Multifandom Worms!

Claire! She/her | 21 | multifandom blog | COD blog is @ohclaire

[clairelydreaming]

Rocky & reader

Reader who had like a really unstable or frankly unsafe childhood, and had to learn from an early age how to sleep through flight or fight responses.

You honestly can’t remember the last time you got a good night’s sleep. You don’t know that you ever have. The closest was maybe the medically induced coma that brought you here. But ever since waking up, you’ve reverted right back to that sense of unease you just can’t kick.

Sometimes it was the silence. Space is silent, no one had to tell you that, but living it was different. Even living alone on earth there was still noise. An inconsiderate neighbor, traffic, birds. None of that existed in space. The closest thing was the dull hum of the CO2 scrubber, but even that put you on edge. Knowing one malfunction stood between you and your demise.

But sometimes it was the movement of the only other person in light years. You and Grace didn’t always sleep at the same time, restlessness was not your burden alone. He’d sometimes get up in the middle of the night, or never go to sleep at all—opting instead to stay up and ‘work the problem’ as he claimed. You knew it was an excuse, but hey—pot, kettle.

You knew Grace wasn’t a threat. He was actually the least threatening person perhaps ever. But your sleep-raddled brain didn’t know that and things going bump in the night (Grace’s clumsiness) made you think of too familiar situations that you’d rather not think about.

So yeah, you’ve never slept great, but space wasn’t helping either.

Until Rocky.

Meeting an alien…there’s no words. The pure amount of cognitive dissonance to work through alone is astronomical. To go from believing sentient life outside of earth to only be a theory, to being face-to-face with one takes a lot of getting used to. And that’s before you even consider learning to communicate with one and learning all their cultural quirks.

When Rocky suggested (more like demanded) that he watch you both sleep, it was fairly unexpected.

Grace was rattled by the suggestion—disturbed? even. Of course he was, it’s hard to adjust to things you have no precedent for. But you…you were oddly…soothed? at the prospect.

You thought about all the nights you were too worried the fighting would find its way into your room to sleep, or the small voice in your head that whispered you might pass quietly for no reason at all, or all the lonely nights in a brand new apartment with no one to help when all you wanted was someone to fall asleep with.

You tried to look hesitant to save face, but the idea that Rocky would make sure it was safe all night…you had the best sleep you had in years. 

Not that it was foolproof. You’d managed to make it a while without having any problems, but you supposed it had to happen eventually.

It was one of those evenings (or at least, the closest thing to evening you could get in a space ship) where you felt a sense of dread for no reason. Like if you went to bed something bad would happen. And Rocky sensed it.

“…Okay? Question.” He put down his xenonite.

“Mm, yeah…just…” you mumbled, trailing off. You considered your answer, not wanting to worry him. Even after so long, you were still an alien. He didn’t always get the inner workings of human minds. “Just worried.” You decided on vague.

Rocky shifted from his watching position, scuttling as close to the barrier as he could get before tapping twice on it, “worried? Why worried?” He sounded concerned now—at least that’s what you thought. You were still getting used to all of his tonal frequencies.

You took a deep breath, turning on your side to face him and bringing the covers up closer to your chin like it might help you. “Um…it’s not actually a problem, Rock. I just sometimes get worried that I’ll…die. In my sleep. For no reason. And I just won’t wake up.”

You said it and immediately regretted it. That’s essentially exactly what happened to his crew and now you’ve probably brought up unwanted memories or maybe he’ll misinterpret and think you’re actually dying—

“No.” He breaks through your avalanche of thought with how solid of a no it is. “You are safe. Rocky watch. Rocky see if something wrong. If something wrong, I fix. You no die.” He spreads his claw on the barrier, “Rocky no let you die…promise pinky.”

You can’t help the layer of tears that build up rapidly. You had taught Rocky about pinky promises the other day…you had mentioned how you took them as law mostly as a joke to Grace, but you knew Rocky was dead serious.

Your lips twist to the side as you try and keep it together. You bring your hand up, balling your fist but leaving your pinky up to rest on the barrier against his claw. It was the closest you were going to get to a pinky swear, so it would have to do.

You felt incredibly tired all the sudden, hand sliding down the barrier so you wouldn’t have to hold it up anymore, and his claw followed. “Thanks, Rock.”

“No need thank. I do this for cluster.”

You were halfway to sleep, only barely hearing him, but you didn’t know that word. “Wh—“ you yawn, “what’s that?”

“Is family.”

[clairelydreaming]

Ryland Grace x reader, Rocky & reader

Reader who started calling Rocky pet names out of habit and, after explaining, Rocky loves it. But then reader and Grace start dating and you call him a pet name and suddenly Rocky is seething with jealousy.

“Rock, honey, be careful,” it slips out when he barrels past in his ball one day.

You’re writing on a white board when he squeezes past, knocking into the leg of the table and causing it to shake, sending some utensils flying. Obviously he’s incredibly sturdy (…rocky…), but he can be kind of reckless sometimes.

“No understand second word.” At least he stops rolling around to ask.

Grace looks up from his work bench, glasses sliding down his nose to where they’re almost falling off, and glances between the two of you. He’s in one of his stupid pun shirts that grip his biceps too tight, and you can’t think about that too much or else your mind will wander.

You realize what you said and that now you have to explain pet names to an alien. “Oh uh…” you look back at Ryland for assistance, but he just throws his hands up in a this-one-is-on-you gesture before returning to his work, slipping his pen between his teeth as he thinks.

You look back to Rocky who is eagerly awaiting your explanation.

“…It’s a pet name. A term of endearment,” you decide to go with, “Like something you call someone you care about.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then, “care about Rocky? Question.”

You’re shocked that it’s a question. You squat down to be semi-level with him, hand finding the top of his ball, “yeah. Of course I do Rocky.”

He extends himself so his carapace bonks the tops of the ball where your hand is. The ball does a great job at insulation, but you can still feel a little more heat seep through when he does.

“Amaze amaze amaze. Rocky cares about humans too, statement.”

You smile, but then remember something else, “Oh! Honey is also a food, though.”

He shrinks back down, you assume because he’s put off by the mention of eating. He takes a single step back, ball rolling a small amount.

“Rocky food? Question.”

You burst out in laughter, Ryland can’t help but join too.

“No! Rocky not food! Honey is sweet, so you call someone honey when their personality is sweet too.”

“Oh, understand. Rocky sweet!” He does his little happy chirps and jazz hands that always make you get a little cuteness aggression.

“…debatable…” you hear Grace murmur from his station, probably because Rocky rolled over his toe this morning.

“No, Rocky sweet, statement. Other human said so, Grace is dumb dumb dumb human, smart smart smart human call Rocky sweet.”

You stand and laugh, happy to gang up on Ryland with Rocky, “yeah, Ry, I’m smart smart smart.”

It’s months later after you and Ryland finally stop pretending that you only love each other as ‘crew mates’ that it gets brought up again.

“Ry, can you pass the p20,” you’re running more experiments on the taumoeba, at this point more out of boredom than anything.

He hands the pipette to you from across the bench. “Thank you, honey.” The word slides out without you even realizing it, but someone in the room definitely takes notice.

Rocky stops his ministrations with his xenonite, dropping it and rapidly tapping on the barrier.

“What. Grace not honey, Rocky is honey! Only Rocky get pet name, statement.”

You look up incredulously, unaware that Rocky felt so strongly about his pet name.

Grace seems fairly shocked at his insistence too, but he’s not one to pass an opportunity to tease Rocky. He tilts his head like he’s thinking before looking over at Rocky, “Well, no bud, I’m pretty sure I’m honey. Maybe when you can pass a pipette…” Ryland teases.

“No no no, Rocky honey, Grace is leaky space blob, other human knows Rocky better.”

You can’t stop your giggle. It feels a little mean because clearly Rocky is actually passionate about this, but his possession is cute.

“Okay! I’m sorry!” You say through the giggles, “It was an accident. Rocky is honey. Ry, you…we’ll workshop it.” You’re not sure if he even likes pet names, let alone which ones.

He pouts across the lab bench to you.

“No workshop. No special name for Grace, only Rocky.”

Ryland throws his hands up, “C’mon, man!”

[vanillapjm]

give it till april

jack abbot x f!reader | slow burn, age gap, hurt/comfort, veteran!jack, reader is a paramedic turned ER charge nurse, chronic pain themes, emotional avoidance, pittsburgh winter

tw: ptsd adjacent themes, referenced combat injury, referenced grief, medical setting

The first thing you learn about Jack Abbot is that he lies about his pain levels.

Not dramatically. Not in the way patients lie, theatrical minimizing, hoping you won't notice the sweat on their upper lip or the way they're breathing through their back teeth. He lies the way someone lies when they've been doing it long enough that the lie has become the first language and the truth is the translation. Automatic. Fluent.

You know this because you spent six years as a paramedic before you became a nurse, and paramedics learn to read bodies the way other people read faces. By the time you get to a scene, the body has already been telling the story for minutes, sometimes hours. You learn to listen to it instead of the words.

Jack Abbot's body, on a bad day, says something completely different from what his mouth says.

His mouth says fine, it's manageable, don't worry about it.

His body says the socket fit is wrong today, or the weather changed overnight and the phantom pain is running hot, or he's been on his feet for six hours past the point where he should have sat down. The particular set of his jaw and the almost-imperceptible shift of his weight to his right side are the story, if you know how to read it.

You know how to read it.

You don't say anything about it for the first two months.

You came to PTMC in January, which is, in retrospect, the worst possible time to move to Pittsburgh. The city in January is gray in a way that feels personal, a low flat gray that sits on everything and muffles sound and makes the days feel like they're happening inside a cotton ball. You grew up in North Carolina. You were not prepared.

What you were prepared for was the job, because the job is the one thing that has always been straightforward. You are good at this. You have always been good at this, from your first day on an ambulance at twenty-two to the charge nurse position you'd held at Durham Regional for four years before the particular series of events that led you to Pittsburgh. You don't think about those directly if you can help it. You've filed them under necessary change in the organizational system of your own history.

PTMC's night shift ER is a different animal from what you knew. Bigger, faster, with the specific energy of a teaching hospital, residents everywhere, the constant low-level hum of people learning under pressure. You'd worked in teaching hospitals before. You understood the rhythm.

What you didn't anticipate was the attending.

Your first shift, you're given the standard orientation rundown by the outgoing charge nurse, a woman named Delphine who has clearly been doing this long enough to have developed a personal shorthand for everything, delivered at speed. She covers the board system, the trauma bay protocol, the supply room situation, the attendings. When she gets to Jack Abbot, she pauses in a way that isn't quite a pause, more like a breath, like she's selecting the right words.

"Night shift lead," she says. "Ex-military, Army. Left leg prosthetic, below knee. He'll never mention it, don't mention it either unless he brings it up or it becomes a clinical concern. He runs a tight floor. He's fair. He doesn't raise his voice." She looks at you over the top of her reading glasses. "When he gets quiet is when you should pay attention."

"What does quiet mean?" you ask.

"You'll know," she says, which is not an answer, and turns out to be completely accurate.

You meet him properly at the start of that first shift, in the handoff briefing. He's already at the board when you come in, reviewing overnight census with the precision of someone who has been doing this long enough to read a board the way other people read a sentence. Whole, not word by word.

He's, you notice him the way you'd notice a weather system. Something that occupies space differently from the things around it.

Late forties, maybe early fifties. Dark hair with gray through it, more at the temples. The kind of face that would be called handsome in a way that's about structure rather than prettiness, strong jaw, lines around his eyes and mouth from years of squinting into the sun or the middle distance. He’s in black scrubs, wearing them with the unconscious uprightness of someone whose posture was trained into him young and never quite left.

When he turns to acknowledge the incoming shift, his eyes do the thing Delphine warned you about. A quick systematic read of the room, everyone clocked and filed in seconds. When they land on you, they pause one beat longer. New face. Catalogued.

"Charge nurse?" he says.

"Yes," you say. "First shift."

"Durham Regional before this?"

"Six years before that as a paramedic."

Something registers in his expression. Not warmth exactly, more like the slight adjustment of a person recalibrating an estimate. "Good," he says, and turns back to the board.

That's the whole introduction.

Later you'll understand that good from Jack Abbot in the first thirty seconds of meeting you is the equivalent of a lengthy written endorsement from anyone else.

The first month is learning. Not the job, you know the job, but the floor, the people, the particular language of this specific place.

You learn: Lena at the main desk has worked this floor for nineteen years and knows where everything is, has ever been, and probably will be. Consult her before the supply room. Resident Santos is sharp and combative and improves dramatically when you treat her like the intelligent adult she is rather than a medical student who needs managing. Resident Whitaker is careful and slow and will get there, he just needs more runway than the others. Dr. Parker Ellis is the senior resident who has, apparently, been trying to get Jack to take a vacation for three consecutive years.

You learn Jack in layers, the way you'd learn a complicated patient history. Not all at once, but accumulating, building toward a picture.

He takes his coffee black and too hot, and he has opinions about the ER coffee machine that he has apparently been voicing to facilities since before you arrived. He reviews charts standing up, always, unless it's the end of a long shift and he thinks no one is watching, at which point he will occasionally, briefly, sit. He has a particular way of delivering bad news to families. Not scripted, not the sterile clinical distance some doctors put on like protective gear, but present. Actually in the room with them. You've watched him do it three times in your first month and each time it's the same: he finds a chair, he sits at their level, he doesn't rush the silence.

He is, in ways that are professionally inconvenient, exactly the kind of person you find most difficult to be indifferent to.

You do your level best anyway.

The pain thing comes to a head on a Thursday in February.

The weather has been bad for a week. Pittsburgh winter, which turns out to be a different category of winter than North Carolina winter, with a wet cold that gets into everything and a wind off the rivers that has a personal quality to it, like it knows where you're going. You've been told by multiple people that you'll acclimate. You're skeptical.

The floor has been brutal. A multi-car pileup on 376 sent four traumas in under an hour, and the residual administrative chaos of that is still reverberating five hours later. You've been moving without stopping since the shift started, and you're aware, in the background-noise way you're aware of your own physical state during hard shifts, that your feet crossed the threshold from tired into genuinely unhappy about two hours ago.

You're at the medication cart at hour seven when you notice Jack at the far end of the hall, reviewing a chart. The weight distribution is wrong. He's putting almost nothing on his left side, and the line of his back is carrying a tension that wasn't there at the start of shift. He's been on his feet for the same seven hours, plus whatever time he was here before handoff, and the socket that connects his prosthetic to his residual limb has a tolerance for hours-of-use that you know from six years of working with amputee veterans is finite and individual and frequently ignored by the person most affected.

You finish with the medication cart. You think about it for another minute. Then you go to the supply room.

When you come back, you find him at the hub.

You set a heat pack on the counter next to him, the kind you crack and shake, runs for about forty minutes. You don't say anything. You go back to your charting.

A long pause.

"What's this for," he says. Not a question. The sentence has the quality of someone who knows exactly what it's for and is deciding how to handle it.

"Residual limb pain responds well to heat when it's cold-triggered," you say, eyes on your screen. "Particularly after extended weight-bearing. I've got four amputee veterans in my contacts from my paramedic years and two of them told me that independently."

Silence.

"Your weight's been on your right side for two hours," you say. "I noticed."

More silence. You type something. You can feel him looking at the side of your face.

"I didn't ask for—" he starts.

"You didn't," you agree. "I didn't offer it as a commentary on your ability to do your job. I offered it as a heat pack." You look at him then, briefly, level. "You don't have to use it."

You go back to the screen.

Another pause. Then, in your peripheral vision, he picks it up.

He doesn't say thank you. He goes back to his chart.

You don't expect him to. You weren't doing it for the thank you.

About twenty minutes later, a cup appears next to your keyboard. Coffee, from the good machine at the other end of the floor, not the hub machine. Hot.

You look at it.

You look toward the board, where he's standing.

He's talking to Ellis about a consult. He doesn't look over.

You drink the coffee.

This becomes, without either of you naming it, a language.

Not every night. Not predictably. But the small offerings accumulate, the coffee, the heat pack on the bad days, a granola bar left near your station during a brutal stretch when you haven't eaten since before shift, a specific piece of information relayed in a way that makes your job marginally easier, the quiet appearing at your shoulder on the nights that earn the particular designation of hard rather than just busy.

You do the same back. It comes naturally. Six years of paramedic work teaches you that care is often most useful when it's practical and doesn't require the other person to acknowledge receiving it.

The first conversation that isn't about the floor happens in the break room, five weeks in.

You're eating dinner at eleven PM, or what passes for dinner, which is the depressing collection of vending machine items that constitute nutrition during a long night shift, when he comes in for coffee. He does the microwave thing. He leans against the counter while it runs.

You eat your crackers.

"Durham," he says. "What made you leave?"

He's not looking at you, looking at the microwave, thirty-eight seconds remaining on the display.

"Needed a change," you say.

"From the job specifically?"

"From a version of myself I'd gotten stuck in."

The microwave beeps. He gets the cup. He turns around and leans against the counter facing you now, and the expression is attentive in the particular Jack Abbot way, not performing interest, just actually interested.

"What version," he says.

You consider how much of this you want to hand over to someone you've known for five weeks. Then you consider that you're in Pittsburgh in February eating crackers at eleven PM and your options for honest conversation are limited.

"The version that had gotten very good at the job," you say, "by removing herself from it. Technically excellent. Clinically appropriate. Completely sealed. You do the thing for long enough without adequate processing and it just," you tap the side of your head, "goes somewhere it shouldn't. Calcifies."

He's quiet.

"Paramedic work specifically does something to you," you say. "You're first in. By the time a patient reaches an ER, there's a team, there's protocol, there's structure. On a scene it's you and your partner and whatever you find when you get there. No buffer. You absorb a lot." You pause. "I absorbed a lot."

"And you stopped processing it."

"I stopped having the bandwidth. And then I stopped noticing I'd stopped. And then one day a woman in the waiting room asked me if I was okay and I realized I genuinely didn't know how to answer."

He makes a sound that isn't quite a word.

"You know that version of the problem," you say. It's not a question.

A beat. "I know a version of it," he says. "Different origin. Same architecture."

"Military."

"Yeah."

"When."

"Three deployments. Third one ended the career." He glances down at his leg without looking like he's glancing down at his leg, a micro-movement you'd miss if you weren't watching carefully. "By which point I'd been not-processing for about eight years."

"How'd you get out of it?"

He makes a quiet sound that has some irony in it. "Badly, at first. Then therapy. Then time. Then finding something worth being present for."

"Medicine."

"Among other things."

The break room is quiet. The vending machine hums. From outside the door, the distant sounds of the floor.

"Pittsburgh was supposed to be temporary," you say. "I was going to do a year, get my head right, figure out the next thing."

"And?"

You look at your crackers. "Still figuring."

"How long have you been here?"

"Seven weeks."

"Give it till April," he says. "The city looks different when the gray lifts."

"That sounds like the beginning of civic propaganda."

"It sounds like someone who came here for temporary reasons and then stayed," he says, and picks up his coffee and goes back to the floor, and you sit in the break room for another few minutes thinking about the specific weight of that sentence.

March is when the floor gets to know you.

Lena starts leaving notes for you at the start of shift, small intelligence briefings on the state of the floor, the status of the supply situation, which residents are having good nights and which need watching. Santos, after an incident involving a difficult patient and your intervention on her behalf, starts bringing you coffee exactly once a week in what you understand is her version of a significant gesture. Whitaker asks you questions in the tentative way of someone who has been burned before by asking the wrong person, and you answer them straight, and he relaxes.

Parker Ellis tells you, on a Tuesday in March, that you're good for the floor.

"How so," you say.

"You stabilize things," she says. "Some charge nurses manage the floor. You hold it. There's a difference."

You think about this later. You think about the version of yourself in Durham who was excellent at managing and terrible at holding, and whether Pittsburgh is teaching you something or whether you arrived already changed and the city is just the location of the change.

You think about a lot of things lately that you'd stopped thinking about for a couple of years.

Jack is not incidental to this. You'd be dishonest with yourself if you tried to argue that he was. There's something about the quality of his attention, the specific way he notices without making the noticing a performance, that has begun to unlock things. Things you sealed up and labeled later and then ignored.

You don't know what to do about this, exactly.

You file it under pending.

The night it shifts is a Wednesday in late March.

A warehouse fire on the South Side sends three critical patients in under forty minutes. It's the kind of night that strips everything down to function, no room for anything except the work, the sequence, the next right thing. You've been in these nights before. You know how to move through them.

What you haven't navigated before is moving through one of these nights and simultaneously being aware, in some registered but unaddressed corner of your attention, that Jack Abbot is running on something that isn't all right.

It starts small. The tells are minor. He's been on his feet longer than he should, the cold has been bad this week, the socket issue you've been watching for two months has been a recurring problem and he's mentioned the new fitting exactly once in the dismissive tone of someone who made an appointment and then cancelled it. On a normal night you'd leave a heat pack and a coffee and consider the conversation managed.

This isn't a normal night. This is eight hours of controlled emergency, and by hour six you can see, if you're watching, if you've been watching for three months, that the pain is running high enough to be a factor.

He doesn't show it in the work. That's the thing that makes it worse, in a way. The work is impeccable. The decisions are right, the communication is clear, the patients are managed with the same steady competence that they always are. Whatever he's dealing with, he has put it somewhere else with a proficiency that speaks to long practice.

But you've been a paramedic. You've seen people push through pain until their body stops accepting the instruction, and you know what that looks like in the seconds before it happens.

At hour seven, during a lull between the second and third trauma, you find him at the hub. You don't ask how he's doing. That's not the language.

"I need you to do something for me," you say.

He looks at you.

"Sit down for twenty minutes. I'll cover."

"I don't need—"

"I know you don't need to. I'm asking you to do it for the floor." You hold his gaze. "You're eight hours into a shift that's had three traumas and you've been compensating your gait for the last two hours, which means the socket is causing problems, and if you end up off your feet involuntarily in hour nine because you didn't sit down in hour seven, that's a floor problem. So I'm asking you, as charge nurse, to sit down."

A long pause.

"That was very tactical," he says.

"I spent six years on ambulances. I learned to frame requests so people would take them."

Something almost moves in his expression. "Twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes."

He goes to the break room. You cover the floor. Twenty-three minutes later he's back, and the gait is better, and the tension in his jaw has reduced to something closer to baseline, and he doesn't say anything about it and neither do you.

But at the end of shift, when the floor is winding down and you're both at the hub finishing charting, he says, without looking up from his screen: "How did you know it was the socket and not the phantom pain."

"Phantom pain doesn't change your gait," you say. "Socket fit does."

He's quiet.

"You cancelled the fitting appointment," you say. Not a question.

"How do you—"

"You mentioned it in February. You haven't mentioned it since, and the problem's gotten worse, not better." You save your chart. "I'm not asking you to explain yourself. I'm observing that the appointment would probably help."

A pause. Then: "You're very annoying."

"I know."

"In a," he stops. Starts differently. "It's useful. The annoying."

"High praise."

The almost-sound, the one that isn't quite a laugh. You've been hearing it for three months and you've started to understand that it's the version of warmth he allows himself in professional settings, the suggestion of it, the controlled release. You've started to notice when you prompt it.

You're aware this is information with implications you haven't fully processed.

April arrives and the gray does lift, like he said.

It happens incrementally, a morning here, an afternoon there, the river catching light in a way that Pittsburgh in January made you doubt was possible. The city reveals itself differently in April. Older neighborhoods with the particular architecture of a place built by people who intended to stay. Bridges everywhere, connecting things.

You take a different route to work and find a diner and start stopping there before night shifts, and the routine of it, the specific booth, the same server who brings coffee without being asked after the third visit, grounds something that has been unmoored since January.

You're better, you realize, in April.

Not fixed. Not resolved. But better, in the specific sense of being present in your life rather than passing through it at a remove.

You tell Jack this, one night in the break room, because the break room has become the place where you say the things that don't fit on the floor.

"You were right about April," you say.

He's at the table with a chart, paper, one of the few remaining paper charts, a particular older patient who prefers them and for whom Jack has apparently been maintaining the practice without comment for two years. "Was I."

"The city looks different. You were right."

"Mmm." He makes a note. "How's the diner?"

You look at him. "I haven't mentioned a diner."

"You come in before some shifts with powdered sugar on your jacket," he says. "There's a diner on Penn Avenue that does beignets until four AM. It's the only place within walking distance of the parking structure."

You look at your jacket. There is, in fact, a trace of powdered sugar on the lapel.

"That's —" you start.

"Observational" he says. "Same thing you do."

You sit down across from him. He turns a page in the chart. The break room is quiet.

"How long did it take you?" you ask. "After you moved here. To feel like Pittsburgh was where you actually lived and not just where you were."

He thinks about it. "Two years, maybe. Closer to three before it felt like home."

"What made it feel like home eventually?"

He's quiet for a moment. Then: "People. The floor. Having something that mattered."

"Not the city itself."

"The city's just the container" he says. "What you put in it is the part that matters."

You look at the table. "I haven't put very much in it yet."

"You've been here four months."

"I know. In Durham I had ten years of putting things in. People, places, a version of myself that knew how to be there. Starting over is —" you look for the word.

"Expensive" he says.

You look at him.

"It costs something," he says. "Starting over. People underestimate that. They think fresh start means free, but it's actually the opposite. You pay for the fresh start with everything you built before it."

"Was yours worth it?" you ask. "The cost."

A long pause. He closes the chart. He looks at you with the expression that isn't quite neutral, the one you've seen a handful of times, the careful one, the one that's managing something.

"Most days," he says. "Yes."

The night in April that you file under the night things changed is less dramatic than you'd expect.

It's not a bad shift, particularly. Moderately busy. No catastrophes. The kind of night where you move steadily and finish on time and feel, at the end of it, tired in the clean way rather than the hollowed-out way.

What happens is this: at two in the morning, during a quiet stretch, you're in the hallway outside the storage room and your phone rings with a call you've been half-expecting and fully dreading.

It's your sister in Raleigh. Your mother's been asking about you. It's been three months since you visited. When are you coming home.

You stand in the hallway and have a version of the conversation you've been having for a year, the one where you explain, without explaining, that home is a complicated word right now and that you're figuring things out and that yes, you'll visit, you just need a little more time. Your sister is kind about it. She's always kind about it. The kindness makes it worse, somehow.

You hang up and stand in the hallway for a moment with your hand flat against the wall.

"Bad news?"

You turn. Jack is at the other end of the hall, heading toward you.

"No," you say. "Just family. It's fine."

He slows as he reaches you, reading the hallway the way he reads everything. He doesn't keep walking. He stops, a few feet away.

"You don't have to," he starts.

"I know." You lower your hand from the wall. "My mom wants me to come home for a visit. My sister was relaying the message. Nothing bad happened. I just—"

you stop. You're not sure how to finish the sentence.

"Don't know what home means right now," he says.

You look at him.

"You said in March, starting over costs what you had before. I think one of the things it costs is the easy answer to that question."

Your chest does something complicated. "Yeah."

"That gets easier," he says. "Not because you answer it definitively. Just because you get better at living in the ambiguity."

"That sounds terrible."

"It's better than it sounds."

You lean back against the wall. He stays where he is, which means he's about three feet from you, and the hallway is empty and quiet and it's two in the morning in Pittsburgh and you've known this man for four months.

"Jack," you say.

"Yeah."

"Can I ask you something personal?"

A pause. "Probably."

"After you came back from the last deployment, the one where you lost the leg, who took care of you?"

The question sits in the hallway. He's very still.

"Why are you asking that," he says. Carefully. Not defensively.

"Because you're very good at it," you say. "Taking care of people. Not in the managing way. In the actual way. And I've been trying to work out if that's just who you are, or if someone taught you by doing it for you."

A long pause.

"My platoon medic," he says. "Before I became one myself. Man named Curtis. He had a way of treating the person that had nothing to do with treating the injury. Used to drive the MOs insane. He'd spend ten minutes just talking to someone. Being there. And they'd come through things they statistically shouldn't have come through." He pauses. "I asked him once why he did it that way. He said the body takes cues from being witnessed. That knowing someone is there changes the physiology."

"He was right," you say. "That's documented."

"I know that now." He looks at the floor for a second, then back up. "After I came home the last time, after the leg, no one took care of me, specifically. I didn't allow it. I had a version of that problem you described. Sealed up. Handled." He says handled with the specific irony of someone who has been in enough therapy to know what they were actually doing. "I took care of myself because the alternative meant admitting I needed it."

"How'd you crack that open?"

"A therapist with considerably more patience than I deserved," he says. "And time. And losing enough by refusing to let anyone in that eventually the cost of refusing was higher than the cost of letting."

"What did you lose?"

He's quiet for a moment. "That's the longer story."

"Okay," you say. You don't push.

He looks at you. The careful expression, the managed one, and then, for just a second, something shifts in it. Like a held breath, released.

"My wife died," he says. "Seven years ago. And I'd been so shut down, for so long, that I almost missed the last year of her life because I was performing fine for everyone including her. Including myself." A pause. "I don't, I'm not putting that on the table as a bid for sympathy. I'm answering your question about who taught me by doing it for me. She did. Once I finally let her."

The hallway is very quiet.

"I'm sorry," you say.

"Thank you." Said simply. Not deflecting it, not managing it. Just receiving it.

You stand in the hallway for another moment.

"That's not a shorter story." you say, finally.

The almost-sound. The not-quite-laugh. Warmer than usual. "No." he says. "It's not."

"Thank you for telling me."

"You asked an honest question," he says. "You get an honest answer."

He pushes off from where he's been standing and moves back toward the floor. At the hallway junction, he pauses.

"You should go visit," he says. "Your mom. It doesn't have to mean anything about home. It can just mean going."

You look at him.

"Pittsburgh will still be here when you get back," he says, and turns the corner.

You stand in the hallway for another thirty seconds.

Then you go back to the floor and do your job and don't think about it. Or try not to.

You fail, mostly.

May.

You go to Raleigh for four days, which is the longest you've been away from the floor since January, and which reveals something you hadn't fully understood: you miss Pittsburgh when you're not there.

Not the winter. Not the gray. But the diner and the particular quality of the morning light over the river and the floor and the people on it. Lena and her comprehensive institutional knowledge. Santos and her weekly coffee tribute. Whitaker finding his footing. Parker Ellis's running commentary on everything.

And Jack. You miss Jack, which you acknowledge privately and then immediately file under to be examined later while you eat your mother's cooking and sit on your sister's porch and allow yourself, for four days, to be someone's child and someone's sister and not a charge nurse running a trauma floor.

When you come back, you are, measurably, better. Something that was wound has loosened. Something that was held at distance has been permitted to be close.

You walk into your first shift back and Lena says "welcome back, honey" and Santos gives you a nod that is the Santos equivalent of a standing ovation, and Whitaker tells you about a case he managed well while you were gone with the barely-suppressed pride of a kid showing a parent a test score.

Jack is at the board when you come in. He doesn't turn immediately. You do the handoff briefing, get caught up on the floor status, settle into the shift.

An hour in, he ends up beside you at the hub.

"How was Raleigh," he says. Not looking at you. Looking at the board.

"Good," you say. "It was good."

"Your mom."

"Good. She kept feeding me."

"Sounds right."

"How was the floor," you say.

"Functional. Ellis covered competently. Whitaker had a good week."

"I heard."

A pause. He marks something on the board.

"You look better," he says. Still looking at the board.

"I feel better."

"Good." He caps the marker. And then, still not looking at you: "Pittsburgh felt different with you gone."

You go very still.

He puts the marker in the tray. He still doesn't look at you. The floor noise continues around you, the steady background hum of a functioning ER, monitors, voices, the distant sound of the ambulance bay.

"I'm not sure what to do with that," you say, very carefully.

"You don't have to do anything with it," he says. "I'm just saying it. For accuracy."

You look at the side of his face. The line of his jaw. The gray at his temple.

"Jack," you say.

He turns, finally, and looks at you.

"I need you to be clearer than that," you say. "Because I have been working very hard for five months to be professional about something and if you are saying what I think you might be saying I need you to actually say it."

A pause. Something in his expression moves through several registers, the careful controlled neutral, the managed version, and then the version underneath it, the one you've seen a handful of times. The unguarded one.

"I think about you," he says. "Outside of work. I think about whether you're sleeping enough, whether the diner is open when you need it to be, whether whatever you're still carrying from Durham is getting lighter." He looks at you steadily. "I'm aware of the position. I'm not asking you for anything. I just, you said you needed me to be clear."

You breathe.

"I think about you outside of work too," you say.

The hallway with your sister calling. The four days in Raleigh and the shape of what was missing. The floor at two AM and the particular way he told you the longer story because you asked an honest question.

"I think about how you are the first person in a long time who has not asked me to perform anything," you say. "Who takes me as I am and doesn't need me to be more okay than I am, or less damaged than I am. You make it easier to be actually here. And I don't know what to do with that either, but I'm done pretending I don't know what it is."

He's very still.

"I don't know what this looks like," you say. "Practically. Given,"

"The floor."

"The floor."

"You're charge nurse," he says. "I'm the attending lead. There's no direct supervisory,"

"I know."

"It would require—"

"I know."

A pause.

"I'm not impulsive," he says. "I need you to know that. I don't do things halfway. If this is something, it's something. I can't do the version where it's ambiguous. I'm not built for that anymore."

"Okay," you say.

"Okay?"

"I don't want ambiguous either." You look at him. "I moved to Pittsburgh because I needed to stop being a recording of myself and start being actually present. And whatever this is," you gesture slightly, the small inadequate gesture for the thing you've been building for five months in a language of heat packs and coffee and two AM honesty, "it's the most present I've felt in two years. I'm not interested in backing away from that."

The floor continues around you. Someone calls for a consult at the other end of the hall. A monitor beeps its reassuring rhythm.

Jack Abbot looks at you with the expression that has no performance in it.

"There's a restaurant," he says. "On the North Side. It's good. I've been meaning to," he stops. Tries again. "Would you have dinner with me."

"Not a shift," you say.

"Not a shift."

"When."

"Saturday. You're off Saturday."

"How do you know my-"

"I know the schedule."

You look at him. He looks back. The door, which has been ajar for five months, is open.

"Yes," you say.

He nods. The expression does the thing, the almost-laugh, warmer than you've ever heard it, and then, briefly, the real one. Quiet and genuine and entirely devastating.

"Back to the floor," he says.

"Back to the floor," you agree.

You go in opposite directions. You don't smile until you're around the corner.

Saturday is April in Pittsburgh, which means cool and bright, the city wearing its best version of itself. The restaurant is on the North Side, small and warm, with the kind of menu that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you've walked into a performance.

He's there when you arrive. He's early, you realize. Of course he's early. He's been running tight logistics his entire adult life.

He stands when he sees you, and the simplicity of the gesture does something unexpected to your chest.

"Hi," you say.

"Hi," he says.

You sit down. The server comes. You order wine. He orders water and then looks at the wine and changes his order, and you file this as the first new thing you're learning about him outside of the hospital context. There will be many more of these. The prospect of them is something you haven't felt in a while.

The dinner is easy. Which is not what you expected, exactly. You'd anticipated a version of the careful managed conversation of the floor, the professional language, the deliberate navigation.

But off the floor he is still Jack, still precise, still honest, still the person who answers real questions with real answers, but something has been set down. Some part of the management. He talks about his sister who calls him too often and who he would not trade for anything. He talks about what it was like to go to medical school in his mid-thirties, post-military, post-amputation, in a class full of people a decade younger, and what he learned from that and what it cost. He asks about your paramedic years with the genuine curiosity of someone who wants to understand the timeline of a person, not just the resume.

You tell him about the car accident that started your paramedic career. The one you were first on scene for at twenty-two, the one where you didn't know what you were doing and did it anyway and everyone survived and you sat in the ambulance bay afterward for forty minutes understanding that this was what you were supposed to do. He listens to the whole thing.

"That's how you know," he says, when you finish. "When you can't explain the why and you don't need to."

"Is that how it was for you? Medicine?"

"After the leg," he says. "I needed something to fix things with. I'd been breaking things, one way and another, for long enough. I wanted to be on the other side of it."

"And?"

He looks at his glass. "And it worked. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

He looks at you. "There are still nights."

"I know," you say. "I've seen some of them."

"You have," he agrees. "You see things very clearly. I found it uncomfortable at first."

"And now?"

The expression. The real one. "Now I find it," he considers the word carefully, "restful."

You look at him across the table in the warm light of this restaurant on a Saturday in April and you think about five months of a specific language built of small gestures in a hospital at two in the morning, and how the thing you came to Pittsburgh to find, the presence, the being actually here, has arrived from a direction you weren't expecting.

"Can I tell you something," you say.

"Yes."

"I came here to stop being a recording of myself and I'm not sure when exactly it stopped being a risk, but I think it was early. Earlier than I wanted to admit."

He waits.

"I think it was around the time I started leaving pens near your chart station," you say.

The almost-laugh. The real one. Warm and quiet and brief, and you're close enough now, across a restaurant table on a Saturday night, that it's not at a professional distance anymore.

"Around the same time," he says.

"The heat pack?" you say.

"Before that, actually."

"When?"

"Third shift," he says. "You were in bay seven with a patient who was frightened and escalating and you were completely still. Not frozen. Still. Like someone who has been in frightening rooms before and knows that the stillness is what the other person needs, and who can provide it without it costing them anything in the moment. I'd seen nurses do that before. Not like that."

You don't say anything for a moment.

"And then I walked away and told myself it was a professional observation," he says, dry, "and I was extremely convincing. To myself. For about two weeks."

"Then what?"

"Then you left a heat pack on the counter without making it an event," he says. "And that was harder to file away."

You look at him.

He looks at you.

"Jack," you say.

"Yeah."

"I'm not very good at this part. The saying the thing part. I spent a lot of years being good at everything else."

"I know," he says. "I'm not either. I've been told I communicate like a situation report."

"You don't, actually."

"Only with you," he says. Simply. "Only recently."

The restaurant is warm and the wine is good and Pittsburgh is outside the window doing its April thing, and you reach across the table and put your hand over his.

He turns his hand over.

His thumb moves across your palm, once, and you feel it in your sternum.

"We're figuring it out," you say.

"We're figuring it out," he agrees.

Here is what you know, by the time the summer comes.

The diner on Penn Avenue knows your order. The server, whose name is Gloria, asks after Jack on the mornings you come in alone, because you came in together twice and once is a coincidence and twice is a data point and Gloria has been reading data points for thirty years.

The floor is still the floor. The work doesn't change, the long nights don't change, the particular weight of the hard ones doesn't change. But there is a shift in the architecture of the hard ones. The knowing that at the end of them there is a person who will not require you to perform recovery, who will simply be there while the shift processes through you like weather.

You go back to your hometown in June and this time you don't feel the pull of the departure the way you did in May. You feel it on the return, the Pittsburgh-shaped gravity that has been building since January, that you understand now is not the city itself but what you've put in it.

You call your mother from the airport and she asks how things are going, really, in the tone of a woman who reads her children accurately from two states away.

"Good," you say. "Really."

A pause. "There's someone," she says. Not a question.

"There's someone," you confirm.

You can hear her smiling. "Does he deserve you?"

You think about a man who answers honest questions with honest answers. Who said restful and meant it as the highest thing.

"I think we deserve each other," you say. "Which is different."

"That's better," she says. "That's the right answer."

Jack is on a Saturday morning in July, in your apartment, drinking coffee that is actually hot because you got a machine that does it correctly, reading something, when you come in from your run.

You are, in the clinical vocabulary, a lot. Red-faced, sweaty, approximately nine miles of July heat in your joints.

He looks up. He looks at you. The expression, the open one, the unguarded one, the one that stopped being rare sometime around April, sits on his face with the ease of something that lives there now.

"There's water," he says.

"I see it."

"You look like you ran somewhere unreasonable."

"Nine miles."

He shakes his head. Returns to his book. "Statistically inadvisable."

You get the water. You sit on the other end of the couch, legs folded under you, drink half of it and look at him.

"Jack."

"Hmm."

"I rescheduled the fitting appointment."

He looks up from the book.

"The socket's been giving me problems," he says.

"I know."

"I cancelled twice."

"I know that too."

A pause. He looks at you. The expression is the one that means he's deciding how much to say.

"Thank you," he says. Quietly. "For staying on it."

"You stayed on mine," you say. "The processing thing. The being-present thing. You stayed on it without making it a project."

"That's different."

"It's not."

He holds your gaze for a moment. Then the almost-sound, warm and real.

"Annoying," he says.

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true."

You lean over and take the book out of his hands and put it on the coffee table, and he watches you do this with the mild expression of someone who is not going to object.

"We have four hours before you have to be at the hospital," you say.

"I'm aware of the schedule."

"Then stop reading and pay attention to me."

The actual laugh, brief and quiet and entirely devastating, the same as the first time you heard it and every time since.

"You're the most presumptuous person I've ever met," he says, and puts his arm around you when you lean into his side, and outside the window Pittsburgh is doing its summer thing, green and warm, the rivers catching the light.

You're learning that this is what it's supposed to feel like.

You're learning it's worth the cost of getting here.

Author's Note:

jack abbot has been living in my head rent free for longer than i'd like to admit, and at some point i had to do something about it. so here we are.

this one is slow and quiet and a little bit about learning to let people see you. if that's your thing, i hope you like it.

for everyone who's been fine. you know the kind.

— with love and an embarrassing amount of feelings about a fictional man

[themusingsofacurlyhairednerd]

Wicked Games

Assassin!Reader x Poly!Feysand

Author's note: This is my first self-insert and first smut, wanted to try something new for a change. Not proof-read, we die like men.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This mission was supposed to be simple, quick. In and out, cut and dry, the job coming in like all the others: A manila envelope under your door, no markings, the target and order inside. That was how it had always been, how it always would be, it was the only thing you knew to be true. So how in the Seven Hells had you ended up here? The High Lord leaned against the wall, his well pressed shirt open half way down his chest, the swirl of Illyrian ink in stark contrast to his bronze skin, so casual in the face of what should have been his own demise. Worse, the High Lady, perched atop the desk, her bare legs bouncing against the wood as she kicked her feet almost giddily. Neither of them looked displeased with the fact that you had been sent there to kill them. In fact, you were quite sure the infamous Curse Breaker was laughing at you as you squirmed uncomfortably in your seat. They hadn't even tied you down! It was starting to feel like an insult, they way they'd simply ushered you in here and asked you to sit like you'd come in for a meeting and not for the poison you'd slipped into their wine minutes before.

"It was a valiant effort, really," said Rhysand as he pushed away from the wall and came to stand behind you.

It was impossible not to be aware of the sheer power of him when he was this close. It was like a dropping a stone into a pond, the ripple of star-kissed power brushing steadily against you. You'd been around powerful males your whole life, had been trained to kill many of them, but none had ever felt like this. He was the shadow of a thought in your mind, a brush of darkness against your skin, you could practically taste jasmine and citrus.

Feyre was no better as she placed her elbows on her knees and leaned forward to get a better look at you. The dress she wore was cut low, the neckline plunging towards her midsection, accentuating every curve when she sat like that. Power radiated off her, not just Night, but something other, as if something beyond the power of the High Lords prowled beneath her skin.

"Not many people dare try," she said with a grin. She'd been the one to catch you. It had been a mistake going for her first, you could see that clearly now. The decision to spike their wine and than disguise yourself as their new cupbearer was already a risky move, but you liked to be absolutely sure the job was done, and done right. And Feyre hadn't taken her throne, she had been perched in Rhysand's lap, kissing his neck and whispering in his ear as she drank cup after cup. You'd thought she would be too drunk to notice the change in taste, too caught up in the revelry to even notice that you were not their usual cup bearer. You had been very, very wrong. She hadn't even gone in for a sip, had somehow been using her public display of affection to distract from the fact that she'd slipped right into your mind and seen exactly what you had done. And still, she could have killed you right there, could have summoned water or flames or ice and you'd heard she could do and taken you out in front of everyone in the Court of Nightmares. But she'd gotten out of Rhysand's lap, stumbling on heels you thought were too tall for her, and thrown an arm around your shoulder, whispering in your ear that she needed your help finding the bathroom--and knocking the spiked drinks out of your hands in the process. It was very clear to you now that she had never been drunk in the first place.

Neither of them were anything like the report you'd gotten.

"I-" what was there to say? Words felt useless.

Rhysand leaned down, resting the bulk of his weight on the back of the chair, his lips dangerously close to your ear. "So who do I get to thank for sending you?"

You shivered at his proximity, at his warm breath over the shell of your ear. Not many people dared to get this close to you; not many people got the better of you like this either. This was certainly a lot of firsts.

When you gave no response, Feyre said, "Don't be shy."

They were likely to rip the answer right out of your skull with those terrifying daemati powers if you kept your mouth shut, or worse, summon that Shadowsinger you'd seen lurking around the halls earlier. "I don't know."

Rhysand made a disappointed sound from where he still hovered by your ear. You refused to try and turn to look at him, refused to acknowledge that you had even heard him.

Feyre jumped off the top of the desk, her stilettoes clicking against the polished marble floors. "Now, now, don't make this difficult for yourself."

"Your secret is safe with us," Rhysand said mockingly.

"I don't know! I get my orders in the mail. There's never a return address or signature."

"Where's the mail?"

"I burned it."

"Well in that case," his voice was the only warning before you felt something scrape against your mental shields. You tried to throw more walls up as a talon slashed across your mind, but it was not Rhysand that slipped past, but Feyre, quick and quite as the huntress they said she used to be. She laughed as she sprinted through your memories, all attempts at shielding useless as Rhysand kept poking at what little shields you had up to distract you. They were the perfect team, synced to perfection, each move calculated and sharpened.

Feyre stepped into the memory of you opening the envelope as simply as if she had stepped through a doorway. The memory unfolded for her, you saw your own hands break the seal, open the letter, and burn it in a flash, before reality broke back through. You shook your head, fighting the memory away like it was a spot in your eye.

"That handwriting looked familiar, didn't it, Darling," Rhysand purred, the low timber of his voice rumbling in your ear.

"How thoughtful of Keir to give us an Anniversary gift," Feyre returned.

Keir. You only knew the stories about him, what a horrible male he was. You'd been lucky to have not been born in the Court of Nightmares like your mother, had grown up only with the tales of what kind of place this was. Your mother had protected you for as long as she could, but when Amarantha had come, when war bands had fought and bickered over land in the little territory she and your father had managed to make for themselves... well, they were gone and you'd had to find a way to survive, but you hadn't forgotten those stories. Your stomach twisted. This job had never been easy, but it had never been for males like Kier. At least, you'd never thought so.

You must have looked surprised because Feyre put two manicured fingers under your chin and tilted your head up to look at you. Something wicked gleamed in those strikingly blue eyes and you quickly blurted, "I swear I didn't know! I needed the money, I didn't know the job was from him."

"We believe you," she said. "But I think you should prove you're worth letting go."

You swallowed the lump in your throat. "I'll do anything!"

Rhysand chuckled at that. "Anything?"

The suggestiveness in the question made you shiver, more so when the High Lady broke into a grin. That couldn't be a good sign.

"I want to see Keir sweat a little, don't you dear?" Feyre asked over your head to her mate.

"More than just a little, I should think."

This felt like a fever dream, everything a little distorted and muffled. Perhaps it was. You had hit your head pretty hard on your last mission. How else could you explain what was happening here?

"Stand," Feyre ordered.

You did as you were told, even if you were biting the inside of your cheek.

"So responsive," Rhysand said, more to Feyre than you.

You frowned at that.

Feyre stepped closer to you, settling her hands on your hips. There was no room to twist away as her mate settled in behind you, the heat radiating off him seeping through your shirt. They even moved in perfect sync.

Nowhere to run now.

"You're going to play our favorite game with us."

Game? The reports hadn't said anything about them liking games.

"I don't understand-"

Rhysand cut you off, "Just follow our lead."

Feyre gave your hips a squeeze, "It's fun, trust me."

You didn't know what this had to do about proving you had made a mistake in taking this job, but you didn't know what other choice you had, so you just nodded.

They led you back into the throne room, the night's revelry still in full swing. Near the back, where the tables were still piled high with food, was Keir, the aging steward speaking conspiratorially with some of the other high ranking officials of the Court. Did he know already that you had failed? If he did, he didn't show it. He didn't so much as look up from his conversation.

Something hot twisted in your stomach at the sight of him. How could you have taken a job for a male like him?

Feyre pulled your thoughts away from him as she pulled you over to the dais, where their thrones sat empty. Even though Keir wasn't paying attention, others in the crowd were.

You swallowed thickly as Rhysand slid into his rightful seat, looking every bit the High Lord he was. Feyre didn't resume her seat in his lap, however, this time she perched on the arm rest, and guided you into her former place.

Your cheeks heated, mouth dry as the High Lord looped a strong arm around your waist and positioned you more comfortable on his lap, one long leg slotting between your own.

Feyre chucked at your obvious embarrassment. "Now now, you said you'd do anything." She said into your mind.

You dared a glance at her. This wasn't what you'd meant!

"This game is much more fun if you relax," Rhys purred as he dragged his nose over your throat looking for a place to sink his teeth.

You shivered despite yourself, the warmth of him seeping into you.

Feyre gripped your chin in her hand, forcing your gaze away from where it had wandered into the crowd. Keir still wasn't paying attention, but more and more people were halting their dancing and drinking to leer at this new pet their High Lord and Lady had brought back with them.

"Eyes on us."

Rhysand's hand slid over your hip and down to your thigh. The servant's garb you'd borrowed was a thin pair of pants, and a large, hooded sweater, not the sexy, revealing gown the High Lady donned, but you still couldn't help but feel incredibly vulnerable in this position.

How were you supposed to know what to do? How was this proving you could be trusted not to take another job from Keir? Was that fool even looking this way?

Rhysand nipped at the underside of your jaw and you jumped, thoughts careening away from Keir and whatever he was doing. The High Lord's breath was warm on your neck, each nip he left along your jaw sending shivers down your spine. It was an effort to keep your eyes open, to not immediately tilt your head back against his shoulder and let him explore every inch of you as you submitted fully to him. He could make you, if he wanted, it would be all too easy for him to reach inside your mind and move you however he wanted. You'd be a liar if you said the thought didn't excite you. The thought of handing yourself over to someone with that kind of power, testing to see what they'd do with it was more tempting than you'd ever dare say aloud. And maybe the High Lady had heard those thoughts, because a moment later, she was threading her hands through your hair and tilting your head back to let Rhysand explore further.

You whimpered softly as he ran his tongue over your pulse point and then Feyre was leaning in and nipping at the other side of your neck. It was too much at once, the overwhelming scent and warmth of them had you leaning fully into Rhysand's shoulder, eyes closing. One of their hands slid under your shirt, stroking at your side, you thought it might be Feyre, but didn't dare open your eyes to look, lest this really be a dream and you'd awake alone.

"Good girl," Rhysand praised. Somehow, even in your head his voice was low and husky. His hand slid further up your thigh, testing as he drew closer to your core. The move had you squirming and Feyre responded by dragging her hand from underneath your shirt to hold your hips down. There was no escaping either of them.

You still weren't sure how you ended up in this position, but you no longer cared. All you knew was this, them, and how much more of them you needed. Distantly you wondered if this was some daemati trick, if they had slipped into your mind and convinced you to do this. You decided you didn't care if they had, not as Feyre's lips were on yours, her tongue sliding past your teeth. There wasn't a hint of wine on her lips, despite all you'd seen her drink earlier. How she did that was anyone's guess.

Rhys drew circles on the inside of your thigh with his fingers, teasing you now as he continued to nip at your throat. There'd be marks in the morning, of that you were certain.

Feyre broke apart abruptly, laughing as you chased after her. "I think she likes this game of ours."

"Shall we play some more?"

You could play it all night if they wanted. There was something intoxicating about the two of them that had you desperate for any scrap of affection they could give you.

"Yes!" You said it faster than you intended, a blush creeping it's way back up your cheeks as you realized how pathetic it sounded, especially to two high fae. "Please."

Feyre leaned over you to kiss Rhys this time, intentionally pressing herself forward so her chest brushed up against you. You arched up to press your lips against her collar bones, too scared to go lower. She hummed approvingly into Rhy's mouth and he rewarded you by dragging his hand the rest of the way up your thigh, cupping your core through your pants. You were desperate for friction now, grinding your hips into his palm, even as your lips continued to work of Feyre's collarbones. She smelled so good! Her skin soft under your lips. You wanted the time to run your lips over the smattering of freckles she'd gotten while hunting in the summer time.

Rhys' free hand slid into your hair, pulling tight as he whispered in your ear, "No marks on your High Lady. Not without my permission, understand?"

If you were of any sound mind you might have been tempted to scrape your teeth across her throat, just to see what he would do, but you knew you weren't lucky enough to get away with it after everything that had happened already. "Yes, sir."

His dark laugh rumbled in his chest, the vibrations sending shivers down your spine. This was a very dangerous game, far more dangerous than any assassination attempt had ever been. Dangerous, because, for once, you were enjoying it and enjoying anything in this line of work got you in trouble.

Feyre leaned back, out of your reach, and still held by Rhys' arm around your waist, it was impossible to reach out after her. Especially now that the High lord had decided he didn't like the article of clothing between his hand and you, and was reaching for the waistband of your pants.

The blush returned tenfold. This--touching, kissing, in front of all these people was one thing, but that?

The High Lady pouted as she looked at you, her eyes lust-blown, so dark you almost couldn't see the blue. "I think you have too much on."

Before you could contemplate what that meant, she snapped her fingers and your sweater disappeared entirely.

You tried to move to cover yourself, squirming now, and she grabbed your hands with a disapproving tut. "No hiding."

Rhys' hand had slid inside your waistband, so close again your hips rocked forward, searching for him without conscious thought, even as your face heated. There was a fine line between your pleasure and sheer mortification and somehow you were still teetering between the two, torn between wanting more and wanting to sink into the floor and disappear. The crowd was watching, or at least you were pretty sure they were, at this point you were too scared to look and kept your gaze glued to where the High Lord and Lady were touching you.

"So pretty," Feyre hummed as she moved your hands up and around Rhys' neck.

There was no hiding what they were doing to you now. You might have fought them harder if Rhys' hand wasn't finally where you wanted him so desperately, a finger sliding easily into you. Your jaw dropped, a strangled sound coming out of you.

"So wet," he teased, mind to mind. "All this for us, pet?"

Pet. Toy. The High Lord's little play thing. You'd been called worse.

"Yes, sir."

"So well trained, maybe we should keep her," Feyre said as she placed a gentle kiss on your nose.

"Where'd you learn this manners, hmm?" He nipped at your ear as he slid a second finger inside you.

Your eyes rolled back into your head at the stretch, at the way he curled his fingers, hitting all the right spots. Heat coiled in your gut and you found yourself instinctively tightening your hands into the silky strands of his hair.

"Certainly not Keir," Feyre said as she brought her hands to squeeze at your breasts.

You'd had your eyes closed, lost in the bliss of Rhys' ministrations, unprepared for the new sensation of her hands on you, you let out a moan louder than was appropriate for the situation.

"Guess I'm just good at this game," I quipped weakly. The two of them working together like this was becoming overwhelming, you could barely think past the point of contact of with their hands. There was only this and them and the heat coiling tighter and tighter in your stomach. Rhys' pace was quickening. Feyre was playing with the clasp at the center of your bra, toying with it like she was contemplating ripping it off you.

She might have, if someone hadn't cleared their throat at the base of the dais.

"What do you want Keir?" Rhys sneered, the true picture of princely boredom, as if he was not currently holding you at the cusp of an orgasm, as if his mate wasn't leaving hickey's on the exposed skin of your breasts as they spoke.

You'd thought, as you registered Keir's presence that this would be the end of it, that they would stop now that they had his attention, but Rhys was still curling his fingers inside you, stroking relentlessly as Feyre bit and sucked at your sensitive skin. You arched into her, biting down on a moan, this game be damned. Who cared about Keir? About the rest of the court? You needed them to keep touching and kissing you. This was all that mattered.

You were panting as Feyre giggled into your skin. "Doing so good for us."

"Please," you begged, grinding yourself down on Rhys palm. You were so close, just a little more.

"I hate to interrupt," Keir began.

"No you don't," said Feyre. "It's your favorite thing to do."

"But your little toy-"

"Brought us a gift for our anniversary?" Rhys finished for him.

"We know," Feyre added. "It was a really sloppy attempt at a gift."

Keir stammered, none of the words coming out right.

"She needs some training," Rhys said. "A little refining around the edges, but I think this will be a very profitable relationship."

"Just wish we knew who sent her our way," Feyre cooed.

Rhys' free hand hand came up to rest on your throat, just tight enough to make you lean your head back to look at him. The move sent heat straight to your core, your muscle tightening as you whimpered for him. "But we'll get it out of you eventually, won't we, pet?"

Keir was visibly shaking now.

"Mhmm," you whimpered.

"Come on now, where are those pretty little manners you had before?" Rhys teased, his hand suddenly stilling.

The loss of friction was too much, tears welling up in your eyes. "Yes, yes High Lord." You stammered.

His grin was feline as he started moving again, faster this time. Feyre slid behind your mental shield again, this time opening up a door in her own mind to show you what you looked like through her eyes, your pupils blown, your cheeks flushed, lips kiss swollen and red. They'd left little red marks all along your throat and chest. Then she blasted you with an image of what she still wanted you to look like, images of her between your legs, of you taking Rhys in your mouth. You tightened around Rhys' fingers.

"And you would take the word of some-" whatever word he was about to throw at you was suddenly cut off as Rhys removed his ability to speak.

"Careful how you speak, Keir."

The steward's mouth opened and closed as he tried in vain to defend himself.

Rhys waved a hand, "You clearly have nothing useful to say here, you can go." Keir spun like a top, mouth still flapping open and closed like a fish, limbs splayed awkwardly, clearly not in control of his body, until Rhys made him walk half way to the door. Once he'd been released from the High Lord's grip, he stumbled and all but ran for the door.

"Why...?" The rest of the thought eddied from your mind as Rhys curled his fingers, hitting a spot inside you that made stars dance across your vision, your orgasm barreling through you so fast you're sure you screamed their names, but didn't have the presence of mind to hear it for yourself.

"We could kill him now," Feyre said as you slumped back against Rhys' shoulder. "But what fun is that? Why show him the mercy of a quick death when we can have him looking over his shoulder every five minutes, contemplating how to beat us in this wicked little game of ours?"

"I think," Rhys cooed as he placed a gentle kiss on your temple. "That it would be much more fun to eventually turn you on him instead."

You huffed a laugh at that.

Rhys carefully removed his fingers from your core and attempted to bring them to his mouth for a taste, but Feyre beat him to it, sliding his long fingers directly into her mouth, holding eye contact with you the entire time.

You clenched your legs together, wincing at the bit of soreness you felt there.

"Besides," Rhys purred in your ear, right before he shifted you around, settling you chest to chest in his lap. "This game is just getting started, isn't that right, pet?"

[clairelydreaming]

OHHHHH MY GOD

[clairelydreaming]

If Neteyam had lived do you think the Metkayina would have given him a tattoo with Aonung, Tsireya, and Rotxo.

[clairelydreaming]

Avatar Jake & Neteyam angst

Its been a long time since Jake last thought of how low he used to be. Of how dark earth was. Of how drained and dead he felt.

Pandora, Neytiri, his family. They changed that. Becoming one of the people changed that. Opening his eyes and seeing changed that.

Finding a place on a world that didn’t seek to constantly exploit and suck the last of his life from him, was a weight of his chest he had gotten used to. It made him realize he had barely been breathing before, barely living.

Its been a long time since he’s though about it. But standing over his dead son made his chest compress in all the same ways. The muscles in his legs weakened with his grief, flashes of too-bright billboards and trash-ridden oceans hovered in his vision like a taunt. A loss that great cannot be put into words, but it shook the whole foundation of his world. He started thinking about that darkness again. He started thinking maybe living as a sewer rat was better than living as a mourning father.

[clairelydreaming]

Avatar Neteyam angst

Songcords are meant to encapsulate a whole life. From the first moment your heart starts beating, to the day you choose your calling, to mating, and family, and finally when you return to Eywa. They are supposed to be long, and beautiful. A full chorus and verse.

So for Neytiri to cut the excess from Neteyam’s cord, and tie that final knot, when she though he would get so many more beads…it was almost harder than watching his eyes go blank.

[clairelydreaming]

Jake Sully x reader

The first time you got to spend a whole day in the Pandoran forest in your avatar, you broke down.

In the early hours, you’d been filled with wonder, whipping your head in every direction so fast you could barely see anything at all, but there was just so much to see.

You touched every plant, enraptured by the evolutionary defenses you were able to observe. You stalked every creature—big or small, dangerous or innocuous—eager to see the way their patterns differed and remained the same to the now-extinct creatures of earth. You tested out the avatar. At first, sticking to the confines of human capability, but when you realized you could do so much more, you pushed those. Leaping from branches to see how far you could jump, climbing whatever you could to see how strong you were, running—sprinting—to test how fast you were.

It was exhilarating. It was freeing. It was everything you could have ever dreamed of, and everything you could never keep.

Eventually you had to wake up.

The glamour evaporated quickly after that. Yes it was beautiful, even more so as the night fell and the bioluminescence showed itself, but you couldn’t stop thinking about everything that was yours; or you supposed, everything that wasn’t.

This planet wasn’t yours. This body wasn’t yours. This forest wasn’t yours. These people weren’t yours. This culture, this community wasn’t yours.

You had a dying planet, and a broken body, and an extinct forest, and no one to call your own. The real danger of pandora was it highlighted what you couldn’t have.

That’s where Jake found you. Rubbing the grass to get it to glow, crying like an idiot.

It was an ugly cry too, born of all your pent up anger and sadness about your home planet dying, about you dying with it, about feeling so alone.

You were making ungodly noises, tears streaming heavily, nose running, hiccuping and breathing heavily and sniffling when—

“Uh, sorry to interrupt but…are you alright?”

You startled hard, this was precisely the situation you didn’t want someone to see you in. Especially Jake Sully, who was literally living your dream as the first in the Avatar Program to be fully accepted by the Na’avi.

You whipped around, stopping your inane rubbing of the ground to instead wipe your tears away rapidly.

“Yes! Yes, I’m fine! Sorry, I’m just um…”

You had no excuse. You tuck your hair behind your larger ears—odd to adjust to—and look away awkwardly. It was an honor within itself that the Omaticaya even started letting Dreamwalkers back into the clan after the previous disasters with the Sky People, you didn’t need to go fucking that up now.

“…admiring the grass?” He gave you an out.

“…yes.” You murmur.

You expect him to just move past, he has duties to the clan now. Instead, he carefully walks over and sits himself down next to you.

You just stare at his side profile in shock for a while. He ignores it, opting instead to look around at the nature, even brushing the grass to illuminate it like you had.

“Y’know, I didn’t quite believe it when I saw it for the first time.” He starts softly, softer than you’d ever heard him speak before.

You’re listening intently now, still sniffling a little.

He gestures to the forest, “the…beauty, the livelihood of the forest. I know we had some like this on earth at some point, but it’s different to see it. To live it.”

Your breath is slowing, his voice is calming.

“After a while, I…started wishing I didn’t have to wake up. Started feeling like I belonged here, in this body, with these people, and on this planet. Not on a polluted planet, or in the industrialized military outposts we subjected this planet to. I got lost.” He finally looks at you. Really looks.

Sees.

“I know how that feels. To feel cheated of a life with a planet that is thriving and a body that works. And I know the dread of waking up back in the other reality.”

He puts his hand on your shoulder. You like how the warmth of his skin steals the chill from yours.

“Trust in Eywa—which, frankly, I thought was a load of bull before—but she helped me. She put me in this body, let me stay. She keeps the balance. She knows when to help. I believe she’ll want to help you too.”

He stands, not expecting an answer from you, and moves to leave. You stare at the ground, digesting his words and pondering how he knew what you were thinking about.

He turns back briefly, “don’t let your two lives be separate, and don’t let one ruin the other. They’re both you.

Then he’s gone.

[clairelydreaming]

Regulus angst, Jegulus implied

Regulus wasn’t brave.

That’s what he told himself. Sirius was brave.

Brave enough to stand up to their parents, to say what he meant—truly meant. Brave enough to leave.

Regulus wasn’t Sirius.

He couldn’t tell his parents that he hated what they stood for, hated that they force him to stand for the same, hated that he would be excommunicated if he rebelled, hated that he was the favorite, hated that he wasn’t Sirius…hated himself.

Because some twisted part of himself needed them. Needed to still be a kid, still needed a safety net, needed to pretend he was in a regular loving family.

So, no, he wasn’t brave because if he had been, he would never be this incredibly selfish. To stand next to such bigotry and let it fly because he wanted his mommy.

This was something he had begun to come to terms with: his cowardice.

But then Sirius’s arm was around James and James laughed like there was only good in the world, and that good had an arm around him.

And suddenly he had a deeper urge to be that good, rather than be in his family’s favor.

He found himself picturing what it might be like; to be like Sirius. To unabashedly reject his parents ideals, to be sorted into Gryffindor, to have Sirius love him again, to spend his breaks at (what he could only assume was) the warm Potter house, to be the one with his arm around James. To be the one who left.

To Regulus, staying was the lesser evil, but this churning in his gut at the sight of his brother and his—his nothing, had to be far more evil.

His arm started to burn with a phantom kiss. The knowledge of what would be permanently etched there in two weeks haunted him, and the churning got worse. He shot to his feet to find a suitable place to dump the pumpkin pastie he just ate.

Can’t even vomit bravely, his brain supplied unhelpfully.

To tell the truth, Regulus didn’t think he would be able to change, to be brave.

Better the devil you know.

All he could do was bite his tongue and pretend like his mothers voice wasn’t like nails on a chalkboard, like he didn’t have nightmares about receiving the mark, like he didn’t cry about losing his brother, like he didn’t have dreams about his brother’s best friend.

Regulus was not brave.

[clairelydreaming]

Feysand x reader, cw throw up

You didn’t feel good.

It was that type of nausea that you couldn’t fight, the type that made you resign yourself to the fate of needing to expunge your system.

You were the type that fought hard against throwing up, because why would you let that be easy. But in this moment, you wanted nothing more than to throw up, anything to fix this.

Mother, if you’re listening, you thought, please anything to make this go away.

And so throw up you did.

You really didn’t mean to tug on the bond. it was still so new and you knew for a fact that the High Lord and Lady had better things to be doing, but your eyes were watering and you felt so ill and no one was there to hold your hair or hand or help you and so—

“Sweetheart?” a knock at the door.

You groaned, head still hanging over as you fought another round of nausea. Their presence was the last thing you wanted. Well, maybe not, you wished that someone was here to help you, but you unequivocally did not want them to see you throw up.

You felt their panic at your lack of response before another urgent knock came, “love, what’s wrong? let us in or I’m winnowing.”

You went to respond when that nausea culminated once more, then at the next moment you felt two pairs of hands: one holding your hair and rubbing your back, and the other holding your hand and rubbing your arm.

You whimpered a little, both from the nausea and you didn’t want your mates to see you like this. “Sorry,” you got out.

“None of that now, love,” came Rhysand’s deep timber.

Feyre’s sweet tone followed, “we’ll take care of you, sweetheart.”