who could stay? (you could stay.) (eddie munson x reader)

summary: you're convinced that being loved comes with a cost. he finds a way to prove you wrong. (wc: 9.7k+)

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Keep going, keep going, keep going. 

Agree to run that errand for someone. Offer a shoulder to cry on for that person. Fix that problem for this friend. Keep going, keep offering, keep becoming indispensable. 

You couldn’t pinpoint the exact age you’d figured out the formula. You can never know for sure if the day was sunny or if it were rainy, if it were a calm December morning or a buzzing July night, but those details aren’t very important. The only important detail is that you had finally cracked the code at some point – you had finally figured out the solution to feeling unlovable. And that was that, truthfully, there wasn’t a solution. Once you were destined to feel this way, to feel so sour at your core, there is no easy way to rid yourself of that rotten pit. It would always be there – always churning, always burning, always yearning. Yearning to be loved, yearning to feel those waves of warmth cascading over your brain and down your spine, the ones others had always described to you but you’d just never… experienced. Never became familiar with.

It felt like everyone was playing an over-elaborate prank on you. They’d all conspired against you, invented a false feeling in which someone claims to feel loved, only to sit back and watch as you fumbled to find it. They’d laughed as you dug through a graveyard of relationships, caked your fingernails with dirt as you sobbed and would continue to claw deeper, trying to find just one set of bones that might hold that warmth for you. 

The only solution to that detrimental feeling of being unlovable, was to feel needed. 

You needed to feel so necessary, so essential, to everyone around you at all times. It never mattered how much of you it took. You’d give away every piece of yourself a million times over just to feel wanted at some capacity, even if that capacity were one you’d forced upon the other person. You didn’t care if you’d built the glass cages of theirs – you just cared that they kept you around to wipe away any smudges that appeared. 

Being wanted wasn’t quite the same as being loved. And if you thought about that for too long or too often, you might just break irrevocably. 

“I just don’t understand him,” Nancy sighs from the head of your bed, reclining against a wall of pillows you’d lined your headboard with. Two of which were body pillows. Long tubes of fluff to try and fill lonely spaces, you suppose, “Why didn’t he just tell me he didn’t want to go to the same college? Why… Why do I feel like I am forcing him to be with me?” 

Because you are. Just like I force you all to need me. 

“I don’t know, Nance.” 

That bland, bitter, half-thought out answer lingers on your tongue, almost burns your throat with the whisper of say more, say something useful, say something comforting. It’s the whisper of those four words not being enough. It’s the whisper of that threat that those four words could be the beginning of the end, the thing that makes Nancy realize she doesn’t need you. 

After all, what use is a friend that can’t give good advice, or be supportive during relationship rants? 

You open your mouth to add on something sweeter, something to coat the conversation like honey and smooth out the lines forming on Nancy’s forehead, but she beats you to it, “I’m sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I?” 

Yes. “It’s fine,” at least that wasn’t a lie – you’d dug this specific grave, had rooted down tooth and nail only to find another empty coffin of a friendship curtained with want instead of love. You’d all but asked for this, “What he did really was shitty. It’s not fair to you.” 

The words are almost robotic, telling Nancy Wheeler what she wants to hear rather than what she needs to hear.  You don’t always do that, you do make a point of investing in the truth from time to time to truly secure your position as someone who is genuinely needed in her life, but the headache nagging at your temples tells you it’s not worth the fight tonight. You’re tired, you’re agitated, and you really just want to get Nancy to the point of contentment in her rambling so that you can send her on her way. 

God, you’re an awful friend. 

It turns you quiet, a ricocheting thought that bruises your inner skull the rest of the time Nancy sits on your bed. The guilt eats you alive for that moment of irritation the rest of the night. Even after Nancy goes home, even after you’ve brushed your teeth and you’ve tucked yourself into bed. The guilt gnaws on the edges of that emptiness inside of you, that ever-present black hole that already existed, and says this is why you cannot be loved. 

Maybe the pity party for feeling like a bad friend is what makes you a bad friend. 

And maybe if you were a better friend, you would be loved instead of wanted for once. 

It’s all part of a cycle, never-ending and treacherous. It’s always been this way. You make promises to your friends and rip yourself to shreds before remolding yourself into whatever they need; giving rides to the younger kids within your circle to the pool all summer which evolved into taking turns with Steve as to who would pick them all up after their D&D club ran late every Friday night, always lending a listening ear to Nancy once Johnathan moved away and she’d had to witness her relationship and her love vanishing in real time, always being the one person who will listen to Robin ramble for hours about her sudden interests. None of it was born of ill-intent, but when you’d go home lonesome at the end of the night, you could see it all for what it was. 

You were trying to fill a void. A hollow rot, a black hole. And it was only working half the time. 

Half the time, until he came along. 

And make no mistake, his arrival was as bloody as anyone who had previously entered your life. For a while there, you believed his headstone was at the end of the line already, sanctioned away in this graveyard of the ability to be loved. He came crashing into your life on a random Friday night, and you had sworn you could already see the end as it began, but you had been wrong. 

“So, you’re the infamous babysitter.” 

His voice caught you off guard. You’d been sitting in your car with your windows down, enjoying the reprieve of a cooling autumn evening as you waited for the boys to finish up with their D&D club. With your head buried in the latest sci-fi novel that Dustin had recommended and would no doubt be grilling you on once he got in the car, you hadn’t even heard the club exit the school. 

“Nope,” you fought a smile as you glanced up from the pages to see an older guy standing there, closer to yours and Steve’s age than the kids. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that this was the famous Eddie all the boys would ramble on about for hours on end, “Harrington’s the babysitter. I’m just the taxi driver.” 

There was something particularly pretty in the way he threw his head back with laughter at your words. Curls that messily fell just beyond his shoulders, full lips disappearing as his teeth peeked through and shined beneath the parking lot’s lamp posts. His denim vest looked purposefully distressed with a mirage of patches and pins, and he was wearing a leather jacket beneath it, even if it wasn’t quite cold enough for it yet outside. He was cute – and watching him laugh because of you sparked something irreversible inside of you. 

“C’mon now,” he sighed as his cackles quieted, “Give yourself more credit than that. At least call yourself something fancy, like ‘chauffeur’.” 

“Ah, but ‘taxi driver’ insinuates that I charge them,” you don’t miss a beat, and your quick wit has him chuckling again. 

You caught sight of his eyes, corners creased with joy – brown. They were deep, russet, tantalizing brown. Almost indiscernible from his pupil in the dark. 

“I’m Eddie, by the way.”

You took his hand that he shoved through your open window with ease, and felt an immediate shiver run down your spine. Not quite from the cold, but not quite warm. You saw the first flash of his grave, and you knew you’d be digging your greedy hands into it soon enough. 

As you gave him your name in return, you knew you wouldn’t be leaving well enough alone. 

You had been half right that night. You wouldn’t be leaving well enough alone, you would be seeking out the impossible from Eddie – but so would he. 

It quickly became apparent that Eddie was a pest. Someone who weaseled his way into the lives of others, who made his presence felt and never forgotten. 

You’d started with the same slow dance as you did with every new person, a hesitant dipping of your toes into their waters, unsure if your presence in their life would only cause more trouble than you’re worth, when you quickly discovered that nothing could ever be hesitant or slow with Eddie Munson. He’s the one constantly reaching out to you. Driving the kids home now takes double the time it used to, long conversations being had with him that has the kids dragging you away, practically begging to just be taken home. The day he’d asked for your number, you couldn’t tell which one of you burned brighter red. And the moment he had your number in his clutches? Forget about it. You never heard the end of Eddie Munson, and you never really wanted to. 

Unlike your friends you already had and loved deeply, Eddie was observant. 

It’s within the first month of knowing you that he had picked up on your insecurities. Maybe he hadn’t directly seen that gaping hole in your chest yet, but he noticed your habit of running yourself dry to see others thrive. 

The need to be needed. He picked up on it quickly. 

“What about Sunday?” Eddie’s voice traveled over the line as you laid on your stomach, stretched out across your bed for a few moments of rest before you had to get up and take the cookies you’d baked for Steve and Robin into Family Video, just like you had promised, “I’m free then if I finish all my fuckin’ homework on Saturday night.”

Surprisingly, that phone call with Eddie hadn’t been something expected or planned. It had been impulsive; in a rare moment of peace, you found yourself craving to hear his voice. Somehow, the two of you had ended up trying to figure out a free day to properly hang out. Eddie wanted to go to Benny’s for milkshakes, and you wouldn’t turn down the free fries he also promised.

“I can’t,” you paused just to hear his predictably dramatic sigh, grinning as you continued to explain, “I’m taking Max to the skatepark that day.”

“And it’s going to take all day?” 

“It could!”

“There’s absolutely no way.”

“You clearly haven’t seen that girl skate.” 

The conversation continued, light-hearted enough with plentiful jokes made. Something about talking with Eddie made your heart lighter, the usual unbearable and contradictory weight of emptiness no longer on your mind as you listened to him ramble about something that had happened in one of his classes – a teacher tried to embarrass him when he caught Eddie doodling for a D&D campaign by asking him a question, not expecting him to know the answer. Eddie had, of course, leaving the teacher baffled with a smirk.

 It’s all about my charm, sweetheart, he responded when you asked how he hadn’t earned a detention from that. 

Only towards the end of the call, when the conversation finally lulled and the two of you found yourselves settled into a comfortable silence, did Eddie finally circle back to the beginning of your conversation. 

“You know,” he started, “When I first met you, I never took you to be someone so…”

“Amazing? Wonderful? Funny?” you jokingly attempted to finish his sentence.

“Busy.” 

Oh. You hadn’t expected that one. 

“Busy?” you repeated back to him, “I’m not that busy.” 

Your mind immediately started racing with thoughts of what he had meant. Was he feeling neglected? Maybe you should have canceled on Max on Sunday, agreed to Benny’s with him instead. No, you couldn’t bear Max’s disappointment. Maybe you could tell Max you had a time constraint, even though you knew she hated those when it came to her skating days. Was there any other plans you could abandon? Anyone else you could bear to let down for the sake of not leaving Eddie high and dry? No, no – all your other weekend plans involved going to the movies with Robin, helping Steve look into colleges finally, taking the boys to the Starcourt mall to shop for supplies to make figurines for their newest campaign. The room was suddenly getting smaller, your chest constricting, your head spinning. You couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing any of those people, no, but what about Eddie? Maybe he was right in feeling neglected, maybe you deserved whatever guilt was to come from whatever his next words would be. He was your friend, you were supposed to make time for h-

“Sweetheart,” he scoffed over the line, and you swore you heart stopped right then and there, “You’re the highest thing in demand since Cabbage Patch Kids last Christmas – and trust me, I should know how in demand those fuckers were. I worked seasonally at the mall, remember?” 

Your breath caught. He was feeling neglected. You weakly began your apology as tears were already filling your eyes, that panic turning over itself in your gut, “I’m-”

“And it’s not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong,” It’s clear your voice had been too soft, too weak, for him to hear you, “Just means I’ve gotta fight harder to be worth your time, am I right?” 

You had to clear your throat, but it did nothing to subsidize that anxiety that rattled your bones. It’s blatantly evident as your voice shook with a second attempt at an apology, “I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean- I can… I’ll… Just tell me when for Benny’s. I can make it work, I swear-”

“Woah, woah, woah.” 

He had to have heard the tears that had escaped down your cheeks. The shake of your breath as you’d stuttered over your words, grasping for a solution. 

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” his voice was soothing and soft, the most gentle it had been the entire night. You pinched your eyes shut and just tried to imagine those stupid, big doe eyes, those ungodly messy curls (you’d started to tease him about if he ever even brushed or combed them). The panic remained, but Eddie’s voice started to give it a run for its money, “I was just playing around. You know that, right?” he paused to give you room to answer, but your throat was still tightly squeezed by overwhelming emotion, overwhelming fear of having scorned Eddie, “You could only have enough time in your schedule to see me once a year, and I’d still be your friend. We could only have these random phone calls, even if they were never longer than a minute, and you’d still be worth it. You know that, right?” Another pause, another wave of silence from your end, “Sweetheart, you don’t owe me your time. And I don’t need monopoly over it for us to be okay.” 

Each word made the panic settle. You weren’t sure how he did it. You weren’t sure how mortified you should be that he had only been in your life for a month at most, and had just overheard you at your most vulnerable. 

All you were sure of was that you believed him. 

“Okay,” you croaked, finally feeling that ring of fear loosen, vocal chords finally functioning once more. 

“Okay,” Eddie repeated back in that same gentle, soothing, soft tone. 

You weren’t disappointing him. You weren’t making him feel neglected. He still found use for you, he still wanted you around – he still needed your friendship. That had to be enough.  

It was quiet over the line for a few moments. 

It has to be enough, you reminded yourself. 

“Say,” you finally said, voice back to normal strength and the tears having dried themselves up for the most part. Your heart had almost returned to normal rhythm, “How does Benny’s sound tonight?”

“Tonight?” he chimed back, sounding as excited as a little kid the morning of a cherished holiday, something like Christmas. 

A shiver ran down your spine. It’s not from the cold, and you tell yourself it’s not quite warmth – it can’t be warmth. 

“Tonight,” you confirmed, “With a detour by Family Video, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a special delivery of cookies to fulfill.” 

“What kind?”

“Excuse me?” 

You were grinning - God, you were a pathetic fool, grinning and clutching onto that phone like a lifeline. Like if you let go of it, you’d lose his voice, and if you lost his voice, that would be the end of the world. 

“What kind of cookies?”

“Chocolate chip.”

He hummed, not answering right away as if he were deliberating this information. When he finally spoke again, another shiver wrapped around your spine, spinning down, down down. Waves of what you almost believed were warmth. “Okay. I suppose I can be your taxi driver, for a price.”

“What’s your price?” 

“One cookie.”

“Deal.”

It had to be enough, because you were still clutching that telephone tightly to your cheek, long after the phone call ended with Eddie’s promise of being at your house soon enough. It had to be enough, because after that night, it became clear; the world would not end with the loss of just Eddie’s voice from your life, but the loss of Eddie, period. It was the first night of many in which you played a very, very dangerous game. 

Even with Nancy gone, you felt restless. You couldn’t help but linger just a little longer in all that self-pity, still replaying the night and all you could have done differently. 

Had she caught on with how out of it you had been? Had she seen through your act and immediately assumed the worst – assumed you weren’t worth keeping around? 

The thoughts might be an overreaction. 

You were definitely overreacting. 

You didn’t really care that you were overreacting, though, because you really couldn’t control it. It was just another dark path you couldn’t stop your mind from traveling down. It was endless, and it was lonesome, and… and it was just normal. What should be devolving into a panic attack can only settle like an emptiness deep within your chest; you’ve been staring at the blank wall of your living room for so long without blinking, your eyes have gone dry. 

A pattern. That’s what the therapist said. You had a pattern for overthinking these interactions, for projecting feelings onto others that didn’t exist. You think all your friends hate you, you think that a stranger found your smile to be more of a grimace, you think your mom hasn’t called in months because she recognizes you as a failure finally. But none of it is actually what those people think. It’s like a mirror – you look into the eyes of others, and you see all your own insecurities reflected back. 

She’d asked you to work on it. To take a step back and just breathe, just remind yourself of that, whenever this happens. You’d decide whether you’d mention this minor slip up later. For now, you were going to wallow. You were going to spiral with just you, this damn blank wall, and maybe even the bottle of wine in the fridge. 

Yes, your mind was made up, and you force yourself to stand from the couch and wander into the kitchen, eyes still dry and chest still caving in on itself as you open the fridge. 

That’s as far as you get. Your fridge is wide open, the bright luminescent light flooding your kitchen floor in time with the trickling chill that sneaks up on your warm cheeks and already numb toes, when you spot it. 

A box of takeout. It’s old enough now you could throw it out, you had known the moment he’d taken the last of his meal to-go that he wouldn’t finish it. Teased him about it, even. But he was stubborn and you weren’t capable of turning down the opportunity to let another piece of him, another flash of evidence of his place in your life, occupy this apartment. So there it sat, a half-eaten burger he hadn’t revisited. 

But he had revisited the apartment – revisited you. He’d been here every night this week, and you’d practically had to shove him out on the street to get him to leave this morning to get to work on time. 

The edges of that emptiness that weighs down your insides blur, already lightening microscopically as you slam shut the fridge and forgo the wine completely to grab the phone instead.

“You don’t have to always take care of everyone, you know,” he murmured as he joined you in the kitchen to retrieve popcorn for the gang, everyone gathered in the living room for a movie night. 

“Pardon?” you asked, hardly glancing over your shoulder as you punched in the designated time for the microwave to turn the kernels into an easy, mouth-watering snack of butter and crunch. 

“You always take care of everyone. You don’t have to.”

His words rang clearer that time, loud enough to have stopped you in your tracks. You paused mid-reach, the cabinet for the Harrington’s bowls wide open and shelves nearly too tall for you. 

“I-” you weren’t sure exactly what to say, “What do you mean?” 

His brows scrunched, eyes having narrowed in the slightest in your direction, “Please don’t play dumb right now.” 

“I’m not playing dumb. I’m trying to get popcorn for our movie night,” you waved your hand towards the shelves lined with bowls for emphasis on your point, “That’s not really taking care of everyone – it was just being polite. Steve’s hosting, it’s the least I can do.” 

“The least you can do? The least you can do is actually just sit with friends, enjoy the movie,” the crease between his brow deepened, eyeing you with an unfamiliar concern. You shifted beneath the weight of his gaze. 

You don’t know what to say. Except, “It’s not that serious.” 

He scoffed, and you nearly flinched from it. Fear threatened to bubble up – he’s upset, he’s getting irritated at you. He’s getting tired of you. 

You waited for him to say something more as the buzz of the microwave filled the tense space, but he remained silent. Brooding. 

“What?” your voice shook, your entire being torn between succumbing to all that fear and anxiety in upsetting him further and that voice in the back of your mind that urged you to push him, to hear what he really thought. “I know you have something more to say.” 

“In the six months I’ve known you, you haven’t taken a single break for yourself.” 

He met your push, stood his ground and didn’t let it put any distance between you two. It felt like a goddamn revelation, right there in the Harrington kitchen. 

“I take plenty of breaks, Eddie,” you tried to laugh off, “I do spend time away from you all, hard as that may be to belie-”

“Hardly,” he cut you off as sharply as the first resonating pop that echoed from the microwave. 

“What’s your point? I just like being around you guys. Like I said, it’s not that serious.”

This was the part where the distance would happen. You kept pushing, took the inch he’d given you to bite back and ran with it. Normally, you avoided conflict with any of your friends vehemently. Always afraid, always assuming the relationships to be so fragile and so delicate. You would take such care in never giving them a reason to hate you that you’d never taken to a battleground before.

But there had been a look in Eddie’s eyes that night. A shine that, breaking through all the worry for you, whispered, fight with me. Stand your ground with me. I’ll still call you tomorrow, no matter what words we exchange tonight. 

A safety net had formed that you’d never even noticed. That delicacy wasn’t needed here. You could pick up the sword, there in that kitchen, and it wouldn’t turn Eddie to smoke and shadows. 

“My point is…” he paused, he swallowed hard, he exhibited the delicacy that was usually expected from you, “You can like being around us. But you should put yourself first. At least once. At least on movie night.” 

“How is me making popcorn not putting myself first?” you got the question out, you took a deep breath, ready to go on some sort of defensive tirade for your habit you were well aware of.

He beat you to it, “Every day last week, you only got three hours of sleep, at most, before your shifts. You gave up sleep to hang out with us all way too late, refused to throw in the towel and go home before anyone else.”

“I could have napped-” 

“You didn’t nap,” he stressed, taking a step closer to you. The popping of the snack turning in the microwave was erratic, mere seconds left on the timer. Static noise to the conversation at hand, “I know you didn’t fucking nap after your shifts because you were immediately running errands for everyone else, or hanging out again. You offered to give Robin a ride to work every single day, and her shifts start… what, an hour after yours ended? And then you had to give her rides home, right? But in those hours she was at work, you were helping Dustin with an essay for school – that little fucker told me all about it. You were awake when Johnathan called you and we were all stoned off our asses, went and got us food we didn’t need but still wanted. We didn’t even expect you to pick up, you know? I told them, I swore to them, you wouldn’t pick up. You had a morning shift. You were scheduled literal hours from when we called you. But you picked up. You fucking picked up, and you went and got the fucking food for us fucking idiots.”

Your brain completely malfunctioned. You couldn’t comprehend how he was saying all of these things that should be good things, things that proved you were needed and you were reliable, but with such venom in his tone. 

Anger had sparked within you as you pictured how giddy Dustin had been over the B he’d earned on his essay, that sincere appreciation on Robin’s face every time she left your car last week, the dopey grin that Argyle had worn when you’d arrived with their food order in your pajamas. All previously things to fuel you, filling that aching hole inside of you, now being tarnished because he was concerned.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you seethed at him, “Would you prefer I hadn’t been awake? Would you prefer I let Dustin just… get a fucking F on that essay? Or Robin walks to work?” 

“Yes!” 

You were both shocked at the sudden volume in your voices. The quickness in his reply. The quiver in your lip. 

“Yes,” he breathed out, quieter this time, “I would prefer those things if it meant you were taking care of yourself. The word ‘no’ should be in your vocabulary, sweetheart. I… The world doesn’t end just because you don’t constantly make yourself available.”

But you all needing me might.

“Just… just…” your breaths came out in huffs, eyes downcast and unwilling to meet Eddie’s stare. A final push, and it came out more fragile than you’d ever intended, “Just mind your business, Eddie.” 

He opened his mouth to say more, but the microwave started to go off, signaling what you saw as the end of the conversation – the fight. You’d raised your voice at him, you’d swung that sword in his direction, and he hadn’t vanished. His friendship – he – wasn’t as breakable as you’d thought. 

You spun on your heel, you took the popcorn out and divided it into bowls for the group, busying your hands in any way possible. All the while, he never left the kitchen. He stood just feet away from you and let you do what needed to be done, and only stopped you as you turned to exit the kitchen with the snacks acquired. 

His hand caught onto your elbow, “You have bags.” 

“Excuse me?”

“You have bags under your eyes,” he elaborated. He no longer looked frustrated, but defeated, a morose distress pinching the edges of his feature.

“Jesus,” you were now scoffing, adjusting your grip on those bowls, “You really know how to compliment a girl, don’t you?”

“They’ve been there for months,” his grip refused to loosen, thumb trailing over the crease in your arm, “Please don’t run yourself into the ground.” 

You gave him a cold shoulder as you left him behind to rejoin your friends, unable to shake his consternation. It was so genuine, it terrified you. It made your insides churn, it turned your anxious attachment to dust. 

It made a shiver of warmth travel down your spine. 

The empty space beside you on the couch only remained for seconds after you’d passed around the bowls, keeping one for yourself. He was back there, back at your side, as if the two of you hadn’t just exited a battle ground. As if a stand-off hadn’t just occurred, as if it all hadn’t ended in a draw. 

He looked at you with those eyes.

Fight with me. Stand your ground with me. Don’t walk away from me. I will still call tomorrow.

He did more than call that night. As the movie started, he didn’t so much as flinch when your head fell to his shoulder in exhaustion. He only tucked an arm around your shoulders, only shifted you to be more comfortable as you used him as a personal pillow. He glared at everyone in warning not to grill you on the plot of the movie when you’d awoke mildly disappointed, he’d let you sleep on the drive home. He never once brought the fight back up. 

And he still called the next day. 

After your shift, he was the first voice you heard after dragging your feet into your apartment. A brief apology was exchanged before it was back to business as usual between you two. And somewhere between his rambles, you fell asleep with your phone balanced half-haphazardly between your cheek and shoulder. You could only dream of the grin he wore when he’d hear your soft snores over the line, quieting down immediately to let you rest. He never hung up – he was content to sit on a hushed line if only for the assuredness that you were finally resting. 

The warmth no longer traveled down your spine, instead curling up timidly near that hole inside of you. You let it. 

“Munson residence!”

That warmth that had found home in your chest still remains to this day, rousing at Eddie’s voice over the line. It’s nearly enough to make you cry – the relief that floods you just by the sound of him and his endless chipper. His optimism that always seems to exist, even in contrast with those harsh edges he tries to portray. 

“Eddie,” you whisper, as if you’re not the only one in your apartment, “Can you… Are you free?” 

Even after a year, you still sometimes felt guilt, asking so much of him. Asking so much, and giving so little in return. 

But you weren’t the one who set that standard. Eddie had. Ferociously, fiercely, stubbornly. The insistence that you simply being was enough for him. 

“For you, sweetness?” he chuckles lowly. He recognizes your voice immediately; you never have to say it’s you calling. You could have shrugged it off as Caller ID, but you knew the Munson’s phone didn’t have that. No, he recognized you by voice only. He’d once joked that only you would one day be able to rouse him from the dead, based on the ‘sweet melody alone’. Recognition in death – you had managed to burrow your way so deeply into his life, you’d earned recognition in death. “Always. What’s up?” 

You could have just kept him on the phone. Had one of your infamous conversations about everything and nothing. Sat on the cold tiles of your kitchen and smiled like a child as you listened to him rant. But the cold chill of your lonesome apartment was becoming suffocating, and you remembered that take out in the fridge and the way one of his socks had ended up in your laundry last week. You remembered how you started keeping his favorite brand of beer in your fridge and how one of your pillows started to permanently smell like his aftershave.

He had a toothbrush in your bathroom. He had a key to your apartment. He had a space, here, in this lonesome apartment. And all you had to do was beckon to him, and he would come to fill it. Always. 

“Can you come over?” 

You don’t even have to explain yourself. He complies readily, whispers out a soft yes in the voice you’d also recognize even in death, and promises to be there within ten minutes. 

He makes it within eight. 

And you’re still leaning on your kitchen counter, your head still swimming dangerously with all the different ways you’d let down Nancy. Once upon a time, you might have worried about inviting him over, worried that your anxieties and your short-comings might bleed into your relationship with him. In the beginning, it had been simple enough. You kept him at an arm’s length away the moment you realized you couldn’t make yourself needed to him, not out of selfishness but out of fear. Fear, because if he didn’t need you, why would he stick around? 

Because without need, if you did the wrong thing, there was no necessary thread tying them to you. Because without need, there was no chance for the day that you might find love in your grave robbings, and you couldn’t handle the thought of someone like Eddie Munson deciding you weren’t worth his time. 

It hadn’t occurred to you for a very long time that maybe, possibly, you’d been going around the concept of love with a very wrong mindset. 

Your safe place. That’s what the back of the van had become over these sticky summer nights – your safest refuge. 

It was always the same scene; Eddie on his back beside you, lazily nursing a joint, while you sat up reading passages of the latest book you two had embarked on together. Sometimes it was poetry, sometimes it was fantasy, and sometimes, it was just a reread. That night, it was a reread. The Hobbit. 

“‘I don’t see that this will help us much,’ said Thorin disappointedly after a glance. ‘I remember the mountain well-’” you recited off of the page, when Eddie suddenly sat up abruptly and snatched the book from you. 

“No, no, no!” he wagged his finger at you after he discarded his joint into the ashtray you’d made him start keeping in the fan, “Sweetheart, you’re doing the voices all wrong.” 

You rolled your eyes at him, reaching to take the book back, “Not all of us have a Dungeon Master voice to whip out, Munson. Give it back.” 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Do I need to say please? I’ll say please.” 

It was best like this. Just the two of you, away from everyone else. Some nights, the two of you hadn’t even needed a book to bond over. You’d just gaze at stars, or indulge in whatever weed he’d brought along with him. He never pressured you, though – if you shook your head at his offer of the joint, that was that. He seemed to apply that to most aspects of your friendship this last year. 

You never had to prove anything to him. He saw your worth as if it were glaringly obvious, as if it were as simple of a concept as breathing. No extra effort needed from your end. 

Just by being, you had managed to become something important to him. He needed you, if only because you were you. 

“The puppy dog eyes aren’t gonna work on me,” he snorted, shifting so that his shoulder pressed against your own. A warmth spreads from the point of contact. “Let the master show you how it’s done.” 

You tried to not let it show, but your grin was radiant. He was the master at those ridiculous voices, at theatrics and at bringing the story to life. You were transported from the shore of Lover’s Lake, in the back of that stuffy yet comforting van, to meadows of soft grass and hobbit holes of comfort. To a place where all the threats were mythical and all the expectations of you were released. 

You’d spent the week helping Steve finish up his college plans. His parents had tried to pressure him into picking his top three universities, but the moment he had confided in you that he might prefer a community college to begin, you’d held his hand as you guided him through the process. A rewarding process, have no doubt, but it had left you numb and reeling. Sharing someone else’s stress, shouldering their burdens – it had been a bit much.

You needed this. You needed Eddie’s ridiculous voices and the sharp press of his shoulder against your temple. 

“Falling asleep on me already?” he teased when he’d noticed how quiet you had gone. 

“Never,” you lied through a yawn that quickly exposed you. 

“Liar,” he huffed. You didn’t even need to glance up to confirm the smile you knew he wore. “We can head back home, if you need. I know it’s getting late-”

“No,” you quickly sat up, effectively making yourself dizzy, “No, I- It’s fine. I’m awake. I swear.”

“It’s okay that you were falling asleep,” he was quick to reach out, to tug you back down to his side, wrapping his arm around you to press you even closer than before, “I just don’t want to keep Cinderella out past Midnight.” 

“It’s barely ten.” 

“Nothing gets past you, Sherlock,” he scowled as you pressed your grin against his t-shirt clad shoulder, “I’m serious, though. Do I need to take you home?”

“No, Eddie. I’m good.”

“Swear it? Swear you don’t have an early shift, or some… some obligation?” 

“No shifts, no obligations.” 

“And if I just kidnap you for the weekend? Am I going to have an angry mob at my doorstep, demanding your service?” 

You smiled wider at the thought. The idea of him hiding you away, letting you live in this reprieve for the entire weekend. It was a nice thought, “I certainly wouldn’t complain.” 

And so the two of you sat there like that for an hour more. Eddie coming up with ridiculous tones for the various characters, you slipping in and out of consciousness as his warmth stayed wrapped around him. You don’t even notice when the warmth he’d planted in you finally covers up that hole inside of you, not even missing the absence of that emptiness until Eddie went quiet.

In the silence, you noticed it. 

The gash you’d grown accustomed to, the hole that had become an extra limb for you. Vanished. Gone. Disappeared without a trace.

It was a sudden and terrifying realization. Everything in you urged you to jump up, to scramble around you to find the darkness again, like a comfort blanket you couldn’t stand to lose. You went against the instinct, though, and rose slowly from Eddie’s hold. 

In lieu of scrambling, you peered at Eddie curiously. “Hey, Eds. Can I ask you something?” 

He nodded sleepily, almost as drowsy as you. You’re shocked when he shifts and instead of pulling you back to him, he opted to lay his head in your lap. 

That hole was still gone. The weight of his head on your thighs, the feeling of his breath on your bare thigh. For a moment, you can’t breathe. 

You’re warm. Not uncomfortably so, but encapsulated with an internal warmth. Like a fever spreading, the ice in your spine that you had lived with for years had begun to thaw. 

“Why do you keep me around?” you whispered, still sitting stiffly, staring in awe down at the way he just nuzzled his face into your lap.

With his eyes still closed, face smooth from any worry from the question, he mumbled, “What do you mean?” 

You only hesitated due to the thought crossing your mind; what if you bringing this up reminds him? 

You thought back to the night in Harrington’s kitchen. The push and the pull, the bloody battle and the way he still called.

He was not as delicate as you took him for. 

“I- What do you get out of this?” you couldn’t figure out how to phrase it correctly. You knew what you got out of this, but what does he get? 

“Get out of what?” 

“Get out of keeping me around.”

His eyes finally opened, twisting in your lap so that he could stare up at you. “You say that as if you’re forcing me to be your friend.” 

I could be, that nagging voice in your mind whispered. You could very well be forcing him, and just be blinded because you were enjoying the summer of warmth that he carried with him too much to let him go. 

“You never let me do anything for you,” you sighed, fingers finding themselves tangled in his roots against better judgment. But you needed to touch him, to ground yourself, as you admitted this hard truth, “You do shit for me all the time. You drive all the way out to this lake just because I complain about everything being too much. You’ve started playing chauffeur for the kids to give me a break. Harrington said you even offered to look at college brochures with him. And…. And I’m not stupid, Eds,” your voice shook as you looked down at him, a sudden feeling of undeserving striking you in your chest, “You do so much for me lately. And you don’t ask for anything in return – you don’t let me do anything in return. Why?”

His smile twisted with a hint of sadness, and brown eyes met your gaze without so much as flinching, “Sweetheart, why do you think you have to repay me for that stuff?”

“I-”

“No, hear me out,” he reached up, taking your hand out of his hair and lacing his fingers with yours, slowly dragging it down to rest on his sternum, “I chose to do that stuff. And, yeah, maybe I was trying to take some of that shit off your plate. But you didn’t ask me to. I chose to. I wanted to do those things, do nice things for you, because you won’t let anyone else.” 

You bit back a scoff, “I let people do nice things for me-”

“You really don’t,” his hold on your hand tightened, “You really, really don’t. You constantly…. You just, you take care of everyone else, but you act afraid to let someone take care of you. People are allowed to take care of you, too, y’know? You should let them. They love you – they want to take care of you, just like you take care of them.” 

They love you. 

The air drained from your lungs in a slow, silent sigh. You waited a few minutes, but the oxygen never replenished as you tried to grasp his words. 

They love you. 

Why would they love me? 

“Why wouldn’t they love you, sweetheart?” Eddie looked more concerned now, suddenly prepared to sit up and remove his head for your lap. But his hand still held yours tightly, still clung to you, “You know they love you, right? God, you gotta know that. We all love you.” 

You hadn’t realized you’d spoken the bitter thought out loud until he looked at you, utterly heartbroken, in complete disbelief. “I…”

No. I don’t know that. What have I done to deserve their love? 

“They need me, sure,” you started, narrowing your eyes at the breaks in the waves of Lover’s Lake, “I mean, I just try to make myself useful to them. It’s the least I can do when I… when they…” you struggled to get the words out. You saw that hole again, like a light at the end of the tunnel, but so far from the relief most mean by that metaphor. Something peeking around the corner, ready to devour you all over again. So you plunged, you prepared yourself for it to spring to life and take you whole as you nearly whimpered, “When they put up with me. It’s the least I can do when they put up with me.” 

“No one puts up with you,” Eddie’s voice cracked. You couldn’t even look him in the eyes. “Least of all me.” 

The deadliest of blows. He cracked your hardened surface with that, shook the foundations of every belief you’d held for eternity. 

“Most of all you,” you corrected without thinking, “God, I- Eddie, seriously. What reason do you have for keeping me around? I don’t know how the fuck you put up with m-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” you’d never heard him beg so painfully before then, “Please. Don’t… You want to know my reason?” you nodded numbly, finally looking to find him with wet eyes and lips pressed into a fine line, “Because you’re you. I… Fuck, I love you. I keep you around because you’re you. You’re good for me. Whether you believe it or not. You’re good for me just by being you, and there’s nothing you have to do to accomplish that,” you started to look away before he grabbed your cheeks, turning you to face him as he emphasized each word, “You don’t have to earn love. That’s not what love is. Got it?” 

You looked into his eyes, and saw all the soft declarations of love echoed back to you, even from the very start. 

‘Sweetheart, you don’t owe me your time. And I don’t need monopoly over it for us to be okay.’

‘The world doesn’t end just because you don’t constantly make yourself available.’

The entire time you’d been so worried about taking care of everyone else, he’d been worried about taking care of you. Endless late night phone calls, careful check-ins when he saw the exhaustion take the frontlines, sparse fights about putting yourself first. The only thing he ever wanted from you was for you to take care of yourself. 

While you were busy being there for everyone else, he was busy being there for you. 

He never once made you dig to the bottom of his grave to find the warmth. He’d handed it over on a silver platter. 

So how could you look him in his at that moment, and tell him that you didn’t ‘get it’? That you’d never been sure if what you were seeking from your friends was really love? That, really, you’d given up on being loved a long time ago, assuming it was asking too much? 

How do you look him in his eyes in that moment and tell him you had long since declared yourself unlovable? 

He didn’t make you say it. Only kept your cheeks pressed between his palms, as he leaned forward, forehead meeting yours and whispering words for only you, “I love you, no strings attached. You’re my… friend. I love you. Okay?”  

No one had ever fought so valiantly to get the point across. Not just that night at the lake, but in the entirety of his friendship with you. 

The hole slinked back behind the corner. The darkness decided it could wait another day. And in its place, warm brown eyes filled the void. Whether he even realized it or not. 

You nearly believed him. Nearly. But you bit down hard on that belief, throwing it out of sight, and instead of echoing back the ‘okay’ you assumed he was seeking out, all you did was sob out another, “Why?” 

When you collapsed into him, he held you. Your sobs remained dry, your confusion palpable as you clung to him and tried to let that belief envelope you like his arms had. 

I love you. 

How could someone love you? 

He didn’t press it the way you thought he would. He didn’t scold you for continuing to question him and he didn’t lash out at your disbelief. 

He just held you. Letting your face press into his neck as his fingers ran up and down your spine, giving it a moment before he started talking again. 

“Your humor,” he hummed after a couple moments of silence, heavy breathing eventually evening out. 

“What?”

“The way you take care of others,” he continued on like he hadn’t heard you, “That spark you get in your eyes when you tell someone about something good. A favorite book, movie, story from your day – whatever it is. The way you give the best hugs – and you don’t give me them nearly often enough. The way you snore, and the way you definitely deny snoring.” 

You opened your mouth, about to lift your head and argue with him, but he just placed an encouraging palm on the back of your head to keep you close to him. 

“The way your favorite color changes with the seasons. The way you only like artificial cherry flavoring, not the real stuff. The way you look at night when we’re driving and you’re just screaming your favorite lyrics. The way you look at me to see if a joke lands. The way you fuss about my wrinkled clothes, even when you also don’t care about the wrinkles in your own shirts. The way you take your coffee. The way you always offer to paint one of my nails to match yours. The way you treat your recipe for chocolate chip cookies like some top secret, government trade. But we both know it’s just some recipe from a cookbook you thrifted when you were ten. The way you get excited over the small things, like the cows we pass by on the way out here. They're always there, and you always point them out. The way you just… are.” 

He didn’t have to say it. He was answering your question. 

He was listing his whys. 

“You don’t have to earn it,” he didn’t say the word, not this time. You felt it, “It just… it’s there. It’s there and it’s not going anywhere. I’ll remind you of that every day if I have to.” 

Loved. For the first time ever, it felt like a possibility; to be loved. 

Eddie always knocks on your front door a certain way – a pattern he rarely strays from. But you can always tell. He’s the only fool who would find humor in knocking out such an annoying compilation of hits on the wooden panels until you finally unlatch the lock and open it to find him standing in your threshold. 

His hair is frizzy and in a low ponytail, wearing a baggy band shirt and plaid pajama pants. He greets you with such a wide smile, your chest aches. 

“Hey there, sweetness.” 

You don’t say a word, just drag him inside before you wrap your arms around his waist. Ever since that night, and his admittance of enjoying your hugs, you made a conscious effort to hug him more often. 

“Miss me?” he chuckles, and you feel the vibrations against your cheek as you softly pinch his side. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make him only laugh harder once you pull away. 

“Not at all,” you snark back as you make sure the door is securely shut and properly locked.

“Not even a little bit?”

“Nope.” 

He smacks a fist to his chest as if you had stabbed him with your words, “Ouch. You wound me, sweetheart.” 

“Get over it,” you tease. Your head has finally stopped swimming, your chest no longer tight with the fear of not being enough. Nancy is long forgotten as you say, “Have you eaten dinner?” 

“Depends,” he hums as he toes off his boots, “If you’re offering to buy me some, then no, I definitely did not eat spaghetti with Wayne right before you called.” 

You throw your head back laughing as he’s already making a beeline for your kitchen, digging out that damned takeout menu and reaching for the phone, already so sure of your order.

Knowing your order at restaurants. Without having to ask. Apparently, that was part of the whole ‘being loved’ gig. 

Adjusting has taken months. Since that night in Eddie’s van, he’d kept his word. Not a day went by without him finding a way to remind you, whether it be by direct words or small actions, that he loved you. You both kept it under that friendly guise. He loved you in that familiar way, the way the others supposedly loved you. A way you could manage to recognize some days. 

Other days were still rough. Days like today were still rough. 

The takeout is ordered and Eddie sets up camp on your couch, rambling about something that had happened during one of the DnD nights he still hosted with the kids. Something about a dumb decision Mike did that cost most of the group their character’s lives. You have a hard time following along, and he’s quick to pick up on it. 

“Hey, sweetheart?” he murmurs as you lean into the back couch cushion, smooshing your cheek as you watched him animatedly speak.

“Hm?”

“Bad day?” 

He never judged you for the rough days. He never judged you for the days you still couldn’t find the love, even after he worked so virtuously to show it to you. He may never understand it, that hollow ache that resided in your darkest corners and whispered that none of it was real, but it never deterred him.

He loved you on good days, and he especially loved you on bad days. 

You consider lying to him, but you can’t. Not when he looks at you so earnestly, “Yeah. It… yeah.” 

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks you, shuffling to be more comfortable where he sits as he motions for you to lay down. You do so immediately, head finding a home against his thigh and his fingers stroking over your cheek before they toy with the ends of your hair. 

All you can do is shake your head. You didn’t want to talk about that fear of failing Nancy as a friend, especially when you know that wasn’t her take away from it. It felt silly now; all that overthinking, when you know now if you questioned her on it, all she would have seen from the day was a friend lending a caring ear. You know because you had asked her about it once, if she found your listening habits too callous, upon Eddie’s insistence. 

She hadn’t. In fact, all she could do was thank you, had insisted that she was just grateful someone would listen to her ramblings. And you understood that, left it at that. 

“Okay,” he murmurs, voice so quiet you nearly miss it. His fingers continue to play across your shoulders now, barely weighted against bare skin, “That’s fine.” 

He didn’t mind if you didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t mind if you never spoke another word, if all you needed was him here. You just needed him close by and to sit with you, to make it all a little less much. 

Nothing. He needed absolutely nothing from you, asked nothing of you. Because you didn’t have to earn this. All you had to do was simply be, and he would provide this. 

Love. What an odd concept, to have found warmth in a grave you never even got the chance to dig your shovel into. 

“Hey, Eddie?” his fingers pause at your croaking voice. You smile at his stillness, at the way he hums carefully in response, still trying to offer the silence you quietly begged for, “I love you.” 

There’s more to unpack there. More than just familial love, more than just two friends that love each other without conditions. But tonight is not the night, and you both see that it is enough. There will be other nights to dig your claws in and to dissect what those three little words mean between you two. There will be other nights to consider how your other friends don’t have a permanent spare toothbrush on your bathroom counter or a space for their takeout in your fridge. But not tonight.

For tonight, this was enough. The quiet, and the warmth, the being was enough. 

“I love you,” he emphasizes the last word, leaning down and his lips grazing your temple. 

You notice the way he leaves off the too. He’d love you, even if you didn’t love him. You’d love him, even if he didn’t love you. Unconditional, no strings attached. A warmth you do not have to fight to earn. A rarity you never encountered before, and may never encounter again, but you have for tonight and for as long as he chooses to stick around. 

Your shovel sits abandoned in a shed in the distance. Your fingernails are clean of the dirt. The graveyard, it seems, would go another night without its robber. 

a prompt I hope you saw coming: McCree, sunning his butthole

I did my best to live up to this real-life comedy gold.

So this takes place very early on in the gang’s reunion, when they’re still training as a team and Hanzo/Genji are still a little tense with each other. (Hopefully I kind of conveyed that through context clues alone but just wanted to be sure since I didn’t want to spend a lot of time polishing this because I have lol zero time.)

I hope it TAINT bad.    : - D

-

The simulation is set: nine opponents, fourteen hazards and two environments. McCree figures the first will be blizzard—why else would Mei be up in the box, waving down at them with that innocent smile?—but he has no clue on the second.Probably it has something to do with Genji, since he’s over half an hour late.

“It’s not like him,” mutters Angela, a little too opaque to show any judgment.Hanzo’s judgment, however, is very clear; he snorts loud enough for even Winston to look over, and he’s all the way up in the box with Mei.“I’m sure he’s just puttin’ the finishing touches on things,” Jesse drawls, nudging his boot into the concrete to scratch an itch on his heel.

“My brother is not one for keeping to a schedule,” says Hanzo. The effort to keep any bitterness out of his tone must’ve been monumental.

Jesse’s a quickdraw with more than a gun, so he’s a little miffed when Reinhardt gets to be magnanimous before he can: “I have seen people change in greater ways and in far less time  than in our Genji.” He clasps a hand on Hanzo’s shoulder and Jesse feels even more miffed when the archer doesn’t bristle and brush Reinhardt away like his usual character would dictate. “Perhaps he will surprise you.”

Hanzo seems to hum and cough at the same time. Reinhardt takes his hand back and Jesse licks his teeth behind his lips. “Dunno ‘bout that, Rein. Dickin’ off to meditate is still dickin’ off.”But both Reinhardt and Hanzo give him looks of disappointment and displeasure, respectively. Jesse coos out air like the room is getting hot, looking up at nothing, then turns instead to Angela, who is masterfully ignoring the entire situation.

“You get those new bio-shots in yet, doc?”“Not yet. But the shipment should come any day now. It’s not unusual for that kind of order to take so long. I once tried to have two gallons of e-CTM delivered to a safe house in Bucharest and the driver—”“Oh thank Christ,” Jesse mutters when Genji jogs into the room.“Forgive my lateness,” says Genji. “Torbjorn had not yet finished our suits.”The whole team squints at him. “Suits?” says Reinhardt.

Genji sets down twin crates and hits a button on their sides to let them snap open. “Winston wanted me to set the environment today, so I decided on fire.”Hanzo scoffs even louder than before. Jesse gets the feeling there’s some joke he’s not in on.Reinhardt, ever doe-eyed, persists: “fire?”“Yes. But these suits are not fire-repellant. They are fire-attractive.”Angela actually sounds intrigued, if a tad apprehensive: “come again?”“They will attract fire.” Genji takes out a suit and holds it up; it looks like a Tour de France onesie, only with far shorter shorts. Jesse thinks he’d be shocked if they even cleared his inner thighs. “Particularly to the torso and head.”“Gotta be shittin’ me,” mutters Jesse, turning away, spurs clicking.“Ridiculous,” rumbles Hanzo.“I do not see why I deserve such dissent,” Genji says, his robotic voice a lofty, melodic drawl. “I have designed this course to mimic the eventuality of a burning building. Something most of you would have difficulty overcoming,” he adds with a carefree lilt and tilt of his head. He leans towards the room com link on the wall and holds down the button, carrying his voice to the box above as well as the entire room. “Winston, Mei—you’ll find the simulation code under command 12-A.”

“If you are selecting an environment in which you are already an expert,” Hanzo drawls back, his own voice the total opposite of carefree, “then what is the point of your participating?”“It will still be a challenge for me. I have not been in the position of having to assist other teammates during a battle for a long time.”“Yes,” Hanzo crosses his arms, and Jesse pre-winces before the man even finishes, “Your position is more often far behind enemy lines, getting yourself injured and then calling for help.”Genji crosses his arms, too, though he keeps his tone light. “Now, brother. That was long ago.”“So that has never happened, then?” Hanzo quickly fixes his intense gaze on Angela, who hesitates just one second too long; Hanzo looks back at Genji with the most superior smirk Jesse has ever seen.Genji rolls back one shoulder, seemingly unperturbed. It’s hard to tell with the mask. “Overwatch is based on teamwork. We have all been in the position of requiring help from time to time. That is the reality of working with others—something that you, perhaps, could benefit to learn.”“I have worked in groups many times, as you are well aware.”“And the general of a group, what is their position, often?”“I do not have to explain myself to you.”“No, you just need to adhere to the new order of things.”“You should adhere to—”“I can’t wear that!”Everyone turns to look at Jesse.

The gunslinger clears his throat—he hadn’t really meant to shout—and squares his hips towards Genji. “I can’t put that on.”Genji lowers his arms and puts one hand on his hip, obviously sensing another mutineer. “And why not?”“There’s no way those things ain’t gonna ride up my groin like they’re goin’ for a chokehold. You ever see those boxer-briefs where the legs are just a tad too short on a guy with big thighs? Turn into tighty-whities before you can—”“Oh, please,” says Angela, barely suppressing an amused, if a little grossed-out grin. “I’ve seen you wear far more uncomfortable things for a mission, Jesse. It will only be for a couple hours.”“Certainly!” Reinhardt half-lifts his axe, “Remember those wet-suits in the North Sea? I could hardly breathe! And we were in those all day. Also, my thighs are far—”“Well I wasn’t dealin’ with localized bodily damage at the time, Rein.”“Damage?” Angela looks him up and down. “Are you hurt?”“Naw,” Jesse pulls the brim of his hat down, which he quickly realizes he should not have done, because most of them know him well enough to take that as a clear signal that he is hiding something. “I mean… not in any… it wouldn’t interfere.”

“It seems to be interfering now,” says Genji.“Jesse, if you are injured, you cannot just keep it to yourself. What if we had to ship out today?”“Tell us what it is, Jesse,” says Winston over the room com. “Better to take care of it now.”“It don’t need takin’ care of!” Jesse grumbles, his voice growing louder without his consent. “I just… I can’t be wearin’ shit like that.”Genji looks at the suit still in his hand, then slowly back at Jesse, who feels all the hairs on his arms stand up. “Is it a…” He gestures vaguely to his own pelvic area.“No! Jesus. I mean… not in the way you’re…”

Jesse’s throat closes up as he realizes the deep, deep hole he’s dug under his own feet. Everyone is staring at him with varying levels of suspicion, except for Hanzo, whose face looks more like… alarm? Apprehension?

Jesse sighs. Just get it over with.

He mumbles under his breath.“Sorry?” says Angela. Genji takes a step closer.“I sun-burned my perinmhihmm,” Jesse mutters a little louder, still barely legible.“Wait,” says Genji, who physically removes the com-link from the wall and holds it up to Jesse’s mouth, holding down the button so that his voice echoes like God’s judgment. “Can you just,” the cyborg almost trips over his barely-suppressed laughter, “Can you repeat that please Jesse?”Jesse stares him dead in his green-lit visor and, in his most confident drawl, announces to the entire room: “my pucker hole is crazy burned.”

The laughter hits them all differently: Genji’s head flies backwards with a sharp bark that dissolves into ludicrous snorting, Reinhardt brays one loud note that bounces off the walls again and again, Angela covers her mouth and laughs until Jesse sees her whole face turn red, and Hanzo, also hiding his mouth with his hand, lets his chuckles mostly just shake around inside his chest. He’s the only one who doesn’t look away from Jesse.

“Alright.” Jesse looks up towards the box where Mei is leaning over a console as if having a heart attack and Winston is trying to make sure she’s okay through his own chortling. “Alright, now. Ain’t that goddamn funny.”“Are you shitting me?” Genji, barely able to stay upright, shakes his open hand fingertips-first at Jesse, “How? How could that have possibly happened?”“It’s… it’s a type a’yoga! Shit. You never heard of it?” Jesse puts his hands on his hips, decides he might as well own it. “S’called ‘perineum sunning.’” While Genji collapses into laughter all over again, he goes on, “S’all about absorbing the sun into your body through your… your grundle.” Genji is almost on the floor now, repeating the word ‘grundle’ to himself like it’s a holy mantra. “I been having, y’know, trouble sleepin’ and the like… thought it’d boost my auric field with the power o’the sun and whatnot. Keep my life force from leaking out and all.”Now Genji is repeating ‘leaking’ to himself in a very high-pitched voice while Angela, bless her, manages enough self-control to speak. “Joking aside… Jesse, that does sound serious. Have you… done anything…?”“No! What am I supposed to do? Stick a biotic emitter up there and hope for the best?”“N-no,” says Angela, still fighting giggles but blessedly stepping in front of Reinhardt and Genji, who are both using Reinhardt’s hammer as a kind of crutch for their hysterics. “But some burn ointment may help. Do you have any aloe vera?”Jesse snorts. “Yeah… probably in my kit somewhere.”“You should apply some. Perhaps… perhaps you should sit out this session to do so. We can… ping Lucio to replace you.”“God, yes, please,” Genji wheezes, “Please let’s bring Lucio out here.”Fully aware that Lucio is not really an appropriate replacement for what he brings to the table, Jesse grumbles a thank-you and turns heel for the door. But right before he exits (since Genji and Reinhardt are still laughing), he sticks his head back in to add: “it’s an ancient fuckin’ Taoist practice!”

-

An hour later, someone knocks at Jesse’s door. He almost ignores it, but at the second knock—faster, snappier—he gets up to at least see who it is. If it’s Genji and Lucio come to taunt him, he can at least open the door with his gun in his hand.But it’s Hanzo, standing all regal with his hands resting inside his kimono jacket. Obviously still amused but doing a good job of trying to hide it. A much more welcome sight, despite everything.

Jesse taps the door command and leans on the frame with as much swagger as he can muster. “Well hey there. Sim went by kinda quick, huh?”“Yes,” says Hanzo, those perfectly-shaped lips toying with a smirk, “It was difficult to achieve adequate team cohesion after your… announcement.”“Well, ain’t my fault we’re workin’ with a couple’a gigglin’ frat boys,” Jesse sighs, stepping aside.

The door hisses shut behind Hanzo, who immediately walks to the console. “Athena, cease surveillance of this room. Command three dash eight hundred and four.”“Confirmed,” says Athena.“Still don’t know how you managed to swipe Winston’s command codes,” chuckles Jesse.“It was a crime of necessity.” Hanzo comes up close, presses against Jesse’s front. Chin tipped up to smirk at him. “I don’t want anyone seeing or hearing what I do to you.”Jesse opens his mouth to agree, but Hanzo seizes that opportunity to plant his own mouth there, tugging down on the gunslinger’s chin to line them up. Their arms wrap, their bodies slot, and Jesse lets out a low rumble of pleasure. Hanzo kisses him slower and warmer than he has yet and the effect is melting. Time goes still and Jesse swears he hears a bird singing.

“Wha,” Jesse clears his throat, when it’s over, looks down at Hanzo from heavy-lidded eyes. “What was that for?”“For lying for me,” Hanzo hums. “I will admit,” He playfully unbuttons Jesse’s flannel shirt, “That was the most unorthodox way of getting out of having to show a hickey I have ever heard of, but I commend your creativity.”“Huh?”Hanzo gently pats Jesse’s cheek, still smiling. “Stay with me, cowboy. I appreciate you keeping our time together a secret. I do not know how the others would have reacted if they saw what I did to your thighs.”“Oh.” Jesse takes a half-step back, still loosely holding Hanzo by the elbow with one hand while the other scratches at a side-burn. “Well… yeah, Han. I know you wanna keep things quiet for now.”“It is for both our benefit,” Hanzo mutters into Jesse’s jaw. “It is… I have never done this before. Nothing like this. I want to take things slowly.”“O’course. I mean, I… y’know I’ve had a shaky run of things, too. Though I’d yell it from the top of the rock this afternoon, if you gave the go-ahead.”Hanzo chuckles, that warm, resonant rumble that Jesse is already falling a little bit in love with. “Perhaps someday.”As he goes to kiss down Jesse’s throat, the gunslinger coughs a little. “Well, there’s… I mean, there’s that, but…”Hanzo’s smile fades as he blinks up at Jesse. A shadow of worry crosses his face and Jesse’s heart spasms in pain. “But what?”Jesse sighs again, only with ten times more despair than in the simulation room.“But I really did burn my pucker hole.”There’s a moment in which Hanzo just stares with gently widened eyes, as if he doesn’t understand. Then a bubble of disbelieving laughter makes his chest contract. “You…” More chuckles bubbles up and Jesse thinks it’d be damn endearing, the way this usually self-controlled man can’t hold back his laughter, if he didn’t feel a very real burn of embarrassment spreading across his own face. Not to mention the burn between his ass cheeks.“You what?” Hanzo asks, as if he is really trying to give Jesse the benefit of the doubt here.

“I went down on you for nigh on an hour yesterday on the top of a cliff with my bare ass pointed at a 3pm sun in the goddamn Mediterranean, Han! What did you think was gonna happen?” Jesse pauses, his eyes fly off somewhere up and to the left, then come back to Hanzo with his tone even higher-pitched: “and you don’t think I’d come up with a better lie than that if I had to!?”

“I didn’t… I am sorry, I did not…” Hanzo is practically choking, his hand slapped up over his mouth again.Jesse sighs. He looks at Hanzo, with his shaking shoulders and his bouncing bang-hair, and a rueful half-smile breaks through his irritation. “S’okay, darlin’. You can laugh. It’s funny.”Then Hanzo lets out a bark of laughter even louder and grander than Genji’s, his head tossing back in a very similar fashion. His hands tremble as they hold onto Jesse’s shirt flaps for dear life. The sight is almost enough to make Jesse forget about the horrible, horrible pain.It’s not long before the archer comes back down to earth. “I,” Hanzo starts, wiping away a tear, “I am deeply sorry for this… for your…”“Yeah, yeah.” Jesse adjusts the waistband of his loose sweatpants, which is about the only article of clothing his ass can stand now. “Never gonna live this one down, y’know that? Genji’s probably gonna bring it up at my goddamn funeral.”“I apologize,” Hanzo says, both hands still holding onto Jesse’s shirt. “Why did you not say something sooner?”“Couldn’t find the right words, I guess.”“‘My pucker hole is crazy burned’ now seem like the only right words.”Jesse scoffs and rolls his eyes and cackles into his hand, then winces as the movement makes his thighs shift too much. Suddenly he turns boyish: “it really hurts, sweetheart.”Then Hanzo draws forward with a sound like a low, rough coo, and smoothes out Jesse’s shirt. “If you are truly in need,” his eyes sweep up to Jesse’s and Jesse can’t express how much that adds to his downstairs discomfort, “I can assist you with that aloe vera.”“Really, Han, you ain’t gotta—”“I insist. It is the least I can do after your…” Hanzo gets closer, smirks with those cat-like eyes dangerously narrowed, “…Skilled favors.”Jesse feels a very different kind of burning and chuckles, looking off to the side. “Aww, Han. I don’t think that’ll be as enjoyable as you’re makin’ it sound…”“I will make it enjoyable.” He lowers his hand and palms over Jesse’s cock to prove his point. Licks Jesse’s bottom lip into his mouth and lets it slide out between his teeth.Well, shit. “Alright,” Jesse sighs, “You insisted and all.”

“Mmm,” Hanzo purrs, still rubbing Jesse through his sweats. “And do not worry about Genji. I know many stories of his that more than overshadow yours.”“As nice as that is, darlin’, I really don’t wanna talk about your brother right now.”“Then stop talking and get on the bed.”

Request by Anonymous: Can you write something where Pietro somehow comes back in endgame? Reader is surprised to see her joke filled boyfriend that died in age of ultron.

Imagine Pietro coming back to life after the events of Endgame.

Masterlist

Fandom: Marvel DCU

Words: 1201

Warnings: cursing, Endgame spoilers (if you haven’t seen it by now why are you on the internet reading marvel fanfic?) there’s a references to DC in there see if you can find it ;), and I’m actually proud of this one

Gifs aren’t mine.

(Gender Neutral Reader)

I sigh out as I slam the door behind me and throw my jacket and keys onto the kitchen table of my small, yet insanely expensive apartment in New York City. It’s been only a week after the events of what Doctor Strange had labeled the “endgame”. With the whole time travel shinanigans, everyone coming back from the snap, fighting Thanos, and Tony’s death; I really just needed a break. Just some time to recover and breath even a little bit of fresh air.

Groaning as I pop and sooth the joints in my back that were straining from stress. I make my way to the fridge and pull out the gallon of milk; turning around I make my way to the cupboard and grab some Lucky Charms and then grab a bowl and a spoon before sitting down on the kitchen table as I grab the remote that I oh so thankfully left on the table before leaving the house this morning. I yawn out as I drag over the cereal box and poor it into the bowl and then the milk like the way it should be. Once I had witnessed my friend Richard pour the milk before the cereal and I honest to God was thinking of doing this world a favor and throwing the bowl and his ‘milk before cereal’ self out the window.

I mindlessly skip through the cable that I paid for though I never watch it because of all the other programs that I own like, Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc…, but yet somehow the man selling it to him convinced me that it was a necessity in my life and now here I am. Off in my own little lonely world, yet content.

“You know people usually it cereal for breakfast and not at nine o’clock in the afternoon.”

I let out a startled scream as my body jumps and freezes up. I slowly place down the spoon and I quickly grab the remote flinging it to the left of the voice while I aim my fist to the left.

“Cool trick, sweetheart, but I’m a little bit to fast for that,” came a familiar like accented voice once again from behind me.

My eyes squint in frustration as I sent a low kick to behind me hitting him in the shins, and as I hear a hiss come from behind me I swiftly turn around and grab him into a chokehold.

“Who the hell are you?” I yell as I look at him with wide eyes. There was no way in hell this was him. He’s dead. I saw him die.

“I thought we were way past the meet and greet part of our relationship,” he tries to joke as he also slightly wheezes out for air.

“You’re not him he’s been dead for years!” I tighten my hold on him as my anger grows.

“I’m serious it’s me! Ask anyone of the Avengers! It’s me!” He coughed out trying to pull my arm away from his throat.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Clint’s number. I put the phone to me I ear as I hear it ring before his voice comes through to greet me.

“What’s up kiddo?”

“Is Pietro alive?” I ask him bluntly.

I hear an “oh shit” come from the other line, and hear the archer take a breath.

“So here’s the thing,” Clint starts out as my hand clutches around the phone in anger.

I push the supposed “Pietro” away from me as he gasps for air and I angrily yell into the phone.

“He’s alive and you didn’t fucking tell me?!”

“Look, kid, I know your mad, but-”

“No! No, buts Barton. I have a right to be fucking pissed at you for keeping this from me! I should’ve been the first person you fucking contacted!” I scream out at him in anger as I pace around making hand motions.

“I know I know I should’ve, but the kid didn’t want me to! Okay?! He wanted you to be surprised or some bullshit like that!” At this point the two of us were both furious at the other for honestly no reason.

I glance over to Pietro who sheepishly waves at me and then I go back to Clint, “Look, I’m not mad at you or anything, Clint, I’m just frustrated. Can we stop arguing like children so I can start beating some sense into this idiot?”

“Yeah, sure. Bye kid.” I hear Clint sigh out.

“Bye old man,” I huff out jokingly.

“Okay, just because I have hearing aids does not in anyway make me old,” and with those last words he ended the call.

Turning to Pietro I stare at him. Taking in every inch of his being that stood before me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, actually seen him. He isn’t behind some screen or the glass covering of a picture frame, but actually here before me, in person. My eyes start to fill with tears as I run over to embrace him. His arms Automatically fold around me as I just cry into his shoulder.

I pull away from him and put my hands on his face as he still has his arms wrapped around my waist. I smile fondly at him as I stroke his cheeks with my thumb still astonished at the fact that it actually, truly is him. I smile at him and I lean place my lips upon his kissing him. He gladly pushes against my lips as he kisses me back. All too quickly though I pull away and look at him again. Then I take one of my hands away from his cheek and smack him. The force making his head turn in the opposite direction of my hand.

“Jesus Christ, Pietro! What the fuck is your problem?!” I yell at him with my eyebrows furrowed in frustration.

“Was not expecting that,” he mumbled out as he shakes his head to regain himself. He then glares at me too, “What the hell was that for?”

“For being an idiot and not telling me that you came back from the fucking dead as soon as you did!” I yelled at him in frustration, but still not leaving our current position.

“I wanted you to see me rather than hearing from someone else that I’m back!” He retorts, but pulls me closer in.

Sighing out I rest my head on him and mumble out an apology, “I’m sorry for yelling and hitting you. I just haven’t seen you in years and you coming back from the dead is… is… just a lot to take in. I’ve missed you so much,” I wrap my hands around him firmly as more tears spill from my eyes and slowly make their way down my cheeks and onto his clothes.

“I’ve missed you too,” He mumbles out as he nuzzles his head on my shoulder and I can feel a few of his own tears being soaked up into my clothes.

I smirk to myself as I ask him, “Are you crying, Maximoff?”

“Shut up,” he laughs out as he gives me another tight squeeze.

Simple Complications #1000

     Lance Tucker was stocking shelves in the store while Jake Johnson was sitting at the till trying not to get up and start pacing.      “If you want to put that nervous energy to some use, I could use some help over here,” Lance said.      “How long are we even going to be doing this?” Jake asked.  “It’s been a month that they’ve been gone.”      “I’m sure they’ll be back.”      “And what happens if they don’t ever come back.”      “I mean, I don’t know.  Curtis doesn’t have any living relatives, so the store would go to…I don’t know.”      “It’s not really the store I’m worried about,” Jake said.      “Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”      “Like, what do I tell Lex.  She doesn’t know that Curtis is really the Amazing Archer and that Liz works with him on that, and that they went on this mission.”      “Then what does she think happened to them?”      “I don’t know.  I’ve been avoiding her for a while, because I just don’t know what to say.  She’s a smart girl though, she’ll figure it out, if she hasn’t already.”      “How would she figure it out?”      “She does know about the mission, her girlfriend went on it too,” Jake said.  “And our other brother.  It’s just a matter of connecting the dots.”      Alexandra Johnson knocked on the door to Jake and Skyler’s apartment.  Skyler Nickel answered after a little bit.      “Hey Lex, what can I do for you?” he asked.      “Is my brother home?” Alexandra asked as she went in and looked around the main area of the apartment.      “No, Jake’s at work right now,” Skyler said.  “Why, what’s up?”      “Do you know why he’s been avoiding me for the last couple weeks?” Alexandra asked.      “He’s been avoiding you?”      “Yes, and repeating a question back at me is a terrible way to avoid answering it.  It makes it pretty obvious that you know he has.”      “I mean…it’s not really for me to talk about.”      “It’s about Liz, isn’t it?  She’s my sister too, and if something happened to her, he shouldn’t be keeping it from me.  I’m already having to deal with not knowing what happened to Gina, I need answers somewhere.”      “You should go to the store,” Skyler said.  “Like I said, Jake is working right now, and it’s not really for me to talk about.”      Becca Williams was keeping her composure as she was berated by her boss, Staff Sergeant Laura Connor.      “And now, thanks to your negligence, we have to let him go,” Laura said.      “Sorry ma’am,” Becca said.      “What’s even been going on with you lately?  You’ve always been a bit loose with the rules, but mishandling evidence is not like you.”      “Sorry ma’am.  It won’t happen again.”      “It better not.  Dismissed.”      Becca left Laura’s office and went back to her desk.      “So, how’d it go?” Madhur Singh asked as Becca sat down.      “Better than I expected,” Becca said.  “But I need to be more careful next time or, I don’t know.”      “I know you’re worried about Drake,” Madhur said.  “Just like I’m worried about Kira.”      “It’s been a month, no contact, no word on if they’re even still alive.  And we’re just sitting here like everything’s normal, because it’s not like we can tell anyone that your girlfriend and my boyfriend went on a covert mission into alien territory, and are now missing and probably dead.”      “We can’t think like that.  They’ve been in dangerous situations before and made it out.  What makes this different?”      “I don’t know, but I just have this feeling in my gut that something’s happened.  Something bad.”      Jake looked up as someone entered the store.      “Hey Jake,” Alexandra said.      “Lex?” Jake asked.  “What are you doing here?”      “You’ve been avoiding me for a couple weeks now,” Alexandra said.  “I’m sure you know something about Liz and Curtis, and you’re afraid to tell me.”      Jake looked around the store.  It was just them and Lance.  “Lance, I’m going to take a break.”      “Sure thing,” Lance said.      “Follow me,” Jake said, and Alexandra followed him into the back.  “Liz and Curtis went on the same mission as Gina and Lyle.”      “What?  Why would they do that?”      Jake opened up the broom closet and hit the secret button, causing the back to slide up, revealing a secret staircase.      “What’s that?” Alexandra asked.      “Follow me,” Jake said again as they went down.  “Curtis is Amazing Archer,” he said as they got to the bottom of the stairs and entered the Lair.  “And Liz is his sidekick.”      “Huh,” Alexandra said.  “Well, that certainly explains a lot.  Do you know anything more about this, are they still alive out there?”      “I don’t know,” Jake said.  “There hasn’t been any word from them since they left.”      “Has there been any contact from them?” Ted Jones asked as he sat down on the couch with Krissy Jones, his wife.      “Nothing yet,” Ricardo Lopez said from the recliner he was sitting on.  “But if they are still in the Caldore galaxy there wouldn’t be.  The fastest communication methods we have would still take centuries to make it here, since they can’t be sent through the wormhole.”      “Something has definitely happened though,” Krissy said.  “A few days after the Majestic left, the Caldore diplomatic team became a lot more secretive and aggressive.”      “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” Ted asked.      “If they’re angry, it indicates our friends at least hurt them in some way,” Ricardo said.  “So that’s a good thing.  It’s just a matter of how much, and if it’s enough.”      “And what happened to them afterwards,” Krissy said.  “Are you putting together a team to investigate, and hopefully rescue them?”      “My company had one starship, the Majestic,” Ricardo said.  “So we don’t really have a way to send a rescue mission.”      “But?” Krissy asked.      “We’re looking into options,” Ricardo said.      Back in the Lair, Alexandra and Jake were still talking when Alexandra noticed a blinking light on one of the computer consoles.  “What’s that?” she asked.      “Not sure,” Jake said as he went over to it.  He pressed a few buttons on the keyboard, trying to figure out what it meant, but he had no idea.      “Wait a second, that’s morse code,” Alexandra said.  “It’s an SOS.  That means they’re still alive, right?  And that they need help.”      “Probably?”      “How do we help them?”      “I have no idea,” Jake said.      Meanwhile, in another galaxy, on a prison planet, Curtis Hammer was knocked to the ground by a punch from his opponent.  “You got a decent left hook there,” Curtis said as he got back to his feet.      His opponent just grunted at him, and came at him again, but Curtis dodged the attack, and elbowed him in the back as he went by.  It did not do much damage, but threw him off balance, giving Curtis time to get him into a chokehold.  His opponent tried struggling, but Curtis was able to keep the hold up long enough for him to pass out.  He dropped him to the ground as soon as he was satisfied the guy was not just faking it.      There were various people cheering and booing at this, but Curtis pushed his way through the crowd, to find Elizabeth Johnson.  “How much did we make on this one?” Curtis asked.      “Not much,” Elizabeth said.  “We’re probably going to have to relocate soon, as less and less people are willing to bet against you around here.”      “Well, we have a whole planet at our disposal,” Curtis said.  “Even if we are trapped here.”      “I did manage to hack that Caldore ship before we got captured.  If it goes through the wormhole to our galaxy it’ll send out an SOS.”      “If they don’t figure it out beforehand.  And we have no reason to think it will go through the wormhole.  And even if it does, we don’t know that anyone will go down to the Lair and see it.  And even if they do, what can they do about this?”      Elsewhere on the planet, Drake, Henry, and Jennifer were sitting around a fire, cooking a dinner of some small rodent-like animals they had caught.      “Hear from Curtis recently?” Henry asked.      “Not in a couple weeks,” Drake said.      “Heard a bit about him,” Jennifer said.  “He’s fighting for money in the camps over by Iklon Lake.”      “Not sure why,” Henry said.  “We’re getting by just fine without money on this planet.”      “By living on our own, and hunting our own food,” Drake said.      “I don’t think it’s even about the money,” Jennifer said.  “Sometimes you just feel the need to fight.  I’ve been thinking of giving that sort of thing a go myself.”      “Come on, it was bad enough on Earth, but at least there you were fighting for a purpose,” Henry said.  “I mean, if we need to fight to survive, that’s one thing, but going out and seeking a fight just for the sake of it?”      “I just need to do something,” Jennifer said.  “I’m getting restless here.”      Lyle Johnson returned to the hovel he was currently calling home.  Murshidah bint Haris al-Farooq was in what they referred to as the kitchen, making some sort of soup, while Rachel Kepler was messing with what few electronics they had managed to get hold of during their time on this prison planet.      “Get anything new?” Rachel asked, looking up as Lyle came in.      “A short range comm unit and a flux capacitor,” Lyle said.      “We planning on using time travel?” Murshidah asked.      “Not that kind of flux capacitor,” Lyle said.      “I might be able to make use of those,” Rachel said.      “You still haven’t mentioned what it is that you’re trying to build,” Lyle said.      “Not entirely certain myself, yet,” Rachel said.  “I mean, at this point I might be working on a long range communicator, or maybe, if we’re really lucky, a teleporter.  It all depends on what other kinds of parts we can get.”      “I mean, pretty sure we already have most of the electronics available in this town,” Lyle said.      “Do we move on to another one then?” Murshidah asked.      “I don’t know,” Lyle said.  “This town is relatively safe.  Most of the people here were imprisoned for non-violent crimes.  We’re lucky to have found this place.”      “I mean, for this planet, this place isn’t bad,” Rachel said.  “But I’d rather we continue trying to find a way off this planet.”      “It’s not your fault we’re trapped here,” Gina Farrell said.  “If you hadn’t surrendered, we would’ve all been killed.”      “Instead we’re all trapped here,” Kira Siegal said.  “The crew is scattered all over the planet, or at last this section of it, and there’s no way home.”      “But we’re alive.”      “If we had made a run for the wormhole, we might have been able to make it.”      “Maybe, but we can’t live in the past.  Decisions were made, and now we just have to figure out where to go with them.”      “We’re not going anywhere with them,” Kira said.  “There’s no way off this planet.”      “I’ve been chatting with a few people who are trying to make a ship out of the pods that bring prisoners and supplies down here.”      “What about the ships in orbit?  We’d be shot down the second we left the atmosphere, maybe even earlier.”      “Maybe, but it’s something to try, if nothing else.”      “Maybe if we could make multiple ships, or something, some sort of distraction,” Kira said.      “See, that’s the ticket, we have a problem and we just need to figure out the solution.”      Ricardo stepped through the time door into the headquarters of the ESS Time Division, which was situated in the Cretaceous.  Abigail Esau was waiting for him as he arrived there.      “Hey Ricardo,” Abigail said.  “You said you needed a favor?”      “Yeah,” Ricardo said.  “Several of our friends went on a mission deep into Caldore space, and haven’t returned.  It’s been over a month.”      “I’d love to help,” Abigail said.  “But I’m kind of confined to the base currently.  It’s complicated.”      “That’s unfortunate, your assistance would have been appreciated, but that’s not the only thing I’m here for.  The UES can’t send a ship into Caldore space.  And the only ship my company had was the one that our friends were using for this mission.”      “You want to borrow a ship from us?”      “It would be appreciated.  You have a Palore timeship, and that would be a great help.”      “I mean, I can talk with Harkon, see what he says, but I don’t know how likely it is,” Abigail said.      “That is all I can ask for,” Ricardo said.  “Thank you for whatever you can manage.”      “Yes, I’d like to speak to Admiral Teleros,” Jake said over the phone.      “May I ask who’s calling?” the voice on the other end said.      “I’m Jake, I’m a friend of Curtis Hammer.”      “Who?”      “His dad was a friend of the Admiral.”      “I’m sure he was, but Admiral Teleros is pretty busy.  What’s your reason for calling?”      “Umm…I’m not sure how much I should say over the phone.”      “Is this some kind of prank call?  How did you even get this number?”      “No, this is important,” Jake said.  “Umm, I just need to uh, think for a second.”      The person on the other end apparently decided not to give him that second.      “So, how did it go?” Alexandra asked.      “I couldn’t get past the receptionist,” Jake said.  “She hung up on me.”      “Isn’t there any other way to contact him?  Like, this place is full of ESS equipment.  Maybe a direct line of communication to him?”      “Maybe, I don’t know.  I’m usually only down here if Curtis needs some patching up after a night out of vigilante stuff.”      “Well, let’s get searching than,” Alexandra said.  “Unless you want to try another phone call.”      As Ricardo came out of the time door back into the present day, he found Admiral Jon Teleros waiting there.      “Hello, Ricardo,” Jon said.  “Decided to take a trip into the past?”      “Just catching up with a friend,” Ricardo said.      “Of course, of course.  You wouldn’t be planning on having the timeline altered or anything, would you?”      “Of course not.  But you probably don’t want to know what I was talking about.”      “So, you are planning something?”      “We still have people behind enemy lines.”      “We’re not technically at war,” Jon said.  “And we don’t know that any of your people are still alive.”  As they were talking, a beeping sound started coming from Jon’s jacket pocket.  He took out a communicator.  “Hello?  Who is this?  How did you get on this frequency?”      Ricardo waited as whoever was on the other end was talking to Jon.      “Hmm, that is interesting,” Jon said.  “I’ll be there shortly.”  He hung up.  “Well, the chances of your friends still being alive, at least some of them, seems to have gone up.”      “Oh?” Ricardo asked.      “That was a friend of Curtis.  Apparently they’ve received an SOS.”      Elizabeth and Curtis returned to the shack they were living in.  Bobby Anderson was living there with them as well.  He was napping, but woke up at their return.      “How were the fights today?” he asked, as Curtis went straight to his room.      “Curtis is still the undisputed champion,” Elizabeth said.      “That’s good,” Bobby said.      “Not so much, less and less people are betting against him.”      “I could fight then.  I’m almost as good as him, but no one here knows that yet.”      “You know he’s not going to allow that.”      “He will if you talk him into it.”      “Yes, because he always listens to me.”  Elizabeth rolled her eyes.      “He listens to you more than he listens to anyone else anyway.  Especially me.”      “He just doesn’t want you to get hurt.  He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt.”      “Other then the people he beats up, you mean?” Bobby asked.      “Yeah, other than them.  And himself.”      Jake almost jumped when Jon and Ricardo teleported into the Lair.      “That is so cool,” Alexandra said.      “You said you received an SOS?” Jon asked.      “Still receiving,” Alexandra said as she pointed at the blinking light.  “It just keeps looping over and over.”    �� “It’s not much to go on,” Jon said as he sat down at the computer, and started working on it.  “I can trace the signal back to near the wormhole.  It was probably sent from a Caldore ship that came through.”      “So, Curtis and Liz and them made it back into our galaxy?” Jake asked.      “Maybe, maybe not,” Jon said.  “They may have just hacked a Caldore ship to send out the message if it passed through.”      “It at least indicates they are alive,” Ricardo said.      “Or at least that they were when they did this,” Jon said.  “Anything could have happened since.  And either way, the UES still can’t send a rescue mission.”      “No, I understand,” Ricardo said.      “I don’t,” Jake said.      “It would be considered an act of war,” Jon said.      “And what?  Them occupying most of Europe isn’t?” Alexandra asked.      “We had to let them stay there in order to negotiate a peace treaty,” Jon said.      “A peace treaty they were going to break by sending another invasion fleet that our friends went to stop,” Jake said.      “Yes,” Jon said.  “But we can’t afford to let it be broken.”      “Which is why we’ll wait until you leave before discussing our plans,” Ricardo said.      Drake was having trouble sleeping so he left his tent and went out to sit by the fire.  Apparently he was not the only one who had that idea, as Jennifer was already sitting there.      “You can’t sleep either?” Jennifer asked.      “Yeah, I had trouble for the first week or so we were here, and then it got better, but now it’s bad again.”      “For me it’s just started up recently,” Jennifer said.  “Like, I can get a decent sleep while also being ready to wake up in an instant if something happens, but here, I’m just restless.  In London I was fighting pretty much every day.  Here we’re just existing, and waiting for I don’t know what.”      “A rescue mission, maybe?”      “We went on this mission because no one else could or would.  Who’s going to come rescue us?”      “I don’t know,” Drake said.  “I mean, I’m sure Ricardo is trying to figure something out, but I don’t know what even he can do in this situation.”      “So, what are our plans?” Jake asked after Jon had left.      “If we’re lucky we’ll be able to a ship from Abigail’s people,” Ricardo said.  “I’m not sure how big of a crew we’ll be able to put together though.  I suppose I’ll be going.  Krissy will probably want to go too.”      “And if she’s going, I imagine Ted will be as well,” Jake said.      “I’m going too,” Alexandra said.      “What?” Jake asked.  “No.”      “You’re my brother, not my boss.  And our other brother and sister are out there, as is my girlfriend.  I’m going.”      “Then I suppose I’m going as well,” Jake said.      “So, that’ll make five,” Ricardo said.  “What about your boyfriend?”      “Skyler?” Jake asked.  “He’ll probably come along if I am, yeah, so he’s six.”      “What about Madhur and Becca?” Alexandra asked.  “They’ll probably want to go with as well.  And no offense to us, but they’ll probably be a bit more useful than the rest of us.”      “Very good points,” Ricardo said.  “I’ll check with them, and that may make eight.”      “Hey Gorthos,” Gina said as she lead Kira into the back of the shop, where Gorthos was working on some sort of device.      “Gina, my friend,” Gorthos said as he looked up from his work.  “And I imagine this is your friend Kira that you spoke of.”      “Nice to meet you,” Kira said.  “Gina said you’re working on a way off this planet.”      “Indeed, indeed, trying anyway,” Gorthos said.  “There is a lot of work yet to be done though.”      “Anything I can do to help?” Kira asked.      “Are you an engineer?” Gorthos asked.      “No, but I know quite a few,” Kira said.  “I could start tracking them down and bringing them back here to help with the effort.”      “That would be greatly appreciated,” Gorthos said.  “We can use all the help we can get.”      “Of course we’re in,” Becca said after Ricardo had explained the situation to them.      “What’s the plan though?” Madhur asked.  “Even with a ship, how are we getting to the wormhole without being destroyed?  If we get through it, what then?  Do we even have a starting point?”      “Not yet,” Ricardo said.  “We’ll need to get there first.”      “Which we’re doing how?” Madhur asked.      “We’ll figure something out,” Becca said.  “We’re not going to just leave them out there.”      “The ship I’m trying to get use of has a cloaking device,” Ricardo said.  “That should allow us to get to and through the wormhole undetected.”      “Assuming they haven’t figured out countermeasures after the last time,” Madhur said.      “Then we’ll just have to figure out how to countermeasure those countermeasures,” Becca said.      “The cloaking device it has is a lot more advanced than what the Majestic did,” Ricardo said.        “Now we just need to take time off work,” Becca said.  “When are we leaving?”      “So, do you trust Gorthos?” Kira asked as she and Gina headed home.  “I mean, this is a prison planet.  Do you know what he’s here for?”      “I mean, from what I know, he probably does deserve to be here,” Gina said.  “And I definitely don’t trust him, but I trust that he wants to get off of this planet, and we need all the help we can get.”      “True, very true.  I just don’t want us to do anything we’re going to end up regretting later.”      “Okay, here goes nothing,” Rachel said as she plugged a new battery into the device she was working on.      “How do we know if it’s working?” Murshidah asked before a light bulb on it turned on.      “That’s how we know,” Rachel said, standing up with a big smile on her face, and kissing Murshidah.  “Unfortunately without more parts, my work on it is kind of stalled.”      “So you’re saying you have a bit of free time?” Murshidah asked.  “Lyle’s going to be gone for the next few hours, so we have the place to ourselves.”      “Well let’s not waste our time then,” Rachel said as she followed Murshidah to their bedroom.      “So, I take it something big is going on?” Lance asked Jake.  “What with all of the comings and goings in the past few hours.”      “We got an SOS signal from Liz and Curtis,” Jake said.  “It’s not much, but it’s a sign that they are at least out there, and it gives us a starting point, maybe.”      “You’re planning a rescue mission?”      “Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what we can do, but it’s not like anyone else is going to be doing anything, so we’re all they’ve got.”      “I’d like to go with,” Lance said.  “If that’s okay.”      “I mean, we definitely need all of the help we can get, but why would you want to?  Like for me, I have two siblings and a bunch of friends out there.”      “I don’t have friends, haven’t really for a while, not since high school, and if I’m being honest it’s not like I was a great friend back then.”      “Okay?”      “I want to do better, I want to be better.  This is a way I can try.”      “So what are we going to say for why we need the time off work?” Madhur asked.  “I’ve already used up my vacation days.”      “Same,” Becca said.  “We’ll have to figure something out.  Maybe a conference of some kind?”      “Maybe,” Madhur said.  “The problem is that we don’t know how long we’re going to be gone for, or even when we’re leaving.”      “So, yeah, we have to decide between asking now and saying we don’t know.”      “Which is suspicious.”      “Or we wait until we do know, which’ll likely be at the last minute.”      “Which will also be suspicious.”      “So, no matter what we do, it’s going look suspicious,” Becca said.      “Pretty much.”      “Hello again,” Ricardo said as he returned to the ESS Time Division base, where Abigail was waiting for him again, this time with Harkon Smith.      “Mr. Lopez,” Harkon said.  “It’s good to finally meet you.  I’ve heard a lot about you.”      “Likewise, Mr. Smith,” Ricardo said.      “I told him about your request,” Abigail said.      “I understand it,” Harkon said.  “But I’m not sure I feel comfortable lending you a timeship for this excursion.  If it were to fall into Caldore hands, that could be disastrous.  We already have enough enemies with time travel capabilities.”      “How difficult would it be to remove the time travel capabilities from it?” Ricardo asked.  “We need a starship, but we don’t really need a timeship.”      “Honestly, not difficult at all,” Abigail said.  “I spent a lot of time on that ship with little to do beyond learning it backwards and forwards.  I could remove the time travel tech from it in a few hours.”      “I’m still hesitant,” Harkon said.  “But we do owe you and your friends for the help you provided in dealing with Deanna at the rogue planet.  Just try and get the ship back to us in one piece.”      “I’ll do my best,” Ricardo said.      “I just wish I could go with,” Abigail said.      “Hey, boss,” Becca said as she and Madhur entered Laura’s office.      “Ma’am,” Madhur said.      “Please sit down,” Laura said.      “Of course,” Becca said as they did.  “So, we’re going to be needing some time off.”      “Yes, I just heart about that myself,” Laura said.      “You heard about that?” Madhur asked.      “I just got a call from the chief of police that you two have been requested to provide security to some sort of conference on Maltork Six,” Laura said.  “Apparently Ricardo Lopez asked for you two specifically.”      “Yes, well, he does know us,” Becca said.      “It’ll be a shame to be missing two of my best detectives, but I’m not exactly going to be ignoring an order, no matter how strange it seems,” Laura said.  “Dismissed.”      “Yes, ma’am,” Becca and Madhur said before leaving her office.      “Did you know Ricardo was going to be doing that?” Madhur asked.      “No, but I suppose it’s not that surprising,” Becca said.  “I mean, it is Ricardo.”      Kira walked through the marketplace of this town.  She knew Lyle, Rachel, and Murshidah were living in this area, but she did not know exactly where.  She asked around at a few stalls, if anyone knew where they were.  Humans were not exactly common on this planet, so it was not long before she got pointed in the right direction.      As she was about to head that way though, she actually ran into Lyle who was in the marketplace himself.  “Lyle, it’s great to see you,” she said.      “Kira, how’s it going?” Lyle asked.      Kira looked around, but no one seemed to be paying them much attention.  “We’re working on a way of getting off this planet.”      “So’s Rachel,” Lyle said.  “Or so she keeps saying, but I mean, let’s be honest here, do you really think anything we come up with is going to be something the Caldore aren’t already prepared for?”      “They’ve not been prepared for a lot of the things we’ve thrown their way so far.”      “Well sure, thanks to the fact that we have plenty of tech they were unfamiliar with.  But here on this prison planet all we have access to is the stuff they’ve allowed to be here.”      “So, you’ve just resigned yourself to being stuck here?”      “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”      “So, is this everyone?” Jake asked as him and Skyler walked onto the bridge of their borrowed ship.  Ricardo, Lance, Madhur, Becca, and Alexandra were all there.      “Not quite,” Ricardo said.  “We still need to pick up Krissy and Ted from Maltork Six.”      “Who’s piloting the ship?” Skyler asked.      “We haven’t figured out who’s doing what yet,” Madhur said.  “It’s not like any of us really have much experience running a starship.”      “I mean, I’d like to give it a whirl,” Lance said.      “Same here,” Becca said.  “And I’ve actually been on a starship before.”      “Yeah, but I’ve seen your driving,” Madhur said.  “I’d prefer someone else.”      “I could do it,” Alexandra said as she went and sat down at the piloting console.  “I’ve watched Gina fly ships before.”      “And what do the rest of us do?” Jake asked.      “Well, you’re the closest thing we have to a doctor if anything goes wrong, so why don’t you go check out the infirmary,” Ricardo said.      “I’m pre-med.  Pre means before.  Why does everyone think that means I’m qualified to be a doctor?” he asked before heading off to find the infirmary anyway.      Rachel and Murshidah were basking in the afterglow of sex, when they heard the door to their home open.      “I’m home,” Lyle shouted out.  “And we have a visitor.”      “Who’s visiting?” Rachel asked Murshidah as she went to pick her clothes up off the floor and start getting dressed.      Murshidah just shrugged as she did the same.  After Rachel was dressed, she left their room, and found Kira was with Lyle.      “Kira, hey, what’s going on?” Rachel asked.      “We’re working on a way to get off this planet,” Kira said.  “Lyle tells me you’re working on something too?”      Rachel pointed at her device that was on the table.  “Yeah, it’s still a ways away from completion, but it’s getting there.”      “What is it?” Kira asked.      “Still not entirely certain,” Rachel said.  “At this point it could be the start of a few different things.  What are you working on though?”      “Ships, made with whatever can be scrounged up,” Kira said.      “Wouldn’t those just be shot down?” Murshidah asked as she came out into the main room.      “Probably,” Lyle said.      “Maybe not,” Rachel said.  “I mean, it wasn’t something I was considering, but my device could be a crude cloaking device.”      “They eventually managed to see through our not crude cloaking device,” Lyle said.      “Yeah, but we wouldn’t need it to work for very long, assuming we’re just trying to escape the planet,” Rachel said.  “Getting back home through the wormhole would be another matter entirely though.”      “One step at a time,” Kira said.  “Just gotta take it one step at a time.”      After picking up Krissy and Ted, the ship was now on its way to the wormhole that would bring them to the galaxy that the Caldore Imperium called home.      “So, what happens if they can see through our cloak,” Madhur asked.      “Depends on how quickly,” Ricardo said.  “If we’re close enough to the wormhole to go through, then we just punch it and get through before they can destroy us.”      “And if we’re not close enough?” Madhur asked.      “Best case scenario, we escape and formulate a new strategy,” Ricardo said.      “Worst case?” Madhur asked.  “Never mind, don’t answer that.”      “We’re going to do this,” Becca said.  “And it’s going to work.  It has to.”      Curtis punched his opponent in the face.  One hit and he was down.  There were a few half-hearted cheers from the crowd, but not many, as they were getting pretty bored of Curtis never losing.  He walked past the crowd to Elizabeth.  “Well?” he asked.      “No one’s betting against you anymore,” she said.  “We got nothing.”      “So, we’ll have to move somewhere else, where I don’t have a reputation yet.”      “You’ll have to go pretty far for that,” a familiar voice said.      Curtis turned around.  “Jennifer, hey, how’re things.  How’s Henry doing?”      “Henry’s fine, Drake’s fine, I’m bored,” Jennifer said.  “But word about you has been going around.”      “How far?” Curtis asked.      “A better option might be getting someone else to do these fights for a while,” Jennifer said.      “That’s what Bobby’s been saying,” Elizabeth said.      “We’re not putting Bobby into street fights,” Curtis said.      “What about me?” Jennifer asked.      “I thought you guys were living out in the wilderness and such, so you didn’t need to make money,” Curtis said.      “It’s not about the money for me anymore than it is for you,” Jennifer said.  “We’re fighters, it’s the type of people we are, and we’re bored when we’re not.”      “Well, even if that’s true, then wouldn’t I be bored if you were taking my place?” Curtis asked.      “Just because I start fighting, doesn’t mean you have to stop,” Jennifer said.  “But living in these camps, you need money even if that isn’t the reason you fight.”      “We’re dropping out of superspace in three, two, one, now,” Alexandra said from the piloting console.      “How many Caldore ships are out there?” Ricardo asked.      “I’m picking up forty-seven ships,” Madhur said.      “I’m ready to start firing on them at a moment’s notice,” Becca said.      “Hold off on that,” Ricardo said.  “Any sign that they’ve noticed us?”      “I don’t think so,” Madhur said.      “There was just an increase in the amount that they are talking to each other,” Krissy said.  “Looks like they’ve detected some changes in the wormhole’s behaviour, which they are saying means there’s another ship in the area.”      “So they know someone’s here,” Ricardo said.  “But they don’t know it’s us, and they don’t know where we are.  In that case, keep us on course, let’s get through that wormhole before they do discover anything, and be ready to enter superspace the second we’re on the other side.”      “On it,” Alexandra said.      “That was pretty close to actually admitting why you’re really getting into these fights,” Elizabeth said as she and Curtis were heading back to their place.      “I’m not doing it cause I’m bored otherwise,” Curtis said.  “I was just pointing out the flaw in her logic.  Remember, my plan used to be to become a lawyer.”      “Right, but she does bring up the point that we could be out in the wilderness, where we wouldn’t be needing to make money to get by, just hunting and gathering.  And it’s not like that wouldn’t present its own challenges.  Hell, you’re an archer, that would be more useful with hunting.”      “Maybe, but it wouldn’t be…” Curtis trailed off.      “It wouldn’t be what?  It wouldn’t be punishing criminals?”      “My job isn’t to punish criminals, it’s to apprehend them, and these ones are already apprehended.”      “As are we,” Elizabeth said.  “Which means your job, like all of our jobs, is survival.”      “We have left the wormhole,” Alexandra said.  “Entering superspace now.”      “Okay, so what next?” Madhur asked.  “We’re in this galaxy, but we have no idea where to even start.”      “We’re going to check out the location of the shipyard first,” Ricardo said.  “That’s our starting point.”      “And what are we expecting to find there?” Madhur asked.      “We’ll see when we get there,” Ricardo said.  “The shipyard could be in perfect working condition, or it might be damaged, or if we’re really lucky it’s been fully destroyed.”      “And what will each of those things mean?” Ted asked.  “Like, it’ll tell us how successful they were, but it won’t tell us where they are.”      “Maybe, maybe not,” Becca said.  “We know they made it into this galaxy, so the status of the shipyard may help indicate if they made it that far.”      “But in theory, the plan was to go straight from the wormhole to the shipyard, and then straight back the other way,” Madhur said.  “So unless the Caldore have a way to force a ship out of superspace, they were presumably captured in one of those two locations.  And if the Caldore do have such a method, it was presumably still on that line between them.”      “Well, if that’s the case, we might end up getting pulled out at the same location,” Alexandra said.  “So that’ll at least be a lead.”      “And if not, depending on what we find at the shipyard, we might head back to the wormhole,” Ricardo said.  “But we should check on the shipyard first, just in case.”      “And either way, it’s important to know if they were successful,” Krissy said.      “So?” Kira asked.      Rachel poked her head out from under the engine she was looking over.  “Yeah, this is definitely workable.”      “That’s what I said,” Gorthos said.  “And we’ve got a few of them.”      “How many?” Kira asked.      “Eight, which’ll be enough for two ships,” Gorthos said.  “We’ll need four per ship.”      “Naw, that’s overkill,” Rachel said.  “We can easily get by on two a ship, might even manage one per ship.”      “That’s ridiculous,” Gorthos said.  “We can’t manage that.”      “Why not?” Rachel asked.  “All we need them for is escaping the gravity of the planet.  So we don’t need to worry about overloading them as long as they get us that far.”      “And then what are we supposed to do next?” Gorthos asked.  “Just slowly float through space?”      “Floating through on momentum, or traveling through with those engines, either way we’re not getting to another system in at least a decade,” Rachel said.  “Whatever we’re planning once we’re in space, these engines aren’t what we need then.”      “Seven ships they notice increases the chance that they don’t notice the cloaked eighth ship,” Kira said.      “I’m not going up there to float around unless we have a plan for what to do next,” Gorthos said.  “And this is my equipment.”      “No problem,” Kira said.  “We’ll figure something out.”      “Dropping out of superspace now,” Alexandra said.      “What are we seeing?” Ricardo asked.      “A hell of a lot of debris,” Becca said.  “Whatever was here was big, and got destroyed.”      “Well, at least we know they were successful then,” Madhur said.  “Which means we know they got at least this far.”      “Wait, I’m picking up a signal from the Majestic’s transponder,” Krissy said.      “It’s in the area?” Becca asked.  “Where?”      “Umm, amongst the wreckage,” Krissy said.      “Yeah, I’m looking over these sensor scans,” Ted said.  “And I’m pretty sure I’m seeing a bunch of pieces of it.”      “Any lifesigns?” Ricardo asked.      “Nothing,” Skyler said.  “No lifesigns.”      “So they succeeded, but at the cost of their own lives,” Becca said.  “We’ve lost them.”      Drake brought some firewood back to the campsite, and found Henry pacing.  “Hey Henry, you okay?”      “I don’t know,” Henry said.  “Jennifer went off to do some hunting earlier, and she’’s not back yet.”      “How long has it been?”      “Several hours, I’m not sure exactly, but she’s usually not gone for this long.”      “I’m sure she’s fine, but if you want I can go search for her.”      “No, that’s okay, I’m sure she’s fine, that’s not what I’m worried about.”      “You think she went to one of the nearby cities or camps to participate in some street fights?” Drake asked.      “Yeah, I mean, honestly I’m surprised she hadn’t done so sooner.”      “Well, she can hold her own in a fight.  There’s no reason to be worried.”      “I’m not worried that she’ll get hurt,” Henry said.  “I mean, okay yeah, I’m always going to be at least a little worried about that, but the bigger issue is that I’m worried about how much she enjoys fighting.”      “Oh?”      “I mean, violence should always be the last resort, right?  Not the default.”      “We’re seldom given a choice in that matter.  Like, we didn’t ask for the Caldore to come and invade Earth, and we didn’t ask for them to succeed in conquering parts of it, and we sure as hell didn’t ask for them to build another fleet to finish the job.”      “Yeah no, I get all that.  I understand why she’s been fighting this whole time, and you and Curtis and everyone else.  But here, now, with these street fights Curtis is taking part in, and maybe now Jennifer too.  That’s a choice.”      “You can take the soldier away from the war, but you can’t always take the war away from the soldier,” Drake said.  “Eventually the fighting becomes part of who you are, and it’s not so easy to leave that behind.”      The mood on the ship was pretty grim after Becca had made her comment.  No one quite knew what to say.  Some of the people were not even quite sure what to do, while others were obsessively looking through sensor readings, trying to find something, anything.      “I guess, set course back for the wormhole,” RIcardo said.  “This wasn’t what we were hoping for, but it’s what we’ve got, so we should head back.  The longer we stay here, the more the risk adds up.”      “Wait,” Krissy said.  “I’m picking energy signals that indicate there was teleporter usage in this area.”      “So?” Lance asked.  “What does that matter?”      “Because the Caldore don’t have teleporters,” Jake said.  “That means it was our friends.”      “Okay, so what does that mean?” Becca asked.  “They used teleporters to get over to the shipyard and blow it up?  Or are we thinking they teleported over to another ship and managed to escape that way?”      “It’s possible,” Ricardo said.  “And if that’s the case, they likely would have tried to get to the wormhole to escape.”      “But without a cloaking device,” Becca said.      “Which means there’s a decent chance they would have been caught,” Ricardo said.      “Okay, where would they be brought if they were caught?” Madhur asked.      “The Caldore have a prison planet,” Krissy said.  “I don’t know where it is, but that’s where they send all of their criminals and prisoners and such.”      “So, we just need to figure out where that is?” Alexandra asked.  “How do we do that?”      “Well, the easiest way would be for one of us to get captured,” Ricardo said.  “If we put a tracker in that person, we can just follow the signal.”      “I volunteer,” Becca, Alexandra, Jake, Krissy, and Lance all said at the same time.      “We only need one volunteer,” Ricardo said.      “Jake is the closest thing we have to a doctor,” Lance said.  “Krissy is our linguist, and Alexandra is our pilot.”      “So that narrows it down to you and me,” Becca said.  “And I’m doing this.”      “I’m more expendable,” Lance said.  “If something goes wrong, better we lose me than anyone else.”      “I’m sure that’s not true,” Becca said.  “But tell you what, why don’t we both go, that way if something happens to one of us, there’s still a chance the other will make it.”      Jennifer snuck back into camp in the middle of the night.  She was trying her best to be quiet as she entered the tent she shared with Henry.  She had been hoping not to wake him, but unfortunately for her, he was already awake, and sitting there.      “Hey, welcome back,” Henry said.      “Hey Henry, I didn’t think you’d still be up,” Jennifer said.      “You’ve been gone all day,” Henry said.  “I had no idea where you were, or what you were doing.”      “Really?”      “Okay, yeah, I can assume you went to participate in some street fights.”      “Well, I haven’t taken part in any yet, but yeah, I was in those camps I was mentioning before.  Met up with Curtis and Liz briefly.”      “How are they doing?” Henry asked.      “They’re doing fine, but running low on money as no one wants to bet against Curtis anymore in his fights.”      “He’s doing that well?”      “I mean, he’s been a vigilante crimefighter for how long now?” Jennifer asked.  “He’s got some pretty decent skills in that time.  Just like how I got mine fighting the Caldore.”      “I understand that fighting is what you guys do, and I’m not going to stand in the way if this is what you feel you need to do, but I do wish you wouldn’t.”      “Okay, there’s some Caldore ships up ahead,” Lance said as Becca piloted the shuttle they were in towards them.      “Have they noticed us yet?” Becca asked.      “Yeah, they are running scans on us right now.  Let’s hope they don’t decide to just blow us up.  Oh wait, we’re getting a comm signal now.”  Lance opened the comm channel.  “Hello, please don’t blow us up.”      “What are you doing here, Human vessel?” a Caldore asked.      “We’re kind of lost, not sure what happened, can you help us out?” Lance asked.      “Surrender now, or be destroyed.”      “Yeah, okay, not a problem, we surrender,” Lance said.      “Their lifesigns are still good,” Jake said.  “Which means they haven’t been killed.  And they are on the move.”      “As soon as they enter superspace we won’t be able to track them again until they emerge,” Ricardo said.  “So we’ll just have to wait patiently for that.”      “And hope they aren’t killed,” Jake said.  “Then hope that they are actually brought to this so called prison planet.”      “Yes, exactly,” Ricardo said.      “As far as I know, they only have the one prison planet,” Krissy said.  “And from what I understand that’s where they send everyone they want to lock up.”      Kira brought some more of the technicians that had been aboard the Majestic into Gorthos’ shop.  She sent them into the back to assist Rachel with the work.      “Just how big was your crew?” Gorthos asked.      “A few dozen,” Kira said.  “You’re worried we won’t be able to fit everyone?”      “I have some friends as well, and it’s my equipment so my group takes priority.”      “Well, then hopefully there’s enough room.”      A light on Gorthos desk started blinking.      “What’s that?” Kira asked.      “That means a pod is coming down with some prisoners,” Gorthos said.  “Which means we should get there quickly if we want to get some of the equipment from the pod itself.”      “The signal has reappeared,” Jake said.  “In a system not too far from here.”      “Set a course,” Ricardo said.      “Setting the course,” Alexandra said.      “Looks like that system has eight planets around a single sun,” Madhur said.      “That sounds about right,” Krissy said.  “I mean, we don’t know much about the prison planet, but I do recall hearing it was in a system of eight planets.  Security in that system is probably going to be pretty high though.”      “Hopefully they won’t be able to see through our cloak,” Skyler said.  “But what are we going to do when we get there?”      Kira and Lyle followed Gorthos to the location where the pod was landing, and got there just as it touched down.  Gorthos had a crude energy rifle which he was pointing at the pod door as it opened up, and Becca and Lance stepped out.      “Don’t shoot them,” Kira said, raising her hand.      “Kira!” Lance exclaimed.  “And…Jake’s twin.”      “You all know each other?” Gorthos asked.  “That’s good, means we don’t need to fight over the equipment in this pod.”  He went to get to work on stripping the useful stuff from it.      “What are you guys even doing here?” Kira asked.      “We’re on a rescue mission,” Becca said.  “Is everyone else alive and okay?”      “As far as I know,” Kira said.  “We were all in good shape when we were brought here, but I haven’t seen some people in a couple weeks.”      “Drake?” Becca asked.      “Him, Jennifer, and Henry were living out in the woods, last I heard,” Kira said.  “So, what kind of rescue mission exactly is this?”      “Ricardo borrowed a ship from Abigail’s group,” Becca said.  “They are on the way, we just needed to figure out where this planet was.”      “So, what happened?” Lance asked.  “We know you took out the Caldore shipyard, and your ship was destroyed in the process, but what happened next?”      “We got on another ship,” Kira said.  “But without a cloak we couldn’t exactly hide, and when we returned to the wormhole we weren’t able to bluff them into thinking we were Caldore.  Our choice was surrender or be destroyed.”      Henry watched as Jennifer was wailing away at her opponent in the street fight.      “She’s really good at that,” Curtis said.      “I mean, yeah, that’s never been in doubt,” Henry said.  “My problem with her fighting, and you fighting for that matter, isn’t that I don’t think you guys can win.”      “Yeah, I know,” Curtis said.  “I’m surprised you’re even here watching though.”      “I may not agree with her, but I still love her and want to be supportive.”      “Speaking of, you two ever actually going to get married?  You’ve been engaged for how long now?”      “It’s been a while, but then she went to London, and now we’re on this prison planet, and who knows when it’ll even happen.”      “It’ll happen when you guys make it happen,” Curtis said.  “There’s always a million reasons to put something off, and you just have to decide what’s too important to listen to those reasons.”      “Yeah, that’s pretty good advice,” Henry said.  “Thanks, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good talk like this.”      Drake was still at camp, by himself, eating some lunch, when he heard someone approaching.  It seemed a bit early for Jennifer and Henry to be getting back, so he climbed up a tree, to get a view of who was coming, while also getting out of sight himself.      Two people came into the clearing.  One was Lyle, and the other was… “Becca!” Drake said as he jumped out of the tree.      “Drake!” she said.  “You’re alive.”  She ran over and they embraced.      “What are you doing here?” Drake asked.      “Rescue mission,” Becca said.  “We’re here to save you guys.”      “Who’s we?” Drake asked.      “Her and Lance are here on the planet,” Lyle said.  “And apparently they have a ship on the way with Ricardo commanding it.”      “Huh, I figured Ricardo would try something, but I didn’t want to give myself false hope,” Drake said.  “So, what’s the plan?”      “Lance and I came here so that Ricardo and them could locate the planet,” Becca said.  “The next step of the plan is up to them, depending on what they find when they get here.”      “Fair enough,” Drake said.  “I suppose sometimes you just have to make things up as you go along.”      “Kira’s also working on something,” Lyle said.  “A way to possibly get us into space.”      “That’s good,” Drake said.  “I imagine this planet has anti-teleportation fields set up, just in case.  If we can get up there, and meet Ricardo, that’ll make things easier.”      “I don’t think any of this is going to be easy,” Lyle said.      “We’re dropping out of superspace now,” Alexandra said.      “There’s a dozen ships around the planet,” Madhur said.  “And a lot of people on it.”      “None of them have picked us up though?” Ricardo asked.      “I’m not noticing any change in their activity,” Krissy said.  “They seem to be unaware of us.”      “Excellent,” Ricardo said.      “We are picking up anti-teleporter fields from the planet,” Skyler said.  “We won’t be able to just teleport them up from the surface.”      “We didn’t think it would be that easy anyway,” Ricardo said.  “Both Becca and Lance are down there and still in good shape?”      “Yeah, they both appear to still be in good health,” Jake said.      “So, what’s our next move?” Ted asked.      “We’re possibly going to have to go down and land on the planet,” Ricardo said.      “If we do that, they’ll know we’re here,” Skyler said.  “Our cloak isn’t going to stop us from air moving around us if we enter atmosphere.”      “I am aware of that,” Ricardo said.  “But unless they can come up and meet us, I don’t see what other options we have.”      “So, how are going to let them know that we’re planning on going up to meet them?” Gina asked.      Kira turned to Lance.  “The trackers you have in you, do they include communication devices of any sort?”      “They can be used to track our location, and they keep track of our vitals,” Lance said.      “We might be able to work with that,” Kira said.  “I mean, Rachel could probably manage to turn them into fully functioning communicators, but we need her working on the escape ships.  But we could probably use them to send a morse code communication, if nothing else.”      “One way though,” Lance said.  “They just send information, they can’t receive.”      “So we won’t know if they get our message,” Gina said.      “We’ll know when we get up there,” Kira said.  “It’s not a perfect plan, but it’ll have to do.”      “There you guys are,” Drake said as he pushed through the crowd and found Henry and Curtis.  Becca came following after.      “Becca?” Henry asked.      “What are you doing here?” Curtis asked.      “Rescue mission,” Becca said.      “So, get Jennifer and Liz and that sidekick of yours,” Drake said.  “And let’s get going.”      “It’s almost done?” Kira asked.      “Just about,” Rachel said.  “Just making some final adjustments.”      “And how many people will fit aboard?”      “That’s the bad news,” Rachel said.  “We can fit all of our people, and maybe one more.”      “Gorthos isn’t going to like that.  Although to be honest, I am a bit wary of bringing a bunch of people with us that we know nothing about.”      “Well, we should still be able to bring Gorthos himself.  Which I mean, this is his equipment we’re using.”      “Yeah, we at least owe him that,” Kira said.      “Uh, I’m getting some weird readings from Lance’s tracker,” Jake said.  “It keeps cutting out and reappearing, like something’s blocking it.”      “That’s odd,” Ricardo said.      “Yeah, sometimes for two seconds at a time, sometimes for five,” Jake said.      “Send it over to my computer,” Krissy said.      “Sure thing,” Jake said as he did that.      “It’s morse code,” Krissy said.  “They are saying that they’ll meet us in space.”      “How are they going to manage that?” Madhur asked.      “They aren’t giving details on that, just where to meet them, and an estimate of when” Krissy said.      “Can we respond?” Ted asked.      “No,” Ricardo said.  “How much time do we have?”      “A few hours,” Krissy said.  “They’re going to give us a more exact time when they know.”      “Then let’s make sure there’s a distraction ready for when they are ready,” Ricardo said.      As Rachel was finishing up the escape pod, while their other technicians were working on the distraction pods, Kira went up to the front of the shop, where the rest of her crew were.  Curtis, Elizabeth, and Bobby were just arriving, which meant everyone was here.      “You have quite a lot of people,” Gorthos said as he walked up to Kira.  “Is everyone going to fit?”      “I’m sorry Gorthos,” Kira said.  “You can fit, but none of your friends can.”      “That wasn’t the deal.”      “We could always convert one of the distraction pods into another escape pod,” Kira said.      “But we only have the one cloaking device.”      “Yeah, but that cloaking device is ours,” Kira said.  “Rachel made that, most of it before even coming here.”      Gorthos growled.      “Your original plan was to go up without a cloaking device,” Kira said.  “And we have friends up there with a starship, so you’re still better off then before we were helping you out.”      “That’s the last one,” Madhur said.  “Each of these asteroids has an explosive on it.”      “Good work,” Ricardo said.  “That should provide a decent distraction.  Bring us into position to be ready to meet up with them, Lex.”      “On it,” Alexandra said.      “We’ve just got an update from them,” Krissy said.  “They are ready to launch.”      “Okay, everyone start getting aboard,” Kira said.  She looked around as everyone started boarding the escape pod, and pulled Gina aside.  “Where’s Gorthos?”      “I haven’t seen him in a bit,” Gina said.      “That’s worrying,” Kira said.      “Uh, we have a problem,” Rachel said coming over to them.      “What’s the problem?” Kira asked.      “Nobody told me that Becca and Lance were here,” Rachel said.  “We can’t fit everyone.”      “We’ll have to squeeze in a bit more,” Kira said.      “It’s not just that, we won’t be able to escape the planet’s gravity,” Rachel said.  “Someone needs to stay behind, or use one of the distraction pods.”      “How about all of you take one of the distraction pods,” Gorthos said as he approached, with a dozen of his friends, and they were all armed.      “Is everyone aboard?” Kira asked.      “Other than the three of us,” Rachel said.      “Then you two get aboard, and leave,” Kira said.      “We’re not leaving you behind,” Gina said.      “It’ll take a few minutes to launch anyway,” Rachel said.  “You can’t hold them off for that long by yourself.”      “Just get started on it,” Kira said.      “Right,” Rachel said as she went to go work on it.      “She’s right, you can’t hold them off on your own,” Gina said      “Good thing she’s not alone,” Curtis said as he came up beside them.      Jennifer, Henry, Drake, Becca, Bobby, and Lance came up as well.      “Get on the ship,” Kira said.      “We can get on when it’s ready to launch,” Drake said.  “For now, we need to stop them from stopping us.”      As Gorthos and his friends came up to them.  “One last chance,” Gorthos said.  “Surrender the pod to us, and you can live.”      “Or you can surrender and we won’t have to beat you guys to a pulp,” Jennifer said.      Gorthos and his friends attacked.  Gorthos himself went for Kira.  He had a sword and swung it at her, but she ducked and went into a roll and came back up behind him.  She elbowed him in the back, putting him off balance, while she turned around and got him in a chokehold.      “We’re ready to launch,” Rachel shouted.      “Everyone get to the ship now,” Kira said.  Gorthos was still struggling in her arms, but it was lessening.  And around her the fight was still continuing.      “We’re not leaving you behind,” Gina said as she dodged to avoid getting hit by a club.      “Somebody has to stay behind,” Kira said as she dropped the now unconscious Gorthos.      “Watch out,” Lance screamed as he jumped into the path of a spear that was thrown at Kira.  It hit him in the shoulder as he fell to the ground.      “Lance!” Kira said.      Curtis went after the guy that threw the spear, while Kira kneeled down next to Lance.      “It’s fine, I’m fine,” Lance said through gritted teeth.      “We need to get you aboard the escape pod, and get it launched now,” Kira said.  She tore off a chunk of her shirt and wrapped it around Lance’s shoulder.      “How long will it take us to get up into space and aboard Ricardo’s ship?” Curtis asked as he came over.  The fight was pretty much over, and Gorthos’ friends had been soundly defeated.      “Ten minutes, at least,” Kira said.      “Lance won’t survive that long with that kind of wound,” Curtis said.      “You did say someone had to stay behind,” Lance said.  “I’d like to volunteer for that.”      “Lance…” Kira said.  “You don’t have to do that.”      “If I’m not going to make it anyway, I’m the right choice,” Lance said.  “I know that, you know that, I’m okay with that.”      Kira closed her eyes for a second.  “Right, thank you.  You didn’t have to do that, but thank you.”      “I haven’t always been a good person,” Lance said.  “But I’m glad I finally got to do something worthwhile with my life.”      “Everyone aboard the escape pod,” Kira shouted.  “Let’s go.”      “We’re detecting a launch from the surface,” Madhur said.  “No wait, seven launches.”      “They’ll be the eighth launch,” Krissy said.  “The one we won’t detect, assuming Rachel’s cloaking device works.”      “Oh, I assume,” Ricardo said.  “We’re in position to pick them up?”      “Yeah, we’re where they told us they’d be,” Alexandra said.      “The Caldore ships are opening fire on the pods,” Madhur said.      “Just the visible ones?” Ricardo asked.      “Looks like it,” Madhur said.  “Three of them have been shot down so far.  Four now.”      “The remaining pods just left the atmosphere though,” Skyler said.      “And the remainder of the visible pods have been destroyed,” Madhur said.      “Our friends should be here in about half a minute,” Skyler said.      “Then time for our distraction,” Ricardo said.  “Blow up the asteroids.”      “Detonating the explosives now,” Madhur said.  The viewscreen showed the asteroids in the distance exploding.  “Several of the Caldore ships are going over there to investigate, but a few are still staying here.”      “It’s the best we’re going to manage,” Ricardo said.  “The shuttle bay doors are open?”      “They are,” Ted said.      “Our friends should be here any second,” Skyler said.      “Lex, make sure we’re ready to jump into superspace at a moment’s notice,” Ricardo said.      “Understood,” Alexandra said.      “Decloak, and let’s hope they are fast,” Ricardo said.      “Decloaking now,” Ted said.      “The Caldore have noticed us,” Madhur said.  “They are locking weapons.”      “The lead ship is hailing us,” Krissy said.  “They are demanding our surrender, and saying if we don’t that we’ll be destroyed.”      “Tell them we surrender then,” Ricardo said.      “What?” Jake asked.  “We’re surrendering?”      “Of course not,” Ricardo said.  “We’re buying time.”      “Something just landed in our shuttle bay,” Ted said.      “Confirm what it is,” Ricardo said.      “The lead Caldore ship is approaching and preparing to dock,” Madhur said.      “The pod in our shuttle bay just decloaked and it contains our friends,” Ted said.      “Let’s get out of here,” Ricardo said.      “Entering superspace now,” Alexandra said.  “We’re out of here.”      “Wait, that’s odd,” Jake said as the ship went into superspace.  “Lance’s tracker is still back on the planet.”      As the ship flew back towards the wormhole, everyone was reconnecting.  Kira’s crew telling them what had happened, and about their time on the prison planet, as well as being informed of what had been going on while they were there.      There was some apprehension as they approached the wormhole back to the Milky Way Galaxy, as that was where Kira’s crew had been captured, but with their cloaking device they made it past the Caldore with little difficulty this time.  And it was not long before they returned to Earth.      “Did I make the right call?” Kira asked as she lay on the couch, her head on Madhur’s lap.  “Leaving Lance behind?”      “Leaving someone behind is never easy,” Madhur said.  “But someone had to stay behind, and he wasn’t going to make it back alive.”      “So Curtis said, but what if he was wrong?”      “You can’t think like that.  You made a decision, and you can’t change that.”      “We know time travellers.”      “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”      “No, rewriting history to fix my mistakes is not a valid solution.”      “And that’s assuming this was a mistake.  You made the best decision you could at the time.  That’s not a mistake, it’s just a shitty situation.”      “What if I was wrong?” Curtis asked.  “What if Lance could have survived.  I should have been the one to stay behind.”      “You’ve described the wound to me, and I agree with your opinion,” Jake said.  “It sucks, but he wouldn’t have made it.  You staying there would have been pointless.”      Curtis punched the wall.  “Why does everyone keep dying around me.”      “Because sometimes people die,” Elizabeth said.  “It’s an unfortunate side effect of reality.  But there are also a lot of people that are alive because of you.  If it weren’t for people like you, the Earth would have been conquered by now, with millions dead, and everyone else enslaved.  Dark Hawk knew and understood that.  So did Lance.  They gave their lives trying to help, just like you try to help.”      “But…it’s not fair,” Curtis said.      “It’s not,” Elizabeth said.  “That’s why we just have to keep trying our best every day to try and make it fair.  It’s not always easy, but we just have to keep trying, because the other option is to give up.  And we can’t give up.”      “So, I suppose now that we’re back on Earth, you’ll be heading back to London shortly,” Henry said.      “In a bit,” Jennifer said.  “But not right away, I don’t think.”      “Oh?”      “That fight is important to me, and I do intend to return to it, but you’re important to me too, and I can’t lose sight of that either.”      “I don’t want to stand in the way of what you need to do,” Henry said.  “I never have.  I just want to be able to stand with you.”      “We’ve been engaged for a while now,” Jennifer said.  “Maybe it’s time we finally actually did something about that.”      “Well, the first step is setting a date, I suppose,” Henry said.      “How long until you go back to Maltork Six?” Rachel asked.      “I’ll be on Earth for another few days, catching up with friends and family and such,” Murshidah said.  “But I do have a job to get back to.”      “I’m going to miss you.”      “You can always come visit, it’s not that long of a spaceflight.”      “I guess not.”      “If you wanted you could even move out there with me,” Murshidah said.      “I…you know that’s actually not a half-bad idea,” Rachel said.  “I never really thought about moving to another planet before, but yeah, I’d really like that.”      Many months later, Drake entered a room.  “Well boys, here we are,” he said.  “Henry’s about to get married.  Nervous?”      “Not really,” Henry said.  “I mean, maybe a bit, but overall, I’m just really happy that this is finally happening.”      “Yeah, it’s about time,” Curtis said.      “See, this is why you plan things out in advance,” Drake said.  “So things don’t drag on endlessly.”      “Oh yeah?” Henry asked.  “How long until you and Becca tie the knot?”      “Still another two years on that,” Curtis said.  “Assuming his plans from three years ago are accurate.”      “What?” Drake asked.  “I didn’t even know Becca back then.”      “Yeah, but that’s what you were saying the day we started university, that your plan was to get married in five years,” Curtis said.      Ricardo came into the room.  “Hey guys, sorry I’m late, just taking care of some business.”      “No problem,” Henry said.  “Although, considering the kind of work you do, anything we should be concerned with?”      “No, things have been rather quiet on that front as of late,” Ricardo said.  “Which is nice, one should never have to be defined by their job.”      “Depends on the importance they put on their job,” Drake said.  “Being a journalist is pretty important to me.”      “As is my job,” Curtis said.      “Isn’t being a costumed vigilante more like a hobby than a job?” Henry asked.  “I mean, it’s not like you get paid for it.”      “Maybe not in money, but there are other benefits,” Curtis said as he snapped the fingers of his new robotic hand.  “You know, helping people out.”      “What about you Henry?” Ricardo asked.  “You have some big career in something planned yet?”      “I’m not sure yet,” Henry replied.  “But the important thing is that whatever I’m doing with my life moving forward, I’m doing it with the woman I love.” The end…