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writefandoms · 3 years

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The Outfit

Levi x Female!Reader

Summary: You buy Levi a new outfit to wear during sexy times🥴 (NSFW, blowjobs)

Word Count: 2.1k

“What was that?”

The short captain scowled at your cocky expression, embarrassment mixing with anger in eyes.

“You heard me, dumbass.” Not being able to hold eye contact, his steel orbs wander to the wall beside him.

Being on Levi’s squad had a lot of advantages, it was well known that the Great Captain Levi chose only the best of the best for his team. So many cadets and new recruits looked up to you because of your skills. On top of that you were one of the only women on his squad, besides Petra. You couldn't help but feel pride when young girls would say you were their inspiration.

But that’s besides the point, your skill was enough to catch the might Captain’s eye. And after late nights of drinking and occasionally crying, you built a good relationship with the shorty. A relationship that turned into something less pure.

Now, the usually stoic and cold captain, is standing before you looking like a nervous teenager confessing his love to his crush.

“Sorry couldn’t hear you, Captain. Could you repeat that please?” The glint in your eyes didn’t match your innocent tone.

As much as he scoffs and glares, Levi loves this part of you. He sucked his teeth before staring straight at you, “I’ll wear the stupid dress.”

You knew what he was going to say, but making him say it himself only added to the satisfaction of cracking his armor.

“Oh? Why did you change your mind?” He obviously didn’t like the teasing because he swiftly turned around and stomped away, you could hear him muttering under his breath.

“I’ll see you later, Captain,” You call out to his fleeting form.

The clock ticked loudly throughout your empty room. Time always moved so slowly when you had to wait. Sitting in a sofa chair besides your bed, your boot taps against the wood floor. He was a clean freak, so he was definitely showering or something after such a long day.

It wasn’t much longer until you heard three light taps on your door, making you shake with anticipation.

Taking a deep breath you called for them to enter, trying to hide your excitement but probably failing horribly.

Your beloved Captain walks in, shutting the door behind him. “Let’s get this over with.”

Smirking at his poor attempt at seeming bored you retort, “As I recall, you’re the one who said they wanted to do this.” Leaning back in your chair you cross your legs, “If you don’t want this then leave, you know I would never force you into anything you don’t want.”

Levi knew what you were doing, while you loved riling him up, consent was key in any healthy relationship. Ticking filled the room once again as Levi stayed glued to his spot by the door.

“Good. Lock the door.” A small clicking of the door locking followed quickly. He remained at the door awaiting further instruction.

“Back of the bottom drawer.” You pointed towards your dresser, watching as his small form moved swiftly across your room.

He crouched and opened the drawer, “Do you just throw your clothes in here?” he complains.

“Just keep looking.” You roll your eyes as he grumbles as he probably fights the urge to re-fold all your clothes.

You knew he found what he was looking for when he went completely silent. Standing up once again, this time with a black and white clump of fabric in his hand. He pinches a shoulder in each hand and lets the ruffled dress unravel.

He scans the outfit for a moment. It’s adorable in your opinion, him and the maid outfit. You were shopping with your squad mates when you saw the dress.

A black dress with a white trim that connects with a short black skirt, a white apron tied around the waist, and a pair of thigh high white socks. There were cute little black bows on the sleeves.

You couldn’t stop the dirty thoughts from attacking your brain and crotch, imagining Levi wearing such a sexy outfit. Not wanting to chance someone else taking it, you purchased it right then, jokingly bringing it up to Levi a couple days ago. But it seems that seed only grew in the Captain's dirty mind.

“You like it?” Now standing behind him peering over his shoulder, worrying that he might not like the style.

“It’s not wrinkled like all your other clothes.” That’s a yes, you grin.

Pressing your chest against his back, your arms wrap around his waist. “You’re gonna look so perfect.” He shutters as you kiss a trail down his neck.

“Now go get dressed.” Pulling away he looks at you with a dazed look on his face, only nodding and walking to your personal bathroom.

Once the door fully shut you let out a small squeal of joy, unable to contain yourself any longer. Nothing is more attractive than a man who isn’t consumed by his own pride. Of course a man can be masculine, live your life however you want, but when it becomes the end all be all then it’s an issue.

Being comfortable with your body is an attractive quality, one that Levi most certainly doesn’t lack. This fact is only solidified when he exits the bathroom, maid outfit wrapped snugly around his form.

His normally small waist was more apparent with the apron tied around him, his hips appeared larger due to the flare of the black skirt. Underneath the skirt revealed his smooth pale thighs. That soft skin on both sides of your head, gently squeezing you as you worked him to the edge with your mouth. That’s a feeling you're all too familiar with.

Unfortunately, the remainder of his legs are covered by a thin white material. Disappointment quickly fades as you take in the white stockings on his slender legs, somehow the extra piece of cloth made the outfit feel more lewd.

“My eyes are up here,” he snaps at you as your eyes begin to linger to unholy places, “Stop looking at me like I’m a piece of meat.”

“Aw, but you look so beautiful it’s hard not to stare.” His cheeks turn pink at your compliment, but doesn’t respond.

“I gave you a compliment,” you place a finger under his chin tilting his head back, giving him a faux look of sadness. “So what do you say?”

His eyes widen at the authoritative tone in your voice, legs unconsciously squeezing together. “T-thank you…”

Hearing Levi stutter is a rarity that blesses you more than anyone in the Survey Corps. He is clearly struggling to maintain his composure.

You’ve only touched his chin and he’s already turning red and pulling his skirt to hide his growing bulge.

“Of course,” pulling your hand away, you swear he chases after your touch before controlling himself and remaining still. “Now I have a few ideas about how we can spend the night.” You sit back on your sofa chair, motioning for him to approach you.

He takes a few steps until his legs are touching yours. Spreading your legs, pulling him closer, his knees bump into the front of your chair. Hands gripping his elbows slowly sliding down to hold his hands.

Leaning forward, you rest your chin against his chest peering up at him. Due to his short stature, he’s only about a foot taller than you, when you’re sitting down. Pupils blown out, pink cheeks, and racing pulse. All telltale signs of your captains excitement.

“You’re beautiful.” Silver eyes widen a touch, clearly not expecting the praise. Quickly masking his surprise, he rolls his eyes and scoffs.

Chuckling slightly at the man's childish behavior, you release one of his hands. Fingers dancing along the front of his dress, the light touches making him press his lips together to prevent any sounds from escaping.

“So sensitive tonight, Levi.” Before he can retort, your fingers pinch his right nipple.

He arches into you, a small gasp followed by a low moan as you twist the hardening bead between your fingers.

“And so cute.”

“Shut… Aah… up.”

“Let’s take this to the bed, yeah?” He pulls away and goes to sit on your bed. You take a moment to take off your boots, knowing he’ll throw a fit if he sees you wearing shoes in bed.

Levi’s sitting at the foot of the bed, with his legs dangling over the side. Such an innocent position gives you the nastiest idea.

Rounding the bed, you sit on your knees on the ground in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing? You know how filthy that floor is?” His endless questions are silenced when you place a hand on his knee, slowly moving upwards.

“I thought I’d give you a little appetizer before we got to the main course.” Grinning widely you place your other hand on his other thigh, “Well I guess I’ll be the only one eating.”

“Such a shitty joke…” You lift up the front of his skirt, only to find he wasn’t wearing anything underneath. A very welcomed surprise.

“Boxers would have looked weird.” He’s looking off to the side, clearly sensing your next question.

For someone who seemed so against the idea, he was actually worried about ruining the aesthetic?

But you keep your teasing to yourself, not wanting to make him stomp off. You let his skirt fall back over his thighs.

Leaning forward, he shudders at the gentle trail of kisses as your lips travel up his stocking clad knees. Moving higher with each kiss, closer to the exposed skin of his thigh. Kisses turn into love bites, leaving a trail of crescent indentions and saliva along the inside of his thigh.

It only takes a few touches and his dick is already straining against the ruffled material. Instead of holding the skirt up, you opt to just throw it over your head, hiding your face from Levis' line of vision.

“Hey- Ah!” Your fingers wrap around his cock, giving it a slow jerk. Already drops of precum leak from it’s reddened tip.

“Ahh!” He moans above you, sounds slightly muffled from the layers of clothing above you.

Speeding up your jerking, you lean closer towards his dick and give it a few licks. All the way up the shaft, reveling in the slight quivers of his thighs. Parting your lips you take in the tip, giving it a light suck. Levi lets out a loud groan above you, his hand now on the top of your head.

His noises only encourage you to move your head faster, taking him deeper in your mouth. Obscene noises fill your ears and mix with his moans of pleasure.

Swirling your tongue around his tip, the salty precum hits the back of your throat the more you suck. His thighs spasm, squeezing tightly around your head. An obvious sign that he won’t last another minute.

Pulling him out of your mouth with a wet pop, you push the skirt off from over your head.

“It was so hot down there-” You cut yourself off once you caught sight of his expression.

His face was beyond hot. He looked absolutely fucked.

A thin layer of sweat covered his face, redness across his cheeks and ears, and a trail of drool trailing down his chin.

Although you just had his dick in your mouth, the look on his face is what makes you clench your thighs together. A familiar wetness building between your legs.

Standing up so quickly, you got a bit of a head rush. Levi jumps at your sudden movement, looking up at your hungry gaze. He bends his knees and pushes himself backwards up the bed. You follow after him, crawling on your knees towards him.

“I can’t wait to fucking destroy you.” You can see him visibly shiver at your dominant tone.

“Then hurry up…” He demands, a slight tremble in his voice.

Oh god. This man will be the death of me.

Pressing a palm against his chest, you push him down to lay against the pillows.

“Relax, baby.” The small resistance he meets you with melts at your words, “Let me take care of you.”

Laying flat on your stomach, you move his legs so they’re bent over your shoulders.

“Comfortable?” He shifts his hips down a bit before nodding. “Good. Remember two taps to stop.”

The heels of his feet dig into your back, pulling you closer to his torso. A silent plea to shut up and make him forget all his worries.

“Okay, okay!” So pushy, shorty.” He glares but says nothing, as you lift the front of the skirt.

“Now be a good Captain, and keep your voice down.” He grunts as you take the leaking tip into your mouth, giving a gentle suck.

Pulling away with a ‘pop’, fingers wrapping around his shaft jerking at a quick pace.

“We don’t wanna wake our comrades, do we?”

I hope this 2k word self-indulgent fanfic of Levi in a maid outfit makes up for my month absence☺️ Please tell me what y’all think❤️

#levi ackerman x reader #levi x female reader #attack on titan #levi x reader #snk levi #aot #aot imagines #snk season 4 #levi maid #levi smut #smut #nsft

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spacestationdaedalus · 3 years

Text

stay with me, my darling

Jon nods. Conversation, right. "Tim said- he asked, if there was anything we wanted to tell our future selves. And the- the Gertrude tape I played for you. I was just...thinking."

"That's not a good sign." Martin replies, and it could have had humor in it, another day, another time. But now it's mostly truth.

or: reminiscing, and hope for the future during the apocalypse

thank you @entitynumber5 for this prompt!! I love it and you to bits

ao3 link here!

...

There are moments, right before the nightmares and right after them, when Martin can sleep. There has to be space to breathe, between the fear and dread. How else will you really know what you've lost, know how afraid you are? Or maybe, even now, the fears are bound by the limits of human physiology, the nature of REM sleep and dreams. It's something Jon can't Know, but even if he could. It doesn't matter.

But there is something he could Know, if he wanted to. With Martin within arms reach in the bed next to him, Knowing if he was awake would be as easy as breathing. Maybe easier, now - a reflex, poised and ready just beneath the surface of his skin, just behind his eyes that don't blink as much as they used to.

He doesn't. He owes it to Martin. That sense of normalcy, however small.

Jon takes a breath, holding the compulsion at bay, locked tight in the back of his throat. He'd already slipped up, forced more than one answer out of Martin since they fled from London. Like hell he'll do it again.

"Are you asleep?"

It's no more than a whisper, ragged and sad sounding even to Jon's own ears. But it might as well be a scream compared to the muted terror outside, the solemn creaking of the boards beneath and around them.

It's quiet for a beat, then Martin shifts. He makes a little noise of coming to awareness - the same one he'd made every morning, when there were still mornings to wake up to. Jon didn't think it was possible to feel nostalgia for something that happened so recently. But the pang, the loss of soft morning sunlight and warm blankets and clumsy, sleep-mused hair and hellos sinks deep into his stomach, and he lowercase-k knows he's wrong.

"J'n?" Oh, but his voice still has that quality to it. When he's just woken up, unguarded, a smile when his eyes find Jon. The sound eases just a bit of the awful tightness in his chest. Not much, though, because Martin doesn't smile as he blinks away the sleep from his eyes. He fumbles for his glasses as he sits up, brow furrowed. Jon can't blame him.

"Is something wrong?" Technically a question, but not phrased like one. Martin’s voice matches Jon’s for pitch, quiet and soft.

Jon looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers. His mouth is dry. He feels guilty, for waking Martin up from the only rest he can get for something so silly . But it's hard to distinguish between shades of guilt these days, carved out of his chest and curled up where his lungs should be.

He almost says nevermind, go back to sleep, but that would be worse, waking him up for nothing. And Jon is nothing if not stubborn. Words are hard, but he gets them out.

"I was- I was thinking about the tape, that I...about what Tim said."

Martin sighs. It's not annoyed, or sad. Maybe fond? Jon isn't sure - you could be sure, you could pluck every thought from his head like grapes from a vine. The thing that only watches trills at the thought, buzzing anticipation and thirst filling his skull and he digs his fingernails into his palm until it hurts, stop stop stop-

"Jon?"

"Hm?" He comes back, with the extra volume and concern Martin adds to his name. Had he really drifted that easily, that far, that quickly?

Martin takes one of his hands, unfurling the fingers that he'd clenched. His nails leave crescent moons in the skin of his palm. Martin delicately runs a finger along them as they fade, and it tickles just enough to be both pleasant and distracting. "I said, the one at your birthday? The tape?"

Jon nods. Conversation, right. "Tim said- he asked, if there was anything we wanted to tell our future selves. And the- the Gertrude tape I played for you. I was just...thinking."

"That's not a good sign." Martin replies, and it could have had humor in it, another day, another time. But now it's mostly truth. "Jon-"

Jon shifts to face him. It's not a sudden movement, but it's lightning quick compared to his syrup-thick movements of the last few so-called-days. "I know, I know it's not- it's not healthy to dwell on it, on… It's just… there's so much I would, would tell myself if I could."

"Even if we couldn't avoid all of it. Maybe it could have been easier."

"Jon…"

"Martin, please ." It's the most emotion he's been able to get out of his voice since he stopped sobbing after the statement that got them here. It hurts. It hurts and he knows it's what he deserves.

Just let me have this , he wants to say, but can't bring himself to. He leans forward instead, just barely. Not for any reason other than his head is tired , but Martin pulls him further, touch gentle but firm. He wraps his arms around him, so easily, so Jon's head is resting on his shoulder, eyelashes brushing like butterflies against the crook of his neck.

"Alright, alright. It's okay."

Martin whispers into his hair, and for all Jon can See, he can’t imagine anything that would take the comfort of it away. They stay like that for a moment, a while. There’s a lot that Jon wants to say, and even though he started the conversation he doesn’t know where to begin. Everything is tangled like overgrown weeds in his mind, like boxes of cords with no purpose that sit in jumbled piles, wrapped around the things he’s trying not to Know and the things he wants to forget and the things that hurt to remember. But then Martin breaks the silence for him.

“For one thing, I wouldn’t…" Martin seems hesitant, like he's not sure he should say what he's about to say. "I wouldn't have let Biscuit into the archives.”

Jon stops. It's quiet for a moment, in a way he forgot it could be. Martin stills next to him, anticipating.

“Wh...what?”

Marin breathes out a small chuckle, almost with a nervous edge to it. “Y’know, the dog I let in? On my first day?”

Jon is something close to comfortable against Martin's shoulder. But he can't stop himself from pulling back far enough to see his face.

"You named the dog?”

“Oh,! No, that was on his nametag. Had a phone number too, that’s - that’s how I got him back to his owner."

I love you I love you I-

That might as well have been a decade ago. Jon can’t stop the quirk of lip, however small, at the ridiculousness of it. “I never knew that.”

Martin cocks his head, hint of a wry smile playing at his lips. "Well, yeah, it’s not like I was going to bring it up to you again. You looked like you were going to fire me on sight for weeks.” His face falls, slightly. “Although, I guess you wouldn’t have been able to, even back then."

Jon sighs, heavy as it's dragged out of his lungs. “I would have, though, if I could. All of you.”

The silence is thick, but not unbreakable. So Jon does just that.

"Maybe we could have ended up at a normal office job."

"What, like a...bank, or something?"

Jon smiles, wider, even though it feels like his face forgot how. Like riding a bike, maybe. "Yes, something… dreadfully boring."

"A boring job does sound pretty appealing."

"At least, them, I wouldn't have had to tell myself to stop pushing the whole, skeptic thing." Jon can't help but recall the conversation, in the storage closet with the man in front of him and what should have been certain death waiting outside. Even that seems so much simpler, now.

Martin makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat. "Maybe I would have told myself to confront you sooner. A-about the statements, I mean. Could have had that whole-"

Martin deepens his voice in what Jon realizes is an imitation "- heart to heart thing sooner."

"I'm not sure if it would have gone over well.” Jon can't help but be honest. Old and new shame bubbles up in his throat, and he has to say something. "Martin, I'm- I'm sorry for the way I acted, back then. I was… god, I was such a prick to you. It wasn't fair, or- or right ."

Martin barely lets him finish before he's saying, "Yeah, you were pretty… prick-ish? I forgive you though. I don't really think about it much anymore, if it means anything.” He breathes out a quiet laugh. “It's kind of funny, actually. In hindsight."

Jon can't stop the look of disbelief. "Really."

Martin smiles. "I mean, yeah? And gosh , you should have heard the things I used to say to Tim and Sasha about you. It wasn't completely one sided."

That catches Jon's attention. "Oh?"

The look on Martin's face isn't quite regret, but it's close. " Any ways-"

"No no, Martin, please , I'd love to know.'' Jon is careful not to phrase it as a question. His voice is quiet, still, but coy. His curiosity is all his own and no one, nothing , else's. He revels in the feeling.

Their hands are entwined on the bed between them. Martin looks down at them as to not meet Jon's eye, but he's smiling, still. "I think I described you as a cactus with twice the spines and half the emotional capacity, once.”

Jon's laugh, soft and brittle as it is, surprises even himself.

Martin looks up at him, encouraged. "Heh- Tim got a kick out of that one."

Tim's laugh, faded like an old photograph in his mind. It hurts to remember, but it would hurt worse to forget. He wish he had that luxury for Sasha. The real Sasha, the stranger who was friends with Tim, friends with him . At least, he hoped she had been. She sounded so lovely.

But, back to Martin. "Yes, well, I can't say you're wrong about that."

Martin sucks in a breath, and Jon freezes under the possibility of upsetting him. But then.

" Oh , Jon- that’s the complete opposite of the truth."

Jon laughs, with less humor. "Martin-"

"No, no, let me finish." Martin takes one of Jon's hands, the burned one, in both of his. "You put up a great front, I'll admit it. But you care so much, even… even though things haven't been easy, or good, or… or fair. You never stopped caring, this whole time. It's obvious now, at least - at least, to me. Even if you don't always say it.”

"You care so, so much and it's - god , it's one of my favorite things about you, Jon."

Something about the way Martin says his name chisels something open in Jon's chest. And not for the first time. Being known, existing to someone else that actually wants him to. There's a reverence to it, the way Martin says it, that Jon knows he doesn't deserve. But he tries to move past that thought and let the sound warm him from the inside out.

Jon whispers Martin's name, quiet and strangled. He hopes it carries the same depth, the same love.

Martin keeps going. "And I - that's why this is so hard for you. I mean - well, of course it's hard, it's pretty fucking terrible, actually - but," Martin sighs. "I know that's why you want to blame yourself for all of this-"

Jon finds his voice, stronger. He's not sure where the sudden energy comes from, but it probably has to do with the knot that's made a home in his ribcage.

"It's not about want , Martin, it's- it's the truth. What else am I supposed to do? I ended the world -"

"Jonah fucking Magnus ended the world, Jon. Not you. He used you."

"I don't really see the difference."

The burst of energy leaves him, water spilling down a drain. This isn't the first time they've talked about this, and it probably won't be the last.

Martin sighs. "I know. But I'll keep telling you, as many times as it takes. Because it's true. And it- it hurts, seeing you like this."

Jon looks at Martin, really looks for the first time in too long. His eyes, tinged grey from his time in the Lonely, dark circles under his eyes, tight lines at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm sorry." He doesn't know what else to say, other than, "I love you."

"No, it's-" Martin shakes his head, just a bit. "I love you, too."

It's quiet for a long moment. Martin lays back down on the bed and gestures for Jon to follow him. Which is easy, for Jon to do. The bed isn't warm, but it isn't cold either, in the strange way that things are and aren't right now. But Martin is warm, Jon can feel, with their legs tangled together and foreheads touching.

Jon won't, can't sleep, but laying next to Martin still feels like rest. In a way.

"Martin." Jon doesn't know why he needs to say Martin's name. It's not like there's anyone else he could be talking to, with less than centimeters between them. But the thing he's about to say is so deeply important to him, and it feels like he needs to.

"I'm… glad," God, his vocabulary always escapes him when he has to speak out loud. Talk about his feelings. "That I got to spend time, with you. Time here."

They haven't left. The cabin still stands, doors and windows, squeaky hinges and leaky faucets intact. But it's not the same, never will be as far as Jon can tell. "The weeks that we had, before- I...I don't think I'm lying when I say it's the first time in a long time that I-"

Felt loved? Felt like a person, again?

"...was happy."

Martin smiles, but it shakes like a leaf in the wind. A tear slips from his eye, dripping slowly over the bridge of his nose.

"Me too."

Jon brushes a kiss, feather light between Martin's eyes, catching the tears and hopefully some, any tiny amount of the sorrow that lives in the lines of his face.

"I could have stayed here forever, like that. With- with you. Just…"

"Living?"

"Yes. Living."

It's not the first time Jon's treated himself to the thought, however far fetched, however foolish. A life, a normal, mundane life in the countryside. Maybe with boring jobs, but not a boring life. Not with Martin here. Not with Martin to wake up next to, to fall asleep with, to walk with to the village. Talking about nothing important but committing every detail to memory. That Martin prefers vanilla over chocolate, that he had a pet goldfish named Larry when he was seven, that he loves dandelions even though they're classified as a weed, who gets to decide what a weed is, anyway, right, Jon?

"The walk to the village is a bit much, but we could manage." Martin's voice is thick. "The shopkeeper already recognizes us."

The mention of a person outside their wooden refuge pulls knowledge unprompted from Jon's mind. He doesn't have the heart to tell Martin she's currently walking through endless identical corridors with identical doors leading nowhere. The lights above her flicker just so, and she swears she sees something out of the corner of her eye, but she turns and there's only off-white walls and beige doors and the sound of footsteps quickening in threatening cadence towards her-

Jon doesn't mean to drift again. But Martin's voice brings him back. Like it always will.

"Plus, we get to see good cows on the way, so it's worth it."

Jon pushes the thoughts away, and smiles. "I suppose you're right." After a breath, he goes on. "Less food to carry from the store if we have a garden."

"Jonathan Sims, a green thumb?"

Jon bristles at the not-quite accusation, but it doesn't quite reach his voice. Too much energy that he doesn't have. "Well, no, not yet. But I always thought it would be nice, to have a garden. I can learn."

"It would be." Martin slips into sincerity so easily. "I'm sure you would grow lovely vegetables."

"And spices, for cooking."

"Of course." Martin sighs, quiet, fond. "A man that can garden and cook, what could I possibly bring to the table?"

"Everything." Jon blurts out without thinking, and stands by it like a beach umbrella buried in the sand. "You're… you're better with your hands, than I am. Like, the door hinge you fixed when we first got here."

"That's not exactly master carpentry, Jon-"

"It doesn't need to be." Jon doesn't give him time to retort. "And your embroidery. It's- it's good, we'll hang it up on the walls and you can teach me how to do it."

Jon already learned embroidery once, technically, from his grandmother. But she had always grown impatient with his impatience, quick to scold him for fidgeting and rushing his stitches. Like it was an exam he was actively failing instead of something you do for fun. It wasn't all bad, not really, but Jon imagines relearning long-forgotten movements under Martin's hand and smile, and it makes him want to buy every spool of thread, every needle he can get his hands on.

"Of course." Martin replies. "We could put up other pictures, too. I've actually- I've, uh, always wanted to get into photography."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Not for any, real reason, I suppose. Just… seems like it would be fun."

I love you I love you I-

"That sounds like a reason to me."

They go on a bit longer, about pets ( at least one cat, and apparently a species of lizard that Martin is particularly fond of) and colors to paint the bedroom ( something bright but lively, a light blue, maybe) and mugs to buy from the second hand store ( Martin collects novelty mugs, and Jon files that away for later ). Jon knows it’s terrible of him, selfish to revel in this while the world suffers under the weight of its own choking fear.

Later, they'll talk again. A few times. Later, aching sorrow becomes burning anger and drive and they leave with the bags Martin's already packed. But for now, Jon holds Martin's face, and Martin wraps his arms around Jon's waist. Pulling him close, like a ship docked in harbor. And it feels safe.

#the magnus archives #tma #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #tma fics #my writing

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imaginekhaos · 4 years

Text

Look Me in the Eyes

NSFW

Pairing: Deku x Reader

Warings: unprotected sex, coercion, semi-public sex, dirty talking

Word Count: 3,911

This is my first time writing a fan fiction for BNHA and I’m really nervous. Any feedback is welcomed and I hope you enjoy.

This is also really unedited so I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors.

* * * * * * *

Izuku Midoriya was many things. He was smart, determined and very kind. A flirt, however, he was not. You had developed a crush on Midoriya sometime around sophomore year, a few months into transferring to U.A. after your family's big move to Japan. It had started out harmless, a school girl crush with the intent of staying that way. You should have known better the second you met the girls of class 1-A and their giggling ways. Things took a deeper turn one night when you were all hanging out in Momo’s room, laughing, gossiping, and eating way too much junk food for your own good. The topic had naturally ended up on boys, specifically those in class 1-A. One thing lead to another and you eventually confessed your tiny crush on a certain green haired hero-to-be. Oh how you wish it had stopped there that night, but getting a group of girls together always ends up eventful.

“So,” Mina started mischievously from beside you, “who do you think is the most… endowed… of all the boys?”

The question caused many mouths to fall open at the abruptness but pretty soon thoughtful faces coated the entire room.

Mina continued, “I wouldn’t be too surprised if it were Kiri. He’s polite, manly and cute, so if he had a big dick it would just complete the package. No pun intended.”

Laughs rang out along with a few agreements from the other girls. Eyes trailed to your form sitting next to Mina, waiting for you to spill your thoughts. Heat engulfed your face, never expecting to have to answer this question.

“What about you, [Y/N]? Any particular green-haired, freckle-faced person come to mind?” Jiro teased.

“I-I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it before. Seems kinda r-rude, doesn’t it?” Stuttering your way through an explanation, hoping to diffuse the situation and detract attention from yourself.

Jiro rolled her eyes at your lame answer. Uraraka then chose to speak up in a voice barely above a whisper, “I bet he’s big… “ The blush on her cheeks was so dark that is was only outmatched by the one across your cheeks due to the thoughts that were running through your head. The rest of the night was spent laughing and spilling more secrets. It brought you all much closer as not only friends but as a new class of heroes.

Though the night went on as a festive blur, one remark in particular kept repeating in your head the next few days. Thoughts of hard muscle juxtaposed with soft skin and tufts of green hair. Thoughts of hot sweaty bodies intimately colliding. It was all too much! But, it was all in your head. No one knew the kind of lewd scenarios playing out in your mind. Especially Izuku. So, since he wasn’t much of a flirt, you weren’t surprised when he never noticed how bright your cheeks burned when his friendly touches lingered a little longer or how his eyes managed to make you feel so exposed when he studied you during training. Even if he had noticed he had been kind enough not to say something, no matter how bad you sometimes wished he would.

* * * * * * *

The last two years of high school went along without much of a hitch. As a class, you helped dismantle any trouble you came across and under the guidance of professional heros, you all managed to blossom into a promising new generation of heros. But with graduation comes separation. Many of the class broke off to find the region where they would be most helpful. Asui managed to snag a perfect placement on the coast, assisting in storm and water rescue while other students like Kaminari and Iida found agencies that had them doing all kinds of hero work. Even though you never left the area after graduation, you still found the perfect agency for you. It was small in comparison to some of the more well known ones, but they often assisted other agencies when short staffed or needed specialized help, so you couldn’t complain. Plus, all the other heroes were nice and very helpful when it came to learning on the job. It wasn’t until two years into the new job that the first real problem arose.

* * * * * * *

Slamming your fist on your desk you let out an aggravated groan. Tonight was a bust. There had been a new villain terrorizing the area around your agency for a few weeks now. They were strong, fast and impossibly hard to capture, always managing to escape their bonds before the could be truly apprehended. It made you so damn mad and made you feel like an awful hero because you couldn’t capture a single villain. You run your hands across your face and through your hair before rubbing your tired eyes. It had been too long since you had any quality sleep and it was starting to take its toll on you. With a sigh, you decided that the best course of action would be to call for some assistance. You got in contact with a local agency who agreed to send someone to help you with the problem. Thanking them, a huge weight felt lifted off your shoulders knowing that the villain would be caught within the week and you'll finally get some much needed rest.

The next day went forward rather uneventful until the evening. The extra hero was supposed to arrive early in the day for introductions and debriefing, but they had yet to show. Deep frown lines and worried creases overtook your normally cheery face. Why weren’t they here yet? Did they forget? What if they got caught by the villain, got dragged back to their layer and is currently being subjected to foregin tourture methods and no one knows where they are and- A very familiar head of green hair entered your field of vision, successfully ending the panicked mental ramblings. You had to take a second look. Surely they didn’t send him, he was much too busy to help with something this small.

Then your eyes met enrapturing green ones. They were the kind of green that spoke of lush growth in the wake of a forest fire. They were determined, fresh and held a new sense of warning that read: “I have power. I have authority. I will not start a fight, but I will end one” His eyes scanned the agency, noting every face, name and exit strategy he could retain before his eyes were caught on you. I bright smile spread across freckled cheeks, the glint in his eye gone and replaced with pure sugar. His steps quickened in your direction. Your feet were frozen as juvenile feelings came rushing back as fast as your heart was beating.

Before you knew it, strong arms embraced you, snapping you out of your haze as you gently returned the hug. There were so many questions you wanted to ask, but your tongue was tied in a knot, filling your mouth and preventing any word from escaping.

“[Y/N]! I can’t believe it! It has been so long. How are you?” He spoke in a chipper voice, much too chipper for the feeling running through your body.

“D-Deku…?” you replied

“Yeah! Don’t tell me you already forgot about me, we were so close in school.”

“N-No I didn’t forget, I’m just surprised is all. I didn’t expect them to send their favorite hero to help out down here. Especially considering how low-profile this villain is.” you explained.

His cheeks warmed up at your statement. He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes cast downwards. “Well, I actually volunteered to come help. I saw the request form and your name on it and thought I would lend a hand. I hope that is alright?”

It was your turn to blush as his statement registered in your mind. “Y-Yeah! That’s fine, we need all the help we can get and who better to help us than the future number one?”

His hand retreated into his front pocket, eyes turning slightly cold almost as if you had offended him by bringing up the topic of being the number one hero. He gave a slightly strained smile. “Well I’m here. What can I do to help?”

* * * * * * *

Both your lungs and legs burned as you ran after the villain you had been chasing for weeks. It was finally going to happen, you were going to catch him! Bursting through the warehouse doors the villain had just ran through, your eyes scanned the room for signs of movement. Your heart stopped as you realized there were none. Carefully examining the cargo garage once more, slower as you walked around checking every corner, you found it empty. Heavy footsteps followed after you. Izuku caught up to you, panting from the exertion of chasing the villain. He took a look around the space himself, noticing it was empty.

“[Y/N], how did they get away? What happened? Are you okay?”

A low growl escaped your throat, aggravation flowing hotly through your veins. He had escaped. Again! Think, think, think! Where could he have gone? Was it his quirk that helped him escape so many times?

“[Y/N]! What’re you doing? Aren’t you going to go after him?”

Those eyes. You could still feel their effect on you from earlier and it only intensified because you could feel them on you now.. He just had such an intense way of logging your every move. Don’t get it wrong, it was exactly this kind of awareness that would make him such a successful hero one day, but it made chills run up your spine when you would catch those orbs focused on you. They ensured that any shred of focus you had on the case was dissolved. You weren’t a school-girl anymore, so why were you acting like one? Getting distracted in the middle of a chase was a rookie move and you would be kicking yourself over it for days.

Eye twitching, you whip around to face Deku. “Will you stop asking so many questions? He just escaped like he does every time! I am trying to figure out a plan and I can’t think when you’re looking at me, much less speaking! You are just too distracting and don’t need to be thinking about what you’re making me and my body feel when I’m trying to work!” Huffing, it takes a second for your outburst to register. The angry heat flowing through you immediately turned to cold as all the blood runs from your face.

Those damned green eyes bore into yours with a fire almost as hot as the blush painted across his freckled cheeks. Desire rolled off of Deku in seering waves and you could almost feel it. He took a step forward, breaking you out of your haze. Immediately you began to stutter an excuse for your outburst, “D-deku… I didn’t mean to say that. It was an accident. You weren’t ever supposed to find out!”

He took another step forward and cocked his head to the side, that cold look from earlier clouded his face making him look like a completely different person. “Keeping secrets isn’t any fun, [Y/N]. It isn’t good manners and it hurts people's feelings.” He pouted slightly, “Is that what you wanted? Hm? To hurt my feelings?”

Quickly you shake your head, but still take a step away from him as he continued to walk your direction. “No! I just… I just didn’t want you to know.”

Another step forward. Another step back. “Want me to know what? About your crush on me since high school? Bunny, I already knew. You’re a very bad liar.” Gone was the sweet and caring Izuku you thought you knew. And gone was your escape route you realized as your back hit the cool metal walls of the warehouse. “And not only are you a bad liar, your body is too. I still remember that cute little blush on your face when I would touch you, much like the blush you have now.”

His chest pressed lightly against yours, hot and electrifying. Your body slightly trembled but you weren’t sure if it was from anticipation or from shame of loving his attention. His hands came to rest on the wall by your head, successfully enclosing you two together so all you could focus on was him.

The steady ring of his phone snapped your attention away. Not breaking his eye contact with your face, he grabbed his phone and answered it. After a few nods and yes’s and a few moments of you squirming under his gaze, he hung up and put his phone away.

“They caught him.”

Shock overtook your features, momentarily forgetting the previous predicament. “What? How did they get him? He escaped!”

A smirk crawled onto Midoriya’s lips. “I had a hunch that his quirk dealt with teleportation, specifically short range considering he never leaves this area of Japan. If I were trying to escape, I would lead my enemies to the lowest floor of a building and then teleport to the top, giving me ample time to escape in any direction without leaving a clue. Since most quirks have a drawback, I made a guess that a teleportation quirk would have a cooldown time, limiting the amount of times you could teleport. I then let the local authorities know. They did the rest.”

He seemed so proud of himself. Smug in the fact that he was right. What happened to the sweet and bashful Deku you knew, and what was with that look in his eyes? His scarred hand came up to push your [Y/H/C] locks behind your ears, drawing your attention back to him. His fingers trailed across your cheek bone, down to your jaw before squeezing both cheeks between his fingers making you look at him.

“Now, where were we, bunny? I think you were about to tell me about how you want me to touch you. Right?”

Speaking was difficult with the way he was squishing your cheeks, “I-I don’t think this is a g-good idea. Let’s just go h-home for the night.”

He sighed, a small amount of disappointment flashing across his face. “Oh honey, that’s not what I wanted to hear. Don’t you want me to touch you?” He leaned forward, lips touching the sensitive shell of you ear, “I know you’ve thought about me doing… things… to you before. I can read it on your pretty little face.”

“T-That was a long time ago. H-How are you so sure I still like you?”

A deep chuckle, “I know you still like me because you’ve been distracted since I walked in the door at your agency. Your thighs have been clenching on and off for hours and you can barely look me in the eyes. Do you need me to go on?” by the end of his explanation Deku’s lips were grazing yours. Half-lidded eyes stared at his mouth, focused on its movements.

With a sudden rush of courage, you pressed your trembling lips to his. Mouths moved together in sync. They molded together like two halves of a whole, sliding and caressing each other in a steamy dance. The tip of his tongue ran across the bottom of your lip as an invitation you gladly accepted. Your tongue gilded against his equally as eager one for a moment before you both broke away for air. A string of saliva connected your lips to his. He pressed his forehead against yours, breathing heavily into your space just as you were breathing in his.

“Bunny, you know I can’t let you leave here without giving you what you want. Legs up.”

You followed his demand, jumping to wrap your legs around his waist and arms around his neck as he pressed you against the wall. His strong hands grasped your upper thighs just under the swell of your ass. He let out a breathy groan as he squeezed your plush legs, obviously aroused by their softness and their strength. Doing a balancing act, he propped you up on the wall with one arm and his knee just long enough to flip your skirt up and move your panties to the side.

As his fingers grazed your hot core, you couldn’t help but let out a gasp. His touch was electrifying. It had been too long since someone had touched you like this and every brush and every touch causes your body to react, pussy clenching in anticipation. Your underwear were unbelievably wet considering how little Deku had actually touched you. Noticing this, a sweet smile spread across Deku’s face reaching all the way to his eyes causing them to crinkle at the corners. It was such a strange expression compared to the lust raging in his eyes. He looked pleased with your reaction and for some reason you felt happy that you could please him.

Suddenly you felt something large and hot rub against your lower lips. Looking down for a brief moment, your eyes widened from the sight. A thick and veiny cock slowly rocked along your glistening folds. When had he even gotten rid of his pants? He was much larger than you had originally assumed, but not comically massive the way most people would assume. The throbbing and prominent veins created a beautiful pathway to the tuft of green hair growing at the base and trailing upwards, disappearing under the top of his hero costume.

Deku chuckled, finding humor in the way you were staring at it and how you were analyzing every inch. His hips still rocked slowly against yours, gently nudging your clit. Just that small amount of friction caused your breath to hitch in your throat and before you knew it, you were already panting. His hand came up to cup your cheek. The pad of his thumb traced gently across your bottom lip and your tongue darted out to capture it in your mouth. Deku hissed lightly through his teeth at the way you softly sucked and nibbled on his digit, your eyes half-lidded with ecstasy. Pressing his forehead against yours he spoke, slightly strained from having held back, “Are you ready, love? I can’t wait any longer. You’ll let me fuck you, right? Oh baby, I promise I’ll be gentle.”

Yore core clenched at his words, soundlessly nodding your head, releasing his thumb. “Please…” You sounded so desperate, so needy. This was a new feeling for you, arousal in its most primal form. All you knew was that you didn’t want him to stop no matter how exposed you both were and no matter how needy you sounded. In this moment, you’d let him do anything to you.

With your confirmation, he slowly began pushing his length into you. A groan left both of your lips at the same time. Inch after inch disappeared inside you and with every movement of his hips came a sound of pleasure from your lips. By the time his pelvis met yours, you were both covered in a thin layer of sweat. HIs from effort and restraint, yours from the heat of arousal.

“Fuuuck… You’re so tight, bunny. So tight for me… I have to move, love. You’re driving me mad…” His hips then withdrew from yours in a smooth and slow motion before pushing back into you a little faster than before.

“I-Izuku!” You called out, voice echoing through the empty warehouse.

“That’s right, moan my name, baby!”

He began to pick up speed, using your position against the wall to push you up and then drop you back down on his cock. He felt so big inside you, filling you up and making sure to hit all the right spots even ones you didn’t know existed. You felt you eyes begin to roll back as he kept pistoning in and out of you at a brutal pace. Hands quickly found the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling on the green strands. It was all too much for you to handle and you could already feel the knot inside you tightening. Moans after moans were spilling from your mouth, almost incoherent in your lust-filled daze.

Deku could feel you getting tighter as he pounded into your sopping cunt. Your juices coated his cock along with your thighs. He’d never had anyone so aroused by him and he loved every second of it. Sweat dripped off of his brow and ran down his neck before disappearing behind the collar of his shirt. Your arms slipped from his neck and gripped his shoulders hard, nails leaving red crescents on his pale skin even through the fabric of his costume. The knot in your abdomen tightened even more as he rested his head on your shoulder and moaned deeply into your neck. His lips sloppily placed kisses up and down the column of your throat, tongue flicking out to taste your skin. It wasn’t long before his kisses turned to nibbles which turned to bites hard enough to leave bruises. But you weren’t complaining, if anything it only made you more turned on. Your hands threaded through his hair once more as you could feel yourself getting closer. You knew he was getting there too due to how sloppy his thrusts were becoming. He quickly looked up at you.

“You better look me in the eyes when you cum, okay? I want to see just how I make you feel. Show me that pretty face, love.”

You made eye contact with him. It was deep and sensual and way too intimate for you to handle in your current state. You remember how you felt every time you caught his eyes on you in class or training. You remember how they made you feel so exposed to him, and now that you really were exposed, it was like he could see your every want and need and he was determined to be the one to fulfill them. After a few more thrusts of his hips you could feel yourself unraveling. Stars danced in the corners of your vision as you reached your climax, body jerking against his and cunt quivering. He could feel your walls squeezing him, milking his cock and begging for his seed. Just as you were beginning to come down from your high, Deku’s hips stuttered. His hot cum painted your walls as he cursed deeply, filling you to the brim and then some.

Both of you were breathing heavily, still connected and embracing as the euphoric sensation stopped buzzing through your veins. His eyes were still searching yours, glazed over with want. Slowly he slid his softening member from your core and sat you down on your feet. You felt sore but so satisfied. Your thighs quaked from having to support your own weight again and small rivulets of mixed juices ran from your pussy and coated your thighs. You were truly exhausted.

Deku got himself dressed and situated before helping you get everything straightened out. He pulled you to his chest, lips pressing into your forehead quickly before he spoke.

“Let’s get you home, bunny. My place isn’t far from here.”

* * * * * * *

As you left the next morning after a shower and homemade breakfast, along with a promise for a real date soon, you sent a text you Uraraka with a simple message: You were right.

#midoriya izuku #deku #deku x reader #deku smut #my hero academia #my hero academia smut #fanfic

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barbabangme · 4 years

Text

🚨 🚨🚨BARBA SMUT ALERT 🚨🚨🚨

*a lovely mutual sent this to me and wanted to share anonymously! ENJOY SOME NICE BARBA FUCKIN*

Barba stood at the door of your apartment, a little concerned at how easy it had been to get in past security. He’d talk to you later about that, but for now he had to drop off your miscellaneous files you had left in his office. He was about to knock when he noticed the door was slightly ajar, like someone left in a hurry. Not only that, he heard loud music blasting from inside and became much more concerned. After pushing the door open, he followed the music all the way to the bathroom where he found you lying fully clothed in the bathtub, bottle of wine in your hand.

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You couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t believe how badly you had bombed the case. It was open and shut, and it had been a complete surprise when the defense refused the deal you assumed they would take since the evidence was overwhelming. You had video evidence of the man committing the crime, yet the jury had been loud and clear: “Not guilty.” Never again were you going to underestimate the power of charisma a defendant could bring. In fact, you were probably never going to get the chance to have anything to do with a defendant, since you would almost certainly lose your job over this. Even an attorney that graduated at the bottom of their class could’ve secured a win, yet you graduated at the top and you didn’t. Before you had a chance to play Fernando by ABBA yet again, your colleague, the annoying yet strikingly handsome Rafael Barba stepped through your bathroom door.

“If I knew I was having company I would’ve tidied up,” you said, tequila bottle in hand, still laying at the bottom of your bathtub. At first he just stared at you with a mixture of what looked like pity and disgust. You imagined how this scene looked to him, the man who was put together with his three piece suits and expensive watches. You weren’t a slob but you certainly weren’t as anal as him about having it together. In fact, the last time you had anything together might’ve been the 5th grade when you got put in the gifted children’s class. It was honestly a surprise you got into law school, much less graduated.

“What are you doing?” he finally got out.

“Celebrating the loss of my job and my entry into the world of homelessness.”

“Come on, it’s gonna be fine. You’re better than this,” he said as he stood there awkwardly. You knew cheering people up wasn’t his strong suit, so you couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable he was then.

“You’re better than this. I’m not.” Climbing out of the bathtub, you became acutely aware that your blouse was unbuttoned, the same one you wore yesterday. You couldn’t bring yourself to care though, you were a mix of drunk plus dejected and nothing seemed to matter anymore. Who cares if Barba saw your underwear? It’s not like you would be working with him much longer.

“Now’s your chance to see what’s underneath all those three piece suits,” your inner monologue whispered.

“Oh my god shut up!”

“Excuse me?” he replied, and only then did you realize you said it out loud.

“Nothing,” you responded. “Want a drink? Most of my alcohol is cheap because I’m not exactly ballin like you are, but after enough of it it won’t really matter.”

To your surprise, he followed you to your pathetic looking kitchen. Maybe he wasn’t so straitlaced after all. After embarrassing yourself by almost falling over when you were walking, you finally got out every single bottle of alcohol you owned. It wasn’t much, but what little you had was potent.

“Take your pick, your highness,” you said as you did an exaggerated bow.

“Wow, this is, uh-”

“Awful? Yeah I know, but it’s all I have.”

“I was going to say unique, but that works too.” He grabbed your whiskey and poured himself a glass.

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By the time he got to his third drink, you had seemed to forget all about the disastrous trial. You guys were laughing about something stupid, Barba honestly coudn’t have cared less what about. It was taking all his willpower not to stare at your exposed chest, willpower that was slowly decreasing the more he drank. You were wearing a lacy black bra, something that had always been a favorite of his and frankly it was driving him crazy. All those months of working in close quarters hadn’t helped him with his... interest? Crush seemed too juvenile of a word to describe it. Frankly he almost quit when he found out you were going to be his co-counsel. It was hard enough working in the same department together, now you’d be forced to be together for hours on end, day after day? He was a strong willed man but not that strong willed. But somehow he managed to do it, with the months of your hard work culminated in the sham verdict the jury gave out. At least it would be easier to avoid you now that this was over.

As you poured him another drink, Barba couldn’t help but make a slightly suggestive comment. “Trying to take advantage of me huh?”

“Maybe,” you said in such a way he almost believed there was more to it. He was about to brush it off when the glint in your eye caught his attention. He brushed it off as him reading too much into things, after all you were his colleague and it was highly inappropriate.

“God I’m so glad that trial is over,” you sighed, leaning back into your very old couch. “I can’t believe my last trial ever was a loss.”

“Okay you need to calm down,” he started. “You are going to be fine. Nobody is expected to win 100% of their cases, and the district attorney’s office has faced losses like that before. It’s not a big deal.” He genuinely thought he helped until he saw the look on your face.

“You really don’t get it do you,”you said, your voice low. “You, sir, are going to be just fine. Nothing is going to happen to you, your job is secure. Me? I’m a newbie compared to you. I haven’t been here long enough so for me to lose such an easy case? That looks badly on me, alright? I am fucked. I am so fucked. There is no way my career recovers from this.”

Barba could tell you were getting heated, but he couldn’t help but think you were overreacting and normally he might’ve understood that the smart thing to do would be to keep his mouth shut. However, he had more whiskey than he could remember and his mouth was looser than usual today.

“Honestly, you’re overreacting. The DA might be mad but at the end of the day we’re going to be equally blamed for it and eventually people will forget and they’ll move on. It’s-”

“It’s going to be a god damn disaster that’s what,” you almost yelled. “I don’t get how you don’t see it. I am supposed to be a lawyer that graduated at the top of her class, yet I can’t even secure a win from one of the easiest cases this state has ever seen? Yeah, you were there too but you’ve been in the game longer, you have more wins under your belt than I do, you’re more established. Compared to you I’m just starting out and I started out with a fucking failiure.”

You two went back and forth for a while, until Rafael could sense you were about to reach your tipping point. As you were about to shout something else at him, he calmly raised a finger in your face to quiet you down, held his glass of whiskey with his other hand, and took a drink. You were silenced immediately, mostly trying to figure out where he got the audacity when he put the drink down and looked into your eyes, culminating in what seemed like the longest staring match to ever occur. But something else was different. You didn’t believe in fruity things like auras or horoscopes, but it felt like the energy in the room had changed. All of a sudden, there was an unbearable amount of sexual tension, and it was all concentrated right between the two of you. It was almost as if the arguing fed it, made it stronger, to the point where you knew whatever proceeded would be against both of your moral codes.

After who knows how long, Rafael decided he had enough. “I think we both know how this is going to end,” he said in a deep, husky voice. You tried not to let on how much he affected you, but you just couldn’t help it. He looked so fucking good, with his sleeves rolled up and his jawline taut. You were so nervous, but now wasn’t the time to be nervous. With someone as confident as Rafael, you needed to act like you knew what you wanted and you were going to get it. You leaned in, until your faces were mere inches apart. “Oh really? Because I’m not sure I do.”

Getting up as carefully as you could, you slowly started walking towards the bedroom and began to unbutton the rest of your shirt. You kept forcing yourself to not turn around, you didn’t want to see what he was doing or you would psych yourself out. Right before you got to your bedroom, you felt a strong hand grab your entire arm and spin you. Again, you were eye to eye with him and you swore you felt your heart stop.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it my way,” he whispered in your ear. The dom in you didn’t even care, all you needed right now was him and you were going to do whatever it took to have him. Nodding slowly, he led you to the bedroom and sat at the foot of your bed.

“Strip,” he ordered, as he took a sip of whiskey from his glass. You unbutton your shirt as slowly as you could, partly out of fear and partly out wanting to tease him. You could that glint in his eye again, and it only turned you on even more.

After what felt like forever, you dropped your shirt on the floor. Standing in front of him in only a lacy black bra and a pair of fitted pants, you started to unclasp your bra when he held a finger up and stopped you.

“Pants first,” he pointed down. You obeyed, loving how bossy he was, a quality of his that often rubbed you the wrong way. Once you stood in front of him in your matching lacy underwear, it finally hit you how exposed you were. You started to cross your arms when he stopped you.

“I want to see you. Turn around.”

You almost didn’t, just to see what he’d do to you, but you eventually turned around. Once you were facing him again, he stood up slowly and began to unravel his tie. You couldn’t help but stare at his arms, they were just so fucking perfect. He put his hand under your chin and gently lifted your face so your eyes met. “Up here.” Staring into each other’s eyes was a strangely intimate gesture, but not an unwelcome one. You ran your hands under his suspenders as he unbuttoned his shirt. You couldn’t even wait for him to take it off before you ran your hands all over his chest and his back, pulling him closer and he glanced in your eyes for a split second before your lips met.

The first kiss was gentle and soft. He pulled back quickly to gauge your reaction. The second one was much more intense, his hand coming around the back of your neck, pulling you even closer. He slid his hands down your back and unclasped your bra, throwing it on the floor. He turned you around and you two fell back on the bed together, him on top. Your bodies kept moving close together, as if it was physically impossible for them to be apart. He started kissing your neck, and you made sounds you had never made with any other man before. So far, he had exceeded every expectation you ever imposed on him in your day dreams, and you hadn’t even gotten to the main course yet.

He was breathing heavily in between kisses when he whispered in your ear. “Take it out.” Your hands slid down and began to unbutton his pants when you felt it against your leg.

“I hope it’s not that big, my insurance doesn’t cover that,” you thought to yourself. You reached in and took it out and not only was it bigger, the girth was unmatched.

“I think you know what to do.” It may have sounded like a suggestion, but you knew better. Barba was always in control, even when it felt like he wasn’t and that was an order not a suggestion. Sliding the rest of your “clothing” off, you did the same to him with his shirt and pants while he moved around from your neck to your chest to collarbone.

You didn’t even notice it going in because he didn’t warn you. It went so deep you were speechless for a moment, all thoughts void. When you could finally breathe again, he didn’t go easy on you, instead he put one hand on the headboard and used to to drive himself deeper. You could feel your bed slamming against the wall, which was surely going to get a complaint from your neighbor but you didn’t care. He slowed down for a moment to come down and kiss you, so you took the opportunity to run your hands down his surprisingly wide back. He pulled away for a moment, and then flipped you around so your back was arched in the air. Grabbing your hips, he pulled you back onto himself with surprising accuracy.

“He’s done this move before,” you thought to yourself. After almost slamming you down on him, he moved one hand up to your waist to arch your back and the other to your neck and grabbed it.

“Good girl,” he whispered in your ear. You felt a shiver run down your spine and Rafael knew it too, smirking to himself before pulling you back onto him. It wasn’t long before you finished, letting out yet another noise no man had made you make before. You had no idea what it was: the sex, the moves, or the man himself but your never came close to finishing from sex alone before. You figured it was probably the fact that you had spent so long fantasizing about this man, only to have him exceed expectations. You couldn’t stop thinking about his hands on your hips, the way his mouth felt all over your body, how big he was-

Your train of thought was interrupted by his abrupt stop. You looked back at him to see him more fucked out than you had ever seen him before. You turned around to face him.

“What’s wrong?” you said, hoping he wasn’t regretting his decision.

“I’m not usually- I mean, it doesn’t usually happen this fast,’ he said, out of breath. You just smiled at him, stretching your legs out until they were around his waist and brought him closer to you. “That is just fine with me,” you whispered in his ear. The two of you lowered down, once again looking into each other's eyes. You locked your legs around his waist, he wasn’t going anywhere until he finished and when he did, he let out a guttural noise that only ignited a fire within you despite the two of you just getting done. The both of you collapsed on the bed, just the noises of heavy breathing filling the air while you tried to comprehend what just happened. You glanced over at him, half expecting him to have a look of regret but instead you saw something you could only describe as primal in his eyes. After a brief moment of staring at each other, he reached over with his hand to hold your face gently, then gave you the softest kiss in the world. You held his hand with yours, not wanting him to let go.

#rafael barba #barba #raul esparza #smut #rafael barba smut #submission

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xumos-hoe · 4 years

Note

Heeey guess who feels like shit due to a doc’s appointment 🙃 anyway I need my boys rn so can I have a rundown at how they’d react to mc’s blood having to be drawn and after it’s over they feel really dizzy and start throwing up due to the extreme anxiety? I’m sorry if this makes you squeamish or something you don’t have to do it fheskfsghhd

Aw don’t worry about anything squeamish, it takes a lot to make me uncomfortable with writing a certain thing

considering this was sent a while back and I finally got time to write it, you’ve already probably gotten blood drawn and I hope all went well anon :D

Hope you enjoy 💕

MLQC crew react to MC getting blood drawn

~~~~~~~~

Victor

The two of you were currently at the hospital after you had briefly mentioned not having received a blood test for a few years now.

He waited at the clinic with you and couldn’t help noticing your eyes widening to saucers when the nurse entered with a tray of assorted needles and tubes.

Had you gotten paler? And why were you shaking so much?

The nurse takes your arm and feels around for a vein. His grasp alternates to your free hand; hardly brushing against your pulse, but still sensing your restless heartbeat.

And when the needle finally penetrates, you let out a loud yelp and start crying almost instantly.

The nurse seems taken aback with your reaction, and Victor is just as surprised. He squeezes your hand with some sort of reassurance and politely asks you to stay still. You continue to tense up and thrash against the needle as more tears fall around your face.

The 10 second procedure feels like an eternity until the nurse finally pulls away with a sufficient sample size. Your movements turn sluggish when the nurse presses gauze and a bandaid to the tiny puncture, turning rapid as soon as she pulls away and you nearly bolt out the chair.

The world is a spinning cacophony of noise. Victor shouts your name but it sounds like an echo—all you can focus on in the moment is spilling your guts all over the floor.

Victor is pulling your hair back, patting your back and shouting something to the nurses. The clinic wounds up keeping you for a little while longer for resting, until Victor takes you back home to his place for quality pampering time in case the anxiety comes back.

You try and apologize for creating a scene back at the clinic but he’ll hear nothing about it. In fact, he’s more irritated with why you hadn’t told him about your anxiety with blood tests; with pockets as deep as his, he could’ve found a better substitute for you.

Aside from all that, he’ll focus more on making sure you’re comfortable and as calm as possible for the rest of the day.

Lucien

Okay so he gave you the blood test himself

Mans basically a doctor, so when you mentioned you were feeling a little sick lately, he suggested that you get blood work done. And not by your usual doctor—but by him!

You politely refuse, saying it’d be too much of a hassle if you made him go through that; but in reality, it was all an effort to avoid the situation entirely—it didn’t matter who did it.

Of course, you can’t really talk this man out of things once he’s made his mind up—so somehow, you’re already sitting in a chair in a lab, internally freaking the fuck out, but unsure of how to properly articulate it.

“What? Not so confident in me, it seems...” Lucien tugs on a pair of disposable gloves with a teasing smile as he settles beside you, perceiving the uneasiness written across your features.

You hardly smile, instead, watch on with a fearful gaze as he sets down the needles and neatly labeled tubes on a tray. Nausea is already flooding your system; you instinctively lurch forward as the familiar anxiety from all those years ago begins to settle in, turning your hands sweaty and cold. You tremble ever so slightly as Lucien tugs your sleeve up and positions the needle without so much as having to tap out for it.

His free hand reaches for your own right before it enters, murmuring something low that you’re unable to recognize in the apprehension. You let out a small whimper and squeeze hard on his hand when the needle finally pierces through, setting every nerve aflame.

You’re dead silent until the process completes. Lucien sensed your fearfulness from the beginning, unaware of it’s true effects until the split second the needle slips out and you sprint out of the chair.

Your collapse to the ground, getting on all fours and proceed to dry heave. Your pained gasping and sobbing echoes throughout the empty lab, but all you can feel is Lucien’s warm hand rubbing soothing circles against the small of your back.

When the gagging begins to wane, he holds you in his arms for a little while until the trembling follows suit. He wipes away a few stray tears in your eyes until most of your anxiety has melted away.

He’d be a little frustrated (out of genuine guilt) that you didn’t think to warn him about these kinds of things earlier. Lucien doesn’t want to feel like he pressured you into anything, especially when his interest was all for the benefit of your health—but in the case that compromised another part of your well-being, he wouldn’t think twice about going through with it.

Kiro

It was just another usual checkup.

But as soon as the PA informed you that you were quite overdue for a blood test, you were wishing you’d never even gotten out of bed that morning.

Kiro had accompanied you to your doctors appointment since he was free and wanted to be by your side for the most part. He, himself, despises getting blood work done, so when the dread kicks in and reflects itself in your features, he recognizes it instantly.

He pulls you into a reassuring embrace as soon as the doctor exits the room to grab the supplies, nuzzling his face close to yours with a smile. “Don’t worry, Miss Chips. I’m right here!”

You almost smile back, until the door swings open and the doctor re-emerges with a sickening display of needles and gauze in their hands. The sight itself causes your heart and mind to swell with anxiety—you hope Kiro doesn’t notice the acceleration in your heartbeat or the way your body has already began to tremble.

Even so, you put on a brave face and tug up your sleeve when the doctor approaches. Kiros murmurs an encouraging that’s it as soon as the syringe appears, but you hardly hear it.

You instinctively reach for his hands and he welcomes your touch, giving a small squeeze when the needle aims against the right vein and pierces through.

You yell out, catching both Kiro and the doctor by surprise when they both look up to find a small pool of tears has gathered in your eyes. Kiro is stunned when you continue to yell out and thrash against the PA. They shoot you an impatient look and ask to stay still; Kiro does as much as he can, to little avail.

“Hey...Miss Chips?”

He expected you’d be scared—but definitely not to this extent.

“Breathe in and out...”

You listen to him and try to focus on maintaining a rhythm; anything besides the needle in your arm, and it works!...until the doctor finally tugs it out. The sensation takes you back to square one and you nearly faint if it hadn’t been for Kiro keeping you up right.

He flashes a nervous smile as soon as the doctor steps back. “See? That wasn’t so bad!”

But the room has already began to tilt ever so slightly, blurring at the edges as a wave of dizziness and nausea crashes over you. The color drains from your face and you lurch forward, throat filling with bile as soon as you empty out your stomach right there.

The doctor rushes to get assistance. Kiro’s expression turns bewildered, but he hardly leaves your side for even a moment and acts swiftly. One hand is at your hair, holding back every strand as the other reaches for a tissue to pat the sheen building on your forehead

Eventually your movements become weaker and the vomiting subsides. With the clinic staff and your boyfriend right by your side, the spike in your anxiety thankfully dies down.

He brings you water when you need it, and takes his time feeding you the crackers a nurse brought in as you relaxed, all the while whispering sweet nothings to calm your mind and make sure you’re ready before taking you back home personally for more relaxation.

Gavin

He drives you to the clinic himself that morning on his day off, promising to treat you something right afterwards. You agreed to getting the test done, of course, but that didn’t mean you were any less than a bundle of nerves and dread on the way there.

Even in the waiting room, you fidgit restlessly in your seat, heart sinking further down your chest whenever the door opened and the receptionist called in patients.

Gavin accompanied you into the lab. You were thankful for his presence when the nurse sat you down by the counter and asked you to lay out your arm.

He was unsure whether or not he should hold your hand, although every part of his being wanted to. He waited until your fingers crept and entwined with his first before he gave in. Nothing prepared him for how unusually cold and shaky they felt right as the needle pressed up against the flesh beneath it, piercing smoothly and precisely.

You jolted as soon as you became painfully aware of the sensation, squeezing Gavin’s poor hand with all your might until you were sure it would just crush in your hold—but he never once pulled away or resisted.

The nurse finishes and steps back hurriedly, just as soon as the world began tilting back and forth; the sight endlessly nauseating, so you squeezed your eyes shut and began gagging.

Gagging until you vomited all across the ground, but not once did Gavin step back or waver. He steadies you by your shoulders and tries to keep his touches as light as possible, a reassuring rub here and there until all had seemed to calm.

Staff returns to clean the mess and brings along dry snacks and apple juice for you to eat to regain strength in your muscles. Gavin is there all through it, holding the box to your lips and waiting patiently as you alternate between the crackers and juice.

Instead of a date, he takes you home straightaway for time to rest-up. He stays by your side through the day and night until you can properly thank him when you’re feeling up to it.

#mr love queens choice #mr love: queens choice #mr love victor #mr love lucien #mr love kiro #mr love gavin #mlqc victor #mlqc gavin #mlqc kiro #mlqc lucien #mlqc headcanons #mr love fanfic #mr love headcanons #requests #evol x love #love and producer

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pinnithin-writes · 3 years

Text

Good Jokes

Chapter 21

The portal stole their breath from them, chewing them up and spitting them out in a dark, red cavern. Tommy was up to his shins in some kind of tarlike fluid, but he was less put off by the wetness in his socks than he was by how warm it was. Pocked stalagmites reached up from the floor like long, spindly fingers and the air was thick with a humidity that made it hard to breathe. Firelight flickered overhead. It was unexpectedly quiet, save for the lapping of water around their legs as the team assembled raggedly and gained their bearings.

“Oh my gosh, this place is huge,” Gordon breathed.

The unnerving qualities of this womblike place were second to the great, crouching thing that watched them from the center of the chamber. Benrey’s arms were tucked in at odd angles, and his form rose up from the murk like a tumor. From where his wide, pallid face was resting, Tommy could see that dark fluid sloshing into the corner of his mouth.

Gordon sounded as unsettled as Tommy felt when he asked, quietly, “Is he dead?”

Sure, dead like a possum. Benrey’s eyes may have been unfocused and glassy, but Tommy wouldn’t believe for a second the creature was deceased until he personally watched his final breath leave him.

As if sensing Tommy’s thoughts, the entity’s gaze lasered in on Gordon when he took a tentative step in his direction. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Gordon responded automatically, halting in his tracks.

“I knew this was gonna happen.”

Benrey’s voice echoed off the sides of the cavern and rippled the water around their calves. Firelight flickered hot and yellow off his tractor tire irises, and Tommy had to look away.

Gordon had a bit more resolve in him, keeping nervous watch on the entity. “What?” he asked. “What do you mean you knew this was gonna happen?”

“I’m telling you - look, I’m... I like everything, I'm a great cool...” Benrey trailed off.

Tommy watched a confused glance pass between Gordon and Coomer while the entity went on.

“I feel a good, but you make me angry. Rememb-”

“Why,” Gordon interrupted, frustration edging his voice. “Because I don’t have my fucking passport? Is that what this-”

Benrey cut him off abruptly with a flash of his serrated teeth. “No. You remember? The first time we met... you wa- you walk in- I’m on my shift, and you come in, and you got a dick slip in your... in your HEV suit.”

There was a fraction of pause, an iota of processing during which the gears spun in everyone’s heads, until Tommy saw Bubby mouth the words, dick slip? and suddenly he was forced to hold in a riot of shocked laughter.

Gordon threw a glance over his shoulder at the others, astonished light dancing in his eyes. When he turned back and demanded, “What?” Tommy heard humor in his voice.

“And I tried - I tried to stop you. I tried to tell you. I was stopping you - I was going, ‘hey, yo dick out,’ but you didn’t-” he broke off, giant forehead wrinkling in consternation. “I was tryna be nice, and then you were talkin’ to my friend, J- Jefferem, and you’re telling him like, ‘Aw, I don’t have my passport…’”

As Benrey spilled more nonsense out of his mouth, Gordon turned, one hand propped on his waist, to give a “you’re hearing this, right?” look to his teammates. Dr. Coomer exhaled loudly out of his nose, shaking his head as he took this time to reload his weapon. Gordon looked to Tommy, the corners of his mouth quirked up ever so slightly and brows raised like a child asking for a dare.

The entity continued to rumble the cavern as he spoke. “And... he was so upset - he has anger issues - I was gonna protect you from him, we were - I was gonna be nice to you. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” Gordon answered, “and then you contradicted yourself almost immediately. I didn’t say shit to you, you immediately started attacking me, and you just harassed me-”

“No, that’s just my job!” Benrey huffed, eyes rolling in Gordon’s direction.

“To do what?” he demanded. “What is your job? What is this - where the fuck are we?”

Tommy was about to tell Gordon that prying answers out of the entity would be ultimately fruitless, even in possession of a crowbar, but he stopped short when he saw that the man was… smiling. Grinning outright, like he had just told a bad pun and was waiting for everyone to tell him to fuck off. This conversation was on purpose, Tommy realized, prodding Benrey to keep talking - not to make sense of his story, but purely because its utter ridiculousness brought Gordon glee. He fought down a giggle and watched the exchange unfold.

“I - I mean,” Benrey went on, “if there’s a dick - if, y’know, someone’s dick out on the job, I gotta stop ‘em.”

“What are you on about? What?”

“But like... you don’t remember?”

“My dick has not been out all day.”

“No, no! Like... the first time we met.”

“Yeah, in fucki- before the test?”

“What test?”

Gordon exchanged a glance with his companions. “What does this have to - I don’t understand. I-”

“ Listen, ” Benrey said, and launched into an argument that Tommy could barely parse.

Deadly serious, the entity droned on about PlayStation 3, a game called Heavenly Sword, and the embarrassment of asking his coworkers for some kind of exclusive gaming membership. It was nonsensical, difficult to track, and Gordon was loving every second of it. Nearby, Coomer and Bubby were keeping a wary eye on their adversary, weapons in hand, but they were chuckling to themselves, as well.

Somehow this gigantic, horrifying creature was digging himself into a hole with every word, reducing little by little to just… an annoying guy with bad video game opinions. Benrey could immolate them on the spot, stretch out a massive hand and crush them like insects, and instead he was arguing with Gordon about the likelihood of a dick slip in the armored casing of a hazard suit. All Gordon had to do was keep him talking. Tommy felt a flood of admiration as he watched the guy ham it up with that shit eating grin on his face.

“How does that have to do with fucking anything?” he asked, punctuating every word with a gesture of his hand.

Benrey fell suddenly silent, pupils dilating like a cat out to hunt. “My friends are here,” he uttered quietly.

Gordon cut his eyes around the cavern, searching for signs of movement. “What friends?” he asked. “What is he talking about?”

Benrey’s volume rose in agitation, shaking the chamber and raining bits of gravel on their heads. “Sony CEO Jack Tretton survived a nuclear- a nuclear bomb!”

“What?” Gordon barked, taking a startled step back. “What? Should we…?” he looked to the others. “Should w-”

“Sony CEO Jack Tretton hired Nintendo CEO Reggie and they built a big bomb that was gonna go off... but I saved the world!” Benrey bellowed.

Tommy was convinced at this point that, if Benrey was ever occupying the same plane of reality the rest of them were in, he was no longer a part of it. His form began to shift and stretch, shoulders rolling and neck straining as he began to rise out of his false rigor mortis.

Though a touch of laughter remained in Gordon’s voice, he was beginning to sound alarmed. “Should we stop him?” he asked. “Should we just start shooting at him? Cause I d- it’s not gonna do-”

“No, no!” Tommy interrupted sarcastically. “Let hi - le- let him finish. We need to understand.”

Coomer let out a harsh chortle as he racked a round. “It would be rude to interrupt,” he agreed.

As Benrey continued to rise from the murk, a thin, skittering sound could be heard from the walls of the chamber. “So I didn’t - I didn’t have a big plan. I was ‘sposed to be nice, but you forced me to be baaad so I’m gonna be baaad, friend.”

Judging by the way Gordon’s eyes were skimming the area, he heard the noise, too, but laughter was still shaking his words. “How did I force you to… how did I force-?”

Benrey angled his chin toward Gordon, unimpressed with his mirth. “The big plot is slowly unraveling before our eyes,” he intoned. “Look at this.”

“Look at what?” Gordon demanded.

A horrible sound wrenched through the cavern, a sonic bass that Tommy felt deep within his chest cavity and shook the very room they stood in. The scratching grew louder and he caught flickering glimpses of skeletal hands in his periphery, reaching from the burrows that honeycombed the walls. He braced himself and raised the stock of his rifle to his shoulder.

“I don’t know what he’s saying anymore,” Gordon said, “I-”

There was a sickening rip-tear and a subsequent wave of red water rolling in their direction as Benrey hauled himself all at once to a standing position. He stared cooly down at the four of them, murderous intent clear on his face even at this distance. Fluid trickled down his form in red lines like blood. Tommy readjusted his aim.

Gordon took a couple frantic steps back, water sloshing around his legs. “What’s happening. What is happening?” he asked. “What is happening to him?”

“I can feel a change in his DNA,” Coomer answered thinly, right before Benrey became a nightmare.

His form unspooled like a helix torn in half. Flesh and bone separated, sinews snapping apart as whatever it was that made this thing Benrey released itself. The creature fanned wide, covering the space with limbs that shouldn’t function, eyes that shouldn’t be able to see, serrated and hungry. All this time it made a terrible noise, war made sound, shaking the cavern in its horror.

This wasn’t a joke anymore.

Several things happened at once. Skeletons poured from the walls, clawing and scraping toward them in a rattling wave. Gunfire exploded around Tommy as his teammates began firing - at Benrey, at the undead, at anything that moved to stave off the onslaught. The entity roared his frame-shaking bellow, and through the whirlwind of movement and all the terrible noise, the Science Team was scattered like dandelion seeds caught in a lawnmower.

Reality blurred for Tommy after that, boiling down in his brain to the pull of his trigger finger and his own heartbeat in his ears and Gordon, somewhere, frantically calling his name. Hearing it almost hurt worse than the psychic waves crashing over his body while the skeletons pursued him. He swung the stock of his rifle and shattered a stray skull as he ran.

Where did he run to? Where else was there to go but into oblivion? Panic rose in his throat as he fired off rounds and dodged the reaching fingers of the thing that once was Benrey. Distantly, he heard calls from his teammates, and then a hand locked around his wrist and he was being yanked into a portal.

Atoms scrambled, heart hammering in his throat, Tommy landed on the other side with his ears ringing, stumbling and tearing his palms open on the gravelled ground. For a second, all he could focus on was the steady beads of blood rising to the surface of his skin, hypnotic and scarlet in their mortality. But then a strong pair of hands were under his arms and Dr. Coomer hauled Tommy back to his feet. A heavy slap on the back knocked him back to reality.

Gordon, after checking that they had all made it through, swept the room with a cautious gaze as he rallied his nerves. “Are we safe?” he asked. “What is this?”

Did it matter where they were? Somewhere else in the monstrous structure that was Xen. A vesicle, an artery, the porous space inside a network of bronchioles. All Tommy could think about was how heavy his arms felt as he carried his gun. A pool of unidentifiable fluid lapped nearby, its depth unguessable.

“What the fuck is the plan?” Gordon asked them. “What do we do?” he passed a glance between Bubby and Coomer, who could only offer a collective shrug. His voice was on the verge of breaking as he went on. “I don’t know. I’m scared as shit.”

Bubby worked his jaw contemplatively. “I’m… confused,” he admitted, quiet in a humility Tommy rarely saw from him.

Dr. Coomer nodded in agreement. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, Gordon.”

Gordon turned his gaze to Tommy, who slowly shook his head. Stay alive. That was the plan right now for him. He wiped his bleeding hands off on his lab coat and said nothing.

“Okay… We know that he likes PS3… and that my dick-” he broke off to drag a hand down his face in frustration. “What the fuck? ”

“And he and his friend just got a - uh, month of PSN,” Tommy added.

“And Heavenly Sword,” Coomer agreed.

“Okay,” Gordon uttered automatically, backtracking with his brow furrowed. “I don’t kn - I’ve never played that game. Is there anything he said that’s gonna help us kill him? How do we kill this fuckin-”

“Well, he said it’s not a ripoff of God of War,” Dr. Coomer added, unhelpfully.

This somehow drew the entity’s ire, his terrible voice thundering through the chamber, source unknown. “It’s not a ripoff.”

Suddenly the walls were crawling with skeletons again and the once quiet room exploded with gunfire. As Tommy spun and popped off rounds, he distantly heard Bubby cry, “Into the water!”

His mouth was halfway open to bark wait waitwaitwaitgunsdon’tworkinwater - when there was a splash and his companions disappeared below the surface. Tommy spat out a curse and followed them.

Muffled silence pressed into his ears as he slipped into the depths. Tommy blinked against the gloom, darting his eyes around as he tread water with his rifle in one hand. There was Gordon, a furious figure filling hollow skulls with gunshot wounds. Bubby and Coomer backed him up, honing in on something dark and swirling beneath their feet. This shouldn’t be possible, shouldn’t be working in this way; physics were definitely, definitely busted here. A skeletal hand clutching at Tommy’s pant leg tore him from his thoughts and he twisted to kick it away.

Well. When in Xen. He bicycled his legs to stay afloat and started firing.

An explosion of something deep beneath them sent the water boiling, forcing the team to haul themselves to dry land while the skeletons perished around them. Tommy spluttered and coughed at the lip of the pool, limp and unresisting as someone hauled him out. Unsteadily, he found his footing as his lungs expelled water. He wiped his eyes clear of the brackish fluid and blinked them open, gaze finally focusing in on Gordon. He stood before Tommy with a steadying hand on either shoulder, space between his eyebrows creased with concern while rivulets of water ran off of him.

Tommy let out a quiet sigh and gave him a weak nod. I’m okay.

Gordon released him as soon as he was sure he could stand on his own. “Tommy, was that your passport?” he asked, chest heaving as he caught his breath.

“That was Tommy’s passport,” Bubby confirmed.

Tommy paused, brow furrowed, trying to recall ever seeing anything passport shaped in the murk. Water dripped and puddled around his shoes. “...No,” he said. How would that even make sense? A passport the size of a flatscreen, spinning in some alien pool, detonating upon impact? Seemed impossible, but so did a lot of other shit in this place.

Gordon’s eyes were alight, like he was on the edge of some conclusion. “That was your passport,” he insisted. “Is it in- it’s not in your pockets. Check your pockets. What’s going on?”

A span of silence stretched as Tommy wrestled with his exhausted brain for context. Maybe this was another physics thing, a side effect of existing on Xen. He scrubbed the side of his jaw with his fingertips in exasperation as he worked over his thoughts.

“He’s checking his pockets,” Gordon explained to the group, humor touching his voice. “He does it with his brain. With his mind.”

That was enough to surprise a light laugh out of Tommy, and when he met Gordon’s eyes, he saw that he was giving Tommy a weary smile of his own. Making jokes even now, even here, just for him. It was a balm to Tommy’s troubled soul.

“Tommy,” he prompted.

Okay, he’d humor him. Tommy slung his rifle over his shoulder and began patting the pockets of his slacks. “That was - ah- that- that wasn’t-” Hmm. Wallet, phone, keys. He checked the waterlogged pockets of his lab coat, too - old receipt, rubber band, gum wrapper - and came up empty. “Yeah, my passport’s missing,” he sighed.

“Okay!” Gordon exclaimed. “Okay, so he took our passports. And that's gotta be-”

“One by one,” Benrey interjected, disembodied voice shivering through the room.

“Oh, fuck,” Gordon hissed, freezing to check for more incoming denizens. When no threat immediately arrived, he continued hurriedly. “There’s gotta be some kinda energy field around it, and the skeletons…” he trailed off, raking his hand through his hair. “I don’t understand this. I don’t get it. But we gotta blow up the rest of those passports. We gotta put an end to this bullshit.”

He dropped his hand and looked to his team. Gordon had suspended his disbelief for the sake of taking down their enemy and was asking the others to, as well. Tommy fingered the rifle strap over his shoulder as he thought it over.

The way Gordon laid it out, this sounded vaguely like some video game thing. Benrey had pulled from Earth again to create an off-brand horcrux out of their passports, for what, spite? To fuck with Gordon? Tommy could hardly parse his motives, why he would set up an elaborate stunt like this when he could just outright kill them. What was he waiting for?

Tommy realized belatedly that three pairs of eyes were fixed on him, expectant. He sighed heavily through his nose and nodded. Okay. It was hope. The tiniest, slimmest claw of it, but it was hope. He’d try it. If Gordon was reaching for it, by god, he’d try it.

---

The subsequent three hours of Tommy’s life were some of the hardest he had to endure, and he’d lived through some pretty shitty ones in the past week. The Science Team hurried through Xen, weapons in hand, dodging skeletons and shockwaves of noise and the horrible flailing limbs of the thing that was Benrey as they sought out the other passports. All of it swirled together in a cacophony of gunshots and white noise, but Tommy knew there were things he’d see on the backs of his eyelids at night after this.

Bubby’s failed prototypes, crawling and lockjawed. Colored lines of psychic barriers, trapping him in place and squeezing the air out of him. And the skeletons. The skeletons were possibly the worst thing, because Tommy realized he recognized some of them. Nametags clipped to half-shredded uniforms told him that these were the people Benrey had killed in Black Mesa, and now they were conscripted to pursue Tommy and his friends through this nightmare. Looking at them made him sick. Shooting them made him sicker.

They eliminated Bubby’s passport. Then Coomer’s. Benrey attempted to flaunt his, and they took that one out, too. They fell back and regrouped, shaky and warweary with the blood roaring in their ears. How all four of them were still alive was a miracle. Water sloshed around their legs, thick and red.

“Gordon,” Coomer panted as they retreated from Benrey’s looming form. “We’ve got all the passports, but… You - you never had yours with you, did you?”

“No,” he ground out through gritted teeth. His legs were shaking with the effort it was taking him to stand. “It’s in the locker.”

“Bad little boy,” Benrey rumbled from across the room. The skeletons that had loped around him like a pack of wolves were gone, but he still cut a menacing image in his oversized state.

Gordon’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “He’s just waiting to kill us,” he huffed. “He’s just playing with us now. There’s no more portals.”

“No,” Bubby said suddenly.

Tommy, Coomer, and Gordon cast him curious glances.

His eyes glittered, defiant and steely, behind his glasses as he set his jaw. “I don’t accept this death,” he said with resolve. “I have a plan.”

Tommy caught on immediately. It would be putting Gordon at a huge risk, but it was likely the only chance they had. He turned to Gordon, already hating himself for the suggestion on his lips.

“Do you think you can still get your passport if you go back?”

Gordon cut his eyes over to him. “How can we go back, Tommy?”

We, he said. We, not I. Tommy dropped his gaze, unable to look at Gordon. He wanted nothing more than to follow him back to where this all started, to stand at his side and fix this mess together. The thought of sending him through alone felt like tearing out one of his own organs. He swallowed thickly and didn’t answer him. Tommy was needed here. He would stay here.

Bubby was already unholstering the weapon he’d kept stashed since they departed from Darnold’s lab. It hummed as he powered it up. “We can go back,” he said, with confidence.

“Portal gun,” Coomer exclaimed.

Gordon blinked. “So that’s what th-”

“Everyone,” Bubby cut him off. “I need space.”

Tommy and Dr. Coomer exchanged a glance before retreating to a safe distance behind Bubby. Coomer raised his rifle and locked the sight on Benrey in a warning. The entity stayed put, tracking them with his big yellow eyes.

“This’ll be a little trippy,” Bubby warned. “It’ll be a little fucked up. But we’re going to have to take you back to the past.”

“Send me back, Bubby,” Gordon said, bracing himself.

Coomer didn’t take his eye away from the scope as he offered a final, “Godspeed, Gordon.”

“Alright, one last warp,” he sighed. He tossed a disdainful look over his shoulder at the entity. “Later, Benrey,” he growled.

“Peace,” Benrey sneered at a distance, grinning like a wolf.

Tommy raised his rifle to provide suppressing fire with Coomer while Bubby pulled the trigger. There was a discordant snap to his reality that left his ears ringing as a flashfire of green billowed out. He flicked a final look at Gordon, met his eyes just before he blinked out.

The man smiled, determined and lovely, as he disappeared.

Chapter 20 <-----> Chapter 22

#ink #fanfiction #good jokes #part of my endeavor to relocate all my ao3 work #guns #violence #body horror #hlvrai

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quintessence-sentimentalist · 4 years

Note

Hey, thanks for answering my Hay LinxEric question. Now, how would you fix IrmaxJoel?

Sorry for the delay on this—I haven’t been in quite the right mindset for the in-depth analyses as of late, and the question of how to fix this couple is a tricky one.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a very good one. Compared to a number of the other relationship fix-its I’ve considered (CxC, Nigel x Taranee) where I haven’t had a particular attachment to the couples, I actually have a lot of feelings about and adoration for Irma and Joel. And while that can also be said about HLxE, my perspective on Irma x Joel is a bit different.

Namely, the fact that I love their platonic relationship as it was presented in canon, and would actually have been pretty aligned if they were kept that way for the rest of the series.

(But of course, we couldn’t even have that, as any sort of acknowledgement of their relationship was wiped out of existence, and then referenced out of nowhere and without explanation many, many issues later with Joel thinking on how “Aw, we used to be friends, but not anymore.”)

I’m not saying I don’t ship them romantically (I do, and we’ll get into my fix-it of that later on in this ramble), but it wouldn’t have necessarily been a deal-breaker if they didn’t end up together. Admittedly, I’d probably be eating those words if Irma and Joel were still hanging out by the time Stephen (or, really, any brand-new love interest) came into the story, if only because throwing Irma into a romantic relationship without any real on-page emotional buildup doesn’t sit right with me no matter how I slice it. To be fair, that’s also just a me thing, because I prefer my ships to have a strong personal foundation over having the characters be drawn together primarily because of looks, etc., so there’s definitely room for different views.

For me personally, though, the only way I’d really be behind a non-IxJ endgame is if a) Irma didn’t end up with anyone (which could have been great! The other girls were single at various times in the series, but having Irma be the one who’d never been in any sort of relationship would have been good to show that it’s more than okay to not have a significant other at that age), or b) Irma ended up in a relationship with someone else with whom she already has a long-established emotional connection (i.e. I’m not counting an old summer camp crush that we’ve only just learned of when it’s convenient to the in-story events). Seeing as that second option pretty much leaves us with either the other girls (which is fair) or Martin (not as sold on this one, but it’s a little bit better than their animated series counterparts), that would potentially have to be a fix-it as well.

Regardless of Irma’s relationship status—in a similarly meaningful one or not in one at all—let’s look at a fix for platonic Irma x Joel. Honestly, this one can just be summed up as LET THEM REMAIN CLOSE FRIENDS.

Really, it’s… it’s not that hard. Kandrakar knows that I love these girls and their bond, but I also like to see their lives outside of Guardianship, and that means that they can have other friends beyond each other. (Which they did try to do with Taranee and having Luke and Sheila, and I appreciate the effort, even if it wasn’t really executed in the best way.) Irma and Joel were something special, with their shared adoration for Karmilla and complementary senses of humor and, frankly, the fact that neither of them initially considered each other in a different sort of light. They had so much in common, their personalities resounded with each other so beautifully—all these qualities building up to what I’d dare call soulmate material—and all either of them can think is, “Hey, this is an awesome friendship!” And I adore that.

Which is why I can’t fathom why they’d suddenly do away with a relationship that had been lovingly (and largely platonically) tended to on the side for a number of story arcs.

I’m going to caveat that I have only read New Power and beyond but once in my life so far, and a good number of years ago, to boot. I have no actual recollection of whether or not there was any sort of explanation for why the two of them stopped hanging out (besides that offhand comment that they just don’t anymore, which was given to us… oh, three or four arcs later?). No idea if there was any sort of confrontation between Joel and Stephen and Joel out-of-character gets jealous—I wouldn’t put it past them to have done this (which is awful), but given the notoriousness of vanishing things without any warning that inspired this whole damn fix-it series, there’s a fighting chance for it to have gone either way.

Regardless of what actually happened in canon, there is no concrete reason why Irma having a healthy, happy friendship with someone of the same gender as her new significant other had to be done away with. Even if it could be argued that Irma and Joel had romantic chemistry and ooooooohhhh that could be a threat to her new relationship (um, no.), the two of them had already dealt with those potential feelings back at the end of the Book of Elements/beginning of the Ragorlang arc, and while they didn’t deny that the potential was there, there was unspoken agreement that both were more comfortable as friends at the moment. If we were to use that attraction as a justification against keeping their friendship around while one or both were in other relationships, it just wouldn’t—in a very apt turn-of-phrase—hold water. And there isn’t a reason at all to drop it if there’s no romantic relationship(s) happening whatsoever.

So yeah. Base-level fix-it for Irma and Joel is keep their friendship.

But let’s take it a step further and look at a fix-it for an IxJ romance. I’ll admit that I volleyed around a couple different thoughts about this, even going so far as being sold on an end-of-series-payoff slow-burn like I originally thought we got with Cornelia and Peter (back when I thought the series ended at issue #74 like the Philippines comics did). And while that could have worked for them, I thought back and realized that so many of the canon ships had big moments like that. Will and Matt have their Big Damn Kiss after facing off against Cedric and Matt discovering the truth. Hay Lin and Eric have their joyful spur-of-the-moment kiss when Hay gives him the CD he wanted. As mentioned, Cornelia and Peter have their supposedly-final issue culmination of long-brewing chemistry. And of course, let’s not forget Cornelia and Caleb’s fairytale romance in the early days.

Really, all the relationships—except Taranee and Nigel, although the tradeoff for that was long, drawn-out conflict—officially kick off with a fireworks-level big bang. It’s a Moment when the couples come together, something to be remembered. And with Irma being Irma, loveable loudmouth as she is, it’d make sense for her to have something like that as well—a blurted confession, maybe, or a deep, passionate first kiss.

That’s why I’m of the camp that would have a quiet, but no less meaningful resolution to Irma and Joel’s romantic feelings.

We all know Irma’s the outgoing type—natural comedian always on-hand, outspoken to a fault, passionate and unabashedly loud. But a number of times over the series, we’ve seen her have to get introspective or at least a bit more low-key (oftentimes in the wake of an outburst that hurts someone else). These quieter moments usually offer some great character studies and development for Irma, and I’d like to think that, if given the chance to accept and want to act on her deeper feelings for Joel, it would happen in a similar way.

Just give me the two of them hanging out like usual, but maybe with not as much chatter. Joel is playing his guitar, Irma’s kicked back with a magazine that she’s only half-paying attention to as she listens. Eventually, the magazine drops further and further from her face as her gaze drifts fully to Joel and that goofy face he makes whenever he hits that one chord and that warm fond feeling she gets…

Her thoughts skitter to a sudden stop, but she tries not to let it show outwardly. It’s been a long time since Irma’s thought of Joel in any more-than-friendly terms, probably not since the mix-up with the note to Karmilla that first brought the idea to her mind. It had been an accident, and maybe she hadn’t fully realized—or at the very least hadn’t been ready—to confront those feelings by that point, but the inklings were there. And they’re still here, and maybe a little bit more than just inklings, and maybe she’s actually ready to admit them.

So Irma sets down the magazine altogether, and carefully slides a little closer to Joel’s side. The movement doesn’t go unnoticed, but he looks up only in faint curiosity—not at all startled or displeased. Irma just returns with a small smile, maybe a little nervous (is this too much too fast? Does he even feel the same way anymore?). But there’s no need for worry—or even words, for that matter—as the two of them have always been so in-sync, and are in perfect alignment on this in particular. That’s clearly proven when Joel grins back and carefully shifts his body and guitar so Irma can comfortably settle in right next to him.

(There are words later, of course, if only to make absolutely certain they’re both on the same page, and just because hearing it out loud makes it feel so real. And really, things don’t change that much in their relationship—they still laugh and crack jokes and tease each other to no end, just with a bit more cuddling and kisses and comfy quiet between them, where neither feels the need to fill the silence just because.

And because I’m predictable, a situation wherein Joel gets clued in to the Guardian Secret would involve Joel being very understanding and patient… and also terrifyingly aware that he is never again going to win in a water fight against his girlfriend.)

So. Apparently I had more thoughts on Irma and Joel fix-its than I thought, but I also have zero regrets and too damn many feelings.

#quintessential asks #thanks for asking!#quintessence-sentimentalist's one-woman mission to fix W.i.t.c.h. canon ships

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sa-gt-tarrius · 4 years

Text

Everything is Okay [Secret Santa gift]

Warnings: Hypothermia, mild language, fear

@barclays-sides @secret-sanders-sized

Before you say anything... I know you asked for fluff and I promise you it’s in there... I’m just a sucker for drama and couldn’t control myself for three seconds. (Nothing bad happens to anyone, I swear. *sob*)

After a camping trip gone awry, Logan finds help from an unexpected source. If only Roman was here to see this...

***

Logan realized he didn’t think this whole thing through.

Now, Logan wasn’t stupid, not really. He just made a miscalculation—a simple judgement error. It happens to the best. But this particular lapse of judgement was about to cost him greatly.

Shivering rapidly, Logan tugged his coat tighter against his body, pulling his legs further underneath the tree branches looming overhead. It wasn’t like journeying this deep into the woods was Logan’s idea, anyway. Roman had suggested they, along with Virgil, go camping to catch up on some much-needed quality time. And damn it all, Logan agreed to come, if only to appease his puppy-eye face. So they decided to camp in a nearby national park. It fulfilled Logan’s requirement of being close to civilization while also satisfying Roman’s desire for adventuring in the woods.

When Logan got separated from the group, he did everything he was supposed to do. He stayed put, began blowing his whistle, and waited hours for someone to find him. But he wasn’t able to stay stationary forever—not with the thunderstorm approaching quickly. So instead of waiting around to get drenched, Logan had found some shelter. It wasn’t much, just a small aspen tree, but it kept Logan mostly dry. But even the helpful tree branches couldn’t protect from the blistering cold.

Logan wondered where Roman and Patton were. Did they find sufficient shelter? Or were they searching for Logan in the storm like a couple of idiots? With any luck, they took refuge in a ranger station and alerted the park authorities about Logan’s disappearance. Surely Logan would be found in due time. The thought alone was comforting. Everything is okay, he thought, trying to keep his spirits up. He’d be fine.

But nice thoughts wouldn’t keep Logan warm. The man kept running his hands against his forearms, trying vainly to summon heat from friction. But instead of warming up, he just got his gloves wet. Logan sighed, settling on crossing his arms instead. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all he could do for now. He simply had to tough out the cold and wait for rescue. Easier said than done, he thought bitterly.

Minutes had gone by. Or was it hours? Logan’s coat had gotten completely damp by then, to the point that it would be much warmer without it. Cold water leeches heat faster than cold air does. Logan knew that already. He should take the coat off. Yeah, that sounded good. The coat was unceremoniously shed onto the muddy ground, along with the sweater he wore beneath it. All it left him with was his t-shirt and pants, both of which were slowly being soaked by the rain still dripping through the above branches. Logan briefly considered taking the rest of his clothes off. Would that help? Logan wasn’t sure. His thoughts were fuzzing as if his mind was a TV channel of nothing but static.

Whatever. Roman and Patton would come soon enough. Logan grunted, shuffling closer to the trunk of the aspen tree. Thunder rumbled overhead, but Logan didn’t react. He sat still, shivering violently as the storm continued to pass over the park. Everything is okay. It had to be.

The rain was pouring much harder now; the tree branches provided very little protection from the onslaught of raindrops. Each droplet stung when they landed on Logan’s pale skin. (Was his skin blue? Nah, that must just be his imagination.) Logan regretted ditching the jacket, despite knowing that it wouldn’t help at this point. Still, by instinct alone, he reached for it. But when his hand came into contact with the soaked fabric, Logan realized something crucial. He couldn’t move his fingers. They twitched under his gaze, attempting to budge, but remained frozen in place.

Suddenly, the pieces clicked. Hypothermia. No wonder he was so delirious.

This was bad. This was very, very bad. Logan had to get warmed up quickly, but he just couldn’t think straight enough to do anything about it. All he could think about was hold cold he was and how nice it would be to sleep right on the ground. The dirt would be comfortable enough, right? No, no… He had to stay focused. Warm. He had to get warm. He had to. Had to get warm.

Through the barrage of blurry, inane, hypothermic-induced thoughts, Logan failed to notice someone approaching the aspen tree.

***

The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that regulates body temperature. When it detects a drastic decrease in body heat, it activates a variety of responses to bring the body back to a healthy temperature. Among these responses are shivering, vasoconstriction, and the overbearing impulse to find warmth.

However, while the body is suffering from extreme hypothermia, humans have a strange tendency to remove their clothes, despite the dangerous cold. Biologists have hypothesized that this is because of a malfunction of the hypothalamus brought on by the extreme temperatures, leading those suffering from hypothermia to believe they feel hot, even in the coldest environments.

So when Logan woke up feeling warm, he began to panic. His jacket and coat were gone, and although he could still hear the pouring rain, he felt rather cozy. This was not good at all. He was probably in the third stage of hypothermia, where the human body shuts down to conserve heat. How long did he have? He had to find proper shelter quickly. Who knows how long he’d last in the rain with no protective gear to shield against the rain and wind?

Logan took a glance around, only to find that he couldn’t see anything. At all. It was pitch black, with no trace of light to be seen. Was it truly nighttime already? It was only midday when the storm started. He reached forward, hoping to properly grasp his bearings, only for his hand to connect with a soft, fuzzy surface. A blanket, maybe? Logan thrashed around, trying to throw the blanket off. Hypothermia was known to cause a loss of coordination and dizziness—Logan could confirm that was true as soon as he started moving. He wasn’t cold anymore, but he fumbled a few times and struggled to sit up.

Eventually, though, the blanket was removed. He blinked rapidly as he came to terms with his surroundings. He was not, as he was starting to believe, in a ranger station. In fact, he wasn’t even in a building. He was in a cave, spanning several dozen feet across and reaching upwards for at least two stories. The entrance to the cave laid to Logan’s right—he could see the onslaught of rain, even from afar. In the centre of the cave, a fire was blazing, illuminating the cave in a warm orange glow.

“Oh, you’re awake!”

Logan jolted, whizzing his head around to find the source of the voice. No one was there, at least not that he could see. All that was visible in the dim light was a huge swatch of blue fabric, seemingly hanging in midair. A tapestry? A curtain?

Logan narrowed his eyes, trying to confirm, but froze up when he finally realized what he was looking at. No. It was a shirt. A huge shirt, ten times the size of Logan.

A sharp gasp escaped him as his eyes landed on a pair of hands pressed up against the wall of blue. Each of the hands was bigger than Logan himself. They twitched and fidgeted, somehow alive and moving despite their unreal size. The hands were connected to arms, larger than tree trunks and probably twice as sturdy.

Logan dared to look up further, only to be met with a pair of enormous, worried brown eyes.

“Um…” The giant man shuffled a bit, clearing his throat. “Hi there.”

No, this wasn’t right. Giants didn’t exist. They were legends, myths and nothing more. This had to be a dream. Or perhaps he was hallucinating thanks to the hypothermia. Logan kept his focus locked onto the giant’s huge brown eyes, glimmering faintly in the fire's light. Surely a hallucination wouldn’t look so lifelike, would it? Or was Logan losing his mind out here?

The stunned silence continued. Logan was becoming less and less afraid by the minute, his fear being replaced by a sense of awe and wonder. He was honestly shocked by how human the giant looked and acted. If he was six feet tall instead of sixty, he’d be just as normal a human as Logan.

As Logan inspected the giant, a few details stole his attention. The pebbles littered in the giant’s hair, the dampness of his shirt, the grime that covered his palms… Not to mention the fact that he was hunched over, trying to fit his massive body into such a small space. If he were to stand up, he’d be twice the height of the cave, easily.

“Please don’t freak out,” the giant wavered. Was he… nervous? That was weird.

Logan blinked owlishly, still staring down the massive being before him. “I—I won’t,” Logan replied. He spoke with caution as if he were afraid of saying the wrong thing. “I won’t freak out.”

“Wait, really?” The giant looked genuinely surprised. He quickly brushed a lock of dusty brown hair out of his face. “Cool! Uh, my name is Patton, by the way.”

“I see,” Logan murmured, still completely captivated by Patton. “Good to meet you.” But was it, though? Logan hadn’t decided yet.

Patton frowned, bringing one of his hands up to Logan’s quivering body. “Oh gosh, are you still cold?” he exclaimed, his expression tinged with concern. “You poor thing. Lemme get you warmed up.”

Logan yelped as one of the monstrously large hands slipped around his back and under his legs. “Wait, stop!” he hollered, squirming frantically.

Patton flinched, quickly retracting his hand. “I’m sorry, I'm sorry… I won’t touch you, alright?” The giant put both his hands flat on the ground as an act of surrender. “See? Not touching you.”

“I—I don’t care for heights,” Logan muttered, curling in on himself. “Please don’t lift me like that.”

“Oh. I... I didn’t mean to scare ya, kiddo. I’m so sorry.”

“Who are you?” Logan asked, ignoring the giant’s kiddo comment. He wasn’t interested in apologies—he wanted answers to the stream of questions running through his mind. “Where am I? H—how are you so big?”

Patton lowered his head a bit, still keeping his distance as to not frighten Logan any further. “Well, I’m nobody special. I just live around here.” The giant shrugged limply. “You’re in the mountains by the park. I found you on my hike and brought you here to warm up.”

“Uh-huh.” Logan nodded absently, not paying attention. He quickly evaluated his options: should he stay here with a giant who may or may not cause him harm, or go out and risk getting hypothermia again? Could he even run if he wanted to? His body was still so weak… He huddled further against the jagged wall, shivering. Was he cold or scared? He couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both.

Everything is okay. …Yeah, keep on telling yourself that.

“As for how I’m so big, that’s a funny story. You see, I… uh…” Patton paused, biting his lip at the sight of the trembling man beneath him. “Oh, geez... you’re shaking like a leaf, buddy.” The pair of gigantic hands moved again, shooting towards Logan at the speed of a car. “Here, let me get you warmed up.”

“No!” Logan screeched, covering his face out of instinct. “I said not to—”

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” the giant exclaimed, his hands missing Logan entirely. “Shhh… I'm not touching you. I promise.”

Patton’s hands fumbled with something behind Logan, and suddenly, the smaller man was enveloped by a warm, fuzzy, familiar embrace. Then, as quickly as they came, the hands retreated once again.

“My hoodie is nice and warm,” Patton explained, his voice echoing through the cave. “Get cozy, okay?”

Logan blinked, scanning the blanket on his shoulders more closely, before realizing that it wasn’t a blanket at all. Patton had wrapped him in a sweater, one that spanned his height multiple times over. “I… ah…” Logan stammered, unable to finish a sentence without stuttering, “th—thank you.”

Patton shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said with a kind smile. “I know, I’m pretty scary.” When Logan didn’t reply, Patton turned away to watch the fire, his face crestfallen and flat. “...Maybe I should go get some wood.”

“Wait, I…”

Patton’s eyes shot toward him, attentive and bright. Logan gulped, straightening up under the scrutinizing gaze. Use your words. “I should… th—thank you for coming to my aid. I… t—t—truly appreciate it.”

Silence overcame them for a moment. Logan’s words had somehow floored Patton. His mouth hung agape and eyes blinked rapidly. It took him a minute to reply. “Uh, yeah,” he finally breathed, rubbing his neck with his mammoth hands. “You’re welcome, kiddo. It’s no biggie.”

Logan cocked his head. “It’s, ahh… i—it’s Logan. Not kiddo.”

“Oh.” Patton nodded in confirmation. “Logan. Okay, got it.” The giant turned away from him to stare outside, flinching as thunder rumbled once again. It seemed that the storm would not pass anytime soon. Logan frowned deeply, wondering how long he’d be stuck in this cave for. He had no clue which way the campsite was. And even if he did, there was no chance of him making the long trek down the mountain, anyway. Not in his delirious and weary condition.

Logan snuggled into the sweater as best he could. The sleeve wrapped around his front, but it was so big and awkward that it didn’t stay on that well. It kept falling off him, despite his best efforts to keep it on. He regretted taking his jacket off. It was so cold here, and the fire was too far away to warm him up at all.

But then, suddenly, Logan was ripped from his thoughts as something grazed his shoulder. An index finger. “Do you want to sit closer?” Patton asked tentatively, gesturing to the empty spot beside him.

Logan hesitated, glancing between Patton and the inviting blaze further ahead. The fire looked inviting… and at this point, Logan had to reason not to trust Patton. “I—I should be able to… Yes, that sounds fine.” He steeled himself enough to roll onto his stomach and begin the arduous crawl to the flickering fire. Patton stayed true to his word and didn’t pick him up, instead waiting patiently for Logan to make his way to Patton’s side.

When he made it, he sat cross-legged on the jagged ground, hugging himself tightly. Almost immediately, the heat emanating from the flaming wood overcame Logan, and he sighed in contentment. For the first time all day, he felt rather comfortable.

Something shuffled behind Logan, and seconds later the sweater was draped over his shoulders again. Patton gave him a gentle smile, keeping his voice level and quiet. “Better rest up. I’ll take you home when the storm passes.”

“Satisfactory,” Logan mumbled, pulling the sweater around his legs. Everything is okay. But was it? Logan wasn’t sure yet. He had to ask.

“Patton,” Logan whispered, eyes glued to the fire. “You won’t hurt me… will you?”

“Of course not,” Patton replied, looking rather offended at the suggestion. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Logan nodded. “I believe you.” And he did.

Everything is okay. And this time, it was.

#barclays-sides #secret-sanders-sized #infinitesimal!sides #mywriting #ts logan #ts logan sanders #ts patton #ts patton sanders #gt #g/t #giant tiny #giant/tiny #tw hypothermia #im sorry your og secret santa backed out #i hope this makes up for it somewhat!

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ofgoodmenarchive · 4 years

Text

Blighted Empire: Ch. 1

Sins of Our Fathers

Dorian hated travelling by sea.

It was a long, lurching journey between Tevinter and Ferelden. He lamented Orlais rejected their ship- Orlesian Circles already overburdened by the first wave. Now all of Thedas struggled to house them.

Curled up on his cot in the gloom, he twitched and turned as his vision spun. There was nothing left in his stomach to heave and the shakes were so intense, in his delirium he worried he'd caught Blight. He wasn't one to run scared for his father and the constant groaning and swaying of the ship did not welcome him- but he felt desperate for a second pair of eyes.

Do I look sick? Are there sores? Everything is dancing, I can't see.

Stumbling out of the cabin and into the narrow hall, he rocked with the ship and more fell than walked. Magister Pavus couldn't have gone far. He listened intently for his voice through the ceaseless noise of their vessel. The boxed environment had an eerie, dream-like quality. He was unnerved almost beyond reason but couldn't understand why.

“It can still be done. Take him now- there's no reason to wait.”

He froze, straining to process hushed conversation.

“The boy has lost his mother and is being taken far from his homeland. This is not the time for such a discussion.” He wasn't certain on the identity of the first voice but this was his father.

“What discussion? Simply take him now and have it done. Whether in his homeland or Ferelden, he will still be cursed by this affliction. You would prefer he embarrass us in front of outsiders by flirting with inferiors, as he does everywhere?”

An exaggeration to be sure but it still stung. His stomach churned, especially unsettled as he pieced together their discussion. They weren't just griping about his rebellious nature- his father aimed to rid him of his rumoured predispositions before they had a chance to shame his bloodline more than they had.

“I doubt such things will be on his mind.” He defended his son that much.

“A fixation of this extent is a disease, Magister Pavus, it does not reason. If he's brought with us as he is he'll be a nuisance at best and at worst, a complete embarrassment.”

Unable to support his weight any longer, knees buckled and he slumped against the door. It held but as his mind spiraled he heard his father.

“Is someone there?”

Insides tied into knots, time slowed. Habit told him to run but an outrage was stirring. How could his father even consider this? Was it so impossible to love his son as he was? His pulse in his ears, he shoved open the door and stood there, uneven.

What he saw made no discernible sense and he knew something was terribly wrong.

Magister Pavus was present, a statue in the small, dank space. But the disembodied voice belonged to nothing but black- an inky mass that lurked in the corner, watching without eyes. Everything was still, as if the ocean itself had been swallowed.

This can't be real.

When he'd overheard his father speak of this plan, he'd retreated and hid for the rest of the voyage. The voice was never identified so the demon simply did not know what to replace it with. Perhaps it never expected Dorian to confront his father.

The reflection of Halward Pavus glowered at Dorian, sinister lines ageing his face. Dorian's heart leapt from his chest as he backed into the hall, seasickness replaced by fear.

“Dorian! Please- wait!” It almost sounded like his father. Tone too exaggerated in concern, intentionally plucking at emotion. Even in such circumstance, his father certainly would not be so frantic. A puppet of Halward Pavus, features seeming to sprout in webs and distort.

Devoid of thought, he ran. He had to get away from that ghoul, that's all that mattered. Mania took him away from the unnaturally lifeless ship- up several ladders and above deck. Retreat gave him time to compose himself, noticing and being thankful that even the ship was built to a rough specification of his memory.

If there had ever been an ocean, it was indeed swallowed. The ship was half-buried in endless piles of scorched stone. Destruction stretched as far as the eye could see; buildings ravaged by green flame, noxious clouds blotted the sky, rot covered a land strewn with bodies.

The Tevinter Imperium.

They said that on the final retreat, half of the Imperium burned. It could not even be estimated how much was caused by Darkspawn and how much was a defeated army laying waste to everything as it fled.

Dizzy, he steadied on the edge of the ship. If this was the Fade as he suspected and forgetting was a part of it, the Black City should be visible. Nauseous, he scanned the polluted sky and made out dark towers floating in mist.

The good news, this is certainly not real.

He consoled, straightening himself. Banishing the demon was his only priority and the easiest way was with a weapon from the Fade to channel his will. He could possibly locate one from the ship but didn't want to risk a trap within the narrow space. Feeling more decisive, he hoisted himself over the side and skittered down rubble.

“Don't you want to speak to your father, Dorian?” A voice taunted as he went.

Trudging through the decay was difficult, it stuck to his limbs, tar-like. He tried not to think of the layers of decomposition he waded through or how many people comprised that sludge. He reminded himself incessantly it was not real. Even if Tevinter looked something like this now, it was a nightmare enhanced by his unconscious.

Toppled structures around him took shape- he recognised fragments of architecture from Minrathous and home- even pieces of the Ferelden Tower, different times and places stitched together in awful tapestry. Legs met less resistance now, a solid ground littered with corpses in place of a swamp.

“Ah, if it isn't the very fortunate Dorian Pavus! To escape the cleansing of his deviant homeland with limbs, health and sanity while so many fled with nothing! For many, even less than nothing.” It echoed from everywhere, from inside. The unending landscape felt small.

Dismissing it, he plunged onward. He couldn't entertain the demon, not for a moment. His path was clear- it had to remain so.

“You don't want to talk to me, Dorian?” The voice chided, warbling as it fought for consistency.

“No, not really, thank you!” A nervous whisper escaped. His next step met an obstacle, something cold and unrelenting around his leg. Yanking, he refused to see but it was so tenacious he had to steal a glance to thump it in the face with his opposite boot.

Maybe it had been the face of someone he knew, back at the 'Forgotten District of Minrathous', he dared not allow the image to set. Perhaps the voice that scratched from tattered chords would be familiar if his thoughts were not persistently screaming to drown it.

“You wonder what makes you so much better, don't you? You wonder why you deserved to live.”

“It wasn't my choice!” He couldn't help yelling while he kicked, over and over until the arm severed. He broke into a sprint.

“None of it was my choice!” He had to scream it. He needed it to be known. He needed to believe it. The demon would not relent, striking before he could recover.

“And what of your choices, my son?” Unmistakably familiar though she croaked so dry.

They said on the final retreat, half of the Imperium burned.

Dorian, I don't think she'll be there.

Mournful words as the great silhouettes of the harbour stood almost grandly against blood-streaked horizons.

There was no escape from it, was there? With a grave turn, he faced the blackened corpse of his mother. Grief buried so deep the demon failed to reconstruct her appearance. How fortunate most of Tevinter lay in ashes.

“Fooling around while your betters prepare, shirking responsibilities, drinking and joking, losing your amulet, fraternising with inferiors. And do you think people can't tell why you look at Felix that way? Why you drag him into playing house and act like it was his notion?”

“You're very chatty for a woman who burned to death.” He mocked with an edge of hysteria and in equally hysterical motion, threw his hand, willing a shape that obliterated the area. Shards of ice pierced the land where the nightmare once stood. Dorian hadn't even realised what form he cast- reflex became his strategy.

“Why don't you want to talk to your family, Dorian? Don't you miss them?” The voice underwent more grotesque transformation, sampling whatever fruits Dorian's vulnerable mind bore. The spot of ice pulsed and grew, temperature falling dramatically, unforgiving winds howled through the nightmare. He tried to outmaneuver the frost and slipped.

“But you would speak to me, would you not?”

Keeper Lavellan cast a long shadow. Lightbringer's sharp glow aimed at Dorian's throat. His reaction to this was more visceral than towards the ghoul of his father. Heart drummed painfully against rib cage as he swiveled on ice and skid over harsh terrain. He couldn't find a grip but managed to swerve behind a spire.

The real Lavellan was already uncompromising and only half-reasonable, he could only imagine a demonic figment to be merciless. Thoughts screamed as he tried to organise a plan of attack.

Relaxed steps clicked after him. One set, two set, three sets.

“Does it shame you to face me, Tevinter?”

“Does it make you feel small, stupid, unworthy?”

“Does it make you feel unclean?”

Hands clasped ears, blocking the trio of Lavellans as best he could. Of course there would be three! Except these brothers were the same person and all their malice crept towards Dorian. He risked a glance around; poor mimics of Lavellan, really. He was not quite that sharp, not quite that towering, not quite that cold. Lightbringer wasn't even accurate!- He couldn't recall the runes seamlessly but enough to know they were wrong!

Listing these discrepancies brought little comfort. How could he face three demonic, mad elves on his own, even if they were fade-forms?

It dawned on him- he didn't have to. The Fade wasn't just home to nightmares but benevolent spirits. If he chose cautiously and inscribed correctly, one might give aid.

They were edging towards him but no matter how Dorian scribbled on ice, he couldn't remember the rune for Valour. It was like trying to recite a melody and losing yourself in another, akin but different. He couldn't comprehend these intruding runes but they were all he could think as he drew summoning circle after summoning circle.

“Tell me something.”

He was out of time.

Tearing his gaze away from cryptic doodles, he met the nightmarish Lavellan in the eye.

He remembered the last time they spoke, Lavellan grieved his people. Now he loomed like a harbinger of death, an immense figure with a triplet at each side and mockery of a celestial blade.

“Do you ever consider that what was left of my family died so that the rest of yours may live? Do you ever consider that I may die in your place, reclaiming your homeland? Does your existence not shame you, Dorian Pavus?”

Despair strangled him, an incredible weakness overpowered his limbs. Through tears he looked between the fake Lavellan and his juvenile circles.

“Lavellan...I shame myself...” Delirious and sapped of reason, he placed fingers on the initially-drawn summon. It felt right, somehow. All of his will poured into those etchings until they came alive, submitting himself to the Fade.

Light blinded him. He processed the outline of a straight-backed figure atop the circle, rejuvenating warmth shielding them both.

“How repulsive.” It stated tepidly and there was a slice of movement. With discoloured vision, it looked as though the demon Lavellans were squeezed by invisible hands, causing them to burst like firecrackers.

His mind swirled, colour tinted the scene in patches.

“Valour?”

“No.”

When eyes readjusted it was still Lavellan but the contrast between him and the others was night and day. The chill was present but did not overwhelm and Lightbringer rested, the weight of it at his belt much less threatening.

“You're not Lavellan either.” He thought aloud. “Lavellan is fighting Darkspawn in Tevinter.”

It was not, could not be Lavellan but still the familiar scrutinisation was uncanny.

“I am remembered here. Why do you summon me?”

Whatever he'd drawn, Dorian concluded it reached not only into his memory but into those of the Dalish turned Circle Mages- it was the only way to account for the accuracy. He wondered if the spirit who answered was aware of its situation.

“To defeat the demon, of course.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I was trying to summon Valour.” He repeated and considered that spirit Lavellan was still rather draining.

“You are a bad liar, Dorian Pavus.” The way he said it was so human it caught him off guard, going on the defensive.

“I won't stand in this Fade-pit and be lectured by a fake Lavellan! Tell me your real name and I might oblige you!”

The imitative spirit became static, pupils unmoving. He wondered if he'd broken it, if it was searching within the Fade, or struggled with the conundrum on whether to respond to a question the true Lavellan rejected. Well, good!

Eyes blinked into animation, a name finally decided upon.

“Evallan.”

“You made that up.” He said reflexively and the spirit only looked at him, humourless. Though he might have wanted to continue testing, a darkness crawled over everything. He made some sound in alarm but the spirit's voice hushed him, gentle.

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#dragon age #dai #dorian pavus #apocalypse au #m!lavellan #pavellan #da fic #dragon age fic #blighted empire #my writing

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failes-xtra-bits · 4 years

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19.5 Blissed Out

Short chapter, i left the sex in because it’s not explicit and some of it is relevant

Damen was happy it was radiating from him the weight of his body heavy and replete. He was aware of Laurent slipping out of the bed. His sense of drowsy closeness lingered. When he heard Laurent moving across the room, Damen shifted, naked, to enjoy an interval of watching, but Laurent had disappeared through the archway and into one of the rooms that flowed out of this one. he was content to wait his bare limbs on the sheets heavy, a gold slave cuffs and collar his only adornments. He felt the warm, wonderful, impossible fact of his situation. Bed Slave. He closed his eyes and felt again that first long, slow push into Laurent’s body, heard the first of the small sounds that Laurent made.

When he looked back up, Laurent had reappeared in the room's archway.

‘ I brought you a towel, but I see you have improvised.’ said Laurent, pausing at the table to pour a cup of water, placing it on the low bench by the bed.

‘Come back to bed,’ said Damen

‘I,’ said Laurent, and stopped. Damen had caught his hand, entwined long fingers into his own. Laurent looked along their arms. Damen was surprised at how it felt: new, each heartbeat his first, and Laurent reshaped before him. Laurent had restored both his shirt and a flickering version of his usual standoffishness, but he had not laced himself back into his clothes, had not reappeared in his high necked jacket and shiny boots, as he might have done(That’s the 2nd time he’s expressed being nervous about being left naked and alone, he feels vulnerable as well) . He was here, hesitating on the edge of uncertainty. Damen pulled on Laurent’s hand. Laurent half resisted the tug, and ended with one knee on the silk and a hand braced awkwardly by Damon's shoulders. Damen gazed up at him, the gold of his hair, the fall of his shirt away from his body. Laurent’s limbs were slightly stiff, more so when he shifted to get his balance, awkward, like he didn't know what to do.

‘You take liberties.’

‘Come back to bed, Your Highness.’ that earned him a long cool look at close range. He felt bliss-drunk on his own daring. He glanced sideways at the towel.

“Did you really bring that for me?’

After a moment. ‘I-thought to towel you down.’

The sweetness of it was startling. Damen realized with a little pulse of his heart that Laurent meant it. He was used to the ministrations of slaves, but it was an Indulgence beyond any dream of decadence to have Laurent do this. His mouth quirked at the impossibility of it.

‘What?’

‘So this is what you're like in bed,’ said Damen

‘Like?’ said Laurent stiffening( it’s driving him crazy to be so out of his depth, he takes great pains to appear knowledgeable to others).

‘Attentive,’said Damen, charmed by the idea. ‘Elusive.’ He gazed up at Laurent. ‘I should be attending you,’ he said.

‘I... took care of it, said Laurent, after a pause. There was a slight flush when he spoke, though his voice, as always, was steady. It took a moment for Damen to understand that laurent spoke of practical concerns. Laurent’s fingers had tightened around the towel (poor Lo-Lo). There was a self consciousness in him now, as though he had become aware of the strangeness of what he was doing. a Prince serving a slave. Damen looked again at the cup of water, which Laurent had brought-----(sweet baby) for him, he realized. Laurent’s flush deepened. Damen shifted to regard him better. He saw the angle of Laurent’s jaw, the tension in his shoulders.

‘Going to banish me to sleep at the foot of your bed? I wish you wouldn't, it’s quite far away.’

After a moment, ‘Is that how it's done in Akielos? I can nudge you with my heel(😆) if I require you again before dawn.’

‘Require?’ said Damen

‘Is that the word?’

‘We're not in Akielos. Why don’t you show me how it’s done in Vere.’

‘We don’t keep slaves in Vere.’

I beg to differ,’ said Damen.

Laurent had at least one layer of armour peeled away and was exposed, a young man stripped down to a shirt. The white shirt trailed laces, soft and open, a counterpoint to the tension in Laurent’s body. Damen deliberately did nothing at all except gaze back at him. had indeed taken care of matters, and had removed any evidence of their activities from his appearance. He did not look like someone who just been f****d. Laurent’s post-coital Instincts were remarkably self-denying(we know why...😠).

‘I lack,’ said Laurent ‘the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with,’ you could see him pushing the words out,’a lover.’

‘You Lack the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with anyone,’ said Damen.

A handspan separated them. Damen’s knee almost touched Laurent’s knee where Laurent’s knee crooked on the sheets. He saw Laurent close his eyes briefly as though to steady himself.

‘You’re not... the way I thought either.’

The admission was quiet. There was no sound in the room, just the shifting glow of the candle flame.

‘You thought of it?’

‘You kissed me,’ said Laurent. ‘On the battlements. I thought of it.’(Oh and I’m sure it was long before the Kiss… IJS)

Damen couldn't help the furl of pleasure in his stomach. ‘That was barely a kiss.’

‘It went on for some time.’

‘And you thought of it.’

‘Are you angling for an earful of talk?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and the warm smile was helpless too.

Laurent was silent, as he fought an internal battle. Damen felt the quality of his stillness, the moment when he pushed himself to speak.

‘You were different,’ said Laurent.

It was all he said. The words seemed to come from a deep place in Laurent, eked out from some core of truthfulness.

‘Shall I put out the lights, Your Highness?’

‘Leave them burning.’

He felt the careful aspect of Laurent’s motionlessness, the way that even his breathing was careful.

‘You can call me by my given name,’ said Laurent. ‘If you like.’

‘Laurent,’ he said.

He wanted to say it while sliding his fingers into Laurent’s hair, tilting his head for the first brush

of lips. The vulnerability of kissing had caused tension to ribbon through Laurent’s body, a sweet, hot tangle. As now. Damen sat up alongside him.It had its effect, the shallowing of breath, though Damen made no move to touch him. He was larger, and took up more space on the bed.

‘I’m not afraid of sex,’ said Laurent.

‘Then you can do as you like.’

And that was the crux of the matter, it was suddenly clear from the look in Laurent’s eyes. It was Damen’s turn to hold himself still. Laurent(awww, he wanted to touch but wasn't sure how to proceed) was looking at him as he had since he had returned to the bed, dark-eyed and on the cusp.

Laurent said, ‘Don’t touch me.’

He was expecting . . . he wasn’t certain what he was expecting. The first hesitant brush of Laurent’s fingers against his skin was a shock. There was an odd sense of inexperience in Laurent, as though the role was as new to him as it was to Damen. As though all of this was new to him, which made no sense (Shhhh Shana).

The touch on his bicep was tentative, exploratory, as though it was something new to be marked out, the span of it, the shape of the curved muscle. Laurent’s gaze was travelling over his body, and he looked in the same way that he touched, as if Damen was new territory, unexplored, that he couldn’t quite believe was under his command(He can't! He’s wanted to explore you for awhile, honey).

When he felt Laurent touch his hair, he bowed his head and gave himself up to it, as a workhorse might bow for the yoke. He felt Laurent shape his palm to the curve of his neck, felt Laurent’s fingers sliding through the weight of his hair as though experiencing the feel for the first time (So cute, he really is just in Awe of Damen).

Perhaps it was the first time. He hadn’t taken Damen’s head like that, splaying his fingers over its shape, when Damen had used his mouth. He’d kept his hands fisted in the sheets. Damen flushed at the idea of Laurent cupping his head as he gave him pleasure. Laurent was not that uninhibited. He hadn’t given himself over to sensation, he’d caught it up in an internal tangle. He was tangled up now. Dark-eyed, as though touch was to him an extreme act.The rise and fall of Damen’s chest felt careful. A single breath might disturb Laurent, or so it felt.Laurent’s lips were parted slightly, his fingers sliding down the planes of Damen’s chest. It felt different to the proprietary pushiness he had exercised when he’d pressed Damen down onto his back,and taken him in hand.Damen’s blood thrummed with his over-awareness of Laurent. The heat of Laurent’s body in proximity was unanticipated, like the soft tickling shift of Laurent’s white shirt, specifics lacking from imagination.Laurent’s fingers dropped to his scar.His gaze caught there first. Touch followed, drawn with strange fascination, almost reverence. Damen felt the shock of it as Laurent’s fingers travelled its length, the thin white line where a sword had run through his shoulder. Laurent’s eyes were very dark in the candlelight. A first spill of tension, Laurent’s fingers on his skin as his heart beat like a bruise in his chest.

Laurent said, ‘I didn’t think anyone was good enough to get past your guard.’

‘One person,’ said Damen.

Laurent wet his lips, his fingertips tracing up and back, slowly, over the ghost of a long-ago fight.There was a strange doubling, brother for brother, Laurent close as Auguste had been, and Damen even less defended, Laurent’s fingers on the place where he had been run through.The past was there with them suddenly, too close, except that the sword thrust had come clean and fast, and Laurent was dark eyed and slow, fingers sliding over scar tissue.Then Laurent’s gaze lifted—not to his own, but to the collar. His fingers lifted to touch the yellow metal, his thumb pressing into the nick(so many conflicting emotions for Laurent).

‘I haven’t forgotten my promise. That I’d take off the collar.’

‘In the morning, you said.’

‘In the morning. You can think of it as baring your neck to the knife.’

Their eyes met. Damen’s heartbeats were behaving oddly(it’s love,dummy, own it).

‘I’m still wearing it now.’

‘I know that.’

Damen found himself caught in that look, held in it. Laurent had let him inside. That thought was impossible, even though he felt inside now, as though he had passed inside some crucial boundary(You have no idea, Damen). He felt Laurent’s knee slide alongside his own. He felt Laurent shift in towards him, and his heart was pounding in his chest as, in the next moment, Laurent kissed him. He half expected an assertion of dominance, but Laurent kissed with a chaste touch of lips, soft and uncertain, as though he was exploring the simplest sensations. Damen fought to stay passive(Good Boy), his hands curling in the sheets, and simply let Laurent take his mouth. Laurent shifted over him, Damen felt the slide of Laurent’s thigh, Laurent’s knee in the bedding. The fabric of Laurent’s white shirt brushed his erection. Laurent’s breathing was shallow, as though he was out on a high ledge. Laurent’s fingers brushed his abdomen, as if curious about the feel, and all the breath left Damen’s body as Laurent’s curiosity took him in a certain direction.

Damen leaned in slowly, and, when Laurent didn’t draw back, he pressed a single soft kiss to the column of Laurent’s neck. And then another(These are the tender acts that are the last straw for Laurent, this is sooo not what he expected from Damen).

That—feels good,’ said Laurent.

Their chests brushed. He could hear Laurent’s breath in his ear. His own arousal, pressed between their bodies, felt only the subtlest shifts as Laurent pressed unconsciously against him. Damen’s other hand came up to rest on Laurent’s other hip, to feel the movement without guiding it. Laurent had forgotten himself enough to start moving against him. There was not even anything practiced about it, just a closed-eyed seeking after pleasure. It was a shock to realise in the slight tremors, the flickering of breath, that Laurent was close, and how close he was, that he could come from being kissed, and this slow, back and forth. Damen felt the slow slide of it, sparks of pleasure, like sparks struck from flint.

Damen could never have reached his own peak like this, but the slower Damen kissed him as they moved together, the more it seemed to take Laurent apart. Maybe Laurent had always been this sensitive to tenderness(starved for tenderness!). Laurent’s eyes were half closed. The first small sound escaped him. His cheeks were flushed and his lips parted, his head turned slightly to one side, a small tumult in the normally cool, calm expression.

He saw it on Laurent’s face as his body began to tremble and surrender up its defenses.Yes, thought Damen, and it was happening, Laurent was giving of himself. He felt the jerk against him, Laurent’s eyes opening almost in surprise(probably the first time ever, with him in charge of his own body), as his internal resistances dissolved into release. They were tangled together, Damen on his back in the sheets, where Laurent, in the last driving moments, had pushed him.

Damen was smiling helplessly. ‘That was adequate.’

‘You’ve been waiting to say that.’ The words were only a little blurred.

‘Let me.’ Rolling him over and toweling him down, softly. Out of delight that he could, he leaned in and pressed a single kiss to Laurent’s shoulder(Laurent’s in love). He felt uncertainty flicker faintly in Laurent again, though not strongly enough to surface. It settled, and Laurent didn’t pull away. Damen lay in a contented sprawl beside him, the toweling done.

‘You can,’ said Laurent, after a moment, meaning something else entirely.

‘You’re half asleep.’(AND considerate)

‘Not quite.’

‘We have all night,’ said Damen, though it was not long, now. ‘We have until morning.’He felt the lean shape of Laurent beside him on the bed. The light was dim with guttering candles.Order me to stay, he wanted to say, and couldn’t.

He was twenty years old, and the prince of a rival country, and even if their nations had been friends, it would have been impossible.

‘Until morning,’ said Laurent.

After a moment he felt Laurent’s fingers lift and come to rest on his arm, curling there slightly(He wants him close😭).

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seriouslyhooked · 5 years

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Lost Souls and Reveries (Part 16)

22 part AU written for @cssns. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15. Story available on AO3 Here and FF Here. Banner created by the amazingly talented @shipsxahoy!!

Killian Jones is a wolf shifter without roots, without plans, and without a pack. He’s a rogue, someone humans should avoid and shifters should be wary of given his lineage. But one night years back set him on a path he didn’t realize he was taking, a path leading to a future he is destined for. That future is tied up in one woman – a human named Emma Nolan. Together Emma and Killian will find not only answers, but a love that’s truly fated. But will love be enough to set them free, or will past demons win out in the end? (Answer: love always wins – I am writing this so despite some tiny pockets of angst it’s basically a fluff-filled insta-love fest). Rated M.

A/N: Hey everyone! So we are back after the LONGEST time away I have ever had from fic writing since I started way back when. I know it was such a long break, and so many of you have reached out to see if I am still in this, but I never forgot this story. I just had to pass the hardest year of school ever to get back to my CS happy place! There is so much going on in this story right now, so many pieces that need tying together or resolution on, and in this chapter we are moving full steam ahead (but since it’s been a while you might want to go back and refresh on where we left off before). There’s finally a meeting that so many have you have been waiting for and there’s love, loss, and so many other emotions too… but I won’t spoil much more than that. You’ll just have to read and then let me know what you think! Anyway thank you all so much for continuing to follow along in this story with me. Hope you enjoy!

“Okay, so I know that technically I can do more than make flowers grow, but I have to be honest… this is so freaking cool, I never want to stop!”

The excitement exuding from Anna this afternoon as she and Elsa worked on some magical ‘training’ with Ruby was undeniable. Emma couldn’t blame Anna for that elation either, not when she was watching her friend do something remarkable and almost unbelievable. The beautiful garden that had been here just a few hours ago was now totally over grown, with so many more flowers than there had been before. The colors of their petals were also now touched with an ethereal element. They seemed to glow, and to radiate this precious golden light from within. The veins of each leaf swirled in a pronounced and gorgeous way, and these plants were simply bursting with life and energy and magic.

Over the past three days Anna and Elsa had been doing their best to make progress in their ability to wield their family gift. This had been a fatiguing process, with Ruby having to start from very basic places. There were rules, it turned out, about how to cast spells and use magic safely. One had to remember all of these steps to make sure no one got hurt, and though at times Anna was a little hyper active or distractible, Emma had never seen her friend more studious and focused. She was determined to access her magic and do everything she could with it, and that determination was bringing her leaps and bounds in a very short time. In fact, Ruby was so confident in Anna’s ability to test her gifts and to remember to follow the laws of magic that she’d given her free time to just explore what she could do, thus this impromptu garden party of sorts.

“It’s amazing, Anna. How does it feel?” Emma asked, having a sense herself as she felt the warm and subtle kiss of the magic in the air around them. Emma felt rejuvenated and calmed all at once by this magical display, so she could only imagine what casting the spells that made this possible felt like.

“It feels like…” Anna closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and soaking in the joy around her, and when she opened her eyes they were filled with emotion and a thoughtful quality that spoke to real happiness. “It feels like getting to lick the spoon when Grams makes cookies, or the first beach day with Mom and Dad every summer.”

“That good?” Emma asked, less as a question and more as a statement of awe and true joy for her friend.

“That good,” Anna agreed, her smile growing as her eyes cast around at all she’d created over the past few hours. But eventually her gaze turned back to the house and some of that happiness dimmed. It wasn’t fully gone, but now there was a little bit of sadness in the midst of all this celebration. “I only wish that Elsa felt this way too.”

“She’ll get there,” Emma promised, though she didn’t have visions of the future to check that that was true. All she had was a thorough understanding of her other best friend, and faith that soon the pieces would fall as surely into place for Elsa as they had for her sister. “You two are never far apart for long.”

“And where we go you usually follow,” Anna joked, making Emma laugh even though this time that couldn’t be the case.

“Unless you know of some mystical waters or whatever the heck sparked magical people years ago, where I could get a gift like yours, I’m not sure that’ll be happening this time. I think the flowers only have one new overlord to answer to.”

“Well of course your magic won’t be the same,” Anna said, like this whole conversation was so totally obvious. “But being a shifter? I mean come on, that’s arguably the coolest magic of all. You’ll get to turn into a wolf for crying out loud!”

At the mention of her suppressed shifter status Emma’s heart jumped. That seemed to be a recurring thing since her grandmother had turned up and dropped the bomb of all bombs. Well honestly, maybe the biggest reveal had been the fact that her grandmother was even alive at all, but looking past the magic that was required for all of this to be real, and the heartbreak of the years that Ruth and her Dad had been apart, the reality that there was shifter blood running through Emma’s veins was surreal.

Being a hybrid, even if her ability was currently blocked, changed so much about what Emma knew of herself. It was a blessing and a curse in so many ways. On the one hand Emma was glad to have some things make more sense. The white wolf in her dreams all those years ago and that feeling that not everything was as it should be now made sense, but at the same time there was no guarantee that Elsa could even remove the block in Emma’s spirit as she had for Neal.

Currently Elsa was trying to access those memories with Ruby, but it was slow going. And even if Elsa could recreate the spell, Emma had to think about if that’s what she wanted. It would no doubt be dangerous, and no one actually knew what happened when human/shifter hybrids came of age. She would be the first one as far as they all knew and she was so out of touch with her animal Emma didn’t even realize it was there when she was awake. So how could she ever expect to be a good shifter? How could she hope to learn all that needed to be learned? What if in the end she wasn’t meant to be one? What if -

“Uh oh, and there you go again, over thinking things,” Anna said, bringing Emma’s attention back to the real world. Anna’s hand was now on her hip and she shook her head in an almost chastising way. “You’ve got to stop doing that, Ems. Elsa is going to figure this out, she’s going to find a way to safely lift the block, and then you are going to finally be all you were meant to be.”

Emma didn’t want to argue with her friend, but suffice it to say she wasn’t as convinced. Anna made it sound so simple, but in Emma’s mind it wasn’t. What she had right now was brilliant. Her life was full and happy. She had her family and her friends, and she had a true love, her fated mate, a man who made her experience love in the most blissful of ways. She didn’t want to risk any of that, and she didn’t want to go off hoping for more when what she had right now was more than enough. No one should be this lucky, despite the continued unrest that waiting for Liam was bringing, and Emma didn’t want to jinx things by feeling entitled to being a shifter too.

“It’s like me and my magic, Emma. When we found out, I was excited but I was also really scared. I kept thinking that everyone was wrong. There had to be a mistake, because it wasn’t me who was special it was Elsa.”

“Anna,” Emma said, her earnestness showing through in her tone. “Elsa might be special but so are you. You deserve your magic just as much as she deserves hers.”

“I know that, Emma, I do, but even if I know that, there’s still that voice in my head that doesn’t want to hear it, and I bet it sounds a lot like the one you have telling you that you’re not ready to be or worthy of being a shifter.”

Anna came over and took Emma’s hand in hers in a sign of solidarity. She was right, after all. Those negative thoughts did seem to be something they shared, and though she was nervous, Emma craved the chance to overcome hers just as Anna had.

“So how did you get over it?” Emma asked and Anna laughed.

“I didn’t. It’s still there sometimes, but I just have to tell it to shut up. Fear doesn’t want you to hope for good things, Emma. It wants you to limit yourself and deprive yourself of things that could be great just because they also could be scary. You can either cave to it or you can overcome it, and not so deep down you know that. And you know how I know that you know? Because you, Emma Nolan, are one of the bravest people I have ever met.”

Emma’s throat tightened at the words, and she could feel her friend’s own emotion starting to get the better of her. Anna’s feelings freely flowed in the air around them just as they always did. She was not the kind of person to stifle her reactions. Instead, she spoke the truth as she saw at, blowing Emma away as she did.

“There’s no one else who faces a crisis like you, Emma. You stay steady, even when everyone else breaks. You did it when we were kids and small scale things happened, like when the Heller boys decided to start bullying Elsa, or when someone had to scale the McNealy’s fence to get our ball back.”

Emma barked out a laugh, thinking about old Mr. McNealy and how he used to scare them senseless as kids. Now they knew he was just a curmudgeonly old guy, but back then he seemed like a real monster.

“And you did it when everything was happening with Neal. You had to take on so much far too soon, and you did it unflinchingly for your brother and for your parents. Then, when we lost Grams, and then lost Mom and Dad so soon after, you were there for us too. Night and day, no matter what, you were our rock. As much as Elsa and I pulled ourselves together, you were right there with us, and you never questioned it. It’s always a given to you that you’ll help everyone you love and anyone you meet.”

“Well when you put it like that…” Emma said, attempting some humor even though her voice was thick with emotion. She was touched at Anna’s words, and it came to a head when her friend pulled her in for a hug. The tears pooling in her eyes fell at that point, quietly but undeniable, and she had to wipe them away as she pulled back. “Thanks, Anna. And just for the record, I don’t think I have that calm in the storm thing all to myself.”

“I know. It was a great pep talk wasn’t it?” Anna asked, prompting more laughter between the friends that continued until some rustling came from the hedgerow and Elsa and Ruby appeared.

“Seems like you two are having fun,” Elsa said, her eyes softening immediately as she saw Emma and Anna. There was still stress there, but Emma could see that Elsa felt better being back in their company.

“Well there’s plenty to go around,” Anna joked, flicking her wrist and launching an ivy vine up into the air and having it rustle against Elsa’s braided hair. “Unless you guys still have work to do. It’s kind of been a lot for one day, don’t you think?”

“About that… we’ve got some good news and some not so good news,” Ruby announced, her hands waving along as she talked, a trait Emma knew she and Killian shared when they were catching other people up to speed. “The good news is that we were able to access Elsa’s memory of when she helped Neal.”

“So you saw the spell?” Emma asked, looking between Ruby and Elsa. A chill zipped through her at their faces, because despite the breakthrough, neither of them seemed super enthusiastic.

“We did,” Ruby continued. “Turns out Elsa did the impossible – she literally removed Neal’s two souls from his body to blend them back together.”

“Removed them... wait, like killed him?” Emma asked, shocked, and Elsa looked so stricken as she quickly explained.

“I didn’t kill him. It was just a few seconds. It happened really quickly. He just went to sleep for a second, that’s all.”

“But technically without a soul a person is dead,” Ruby supplied. “And if they’re not, we’re entering vampire territory.”

“Vampires?!” The question was yelled out not just by Emma, but Anna and Elsa as well, and Ruby winced in response.

“Sorry, bad joke. Vampires aren’t actually a thing. But then again removing souls from a body wasn’t supposed to be a thing either. So at this point…” Her continued attempt at light heartedness petered off as Ruby shrugged.

“But you can do it,” Emma said, looking to Elsa and her friend nodded.

“Apparently I can. I had no idea what I was doing then, and I can’t find anything in my family’s archives. It’s a mystery.”

“Would you even be able to do it again?” Anna asked and Emma fully expected Elsa to say that she couldn’t, but for the first time Elsa looked certain as she nodded.

“Yes. I can do it.”

“Maybe,” Ruby stressed. “She can maybe recreate a miracle a second time, but I have to be honest guys, this is not magic I know how to wield. It’s a real risk. Anything could go wrong. Your souls could react badly, they could not blend, they could reject any kind of intervention at all, and if they did…”

“If they did, I could die.”

There was no need to say anything else on the matter for a moment. The four of them allowed Emma’s observation to hang in the air, sinking in in a sickening way. Life and death situations were something Emma had faced before, but she’d never willingly put herself in a dangerous way. To do so now would either be incredibly foolish or impossibly brave, and Emma wasn’t sure where she stood yet on that. On the one hand, she could be taking a huge risk only to lose everything she now held so dearly. On the other, this could be the answer to that last missing piece of the puzzle that was her life. Plus it would help not only her, but Neal as well who was going to be facing his first shift just a few more years from now.

“Whatever you decide, Emma, there’s no need to rush,” Anna said, finally breaking the silence that had fallen as she touched Emma’s arm in a reassuring motion. “It’s not like Elsa is going anywhere. We’ve got time to see what you might want.”

“Exactly,” Ruby said with a firm nod. “This isn’t the kind of thing we should be too hasty about. Let’s just tackle one thing at a time. Liam will be arriving any day now. Let’s climb that mountain before staring down another.”

The four of them agreed this was a good place to leave things, and Emma was relieved. Crazy that the impending arrival of Killian’s unknowable brother was of relief to her now when for days it had been so anxiety inducing. But for some reason, that felt like a battle that could be won. For this moment she was part of a team, it was her and Killian and her friends and family. She felt like anything could be accomplished as long as they were together, and she genuinely had hope in her heart that things weren’t as hopeless with Liam as Killian believed. But trying to heal her block… well that would just be her and Elsa trying to do something they had no real clue how to do, and that was scary as hell.

“Ruby, what’s wrong?”

Elsa’s sudden question prompted Emma to look to her new friend, immediately feeling a pang of anxiety again. Ruby was overly alert, and Emma had seen that kind of posturing before from Killian when he thought she was in trouble.

“We’ve got company.”

“Liam?” Emma and Elsa asked at the same time and Ruby shook her head.

“No. I think I’d sense if it were Liam. No I just heard something. In the woods back there.”

The three friends turned to follow Ruby’s gaze, but Emma was shocked when Ruby moved forward towards the sound. She told them to stay back and she’d figure it out, but just as she moved out of sight, Emma, Elsa, and Anna heard a throaty chuckle that came from the opposite direction. They jumped in surprise and whipped their attention over and then Emma and her friends sighed aloud in relief.

“Graham, was that you?” Emma asked, and their town Sherriff grinned.

“Maybe.”

“It was him,” Anna said with an eye roll. “Well I hope you’re happy. You scared five years off my life. Not cool Graham.”

“Ruby it’s okay you can come out!” Emma called. “It’s just Graham. He’s harmless.”

“Oh you wound me, Emma. I like to think I could do some…”

Whatever words Graham was going to say trailed away as his eyes looked past Emma and back to the tree line. Without even having to peer over, Emma knew what he was staring at, or rather who he was staring at. The only person in that direction was Ruby and from Graham’s expression, this was more than a strictly ‘she’s hot’ reaction. Emma flipped her gaze to her new friend and sure enough, Ruby looked just as struck silly as Graham did.

“Ooh, look it’s happening again!” Anna whispered whisper-yelled gleefully. “Love struck, the two of them. It’s like Emma and Killian 2.0. I bet you guys a month of diner lunches that they’re fated mates too.”

Both Emma and Elsa refused to take the bet, instead watching (with totally no chill and no attempt at giving Graham and Ruby privacy) as the two shifters moved toward each other. Emma wondered what it must be like for them, but she had some idea. Killian had detailed to her what it felt like to be confronted with one’s other half if you were a shifter. Everything shifted focus and all of a person’s senses were heightened and needy. It was an instant force of lust and want and adoration. It was really love at first sight, and for most shifters it was just understood. There was no need for small talk or getting to know each other. Nature chose your perfect match, and time would prove that to be true.

Because she knew this, it didn’t surprise Emma when Graham took Ruby’s hand in his and when his other hand came to cup her cheek. They were so close, eyes flashing a wolf’s color and they looked just a split second away from forgetting themselves entirely and making out or doing more. Surprisingly though, words did come, and though Emma and Elsa and Anna were totally forgotten, Ruby did seem to have the sense to ask some critical questions.

“But how did I… there’s no trace of you in town. I should have known about this - known about you.”

“Oh trust me, babe, Tink is going to be hearing quite an earful from me about this.”

“Babe?” Emma whispered to Elsa and Anna, half shocked at the word choice and half uncomfortable. In all her years of knowing Graham he had never, ever, called anyone anything like that before.

“Tink?” Ruby asked, and Emma was really curious now about what having a mate meant for Ruby. There was a chance she was so overwhelmed with Graham that she wasn’t able to tap into her gifts, but this seemed like a relatively straightforward vision. Also, Emma was like ninety five percent sure Tink had been mentioned more than once.

“Girl, she is so gone for him,” Anna said gleefully. “Oh! We should make popcorn!”

“Uh no,” Emma and Elsa said at the same time before Elsa continued on. “If anything we should leave them be. It’s only a matter of time before they start going at it, and we don’t need to be anywhere near seeing that.”

Emma laughed at Elsa’s claims as Anna feigned a sigh. Obviously she wasn’t interested in spying on the intimate moments of two new mates, but Anna really did love love, and Emma knew her friend was hoping for more cuteness before any impending sexy times. But whatever any of them were expecting, it likely wasn’t what happened next. One second Ruby and Graham looked poised to run off together, and the next Ruby’s features changed and her eyes went hazy. It only lasted a moment but she jumped when it was over and she looked to be in actual pain. Graham moved with her, and though Ruby was still alarmed, Emma could see the slightest bit of comfort come form Graham still being there. Still it wasn’t enough to fully calm her, and what Ruby declared next sent ice rushing through Emma’s veins.

“He’s here. Liam’s here, and he just found Killian.”

Shit!

………………………………..

At times like this it was difficult for Killian to know if pacing was a product of habit or an animalistic urge.

There was evidence enough to suggest it could be his animal. Wolves were known for patrolling when they were contained, agitated, or ready to fight, but as the morning light shifted to a mid-day warmth, Killian’s pacing felt like more than that. True, he felt a little held captive; the anxiety of what was coming was getting to him and there might indeed be reason to fight. But this motion right now, this back and forth route in front of his new Storybrooke home, wasn’t caused by his brother or an impending battle: it was caused by a desire so strong it was starting to control him.

As the days passed by, Killian’s love for Emma only grew. Despite the full moon being long gone by now, he felt this continuing clawing need to be near his mate. It was difficult for him to be away from her, and it was damn near impossible when there was a threat not too far off. In fact, the only thing keeping him sane right now was that she was protected and surrounded by other people who loved her. Ruby was a more than capable shifter who had made it very clear that she considered Emma family in the realest kind of way, and with her visions she should see any danger for Emma before it got here. They had been spotty as of late, with larger blind spots than she was used to, but both Killian and Ruby were certain that when the time for Liam’s arrival actually came, Ruby would know of it. That, coupled with Anna and Elsa’s new gifts, was enough to keep Killian from trailing Emma all afternoon and trying to protect her himself.

The fierceness of his need to see Emma safe was one of the strongest things he’d ever experienced, second only to his love for her, and carrying around such immensity of emotion made Killian eager to shift and to run and howl. He’d allowed himself the first two so far this morning already, but eventually he’d been called back to human form and to the house again. Connecting with his wolf right now just didn’t seem to hold all of the power that it once did for his peace of mind, and Killian was relatively certain he knew why. For underneath all of that protective instinct, and beyond the anticipation of seeing his brother again, there was something else clawing at Killian, something he wanted to do so badly but kept having to keep himself in check over.

Opening the small black box that held a symbol of his hopes for he and Emma, Killian looked down again at his grandmother’s ring, his eyes catching the way the precious gem sparkled in the light. It looked just the same as it always had, a classic and beautiful ornament, now fitted to Emma to perfection, and designed to show the world how tied up they were together. It was a testament to love, a symbol that, if she said yes, the two of them would be wed. And even though he knew that’s what Emma wanted, seeing as she’d already agreed to be his mate, it still made his heart sputter in his chest to think of asking her. He knew that he wanted that moment to be perfect. Emma deserved everything from flowers to candlelight. She deserved ambiance and the undeniable truth that he loved her more than anything. She deserved a story, one they could tell forever and look back at with pride. But even though he knew what should be done, it was killing Killian not to just do this now. He hated waiting. His patience was all but fried, and every day that he spent not working towards that forever with Emma hurt him more than he could say.

But here was where it all came back full circle. Because the reality was he couldn’t create that moment. He couldn’t give Emma those things when he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. All of them were anticipating the arrival of his brother and the showdown that would come, and until that was faced and dealt with Killian couldn’t do what he wanted most. It would be too selfish on his part, and he already had regrets about how things had gone with Emma already. Not their being together surely, for he could regret nothing about having Emma in his life and in his heart. But he wished that things could have been a little less harried. Emma was strong and determined. She would stand tall through whatever storm came their way, but he wished she didn’t have to. That essence of normalcy that she was craving? Truth was he craved it too. If they could just have a little bit of peace and quiet to enjoy all that they’d found it would be miraculous. But it seemed too much to ask the universe to have such a brilliant mate and a bit of time to truly enjoy his good fortune.

You’re going to wear a patch in the grass, Killian.

He heard the words in his head and they were said with the loving chastisement that only his mother had ever truly been able to capture. He closed his eyes and stopped, inhaling the fresh air around him and breathing out again. It was rare for him to do this anymore, to hear his mother’s voice as he went about his life. He’d shut off the part that was open to her and her goodness so long ago. When he trained to confront his father, he stifled that old connection. He shut down the little voice inside his head that reminded him what was good and right. But since he’d found Emma and tried to separate himself from that old life of revenge, he was more and more susceptible to it again. That susceptibility was both beautiful and painful. On the one hand he swore he could hear his mom right now. He could picture her in his minds’ eye shaking her head at him with a smile at her lips. But he knew when he opened her eyes she wouldn’t be here. There would just be more waiting and more agonizing over what was next.

“Bloody hell, Liam, I wish you would just get here already and be done with it.”

The words were gruff as he spoke them aloud, nearly yelling with the ferocity of his agitation. He kept his eyes closed and tried to center himself again, but before he could a voice by the tree line responded to him.

“Wish granted.”

Careful not to make any sudden movements, Killian pivoted to where he heard his brother’s voice and looked at him for the first time in so many years, seeing that it was in fact Liam there, and not just some figment of his imagination.

A few seconds passed where Killian allowed himself to take his brother in, and though he was surprised at how clean cut and together Liam still seemed to be, he didn’t let any of that show. If this reunion was going to be anything like last time then he was in for a hell of a fight, but there was a real need for Killian to control himself. Even on the night he was first infected, the bite had made it so Liam was out of control and unable to resist his baser urges. To counteract that, Killian had to be smart. It was the only way to handle this and to see that he, Emma, and the rest of their friends and family were okay. Still, looking at Liam now was like a stab to the heart, for though all this time had passed, he still looked as he always had, and Killian swore he saw a mix of sadness and also love in his brother’s eyes, despite everything.

“It’s been a long time, little brother,” Liam said, filling the space between them with words that were charged in a way Killian couldn’t understand. There was no anger there. No resentment. Just longing and a little bit of pain. “You look different.”

“I am different,” Killian replied. His muscles flexed slightly, and though he hoped to hide it from Liam, Killian watched as his brother tracked the movement. Liam didn’t reply in kind though, instead siding with continued conversation as he moved a bit closer.

“Ah yes. A mate’s love will do that, or at least that’s what they tell me.”

Now Killian couldn’t help tensing up. He didn’t like it at all that his brother had mentioned Emma, even in the abstract. It was too close for comfort, but when Killian let out a low growl, Liam only laughed. It was a barked out sound, one that made it seem like Liam hadn’t had cause to laugh in a long time, but it calmed something inside of Killian. It wasn’t threatening. If anything, Liam seemed to be enjoying himself. That was unexpected, but it didn’t feel aggressive and that was something to be grateful for.

“Relax, brother. I didn’t come here for her.”

“Then why did you come?” Killian asked, wanting to believe Liam, but knowing that the bite would change any man and that it had already started to change Liam years ago.

“So it’s like that then,” Liam sighed. “Straight to the point. No conversation after all this time? No soft landing?”

“Why bother putting it off? You’re here, and we both know why.”

“I’m not so sure we do,” Liam replied thoughtfully. “I’ve thought of this moment every day since that night. I thought of what I’d say when I saw you again, and damn if I can bring myself to say any of that now. It all seems… not enough.”

“Well why don’t we start with the basics. This control you’re displaying. Is that… permanent?”

“Much as I might like to say yes, I can’t do that. For all my flaws, lying is something I still can’t abide by.”

Killian’s stomach fell at the confession from his brother. It was confusing to say the least, because on the one hand Liam didn’t seem to be doing anything that would signal that he or his wolf wanted to fight. There was no display of dominance, no call to contest. To Killian that signaled that maybe Emma’s more wishful thinking was right. Perhaps Liam was here to make amends and to make things right, as crazy as that seemed, but confessing that he wasn’t actually in control scared Killian. He’d seen the flip switched in his brother before. It was terrible to behold and if Liam couldn’t stop it then it was only a matter of time before Killian bore witness to that beast again.

“So the sickness. You haven’t cured it?”

“No,” Liam replied, his acceptance of his condition heart wrenching to hear. “I am what I am now. A monster, a beast, an abomination: you can call me whatever you like, but the curse remains.”

Killian allowed that truth he already knew to soak in. Again he’d been hopeful, and again his hope was thwarted. Of course Liam was still burdened with this blackness. There was no escaping it, but still it killed Killian to hear it. Listening to his brother berating himself, calling himself a monster – a beast – it was terrible, and yet Killian couldn’t contradict him. He knew nothing of Liam anymore. He knew the man he had been, but what was to say that man truly remained? He appeared to be here, but appearances weren’t enough to build trust on. They couldn’t be, not when the stakes were so high.

“You never were good at covering your emotions, brother,” Liam said witfully, his eyes studying Killian intently. “I can see it all practically jumping off of you. Love. Wariness. Sadness. Fear. Crazy you stayed hidden all these years. You’d think so much energy would be easier to track.”

The mention of tracking put Killian on alert again. There was the reminder he needed that this wasn’t a one off. Liam wasn’t here for a casual visit. He’d been hunting for Killian for years and Killian had known it. He’d lived off the grid as much as he could. He never built a life, never had roots. Hell, he never had dreams of any kind for years and years to stay ahead of that search. His life had been hellish, and that hell was in no small part because there was always the threat of Liam just waiting to take him down.

“What can I say? Ruby’s a powerful witch.”

“Ah she always was. Little Red,” Liam said with another strange laugh. “Remember when we called her that as kids? God she hated that.”

Killian was thrown by the tenderness Liam displayed for Ruby. This whole exchange was honestly giving him whiplash. One moment his brother was kind and trying to connect, the next he was poking Killian with the reminders of the threat he posed. It was confounding and confusing, and it made the wolf inside scratch at the surface, trying to fight this out instead of lingering in whatever strange game Liam was playing here.

“Ruby isn’t the reason you came either. So let’s get on with it. Why are you here, Liam?”

“I’m here because I have to be. We had to meet again. You made sure of it that night.”

“I spared you that night, Liam. I…” Killian trailed off before reiterating the thought, because honestly he wasn’t so sure that’s what he’d done. Had he spared Liam? Or had he just damned his brother to so many more years of this descent into madness?

“You made a choice, a choice that speaks to who you are, brother. You could have killed me, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. It could have all been over. You could have been free, but instead you chose another path. This path, and now we have to face it.”

The ominous words hung in the field between them and Killian didn’t know what to say. Liam was right after all, at least in a way. He hadn’t been capable of killing Liam. There just wasn’t that option, and because of that there had been the risk and that sinking sensation that followed Killian all these years that they’d meet again. But while his brother was resigned and yet also strangely unreadable, Killian was resolute. Things wouldn’t end the same way twice. There were too many other people who needed protecting, and too much more to live for now than there had been years ago.

“I’m sorry, Killian. I’m sorry for that night, and for any night you’ve faced since that you worried about me. I’m more sorry than you can ever imagine. I would have done anything to spare you that.”

Wait… what?

“You’re sorry,” Killian repeated, his mind reeling from the truth he heard in Liam’s out of the blue words. “But you’ve come here to kill me.”

“So you keep suggesting,” Liam replied, his eyes taking on a little humor again.

“And what are you suggesting, Liam? I realize this is all some big game to you, but frankly I don’t want to play. I never did, so if you’ve come to fight me, fight me.”

“You know I thought this would be different, our last time together,” Liam said, his voice a wistful whisper, as it sailed across the breeze to Killian’s ears. “I should have known, even if I hoped for something more. But let me cut to the chase. I came to -,”

The snap of a branch in the woods very close to them claimed both brothers’ attention, and when Killian saw it was Tink his feelings were mixed. There was relief, but also dread. He couldn’t exactly explain why, but the reason would show itself soon enough.

“I caught a new scent in town and thought you might need backup,” Tink said, but her usual confidence was cowed in an instant when a fierce growl sounded out so loudly that it shook the ground around them.

Killian whipped his head back to look at his brother, but Liam was gone and all that remained was the beast in man’s clothing. His eyes were like coal, his face was snarled, his stance was poised for shifting. He heaved for breath, his anger rolling off of him, and just like that the nightmare Killian had been reliving for years was with him once more. Whatever had just occurred was over. The talking was done, the dancing was finished, and now it was time to face this twisted fate once and for all...

Post-Note: Okay I know I know I left this on a cliffhanger and I am terrible! BUT I have some pretty great news – the next chapter of this story is already mostly written and I will be posting it sometime in the next week! I should probably space it out more since the rest of the chapters aren’t completed yet, but trust me – you will all want to see the conclusion of what happens between Killian and Liam. Anyway thank you all so much for your patience and your continued support. Hope you’re all doing well, and hope you’ll tune in next time!

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daisychainblogs · 4 years

Text

The One Where I Leave At The Interval: and it is entirely, 100%, no-I’m-not-kidding-ly unintentional

As light dips on the Weston stage – I feel a little anxious.

I am at the Bristol Old Vic to see Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Company’s The Laramie Project: performed by the graduating students of the Old Vic’s theatre school, directed by Nancy Medina. The specifics of the play are a little hazy - I know it will tell the true story of Matthew Shepard’s murder: the twenty-one-year-old victim of a gay-hate crime which took place in the small town of Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998. And I know that the script is a scrap-book-type-medley of interviews – eyewitness courtroom accounts, newspaper reports, doctors’ notes – but that’s it. Everything else sits quietly in the dark.

So - I’m nervous. Performances of any autobiographical leaning – especially one as unsettling as Kaufman’s – make me decidedly queasy. This will be sharp and heavy, I think. I’m a little afraid to pick it up.

As the lights start to dim, I take a long, deep breath. Brace, brace - here we go.

And it goes; and the story is told, and I have my opinions, but it’s fine, and I’m fine, and then – well, then - then suddenly it’s not going anymore, and it’s ….over?!

It’s a very odd ‘over’. We get a boisterously loaded line about ‘hope’ – ‘H.O.P.E’, each letter separated from the next - how Matthew’s story is filled with it, how Laramie rallied and marched for it - and then this larger than life thunderbolt sound and accompanying projection crack across stage and then that’s – that. Lights up, end of.

I turn to my friend – eyebrows a-scrunch.

‘Weird’ I say.

‘Mmmm’ she mmmm-s.

‘I mean - is that it? Is that an interval? What’s up?’

‘No, no’, she assures me - ‘I think that’s it. Finito. Over and out’.

Curious – but I’m reaching for my discarded-earlier-here-somewhere jumper, so - not overly curious, I suppose.

‘Bows?’

‘Oh – well, it’s the Old Vic students’ final show-case-of-talent type performance– I guess they don’t need them?’

Makes perfect sense to me. It seems sensible - admirable, even – that our ensemble doesn’t expect a clap and a whoop for the telling of such a story. It is real after all - not ‘entertainment’ in its most straightforward of senses. It’s Avant Garde – it’s drama school! It’s no bows!

So. We shrug on coats, grab bags - cast those final, habitual looks back at the house-lit stage – and potter out of the auditorium.

One bus ride and on front-door-push later, and I’m flicking on the kettle, reaching for the caffeine – preparing to burn the midnight oil. Pen poised; coffee sipped – let’s go. First up - what, when, who, why – Google’s got me. And so I’m skimming and skimming and I’m gathering the various necessaries and I -

‘Over two and a half hours, its audience is made to pay witness to - ’

Skimming scuffs to a halt.

Two and a half hours. Two and a half hours… two and a half hours?! Surely, I wasn’t in there for two and a half hours, I think.

*tick,tick,tick*

…that slightly odd finish…no bows…

Oh NO. No, no, No

‘It’s long, FIRST HALF feels particularly tough’

*it was at this moment, she knew...*

It wasn’t finished.

We left at the interval.

So here’s the point in the story where I hold both hands up and state, for the record - Brownie’s code, Scout’s honour – that I, Daisy Game, am a twit.

‘How?- *bash* ‘HOW’ *bash* ‘did I manage’ *bash* ‘to do *bash* that?!’ (*bash*)

After an extended period of whacking my head against the laptop keyboard to the rhythm of my own embarrassment - I pick up the phone and call my partner in the crime.

And yes, she is embarrassed – ‘yeees? …yes…What?!’ – but once she’s through that initial period of All-consuming English Shame (‘I feel awful! ‘) - she is a little less inclined to pull a keyboard head bang manoeuvre.

‘No – but – it was over?! We would have known, surely? It just felt over – I mean you know when it’s over, right?! You can kind of just feel it and - and - I – I just – well, what else was there left to tell?!’

And yet – over it most objectively was not.

But here’s the thing. I know it seems ludicrous - but let’s pretend for a second, just for fun, that I have a leg to stand on. Because then maybe (emphasis on the ‘may’ and on the ‘be’) --- I can defend myself?

I might not be a fully fluent, tour guide worthy local in the land of theatre - but I’m certainly not a map-carrying tourist. It’s always been a quiet love of mine - (Brava to the village hall and its stellar pantomime, circa 2007-2010). I go to shows regularly, and I tend to know the format of the thing. So given that I have never before done something so plainly idiotic (in the context of an theatre, at least) … might there be something in the suggestion that - somewhere, somehow - this play led us to believe that it was over?

Because as I sit at my kitchen table – pondering on the knowledge that, at that very moment the Weston stage was most likely crowded with enthusiastically bowing final year theatre students – I am not sorry that I am here, and they are there.

I know it was unfair, set-yourself-up-to-lose kind of expectation - but I think I expected to be more shaken by it all; to walk out and carry it with me for days – or at least hours – to come. But when it came to it, I was simply struck by the strangeness of The Laramie Project.

Yes, it pulls out all the theatrical bells and whistles – the fourth wall is shattered, we get multi-rolling, we get synchronised speech – but it all somehow seems to lack intent, or purpose, beyond the stage.

Should we really need to our actors to hop skip and jump – changing role, changing costume, talking to us – oh what larks! – to stay with this story from start to end? Should we need to be ‘entertained’ in such a hyper, frantic manner? Because it is not an entertaining story. It is a deeply, deeply disturbing story, and the way this play tells it seems a bit bolshy and overly stimulating. The ensemble element – the actors skipping and leaping across the stage – is just a little self-conscious. As each actor shrugs into their next role, a temporary chorus member leaps to said shape-shifters side – thrusting a fist-and-thumb point in their direction and announcing the name of the character we have just witnessed the entrance of in the middle of the stage. the best way to put it? It’s loud, and it’s a little attention seeking.

I know I’m being harsh. These techniques I bash with such abandon do ‘work’: the strange ‘everyone plays everyone’ thing is pretty fitting for this story. Doctor – shopkeeper – priest: as members of the Laramie community, one and all are oddly complicit; the multi-roll skips and jumps seem to suggest. The shop keeper is the doctor, and the doctor is the priest: and all three are Laramie. It’s all one great mess of a community. ‘It’s not the town – things like this don’t happen in Laramie’, we are told time and time again. But, as one town member quietly admits – it did happen: and so, things like this do happen in Laramie – and so Laramie cannot get off scot free by pointing the finger and isolating the blame at its most obvious perpetrators.

I think I get it – but like it? Appreciate it? That’s another matter. And Did we really need to hear a car horn toot across stage at the mention of said vehicle? And that thunder…

So - going back to discussion of my earlier-than-intended rendezvous with pyjamas and notebook– and please know that I really don’t mean to sound overly literal, or pig headed, or ignorant (although I realise that I very likely might) but - what else was there left to tell? We’d heard about Matthew. We’d been told about his deeply disturbing encounter. His time in hospital, and his passing. We’d seen the trial, and the verdict. And we’d been left with a pretty heavy ‘closing’ line (‘H-O-P-E’ … there’s always hope’). I really don’t feel that any more was needed. And the approach to the play didn’t leave me wishing for more where that came from.

I think it’s important to reiterate at this stage that I do know full well that, thanks to my premature exit, I forfeit the right to comment with integrity. Maybe in that all-mysterious second half, it starts to make sense. ‘Oh, no’, the play might perhaps have gone on to chortle – ‘No - we WANTED you to feel that way. We wanted you to feel it was a little contrived, and loud. We had you fooled’, and maybe it then proceeds to prove exactly why such fooling was necessary. And I’m not saying that the performances themselves weren’t accomplished. The Old Vic theatre school consistently nudges out star after star – Erin Doherty, Josh O Connor – and the quality of acting was stellar. Strong, confident, professional. Hats off.

The more apologetic, more cringingly embarrassed half of me wants to clarify once and for all that – true, it might not have been my all-time favourite production - but I would never, under any circumstances, have left the show early. It’s rude, it’s unfair – and I swear: it was an accident. I can only apologise to the cast and crew.

But the less apologetic half of me? Well – that part of me is colder. Because that part of me thinks that even if it this was the case – even if that second half explained the whole thing - isn’t the whole of act one an awfully long time to make your audience wait for the ‘ahaaaa’ moment – a long time to wait before pointing your audience toward the light switch?

So – I leave you with two lessons learned. Take from them what you will.

Lesson number one: solid performances can’t save iffy technical and strange scripts.

Lesson number two: Always, always wait for the blasted bows.

Signing off, a (still) very embarrassed, chaotic student.

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itsthejuggernautbitch · 5 years

Text

You Look Like Trouble (Morning Glory Wine - Cable/OC

Here’s chapter seven!

We’re getting close! Three more chapters after this one! (And don’t worry, the next chapter will be long. An apology for the long wait.

(And as always, not to be that person but if you’ve got the time and the inclination, kudos or a comment would be greatly appreciated.)

Taglist: @this-that-and-every-thing-else @ptite-shit @lesbianyondu @chromecutie @gallifreyangrandtorino @ra-ra-rasputiin @akihecko @bigstarlightkingdom @buckyjefferson @lenavonschweetz

Colossus wasn't expecting Vivian to return to the mansion so soon, but when she rang the doorbell of the X-Mansion, he welcomed her with open arms. She'd been to the mansion twice in one year, an unprecedented event. Colossus was almost astounded - almost.

Colossus brightened considerably upon answering the door. “This is unexpected.”

Vivian had made her decision. Colossus knew what her answer would be, it was just a matter of when. And apparently when was now.

Vivian raised an eyebrow. "Is it unexpected, though?"

Colossus shrugged. "Not really. But I am glad to see you!"

"I'm glad to see you, too," Vivian replied. She crossed her arms, peering past Colossus into the depths of the mansion. “Can I come in?”

Colossus sensed that something was wrong, but he knew Vivian. She wouldn't answer his questions if he asked her how she was doing. She'd have to tell him on her own, if she told him anything at all.

“Of course.”

He put on a pot of coffee, busying himself with finding two clean mugs. "Am I correct to assume this is about our previous discussion?"

"You are correct, as you always are," Vivian replied, taking the coffee mug from him. The mug was purple with little flowers that spelled Ellie on it. The coffee was just how Colossus knew she liked it - black, two sugars. "I'll do it."

Colossus was quite honestly surprised to get such a glib answer from her. She could be blunt, but this was decisiveness to the point of uncharacteristic. "I will be honest, Vivian. I did not expect your answer so soon."

She almost rolled her eyes. "You knew I would say yes."

"Hoped, not knew."

Vivian swirled the coffee around in her mug. "Well, as soon as my lease is up, I'll get moved in here."

Colossus didn't drink coffee. He'd made tea for himself, which he took a delicate sip of. "That is more than acceptable. I will have your room ready."

"Rooms, as in plural. I need your help."

Ah, there it was. Colossus was surprised that she'd gotten to the point so quickly. It made him nervous.

"Anything, Vivian. You only need ask."

"Benji and Shelly both have mutations. I need to get them away from Jack."

Colossus set his mug down on the kitchen table. "Has something happened?"

"No, Shelly says he doesn't know." Vivian drained the rest of her mug. "But accidents happen, and if he finds out… You saw what he did to me. I can't imagine what he'll do to them."

"You do not have to lift a finger," Colossus replied. "We will go get them. No court order has bearing on us."

"Just get them away safely…"

"And I'd like to speak to Jack myself... You never let me near him."

Colossus being his gentlemanly self... It was the first time in a week Vivian had smiled. Perhaps she should have let him confront Jack all those years ago. It didn't matter now, and it was probably better that he hadn't. Colossus would take care of whatever she needed.

"Don't kill him, big guy. Although I appreciate the brotherly sentiment."

Colossus looked appalled, though it was mostly just a put-on. "Kill him? Never! Hurt his feelings... different story."

Vivian started collecting the mugs from the table to put them in the sink. If she was going to live here again, she supposed that this was just the beginning of her chore list. "I trust you, Piotr."

"I know. I will see that they are safe. It won't be today, but once I have a plan, I will take care of it."

Vivian hugged him, the first time she'd done so since she was a teenager. "Thank you."

Wade never claimed to be much of a planner. He was more of a do-er, a man of action - shoot first, think later. His method of firing random bullets at life had worked well for him for the past few decades, although “well” was more or less a subjective term. Nevertheless, his man-of-action method usually got him about as far as he needed to go. In fact, sometimes it worked so well that he could even talk a girl as stubborn as a mule into going back to work.

Wade managed to talk Vivian into pulling her shift that night via his "shoot until you hit something" method. He had to cry a little bit to convince her, but once he got one of those Cry-Baby tears to roll down his cheek (he could see his handiwork in the window reflection behind her head), Vivian gave in. And he may have threatened to tell Weasel her address.

Vivian had taken up her usual spot in the backroom. She’d had more than enough clients for the night to make up for her absence over the past week. In fact, some of the usual miscreants had let their minor wounds fester until she came back. Puckered, greenish stab holes were not what she’d hoped to see that night. Really, she’d hoped to fix a few broken bones, grab a drink, and make Wade or one of his buddies drive her home.

But things never really seemed to work out the way she wanted them to.

Both Weasel and Wade had been in and out of the backroom all night, which was strange because usually Wade had a job well before midnight and Weasel was too busy managing the bar. But they’d both been fluttering in and out, asking if she needed any supplies or a drink. She couldn’t tell if they were catering to her because she was back or because they were afraid she might leave. Wade had even sat in on a meeting with a patient who had to get his broken arm reset (the screaming was awful).

In any case, Vivian usually closed up shop around 2:00 AM, so when she got a knock on the door directly after that, she was a little perturbed. And it didn’t get any better, because when Vivian opened the door, it was Cable on the other side.

She paused, sighed, and shook her head. “Not happening.”

She shut the door again, but try as she might, she just couldn’t ignore the soft knock that sounded about a minute later. Like he’d hesitated, maybe even turned around to walk away, but thought better of it.

It was only when he knocked a third time, even more softly than the last, that she finally opened the door again.

She crossed her arms and stared him dead in the eye, wondering idly how many people had ever done that and not been stabbed. “If you’re not bleeding, the answer is no, you can’t come in.”

Cable grimaced a little, but didn’t flinch otherwise. “Can I at least apologize?”

“I don’t want an apology. I want an explanation.”

“The explanation is part of the apology.”

She signed again, more out of annoyance for herself than anything, but she stepped aside to let him in. “Fine. Come in.”

Honestly, Cable didn't have much of a game plan. He didn't think he'd get this far. He didn't think he'd even make it through the backroom door.

He hovered next to the examination chair, supremely uncomfortable. “I guess you have questions.”

Vivian stood directly in front of him, arms crossed. She glared at him, incredulous. “Uh, yeah?”

“Look, I’m sorry, I just-” he sighed. “Maybe if you just ask me-”

“Alright. Why did you kiss me if you’re married? Why didn’t you tell me that you’re married in the first place? I would have left you alone and I wouldn’t have embarrassed myself.”

"I... I don't know how to explain-"

"You've got ten seconds to figure it out before I walk out that door and leave you here to mop the blood off the floor for Weasel."

She tapped her foot, waiting for his response.

“I’m from the future,” he began, finally sitting down in the exam chair. He'd been on the receiving end of interrogations before, and this sure did feel like one. “I came here to save my wife and daughter. In my timeline, they were murdered.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear about your family.”

“I saved them - I think,” Cable replied. He stared at the wall, as if his mind was somewhere distant. “I had one charge left to get home, but I made the choice to use it to save your buddy Wade and stick around to stop the world from going to shit.”

Vivian, ever relentless, continued. “So if you consider yourself to be still married then why did you even entertain the idea of being more than friends?”

Cable stared back at her, doing his best to maintain the air of cool, calm, and collected - none of which he could say he actually was. “I take solace in the hope that I did my job and saved my family. My wife... I don’t think she'd want me to be stuck here miserable and alone. I don’t… But I didn’t think I’d even meet someone here I could… feel something for… in the way that I felt for her.”

She stared at him silently for a while, brown eyes searching his face for something unknown. She'd long since memorized the lines of his face - every scar, line, and mark - from their talks. She was looking for something more than skin-deep.

“I’m sorry Wade pushed you into my lap.”

“He didn’t push me," Cable said. "And I’m glad he brought me here.”

Vivian sat down in her chair, finally at eye level with him. She stayed a careful distance away - a safe distance away. Enough distance that she didn’t feel like getting up to hug him.

“I was raised in the X-Mansion. I left when I was eighteen because I was determined to go off to college and become a doctor. I got pregnant when I was twenty, got married, had my son. Made it through college. A year into medical school, I got pregnant again, which leaves something to be said about the quality of sex education at the X-Mansion because I obviously didn’t know how to make my ex-husband put on a condom.”

Cable’s eyebrow was quirked, but he didn’t say anything.

“When my son was nine, he got hit by a car. I came home to a yard full of sirens and flashing lights. I never thought he would be in the back of one, but he was. His leg was crushed and his lung burst. I managed to heal his lung and correct some of the damage to his leg.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He’s fine now. My ex-husband found out. He didn’t know I was a mutant, you see. He figured it out because how does one explain this kind of miracle, but for mutant abilities. He served me with divorce papers the next day, took both of my kids, called the hospital where I worked and had them fire me. I lost my kushy, fancy job that I loved and worked hard at, and I lost my kids. They live about two miles from here, and I don’t get to see them unless my ex-husband doesn’t show up to something.”

Cable didn't quite know what to say to that.

“We make a pair, don’t we?”

"Seems that way, doesn't it?"

They sat in silence for a while, not much else to say. Finally, Vivian reached out and took his hands in hers, but didn't say anything.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. What do I have to do to fix this?”

“Take me home.”

Again, he raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Not like that. I’m done for the night and I haven’t slept in days anyway. Just come and spend some time with me away from this dump where we can talk. This is not unsalvageable, but we need to work through some things first.”

Cable nodded. “Alright.”

When Vivian opened the door, she found a wall of people with their ears pressed to the wood. Several of them teetered and backed up, one of them fell flat on his face. Wade and Weasel were at the forefront, bar abandoned.

She rolled her eyes. “Y’all are some nosey bastards.”

Vivian climbed into the cab of Cable’s truck. The seats were soft, cushioned leather upholstery, cracked from age and peeling in places. The dash was equally as cracked and peeling - and a little sticky from sitting out in the hot sun. She had no idea what model it could be; she barely drove enough to know the model of her own car. Nevertheless, the front cab of the truck was comfortable and smelled like leather.

“I like this truck. It’s got character.”

When Cable crunk it up, it stalled a bit before roaring to life. “Stole it about a year ago from some hicks outside of town.”

“Yeah, seems more suited to hauling around a dog and a cooler of beer than Marty McFly and his futuristic supersoldier weapons.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

Vivian kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on the dashboard. “Back to the Future? Don’t worry, Wade and I will make you watch it. Are movies even still a thing where… when… you’re from?”

He smirked, amused by her familiarity. “Yeah, but I never had much time for them.”

“Well, you do now.”

Vivian rolled down her window to breathe the night air. The city was stale and damp, but the smell got less and less oppressive the further away they got from the red light district where Sister Margaret's was located. Skyscrapers gave way to office buildings and medical facilities. Parking decks became gated lots. And the closer they got to the interstate exit, the more Vivian didn't want to go home yet.

They rolled to a stop at the light.

Vivian caught his attention. “Hey, turn left here.”

“I thought we go right?”

“Just go with it.”

He turned left.

They drove until they were no longer in the city, until the skyscrapers and concrete and steel gave way to rolling hills and green fields and unnamed crops. Both of them had been silent since they left the city. They filled the silence with the sound of the radio, the breeze rushing through the open windows, and the cool night breeze filling the cab of the truck.

“Pull into that field.”

Cable did as she asked and pulled into the field, careful to tread only where he could already see the tracks of some farmer’s truck. Vivian reached into the backseat and grabbed her bag and jacket, along with a couple of Cable’s utility rolls and a worn denim jacket she found wedged up next to a pillow.

Cable watched her collect all of the stuff from his backseat. “What are you doing?”

“Humor me.”

She got out of the truck, let down the back gate, and threw everything into the bed of the truck, arranging it until the makeshift bed was relatively comfy. She marched back around to the passenger’s side and stuck her head in the window. She reached across the cab to turn up the radio, fiddling with the knobs until she found a station she was satisfied with.

“You coming?” she asked.

Cable blinked, but the corners of his mouth turned up into the barest hint of a real smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

Vivian crawled up into the bed of the truck, clutching the denim jacket like a blanket. She leaned against the back window so that she could stare up at the sky. Cable climbed into the bed after her and settled in close next to her, his arm just barely brushing hers. The stars were bright, glittering like diamonds in the night sky.

“This makes me feel like a kid again,” Vivian said, pulling the denim jacket up under her chin. It smelled spicy - not dirty or musty, but worn and masculine and comfortable. “Growing up, my friends and I used to ride out into the fields and sit out arounds for hours listening to music and staring up at the stars.”

“Did you grow up here?”

“I grew up down south, until my mutation showed up. I think I was twelve or thirteen when I went to live at the X-Mansion. We used to sneak out late at night and come out here.”

“You can’t see the stars in my time.”

Vivian looped her arm through his, tucking his arm under the jacket with her. “Ten points for the past, then. It’s not so bad here.”

Cable looked down at her. “Not so bad at all.”

The song playing over the radio was an older country song - maybe Patsy Cline or some other old crooner. Vivian almost never used the radio anymore (too many commercials, not enough music). And she’d be hard-pressed to choose a country station if she did choose the radio, but there was something pleasant about the late-night country music radio shows - the ones that played the old, slow songs rather than the cute, pop-country party songs.

“You never really answered me earlier," Vivian said. "Why didn’t you tell me you were married? What made you think about… this? About me, I guess.”

“What would you have done if I told you I was married?”

“Honestly? Wouldn’t have come near you - beyond a professional capacity, of course.”

“I thought I’d processed things," Cable replied, staring off into the sky. "Come to terms with the fact that I’ll never see them again - that she wouldn’t want me to be alone and miserable.”

“She sounds lovely.”

“She is.”

“Why me, then?”

“You have compassion. Determination. Patience. I respect that. Why’d you reciprocate?”

“You’re heartfelt, even when you don’t mean to be. You’re not pushy. And you're funny, in your own way.”

Cable chuckled. "I've never been called funny."

"And I've never been called patient, but we see things in others that we don't see in ourselves." Vivian took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. “Anything else you need to tell me?”

“Name’s Nathan. Nathan Summers.”

“Duly noted.”

Vivian snuggled into his side, the weight of his arm warm and comforting. They stayed like that for about an hour, until Vivian was starting to doze off.

Cable carefully extricated himself from her grip, gently nudging her awake. “I guess we should go.”

Vivian yawned. “Yeah. I’m gonna end up falling asleep on the way back.”

“Go ahead - I’ll get us back to your place.”

The ride going home was much longer than the ride out to the field, as it always was. Vivian must have slept the whole ride because she didn't remember ever giving Cable directions. Nevertheless, Cable got them home in one piece and without shaking her awake.

When they pulled up to Vivian's apartment, Cable parked in one of the front spaces. He waited for her to grab her bag and jacket out of the back of the cab. She started to shrug the denim jacket off.

“You can keep the jacket,” Cable said. “It looks good on you.”

Vivian couldn't resist teasing him a little. “So you like when I wear your clothes?”

“Well, I guess I do.”

Vivian climbed down, and before she shut the door, she had a thought. Normally, she'd wouldn't be quite so keen on having someone stay the night right after an argument, but with his job being as dangerous as it was and her inability to stay awake some nights, now seemed as good a time as any.

She turned back to look at him. "Hey, uh, it's late, and I'd hate for you to have to drive back to… wherever you live… So, if you want to stay…"

Vivian couldn't call it a smile, but the corners of his mouth turned up in something close. "I've got nowhere to be. Be glad to."

She mirrored his grin. "Well, come on in then, cowboy."

#cable #cable headcanons #cable x reader #cable imagines #MCU!cable #deadpool #deadpool headcanons #deadpool imagines #MCU!Deadpool

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kyle-is-a-fancy-nerd · 5 years

Text

27th day: celebration

Agarwaen is nervous. He sighs deep breathes, and in front of the mirror tries to braid his hair usually messy. He knows it’s shallow because once arrived in the elves district, the elves themselves will take care of his toilette and hair.

Agarwaen is almost an adult now: he is fourteen, near fifteen. His facial features, even though yet androgynous, look more and more masculine. His face looks like his father’s, Caesar, who however denies it: Agarwaen appears more like his other parent, Isil. He apparently has the same thin mouth, the same big eyes, the same discreet laugh. Only his pupils are the exact same grey as his father. He knows it bothers his aunt Hel, to see this bastard possessing one of the biggest points of pride of the Bärenklau.

Despite his young age, he starts to be taller than his father. He knows Caesar is short - he laughs about it himself - but Agarwaen is still proud because to him, it means being a bit of a man. He doesn’t have muscles yet, but his father maintains that he is already an excellent fighter: he has beaten Delrùwath, another one of his relatives. But even more, he has begun to defeat his father, who, instead of being offended, laughs even harder and messes up his hair.

Agarwaen is for now dressed with a wool top, a purple scarf and pants, that he’ll change back once in the elves'. After all, it will be his celebration.

Suddenly, the door opens up. Agarwaen turns over, ready to face his aunt’s butler, or worse, his aunt herself. But it’s only his father, who, in front of his son’s peaky look, burst out a laugh and asks freely :

“My boy would be scared of his father ?”

Agarwaen, embarrassed, doesn’t add anything else until he feels Caesar’s hand on his shoulder. His father’s gaze is worried because he knows today is a big day.

Agarwaen smiles shyly to Caesar and answers :

“Do not worry, father, we can leave.”

Caesar nods then opens the door. They go through the Castle’s gardens, where they can find Frigga, the king’s spouse, who is with some servants taking care of the heir, Modi. However, Caesar ignores them. Agarwaen knows it’s complicated between the king and his wife, particularly for the heir’s education. Caesar barely takes care of him, he prefers to give his whole attention to the kingdom or to his illegitimate son. Caesar hates that people say Agarwaen is a bastard, because to him, he is way more than just this title.

While walking, Agarwaen also sees his aunt on one of the stairs that lead to the gardens. She is with her eternal butler, and both of them disdain him just by a look. As a child, Agarwaen used to live really bad this exclusion from this part of his family, but, since then he has chosen to not pay attention to them. But he also knows that his father and his aunt are really close.

They finally get out of the Castle and Agarwaen can breathe. His shoulders are not as tensed and his teeth as clenching. He smiles at Caesar, who is still laughing while the people salute his father with respect.

Agarwaen still feels like exploring the city and discovering new things every time he leaves. Yet, he knows all the streets by heart: the shop that sells small pieces of jewelry, the other one with swords, or all the other small shops that sell to his father some food or very precious treasuries. Agarwaen remembers his aunt Hel holding up a sigh seeing her brother coming back with thousands of little wealthy details of the armory, knowing it would be of no use. But, Caesar would always return with items from other islands, sometimes found by the rare wanderers coming in their very unknown kingdom. Agarwaen knows his father’s big dream is to explore the rest of the world. Maybe one day.

They finally arrive at the elves’ district. Those streets are isolated, and the elves living there rarely go out to see humans or even less of the Castle. Though Caesar hasn’t been scared to discover their culture so different from his, and now, he knows the elves are loyal to him. To Agarwaen as well. He is sure that if one day he had the ambition to be king, he will have the help of the damned elves. They turn over and smile to them now. The children come to beg some sweets to Caesar, and the adults nod their head then continue to take care of the preparations for tonight’s celebration. The whole district has heard of it: the young Agarwaen is ready to be an adult now.

Suddenly, emerges from the crowd his relative Delrùwath. Agarwaen runs towards them and embraces them. Delrùwath is taller than him. They watch them with a loving gaze while discussing with Caesar. Agarwaen follows them with no idea of what their conversation can be about. They move in the big district which Agarwaen holds even dearer in his heart than the humans’ ones. Here, he doesn’t know only the streets, but also the people: he catches Delkamerth’s children running. There, Léokaren’s inn which welcomes all the wanderers and other people but where there are the best receptions. Farer, Lonaraneth and Kelkathrah’s apartments and Agarwaen thinks they are the ones who will take care of him for his elf celebration. Agarwaen smiles lost in his thought.

Abruptly, emerges his aunt’s butler. Caesar as Delrùwath and Agarwaen look at him not understanding: what is he doing here? But Agarwaen guesses that if his aunt’s butler comes here, it’s that it’s important. Caesar excuses himself then leaves to talk with Hel’s butler. He comes back a few minutes later and announces :

“I must leave, but I will return before the Ceremony starts.”

It doesn’t reassure Agarwaen, but he smiles to his father and says nothing. He trusts him.

Delrùwath messes his hair, laughing when Agarwaen complains then he says :

“You will look wonderful tonight my nephew.”

Agarwaen is blushing, but he doesn’t add anything. They’re moving forwards Lonaraneth and Kelkathrah’s apartments. Delrùwath knocks on, and goes out of the house a tall elf bastard, Lonaraneth: Agarwaen knows it because like him, her skin is not as dark blue and her hair not as cyan as the ones of the other elves. However, she is accepted if not adored by the other elves for her chorister qualities and her makeup talent. It’s also often with her Dalaika Kelkathrah that they craft ceremonial clothes. Both of them are very known in the district.

Lonaraneth doesn't have her hair done but she doesn’t feel any embarrassment. Even, she exclaims :

“My boy!”

She notices Delrùwath and nods at him before jumping in Agarwaen’s arms and declaring :

“I’ve heard the hearsays! Today is the big day!”

Lonaraneth is more extravagant than the other elves, but it is what makes her charisma. She laughs, moves away some of her hair then she takes his hand and brings him in her house and whispers with a playful smile :

“ Do not worry, I’ve already prepared everything. I knew you would come.”

Some hours later, Agarwaen moves out finally from her house. But she is still here and brings him to the fire.

He walks in the streets which are turning darker and darker, Agarwaen senses children’s chuckling. They glance at him with his new clothes. It’s true that Agarwaen looks amazing: he is wearing a skirt covered by colorful feathers and a coat made of white fur. His hair is braid and decorated of other feathers and jewelry, that can also found on his wrists and ankles. His face is full of makeup, but Agarwaen hasn’t had enough time yet to see what he looks like.

It starts to be late, and the torches’ lights shine slowly the darkness. But despite the little of light, Agarwaen still recognizes his father: he wears a similar skirt as him and an identical coat. In his ginger hair is found some braids and a headband full of shell gleam all around him. Agarwaen turns over Lonaraneth and shouts out :

“You didn’t tell me my father will come dressed like us !”

Kelkathrah burst out a peal of laughter then they say :

“It”s a familial celebration, Agarwaen, of course, your father would come as you come.”

Agarwaen’s pupils meet the ones looking alike of his father. The king is in awe and in his eyes can be read pride. He stays astonished, only looking at his son like the happiest of all men. However, Agarwaen as his father are interrupted at this moment by the beginning of the ceremony: some cries and chants are appearing suddenly from the silence, and Agarwaen laughs while he feels he is pushed by his friends. He is lead near the place’s center, where an immense fire shines and brights all his face. His father follows Delrùwath and other elves, and they finally end up in front of the village’s leader. It’s Lakomorth, that smile at both of them tenderly. They reveal to Agarwaen :

“Isil is watching you from the stars.”

And Agarwaen can’t feel happier, not when he knows both his parents see him becoming a man.

#blabla #writing #writersmonth2019 #writersprompt2019

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earwaxinggibbous · 5 years

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Eminem - Worst to Best

So I was watching theneedledrop and thinking I could do this too. That’s all the prefacing you’re gonna get.

I know it’s hard to believe I can judge Eminem from an objective standpoint considering I’m such a big fan that I ranked Kamikaze as my favorite hit song of 2018 (my actual favorite song was probably When You Die by MGMT or Stop Smoking by Car Seat Headrest for the record) but I am able, physically, to have negative opinions even about the rap god himself.

My only rule is that this only includes his full-length studio albums. Infinite won’t be here due to my lack of knowledge regarding it, but everything else is fair game. This will be heavily opinion-based.

Let’s go and start from the worst!

9. Revival (2017)

Initially I was gonna put Encore below this one. After all, in my opinion, there’s nothing egregiously awful about Revival in my mind. It just sort of existed to me, like that dead roach that stayed in my high school’s gym for over a month before disappearing without a word about it.

It wasn’t until I gave a few of the tracks a re-listen that I realized Revival has nothing going for it. This is Em’s sellout album, the one where he collabs with Beyonce, Ed Sheeran and goddamn X Ambassadors in the vague hopes that it’d get him a hit. Songs that don’t bother having clever writing because all they need to do is slap a semi-important pop singer on the hook.

It’s easily Em’s most ballsless album. In a universe where Kill You and Same Song & Dance exist, there is no need for Framed, Em’s almost saddening attempt to return to his Slim Shady roots even though, let’s be honest, the years of Shady are long behind us.

I’m not saying I need Em yelling slurs and talking about murder every five seconds, I just want him to be, for lack of a better word, the most authentic version of himself he can be. And this really isn’t it to me. No amount of politics or wordplay can hide that this is a sham of what an Eminem album should sound like. I don’t need diss tracks, or songs about serial killing, I just want him to say what he wants and not hold back.

Everything about the album is weak and tired. Every song melds into one another, without thought or purpose, only broken up by the celebrity hooks that define them. It’s the blackest mark on Em’s discography, and easily his worst album to date. Not even worth sneezing at.

8. Encore (2004)

I guess we shouldn’t let Em do whatever he wants...

Encore has the opposite problem that Revival does, and it’s a problem I empathize with. Encore is essentially word vomit in album form. It’s the musical equivalent of Jack Kerouac’s spontaneous prose, loud and incoherent and kind of gross. It’s what happens when ambition goes unchecked, and Em just leans a little too far into what the media says about him.

This was also deep in the throes of Em’s drug abuse problem, and it shows. This album feels like a bad drug trip, sludgy and gross and heavy, in a way that makes it hard to move your arms and legs. With these absolutely god-awful sung choruses on songs like My First Single, Eminem dares you to make less sense than him as he rambles like a crazy person through song after song, only taking breaks from his half-attempts at comedy on tracks like Mosh, Like Toy Soldiers and Mockingbird, which try to be serious. But it’s hard to be serious when you’re essentially getting choked in a soup of valium and regret.

I don’t hate Encore like I do Revival, because in some ways I can understand where it comes from. It’s trying to do the same sort of thing its predecessors did, with silly songs and serious ones. But the funny songs are so weird and frankly gross that it quashes any attempt of seriousness. It’s like Eminem thought the only way to make his songs better were to take what his detractors hated about him and turn it up to 11. Songs like My First Single are complete nonsense complete with gut-churning sound effects and a shitty beat, whereas Just Lose It, a song I’m ashamed to admit I enjoy, fills itself with baseless offensiveness and weird reference humor to function. And that was the big hit single off of this album.

Really I think Just Lose It was the best way to sell this album. What says Encore more than a song insisting that Eminem diddles little boys? FACK would’ve been in place on this album, which is not a compliment.

7. Recovery (2010)

Recovery shares a lot of problems with Revival, a lot of radio-bait songs featuring pop artists that have no business being within ten feet of Eminem. But I’ll admit its singles were far superior to that of Revival. No Love was far superior to anything Revival spat out.

I just kinda don’t care about this album. Other than how Love The Way You Lie was permanently ingrained in the cultural consciousness around 2010, I have very few thoughts about it. I remember hearing most of the singles when I was in elementary school, and they were all just kinda fine. Space Bound was okay (other than that coked up line about love being ‘evil’ spelt backwards) and Not Afraid was sincerely underwhelming considering what it was going for.

It’d been diminishing returns for Em for years, so I’m not shocked he needed some time to get back on his feet. But there’s just not much to say about Recovery. I feel like Em was a lot prouder of it than anyone else.

6. Kamikaze (2018)

At some level, I feel like Kamikaze set itself up to fail. And it did pretty well in spite of that.

The album’s main selling point was that it was dissing everyone. Shady’s gonna name names, I remember hearing, as this album dropped right the fuck out of nowhere in the late summer of 2018. Diss track drama has never really been for me, since oftentimes it pits artists I like against one another over petty bullshit. And hearing that Em slammed people simply for disliking Revival only made me more nervous about what Kamikaze’s outcome would look like.

I’m glad to say it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

I’m sort of on the fence about this album. While I think it is punchy, and pretty fun lyrics-wise, it definitely doesn’t hold a candle to any of his older stuff. It doesn’t even really hold up against MMLP2. It’s less that I enjoy this album, and more that I enjoy the possibility of Eminem managing to pick himself up after Revival and move into the new age while still being himself.

Easily the worst moment on this album is Eminem calling Tyler the Creator the f-slur and even implying he’s pretending to be gay, which he has since apologized for. However, the scariest thing to me that the line represents is the possibility that Eminem’s personality is too anachronistic. That in an era of young-adult trap rappers with very experimental homemade beats, there’s no longer room for a famous, albeit angry man in his 40′s being backed by a studio. It’s the years of Soundcloud, where anyone can be a rapper, and someone as old and frankly polarizing as Eminem may never truly have the limelight again.

Em’s style has simply fallen behind the times and he will never be content with updating himself, because that isn’t who he is. And while I love that about him, I think it might speak disaster for his career.

I like the songs though.

5. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)

Now we’re getting into the good shit. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 starts off with a bang, the first song being Bad Guy, a direct sequel to Stan and an incredibly powerful sequel at that. Eminem asks questions about his fame, his identity, and most notably, he fucking gets murdered at the beginning of this album.

MMLP2 strips off all but one skit. No Paul Rosenberg cameo on this one. This was him getting serious after the relative failure of Encore and Relapse. This was, frankly, what Recovery should’ve sound like. With Berzerk being a fun sort of party hit, Rap God is what really got him back on the map. The song asserts his lyrical dominance. It is a brag track, and it earns that right.

Despite it being of incredibly high quality, this is nowhere near Em’s best work, which speaks highly for his track record. The fact that something this well-made is comparatively mediocre when put next to the top four is incredible to me. This album is more of a revival than Revival was. It’s Eminem reaching out of the dirt after being buried and yelling “Hey, I’m not dead yet!” It’s the hearbeat running through a comatose body as they return to consciousness.

But when it comes down to it, I love what this album represents to me more than its content. Aside from Berzerk, Bad Guy and Rap God, none of the songs really stand out either way. It’s all good, of course, but none of it can match up to his older work. Regardless, this album means a lot to me on a spiritual level. Whenever I listen to this I feel like a proud parent, and Em is my son who just completely crushed his elementary school talent show.

It’s a good feeling.

4. Relapse (2009)

At this point it was sort of like picking my favorite child. My number one is obvious, but deciding how to order these three was trouble.

People will probably argue with me saying that Relapse is one of Em’s best, but fuck that. This album is severely underrated among the fanbase, and is an incredibly powerful listen. This album is an auditory representation of rock bottom, in the best way possible.

This is one of the only albums to really define a split between Marshall and Slim Shady, with Slim being a deep-voiced demon and Marshall being a fucked-up middle-aged man who just came staggering out of a rehab center. The way the characters play off of one another is beautiful, Slim trying to manipulate Marshall into his ways and wiles. This also easily has the most horrorcore-type sound and content out of any Eminem album, with Slim occasionally playing the role of a serial killer, such as on 3 am or one of the standout tracks, Same Song & Dance. Insane tells a story possibly regarding Slim’s father, or maybe representative of something else entirely.

One of my few issues with this album, aside from We Made You of all things being one of the singles, is that one of the best tracks is only on the deluxe edition. My Darling ties off the Slim and Marshall story in a nice little bow, plus Careful What You Wish For sweeping up all the themes and putting them in one place.

This album is beautiful, it’s cinematic in a way. It’s deep and powerful and incredibly, incredibly scary, with Em at his lowest point in his life and career. Sadly, it was not well-received critically, which I think is a shame. Clearly they weren’t seeing what I see.

3. The Eminem Show (2002)

Screw Revival, this is easily Em’s most politically powerful album yet. I listened to this whole thing on a boombox I got at Best Buy for 20 dollars and I felt like I had fucking transcended.

This album pulls out all the stops, immediately starting out on White America, a song so goddamn strong that every time little me heard it on the radio I immediately got down and lost my shit. I didn’t even understand what it was about, all I knew was that it was big and important. And it is.

While his first two big albums tried to be weird and threatening, The Eminem Show just wanted to be big, and talk about big things. Eminem fearlessly tears into heavily-charged concepts in White America, Say Goodbye Hollywood and Square Dance. Then on the flipside he aims the gun at himself on tracks like My Dad’s Gone Crazy, Cleanin’ Out My Closet and even Hailie’s Song. It’s a gut-punch of an album, this is where Eminem is truly fearless.

I’ll also say I feel this album is a little bit more accessible, weirdly enough, than Em’s earlier stuff. It’s much less crude and aggressive, but still carries his trademark style. It’s got the skits, he yells a lot still, but the topics are easier to swallow than his earlier albums. I’d say it’s a good entry-level Eminem album if you’re threatened by rape jokes and Em yelling the f-slur constantly. And unlike what Teens of Denial was for Car Seat Headrest, I feel like The Eminem Show manages to be that entry-level album without completely castrating Eminem’s lyrical content.

But even longtime fans can gain enjoyment from this album and how loud and proud it is, how fearless Eminem really is on this album. This one, more than anything, is the unfiltered Marshall Mathers experience. No filters, no jokes, just him and his daughter and Dr. Dre.

But easily the best part of this album is the DVD extras thing where you get a free episode of the Slim Shady Show. Fuck yeah.

2. The Slim Shady LP (1999)

The Slim Shady LP was Eminem’s first really successful work. It was also the first thing he ever put on a CD. Yeah, Infinite was on cassette only. And this album is fucking great. It’s a perfect debut for Eminem. It’s got his first big hit, My Name Is, and a myriad of other great tracks. It’s just good late 90′s rap, with fun beats and interesting lyrics. As much as I love SSLP, I don’t really like talking about it because... yeah, it’s good, I’m just never sure what else to say.

And that might make it sound like I like it less than The Eminem Show, but no, that’s not it. As much as I think political Em is great, I’ll forever prefer nasty rat boy Em any day. This is the Em that inspires me the most, the grody, crude one that reminds me of myself. Best tracks include 97 Bonnie and Clyde, Bad Meets Evil and of course My Name Is. This is also the only album where Ken Kaniff is played by Aristotle. There’s your fun fact for the day.

1. The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

FUCK everyone else, I respect YOU!

The Marshall Mathers LP is a defining rap album. It’s lyrical perfection, the hooks are god-tier, and it is without contest the best Eminem album of all time. I doubt he’ll ever top this, and if he does it’ll probably break space-time.

MMLP ticks all the boxes an Eminem album usually should. It’s quirky, it’s comedic, it’s dark, it’s angry, it’s violent, it’s everything I could want and more. But beyond that, it’s the thing that really proved what Eminem can do. He can tell stories, he can do lyrics, he can flow, he has good beats, he can murder his ex-girlfriend, he can get his own songs censored on the uncensored version of his album, he can do it all.

The songs on this just put me in a good mood. Even though they’re horrible, and I don’t mean they’re bad songs. The content is absolutely fucked, this album is not for the faint of heart. But it makes me feel represented, not for being gay, trans, mentally ill or short, but for being a fucked-up weirdo who lived a fucked-up life and just wants to scream and lose his shit. More than anything, this feels like an album that’s there for me, for better or for worse.

The standouts on this album in my opinion are the two “named” tracks, Kim and Stan. These tracks are incredibly disturbing, but they both mean a lot to me and are incredibly written and acted. The Real Slim Shady is still an amazing single with an awesome, hopping beat. I’m Back is incredibly solid, Criminal is cleverly contradictory, every track on this album is great without any misses. If there were enough words in the English language to describe how much I love this album, I’d probably use all of them.

This album couldn’t exist today. If this came out today, it’d probably be thrown to the wayside for a myriad of reasons. It’s too late 90′s, it’s too dark, it’s “problematic”, we have like 500 white rappers now, but for the record: Anyone who writes this kind of music today owes it to Eminem, ESPECIALLY all of the white rappers who insist they’re better than him. (Looking at you, MGK.) Even if he’s not doing that great now, even if you don’t like him, it’d be foolish to not acknowledge what MMLP did for rap. And not only was it influential, but it still holds up to this very day.

So there you have it. All of Eminem’s full albums (besides Infinite oopsies) listed from worst to best. Have any differing opinions? Leave a reply. Just be polite, you filthy animal.

#worst to best #eminem #music review #music criticism #panda posts

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