenched in sweat, you sit up gingerly only to grimace when you feel the stickiness of your panties.

God fucking dammit, did you seriously just have a wet dream? At this age?

The last thing you remember from last night was… working on your paper. You must have fallen asleep and migrated to your bed at some point. When you glance towards your work desk, the tell-tale signs of an all-nighter are there, alright; opened bags of chips, half empty coffee cups and your laptop still open.

Pushing your covers aside, you grumble to yourself as you hurry to clean yourself up, only to stop dead in your tracks when flashbacks of your dream come back to you in bits and pieces. And more importantly, the name that left your lips-

This cannot be happening.

You stare at yourself in the mirror. It was just a dream. Just a stupid old dream.

But dreams originate from the sub-conscious. Dreams represent the id, the repressed sexual and primal urges that are locked away and hidden from society because they are unacceptable. Having a sexual fantasy is completely normal, but more worrying is who it was about.

You press a hand to your temple as the thoughts race against each other. Sometimes, you think that pursuing this degree is a mistake because you tend to psychoanalyse yourself in a manner that is all too unhealthy.

Splashing some cold water on your face, you brush your teeth quickly and tie your hair back. When you feel significantly more human again, you dig for your phone in the mess that is your bed only to realise that you’d somehow slept through all four of your alarms- and that you’re currently 10 minutes late for your last ever session.

“Fucking hell,” you swear under your breath as you gather your materials and fly out the door.

This is ridiculous. Just fucking ridiculous.

Yoongi never runs. Yet today, he dragged himself out of bed at five in the morning just to make sure he was out of the room before Jimin was up. Jimin likes to get in his morning workouts before 7am sharp, and he is a notoriously light sleeper.

But now, run completed, drenched in sweat and feeling gross all over, Yoongi has yet to come up with a plausible excuse to get him out of his session today. The last ever session for the month, and granted, he has no actual reason to wriggle out of it. It’s just, a part of him isn’t ready for it to be over.

He should have savoured the past few days more. That sweet period of limbo where everything is possible and yet, nothing is set in stone. All weekend long that fucking lemon yellow polish had been haunting him, mocking him even. Yoongi had been oscillating between writing it off as a mere coincidence and something else; something much larger and beyond his wildest dreams. He hadn’t dared to even think it aloud for fear of unleashing a never ending stream of self-criticism.

Deciding to bite the bullet and just say whatever comes to mind, Yoongi pushes the door open, catching Jimin in the midst of pulling a shirt on.

“Hey man. Where’ve you been- wait, you don’t look so good, you doing alright?” Jimin narrows his eyes as he closes the distance between them, tugging his shirt down as he surveys Yoongi’s flushed face.

Yoongi’s just about to grumble a retort- something about still being fit enough to kick Jimin’s ass out on the track- when he stops himself. At least that run had cleared his mind up a little for him to see that Jimin is offering him an easy way out. “Um, actually I’m not feeling too good.”

“What’s wrong?” He immediately comes over to put a hand on Yoongi’s forehead. “You’ve been off ever since our game last week. If you were coming down with something, it’d be over by now.” Jimin worries his plush bottom lip as he draws his hand away. “No temperature. Were you working out? You should take it easy man.”

“Yeah, I just…” Yoongi’s voice trails off. He’s never been good at lying, especially not to Jimin’s face. As obnoxious as his roommate is sometimes, when Jimin is worried, he is the epitome of a mother hen. So he decides to keep it simple. “Your snoring kept me up last night.”

Jimin’s eyes widen in mock hurt. “Dude, what? I do not snore!!”

“That’s exactly what someone who snores all night long would say,” Yoongi says as he reaches for a towel and some spare clothes. “I’m gonna take a shower and go back to bed. Hopefully without your loud ass.”

Jimin just grumbles under his breath, still protesting as he fumbles around his room to get ready for his morning class. But suddenly, he stops in his tracks as he finds his phone. “Wait, that last session with- your last session is today. Do you want me to cancel it?”

“Could you?” Yoongi casts a glance back at Jimin for just a second, all the better to fool him into thinking that this is no big deal, as if he hadn’t been ruminating on ways to worm his way out of this experiment for the past few days. “I mean, if it’s too much trouble to reschedule, then…”

“It’s fine, I got it,” Jimin mumbles with his arms full of books as he texts with one hand. “I’m sure _- um, she won’t mind.”

Yoongi’s ears perk up at the sound of Jimin’s hasty cover up- he was sure that he accidentally almost name dropped there. When he glances over at his roommate, Jimin is avoiding all eye contact as he puts his phone away and ruffles his hair like he always does when he’s flustered or nervous. He decides to probe a little.

“Speaking of… her,” Yoongi begins. “It’s her final year project right? Why’s she not doing it in a group like you are?”

“Because she’s stubborn as always,” Jimin chuckles under his breath, pausing to slap on a little moisturizer on his face. “She thinks she’s really on to something with her thesis, though she won’t let anyone read it. Not even me, her best friend! Can you believe it?” He turns around, a glob of cream still on his nose, with an indignant expression. “She literally just told me like 10% of it. Said it was all I needed to know.”

Best friend? Hmm, now he’s getting somewhere. Trying his best to keep his voice casual, Yoongi asks, “do I know this person?”

Once again, Jimin immediately stiffens up. It’s painfully obvious in his posture that he realises he’s treading on dangerous territory now. Jimin turns back to the mirror and slowly, deliberately spreads the cream onto his skin, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes in the mirror. “Yoongi, you know I can’t tell you that. It’d ruin the sanctity of her experiment. She told you that you can’t have any contact with her outside of that room, right?”

Yoongi sighs internally. At least he tried. He’s just about to turn to head for the showers when Jimin speaks again.

“Why do you wanna know who she is? Did something happen in those sessions?” He asks cautiously, as if he is treading on broken glass. Yoongi can hear from the tone in Jimin’s voice that he’s pretending to play it off casually. “Damn, you really gotta get laid soon.”

At least Jimin gave him a way out again, even if he did it unknowingly. Purposely avoiding the first part of his question, Yoongi shrugs. “I did just get laid. Remember? That girl from your party. After our game. _____. I thought I told you. That little seven minutes in heaven stunt that you pulled?”

At the sound of your name, Jimin visibly pales. “Wh- Who? Who did you hook up with?”

“Did I get her name wrong?” Yoongi muses, searching his memory. He’d only heard it once, and he doubts he could have remembered it wrongly. “_____. She was at your party last week. Dude, you asked me to kiss her in that stupid truth or dare game!”

Jimin’s eyes slide left and right, avoiding all eye contact as his lips press into a firm line. “Did I? I was really drunk. Maybe I just don’t remember.”

Suspicion sinks into the pit of Yoongi’s stomach and drags him down, threatening to swallow him whole. He clenches his fist around his towel. Jimin’s reaction only further serves his theory that… no. It can’t be. He’s simply reading too much into things. “Yeah, you were pretty drunk there.”

Yoongi desperately needs to escape somewhere else and think about all of this stupid, stupid coincidences, the little things that are adding up here and there. He leaves Jimin still standing in their room and hightails it to the showers, forcing the memory of your lips, your kisses, and most hauntingly, your fingers, out of his mind.

“Rough morning?” When you arrive, Mr Gucci is already seated on the other side, obscured by the glory- by Mr Cheetos’s experimental setup. You forgot to reset it after your last session with him, so you reach for the panel and remove it, forcing aside unholy thoughts.

“Definitely a rough morning,” Mr Gucci nods to himself when he sees your unkempt hair, spectacles askew on your face and currently sporting your baggiest hoodie. He, on the other hand, while also dressed comfortably in a baggy shirt, pulls it off with a grace and effortlessness that you can only dream of.

“I’m sorry, did you wait long?” You hurry to get your notes in order, and more importantly, catch your breath and try to regain your composure. You’re sorry that the last session with Mr Gucci has to end this way, even more sorry that he has to see this side of you that should never be revealed to the world. “Just give me a minute to get this set up- you can start with three impressions first if you like. Last week’s were ambitious, pretty and fresh.”

“Sure,” Mr Gucci bobs his head. “Ambitious, pretty, but not-so-fresh.”

You can’t help but laugh as you make a note of this. “Guess I set myself up for that one huh?”

Mr Gucci leans forward on his elbows, intrigued. “Tell me something, Ms Prada. Do all girls have magic powers like you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, no offense,” he holds his hands up. “I’m just incredibly impressed at how different you look. I mean, from how you usually look like. I assume you overslept today and didn’t have time to get to the regular routine, but…”

“Let me ruin your fantasy for you,” you cut him off. “This is what girls wake up looking like. None of that hashtag woke up like this bullshit. You don’t have any sisters, do you?”

“None,” he confirms. “Wait, but please don’t get me wrong! I didn’t mean it in an insulting way. I’m just amazed at how much effort it takes, and that deserves incredible respect.”

Mr Gucci seems worried over having potentially offended you, but the joke he made about not being so fresh tells you that you’re at least getting somewhere with him. Complete strangers wouldn’t mention it at all, though he is still clearly treading carefully to some extent. You’re not offended at all, and you convey this with a genuine smile. “You wouldn’t believe the effort it takes to get from this- a zero to a passable six. In fact, I’m sorry you have to see this at all.”

Mr Gucci’s eyes widen. “A six? That’s the best you give yourself? You’re clearly a nine, at least!”

His sincerity really touches you as you thank him with a smile.

“Honestly, women’s beauty standards are just bullshit,” he shakes his head sadly. “If I had a superpower, I’d completely erase all the beauty standards in the world.”

“Wow, that’s interesting,” you muse while jotting down a few notes. Mr Gucci had just answered one of your potential questions on his own, and this is definitely progress. It’s far from a simple answer you expect from him, reveals something that he’s passionate about. “Usually when people talk about superpowers, they want to go back in time, fly, talk to animals, that kind of thing.”

“Hey, how’d you know? Talking to animals is my second choice,” he grins. “But yeah. I was taking a sociology mod last semester for my elective and it really got me thinking about issues like these. And how I wish it could be solved with a snap of my fingers. Just like that.”

“That’s it, I’m voting you for president,” you grin back at him. “Think of it. You’ll be a better version of Thanos. Just one snap.”

Mr Gucci bursts out in laughter at your joke, clapping his hands several times, and you really feel as if you’re making a connection here. While it did come only in the last session, there’s no doubt that there are the beginnings of something stirring here.

The timer on your desk rings, signalling the end of your session.

“So, Mr Gucci, this marks the end of our month together. Before we end, I just wanted to thank you for participating,” you put your notes aside to smile at him, sincerely regretting that you won’t be able to meet him outside of this room. He definitely seems like good company.

“Thank you for having me, and I must say, it was a new experience,” Mr Gucci says. “I didn’t know what to expect coming into this, and I think I got a lot more out of it than just extra credit.”

“That’s good to hear. Okay, for the last time ever, three impressions?”

“Friendly, cool and my type.”

After Mr Gucci is safely out the door, you reach for your phone’s camera mode to at least try and fix your hair a little before Mr Cheetos is due. Not that it would matter now, since he won’t be seeing you at all, but you feel just a tad ratty and unkempt like this.

You notice that you have a few messages from Jimin asking you if it’s possible to reschedule Mr Cheetos’s session since he’s feeling unwell. That’s strange. Such a last minute request makes things seem urgent, and you can’t help but feel your stomach flip over in worry. You press the call icon and place the phone to your ear.

“Hey- yeah, what’s up?” Jimin’s voice answers.

“Chim, I just wanted to ask if Mr- if he’s okay. I mean, it’s not anything urgent right?”

“Oh no no,” Jimin’s reply comes immediately. “He’s just feeling a little under the weather. Said he needs to rest up today. I’ll ask him when he’s free to reschedule again, then get back to you on that. Sound good?”

“Um, yeah. Sure.” Jimin’s reply leaves a lot to be desired, you find yourself craving for more details about Mr Cheetos. Instead your best friend leaves you frustrated yet unable to ask any more questions, and you curse silently. “Wait! Um, I think I should like maybe get him something. You know, like soup or um, lozenges?”

You cringe at the sound of your own voice. Immediately you wish you’d just let Jimin hang up, and you can go straight back to your room and back to bed. What if Jimin gets suspicious? What if he demands to know why you suddenly care about Mr Cheetos so much? Suddenly feeling a need to justify your actions, you clear your throat. “Because, um I was kinda sick the last time and I feel bad that I might have passed my cold to him. You know?”

Jimin’s chuckle comes from the other side of the line, and you almost heave a sigh of relief.

You’re just being paranoid. Calm the fuck down or you’ll give yourself away, you mutter to yourself.

“Why, what’d you two do in that tiny little room, hmmm?” Jimin’s innocent joke sends your blood pressure sky rocketing again, and this time you can literally feel a bead of sweat make its way down your forehead like in those cartoons, except there is nothing funny about this. “A little spit swapping? Mouth to mouth?”

“We didn’t do anything!” You exclaim in a panic, which you try to cover up with a nervous laugh. “What would we be doing other than the experiment?”

“Geez, you nearly took my eardrums out,” Jimin whines on the end of the line. “Fine, just drop by my room and leave it at the door or something. I’ll pass it to him and say it’s from you.”

More than relieved that he dropped the subject so quickly, you shoot him a quick word of thanks before cutting the line, gathering up your things as you exit the room and head for the cafeteria.

You’re not really sure what to get for a sick person; you’ve never had to take care of one before. Jimin’s the only friend who’d warrant this kind of treatment, and yet you’ve never brought him food or anything like this before. Scanning over the options quickly, you decide on a good old chicken noodle soup and place your order.

With a warm container clasped close to your chest, you send a few texts to Jimin just to let him know that you’re on the way as you ascend the stairs to his room. He replies back that he isn’t in at the moment, and you don’t want the soup to get cold outside, or even possibly getting stolen, so you decide to knock on the door to get his roommate.

It’s not till the door opens that you belatedly remember who Jimin’s roommate is… too little too late as you come face to face with Min Yoongi, whom you haven’t seen since that night.

He looks sleepy, hair tousled as if he just got out of bed, in a half yawn as he peeks his head out. You can’t help but notice his attire of a thin shirt and boxers, but then you remind your eyes to stay strictly at eye level.

“Jimin, can’t you fucking let me sleep in pea- oh.” Yoongi immediately sobers up when he realises it’s not his roommate he’s talking to. “_____. Wh-what are you doing here?”

The moment Jimin gets off the phone, an inevitable sense of dread nearly consumes him. Jimin fucked up.

You’re absolutely going to murder him when you find out. This was never supposed to happen. How could he have let his lines get crossed like that? And as if Yoongi’s suspicion isn’t enough, you just had to call him right at that moment like some sort of freaky omniscient being as if you had heard every single word of his conversation with Yoongi.

His temples are throbbing. The lengths he has to go to keep this stupid secret. And more importantly, keep the two of you apart.

He’s just thankful that the whole conversation took place over the phone as opposed to face to face. He’d already had a hard time getting away from Yoongi earlier, but as his best friend, he’s almost certain you’ll see right through him. Since when did his life become this complicated? Jimin just wants to play basketball and get pussy. And be complimented on his ass. Is that really too much to ask for?

On his way to lab, Jimin’s phone pings again.

You: hey, at ur door in 5. u in?

Jimin: nope, omw to lab. Just leave it on the doorknob

You: it’ll get cold, jackass

You: I’ll ask ur roommate to take it in

Annoyed at the sudden show of your caring side, Jimin tosses his phone into his bag as he joins his final year project group in the lab, opening his laptop and clicking open a few reports he’d typed up a few days ago. But there’s something stopping him from focusing, a niggling thought at the back of his head…

I’ll ask ur roommate to take it in

Fuck.

Jimin all but shoves his laptop away and sprints for the door, yelling out a hasty apology to his team members as he fumbles for his phone before deciding to pour all his energy into making it to his room as fast as possible to intercept you. It only takes about 10 minutes typically to get from his room to the psychology building, but with a dead sprint, Jimin makes it in five.

But it’s still too late.

He sees you and Yoongi staring awkwardly at each other, and thankfully for him, Yoongi hasn’t seemed to realise what you’re carrying- making Jimin’s life infinitely easier, at least for now. Yoongi is fidgeting awkwardly on his feet, you are nervously running a hand through your hair- a habit you picked up from him, and Jimin can feel the awkwardness emanating off the both of you.

“H-hey guys,” he wedges his body in between you and Yoongi, conveniently blocking his view of you. His breaths are coming in pants and he can’t get his words out in time- maybe he isn’t as fit as he’d like to think. “Forgot something- for lab. What are you guys doing?”

You give him a strange look as if you’re seeing through all his lies, and Jimin panics for a second, afraid that you’re going to give yourself away.

“Oh, you needed to talk to me about something right?” Jimin hurries on, turning his back to Yoongi and ushering you away from the door. “Let me uh, get my stuff and I’ll be right out.”

“What’s with you today, Park?” You narrow your eyes in suspicion. “You’re being all cagey. It’s not like I haven’t seen the utter disaster that is your room by now. I can’t say I approve of your lack of cleanliness, but it’s nothing to be surprised about.”

“Yoongi just put up some porn posters all over our walls!” Jimin blurts, and he immediately wants to kick himself. Really? Porn posters? Couldn’t he have come up with something better?

Behind him, Yoongi just lets out another yawn, unimpressed whatsoever, turning to go back to bed. For once Jimin is thankful for his roommate’s unhealthy addiction to sleep. Yoongi doesn’t even bat an eyelid or seem to have heard Jimin at all. “Just get your stuff and get the fuck out of here, Park. Nice seeing you, ______.”

Grateful for the opening, Jimin darts in and pretends to grab a random notebook before letting the door slam behind him, his cheeks bright red with exertion and maybe a little bit of panic. He glances down to see the paper bag in your hands and reaches for it. “You wanted to pass me this?”

“Not you, asshat. For Mr… for the test subject. The one who cancelled today.” You clarify, handing him the bag. “You said he wasn’t feeling well…?”

“I did, yeah I did,” Jimin grips the bag tightly as his breathing returns to normal. That was too close a call. “I’ll make sure to get it to him.”

“Okay,” you nod to yourself, eyes straying to Jimin’s door once more, and he can feel a fresh wave of panic. “Is Yoongi… is he okay though? He looked a little pale there.”

“What?” Jimin laughs nervously, turning to follow your gaze and surreptitiously positioning himself in between you and the door. “Haven’t you noticed he’s always as pale as a sheet? Didn’t you already see his scrawny, pale ass anyway?”

Now it’s your turn to be on edge as you immediately slide your gaze away from Jimin’s. “Wh-what do you mean? I didn’t see anything the other night.”

“Who said it was the other night?” Jimin raises his eyebrows, and you are caught in your own slip-up. Still, the stubborn set of your jaw tells him that you’ll deny it till kingdom come. “Oh come on, do you really think I’m stupid? That look between the two of you just now practically screams it.” Jimin exhales, knowing that he’s treading on dangerous territory here, but he has to confirm it. Has to know if you and Yoongi really did hook up and if he’s really in deep shit.

“It was nothing, ok? Just a one-night stand. Doesn’t mean anything, you know I don’t fuck strangers like that,” you mumble with a roll of your eyes, pulling out your phone to check the time. “Aren’t you beyond late for your meeting anyway? I don’t think you have time to be standing here and interrogating me about my sex life-“

Jimin’s eyes widen as he realises just how long he’s been standing here. “Oh fuck, shit, gotta go. You’re not off the hook though!”

A few hours later, Yoongi hears the door creak open again and he lets out a small groan, turning over in bed and opening his eyes. Jimin is back from class, and he comes over to pull the covers off.

“Get up, lazy ass. Got you something, you should eat it. You’ll feel better.”

Yoongi lifts his head off his pillow in interest as Jimin sets down a paper bag on his desk and lifts out a tumbler from inside it. When he uncaps it, the tantalizing smell of chicken and soup wafts toward him, and even he can’t resist it as he climbs out of bed slowly.

“What’s with you today, Park? You’re being unusually nice to me,” Yoongi comments as he seats himself at his desk, reaching for the spoon and starting to dig into the warm concoction.

Jimin takes offense at this, bottom lip pouting. “I’m always nice to you!”

For a few moments, nothing is heard except for the noises of slurping as Yoongi gobbles everything up as if he hasn’t eaten in days. When he’s nearly done with the food, he turns to look at Jimin, who’s casually using his phone on his bed.

“Hey, you know _____ pretty well, right?”

“Yeah, why?” Jimin answers back with his attention still focused on his phone. “She’s my best friend, although she’s annoying as hell sometimes.”

“Is she the same best friend as the one I’m doing the experiment for?”

Jimin’s thumbs freeze over his phone screen; Yoongi can hear his sharp intake of breath, and he knows he’s got Jimin now.

“They’re the same person aren’t they?”

“What makes you think that?” Jimin is fiddling with his phone case, a telltale sign of his anxiety. He stubbornly refuses to look at Yoongi, but Yoongi refuses to give up. He’ll squeeze it out of Jimin somehow, it’s the only way he can find out for sure.

“You’ve always been a terrible liar, Jimin,” Yoongi sighs as he leans back in his chair. “Now spill. Everything. Why did you set me up with her at your party? You’re the only one out of the three of us who knows so-“

“I was having a brainfuck, alright,” Jimin exhales wearily, giving up all pretense now. “I got my wires crossed. I was really drunk that night, and when I saw her and you together, some weird part of my brain thought you looked really good together. It must have been the way you were looking at her, because I swear you never look like that unless you’re pining for someone-“

“I do NOT pine over girls,” Yoongi immediately retorts, his cheeks flushing pink along with the tips of his ears.

“-how was I to know that you’d end up fucking? For all I know that night, it ended with a harmless kiss,” Jimin throws his hands up in the air, pushing himself off the bed to start pacing back and forth. “You two were already talking before I could stop you. If I stepped in to separate you, that would be suspicious as fuck. And anyway, as far as ______ is concerned, you and Mr Cheetos are two separate people. So what’s the problem here? And as long as you play along-”

“She’s not two separate people to me,” Yoongi fights back. “Not now, not anymore. How can I keep going like this, keep lying to her?”

“Look,” Jimin sits on his bed and massages his temples. “You can’t, under any circumstances, let her find out before she submits her thesis. The truth will destroy her; you know it will. Not only will she insist on redoing her preliminary experiment, the added stress of it all is just… she doesn’t deserve this.”

Jimin is right. You definitely don’t deserve to have all your hard work go down the drain like that. There is a moment of silence as Yoongi contemplates his choices. A part of him is dying to see your face now that he knows everything, put the two halves of you that he knows together in order to make a whole. Even as he admits this to himself, it’s painfully obvious that he’s being selfish, doing so would benefit no one but himself. And it would destroy you in the process.

All for what? Just so he can have a shot at being with you? What makes him think you’d even want to see his face after he single-handedly ruined your thesis and potential graduation? Maybe not single handedly, because there is Jimin to blame too, but still.

“That’s from her, by the way. I told her you were sick to cancel yesterday. That’s why she was at our room earlier.” Jimin breaks his train of thought.

“But isn’t the sanctity of the experiment already ruined anyway?” Yoongi questions, a last ditch effort. “We had contact outside of that experiment room.”

“No, because to her, you are two separate people,” Jimin explains. “Up till now, all the observations and remarks she has on her report are based on interacting with you as Mr Cheetos, not Min Yoongi. Within that room, those are two different people. Any feelings she developed for Mr Cheetos is completely unrelated to any feelings she has for Min Yoongi. You understand what I’m saying, right?”

Yoongi slumps hard against the chair, closing his eyes. He swallows hard. “So what do we do now?”

“We pretend,” Jimin has his lips in a firm line. “She rescheduled your last session for tomorrow, by the way. Just have to tough it out for one more day. And after she submits everything, which should be the day after.”

“… and after that?” Yoongi hates the way his voice sounds. So full of hope but yet so vulnerable at the same time. The unspoken part of his question lingers in the air, but Jimin is more than adept to read between the lines.

“You’re free to do whatever you want,” he shrugs. “Tell her, or not. It’s up to you, buddy.”

Now that he knows, everything is different.

How could he not have figured out it was you right after that night? Your fingers are so distinct, even without the coat of nail polish, he’s sure that he could recognise them anywhere.

On the last session, Yoongi is more self-conscious than usual. Is his voice alright? Maybe he should try to speak in a lower voice so that you won’t recognise him. You and him have barely spoken to each other outside of this room, so there’s not much danger there, but he still doesn’t want to risk it.

Which prompts your question, “are you feeling okay, Mr Cheetos? You sound a little rough. Sorry we had to do this today, it’s just that I need to wrap everything up soon, and-“

“It’s fine,” he clears his throat, flexing his fingers in your grip as he leans his head against the wall slightly. “I’m fine. Sorry for yesterday, by the way. And thank you for the soup. It was really good, and it helped a lot.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” your voice comes from the other side. “I’ll make it quick so you can rest, okay? Your last three impressions of me were relatable, intriguing and familiar. Any change?”

Yoongi bites his lip hard at the irony. “No, no change.”

“Okay thanks,” there is a pause and Yoongi assumes that you’re writing down some notes. “Question for today: if you had a superpower, what kind of power would it be?”

This time Yoongi has to pause and think, force himself to concentrate and stop focusing on the fact that it’s you sitting on the other side of the room from him. “I think… I’d like to be a superhero who saves people from disappointment and rejection. Like I’ll absorb it into myself? Sounds lame right?”

“No it doesn’t,” you answer immediately. “I’ve never heard of that one before. Tell me more maybe?”

“Well, if you think about it, traditional superheroes are all concerned with physical and mortal danger, all that stuff, but even they themselves aren’t invincible to intangible things like disappointment and rejection. And I think it’s because they are intangible that makes them so devastating and insidious. There’s no one in this world who’s impervious to disappointment and rejection.” Yoongi self-consciously flexes his fingers, wondering if his hand is getting a little too sweaty and whether you’d mind or not.

There’s a brief pause and then a sound as if you’re humming in agreement. When you speak, your voice has dropped to a lower, more intimate register, one that sends shivers up Yoongi’s spine. He just hopes it doesn’t telegraph down his arm and over to your side. “I’d very much like to be saved from disappointment and rejection. How should I call you when I need you then?”

Yoongi knows you’re joking, that this is entirely just for the sake of the experiment. This is not an invitation to tell you his real name and just let the cat out of the bag. But being behind this screen has him more reckless than usual, what could it hurt if he drops a few hints here and there? “You’d have to call me by my real name. Somehow, I think Mr Cheetos doesn’t quite cut it for a superhero name.”

His heart is pounding in his chest, mind racing to come up with all the possible ways you could respond to this.

“I guess I’ll remain disappointed then,” you say with an exaggerated sigh. “But actually, I do have a real question for you. If you want to save everyone from disappointment and rejection, does that mean that you don’t believe in the ‘everything happens for a reason’ mantra?”

“No way, I don’t believe in that bullshit,” Yoongi shakes his head vehemently. “I always thought it was utter nonsense, just shit white girls put on posters in their rooms.”

“You mean like the hashtag just girly things?” You are laughing on the other side, and the sound of your gentle laughter brings a smile to his own face. “What an absolute meme it has turned into. Because of people like you.”

“What can I say? I’m one of those assholes,” Yoongi has a shitfaced grin on, wishing he could see the look on your face, although for now he’ll settle on just briefly skimming his thumb over the top of your knuckles, hoping he can get away with it, and he does. “It’s so full of shit. Sometimes things just happen and there isn’t a set reason for it. Maybe there is, but we aren’t always able to know. If we believe there’s always a reason for something, we’ll drive ourselves crazy trying to find out.”

“So sometimes things just… happen? For no reason at all?”

“Yup,” Yoongi says firmly, popping the ‘p’ against his lips for emphasis. “Just accept it and move on. Hurts less that way.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience.”

Yoongi makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat, and you laugh on the other side. “Alright, next time I’ll try doing that.”

There’s a brief pause before you speak again. “I think we’re just about done here. Anything else you want to say to me before we end with three impressions?”

Yoongi fights past the lump in his throat to say something, anything. Regret tastes as bitter as wormwood, and he can’t get the words out. Instead, he bites his lip hard. “No, nothing. My three impressions are still the same. Relatable, intriguing and… familiar.”

“Okay, noted. Thanks for all your help here, Mr Cheetos. I really appreciate it,” you squeeze his hand lightly as you say this, and he can feel his treacherous heart skip a beat just from this simple gesture. “It was great to have you here.”

“It was great to be here too.” Somehow his words sound choked even to his own ears, and he can only pray and hope that you don’t pick up on it. For once Yoongi is glad that you can’t see the look on his face and he can’t see yours either, for it would make it all the more difficult to prise his palm away from yours and stand. “So, um… see you around, I guess?”

There is a hopeful note in his voice that he picks up on right off the bat, and Yoongi hates it. Hates being so vulnerable like this, but somehow with you he’s always in this state.

“See you around, then,” you confirm, withdrawing your arm.

Yoongi exits the room without sparing even a single glance back, afraid that it might make him act on impulse and tear down that damn barrier to really see you. He opens the door, focusing on the way his fingers close around the handle, steps out, letting the door close gently behind him.

And that’s that.

Your eyes are sore, fingers and shoulders aching and still, you’re not quite satisfied with what you have. The midnight deadline is drawing closer and closer, and ever since you’d ended the experiment with Mr Cheetos, you’d locked yourself in your room without coming out.

Blowing a sigh through your lips, you lean back in your seat for a moment, closing your eyes to chase away the glaring imprint of your computer screen. Then you open them again and scroll through your notes for the last session.

Week Four Notes and Observations

Test Subject: Mr Gucci (Control Experiment)

Initial Impressions: Ambitious, pretty, not-so-fresh

(Note: this was a joke in reference to observer’s slightly unkempt state. Observer and participant shared a laugh over this)

Final Impressions: Friendly, cool, and ‘my type’

Personal observations: Conversation seemed a lot more natural this time around. Subject offered genuine personal opinions to question posed, expressed more of his personality. Definite progress in terms of emotional intimacy has been made as compared to the first week. Overall, there was an easy camaraderie between subject and observer, a result of spending the past month together.

Test Subject: Hot Cheetos

Initial Impressions: Relatable, intriguing, familiar (no change from week three)

Final Impressions: Relatable, intriguing, familiar (still no change)

Personal observations: Although subject’s impressions did not change throughout, he was very willing to share insights behind his thought process as he answered the question posed. Subject seems to have formed a little bit of an attachment (?) to the Observer, hinting desire to interact with the Observer outside of the experiment. Such results serve to be in line with the original hypothesis.

It’s enough. It has to be enough. As the minutes tick by, you scroll up and scan through the previous weeks again to see if you’ve missed anything. Then you move on to the last part of your preliminary proposal.

Final Conclusion

Throughout this month long trial experiment, the main aim was to test how human bonds are formed and cultivated under specific conditions. More importantly was to study whether the element of anonymity and physical contact would contribute to a landslide difference between subjects and their willingness to connect emotionally with another stranger. As the results from each week have proven, test subject who wasn’t allowed anonymity nor physical contact took a lot longer to establish a sense of trust and non-superficial interaction with the Observer. Whereas the test subject who was allowed anonymity and physical contact demonstrated a solid and perhaps even lasting emotional connection with the Observer.

In your mind still lingers all the things you and Mr Cheetos talked about during your sessions. Thank God you don’t have to write down the exact content of them in your report, for it would be an incredible violation of privacy, and you prefer to keep his words to yourself. Something only between the two of you, a shared secret. Even though you don’t know his true identity, you can be rest assured that something tethers you to him at least in this reality.

With just minutes to spare before the deadline, you save your document and upload it to be submitted, indulging in a stretch before you tumble into bed for a long, well-deserved sleep.

It’s a bit strange; life after submitting a huge proposal. It’s like you don’t know what to do with your life anymore, like you’ve lost a sense of purpose. You have to wait a bit to hear your supervisor’s comments on your proposal, and in order to distract yourself from harping over it, you decide to go see Jimin. That brat always has a knack for annoying the heck out of you when you need it most.

When you get to his room you try the doorknob without even bothering to knock, completely forgetting that he has a roommate. As a result, you stumble upon Min Yoongi dressed in boxers and no shirt, sitting at his desk working on his computer.

“Oh shit, um sorry, I was looking for Jimin,” you immediately avert your gaze, cheeks heating up. “I should have knocked. I’m sorry, I’ll just let you, uh…”

“Why so flustered?” He responds in a lazy drawl, turning in his chair to face the door, not in the least bit concerned about his half naked state. You wish he’d have the decency to rush and put on a shirt and some pants, at least. “It’s not like you caught me doing anything… illicit. I’m just on my laptop.”

The way you avoid his gaze stubbornly is just adorable, Yoongi can’t resist riling you up further. “Or did you think I was doing something else?”

“Do you know where Jimin is?” You avoid his question as you close the door further so that only a crack remains, shielding your body behind it.

“Hmm? Park?” Yoongi pretends to think for a while before he shrugs. “I dunno. Probably working out or something. Why?”

“Nothing, I just… well, see you later,” you say in a hurry and close the door, but Yoongi is on his feet and has his hand on the doorknob in a flash.

“Hey, wait. Why’re you acting so weird around me? Is it because of that night? We never got to talk about it properly, you know,” Yoongi pulls the door open a tad, fighting against your strength, and you must say that he is a lot stronger than you would think, given his wiry frame. He leans forward and lowers his voice to a sinful drawl. “So I figured now’s a good time as any other.”

“What’s there to talk about?” You sigh, relenting and letting him pull the door open to his liking. “It was just… it was just that. No big deal.”

Yoongi laughs and throws his head back as if he’s thoroughly amused with you. “Damn, you’re really a prude, aren’t you? Can’t even say the word. We fucked, we had sex, I had my cock in your pussy-“

“God, stop!” You hiss at him, stepping inside and slamming the door closed before someone overhears the filth that is pouring from his lips.

Internally Yoongi grins at his genius, he got you to come back inside without even touching you. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it. You’re so cute, Ms Prude.”

Your lips twitch at the nickname, and Yoongi wonders if that’s enough. But then you frown at him and cross your arms. “Fine, we had sex. We talked about it too. Is that enough?”

“Enough?” Yoongi raises a brow, copying your stance. “No, not nearly enough for me. See, when I have sex that mind-blowing with someone, I tend to want repeat acts. Multiple.”

You sniff and toss your hair over your shoulder, turning away from him primly. “Sorry, I don’t fuck people I don’t know.”

Yoongi pretends to frown in mock hurt when really, your cute little attitude and playing hard to get is more endearing to him than ever. “Really? You don’t know me? I spat in your mouth and you swallowed it. Among other things. I’d say exchange of bodily fluids counts as getting to know someone…”

You put a hand to your temple and sigh loudly, as if Yoongi’s some thick idiot. “Not that, you asshat. I meant emotionally. Mentally. I don’t know who you are as a person. That kind of thing. I slept with you that night because… I don’t know why. I just lost control, and I can assure you that it’s not something that happens often.”

Yoongi is quiet for a moment, letting your words sink in as he contemplates his response. It occurs to him that this is the perfect opening, and all traces of his smirk vanish from his face. He turns to look at you with an intensity unmatched, and sensing his seriousness, you straighten your posture.

“What if I told you that you do know me? As a person. You know my deepest darkest fears, my hopes and dreams, and I know yours.” Yoongi holds his breath. It’s now or never. Fuck it. He’s never been one to live life without taking a few risks here and there anyway. “What if I told you… I am Mr Cheetos?”

The words have an immediate effect on you as you take a step back, jaw dropping and your hands coming up to cover your mouth. It feels like all the air has just been sucked out of the room, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe, or even think straight. “Wait. I don’t… I don’t believe you. How can- it’s just-“

“It’s true, every single bit,” Yoongi says calmly. “How else would I know that nickname? The top thing on your bucket list is to perform in front of people you know with a mask on because you want to be a better version of yourself. And your biggest fear is being inadequate, being unable to make it on your own, living your whole life as merely average.”

Hearing your own deepest darkest secrets repeated back to you is bone-chilling, and unsettling to say the least, but then another part of you realises the implication of all this. You and Yoongi fucked at Jimin’s party right in the middle of your experiment. Which means that you continued to see him even after you’d had contact with him outside of that room. That wet dream with Yoongi and Mr Cheetos now seems like the fates laughing down at you, scorning you.

The entire experiment is ruined. The results are contaminated, and the worst thing is that you’ve already submitted it and there is no way of getting it back. Your fate is sealed.

“How long have you known?” You ask quietly.

“I suspected it on the third week.” Yoongi starts slowly. “But I never did anything to confirm it till… till this week. Everything was just falling into place so uncannily, and you know Jimin sucks at keeping a secret so he…”

“My god. I’m going to fucking kill Park Jimin,” you clench your fists. “That stupid little fucker knew all along! He made us make out with each other at his party knowing full well that-“

“Wait, he was drunk, he didn’t know we slept together till I told him,” Yoongi rushes in to defend his roommate, though he can sense that your anger is steadily mounting. “He didn’t mean to set us up at the party together. It was meant to be harmless, he didn’t know we’d-“

As enraged as you are, you’re still able to sift through your emotions and see reason, a quality that you’re proud of, maybe not at this moment though. Jimin only made the two of you exchange a kiss. Never forced you to go any further than that. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. For being unable to resist his sweet lips and alluring touches, for giving in to temptation far too easily. Now your entire future is ruined.

You sink down to the ground in defeat, closing your eyes as you feel a tear escape onto your cheek. You hear Yoongi call out your name, feel his hand on your cheek wiping the tear away, but you move your head away weakly.

“It’s ruined, it’s all gone now, my proposal,” you are fighting back tears. “The experimental results are contaminated. I had contact with you outside this room without even realising it. Come to think of it, I may have had contact with Mr… the other subject too without even knowing it… fuck, I’m so fucking stupid, it’s all ruined!!!”

Yoongi scrambles onto his knees in front of you, the sight of your tears is heart wrenching. He cradles your face in his hands, forces you to look at him. Your breathing is unevenly fast, and he can see that you are having a panic attack, unable to think straight as the tears roll down your face.

“______. Just breathe with me. Look at me and breathe. In, one… two… three. Out, one… two… three,” Yoongi forces you to concentrate on his voice, fighting the urge to take you in his arms and hold you close. He repeats the mantra until your sobs have quietened, and you are staring blankly at his chest.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Your voice is small, and there is a lost look in your eyes.

“It’s not ruined, your proposal isn’t gone,” Yoongi tries to recall the exact words Jimin had said to him the other day. From another pysch major’s perspective, Jimin seemed confident that your thesis would still be valid. “Within that room, you still knew me as two different people. Mr Cheetos and Min Yoongi are two unrelated people to you right till this very moment. All the observations you recorded are still valid. You’re right when you said you don’t know me, Min Yoongi. So it couldn’t have affected your observations in any way. You understand?”

You are quiet for a moment as you listen to him, but then you shake your head stubbornly. “No, no it’s not, I have to get my proposal back and redo the whole thing, the experiment’s not valid anymore-“

“How is it not valid?” Yoongi fights the urge to shake some sense into you. “Your experiment… it has something to do with studying the relationship between two people right?”

“Y-yes, something like that,” you answer him. “That’s why it was so important that you and I have no prior contact with each other, and have our interactions limited to that room only. That way I can determine that any result comes purely from the experiment itself and…”

“And what result were you looking for?” Yoongi presses. “Now that it’s over, you can tell me, right?”

You hesitate for a beat before you give in with a sigh. “Emotional intimacy. That’s why it’s just… it’s all wrong, all fucking wasted, and…”

“God, for such an amazingly bright woman, you can be so dense sometimes,” Yoongi takes you by the shoulders. “You practically made me fucking fall in love with you, do you not understand? If anything, it should prove your theory right!”

His words hit you like a bullet straight to the gut, and for a moment you can’t react. Your words trip over each other as you stare at the man in front of you, his eyes alight with just how sincere he is, and the way he wears that frustrated expression on his face from trying to get you to understand. “Y-you’re… what now?”

“I’m in love with you. You made me fall in love with you,” Yoongi repeats it a second time, even more slowly now. “From that moment I accidentally stuck my dick into that hole, I was as good as a goner. And every session we had after that I could feel myself falling deeper and deeper. It was fucking killing me to keep pretending that I didn’t know it was you on the other side. And to walk out knowing that I could never see you again? I’m far too selfish for that.”

You shake your head in confusion, struggling to comprehend all the facts that are being thrown at you now. “Is that why you chose to tell me now? Instead of… earlier?”

“Jimin said it was better this way,” Yoongi sighs. “He was right. He’s sorry, by the way. And I know it’s a lot to take in, so just… I’ll leave you alone. Give you some time to digest it all. It was a huge blow to me back then too, so… I understand what it’s like.”

You can see the reluctance on his face as Yoongi pulls away, offering you a hand to help you stand up. Shakily, you get to your feet, and he withdraws his hand. Strangely enough, the action sends a pang right through your heart. Awkwardly you shuffle to the door, peeking at his face which betrays no emotion. “I guess I’ll um… yeah. I’ll get going then.”

“See you,” Yoongi nods as he watches you slip out the door, and then you’re gone, for the second time.

Now that the shock has worn off and you’ve had a bit of time to think, to realise that your proposal isn’t in jeopardy after all, you’re a lot calmer. What’s a lot more challenging is reconciling the two different people that you know into one.

You don’t know Min Yoongi. But you know Mr Cheetos. And now they’re the same person, so somehow you have to merge them. It’s beyond futile to deny that you’re more than intrigued by your interactions with Mr Cheetos in that room, and if he was Min Yoongi all along...

You sigh as you toss your phone across the room, ignoring yet another call from Jimin. That sneaky bastard deserves to be on edge for a while more. This whole thing is partially his fault, anyway.

You can’t resist pulling up your report and scrolling through it again, reading all the observations about Mr Cheetos in a new light now. With every word comes the memories of you and him in that room together, and if you think about it, you should have seen it coming earlier. That conversation about fears you had with Yoongi in his room where you thought you’d mistaken him for someone else. And that stupid vivid wet dream. As it turns out, it wasn’t the unveiling of your lewd desires but your subconscious’s way of warning you.

How ironic.

You sigh as you open your email and address it to your professor. Then, your hands hover over the keyboard as you ponder over what you’re about to do. You can’t just sit here and do nothing, not when you can’t deny the facts any longer. Min Yoongi and Mr Cheetos are one person, and as the seconds tick by, it’s no longer as hard to swallow as it was when you first found out.

Which leaves only one thing to be done. You quickly open your proposal and make the necessary changes in red before attaching it and pressing send before you can have any second thoughts.

There. One loose end tied up. Now for the last one.

You push your chair back and head for Yoongi’s room. It’s already past midnight now, so you’re not even sure that it’s appropriate for you to be doing such a thing, but fuck it. You can’t wait a single second longer.

This time, you make sure to knock first, and disappointingly, it’s Jimin who answers.

“Oh,” your face sours when you see him, and his is the direct opposite.

“Hey, _____! I’ve been calling you for hours, I thought you died!” Jimin’s eyes widen at the sight of you. He at least as the decency to look guilty when you glare at him.

“Where’s Yoongi? I need to talk to him,” you demand.

“He’s uh… he’s just…”

“I’m here, why?” Yoongi peeks his head out from behind Jimin, pushing up a pair of glasses higher on his nose. “_____?”

“Could we… could we talk?” You say hesitantly.

“Sure,” Yoongi replies, turning to look at Jimin. “Park, do you mind?”

Jimin immediately jumps to reply, sensing the tension between the two of you. “S-sure, take your time! I’ll just uh… go sleep at Jungkook’s tonight. Take all the time you need.”

And then he grabs his pillow and hightails it out of the room.

“Stupid punk,” you mutter under your breath as you step inside. “What does he think we’re going to do all night that he can’t come back here?”

“You’re right, we’re just talking,” Yoongi agrees. “It’s not like we haven’t been alone together in a room and not jumped each other’s bones before- oh wait…”

You smack him sharply on the arm as you glare at him. “You’re such a fucking sleeze, Min.”

But he notices that a smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you make your way over to his desk.

“So…” Yoongi starts awkwardly, rubbing his neck.

“So… I wanted to tell you something. I wrote in to my professor because I needed to change something on my proposal. I felt like I couldn’t turn it in without being truthful about what happened in the experiment.”

Yoongi feels a lump beginning to form in his throat. “Okay… I hope you didn’t write about me sticking my dick into that hole, because-“

“No, you idiot, of course I didn’t,” you roll your eyes as you pull out a folder you’d been carrying with you. “The changes are here. You wanna read it? It does concern you quite a bit, so I thought…”

“Sure, why not?” Yoongi reaches for the piece of paper from you, willing his hand to stop shaking as he reads through it.

Final Conclusion

… Whereas the test subject who was allowed anonymity and physical contact demonstrated a solid and perhaps even lasting emotional connection with the Observer. At the end of the experiment, said test subject revealed to being ‘in love’ with the Observer by admitting that he had been harbouring deeper and deeper emotions for the Observer as the experiment progressed. As of now it is yet unclear whether these emotions truly count as love or merely just infatuation, as it was an unprecedented result that the Observer did not seek to define the parameters of prior to the experiment. To add on, it has to be acknowledged that the Observer herself does share a similar degree of emotional intimacy with the subject. As such, it would be pertinent to conclude that this observation only further strengthens the author’s main thesis of the singularity theory.

Yoongi reaches the end of the paragraph with his breath stuck in his chest as he lowers the piece of paper, only to find you looking at him nervously.

“Is it… is it okay? I mean, I already sent it to my professor, so yeah, but I just wanted to… y’know…”

It’s cute when you’re nervous and you ramble on and on like that. Yoongi grins a gummy little smile at you as he reaches for your waist and pulls you in for a kiss, your lips meeting for the first time that night, and damn do you taste good. Like everything he’s ever wanted, all the longing and the pent up desire of the past month unleashed into this single kiss. Your lips and tongue clash against each other, too reckless to take it slowly and enjoy each other, too desperate to prove to himself that you are really right in front of him, and he’s not letting you slip away this time.

Finally he draws away, panting because you stole the breath right out of his lungs. “It’s perfect.”

All the tension eases out of your features as you circle your arms around his waist, resting your cheek against his chest.

“But wait, you think I’m just infatuated with you?” Yoongi pulls away to frown at you, but there is a teasing smile on his lips.

“Hmmm, I dunno,” you shrug back. “According to science, infatuation is different from love, it’s a lot harder to prove that love exists between two people, most relationships are just borne out of infatuation…”

Yoongi shuts you up with his lips attacking a particularly sensitive spot on your collarbone, making you moan his name. “You know, it’s hot when you talk about science and psychology and all that shit. But I’d rather hear my name instead.”

Your breaths come in short pants as he sinks his teeth into your tender flesh for a moment before soothing the spot with his tongue. “Li-like I said, Min. Infatuated with me, you are.”

“Shut up, I’m fucking in love with you,” Yoongi reprimands you with a sharp pinch of your nipple.

You smile against his neck, playing with the baby hairs at the nape of it. “Prove it to me then, Mr Cheetos.”

#bts #bangtan bookclub #btssmutclub #bangtanwriters-net #bts fics #bts yoongi smut #bts smut #suga smut

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beatrice-blaze · 4 years

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Black Coffee, Two Drops of Silver || Bea & Kaden

Coffee Plus was a place Bea often escaped to when it was raining. She'd have preferred to spend the day wandering the woods, but with the weather, it wasn't the safest plan. Being at home made her feel too much cabin fever to spend the entirety of her day off there and so she had decided to camp out at the coffeeshop. She was reading a thick book that her father had recommended, "The Wolf's Hour". She didn't typical lean towards horror books, but she would read anything her parents suggested for her. She was only about a quarter of the way through the book, but she was two coffees in and was a bit jittery at this point. Putting her bookmark in, she strongly considered getting another coffee as she stared intently at register from her seat.

Kaden wiped his hand on his jeans before pulling open the door to Coffee Plus. It was almost not worth bothering, he was sure he looked a mess but that wasn't going to stop him from going straight to the only halfway decent cafe in town, especially after all that. The rain had washed away most of the blood and dirt from his run in with a camazotz earlier but his victory had been hard earned. Kaden probably should have gone straight home and hit the shower but he'd earned this coffee. The place wasn't very full, which made sense. It was the middle of a rainy day, he supposed a lot of people were at home. But there was one face he recognized. Bea seemed to be reading a rather large book and sitting all by herself and he had said he'd say hello if he saw her here. Might as well, right? "Interesting book you're reading," he said as he approached her with a smile on his face, his coat and most of the rest of him dripping wet from the rain. "The Wolf's Hour." What an interesting title. Seems like he made the right call after all. "Any good?"

Bea's eyes snapped away from the register up to Kaden and she smiled as she met his eye. She hoped that she didn't look completely deranged when she was staring into space. She was surprised to see him there, but then again, she had recommended the shop and he had said he would say hi. She was almost disappointed that she didn't have some poisonous plant on her to show him. Keep her brand of being the lady casually carrying poisons and all that. Him being soaking wet was definitely not how she was expecting to see him though, but it had been raining pretty hard. "Did you get stuck outside without an umbrella?" She asked, slight worry in her voice. He could get a nasty cold like that. She was tempted to check her bag to see if she had an extra umbrella for him. She tapped the book's cover,"So far, I like it. My dad recommended it. I'm not usually one to read horror, but I like the premise. Are you here to try out the coffee?"

Kaden pushed his hair out of his face, trying to keep the wet mop from falling into his eyes. Any attempts at styling it from earlier that morning had been washed away awhile ago. "You could say that. Not sure an umbrella would have helped.I was out taking care of an assignment. Call about an oversized bat." Oversized was mildly putting it. Camazotz were fucking huge and this one had been no exception. He leaned with his forearms against the chair across from her. He couldn't help but smirk. Of all the books she could be reading. And her dad recommended it? Too many possibilities were swirling in his head to put all the pieces together. He'd have to see where the chips fell. "And here I'd think you'd get enough horror living in this town." He'd have to come up with some way to test his theories on the fly. It was either she was a werewolf or she was covering for one. Maybe even the one he saw last night. "Yeah, I'm here for coffee after a hard day's work. Needed something to keep me going after all that. Mind if I join you?"

"Bad day to get sent out on an assignment like that," Bea said sympathetically. "Somehow, I have a feeling that an 'oversized' bat isn't the weirdest thing you've seen in White Crest, though." She was sure that with his job, he'd seen a hell of a lot more of the crazy things White Crest had to offer. If anyone would, it would be animal control or the cops. She supposed Regan saw a lot of weird things too. His smirk kind of caught her off guard, she wasn't sure why he was smirking, but she couldn't say she didn't like the expression on him. She shrugged, "I guess I'm desensitized to the brand of horror that White Crest produces." Her smile brightened, glad that she had someone to sit with now. "Of course, sit down! I love company. I was about to get another coffee, do you want me to grab you something? You look like you need something extra hot."

"It doesn't bother me too much. I'd rather be outdoors than in an office, whatever the weather," Kaden said with a shrug. "You're right. There was this one time I saw some lady in the woods picking a whole lot of poisonous plants. It was so weird. Never seen anything like it" He threw her a smile, hoping she'd take the joke. Not that he was all that worried, so far she'd been sharp, honestly quicker on the draw than he was the other day. Funny, smart, pretty; it was a damn shame she was more than likely a werewolf. "Thanks. I've got it, though. I'm already standing. And I don't know if I should drink whatever you bring me," he said, adding a wink at the end. "What do you want?" He hoped she'd say cream, sugar, anything in her coffee at all. It would make slipping the bit of colloidal silver in her coffee a lot easier.

Bea nodded,”I understand that. I know I couldn’t work a normal job in an office. I just don’t like the rain that much.” Her eyes crinkled at corners as she let out a laugh, she hadn’t expected him to turn that around on her. “At least she left an impression. Now you’ll never forget her.” She liked talking to Kaden, he was funny and he was definitely a lot more comfortable this time around. She pressed her lips together in an attempt to stop from smiling at her own expense. It didn’t work well as she could feel her smile anyway. “I promise today I have nothing poisonous on me, but if you insist.” She paused, knowing that she really should not have her third latte. She was pretty sure that lattes had more caffeine than coffee... “I’ll just take a coffee with a splash of milk.”

"Coming right up," Kaden told her before heading off to the counter to order two coffees. He drank his black so keeping them separate would be easy enough. While waiting for the mugs, he rummaged through his coat pockets ahead of time, hoping it didn't look too suspicious. He was pretty sure most people didn't care a dropper with collodial silver on them at nearly all times, but then again, most people in town thought the vampires were funny looking cosplayers. Once he had the coffee, he took both to the little customization station on the side. Slipping two drops into hers was easy enough. He pretended to put a sugar in his even though the thought of that disgusted him, too sweet. "Here you go, coffee splash of milk," he said as he took a seat and handed her the mug. Now he just had to see if she reacted to the silver at all. It wasn't much, just a drop, if she wasn't a monster, she'd hardly notice it. Sure, there might be a taste, he didn't know, he didn't make a habit of drinking silver, but all the same. "So, you've been here longer than most, what's the worst you've seen here? You know, if oversized bats sound tame to you."

As Kaden went to get the coffee Bea tidied her space up. She put her book back into her bag and made sure she had no texts to respond to before putting her phone face down. She liked having coffee with people, it was one of the best way to get to know someone. She took the mug. “Thank you,” She smiles at him before taking a sip. She was not prepared at all for the flavor that was about to hit her. That was not that how the coffee here normally tasted. She swallowed and cleared her throat, trying hard not be rude, but that wasn’t good coffee at all. She cleared her throat again before blinking and forcing a pleasant look back on her face. Maybe the milk was bad. “I’ve seen so much at this point I think half the stuff happening is normal. The blood puddles and writing was a bit weird. I’ve had an ... animal get into my house and completely destroy my kitchen and living room. Broke windows and everything. A few of my friends from high school went missing just to come back years later like nothing happened. That’s obviously just a few.”

Kaden watched her intently as she sipped her coffee. He tried to seem casual enough, taking a drink from his as well, hoping it would hide the small smile on his face while waiting to see what would happen. "Are you alright?" he asked as she clearly had some trouble getting the coffee down. "Too much milk, not enough?" Allergic reaction? Are you a werewolf? "I almost forgot about the blood puddles. Amazing how quickly the weird shit becomes mundane. But I have to say, I'm a little surprised the department didn't get a call about that animal running through your house. I'm not sure whether to be offended or impressed." He was trying to keep his eyes off her mug, waiting to see when or if she'd take another sip, see if the reaction was different or worse. "Missing friends? Did they just run away and finally make it back or..."

Bea debating lying and telling him it was fine. She didn’t want make a big deal of nothing, however, she had obviously had a reaction to it and pretending she didn’t seemed a little too late. “I think the milk might be bad. Must be a sign from above that having a third cup isn’t a good idea,” She joked as she put the mug down. She felt bad in a way that she wasn’t going to drink the coffee, but she couldn’t force herself to be that polite. “I can’t imagine living in a normal town after White Crest. It would be so boring.” Oh, crap, she forgot he was animal control. “I took care of it. My sisters and I are figure it out on your own type of people.” That wasn’t even a lie, they did do things on their own because it usually ended up being easier for everyone involved. “Well, the most recent one hasn’t told me what happened, but he was missing for thirteen years and then just showed back up in town.”

The list of suspicious behavior from her was adding up. Kaden couldn't be completely sure, not yet. He needed something more definitive but question was what to try next? "Ah, I'm sorry. Hopefully this doesn't mean I'm bad luck." It most likely did. Hunter meeting a werewolf was only every lucky for one party and he planned to make it his. "Good to hear. But you know, next time if that happens, you can always call for help. I can't say much for the rest of the of the department but I like to think I'm pretty decent at what I do." His brows furrowed as she described the missing friends. Had to say, he was interested in finding out if she was a werwolf but he wanted to know more about this weird shit first. "The most recent one? I know you said friends but I don't know, I thought this happened all at once. There's multiple? That's a long time to be away."

Bea shook her head,”I doubt you’re bad luck. After all that day if you were bad luck I would have accidentally poisoned myself when we first met or something like that.” She liked Kaden’s company. He was witty and he didn’t mind when she teased him. Though the first time they had met he had acted weird, he was much more relaxed now and it just made her more comfortable with him too. She chuckled,”I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but really it’s alright. We live pretty far into the forest anyway, so we’re used to figuring stuff out on our own.” Growing up in White Crest gave Bea the opportunity to see the occasional missing poster for her friends and acquaintances, some had run away others had no answer yet. “There’s multiple. Cindy was a runaway. But Dario... He... His whole family died, but his body was never found. Yeah, it is. He’s not quite the same, but I think that can be expected from anyone after thirteen years, let alone whatever he went through.”

Kaden's face scrunched up as listened to her. It was hard to wrap his head around all this. He knew this town was weird and full of monsters and he fully expected people to go "missing" here. He never expected to hear about people coming back. It was enough to make him forget what his goal was with Bea. "Really, whole family died and he shows back up thirteen years later? I knew this place was strange but that's..." He shook his head as he trailed off. "Now you've gone and made me curious. Did he really just show up again out of nowhere like nothing happened? How'd you know him, anyway?" He leaned against the edge of the table, waiting to hear what she'd say next. He couldn't be sure how or if this could fit into the puzzle he was trying to piece together on her connection with wolves, but he had a sneaking suspicion whatever happened with this Dario guy was no run of the mill missing persons case. Maybe he was the wolf, killed his family and ran off. Maybe part of a pack, her pack maybe? There were plenty of possibilities.

"I think it was a house fire and maybe he wasn't there when it happened, but I'm pretty sure all his family is gone now. He didn't tell me much and I didn't think it was right to pry," Bea said softly. She felt bad for Dario. He had lost so much and came back to a town that didn't have much to offer him. "Just responded to something I posted online randomly, though I'm not sure he knew who I was at the time." Now her face flushed slightly as she had to admit how she knew him. "He was my high school crush. Took me out on a date and everything a week before he went missing." It felt odd calling Dario her friend, but in a way, he was, now more so than they had been in high school. At the end of the day, when he went missing she cared a great deal for him. "I didn't expect to finally have him message me back after the date thirteen years later, but here we are."

Kaden was rapt as she explained the whole story, both fascinated and a little concerned this was a possibility in White Crest. Just when he thought nothing could surprise him with the supernatural. "Sounds like you had a busy week, then. Glad he's back, though. Your friend." He took another sip of his coffee. "Still got a crush? Long lost love rekindled?" he asked, giving his eyebrows a waggle. Maybe he could lighten the mood a little. It didn't need to be dreary inside as well as out. Kaden noticed her coffee was still untouched. He didn't see any hives or rash on her, but that didn't mean anything. "You sure you don't want me to get you another coffee? A better one?" Surprisingly, he did genuinely feel bad that he was there, subpar coffee in hand, and she had nothing. God, he almost wanted to shake it off. He should really stop that, caring. This was meant to be recon, nothing more.

Bea liked the fact that Kaden listened to her so intently. He didn't seem to be one of those people who got distracted when other people spoke and it was oddly nice that she had someone to talk to about this, especially someone who wanted to listen. She could have told her sister how strange it was that Dario was back, but the younger woman was far more concerned with whether or not she was going to see him again. She let out a laugh, answering in a light tone, "Maybe a few years ago I would have said yes, but I'm not sure relationships are meant for me." Of course, she wanted one, she loved romance and the idea of having a family, but she had spent years with her ex and he had walked out of her life so easily. She wasn't sure she ever really got over that. "I think if I have a third coffee, I might bounce off the walls, but if you don't mind dealing with that, I'd take another." She knew she should cut down her caffeine intake, but there was very little chance she actually would.

Kaden definitely understood the sentiment. "I can't blame you. Not really sure they're meant for me either." Attachments weren't really a luxury a hunter could take often. It was hard to put trust in anyone who wasn't a hunter. It was too easy to be disappointed when you discovered a monster. He had to remind himself that's what he might be talking to now. "Doesn't bother me," he said with a shrug. He stood up and picked up her mug to take it back to the counter. "I'll take my chances." He talked to the barista behind the counter, told them how the 'milk' must have been bad. Seemed like his accent and charm had done the trick for once and they brought him a replacement. For a moment, he considered putting another drop of silver in this cup as well. Try again, see what happened. Something kept him from doing it, though. He couldn't be sure what. It was like a twinge in the back of his mind that just told him to just bring the coffee back, be normal for once. He told him self it was because he didn't want to risk getting caught a second time. It wasn't that, though. "Take two for you. Hope it's better this time. Sounds like you deserve the break."

#chat log: kaden #Black two drops of silver

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minas-writing · 5 years

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@homesteadhorner‘s Moodboard Monday - Silent

I read this week's prompt and almost assumed (again) that I didn't have anything to qualify for it. And then I remembered one character who chooses not to speak... and another whose voice was destroyed by a magic potion, and a third who sold her electronic voice box off. So my assumption was incorrect. This moodboard is for Ellie, a native Martian (which was originally colonized by humans from Earth in the first place). The story is a retelling of The Wild Swans.

Long story short, Elise's brothers were sold off by their stepmother, she was tricked into going to Earth illegally and almost killed there. Now she has a cybernetic neck and jaw, and she sold off the voice tech to make money to try and find her brothers. In this snippet, they find her. She is working at a theater as special effects, due to her particular (non-magical) talents.

About 2k words, angst and fluff and whump all in one. This isn’t 100% my best work, especially the ending, but I am proud of it and I’m glad I sort of finished it.

Elise’s heart hammered. They were here. Brona had really done it. Only a few hours ago, he’d proposed, but she had to decline - it was clear that their relationship had always been one-sided, and Elise was busy trying to find her brothers, anyway. Enraged, Brona had called the police on her. Elise’s only crime was that of finding a new home here, but laws were laws.

And now the police were here.

Panicking, Elise snatched Vaun’s carving of a swan off her dresser, shoved it in her pocket, and opened her window. The police were coming up the stairs to her room. Elise heard the startled shrieks of the other theater girls that were awake. She ignored the pounding on her flimsy, though locked, door and did her best to inch quietly and quickly out the window.

It wasn’t quick enough. Elise had one leg out the window and one in her room when the door splintered at the handle and swung open. Three people dressed all in black rushed into the room.

Elise lost the sensation of “up” for a moment as she was dragged from the window and through her destroyed door. The operatives were fast. Two held her shoulders while the third cleared a path through the crowd of barely-dressed, garishly-made up theater girls. They were Elise’s compatriots - most not really friends, but they knew her and she knew them. Elise was too stunned to be properly embarrassed, and she was moving too fast to respond to any questioning looks.

Outside the girls’ home, the pace slowed. There were more people in black - male or female, Elise couldn’t tell - and one came forward to roughly take her finder and prick it with some red box. It beeped, and the person shook their head.

“She’s alien, all right,” the person said, their voice revealing them to be a female. Elise winced. She’d harbored one, small, last hope that somehow the test would come back negative. “Blasted things,” the woman muttered. The people behind Elise began to tow her forward, towards the ship that was the only real source of light in the fading daylight.

“Hold on,” a man said, coming close and leaning toward Elise’s neck. She attempted to pull away or push him, but she was held back. The man reached out a gloved finger and tapped the silicone skin there. Elise had been meaning to repaint that, but there were a few chips in the flesh-covered paint that revealed what it really was. “This looks Terran.”

Despite Elise’s struggling and her dirty looks, the man proceeded to chip away at the paint on her neck and jaw. It didn’t take much - she’d last sealed it over a month ago - but it felt invasive and very uncomfortable. Before long, Elise’s inhuman neck was bare, and she’d been pushed down with handcuffs on her wrists in front of her.

The operatives took a moment to discuss things, and eventually decided against their original plan of immediate deportation. Elise didn’t know what would happen to her. She couldn’t answer their questions, her ability to speak taken from her. She probably wouldn’t ever see her brothers again, despite these years of trying.

Elise stood at a man’s prompting. Vaun’s swan tumbled from her pocket to the grass, a dark brown stain on the graying greenery. Elise lunged for the carving, desperately wanting to keep it close. Someone caught her arm with a hand like steel, and a boot kicked the carving away, dismissing it as unimportant.

Involuntarily, Elise’s eyes filled with tears. Air escaped from her mouth, unaccompanied by the sob that had built up. She pulled, kicked, struggled more than she ever had in her life, but she simply wasn’t very strong. All the while, no sound escaped her throat, except for the faint whoosh of air as she breathed. It couldn’t. The operatives holding her grunted, spoke, but Elise didn’t hear them. There was no sobbing, but there were tears. Her hopes were dashed. Life was hell. No point -

“Ellie!” came a cry from a distance away. Elise froze, allowing herself to be dragged. No one called her Ellie anymore. But, then, who -

Elise looked up. A single shadow drew closer, and the light of the ship brought a sandy-haired man into sharp relief. The operatives ceased their pulling, curious but on guard. The man got within a few feet of Elise before a man spoke from behind her.

“That’s close enough. Who are you?”

The sandy-haired man paused, his green eyes fixed on Elise. He leaned down, silent, and picked up the carved swan from the ground. He brushed a few stray blades of grass off its smooth surface, and Elise recognized those hands.

“Vaun,” she said. Or tried to. Only air came out, vaguely shaped by her mouth. It wasn’t speech, but sometimes she could get things across with the technique. The man in front of her - her brother - smiled worriedly at her.

“You are dismissed,” Vaun said with an air of authority, turning his attention to the people behind her. Elise scrunched her eyebrows, and clearly the operatives thought the same way. One scoffed.

“Once again, who are you?” they asked brusquely.

“No one you’d recognize,” Vaun answered with a shrug. “But I do have a signed pardon here, and you’ll find that it’s quite legitimate.” He held out a piece of paper with a small blob of blue wax on the corner, and someone in black snatched it.

After a moment of looking at it, the person with the paper nodded to another one of their number, who jogged to the ship and came back a minute later.

“It’s true,” they said, reaching the group standing there in silence. “Anyone I reached confirmed it.”

With a grumble, the person handed the paper back to Vaun, who took it graciously. Elise’s shoulders suddenly felt lighter as hands were retracted. Someone removed the cuffs from her wrists and shoved her forward. Elise hadn’t been expecting that, so she stumbled and would have fallen if Vaun hadn’t caught her.

“Take her,” a woman spat, and the operatives were gone, flying away in their prison ship.

“Ellie,” Vaun said, sounding close to tears as he held her. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut, the tears coming out in force again. She squeezed him tightly back, and she didn’t know how long they stayed like that. It was fully dark when he pulled away.

“Are you all right? They didn’t hurt you, did they?” He looked her over, and suddenly Ellie felt six years old again, safe with six older brothers who loved her. Ellie shrugged, thinking about the hard fingers on her shoulders and on her arms that probably left bruises, then shook her head. Vaun’s gaze lingered on the silicone and metal that made up Ellie’s neck now, and she ducked her head, blushing, trying to shield most of it from view.

“What happened there?” he asked, straightening up. He was very tall, amplifying Ellie’s feeling of being small. Ellie couldn’t answer his question without a lot of charades or something to write on, so she just looked at him. Vaun’s face was pinched in concern. His voice got deep.

“You can’t speak, can you?”

Ellie hesitated, but there was no hiding it. She shook her head, confirming his theory. Emotions crowded his face - anger, sadness, worry. Feeling guilty, Ellie looked away.

Vaun exhaled and ran a hand over his face. “It’s all right. Come on, we have places to be.” He took her hand and led her around to the theater, which was just a little distance from the girls’ home. Parked out in front of the majestic building was another ship, smaller and less threatening than the prison ship that had flown away a few minutes ago. It was gray and a little bit beat up, and there was some kind of crest painted and scratched up on the side. Ellie vaguely recognized the design as maybe something to do with the government in the area, but she wasn’t well-versed enough in that to really tell.

The back hatch lowered with a quiet hiss, and Ellie stopped in her tracks. Vaun continued for a step before stopping and chuckling. Jeremiah was hanging out of the hatch, grinning at her. He’d grown, too, and while maybe he wasn’t taller than Vaun anymore, he was definitely more muscled. Without a conscious command, Ellie let go of Vaun and sprinted forward.

“Ellie! There you are!” Jeremiah caught her in a hug and lifted her off the ground. If Ellie could have, she would have laughed loudly. As it was, she just smiled widely and clutched Jeremiah back. He let her down after too short a moment. Vaun had caught up, and the three of them walked into the ship.

“We found her!” Jeremiah hollered. His voice echoed through the body of the ship, and then they arrived in the main lobby, which, due to the ship’s small size, also seemed to serve as a command center. Sitting and standing there, manning different stations or just loitering around, were Ellie’s other brothers.

Ellie broke down. She hid her face in a hand, the other hand firmly grasped in Jeremiah’s, and cried. Immediately, more brothers surrounded her, seizing her as she was clutching at them. She almost couldn’t tell who was who, they’d changed, but they were still hers. Tristan, Rikan, Jakob, Keon… and Vaun and Jeremiah joined the hug-fest, too. All too soon, though, the knot loosened, and Ellie was standing on her feet again.

Jakob scowled. He was still wiry, and moved with a fluid grace, and the angry expression seemed all too at home on his face. “That rat didn’t tell us he’d hurt her this badly,” he snarled, the direction of his gaze clearly indicating that he was talking about Ellie’s neck. She couldn’t get redder, but she did hunch her shoulders as she tried to stop crying and dry her face.

“Wait, you think it was him?” Vaun clarified, a hand dropping onto Ellie’s shoulder protectively. Wait, who were they talking about?

“What else do you think happened?” Rikan called from the front of the room, where the windows were. He was pressing buttons, and from the way that the floor began to rumble, Ellie assumed that he was preparing the ship for takeoff. “The kid told us he’d kind of sort of tried to kill her, and that it had almost worked.” Ellie blinked. They weren’t talking about Draven, were they?

“What did happen, Ellie?” Tristan asked. He shoved a few tubes into the wall and clicked a hatch shut, wiping his hands on a blackened rag. “We’re doing a terrible job of guessing.”

Ellie wet her lips and opened her mouth, but almost as soon as she did, she shut it again and glanced at Vaun, who realized immediately.

“She can’t talk, Tris,” he said lowly. That made all five of the brothers pause. Tristan froze, Rikan stopped punching in coordinates, Jeremiah turned his head sharply, Jakob bared his teeth, and Keon fumbled the screwdriver he was holding. They returned to their various activities after a brief moment, but the damage was done. Ellie could almost feel the ire welling up in the room, and her face drooped. She didn’t want them to be sad, but she couldn’t snap at them to cheer up, or to not worry about her.

“I hate that guy,” Keon muttered as he crawled halfway into a dark space with the screwdriver in his hand.

“I think we all do,” Tristan agreed darkly. He tossed the dirty rag on an empty shelf and went back over to pat Ellie’s hair. She was sure he was getting some grime on it, but she didn’t mind one bit. She leaned into his touch. “Was it a man named Draven?” he asked.

Confused, Ellie nodded slowly. How did they know him?

As if he had heard her, Tristan continued. “We’ve been looking for you for a while,” he said. “We stumbled upon a guy who claimed to know you well, and he gave us this tip, ultimately, but refused to come with us. Not going to lie, none of us were sad about that.”

“I was ready to punch his lights out,” Jakob grumbled.

“Ready for takeoff,” Rikan interjected loudly. He turned his head and gave Ellie a tight smile. “Next stop, the palace.”

#wild swans #moodboard #The Wild Swans #scifi #sci fi #sci fi & fantasy #writeblr #wip #moodboard monday #fairytale #writing #writers #writers on tumblr #story snippet

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therearemorethanfivenights · 5 years

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Chapter 10 is up!

Getting back to the writing.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11674818/chapters/37276622

Or alternatively, read it under the cut -

"Now that we're alone, you wanna do adult things? Like taxes? Or scrabble?" Vincent asked. The parts and service room was colder than anywhere else. The only warmth came from a small heater they'd borrowed from Dawn's room. "Oh, how romantic, I thought you'd never ask" Mangle replied, giggling. The two of them were already aware that this is all they'd be talking about for a long time and were aware of how irritating they were going to be too.

"Ok, but for the next few weeks, I'm not calling you anything except 'girlfriend'. Oh, and sighing constantly. When they ask if I'm sad, boom, I'm just thinking of you. We are driving these people crazy." He snickered at the thought. This was mostly just revenge for all the teasing. And of course, Mike acted in the same way about Amy, pulling her around like a new puppy. Everyone could tell even Mike and Amy were sick of themselves, but they'd kept going for the sake of annoyance.

"Likewise, 'girlfriend'." Mangle teased, "Maybe we could do something productive. Like... clean this place up? It's kind of a mess..." She looked at all the various computer chips, nuts, bolts and tools spread across the floor, coupled with the large mound of bottles of beer and whiskey she'd collected over time. "Could always turn the trash into useful stuff. If we cleaned the bottles we could use them as decorations. Put little lights in them and stuff." Vincent said picking the little bits and bobs off the floor.

Meanwhile, Mike and Amy had headed over to the office. "Think we can snoop on Jeremy's internet history?" Amy asked, a smile forming on her face. Mike ignored her. He'd always been fond of mystery stories and cop shows. Finally, he was living in one, and he had a lead to follow. "Amy... be honest with me here... do you think I'm crazy for thinking that... maybe William didn't take suicide?" He asked her. She looked at the screen, waiting for the pages to load.

"I know it sounds stupid, but maybe he faked his death to get off the grid? The one who found him was Henry, and he announced it to the public. No service, nothing. Nobody except Henry's family could say whether he was alive or dead... what if he's the killer? Revenge?" He busily began taking mental notes of all the details of the event. Nobody, of course, could prove him wrong or right, but it was better to have a semi-crazy theory than nothing, he thought. Amy thought about this.

"It's possible. But Will sounded like a nice enough guy. I mean look at what the internet says. 'Described by company founder Henry Ross as a quiet and humorous individual. He was known by few, yet was more loved than any other employee, and will surely be missed." Doesn't sound like a psychopath, does it?" She said, highlighting the text to read it better. Mike didn't want to dismiss his idea, however. "Sociopath Amy, sociopath. It's unlikely he'd been crazy before. And all the stuff he'd been through... no man can deal with that much pain. Either he snaps and does something awful, or maybe, maybe he does some amazing heroic shit like start a charity or something to make themselves feel better."

“So what, you think the dead guy is behind all this?” She peered at the articles on the screen. “Well… I did some digging and… Michael… he isn’t actually…” Mike was struggling to form a sentence. He almost didn’t believe it himself. “Michael Afton is alive.” He said finally. He turned to his girlfriend as slowly as he could, hoping she would believe him. She just kept reading. “Uh… anyway…” He trailed off. Amy frowned. “But doesn’t that just put more holes in your theory?” She leaned back on the desk. This seemed logical. If Michael was indeed alive, and so was his father, then surely killing would be unnecessary. The dad could just get his son back, problem solved, right?

“You’d think. Except that the only evidence about him being still in the hospital, ergo the only evidence for him being alive was a small blog piece someone wrote. Apparently, this dude is super invested in the franchise, he’s kept tabs on this kid from day one.” Mike shuddered. “So he posted something months ago about the kid possibly not making it anymore. As in: just before the first murder. If William is responsible, maybe he read that post.”

“That’s not that dumb now that I think about it. Still pretty crazy how they kept this kid in a coma for ten years,” Amy gave him a small congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “See? Even if it’s not Will, we might at least have a motive for whoever it is. Who knows? They might be doing it involuntarily.” He said triumphantly. “Wait, what do you mean by that? Involuntarily?” Mike quickly searched up more articles.

“See like you remember how your dad was in the army? How he had PTSD for the longest time so if he heard something that sounded like gunfire he’d just drop for cover? No matter what was going on? Same thing. Just way more messed up. If the murderer was exacting revenge on the kids responsible for ‘killing’ that kid, he’ll be basically hardwired to react in the same way if he hears anything is threatening his life again.”

“So this guy just goes out and murders six kids again? Seems a little extreme.” Amy said. She thought about the way her dad had acted during the Fourth of July. “So that’s why it’s gotta be the dad, right? Nobody else would like that kid enough to murder other kids in his honor.” Mike nodded. It all made sense in theory. Unfortunately, neither of them knew a thing about tracking down dead people.

“Did it hurt?” BB was still sat by Marie, waving his hand through her body. He just had to be sure ghosts could really walk through walls. Toy Bonnie yanked his hair. “Oh my god, B, you can’t just ask people that!” He folded his arms and scowled at him. In truth, he also wanted to know, since robots never experienced anything like death. “BB, please get your grabbers out of my chest, it’s weird. Yes. It hurt a lot.” Marie grabbed BB’s arm and removed it from her insides. “How’d they do it?” He continued, rubbing his head from where T-Bone had hurt him. Marie sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She said, closing her eyes.

It was cold and dark. She felt it, burning, stinging, biting… it hurt and it hurt bad. Her knees wobbled. In front of her lay her baby brother. Little Alex Sanderson. Poor Alex. She took a step towards him.

“You can’t.”

She felt her knees crumble below her. She coughed as her lungs filled with blood. Another step.

“You can’t”

She collapsed in front of him. He was beaten and bruised, dead. Hours had passed, he had gone stiff. She took his hand.

“You can’t”

She knew she was dying. She knew from the moment she felt the rush of pain. She lay Alex on his side. She cried. She coughed. She felt something slide from her back. A large kitchen knife. “You can’t”

She took Alex’s hand and clutched her doll tight. She lay by him and waited for the pain to die away. Footsteps. They got closer. Paws, white and pink. They screamed but she couldn’t hear them. They tried to wake her but she was dreaming. Then they collapsed. They were dragged away. She closed her eyes.

“Marie? Hey! Puppet! Hey, wake up!” She jolted awake. “Marie dear, are you ok?” It was Chica’s voice. “What… Chi… Wha?” She was confused. She was lying in the middle of the dining hall floor. “Whoa now, easy, get up slowly.” Freddy. He had his hand behind her head. She looked at herself. Long spindly limbs, suit, buttons, she was in her body again. “What… what did you see?” She asked the huddle.

She didn’t know how she got there, in the room, in her body. “I don’t think that matters.” She looked up to see Vincent. “Are you ok? He knelt to be at eye-level with her. She tried to sit up. “Ugh… no.” She murmured. “Where are BB and T-Bone? I think I’d like a nice polite word with them.” She growled. From behind the crowd, she heard whimpers. “Please Marie, don’t blame them. You passed out; they just wanted you to be safe.” Chica said. She had armfuls of what appeared to be rescue supplies: Food, water, a blanket, some painkillers from Dawns room and a box of daily hay fever pills. “What’s all that for?” The puppet asked, pointing at the items. Chica placed them in her lap. “I… didn’t know what to grab…” She said, watching her supplies tumble onto the floor.

“I’m going back to my box now.” The group began to whisper. Vincent grabbed her arm. “No, you’re not.” He said, pushing her back down. Chica sighed and grabbed the boxes and bottles. Marie grumbled. She seemed much bigger, trying her best to intimidate her friends into releasing her. “Oh? And who are you to try and stop me?” She hissed. But Vincent’s grip remained firm. “Your best friend, that’s who. I get that you’re stressed but this isn’t going to help. Don’t bottle all this up, we’re your family.” He sat down.

Everyone slowly followed suit. It was rare that Marie looked anyone in the eyes, and now all eyes were on her. She lay back down again and held Freddy’s arm as it followed her head down. “I… I just want to sleep.” She said. She stared at the lights above her before closing her eyes once more.

“So this is the big secret you’ve both been keeping?” Attention had turned to Vincent. He let go of Marie’s arm. “Yes. Her name is Marie-Rose, a victim of our killer and a witness to… the bite,” he said, “and I figured that maybe letting her be might jog her memory faster than stressing her out.” Dawn and Mangle looked at each other and nodded before heading to parts and service. BB and Toy Bonnie had already scurried off to pirate’s cove and were hiding with Foxy, who wanted nothing to do with it. Toy Freddy sat at a nearby table. “Why though? Why keep it from us? It’s your job, we wouldn’t have intruded if you’d just told us why she-“ “Because she’s scared.” Vincent cut him off. “She trusts me.” “And why is that? What makes you so special?” Toy Freddy continued. Vincent took a deep breath.

“Marie came in almost every weekend. She hated everything. She wrecked stuff, got into trouble, anything she could think of to tear her parent’s eyes away from her brother. Alex. They stopped caring about her the minute he was born. During weekends and holidays, she’d hang out by the puppet box, pouring her secrets into it. Her anger, her fear, everything. The kind of stuff you’d scream into the abyss. Eventually, her parents found out where she was going and forced her to take Alex. Her space was gone. So I went and talked to her. I let her vent. She shared the kinda troubles you’d never expect a girl her age to have. I think it was… maybe a year in? She sent me presents on my birthday, started treating Alex so much better and to top it off every other time we spoke she called me ‘dad’ by mistake.”

Finally, Vincent slumped forward, a weight off his shoulders. He looked exhausted. “Were you?” Toychi asked. “Like, that’s… actually so sweet.” She smiled. Vincent sometimes was like a father to everyone around him, but Marie was the most obvious. He looked at the puppet. “Yeah, I guess I was.”

He thought about that. Marie’s father, from what he could understand, was always too busy trying to calm her mother down or looking after Alex. She never called him dad once. So despite his better judgment, and the mere 10 years between them, he’d accepted his fate. “Made me feel old though.” He added, chuckling. Marie smiled. “You’ve been awake the whole time, haven’t you?” He sighed. She grinned. “You’re grounded.”

#fnaf #ThereareMorethanFiveNights #TAMTFN #five nights at freddy's #Chapter 10 #of part 1

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auntie-diluvian · 5 years

Note

What would have happened in chapter 2 if you decided to write it?

Eek I’m so sorry I took so long to answer this!

The longer I think about it, the more I think a second part would have really jumped the shark any way I’d have written it, but I did have some thoughts*, which got… uh, kinda long (hence me taking forever to answer your ask), so I’m gonna put them beneath a cut if I can figure out how.

Some of this was sort of charted out in a long chat between me and Py (specifically I think the bit with Papyrus showing up, which I think was her idea?), but that conversation was so long ago it’s been lost to the sands of time (and tumblr chat having no search function), so most of this is new and specific to the version I posted.

I had a couple of scenes in my head that were a little more defined, the rest was just kind of vague, and it never came to a conclusion, really. So I guess, in theory, all of those “Reader goes to Italy and carboloads themself into personal fulfillment, Sans dies of skelesyphilis, and his gf fucks off somewhere” fantasies can still happen. If, you know, by the end of me rambling about this, any of that still sounds, oh god, you know, fuck, appealing, or whatever. If not, then uhhh whoops sorry I don’t have any ending for you at all, my dude.**

Also this hasn’t been beta’d or anything, I didn’t want to give it the same status as the stuff I actually publish, just like, on principle? so like. keep your expectations in check maybe? especially re: some of the most cliche and melodramatic dialogue I’ve written to date lol

The first scene was to take place on Jan 2nd:

Your friend, the one you’re now glad isn’t speaking to you, is standing at your door, anxiously clutching a small, rectangular cardboard box bearing a sticker you recognize as the logo of your favorite bakery. She speaks to you, and you feel your stomach flip.

“Um, so, these are for you. Uh, happy new year, by the way, and um, the frosting probably got a little smushed- you know how high they like to pile it on. But, you know, they’re fresh, so- should be good. Got your favorites.”

She hands you the box and you peek inside. Cupcakes, of course. Half the frosting’s on the lid, like she said, and you stare at them, dumbfounded. Can’t look at her.

She clears her throat.

“I know what I’m like, sometimes. I can be melodramatic and petty and- and self-destructive. I do dumb shit like drive away my closest friend with the silent treatment because I didn’t get the answer I wanted. I’m so sorry. You were right, and, god, furthermore? The entire thing was just… stupid, you know? Can you forgive me?”

You sway on your feet, dizzy.

“Of course.”

She steps forward and hugs you, and as her arms wrap around you, so does an awful panic.

Your cell phone is burning a hole in the pocket of your bathrobe, from the text you had received ten minutes prior, alerting you to your friend’s impending arrival:

Sans: she’s coming over to your place. please don’t tell her anything. i’ll figure something out. sorry to ask you to do this. i’ll make it up to you

Sans: ok that sounded wrong. not what i meant. everything sounds wrong though

Sans: i’m sorry

“Oh, thank you,” she says, sounding more grateful than she should, her scarf tickling your cheek. “That’s such a relief. Thank you.”

Really just laying that guilt on thick. Uhhh let’s see, after that:

You tell her you’re sick just to get her to go away and she believes you because you look horrible and are wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon

Cue angst about furthering the extent of your dishonesty

The next day she texts you just to “catch up” but in the middle of it, drops that Sans has been more than usually distant. They talked about so much and she knows it’s going to take time for things to get better, but since that first conversation on New Year’s Day, he’s kind of shut down-

But enough about her problems, what’s been going on with you? Oh, Not Much, you tell her. You’re still getting over your cold but you’ve gone back to work. It’s the truth, more or less. You have the sniffles, at any rate, though that’s more due to your daily extended heartbreak/guilt crying alone sessions than any physical malady.

A week later, your friend is back to sending you memes and talking about her job, your favorite shows you watch. Sans is living with her. Everything is normal, on the surface. Sans chimes in on the group chat every now and again, but that’s it. Not another word from him. The awful feeling in the pit of your stomach has faded to a dull ache that only bothers you at night.

Which is why it’s a total surprise when Papyrus shows up on your doorstep one evening and lets himself in. You didn’t even know he was in town. You’ve met him a few times, loved the guy, but he’s not here for a social call.

Well, okay, he is, but it’s not a pleasant one. He is. So. Disappointed. In you. He’s prepared a speech! To express the enormity of your fuckup.

About the 45-second mark of which, you break down sobbing. He stops immediately and grabs you a glass of water and a cool washcloth for your neck.

He apologizes as you calm down, and you have a long talk with him about the hows and the whys. It’s incredibly cathartic, you’ve never told anyone about any of this situation, and you’re drained by the time you’re done. But as he leaves, he has this look on his face and you hate it- pity tinged with trace amounts of leftover dismay, so it’s a relief to lock yourself in for the evening, even if the alternative (i.e. being alone with your thoughts and your guilt and everything else) isn’t much better.

An hour or two later, you get another text from Sans: “i’m sorry again, i didn’t know he was gonna do that.”

Interrupting myself here to say as an aside, so much for a synopsis of my vague concept; this is now going on 800 words. Look at all this work you definitely made me do that I didn’t put on myself at all. Anyway.

Sans text, continued: “he’s in town cuz of me, though, so i think i gotta listen to him. he’s uh saying we should get together and talk about how i”

“hang on”

Five minutes later: “scratch that i’m not listening to him.”

Ten full minutes later: “we can have lunch tomorrow. to talk. if you want. you don’t have to agree to it. i’ll understand.”

It’s about two in the morning when you finally respond: “Where and when?”

He replies immediately.

It’s a good sandwich. A shame you can’t do much more than just poke at it and nibble at the toppings that have fallen out of it onto the wax paper basket liner. And the bag of chips is completely out of the question. You’ve already put them away for later, for when you might eventually start regretting skipping lunch because of the awful somersaults your innards keep doing. Sans’s sandwich isn’t faring much better- he’s twirling his frilly-ended toothpick between his fingers, occasionally poking it into his dill pickle wedge.

Neither of you has said a word past your perfunctory greeting and the order you’d both placed at the counter eight minutes ago. The rest of the sandwich shop doesn’t seem to care, though. Most of its other patrons are absorbed in getting their order and getting out, or making the most of their too-brief lunch hour. It’s noisy, and it would be the perfect setting for the conversation you’re supposed to be having, you credit Sans with that much. If you could just speak.

You’re staring off over his shoulder, at the display rack of different brands of hot sauce, when he startles you by biting off over half of his pickle, chewing, and swallowing with his eyes closed and a sigh.

“thanks for… you know, not telling her yet.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” you say with enough sourness to give that pickle a run for its money.

“no, yeah, i know- i just. yeah. i’ll tell her, though. soon. uh, -ish.”

“Will you tell me when you do it? I don’t think I can take another unexpected visitor, and I-” you laugh, ”-I’m going nuts checking my phone, panicking at every single notification.”

“‘course. yeah.”

“Okay. Thanks. For that.”

“sure.”

You tear off a piece of sliced turkey that’s hanging out the edge of your sandwich.

“…can i say somethin’?”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“i didn’t- uh, know you had- i just thought you were riding the same wave of… whatever that was, as me.”

He clears his throat.

“i didn’t know you felt that w- i mean, that you had actual feelings for- at least, not until you started sayin’ all those things–”

“–I changed my mind, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

He ducks his head.

“yeah, okay.”

You take another bite of your sandwich, chewing as you scramble for something, anything, else to say.

“So. Uh, how’s, um, y'know, everything else?”

He blinks, shakes his head, and laughs.

“what, you really wanna know? or are you askin’ just to ask?”

Shit. No, you don’t really want to know.

“Yeah. I wanna know.”

He leans back, the plastic of the chair back creaking, and looks out the window behind you.

“shit… it’s all… it’s all fallin’ apart on me.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, already a well-honed reflex.

“not your fault, really. in the end. i’m just already tired. a week ago, this’s all i wanted, for everything to go back to normal. but it turns out normal was just a lot of her pretending she could stand me. and we’re not pretending, anymore. so… but that’s supposed to help us sort everything out, right?”

Goddamn your bleeding heart that got you into this in the first place.

“feels capricious of me, right? but if it’s gonna end, why can’t it just end already? but i’m not allowed to give up yet, because that’s not what we’re doing, we’re working through our issues.”

He pushes his basket over to the seat next to him, and folds his arms on the table, head nestled into them.

“even though giving up is all i wanna do anymore,” he says, voice muffled by his sleeves.

“Every relationship requires work, Sans,” you say. Platitudinal, but true, if not particularly helpful.

“but at what point do you cut your losses? is it before or after the seventieth thing this week she tells you you’ve been doing wrong all along that she never bothered to mention to you before? you know she prefers the loose end of the tp to come out underhanded? i didn’t. she’s wrong, but hey, fuck- anything for my baby. i’m tired. i didn’t know it was gonna be like this.”

Underhanded toilet paper rolls? Do you even know who she is?

“i should just go ahead and tell her about this whole thing, already, see if that- i dunno, breaks us beyond repair. but if i do that now when all our wounds are still fresh, i don’t get to say i tried to fix things, and i guess on some level, i need that.”

He rubs his face.

“fuck, listen to me whine. i’m making it sound worse than it is. ”

“Dude, I don’t know. I’m still horrified by the toilet paper thing.”

He snorts.

“i don’t even use the stuff much, so it wasn’t worth makin’ a whole thing out of it.”

“Okay, but I’m fixated on it. It’s like, all I can think about. What the fuck?”

You’re overcome with the strangest feeling- it shouldn’t be so odd to you now, three weeks into your guilt spiraling, but you want to text her about this so badly, to give her grief about it. And if this were a normal situation, if you hadn’t made everything awful, you wouldn’t hesitate. But you’re having a clandestine lunch with her boyfriend to discuss the awful thing you did, and therefore you can’t give her shit about her weird habit you now know about thanks to him, which is what friends do. Friends don’t let friends put the roll on the wrong way without at least dragging them for it for the rest of their natural lives, so can you still even call yourself her friend?

Probably not, huh? That, and the other thing you did. Friends don’t do that, either.

Your smile fades as you start to understand on a much more personal level what he meant. You doubt you’ll be granted the same mercy as him, of working out your issues, and until then you have to live like this, unable to even joke around without it turning bitter. You’re going to lose her, too- you’re going to lose them both, maybe, probably, and the waiting and pretending is only adding to your misery. It’s a hollow kind of wanting, for something to be over and done with, but it’s rooted in you all the same.

You finally decide you’re not going to finish your sandwich, but you wrap it back up in the wax paper liner anyway, and start putting your coat back on.

“Well. Thanks for meeting with me. I think I’d better head back to work, now.”

“you realize we didn’t talk about what happened at all, right?”

You shrug. “Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we don’t need to.”

“you don’t- you don’t have anything you wanna say to me.”

You close your eyes and sigh.

“I’m… sorry?”

“shit, yeah, me too.”

“It was a mistake.”

“unequivocally, yeah.”

“I think that about covers it, don’t you?”

He nods silently.

“Then… I’ll see you around.”

You almost make it to the door, leaving him slumped in his seat with his uneaten sandwich. You look outside at the cold, slushy parking lot, check the time, and nearly get in your car and drive back to work. But instead, your feet carry you back to the table, back to Sans.

“I do actually just have one question.”

He looks up at you, and you can see deep into his eye sockets, and the dark semicircles beneath them, how tired he is.

“sure. anything,” he answers.

“If you had known how I felt, would it all have gone- would we be here now, having this conversation? Or would I have gone home before and none of this would have ever happened?”

Your fool brain wants you to continue: Or would you have stayed?

But you already know the answer to that one, so you stop yourself; these questions are dangerous enough, as is.

He actually looks somewhat taken aback.

“i don’t- i dunno. and i dunno how much good speculating about it’s gonna do. what’s done is done.”

“Please. It’s the one answer I feel like I have any right to.”

He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets and leans back.

“yeah. i think i’d have done the same thing.”

Your chair creaks as you fall back into it, defeated.

“Why?”

“what do you mean, why? did it seem like i gave a shit who else i was hurting at the time?”

He slumps a little further down, and in a softer, more soothing tone, says, “what are you after? do i care now that i hurt your feelings? …yeah. not that it really counts for anything.”

“It counts,” you croak.

“hmm.”

He stands, finally.

“guess you’re right, though. i’d better be getting back to work.”

He shrugs on his wool coat and winds his scarf around his neck.

“you uh… you gonna be ok?”

Are you? Feels like… maybe not?

The sobbing starts, even as you will it not to- christ, no, anything but that.

“oh. uh. shit.”

People are staring, now. You hide your face behind your hands, try to even out your voice to reassure him and your new audience that no, really, you’re fine, but it just comes out all the more overwrought for your efforts. Sans is useless, grimacing, hands outstretched towards you, placating, like with a panicking animal, and it reminds you of the conversation you’d had that night, when you’d offered yourself up as a shoulder to cry on.

“you wanna get out of here?” he asks, and you nod, rolling your eyes at your own uninvited histrionics and swiping at your cheeks.

“k,” he says, and when you open your eyes again, you’re sitting on your couch, in your apartment.

“got tissues?”

You swallow.

“Uh, bedroom, but- please don’t go in there, it’s- it’s bad.”

“k.”

He returns a few seconds later with a handful of toilet paper, and you take it from him.

“hey. it’s gonna be okay. y’know why?”

You blow your nose.

“Why?”

“no matter what else happens, you’ll always know: you put the toilet paper on the holder the right way.”

You chuckle weakly into your wad of tissue.

“You’re right. I’ll always have that.”

He sinks down on the couch next to you. Not too close.

You sigh and slump forward, elbows on your knees, calmer now.

“Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen. The- you know, the turning on the waterworks in a sandwich joint. That was embarrassing. I’m embarrassed.”

“happens. plus, i think you’ve earned the right to cry.”

Your chin wobbles again, threatening.

“Oh? I have? Cool. ‘Cuz I don’t know what I have the right to feel, or do, right now. It all feels wrong.”

“yeah. i know,” he mumbles.

“Sometimes I start feeling sad, for me, because of what I’m about to lose because of this? But then- no, can’t do that, because- hey, maybe I should have thought of that before we-” you catch your breath.

“yeah.”

“I’m mad at myself, and I’m pretty okay with that. But then sometimes I think maybe I’m mad at you for like, seven different reasons, and half of those reasons conflict with each other, but I can’t even… stay mad at you like I think I want to.”

You aren’t looking at him, but you can feel his stare.

“like how?”

You poke and prod at your face, trying to relieve some of the tension headache that’s building around your eye sockets and temples.

“Like, as your friend, I’m annoyed that you put up with ALL of her bullshit. You’re such a doormat when it comes to her. But as her friend, I’m so fucking appalled that you’d sleep with me, her best friend, less than a month after the breakup of a like- how many years? Six?”

“…seven.”

“Seven year relationship. Fuck, sorry, not to belabor the point or anything, but- yeah.” You sniffle. “And then- here’s the kicker. Just as me, alone, not relative to anyone else- I keep wishing you’d just fucking stayed in bed after I poured my heart out to you. Like I have any right to feel that. And of all of it, all the shit, that’s the one that sticks the worst, so the rest don’t get a chance to mean anything.”

The second you turn your head to make eye contact with him, he’s there, leaning in, warm. Big old eye sockets looking at you just like you’d wanted for so long.

“i should’ve. i know.”

Your breath leaves you, almost-but-not-quite on a sob, as he kisses you, and everything is right and better, if only for a split second.

“Wait.”

“yeah- yes. ok.”

“What about-” you can’t bring yourself to speak to him more than a few inches removed from the kiss, as if tethered there by a spell, “-what about everything you just said, what- this isn’t fixing things.”

“no.”

“And I can’t- you can’t do this to me again.”

“i won’t. it won’t be like last time.”

“You can’t promise that,” you say as matter-of-factly as you can manage, given the circumstances.

“keep thinkin’ about how i can’t remember the last time i felt the way i did when you were sayin’ all that stuff about me.”

Your cheeks flush even harder, as if the rest of you hadn’t yet gotten the memo.

“That’s called an orgasm.”

The ridge above his nasal cavity scrunches up pleasantly when he laughs.

“We shouldn’t. If it was wrong before, it’s so much worse now.”

“i know.”

You cast your eyes aside to your front door, then down to where your hands are almost touching as you lean towards each other on the couch.

“You’re so full of shit, you know that?” you ask. “Fuck you for making me fall for it twice.”

Your eyelids flutter shut as you pull him in by the back of his neck.

THEN YOU FUCK AGAIN!!! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!!! HOW COULD YOU!!!

hehe

He keeps his promise, more or less. It’s not her he has to run off to, at the end. You both have half a day of work ahead of you. You’re both late, and it’s as good an excuse as any for you to pretend he won’t still be going home to her, later.

You still have questions. You can’t focus at work.

He never promised much of anything, you now realize. It felt like he was offering much more, but- so what? Is he actually done with her? After everything? What does this look like tomorrow? A week from now?

What, you seriously think he’s going to leave her for you? Only if she kicks him out, you think, bitterly. Which makes you what, exactly? A consolation prize for his neglected ego?

You call him right as you’re getting off work, but hang up before he can answer. You want the truth??? You can’t handle the truth!!!

Things get better as they get worse. He starts coming over to see you, at least once a day. He stays an hour or two when he can. He talks with you in bed.

Yours, now, you think, sometimes.

You don’t ask him when he’s going to tell her. He’s choosing you, so he has to, right?

He will. Soon.

*Now I’m looking back at the beginning of all this and I’m like-

Some thoughts??? Bitch! You just wrote most of the damn thing! And after you said you weren’t gonna!

…So CLEARLY I had like, a little more I evidently wanted to say about this fucking thing. So there you go???

GOD that was a lot of dashes in there though, huh? I didn’t even try to keep the number down.

Oops hehhe

But, uh, yeah! I don’t know how this ends! Or even, at the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, if it ends! Maybe everyone learns from their mistakes and suffers the consequences! Or maybe nobody does! Or maybe it’s a weird combination of learning and not learning and suffering and not suffering because it’s supposed to be like, way more complicated than that.

**Or maybe reader and Sans’s gf wind up auditioning for the same local network tv wrestling show and they have lots of sexual wrestling tension together and also reader has like a will-they-won’t-they thing with an 80s disaster caricature of Marc Maron and they both bond with a group of wonderful interesting women and get to create something bigger than themselves!

God, I love GLOW. Maybe just go watch GLOW instead of this, it’s like, basically the same thing only with more eighties vibes and less skeletons and more women’s wrestling and less magical penises.

So really, not the same thing at all except for the one plot point of sleepin’ with your best friend’s dude that they kind of share, but very very good, you know?

Anyway! I love getting asks (I apparently love them so much that I can’t help myself and end up writing almost an entire chapter just to answer them), and fleshing out all the vagueness a little more without the self-imposed pressure of having to finish it into something publishable was really fun. So thanks for this ask!

#ask #the-one-eyed-king-kaneki-ken #habby balentimes day #sorry mobile users i know this was long as shit #sorry everyone actually #sans/reader #for auld lang syne my dear

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neverwatchedonepiece · 6 years

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496: “To the Sea Someday! the Pledge of the Three Brats!”

... I’m listening.

Another great episode. I think the post-arc fatigue is wearing off.

In another case of Art Imitates Life, we have a tiny Sabo who loathes the privileged society of nobles within which he was raised. Must say that one of my favourite One Piece moments is when Luffy caved in Saint Charloss’ face, so I am all for Oda revisiting this theme.

I also liked the way Sabo’s social status was revealed in small, hinting increments. I didn’t realise what was going on until Sabo himself spelled it out.

The Dine and Dash

This was the first time I realised something was up with Sabo, though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was yet.

After the nice intro showing Luffy’s first attempts at his gomu gomu no pistol attack (awww...), world building began in earnest. If you travel north of Grey Terminal, you will hit a wall. Literally. There is a wall. This wall encloses the Goa Kingdom - a place with a strict immigration policy.

Have you ever wondered why Grey Terminal exists? It’s because the residents inside the wall dump their trash outside the entrance, leaving the cast-offs of society to fight over cast-off scraps. Lovely.

The poor people of Grey Terminal are sometimes allowed inside to sell recycled items. This exception allowed Ace, Sabo and Luffy managed to sneak in.

Just beyond the gate, is Edge Town, where all the edgy types hang out. Ace, Sabo and Luffy easily dealt with a bunch of muggers. Those muggers knew their names, so our three favourite prospective pirates have obviously won a bit of local notoriety here. I can just picture the headlines: AREA KIDS OUT OF CONTROL. AREA KIDS CAUSE CROCODILE SHORTAGE. AREA KIDS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL SOCIAL ILLS.

In the middle of town, there’s another wall. You’d need one to keep out all the Edge. This part of the kingdom is called High Town. There is not a scrap of garbage on the streets here. Apparently, Goa Kingdom is the most beautiful in East Blue. Now we know why. I’m guessing the photographers aren’t taken round Grey Terminal.

And High Town is where the nobles live.

I thought, good, good. Now things are interesting. Is Luffy going to punch out another entitled parasite and form the habit of a lifetime?

The kids sold the crocodile skin and decided to go for ramen. Sabo knew a place. It was a really fancy place. Disguised, they walked in. Sabo demanded a private dining room and flashed a gold locket/pocket watch engraved with a floral emblem. This had the staff fawning all over them. Ace said, “Wow, that thing sure comes in handy!” Sabo was uneasy, “Haha, yeah, I found it on the street one day.”

Being mischievous imps, they had about two hundred bowls of ramen between them, then dined and dashed by jumping out through a fourth floor window. xD

This is when I started thinking: wait... something is up here.

If Sabo is hard-up, how does this kid know about private dining rooms? How did he know about that fancy restaurant. Why was he so sketchy about finding the locket? He robs people all the time. Why not proudly say you robbed a rich noble?

But no. I justified it away as nothing. Sabo might have spied and seen nobles demand private rooms. He’d never tried ramen before. Maybe he had a pang of conscience about stealing the locket and said he found it instead.

Then, a random in the street seemed to recognise Sabo. I did not know who he was at the time, so I shall call him Sweaty Chins (due to his multiple chins and excessive perspiration).

“You’re alive!” Sweaty Chins exclaimed. “Let’s go home.”

“Um... that guy’s calling you,” Ace said.

Sabo seemed shaken, then said, “He confused me for someone else.”

They ran for it. One last shot of Sweaty Chins before the scene concluded was ambiguous. I wasn’t sure if he was happy or not to see Sabo.

[Comrade Sabo]

As Ace is not dumb, he suspected something was amiss. Sabo didn’t want to tell, but Ace literally wrung the secret out of him.

“I’m the son of a noble,” Sabo said miserably.

“And?” Luffy and Ace chorused. (I laughed.)

Sabo explained both his parents were alive. He wasn’t an orphan and never grew up in Grey Terminal. Sweaty Chins was his father. He apologised for lying to Ace and Luffy.

Luffy being Luffy, wanted to forgive him immediately. Ace being Ace was more cautious. “You should wait to hear the motive before you forgive.”

He wanted to know why Sabo was living out on the edge with them if he was from a noble family.

Sabo told his tale.

The flashback opened with a sinister shot of looming, overbearing, lecturing parents. “You need to acquire intelligence and knowledge you need to know as a noble and become a man that can marry a woman from the royal family,” Mr Sweaty Chins said. “Then we’ll live in security and I’m sure that you will live happily,” Mrs Chins chipped in.

“Are you sure?” Sabo said, unconvinced.

“YEAH, OF COURSE!”

Later, Sweaty Chins received some bad news. An entire cargo ship was lost along with the goods he had invested in. He didn’t give a damn about the crew. The money was the main thing. Oh great, I thought. Sweaty Chins is another callous, noble piece of excrement.

Believe it or not, my opinion sunk even lower.

Little Sabo turned up at his study with a drawing he’d done of his dad. Sweaty Chins took out his anger on Sabo, ripped the drawing in half and said, “I’m exhausted from work. If you have time to draw, you should be studying.”

And little Sabo’s heart just shattered into a million pieces.

Then the popular theory about posh schools breeding psychos also cropped up (thank you, Oda!) As little Sabo walked to his expensive school, a bowl-cut fucknugget approached him. “I’m from the royal family,” he brayed. “I’m related to the king. Give me a piggyback to my house.”

Since Sabo has a backbone and pride, he was like, “Um... no,” and walked on. This did not go down well.

“Are you gonna ignore my royal order?”

And then the kid pulled a knife on him.

Yes. You heard right. This royal, parasitic sponge pulled a knife on Sabo (these nobles really will have to go. They are out of control).

And it gets worse. When Sabo beat up the kid in self-defence, *he* was punished for it! Mrs Chins rushed to the school. Not to aid her son. But to fawn over the poor, injured widdle royal. When Sabo tried to explain he almost got knifed, it earned him a ringing slap across the face.

And in that instant you see the hatred born in Sabo right there.

Fuck that noise, he thought. I am out of here.

And he went to party with the people of Grey Terminal, who had time for him and who told him cool stories of all the places they’d been to out on the open sea.

When his flashback ended, Sabo announced he would go out to sea one day no matter what and write a book about it.

Ace said: “I’m gonna become a pirate and defeat others and become infamous. It doesn’t matter if all the people in the world reject and despise me. I’ll become a great pirate and show them what I can do! I won’t run from anyone or lose to anyone. My name will be known all over!”

If they had shown this just before Ace died, it would have been tears time. ;_;

Sabo realised they had a problem. All of them wanted to be a captain. Ace got round this by stealing some sake from Dadan, and That Scene took place.

“Maybe we’ll set out independently,” he said. “When we become pirates, we might not be on the same ship. But our brotherhood will always be there. So from now on, we’re brothers!”

God, I hope Sabo isn’t dead. Maybe that’s why he fought so hard to save Ace, his last remaining brother.

Underage drinking!

#neverwatchedonepiece #nwop #never watched one piece #monkey d. luffy #portgas d. ace #sabo #goa kingdom #sweaty chins #mrs sweaty chins

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disrepairhouse · 5 years

Text

Arc Two: Chapter One - Recalibration

A vast, arid desert stretched for miles, a harsh wind whipping the sand across the endless dunes, creating great whirlwinds reaching for the great, blue sky. Pillars of an ancient civilization stuck up sporadically throughout the dunes, a gust of wind occasionally revealing the remains of a platform before covering it once more. No sign of life or movement appeared under the scorching sun. Suddenly, in the midst of the sand, the air crackled and snapped, subtly at first but fluctuated and grew violent within a matter of seconds, ending in an explosive boom that shocked through miles of the desert wasteland.

Sand and ancient debris whirled through the static air as a pulsing, swirling portal appeared. With a powerful wave of energy, a mass of damaged, sparking red metal was thrown from the center of the portal, landing several feet away before coming to a sliding halt, half buried in the hot sand. The air crackled once more before the portal faded out of existence, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared and leaving only heaps of displaced sand and the immobile pile of robotics behind.

Not far off, the hum of a hovercraft filled the now-silent air as its shadow ran across the sandy hills below. The craft sped through the desert before reaching the deposited robotic body, stopping above it just long enough for its driver to inspect the creation, using a pair of robotic attachments to grab it. Lifting the half-buried body out of the sand and hoisting it in the air enough to not drag, the hovercraft returned the way it came with its new discovery. A quiet laugh escaped the man inside as he returned to one of his many bases.

Finally… something to replace his own lost creations. It would take some repair, but nothing he couldn’t handle, he was sure. The real challenge would be keeping the new addition under his control; he was growing tired of robots going rogue on him.

“If I had let the fight continue, it would have turned in their favor. You couldn’t have just expected me to stand by, could you? He asked me to help with a specific job and I did, and no, he did not specifically ask me to fight Shadow, he just asked me to intervene in the fight. It was my decision how to do it and—Kipper, are you even listening?!”

“Huh, what was that? I stopped listening ten minutes ago.”

Burgundy and blue quills prickled as pale cheeks puffed in irritation. A small hedgehog girl crossed her arms, narrowing furious green and purple eyes at the doll sitting on the back of the rust red couch. She slammed her hands down on her crossed legs while a toothy, terrifying grin spread across the little fox doll’s face. “K-Kipper! Don’t as-ask me about the… past if you aren’t gonna l-listen!” Her face reddened as she barely stammered through her command, causing the grin on the doll to widen further. As soon as she realized he was only looking to tease her, as he often was since he was given the ability to talk—something Itara regretted more everyday—she huffed indignantly and turned away.

There wasn’t far to go, unfortunately, as they were still in the base she’d originally set up in several timelines ago, so she couldn’t do much to escape the infuriating doll’s teasing. It was a small cabin, set far into the forest and away from any town. Itara had found it abandoned initially, but it worked for what they needed, a simple base of operations. They had refurnished considerably to create a more comfortable living space, as well. One of the two smaller rooms was turned into a bedroom for her, the other she’d turned into a computer room, and the larger, main area was sectioned off into a living room and kitchen by a half wall.

The living room was furnished with an old TV and couch, where she spent most of her time, either journaling or watching a show or two when she managed to catch them. She kept her small, black journal on a side table beside the couch so it was easy to grab and write in. On the other side was an even older, more worn out chair and a spiral rug sat in the center of it all. The rug’s material was matted and coarse, thin from years of use, and a bit scratchy to lie on, but Itara often lay there, in front of the TV, to watch her shows.

The kitchen was outfitted with the most basic of necessities: counters, an oven, a fridge, and a few cabinets they’d repaired, themselves. Against the far wall, just beyond the half-wall’s reach, was an old, scratched up dining set with four vaguely matching chairs. A recycled set of blue curtains hung over the two windows in the larger area, the ones over the dining room window cut shorter than the living room curtains so they didn’t run over the table. It wasn’t much, and everything in it was salvaged from something or another, be it street side giveaways or thrift stores, but it was enough for the current residents.

Yelling out in frustration, the young hedgehog girl reached over, shoving the little yellow doll off the back of the couch where his two tails had been propping him up. Even the talking doll, that was now filling the small cottage with a haunting laughter, looked as though he’d been picked up from a gutter. His patchy orange fur was matted down from years of questionable stains, his body badly sewn together with puffs of stuffing sticking out between the threads. What used to be white fur on his ears, padded hands, and belly were grey and spotted with specks of brown. His black button eyes were scratched and dulled, and the red gem that hung from a wire on his head fared no better, having a decent chunk taken out of one side. It was a creepy imitation of a well-known two-tailed fox, but years of abuse and an innately unsettling design with an off-putting aura had left it in an antique shop window for decades. The cleanest part of it was the shiny white ribbon wrapped around its neck.

“Keep it up and I’ll tear the rest of your stuffing out, Kipper.”

The young hedgehog had stormed over to the dining room where the other two residents were set up at the table, one of them hunched over in pieces in one of the chairs, while the other stood over them, working on a laptop. The taller of the two, a towering, thickly-built echidna covered in thin red fur glared over towards the laughing Tails doll, his single, glowing green eye backing his threat and bringing the possessed doll’s amusement to an end. Satisfied, he turned back to the laptop on the table to continue his work; though thanks to the long, metallic claws jutting out from one hand, the process was slow, even though he was plugged into the computer, itself. A long, red tail flicked back and forth as he waited for loading screens.

The other, far quieter bot sat propped in one of the chairs, inactive and badly damaged. The blue and white bot had a leaner design than its red companion, though with the sharp, jutting metallic chassis it was difficult to tell what its original appearance used to be. While the red robot showed signs of damage, between a shattered eye hidden under a black eyepatch, the exposed ‘skin’ on one of its dreads, a long scratch going down its muzzle, and a missing hand, wrapped and replaced with a hook, the blue one was even worse. One arm was missing entirely, only a heavily gashed ball joint and exposed electrical wires remaining; the other was badly cracked and dented. Both legs were splintered and torn, half its torso was nothing but jutting edges and exposed wiring, the top of its head was shattered and charred black, and a long, webbing crack ran across its eyeglass.

At one point in time, both robots had been notoriously deadly creations of Robotnik, designed and built solely to battle and destroy their mobian counterparts. Yet one had been abandoned for years, left to decay in the rubble of a fallen base—until a time-travelling child rescued and repaired him—and the other was reduced to scrap metal after a time-shattering battle against an angry God. Nonetheless, the less damaged of the two was determined to fix his companion, however he could.

“Itara, do me a favor and get the extra USB cord from the other room?”

The small hedgehog muttered a quiet ‘sure’, turning her attention to the room connected to the dining room, shuffling around in it for a moment before returning with a long, black cord, USB ports on either side of it. Handing it to the red robot, she stood back and watched him curiously. “Have you thought of something new to try?”

“Just testing another theory. He’s still going to need a lot of repair before he’s fully functional again,” he paused, adding a small, “if he’s ever fully functional again,” before continuing in the same monotone nonchalance, “but if we can at least get him back online, even if only to a minor degree, it could make the process considerably faster. He would know how his circuity works better than even I would, especially since no one can go back and look now.” Itara shuffled uncomfortably at the suggestion, but it went unseen by the other. “But he’s… even more damaged than I was initially.”

“I wish I could just check,” Itara muttered, casting a hateful glare towards the black journal in the living room. Turning back, she noted, “at the very least, with as much damage as he’s sustained, if we do get him back online, we likely won’t have to worry about his loyalty chip… or his communications system, for that matter. We’ll have to make sure those don’t turn back on at any point during the repair, but it’s easier to keep something offline than to turn it off sometimes.”

“So what happens when he wakes back up, remembers everything that happened, hates you all for it, and kills everyone?”

Both robot and hedgehog turned a wary eye towards the amused doll. It wasn’t so much that they hadn’t considered the possibility, between the two of them they’d run through just about every possible outcome and came up with several contingency plans to deal with them, but that was the most dangerous option out of all of them. Unlikely as it was. Even if he remembered most of what had happened before, and even if he did still hold a grudge about certain circumstances, he would be too damaged to do anything about it. For as terrifying and talented of a killer as their out of commission guest was… he was hardly more than a pile of bolts nowadays.

Sighing in annoyance, Itara turned away from the doll first, crossing her arms as she explained, “RK shouldn’t have any trouble with him, if he tries to attack. He’s built stronger and Sparky’s super broken.”

There was silence in the room afterwards as they considered the answer, RK turning back to continue his work while Itara moved to sit down at one of the empty chairs beside him. Kipper shrugged and dropped against the back of the couch, returning to his ‘sleeping’ state. He could at least talk and move on his own at certain points, but he couldn’t remain active indefinitely. He returned to his doll-like state whenever he no longer felt like interacting with the others, and more often than not, both RK and Itara welcomed the moments of silence.

As usual, they took advantage of the current silence and continued their work on their broken project. RK decided to hook up to the other robot, directly, leaving Itara to run the programs necessary for his new tests through her laptop. Once everything was set up and ready to run, RK shut off unnecessary background programs and let Itara take over the process, using the larger, functioning robot as an interpreter and display for the possible errors running on the other robot once they booted power into him. It took some time before Itara was able to reconfigure the mess of code into something readable but once she did, she relayed the information.

After a quick discussion, and a lengthy argument about how to do it, they decided to shut down everything except the ability to turn lighting and optics on. They would start at the smallest, most basic structure of the design and if no errors appeared, move on until they found the core problem. Then the problem would be fixing whatever came up, but if they could at least figure out what, the how would come. Once again, using his own processors as an intermediate, RK began routing power to the broken Metal Sonic while Itara kept a sharp eye on her laptop screen, watching for problems.

Processors began to whir and familiar crackles of the long-time shorted circuitry sparked up, getting a cautious gaze from the young hedgehog, but when she saw RK making no attempts to stop the process, she returned to the screen to watch for errors. Whirs and the puff of internal fans filled the silence of the open rooms, the occasional warning showing on the laptop screen, that Itara looked into before continuing the process. Unaware she was holding her breath, Itara let it out sharply when she saw one of the bright red eyes light and begin to glow, dimming and brightening slowly along with the notification that appeared on the laptop.

The robot made no movements; even the glowing red eye remained stationary, prompting Itara to look into the program to see if it was getting any optical feedback or if the light behind the screen had been the only component to turn on. She relayed the information to RK once again while pulling up the visual programs of both robots. RK’s was normal, showing a dimmed view of the living room from the one functional eye. Metal Sonic’s however, only showed static. But it was more than they had gotten before. It had only shown black before, if they were getting static now, it meant something was working.

Itara quickly took a seat back in her chair to start looking into it, digging deeper into the code to try and locate the exact problem of the feed, relaying the information directly to RK’s communication lines via the computer since he’d shut his auditory programs down to conserve power. This was the most they’d gotten out of the broken robot since the reset and they were both equally eager to push on. Even when Kipper activated again and started with his usual sass, likely awakened by Itara’s cry of excitement at having finally made progress, she aptly ignored him in favor of working on the robot. While she was still wary about activating him completely, considering his nature and the previous timelines, it was the biggest source of distraction to keep her from thinking about things she preferred not to. She would happily forget problems she couldn’t solve for the ones she could.

As she worked, however, more whirring and sparking started up, causing her to pause and study the still immobile robot. The single lit eye had stopped blinking and remained consistently glowing, and the opposite side even gave an occasional flash, but nothing moved. Checking the various programs open on her laptop again, making sure nothing was overloading or trying to turn on more than it could handle, she returned to work when she felt satisfied she could press on. She knew of Metal Sonic’s previous circuitry problem, knowing he had a short in his system that he’d learned to manipulate, and was likely to return, if not get much worse, so she expected sparking when they reactivated him. That was why she nicknamed him Sparky, after all.

Reassuring herself that was all it was, she poured through the codes again, looking for anything that could be relevant to his reboot. During her search, however, a string of errors finally popped up that brought her progress to a short stop. Optical errors, software errors, reboot errors, overheating errors, the list went on. Sighing, she sat back again, looking over the list before leaning forward again to let RK know… but the second her fingers touched her laptop, a sharp zap ran up them, causing her to quickly withdraw. Leaning back again, she eyed the laptop, concerned, reaching out to try again, knowing she’d need to let RK know to disconnect before anything more happened… when a sharp electrical current zapped through all three electronics.

Darting up and away from the frying laptop with a screech, knocking the chair back and nearly tripping over it on her way, Itara scrambled away from the table and the robots, watching in shock and horror as both Metal Sonic and RK jolted spastically from the assault. Her laptop managed to throw a stream of errors and warnings on the screen before making a horrifying crackling sound, flashing several times, before finally blacking out, the smell of burnt plastic and metals filling the room. Metal Sonic and RK continued sparking for several minutes before they gave a final jolt and dropped forward, leaving a wake of fried electronics with a smell of burnt faux fur. Just as Itara was getting up to start looking over the damage, however, the entire cabin gave off a soft hum as the power shut down, leaving only the light of the setting sun to fill the dark, quiet rooms.

Itara shut her eyes, her ears pinning against her head as she heard Kipper moving behind her, before crying out in anguish and distraught. Kipper chuckled behind her, the light red glow of his gem casting wide shadows around the room when she opened her eyes again. “Oh no, would you look at that,” the doll laughed, “Momma bear’s shorted. It’s gettin’ dark. The powerless little hedgie is all defenseless. What’s going to happen?”

A quick chill ran down Itara’s spine at the suggestion, but she quickly shook her head, turning around to grab the floating doll out of the air and wrap him tightly in her arms, “nothing’s going to happen, Kipper. It’s not like I’m averse to the darkness or anything, I just have to get the power back online… and then… very carefully disconnect everything from RK to let him reboot.”

“But I wonder what caused that in the first place,” Kipper continued, disgruntled at being grabbed but continuing his taunting, nonetheless, “is it possible your killer robot is more active than you originally thought?”

Itara remained silent, keeping the doll tightly wrapped in her arms as she made her way out of the cabin and around the side to check the circuit breaker. She was at least glad the sun was still up, low as it was, but they were so surrounded by forest that even the comforting light of the sun came off more as a harsh, burning glow, casting long, reaching shadows. It was late in the year, on the cusp of winter, so the biting cold was snaking its way through the trees while the setting sun turned the changing leaves to fire. There was only a small dirt path leading down the hill from their cabin, which didn’t reach a solid road for at least a mile, and even then they were several miles outside of town. They were, in many aspects, entirely isolated and alone.

Shaking her head again, Itara flipped the switch on the breaker, one ear perking to listen for the snap of the electricity turning back on before she headed back inside. Casting a longing glance towards the sun, she sent it a silent message on her way back inside. As soon as she stepped foot back inside, however, as she was preparing to return to the robots… the electricity snapped back out, causing her ears to flatten once again.

“You forgot to-”

“Shut up, Kipper,” she hissed, tightening her hold on the doll to emphasize her point, walking over to the robots and disconnecting them both from the main power. With that taken care of, she returned to the breaker, flipped it on again, and finally returned to the robots to start unplugging everything. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to work while holding the doll, she released him and watched him float up above the robots while she went about unplugging them. Sighing in defeat when she saw the state of her laptop, she set it on the kitchen counter. That had been expensive. It would take forever to save up to get another like it. Stupid Sparky, he owed her a new laptop.

With the sun finally setting over the horizon, the woods outside the cabin fell to darkness and silence while Itara sat quietly working to repair the robots. She couldn’t even check to see how far that had set them back, or even what caused it in the first place. Kipper’s comment about Sparky maybe being more aware than they initially thought was caught in her brain and had her concerned. If that was, in fact, a defensive maneuver on his part, whether on purpose or not, it could complicate his repair even more. If they couldn’t hook up to him without fearing for their electronics, or in RK’s case, his own computers, she wasn’t sure how they were going to repair him at all. Well, first things first, she had to get him back online in the first place. Luckily he was more resilient than her laptop and only seemed to be offline, much like the breaker, he just needed his switch flipped back on. Once she had him disconnected and made sure turning him on wouldn’t damage him further, so far as she could tell without her laptop, she initiated a manual startup.

“I’ll try to get you a new laptop soon.”

“Mhm.”

“For now, I suppose you’ll have to do your homework at the school library, though.”

Itara looked up from her journal in horror at this, meeting the unamused stare of the robot who had been trying for several minutes to get her attention. “I didn’t think of that! RK, I can’t! We have to get a new laptop now!”

He shook his head, shrugging, “sorry, Itara, but as you said, it’s going to take a little time to get enough for a high end laptop like that. You’ll be fine. Just let them know your home computer crashed, they should let you use a school computer for whatever you need one for.”

“That’s not the problem! I don’t want to be in that Hellscape any longer than I have to!”

RK stared at her, an eyebrow rising, “I still don’t understand why you hate it so much considering everything else you’ve lived through: Multiple timelines, a destroyed future, and everything that happened with Mephiles, and it’s school that’s the Hellscape?”

“Yes!” Desperation was so blatant on her face, RK almost smirked in amusement, but shook his head, instead, turning back towards the dining room. “Don’t ignore my suffering!”

“You’re the daughter of a God. You’re fine. Come eat your dinner.”

Itara whined loudly and dramatically, but eventually sighed in annoyance and returned to her journal, finishing her thought before setting it down on the stand again. With as much vigor as a slug willingly walking to a salt pile, the young hedgehog made her way to the half of the table that wasn’t consumed by tools and cables and sat with a heavy ‘thump’ in her seat. A small bowl of mac and cheese and a glass of milk sat, waiting for her, but the young girl seemed as interested in it as she had been in Kipper’s earlier taunting.

“Don’t play with it, eat it,” RK warned, watching her poke at the small, orange noodles with her fork, resting her head in her hand and an elbow on the table. “You can pout all you’d like, there’s nothing we can do about your laptop for now, you’re just going to have to be patient.”

“Another reason to hate my lack of powers,” the girl muttered angrily, glaring at her dinner now, but slowly started eating with another warning glance from the much taller robot. An echo of snickers from across the room gained the doll responsible the same glare, though the snickering didn’t stop as Itara’s pouting did.

“In any case,” RK sighed, looking over the table at the remainder of their available tools, “we’re going to need another trip into town soon.” They might need to put Metal Sonic’s repair on hold again until they can replace the laptop, it would be difficult to do anything without at least one computer and he couldn’t suffice on his own. Especially with the new string of errors he couldn’t get rid of. After a long, thoughtful silence, he spoke up again, “perhaps we should look into moving to a new base.”

Itara looked up at the suggestion, tilting her head to the side in confusion. She’d chosen this cabin for a reason in the original timeline, it was far enough that they could work in considerable quiet, but it was also one of the few places RK could remain intact for as long as she needed him to be. Of course, with the reset, with Solaris’ fusion, she doubted the second reason would be relevant anymore, but they’d still need to be cautious about the first. “Where else would we even go?”

“We can only do extremely minimal repairs and upgrades in the situation we’re in, with as few computers as we have at our disposal. One laptop gets fried and we lose all sources of operations, it’s problematic.” Itara’s eyes narrowed as she started picking up on his point, but let him continue, “in such a small base, even if we had the proper amount of computers, at a high enough level to work on Metal Sonic and myself, they could never fit and the menial power such a small dwelling can even get could never power them all. In addition, getting our hands on such high end electronics is near impossible, and stealing them would create unwanted attention we can’t really handle at the moment.”

“RK… what are you suggesting, exactly?”

“If anyone would have the equipment necessary to do the repairs we need to… it’d be the original creator. It’s no secret Dr. Robotnik has a number of abandoned bases around the area, if we could pinpoint of them, clear them out, get them back online without tipping him off about it, it would offer everything we don’t have at the moment. It’s a dangerous gamble, but if we’re careful about it, it could work.” He turned towards her, crossing his arms and adding, “plus, we might be able to find something closer to your school, so you have less of a walk. Or at least something closer to the trains. There are a number of underground bases he used for surveillance purposes that should be empty now; they’d have normal buildings above them to avoid suspicion. If we can find one of those, it could work.”

Itara grumbled in annoyance at the mention of her school again, but went into careful thought about the actual potential of looking into one of Robotnik’s abandoned bases. She’d looked into a number of the doctor’s inner workings during her runs through earlier times, looking for the most beneficial times to steal his robots, she’d run across a number of his various bases, including the underground ones RK mentioned. The problem, more or less, came from taking them without tipping anyone else off. If they powered up a previously abandoned base, it could alert him, and they would be in far more trouble than they were now. Not to mention, it could also tip of others. Robotnik wasn’t their only concern. He never had been.

“What are the chances of success?”

“Depending on the base, it varies anywhere between 2% and 78% chance of success.”

“78%? That’s a surprisingly high percentage,” her brows furrowed in confusion. She wasn’t expecting anything beyond fifty.

“As I said, it depends on the base. There are some that are nearly ruined where the largest complication would just be getting power back to it, it’s old enough that it would be long since off Robotnik’s radar and so far away from populations that it wouldn’t be likely to catch attention from the general populace. However, they are… rather far out of the way, even more than we are now. They’re isolated, but also decrepit.”

Itara hummed in thought, pushing her now empty bowl aside to cross her arms on the table, leaning forward to think about it. It had potential. It would be a search, and they’d have to be careful about how they went about it, but maybe they could do it. Just using an old Robotnik base did offer them a lot of solutions they didn’t have at the moment. She didn’t much care about the location relative to her school, she didn’t even want to go in the first place, but if they had bigger computers, it would be easier to fix Metal Sonic. And the sooner they got him fixed, the better.

Hopefully.

“I’ll run the numbers a bit more later, for now, are you finished?” Itara looked up from her thoughts, having completely forgotten about dinner, but nodded, prompting him to nod towards the sink, “then put your dishes away and get ready for bed. We’re going to have a busy day tomorrow, either way.” The small hedgehog huffed, but did as she was told, dropped her dishes into the sink before grumbling off to her bedroom. RK watched her until she closed her bedroom door before turning back towards the other robot, running the numbers while studying the broken chassis. He had to wonder if the shock earlier was intentional or not. To a degree he hoped it had been intentional, it meant Metal Sonic was in a better shape than they initially thought and they might be able to convince him not to do it again so they could repair him. However, at the same time, it meant he was inherently hostile, which was to be expected, all things considered. But if he couldn’t be reasoned with, RK had to be ready to forcibly restrain him and as much as he loved a fight, he didn’t want to damage Metal Sonic any further than he already had.

His repair was going slow enough as it was.

Shaking his head, he moved to sit down and run through the possibilities of taking over a base again until Itara came back out, dressed for bed and looking for Kipper. Once she had the inactive doll, he told her goodnight and sent her off to bed, waiting until the light from her bedroom switched off before going into a partial sleep mode. He wanted to save as much energy for his scans and calculations as possible without wasting any on unnecessary functions. It was irritating that he still had to preserve energy like that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it until he could be better repaired. The best bet, for both him and Metal Sonic, was to find a base.

Besides, he wouldn’t mind finding something a bit bigger to give Itara more space to move around. Maybe even something a bit nicer so she didn’t have to live in a literal shack in the middle of the forest. They’d fixed it up as much as they could manage on their own, from new coverings for the walls, installing furniture and proper kitchen appliances, and even wiring it for power. But there was only so much they could do in their situation. If he could, he wanted to give her a room as close to the one she had in that mansion as possible. He knew he couldn’t find something quite that large without drawing attention to themselves, but he wanted to see if he could get close.

He knew there had to be something out there, he would just have to find it.

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