Firelord!Zuko x ambassador gn!reader x Fire empress!Mai
Life as an ambassador is a constant cycle of paperwork, duty, and more paperwork. Yet, there is no resentment only pride and honor. The trust placed by both husband and wife is sacred, and it is the ambassador’s solemn duty to restore the Fire Nation to its former glory. Every document signed, every treaty written, every historical record restored is a step toward redemption. Ink stains mark the hands like badges of service, each stroke of the brush helping to rebuild the Earth Kingdom and mend the wounds left by old the Fire Lord’s reign.
Sleep could wait. The warmth of the bed, the comfort of beloved arms, the soft touch of gentle fingers all of it called like a siren’s song. Zuko’s strong arms could easily pull anyone into a peaceful slumber, his body radiating heat like a living furnace. Mai’s delicate fingers could soothe away any lingering tension, her quiet presence both calming and commanding. But duty came first. The nation came first. Love could wait until the ink dried.
“Firefly, how long will you keep us waiting?” Zuko’s soft, husky voice broke through the haze of concentration. “Please come to bed. It’s cold without you,” he murmured, his tone carrying a hint of playful complaint. The sight of his tousled black hair and tired golden eyes almost made you falter. Almost.
“Just a couple more documents to sign, beloved,” came the weary reply, a hand raised dismissively toward the king.
Then swoosh! A dagger sliced through the air, embedding itself in the wall mere inches from your hand. The ink jar trembled. The ambassador froze.
“My dear ambassador,” came Mai’s cold, firm voice, “it is an official order from your Empress to come to bed.”
You didn't dare turn around. Zuko sighed, attempting to defuse the tension. “Mai-flower, don’t you think that’s a little cruel?”
But Mai’s mind was made up. “I won’t call you again, Ambassador. Next time, I will not miss.”
A gulp. A quick extinguishing of the lantern. “Yes, my beloved,” came the shaky response. Terrifying, yes but also utterly captivating.
Robes slipped away as you climbed into bed, settling between the two of them right where you belonged. Zuko’s arms wrapped around you both, his warmth enveloping you and Mai completely. Mai’s fingers found their way into your hair, her touch softer now, though her eyes still glinted with mischief.
“How come you listen to her and not me?” Zuko grumbled, his lips pressed together in an almost pout.
“Because you’re far too soft,” Mai replied smoothly. “A delicate hand is no match for a sharp blade.”
Zuko chuckled, pressing a kiss to your temple. “At least stop trying to murder our love.”
Mai only stuck out her tongue playfully. “They’re into it.”
the avatar movie said being a member of a group that was subjected to genocide does not give you the right to commit genocide against others and i think that's a really interesting plot point in 2026
These are the very first paintings I made for Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. I designed the art style for the Sonam and Tagah scenes throughout the film! I want to thank PD Jake Panian and AD Aaron Loftis for trusting me so much with these parts of the movie; their incredible leadership and support carried our entire team.
i had to give up my nanami fic for a bit because these two have consumed my soul
…
you don’t mean to fall for kirara. it just kind of happens.
it starts with proximity. with how she leans over your shoulder to point at something on her phone. how she calls you a nickname before she even asks if it’s okay. with how she looks at you like you’re already on her side. kirara has always been like that, you think. bright and orbiting, pulling people in without even trying.
kirara is affectionate without pressure, playful without being careless. she holds your hand in public like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. she presses her forehead to yours when she laughs. she texts you good morning and good night and sometimes just sends you pictures of stars because she says they made her think of you.
hakari is already there when all of this happens. looming, really.
you’ve known him longer than you’ve known kirara, technically. you’ve met him through the fight club, through mutual chaos, through the way his presence seems to tilt the room slightly off axis. he’s loud and sharp and confident in a way that makes your spine straighten instinctively. when he looks at you, it feels like he sees too much.
you’re really into him. that part is embarrassing and inconvenient and impossible to ignore.
but hakari intimidates you. his energy is too big, his confidence too unfiltered. he talks like he knows the odds of everything and always bets anyway. when he laughs, it’s all teeth and heat. when he goes quiet, it’s worse.
so you keep your distance.
kirara doesn’t. kirara never does.
she tells you early on that she and hakari are together. solid. long standing. unshakable. she says it casually, like she’s talking about the weather, like it’s just another fact about the world.
you don’t think you’ll ever be part of that. you don’t assume. you don’t hope.
but then kirara starts bringing you around more. she squeezes your hand a little tighter when hakari walks into a room. she sits close to you on couches and benches and lets her knee press into yours like it’s nothing. sometimes hakari watches the two of you with something unreadable in his eyes, something that makes your stomach twist.
eventually kirara asks. she does it gently, sitting cross legged on her bed, eyes bright but careful.
she says she likes you. a lot. and she’d like to date you. and that hakari knows. and that there’s no pressure for anything else.
you say yes before your fear can catch up.
dating kirara feels like stepping into warmth. she’s attentive in a way that makes you feel chosen. she hypes you up, teases you, defends you without hesitation. when you’re with her, the world feels manageable.
hakari becomes this looming maybe. this what if.
you all spend time together, but it’s always tilted. kirara in the middle, you on one side, hakari on the other. kirara touching both of you easily, like a bridge. you laugh with kirara, talk with kirara, lean into kirara.
with hakari, you’re polite. careful. a little stiff.
he doesn’t push. not once.
if anything, he’s gentler than you expect. he keeps his distance physically, gives you space, treats you like something fragile he’s afraid to break. it almost makes it worse.
you can feel the imbalance. how it feels like you’re dating kirara and kirara is dating hakari, but you and hakari exist on parallel lines that haven’t crossed yet.
kirara notices. of course she does.
she notices the way you always sit next to her. the way you angle your body toward her. the way you stiffen just a little when hakari speaks directly to you. she notices the way hakari glances at you when you laugh and then looks away.
so one day, she decides to meddle.
the fight club is loud as always. the air buzzes with anticipation and heat and fever. screens line the walls in the monitoring room, fights flashing and flickering across them. the couch is worn in the middle, familiar, claimed territory.
this is routine. you already know how it goes.
kirara sits down first, right next to hakari. hakari immediately drapes an arm around her, pulling her in without even looking. it’s muscle memory. it’s natural.
you hesitate, then sit on kirara’s other side.
except there’s no space.
kirara has stretched out just enough. her legs are crossed, her body angled in a way that leaves the smallest gap. not enough for you. not comfortably.
she looks at you, eyes sparkling with something dangerous and fond.
you freeze.
hakari notices before you can retreat. his eyes flick to the empty space on his other side. then back to you.
oh.
your heart starts racing. sitting next to hakari has never happened before. not like this. not without kirara between you like a buffer.
kirara pats the couch once, innocently. right next to hakari.
you swear she’s enjoying this.
your options are limited and everyone is watching and backing out would be obvious. so you swallow your nerves and sit.
hakari doesn’t move. not away, not closer. he stays exactly where he is, solid and warm and very real. his arm remains around kirara, but it doesn’t cage you in. he gives you space. too much space, maybe.
it feels strange. like you’re intruding into a space that isn’t yours yet.
the fights start. cheering erupts. kirara leans into hakari, animated, talking fast and excited. hakari laughs, loud and pleased, completely absorbed.
you sit quietly at first, hands folded in your lap, eyes on the screens. you’re hyper aware of everything. the warmth of hakari’s shoulder close to yours. the way his knee barely brushes yours when he shifts. the smell of smoke and cologne and something distinctly him.
it doesn’t feel like you’re dating him. it feels like you’re visiting kirara at her partner’s place. like you’re the extra piece.
the realization stings more than you expect.
time passes. the adrenaline fades. the room gets warmer. your body relaxes despite your nerves.
you’re tired. more tired than you realize.
your head dips once. twice.
you catch yourself and straighten up. your neck aches. you glance at kirara, who’s fully engrossed in the fight, cheering under her breath.
hakari shifts, adjusting his grip on kirara, and his shoulder brushes your temple accidentally.
it’s warm. solid. grounding.
before you can overthink it, before fear can pull you back, your body makes the decision for you.
you lean.
just a little.
your head comes to rest against hakari’s shoulder.
the world stops.
hakari goes completely still.
kirara freezes mid sentence.
you realize what you’ve done a split second too late. heat floods your face. panic sparks in your chest. you start to pull back, already murmuring an apology that doesn’t quite form.
hakari moves first.
his shoulder shifts just enough to support you better. not pushing. not pulling. just there.
it’s deliberate. careful. kind.
you feel it. the choice.
kirara glances at you, eyes wide. then she smiles. slow and soft and victorious.
she doesn’t say a word.
hakari doesn’t either.
you stay.
your heart is pounding, but no one reacts badly. no one laughs. no one makes it weird. the fight continues on the screens like nothing monumental has just happened.
but everything has changed.
minutes pass. your breathing evens out. the fear fades, replaced by warmth and something dangerously close to comfort.
hakari smells like smoke and warmth and something steady. his presence isn’t overwhelming like you feared. it’s grounding. like leaning against a wall you didn’t know you needed.
you relax further without realizing it.
your head slips slightly. your body follows.
you end up curled into him, small and trusting, your cheek pressed against his chest. your fingers curl into the fabric of his jacket unconsciously.
you fall asleep like that.
hakari is in shock.
he doesn’t move for a long time, afraid to wake you. afraid to scare you away. his heart is racing, but he keeps his breathing slow and even, grounding himself so you can rest.
kirara watches the two of you with a soft expression, something fond and satisfied in her eyes. she leans in and whispers that you look cute.
hakari doesn’t argue.
eventually, carefully, slowly, he lifts his free arm and wraps it around you. not tight. not possessive. just enough to say i’m here.
you shift in your sleep, nuzzling closer.
hakari’s chest tightens.
for the first time, it doesn’t feel like you’re just kirara’s partner sitting near him.
it feels like maybe you’re his too.
and when you wake up later, warm and tucked in and safe between the two of them, kirara grinning and hakari looking at you like you’ve changed something fundamental in him, you realize something important.
Suzanne Collins just said fuck you to everyone who’s ever critiqued the Hunger Games as being a “teen girl saves the day” story. She said oh, Mockingjay didn’t make it clear enough? Here’s a book about how people have been rebelling for decades only to have their efforts suppressed and propagandized. Rebellion takes time and it takes failure and Katniss may have been the spark that ignited the wildfire but she did so standing atop the doused flames of everyone who came before her.
For the Valko requests, I would love to see some cute family fluff between MC, Valko, his cousins, grandma, and his sister (I think he had a sister in his lore, correct me if I am wrong), because I want to see how MC would get along with Valko's family. 🐺
𝐀 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄
synopsis: when valko brings you home for the first time, he warns you about everything: his grandmother’s food, his sister’s stare, his cousin’s stories, the family jokes that always cut too close. he forgets to warn you that love in his house is not gentle or quiet, but loud, practical, mercilessly observant, and served warm at the kitchen table.
cw/tw: valko x reader. very soft domestic fluff. light family teasing.
read here: ao3 ⋅ tumblr
Valko lost his nerve three steps from the door.
It was a small death, but you saw it happen; the brave lift of his chin, the twitch in his jaw, the small, tragic collapse of his entire face when a crash came from inside the house.
His hand tightened around yours.
“Dobro,” he said.
Another crash.
From inside, and older woman called, “If that's my good plate, I will put someone in the ground before supper.”
Valko closed his eyes. You turned toward him.
He opened one eyes. “She loves plates.”
“More than people?”
“Depends on the people.”
You laughed before you could stop yourself, and relief moved through him all at once, softening his shoulders, loosening the frightened line of his mouth. He'd been nervous all morning. Badly nervous. Valko, who could grin with blood on his teeth and make danger look like a door he'd simply forgotten to knock on, had spent the whole walk here giving you warnings no sane person could have prepared for.
Do not let Mika read your palm. He makes things up and then believes them.
Do not compliment Baba's curtains unless you want curtains.
Do not say you're full.
And, most importantly, if anyone mentions the soup incident, Valko had said, grave as a condemned man, they're lying.
You had asked what the soup incident was.
He had started to walk faster.
Now he stood before the old wooden door with your fingers caught in his, trying to look calm and producing, somehow, the exact expression of a wolf about to be bathed.
“Valko,” you said softly.
“Yes?”
“You're shaking.”
“I'm not shaking.”
“You are.”
“I’m containing myself.”
“From what?”
“Hereditary embarrassment.”
The door flew open.
A girl about his age stood on the other side, dark-eyed and grinning, with flour on her cheek and murder in her posture. She took one look at Valko’s hand around yours, then lifted her gaze to his face with the slow delight of someone finding a knife exactly where she had hoped one would be.
A slow smile cut across her face.
“Oh,” she smirked. “So this is why you changed your shirt twice.”
Valko made a sound. Small, wounded, entirely unlike a wolf.
“I changed once.”
“You changed twice. The first shirt was the blue one. The second was the one that made you look like you were going to court. This...This is the third.”
His ears went red.
The woman held out her hand to you. “Milena. His sister.”
“Unfortunately,” Valko added.
“Fortunately. Without me, you'd still think soap is optional in winter.”
“It isn't optional.”
“Because of me.”
You took Milena's hand. Her grip was warm, firm, and full of judgement she hadn't yet decided to use.
Behind her, the house breathed out heat. Bread, onions, some in old wood, something sweet cooling on a counter. There were voices everywhere, layered and crossing. One person laughing while another complained, a child humming under a table, chairs scraping, a kettle whistling like a bird losing patience.
Milena stepped aside. “Come in before Baba starts saying we were raised by wolves.”
Valko muttered, “We were.”
She looked at him. “And still, some of us learned manners.”
You crossed the threshold. The house was smaller than the noise made it seem, or maybe the noise had simply learned to fill every corner. Framed photographs climbed the walls in crooked rows. Herbs hung drying above the kitchen window. Nothing matched, and yet everything looked touched, mended, argued over... kept.
Valko leaned close as he helped you out of your coat.
“Last chance,” he whispered. “We can run.”
You looked past him to where an old woman stood near the stove, hands folded over her apron, watching you with bright, wolfish eyes.
“Too late,” you whispered back. “I think she heard you.”
“I hear everything,” the old woman said.
Valko went still.
Milena smiled into her shoulder.
The old woman crossed the kitchen with the slow authority of someone who had ruled this house before any of them had teeth. She was small, broad in the shoulders, silver-haired, with flour on her wrist and no softness wasted in her face. The softness, you realised, was elsewhere. In the bread covered by a towel, in the chair pulled out before you reached it, in the way Valko lowered his head without being asked when she came close.
“Baba,” he said, and for the first time that day, his voice lost its jokes.
She, of course, ignored him.
Instead, she took your face between both hands.
Her palms smelled of rosemary, yeast, and soap. Her thumbs rested beneath your cheekbones, and for one strange second the whole house seemed to lean closer. The cousins, the kettle, the old boards, even Valko, holding his breath beside you.
“So,” Baba Vesna said. “You are the reason he forgets to eat.”
“I eat,” Valko protested.
Teta Marika appeared by the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “You came here last week, opened the pantry, stared at a sack of potatoes for six minutes, then said, ‘I wonder what she’s doing.’”
“That was taken out of context.”
“What was the context?” you asked, because love had made you brave and terrible.
Valko looked betrayed. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
A boy leaning backwards on his chair nearly lost balance from laughing, another cousin caught the chair by its back without looking up from peeling an apple.
Baba Vesna patted your cheek once and released you. “Sit, dušo. Eat something before my family embarrass me properly.”
Valko gave a strangled laugh. “Before?”
No one listened to him.
You were placed at the long wooden table as if the decision had been made before you arrived. A bowl appeared, then bread, then butter, then a small plate of pickled vegetables. Teta Marika, Valko's aunt, kissed the air beside your cheeks and took the small gift you had brought. Mika announced that he already knew your favourite colour from Valko’s face. Luka told him that was the stupidest sentence ever spoken in the kitchen, which Mika accepted as praise. The little one beneath the table emerged, solemn and bread-dusted, and introduced himself as Niko.
“Are you going to marry him?” Niko asked.
Valko walked directly into the side of a chair.
The whole kitchen paused. You pressed your lips together.
Milena leaned against the doorway, radiant with cruelty. “Careful, Niko. Val only has two knees.”
“Niko,” Teta Marika turned from the stove, wooden spoon in hand. “We ask guests if they want juice first.”
Niko nodded, absorbing this etiquette with grave importance. “Do you want juice before you marry him?”
Valko covered his face with both hands. You bit down on your smile so hard it almost hurt. This wasn't what you had expected.
Some foolish, frightened part of you had imagined a den in the old sense. Teeth, watchful eyes, a family arranged around blood and law, waiting to decide whether your bones could be allowed near theirs. Valko had never spoken of them casually. Whenever he said home, something tender and embarrassed moved through him, as though the word itself had fingers and knew exactly where to touch.
Now you sat beneath a crooked lamp while his grandmother tore bread with her hands and put the first piece on your plate.
“Eat,” Baba Vesna said.
You obeyed.
The bread was warm enough to steam between your fingers. The crust cracked softly, butter melted into it in golden lines. Across the table, Valko watched you take the first bite as if your mouth held judgment from heaven.
You chewed. Swallowed.
“It’s delicious.”
Baba Vesna clicked her tongue. “Of course it is wonderful. I made it.”
Mika leaned towards you. “He talked about you after the market yesterday.”
Valko’s hand hit the table. “No.”
“Yes, you did” Luka said sticking his tongue out.
“No.”
“You said, and I quote, 'she chooses fruit with such care'.”
The table went quiet for half a breath, your hand stilled around the bread. Valko looked at Luka as if betrayal had entered the room wearing his cousin’s face.
“That was private.”
“You said it in the kitchen.”
“That makes it private.”
Milena sat across from you and rested her chin in her hand. “He also said you have kind hands.”
Valko’s mouth opened, nothing came out. Your heart did something foolish inside your chest.
The teasing had worked him bright and flustered, but beneath it, something softer trembled. He was embarrassed, yes. Horribly, so. Beautifully, so. Yet the thing underneath was more dangerous than shame. This was exposure. A curtain pulled open in a room he had spent so long keeping dim.
He had spoken of you here.
At this table. In this warm, loud house. To these people who teased him because they knew what he looked like with no armour on. He had brought you home long before he ever brought your body through the door.
Baba Vesna filled your bowl with soup.
“He was always like this,” she said.
“Baba, please.”
“He was a strange child,” she said.
Valko groaned. “Please.”
“A sweet child,” Teta Marika corrected.
“A dramatic child,” Luka said.
“A biting child,” Milena added.
Valko pointed at her. “You bit first.”
“You looked biteable.”
“You see what I mean?” Valko turned to you with helpless outrage. “This is what I survived.”
There was love in it, the kind that had been cooked too long and reduced into something strong enough to stain. They spoke to him as if they had known every version of him and chosen, again and again, to keep putting food in front of whichever one came home.
You looked at him while he argued with Mika about whether a stolen spoon counted as a childhood trauma.
He caught you looking. For a moment, the noise thinned.
There he was.
Valko with his hair refusing every law of decency. Valko trying so hard to survive his own family and failing beautifully. His eyes met yours with a nervous brightness that made you want to reach across the table and be cruel to every fear that had ever found him.
Then Niko pointed his spoon at you.
“Are you keeping him?”
The kitchen stopped.
Valko made a tiny sound into his bowl.
Milena closed her eyes as if praying for patience and finding none. “Niko.”
“What? Mika said maybe she is keeping him.”
His gaze dropped to the table, to the bread by his hand, to the small old cuts in the wood. The blush still clung to him, but it had changed into something quieter now. Hope, perhaps. Or terror wearing hope’s coat.
You could have laughed. Everyone would have let you. It would have been easy to throw the question back into the room like a toy and watch them tear it apart.
Instead, beneath the table, you found Valko’s hand.
His fingers closed around yours at once.
“I’d like to,” you said.
The house held itself still for half a breath.
Then Baba Vesna nodded, once, as if some old contract had been signed in soup and honey.
“Good,” she said. “He is difficult, but warm.”
Valko bowed his head.
His shoulders shook.
At first you thought he was upset. Then you realised he was laughing, quietly, helplessly, with one hand over his mouth and the other holding yours under the table like he meant to keep it there until winter.
Mika groaned. “Ah, look at him. Finished. Completely finished.”
Milena reached for the pickles. “Good. He needed finishing.”
Teta Marika smiled into her tea. “Eat more, zlato. You will need strength.”
“For Valko?” you asked.
“For all of us.”
Dinner became less a meal than a storm with chairs.
Bowls moved, hands reached, stories climbed over one another and died unfinished because someone remembered a better accusation. Luka asked you practical questions in a calm voice: where you liked to walk, whether Valko had shown you the old river path, whether he still pretended not to like sweet things. Mika tried to read your palm and declared that you were fated to own a troublesome dog.
“That's just Valko,” Milena said.
“I am not a dog.”
“True,” Luka said. “Dogs listen.”
Valko began quietly placing the best pieces of food on your plate.
A soft carrot, the inside of the bread, a dumpling he pretended to move away from himself and somehow abandoned beside your spoon. He was not subtle. He had never been subtle. He was a wolf trying to hide a whole deer behind a napkin.
You noticed on the fourth offering.
His family noticed on the first.
Baba Vesna said nothing until Valko tried to give you the last honey cake. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him over her tea.
“Ah,” she said.
Valko froze.
It was one syllable. It landed like a bell.
“What?” he said.
“No, no.” She waved him off. “Continue. Starve for romance. Very noble.”
Mika threw his head back.
You picked up the honey cake before Valko could die at the table and broke it in two, placing half on his plate. “There,” you said. “No starving.”
He looked at the cake.
Then he looked at you.
His expression opened in a way that made the room, somehow, feel too small for your heart. It opened with that unguarded, bewildered softness he sometimes gave you when kindness arrived before he had prepared himself to receive it.
Milena saw it.
Her teasing quieted.
For a moment, she only watched him with something old and protective in her face.
Then she stood. “Come help me with plates.”
Valko blinked. “Me?”
“Her.” Milena pointed at you.
Valko frowned. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“That's not a reason.”
“It has worked on you for years.”
You rose before he could protest again. Milena took two plates from the table and handed you none of them, which told you at once that this had nothing to do with helping.
She led you down a narrow hallway lined with photographs.
Behind you, Valko’s voice rose. “Do not interrogate her.”
The hallway smelled faintly of beeswax and dried herbs. The noise of the kitchen softened behind you, still there, still golden, but now wrapped in walls. Milena stopped by a window overlooking the yard and leaned her hip against the sill.
For the first time all evening, she let the smile leave her face.
“He likes you,” she said.
You smiled gently. “I got that impression.”
“No.” Her eyes flicked towards the kitchen. “He likes people easily. He likes old men who tell bad stories, stray cats that scratch him, children who throw rocks at windows because they want attention. Valko is built stupid that way.”
A laugh escaped you.
Milena folded her arms.
“He brings things home,” she continued. “Broken things, angry things. Things he thinks no one else will be gentle with.” Her gaze moved towards the kitchen, where Valko’s voice lifted in protest. “He does not bring people home.”
Your throat tightened.
From the kitchen, Valko shouted, “It wasn't soup. It was stew.”
Mika shouted back, “Stew cannot make a grown man cry.”
“I was overwhelmed by flavour.”
Milena closed her eyes for one second. “Bože, give me strength.”
You laughed softly.
She looked at you again, sharper now.
“He was nervous all week,” she said. “Changed his shirt three times. Asked me if the house smelled too much like onions. Asked Luka if his laugh was strange. Asked Baba if she could please not tell the story about the goat.”
“The goat?”
“Later.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Maybe never.”
You glanced back towards the kitchen.
He had asked if his laugh was strange.
Something in you ached with such tenderness that it almost felt like anger.
You looked down.
“He didn’t need to worry,”
“He is clumsy with precious things,” she said. “Because he thinks his hands are only good for breaking them, even when he is careful. Especially then.”
“So be kind,” she said. “Or be cruel quickly. He will survive either, but I prefer to know which one I’m dealing with.”
There it was.
The knife under the table. The love with its teeth intact. You didn't resent her for it, you thought, strangely, that you liked her more for it.
“I’m not here to hurt him,”
“Most people aren’t, at first.”
“Milena.”
Milena’s gaze narrowed.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” you admitted.
“With any of this,” you continued. “He makes everything feel…” You searched for the word and hated every pretty one that came. Fated. Wild. Tender. All too polished for the mess he made of your heart. “He makes everything feel like I’ve been walking past a door my whole life, and he is the idiot who opened it with his shoulder.”
Milena stared at you.
Then she laughed once, sharp and startled.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re gone too.”
You looked down, caught.
She seemed satisfied. “Good.”
“Is that approval?”
“That is me deciding not to be difficult.”
“You were being difficult?”
“Dušo,” she said, and now her smile had teeth in it, “I was being polite.”
When you returned to the kitchen, Valko was waiting near the doorway as if he had tried to remain seated and failed.
His eyes moved from you to Milena. “What did you say to her?”
Milena walked past him. “That you were adopted.”
“I’m not.”
“Emotionally, you're a wet dog we found in the rain.”
He watched her go, wounded on principle, then turned to you with genuine concern. “What did she actually say?”
You reached up and brushed flour from his sleeve. “That you’re warm.”
“That was Baba.”
“Family consensus.”
His mouth twitched. “You are enjoying this.”
“I am.”
“You were supposed to be intimidated.”
“By Mika?”
“By the bloodline. The history. The general atmosphere of teeth.”
“Mika told me my palm says I’ll own a dog.”
Valko sighed.
You reached up and plucked the dish towel from his shoulder. “You have flour on your sleeve.”
He looked down, surprised, as if his own body had been making decisions without him. Then he looked back at you, and the kitchen noise faded once more, though this time it was only the two of you making the world small.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The question was casual enough for anyone else to miss the tremor underneath. You heard it. The naked, waiting part. You thought of his hand shaking outside the door. Baba Vesna taking your face between her palms, of bread steaming in your fingers, of honey cake divided in two, of Milena saying he doesn't bring people home.
“I’m all right,” you said. “Are you?”
Valko smiled too quickly. “I’m alive.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
His smile softened.
For once, he did not joke immediately. It cost him something. You could see it in the way his fingers flexed at his side, reaching for mischief and finding courage instead.
“I wanted them to like you,” he said. “I wanted you to like them.”
“I do”
“I wanted…” He stopped, then laughed under his breath. “I don’t know. Something stupid.”
He looked towards the kitchen, where his family had resumed their noise without mercy. Mika was accusing Luka of stealing the larger piece of cake. Baba Vesna had taken down a tin from the highest shelf, probably containing either biscuits or secrets.
“Valko, stop hiding her. I have photographs.”
Horror returned to his face with magnificent speed.
“No.”
“Yes,”
“No photographs.”
“Naked baby photos,” Mika added.
Valko went pale. “You do not have those.”
Teta Marika’s voice drifted after him, serene and deadly. “We have everything.”
He grabbed your hand. “We’re leaving.”
You let him pull you three steps before Baba Vesna appeared in the doorway holding a small album to her chest.
“Sit,” she said.
Valko sat.
It was remarkable how quickly a wolf could become a grandson.
For the next hour, they showed you the evidence of his life.
Valko missing two front teeth and glaring at the camera as though betrayed by dentistry. Valko asleep under the table with one hand buried in a dog’s fur. Valko at thirteen, all elbows and outrage, holding a fish half his size while crying because he had to put it back.
There was Valko covered in mud, Valko wearing a paper crown, Valko with Milena’s arm hooked around his neck while he pretended to hate her and leaned into her anyway. Valko standing beside Baba Vesna in the garden, holding a basket of tomatoes like he had been entrusted with the fate of nations.
Each photograph was another small door.
You had known him in pieces: the grin, the hunger, the awkward tenderness, the jokes he threw like branches over deep water. Here was the rest of him. Here was the child who had survived becoming himself because these hands had fed him, scolded him, dragged him upright, and remembered his softness when he tried to outgrow it.
At some point, while everyone argued over whether the goat incident happened before or after the soup incident, Valko bent close to you.
“You don’t have to keep looking,” he murmured.
You turned a page.
A tiny Valko stared up from the album, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.
“Yes,” you said. “I do.”
He stared at you.
Then, very briefly, he rested his forehead against your shoulder.
It lasted only a second. A shy, exhausted surrender. No one commented on it, though you knew every person in the room saw. That seemed to be another house rule. They would mock the wound, yes, but they protected the pulse.
Later, when the cups were cleared and the album returned to its shelf of holy embarrassments, you stepped outside for air.
The yard was cold, dark and soft around the edges. Herbs grew beneath the window, yhe old trees leaned towards the house as if listening. Behind you, the kitchen glowed gold, laughter pressing against the glass.
Valko followed after a moment, closing the door carefully behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
You looked at him. “For what?”'
“The interrogation. The photographs. Mika. The marriage question. The soup litigation.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Milena.”
“I like Milena.”
“That means she behaved.”
“She said she was being polite.”
He winced. “Then she liked you.”
You leaned back against the porch railing, and he stood in front of you with his hands in his pockets, rocking once on his heels like he wanted to come closer and had forgotten the law of his own body.
Through the window, you could see Baba Vesna pretending to wipe the table while watching you both with shameless interest. You lifted a hand and waved.
She waved back.
Valko turned, saw her, and groaned. “For the love of...Baba.”
“She loves you.”
“That's her usual excuse for crimes.”
“It’s a good one.”
He looked back at you, and the teasing left him slowly, piece by piece. Out here, with the house at his back, he seemed caught between the wild thing and the loved thing. The wolf and the boy in the paper crown. The man who had brought you to the threshold with shaking hands and still tried to joke like fear could be made harmless if he gave it a funny name.
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
“Which part?”
“When Niko asked if you were keeping me.”
The question came lightly, too lightly. A feather laid over a blade.
You reached for him.
This time, Valko did not hesitate. He came into your space at once, as if pulled by a string tied somewhere behind his ribs. His hands settled at your waist, careful at first, then warmer when you didn't move away.
“I meant it,”
His eyes searched yours.
“For tonight?”
“For longer than that.”
He didn't kiss you immediately. Somehow, that made it worse. He stood there and let the answer enter him, slowly, like someone opening the door to a room he had been told was empty and finding it lit.
Inside, Mika yelled, “Are they kissing?”
Valko dropped his forehead to your shoulder.
“Leave them. He is finally being normal.”
You laughed.
He looked at you then, and the last of his embarrassment broke open into something bright, something almost boyish
“Welcome home,” he said, very softly.
You touched his cheek.
Behind him, the old house breathed and creaked and held its golden noise. Inside, his family waited with tea, teeth, stories, and a place at the table already made yours.
summary: you have always found people easier to understand once they are written down. jiraiya, unfortunately, proves much more complicated in person
word count: 15,000
content: jiraiya x fem!reader, slow burn, fluff, mild angst, age gap, mutual pining, friends to lovers, canon-typical mentions of war and injury, literary courtship as a love language, jiraiya being jiraiya, one deeply overworked gingko tree
a/n: the answer to this request for my beloved @t1track!! several seasons, one failed novel and exactly fifteen thousand words later, here she is. thank you for trusting me with this one, i hope you love it as much as i do 🖤
Books had always been better company than people.
They did not grow restless when you declined an invitation, or take offence when you admitted that an afternoon beneath a window with a novel in your lap sounded kinder than a crowded festival. They did not ask why you were so quiet and then interrupt the answer before it had properly formed, and they waited where you left them, patient beneath dust and lamplight, carrying the same secrets whether you came back after an hour, a season, or a year in which everything else had changed.
As a child, you had read at your bedside by candlelight until the wax burnt down to a puddle and the flame dwindled to a sickly orange glow. You had smuggled books into lessons, family meals, medical check-ups, and one academy excursion that ended with you walking directly into a tree because the final chapter had become, at that moment, more important than vision. Growing older had only widened your appetite rather than civilised it: histories, poetry, political memoirs, travel journals, romances of wildly uneven quality, lurid murder mysteries, medical texts you understood only in loyal fragments, and whatever banned nonsense found its way onto the hidden shelf behind the proprietor’s desk at the old bookshop near Konoha’s eastern wall.
By thirty, you had built a life around words without quite noticing the foundations going down.
Your shinobi career had drifted first towards intelligence analysis and then into archival work, where patience, pattern recognition and an unreasonably good memory were valued far more than enthusiasm for being hurled through walls. You still accepted field assignments when the village needed you, but most days found you in the annex beside the Hokage Tower, surrounded by mission reports, coded correspondence and enough dreadful handwriting to make a person wonder whether some shinobi were deliberately encrypting their grocery lists.
It was there you had become friends with Genma and Kakashi, though neither man could explain the friendship without making it sound like a clerical mistake that had somehow acquired emotional permanence.
That afternoon, the three of you sat outside a dango shop while the village endured the full weight of summer around you. The awnings above the street sagged in the heat, their striped canvas faded by sun and old rain, and the wind chimes hanging from nearby shopfronts stirred only occasionally, too languid to commit to music. The sweet smell of grilled rice flour and syrup drifted from the kitchen, mingling with peach skins, dust, warm wood and the sharp green scent of crushed leaves beneath passing sandals, while somewhere down the road a grocer was arguing with a customer about the price of fruit as though the fate of the Land of Fire depended upon two bruised peaches.
Genma had returned from a border assignment that morning and was treating his report deadline as a rumour started by his enemies. Kakashi had arrived late, offered no explanation, ordered tea, and opened a familiar orange book the moment he sat down.
You had brought your own reading material.
This was not unusual. What was unusual, apparently, was the title hidden beneath the brown paper jacket you used to protect older editions from weather, tea stains and other people’s hands.
Genma watched you turn a page, lasted perhaps another thirty seconds, then leaned across the table with his senbon shifting between his teeth. “What’ve you got there?”
You kept your eyes on the paragraph. “A book.”
“Right, yes, I got that far. Thought it might be agricultural equipment.”
“You’d ask fewer questions if it were.”
Across from you, Kakashi’s visible eye curved over the top of his novel. He had not joined the conversation, but he was listening with the serene attentiveness of a man already preparing to deny all involvement should matters deteriorate.
Genma nudged your cup aside and tried to glimpse the cover. You lifted the book beyond his reach.
“What are you hiding?”
“A title.”
“Embarrassing?”
“No.”
“Illegal?”
“Not in the Land of Fire.”
His eyebrows rose. You allowed yourself a sip of tea before taking pity on him. “It’s not illegal anywhere. I’m making fun of you.”
“You know, I’ve been awake since yesterday.”
“That explains some things.”
A waitress arrived with another plate of dango, and Genma immediately took one despite having spent the last ten minutes insisting the road had destroyed his appetite. You watched him bite into it.
“I thought you weren’t hungry.”
“Recovery is unpredictable.” He pointed the half-eaten dango at your book. “You’re avoiding the subject.”
“There was no subject until you invented one.”
“Well, there’s definitely a subject now.”
For several pleasant minutes, however, even Genma seemed willing to let it go. The table slipped back into its usual rhythm, easy from long practice—Genma ate the food he had not ordered and complained intermittently about paperwork, Kakashi pretended his ears were decorative while reading Icha Icha Paradise in public with all the absorbed dignity of someone reviewing an essential treaty, and you returned to your book beneath the awning while the heat lay gold and heavy along the street.
It lasted until Genma finished his second stolen dango.
“So?”
You kept reading. “No.”
“I haven’t asked anything.”
“You’re going to.”
“Aw, c’mon,” he grinned around the senbon. “What’re you reading?”
You turned the page before answering. “One of Master Jiraiya’s books.”
The world, inconsiderately, continued as it had been. Cicadas sawed away from the trees, a cart passed with one wheel squeaking in a tired little pattern, and somewhere inside the shop crockery struck the floor hard enough to prompt apologies from staff. At the table, Genma inhaled sharply enough to catch on his senbon. Kakashi’s orange novel lowered by perhaps half an inch.
You looked between them. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Genma coughed into his fist and glanced at Kakashi in a way he plainly believed was subtle. “Long mission.”
Kakashi, apparently deciding intervention was safer than leaving him unsupervised, let his eye dip towards the brown paper around your book. “To be fair, Master Jiraiya has published several.”
“There are…categories,” Genma added carefully.
“Yes, Genma. I know.”
“And you like this one?”
“Very much.”
Another alarming quantity of shinobi communication passed between them.
You rested your elbow on the table and looked between them. “I don’t know what the two of you think you’re doing, but I’d stop before one of you actually says it.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Kakashi replied.
“You lowered your book.”
“I’ve learnt from the mistake.”
Genma, burdened by no comparable instinct for self-preservation, shrugged. “I just didn’t think you were the type.”
“The type to read?”
“No, obviously you’re the type to read.” He gestured vaguely at your entire life. “The type to read...that.”
You glanced at the orange cover in Kakashi’s hand and recognition arrived with all the grace of a bird flying into a window. “You think I’m reading Icha Icha?”
“Well,” Genma said, removing the senbon from his mouth, “you did say one of Jiraiya’s books.”
“He’s written more than one series.”
“I know.”
“Do you? You looked at Kakashi for help.”
“He’s the resident expert.”
“The resident enthusiast, you mean.”
Kakashi lifted his novel. “I’ve said nothing.”
Genma laughed and reached for another dango, his earlier caution abandoned now that the misunderstanding had been dragged into daylight. “Alright, fine. What is it, then?”
You folded back the brown paper at the corner, careful not to catch the softened edge, and revealed the faded title stamped across the cover.
“The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi.”
Genma’s fingers stopped just short of the plate as Kakashi lowered his novel properly this time. The teasing did not vanish so much as lose its footing; Kakashi’s gaze lingered on the worn cover, the fraying spine and the old library slip tucked between the final pages even though the book no longer belonged to any library, while Genma looked from the title to you with an expression that suggested several remarks had presented themselves and, for once, he was considering whether any deserved to survive.
“Oh,” he said. “That one.”
You smoothed the paper back from the title. “What does that mean?”
“The sincere one.”
“Don’t say it as though you’ve found evidence of misconduct.”
“I’m not judging him.” His mouth twitched. “Just surprised.”
“By sincerity?”
“From Master Jiraiya?” Genma considered this while reclaiming his dango. “A little.”
You shrugged. “It’s a beautiful book.”
The answer came simply enough that his smile faded before he could make another joke.
Kakashi watched you over the edge of Icha Icha. “You’ve finished it?”
“Twice.”
Genma blinked. “I thought it was supposed to be a flop.”
“It was a commercial failure.”
“That sounds like the polite archivist version of flop.”
“The fact that it sold poorly doesn’t make it bad.”
“You’ve taken that personally.”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re insulting one of my friends.”
He looked at the book. “The book?”
“Yes. It behaved better than you have today.”
A laugh escaped him around the senbon before he could prevent it. “There it is. I was starting to worry the literature had made you sentimental.”
“You should be so fortunate.”
You adjusted the brown paper over the cover and found your place again, and for a moment it seemed the conversation might finally be permitted to die with dignity. Genma even leaned back in his chair, which should have warned you that the interrogation wasn’t over.
“What do you like about it?” You looked up. There was no grin this time, only a faintly self-conscious shrug as he rolled the senbon from one corner of his mouth to the other. “I’ve never read it.”
“Of course you haven’t.”
“Probably not helping my case.”
“No.”
“But I’m asking.”
Kakashi had not reopened Icha Icha. That, more than anything, convinced you to answer.
You kept your thumb against the edge of the page, feeling the slight unevenness where age and repeated handling had roughened the paper. “It’s difficult to explain without making it sound miserable.”
“Promising start,” Genma said, though gently enough that you knew he was not trying to derail you.
“The hero keeps failing,” you began, then frowned at your own phrasing. “No— No, that makes it sound as though nothing else happens. He does succeed sometimes, but not neatly. Not in that way stories usually let a hero fail to make him look humble before handing him the victory everyone knows is coming.” You turned the story over in your mind while Genma picked up his tea. “He makes actual mistakes, trusts people he shouldn’t, gets there too late. Sometimes he recognises that someone is suffering and still completely misunderstands what they need, because he thinks recognising pain automatically means he understands the person carrying it.”
Genma’s gaze dropped briefly to the table. “Sounds frustrating.”
“It is. I wanted to shake him several times.”
“So naturally, you read it twice.”
“Obviously.”
Kakashi snorted, loosening the conversation before it became too solemn.
You smiled despite yourself and looked down at the book. “But he wants to end a conflict that started long before he was born,” you continued, “and the story never gives him a clever answer for how. There’s no secret technique waiting at the end to prove he was right all along. Half the time, I don’t think he knows whether his ideals can survive outside his own head.”
Genma had stopped eating.
“He just…keeps trying. That’s the part I like.”
For a while, the street filled the spaces around the table without asking anything of you. Sandals clacked over packed earth, someone laughed from the kitchen, cups knocked together as a waitress stacked them inside, and the grocer down the road appeared to have won the argument about his peaches only to begin another over a melon.
You ran one finger along the edge of the page without turning it.
“A lot of stories about perseverance make it feel like a bargain,” you went on, because neither man had laughed and somehow that made it easier to continue. “You suffer enough, keep going long enough, and eventually the world rewards you for having the right sort of spirit. This book doesn’t. Sometimes he keeps going and nothing gets better. Sometimes he fails again.”
Genma frowned. “Then why keep going?”
“Because if he stops, failure gets the last word.”
The answer sounded less polished aloud than it ever had in your head, and perhaps better for it. Genma rolled his cup between his palms while Kakashi listened with the mild absence he had perfected into an art.
You knew enough of Jiraiya’s history to recognise the ache threaded through the novel, though only in outline. Everyone in Konoha knew some version of him, because a man that famous eventually became a collection of stories whether he wanted to or not—the Legendary Sannin, the student of the Third Hokage, the teammate of Tsunade and Orochimaru, the teacher of the Fourth. Naruto’s godfather too, though that part sat less comfortably beside the others, because he had not been there when the boy was small and alone and making a nuisance of himself for scraps of attention, and had since folded himself back into Naruto’s life with noise, affection, poor decisions and the stubborn tenderness of someone trying to make up for time that could not be returned.
You did not know the whole man. Reading the book, sometimes you wondered whether even he did.
“It’s not perfect,” you added, and Genma’s eyebrows lifted. “The middle wanders badly, there’s a monologue about revenge at least three pages longer than it should be, and I’m almost certain one minor character disappears because Master Jiraiya forgot he existed.”
“That’s more like it,” Genma said with such relief that you laughed.
“I said I loved it. I didn’t say I’d lost all critical judgement.” You shook your head at him. “You should try reading it before forming opinions.”
“That seems like work.”
“It generally is.”
“But after that glowing recommendation...” He rubbed his thumb over the damp ring left by his cup, thoughtful despite the lazy complaint. “Maybe I will.”
“You should,” you said. “Both of you.”
Kakashi glanced down at the orange novel still open in his hand, considered it for a moment, then tucked it into his vest.
Genma noticed immediately. “Have we ruined it for you?”
“I do occasionally stop reading, you know,” Kakashi drawled.
“Not voluntarily.”
“I’m capable of appreciating more than one aspect of an author’s work.”
There was just enough dignity in the statement to make Genma grin. “That sounded defensive.”
You rescued neither of them. “Leave him alone.”
“Thank you,” Kakashi said.
“Don’t thank me. I’m protecting a valuable lending arrangement.”
Genma laughed so hard the senbon nearly fell from his mouth, and by the time Kakashi informed you both that friendship was an increasingly poor investment, the conversation had found its way back to familiar ground. Another plate arrived, Genma denied ordering it, and the two of them began arguing over whose turn it was to pay, an argument made pointless by the fact that Kakashi had already slipped money beneath the edge of the plate.
It was several minutes later that you noticed him looking past your shoulder towards the roofline opposite the shop.
You followed his gaze, expecting perhaps a messenger bird or one of the village cats that treated the upper streets as private territory, but nothing occupied the sun-warmed tiles except a grey pigeon and a line of washing stirring above an open window.
“What is it?”
Kakashi reached for his cup. “Nothing.”
You watched him for another moment, but his attention had returned to the table with such complete innocence that suspicion became useless.
Two streets over, tucked behind a bathhouse chimney and beginning to regret several recent decisions, Jiraiya crouched with one sandal braced against the roof tiles.
He had not been spying. The distinction mattered enormously.
He had been conducting research nearby when Kakashi’s silver hair caught his eye, and any responsible senior shinobi might reasonably have paused to determine why one of Konoha’s most recognisable jōnin was wasting the afternoon outside a dango shop in suspicious company. That the research involved a notebook, a strategically chosen rooftop and the women’s side of the bathhouse was, in Jiraiya’s professional opinion, entirely unrelated.
Ten minutes ago, this had been a perfectly adequate explanation.
Now he remained behind the chimney with his notebook forgotten against one knee and his pen suspended over the page, trying to decide which part of the conversation had offended him most: that Genma had called the novel a flop, that Kakashi apparently owned enough of Icha Icha to qualify as a specialist, or that someone he had never met had read his first book twice and discussed its failings with considerably more care than most critics had ever bothered to give its strengths.
Beautiful, you had called it. Not important, which he might have laughed off. Not interesting, which could mean almost anything. Not surprisingly good, the sort of praise that arrived carrying the insult responsible for its existence.
Beautiful.
Below him, somewhere beyond the chimney and the bathhouse wall, a woman laughed as water splashed, and under ordinary circumstances this would have restored Jiraiya at once to the vital demands of his profession. Instead he stayed where he was, staring at nothing in particular while a dark blot of ink spread slowly beneath the forgotten tip of his pen.
Three days passed before he found you.
You spent the worst of most summer afternoons in the archive courtyard, where the Tower’s stone walls enclosed a square of comparative mercy from the sun and a single gingko tree leaned over a shallow pond as though it had grown tired halfway through sprouting its leaves. The library staff had placed two benches beneath it years ago; one listed badly to the left and creaked beneath anything heavier than a document box, but the other remained sound, its wood polished smooth by generations of clerks escaping their desks with contraband lunches, unfinished reports and the occasional book hidden beneath official paperwork.
You were halfway through a collection of folktales from the Land of Rivers when the light shifted across the page.
The shadow that fell over your lap was broad at the shoulders, aggressively spiked around the head and accompanied by the unmistakable mixture of road dust, ink, sun-warmed cloth and sake consumed rather earlier in the day than most physicians would recommend. You kept one finger against your place and looked up to find Jiraiya standing over you with a hand on his hip, one sandal propped on the bench and his white hair silvered at the edges by the afternoon light.
He had arranged himself with considerable care. Somewhere, presumably, an invisible audience had failed to applaud.
“So,” he began, with the satisfaction of a man arriving at the conclusion of a story only he had been telling, “you’re the woman of exceptional taste.”
A dragonfly settled on the pond behind him, its wings catching blue for an instant above the water. You glanced past his shoulder into the empty courtyard before returning your attention to him “Is someone else here?”
For one gratifying moment, Jiraiya had no answer at all. Then laughter burst out of him hard enough to disturb two birds in the gingko branches. “Sharp. Kakashi neglected to mention that.”
“Kakashi neglected to mention you at all.”
“Unbelievable. After everything I’ve done for that boy.”
“He may feel your publicity needs are already being met.”
Jiraiya gave you a look of exaggerated injury as he sat beside you without invitation, although, you noticed, he left a courteous span of bench between you and made no attempt to crowd the book in your lap. The wood complained beneath his weight. He ignored it, leaning back with ease, apparently deciding the courtyard now belonged to him, and his eyes dropped almost at once to what you were reading.
“That’s not mine.”
“No.”
“Taking a break from greatness?”
“I finished it.”
He turned his head. “Again?”
There was enough interest beneath the casual question that you looked at him properly, and found the grin already waiting for you. It seemed effortless until you noticed the fingers of one large hand tapping an uneven little rhythm against his knee.
“You heard us at the dango shop.”
The tapping stopped. Jiraiya’s expression remained magnificently innocent. “A great shinobi hears many things.”
“It was you Kakashi noticed on the bathhouse roof.”
“A great shinobi hears many things from many locations.”
“You were spying on women.”
His hand went to his chest in offence. “Researching.”
“With a telescope?”
“A respected instrument of observation.”
You returned your attention to the folktale, though reading had become impossible with a Legendary Sannin occupying half the bench and defending voyeurism as methodology beside you. “Perhaps conduct your research somewhere less likely to end with a public arrest next time.”
“Now, now.” He leaned slightly closer, voice taking on a confidential warmth that suggested he was inviting you into a conspiracy. “We’re discussing literature. There’s no need to drag artistic persecution into it.”
“We weren’t discussing anything until you appeared.”
“Cruel.”
“You seem well enough.”
“Years of hardship.”
“That much is evident.”
His grin widened, but he did not answer immediately. Instead, he looked at you with a curiosity open enough to be almost disarming, and because he had stopped talking for once, you found yourself doing the same.
You had seen Jiraiya before—everybody in Konoha had. He moved through the village in bursts, absent long enough to become rumour and then suddenly everywhere at once, buying sake, pestering Tsunade, arguing with Naruto and appearing on rooftops where no decent man had any business being. At a distance, all of him seemed designed to be noticed.
At close range, his age revealed itself not as frailty but accumulation. Fine creases at the corners of his eyes, a narrow scar beneath his jaw, broad hands roughened by weapons, travel and years that rarely made it into village anecdotes. He looked, you thought, like a man entirely capable of dismantling a fortress before lunch and misplacing his wallet before supper
His attention shifted towards your bag. “Do you have it with you?”
“My copy?”
He lifted his brows. “I’d call it my book.”
“You have several thousand copies.”
“None with your notes in them.”
That gave you pause. Jiraiya had already arranged his face into idle expectation, but the tapping against his knee had resumed.
You set the folktales aside and reached into your bag.
Your copy of The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi had been bought second-hand after your first reading because the library edition contained someone else’s annotations, most of them complaints about pacing and one prolonged argument with a metaphor on page ninety-three. Its jacket had faded from blue to the colour of old smoke, the corners had softened through use, and a previous owner had repaired the spine with linen tape that no longer matched anything around it.
Jiraiya took it with considerably more care than his general behaviour suggested, thumb settling against the spine without pressing as he turned the volume over.
“First edition.”
“Yes.”
“Terrible cover.”
“I like it.”
“The hero looks constipated.”
“He’s grappling with the cycle of hatred.”
“He appears to be grappling with shellfish.”
The laugh escaped before you could prevent it, and Jiraiya’s attention lifted from the book at once.
Something in his expression caught for a moment. Satisfaction was there, certainly, the immediate pleasure of having successfully brought joy to someone, but beneath it sat a more targeted sort of interest, as though the sound had confirmed a private suspicion he had not yet shared with himself.
You were still deciding whether you had imagined the change when he opened the book.
“You wrote in it.”
“It belongs to me.”
He turned the volume slightly, holding one pencilled note towards the light as if damage might become less offensive under examination. “You wrote in my book.”
“You sold it.”
“That doesn’t mean I surrendered all moral authority.”
“Publishing generally suggests otherwise.”
Jiraiya looked at you over the top edge of the page. “Are they at least flattering?”
“Some.”
“Only some?”
“You repeat yourself in the middle, and occasionally mistake philosophical insistence for pacing.”
His outrage deepened until you added, “The river scene is lovely.”
His hand returned to his chest. “I’m being vivisected.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Ah.” His eyes narrowed with sudden pleasure. “You have been paying attention.”
The words were light, but they remained between you a fraction longer than the joke itself had any right to. Jiraiya looked down first and began turning the pages more slowly, reading whatever he found rather than searching for praise. The occasional question mark beside an abrupt transition, a disagreement with a character’s decision, a few words of approval beside an image you loved.
He stopped at an underlined passage where the hero’s attempt at negotiation collapsed because he had recognised another person’s grief and mistaken recognition for understanding. In your smallest pencil script, you had written:
He thinks understanding suffering means he understands the person who suffered. It does not.
Jiraiya read it twice. “Well,” he said eventually, his thumb resting beside the words. “That’s severe.”
“Is it wrong?”
“No.” His thumb moved once over the margin, careful not to smudge the pencil. “The hero was younger there.”
“So were you.”
His eyes lifted to yours. You had not meant it as an accusation, the observation had simply seemed true, and from the way Jiraiya studied you, you suspected he was deciding whether to hear judgement anyway.
Whatever conclusion he reached, it eased something in the line of his shoulders.
“Much younger,” he admitted.
You glanced at the underlined passage. “What inspired it?”
“Oh, the usual things.” His tone recovered some of its prior looseness as he leaned back. “Travel. War. Terrible food. Worse company.”
“Himself?”
Jiraiya gave you a sidelong look. “Do you always question authors like this?”
“I work in intelligence.”
“Dangerous combination.”
“You still haven’t answered.”
“I answered several adjacent questions.”
“You decorated the escape route.”
That won a laugh from him, lower than the one that had frightened birds from the tree, and for a moment he looked almost pleased to have been caught. He closed the book around one finger to keep his place.
“Some of him was me. Some was who I thought a hero ought to be. That’s not always the same thing.”
“No.”
“And some came from a student.”
You knew the answer before you asked. “Minato Namikaze?”
The warmth in his face altered. He looked towards the pond where the dragonfly had left the reed and now skimmed over the surface, coming close enough to fracture its reflection without ever touching down.
“Partly.”
You waited because filling the silence would have felt like taking something he had not offered.
“Minato read it when everyone else had decided they had better things to do,” Jiraiya said at last. “Told me the hero reminded him of me. Poor boy had questionable judgement.”
“He named his son after the protagonist.”
Jiraiya looked back at you. “You know that?”
“The name is distinctive.”
“Could’ve been coincidence.”
“It wasn’t.”
You watched him consider maintaining the lie before deciding to abandon it. “No, it wasn’t.”
A warm current of air moved through the courtyard and stirred the gingko leaves overhead, carrying with it their bitter-green scent and the first threads of cooking smoke from houses beyond the Tower. The working day had begun to loosen around the edges. Somewhere inside the annex, stamps struck paper with weary regularity, drawers opened and shut, and a clerk laughed at something too muffled for either of you to hear.
“It flopped,” Jiraiya said, almost conversationally. “Completely. Booksellers couldn’t give it away. My publisher developed a twitch whenever I mentioned a sequel.”
“You always say that like it’s funny.”
“It is funny.”
“Is it?” His expression sharpened, humour gathering by instinct, but you kept your voice gentle. “I know you joke about it but that doesn’t make it painless.”
For several seconds, the page edges stirred beneath his hand.
“I’m sorry people didn’t appreciate it when you wrote it.”
“Don’t be. Failure builds character.”
“Perhaps. Still hurts.”
The remark landed more cleanly than you intended. Jiraiya returned to your notes instead of reaching for a joke, and after watching him read in silence for another page, you said, “You write beautifully, Master Jiraiya.”
His head came up.
Self-satisfaction flooded back into his posture with magnificent efficiency. One hand swept through his hair, narrowly avoiding the scroll strapped across his back. “Well, naturally. You don’t become a best-selling literary genius through rugged good looks alone.”
“The inside of your mind must be a chaotic place.”
His hand stopped halfway through his hair.
“Fascinating, certainly,” you added. “But chaotic.”
Jiraiya stared. “You have a very strange way of complimenting people.”
“I meant both parts.”
“My mind,” he forced out with great dignity, “is highly organised.”
“Is it?”
“Extremely.”
You glanced at the scroll on his back, the notebook jutting crookedly from one pocket, and the book he was currently holding open upside down. Jiraiya followed your gaze and righted it.
“Highly organised,” he repeated.
You pressed your lips together.
“Go on, then,” he pushed.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face has.”
You laughed despite yourself. “Fine. Organised like what?”
Jiraiya leaned back with renewed confidence. “An archive.”
“Half the archives in this village are one leaking pipe from catastrophe.”
“A military archive.”
“I think that’s worse.”
He pointed at you with the solemnity of a battlefield challenge. “I’ll prove it.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“Which will make my triumph more impressive.”
Jiraiya rose, perhaps intending to finish there, but the sudden movement loosened the book from his hand. He caught it before it fell and tucked it beneath his arm with immense dignity.
“You’re stealing my book.”
“Borrowing.”
“You haven’t asked.”
Jiraiya glanced at the copy already tucked beneath his arm. “May I borrow it?”
“No.”
“There. You see the problem.”
“Give it back.”
“I need it.”
“For what?”
“Comparison.”
“The evidence is already in your head.”
“Exactly, and I’ve been told that’s unreliable.”
You pushed yourself to your feet. “Master Jiraiya.”
He was already retreating across the courtyard, the battered first edition secured beneath one arm. “I’ll bring it back.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“That is not a time!”
“It is when you travel.”
“Not when you work in archives.”
His hands came together.
You stared at him. “Don’t you dare.”
His grin flashed, the air snapped, and white smoke rolled across the paving stones. When it cleared, Jiraiya and your book were gone, leaving only a yellowed leaf spinning down where he had been.
You stood there for several seconds in disbelief, then you looked at the collection of folktales still open on the bench, at the empty place beside it, and finally at the dragonfly, which had returned to the edge of the pond and appeared to be taking no responsibility whatsoever.
“He is much worse in person,” you told it.
The proof arrived four days later, tied with red cord and delivered to the archive by a small green toad in a waistcoat, who placed eleven closely written sheets of paper on your desk, requested a signature with grave professionalism and departed only after informing the nearest clerk that the building’s ventilation was an insult to amphibious health.
You waited until lunch before opening it.
The first page bore a title in brushstrokes large enough to be read from the corridor:
AN ORGANISED ACCOUNT OF THE CREATIVE AND INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES OF JIRAIYA THE MAGNIFICENT
Below it, in smaller script:
Prepared in response to slander.
By the time you carried the bundle into the courtyard, you had already managed to establish that Jiraiya’s defence of his own mental organisation was considerably worse than the accusation. The first three sections were coherent enough, dealing with theme, character, structure and the political landscape that had informed The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi; the fourth began with the relationship between hunger and revolutionary movements, wandered through an anecdote about a rice merchant in the Land of Hot Water and concluded in a furious complaint about an editor who had once removed an entire paragraph concerning a woman’s ankles. The fifth was labelled FROGS AS MORAL WITNESSES, while the sixth had been crossed out hard enough to tear the paper.
By page eight, arrows connected arguments that appeared to have been born in different countries. A crowned toad occupied one margin beside the note potential allegory? ask Fukasaku, and a circular stain, probably sake, had swallowed whatever conclusion might once have saved him.
You were still examining it when you noticed a flash of red on the opposite wall. Jiraiya had chosen a position from which he could watch without, apparently, considering himself visible.
You lifted the page bearing the crowned toad. “You’ve proved the point.”
He dropped into the courtyard in a sweep of white hair and red fabric. “I knew an educated woman would recognise intellectual discipline.”
“I meant mine.”
“That’s a visual aid.”
“It’s wearing ceremonial robes.”
“Symbolism.”
“You connected soup stock to intergenerational grief.”
“It made sense in context.”
“Yes,” you furrowed your brows. “That’s the concerning part.”
His affront lasted only until he looked at your face; then laughter broke out of him, broad and unrestrained, and he braced a hand on the bench before sitting beside you. “You’re impossible to impress.”
“I liked the section on political mythmaking, at least.”
“You see?”
“It was followed by three paragraphs about broth.”
“History happens to hungry people.”
You were about to return the papers when he produced your copy of The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi from inside his vest.
“You bent the cover!"
“It was already like that.”
“It was not.”
“An enemy attacked me.”
“An enemy targeted this specific paperback?”
“A critic. Very bitter people.”
You took the book from him before he could invent reinforcements for the story. The corner of the cover had indeed been bent, but the old linen along the spine was gone, replaced by stronger binding tape, and a clear protective sleeve now covered the faded jacket. When you ran a thumb over the repair, Jiraiya developed an abrupt interest in the pond.
“Thank you.”
He gave a noncommittal hum.
“You could simply accept gratitude, you know.”
“Where's the sport?”
You handed him the eleven pages. “You forgot the conclusion.”
“Ambushed.”
“By the sake cup?”
“Deadly opponent.”
“Will you finish it?”
His hands slowed on the cord. “You want me to?”
The question was so much less theatrical than everything surrounding it that it forced you to look at him. “Yes, I do.”
“Even though it’s chaos?”
“Because it’s chaos. I want to know how you get from soup stock to inherited grief and somehow make me agree with you.”
For a moment, Jiraiya only watched you. Then his whole face opened into delight, unburdened by the leer or swagger he wore so easily for an audience, and he bent over the pages to retie them before you could look at the expression too closely.
“Fine,” he chuckled. “But you’re buying lunch.”
“You stole my book and damaged it.”
“Borrowed it, improved it and returned it with added value.”
“You owe me lunch.”
“Half?”
“All.”
He sighed as he rose, gathering the papers beneath one arm. “Merciless woman.”
You slipped the repaired novel into your bag and followed him towards the archway. “I’m sure you’ll endure.”
That, more or less, was how it began—not with a confession or a dramatic rescue, but with noodles, an unfinished argument about narrative structure and Jiraiya making three increasingly creative attempts to persuade the owner that literary prestige ought to qualify for a discount. He paid in the end. For weeks afterwards, he insisted otherwise.
Once Jiraiya decided the archive was part of his life, he became almost impossible to dislodge from it.
His reasons for visiting were rarely credible. One afternoon he needed a border map publicly available for seven years; on another, a census from a district that no longer existed. His claim that Tsunade had sent him to inspect fire safety survived less than ten minutes, ending when the Hokage herself found him leaning against your desk and explaining why his most recent unfinished chapter had required research across three taverns.
Tsunade stopped in the doorway; Jiraiya immediately stopped talking.
“You know,” she started, folding her arms, “most spies make some effort not to announce themselves from the corridor.”
He straightened with the innocence of a fox discovered among feathers. “Official business.”
“You’ve been banned from official business until you finish the report on Amegakure.”
“Creative intelligence cannot flourish under administrative tyranny.”
Her attention shifted to you. “Has he been bothering you?”
“Yes.” Jiraiya pressed a hand to his chest. “Though not enough to require medical intervention,” you added, considering him over the file you were cataloguing.
“Pity.” Tsunade continued towards the records office, striking him on the back of the head as she passed.
He folded over your desk with a groan fit for a death scene. “You see how I suffer?”
“You provoked the Hokage within arm’s reach.”
“I thought age might have tempered her.”
“Haven’t you known her most of your life?”
“Hope is the essence of perseverance.”
“That is not what your book says.”
Jiraiya lifted his head. For an instant, the performance vanished. “You remember?”
“Parts.”
A stunned blink, the faint parting of his lips, and then the brightly painted machinery started again. He leaned one elbow on the desk. “Careful. A man could mistake that sort of devotion for infatuation.”
“I’ve also memorised several passages I dislike.”
“Passion can take many forms.”
“Go and write your report.”
He laughed, but you noticed that he stayed until your lunch break.
Before long, your colleagues ceased looking up when his voice carried through the archive. His visits fitted themselves around the place with astonishing ease. Jiraiya lounging against a cabinet while you finished a catalogue entry, stealing the chair beside your desk and discovering too late that one leg was shorter than the others, arriving from some distant border with dust on his clothes and a book beneath his arm because he had seen the cover in a market and thought of you.
Some offerings were rare; others were, frankly, appalling. A lurid detective novel from the Land of Tea arrived with three pages missing and a note claiming the absence improved the mystery; a collection of mountain poetry carried water stains from the journey and smelled faintly of pine smoke. Once, with great solemnity, he presented you with an agricultural handbook because the author had accidentally written what he maintained was the decade’s most compelling romance.
You read all of them.
In return, books began appearing at the inn where he stayed whenever Konoha kept him longer than a few nights—political treatises, folk epics, an austere biography of a daimyō he despised and romances chosen partly for quality and partly to annoy him. He returned them full of scraps, because for all his indignation over your pencil marks, Jiraiya would not write directly on a printed page.
The hero has no sense. I respect him.
This author has never met a woman.
Page 204 is good. Don’t look smug.
The villain should have won.
One note, tucked into the daimyō’s biography, read, You only gave me this because the old man reminds you of me.
You wrote beneath it, This old man is responsible with money.
The book came back two days later.
You wound me!
The exchange acquired its own rhythm, continuing even when he was elsewhere. Books travelled between you until they felt less like objects than a corridor built piecemeal across the countries he visited, open whenever ordinary conversation could not be. You learnt where he had been from the smell of smoke caught in a binding, from rain-warped paper or foreign receipts used as bookmarks; he learnt which arguments had annoyed you from the density of your notes and which endings had moved you from their complete absence.
You did not ask where his missions took him. Intelligence work had taught you that some questions could not safely be answered.
In time, Jiraiya began telling you when he expected to return.
Not immediately. The first time, he disappeared as he always had, leaving behind an empty inn room, an unpaid tab and half a manuscript beneath your office window as though the eaves could be trusted to protect literature.
Nine days later, he returned to find you beneath the gingko tree. He came into the courtyard with a wrapped book raised over his head, already announcing that he had acquired coastal ghost stories so obscure their own author might not remember writing them, and only faltered when you closed the report in your lap.
“You could have said goodbye.”
The package remained aloft for another second before he lowered it in tandem with the fall of his grin. “It was a short trip.”
“Nine days.”
“You counted?”
“The manuscript you left outside my window was exposed to rain.”
“I put it under the eaves.”
“The wind disagreed.”
His mouth twitched, then settled. “Were you worried?”
You could have lied, but Jiraiya read people too quickly for a false answer to do anything except insult you both so you simply said, “Yes.”
For one instant, humour gathered at the corner of his mouth. You watched him consider it, then let it go.
“I’m sorry.”
The apology was plain enough to believe.
The next time he left, he found you in the same courtyard and said he expected to be gone for two weeks. No destination, no details, only a sealed envelope for Tsunade if he had not returned by the end of the month.
You turned it over. “This is not reassuring.”
“It isn’t meant to be.”
“Then why give it to me?”
“Because you won’t open it.”
The certainty in his voice made the envelope seem heavier than paper warranted. “Perhaps curiosity will overwhelm my principles.”
“Your curiosity has principles. That’s why it’s dangerous.”
“And yours?”
“My curiosity has excellent instincts and no respect for trespassing laws.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I know.”
He left the next morning.
Eleven days later, he climbed through your office window with a cut beneath one eye and a limp he attributed to wrestling a bandit chief. You had already heard from a mutual contact that an unstable roof was involved, but chose not to spoil the story before handing him the sealed letter.
Jiraiya inspected the intact wax.
“I told you.”
“Humour an old man.”
You looked from the cut on his face to the window he had used instead of the staircase. “Is that what you are?”
“Ancient. Decrepit. One strong breeze away from turning to dust.”
“You climbed three floors because the stairs were too ordinary.”
“A final burst of vitality, maybe.”
He pocketed the envelope, though his fingers remained against the fabric for a moment afterwards and then, without commenting on it, he gave you the ghost stories.
It took you three months to begin reading Icha Icha.
Embarrassment had little to do with the delay; you had read explicit novels before, several far more graphic than Jiraiya’s celebrated series, but those authors had remained safely abstract rather than appearing at your desk with foreign poetry and fabricated government business. The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi contained Jiraiya at a distance, earnestness passed through allegory and idealism. Opening Icha Icha felt uncomfortably closer to private correspondence after being assured it was only a joke.
Kakashi solved the problem by placing the first volume beneath a routine mission file on your desk.
You stared at the orange cover like it might bite, then at him. “Is this an official archive acquisition?”
“No.”
“You’re lending it to me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His visible eye bent pleasantly. “Professional curiosity.”
“Mine or yours?”
He vanished before you could press the matter.
Later that evening, you took the book home.
The prose was more controlled than you expected. Indulgent, certainly, and occasionally absurd; the plot behaved at times like a person running downhill who had mistaken momentum for direction. Yet beneath secluded inns, erotic misunderstandings and improbable hot-spring accidents ran an ache no amount of comedy quite concealed.
The characters were always missing one another. They arrived after someone had left, mistook affection for pity, desire for indifference, fear for rejection. They touched readily and spoke badly, arranging physical intimacy with remarkable ingenuity while stumbling around the simpler risk of asking to be known. By the final third, you had stopped making notes.
You were reading beneath the gingko tree when Jiraiya returned from a meeting at Hokage Tower. His voice reached the courtyard before he did, complaining over his shoulder to some unfortunate clerk about Tsunade’s barbaric expectations regarding written reports, but the grievances ended the moment he stepped through the archway and saw the orange cover in your hands.
“Where did you get that?”
“Kakashi,” you offered simply.
“Traitor.”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“I am.”
“You look alarmed.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Painful?”
He ignored you and crossed the courtyard, but instead of taking his usual place on the bench, he stopped close enough to peer at the open page. “How far?”
“Near the end.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What do you think?”
There was no proper performance left in the question. He seemed to be attempting one, but uncertainty had worked its way into the joints, leaving him too interested in the answer to pretend otherwise.
You closed the book. “It’s sadder than people say.”
His laugh came at once, louder than the remark deserved. “Sad? You’ve been reading the wrong parts.”
“I don’t think I have.”
“It’s a romance.”
“Those can be sad.”
“It’s filthy.”
“So can those.”
That pulled a genuine laugh from him. Jiraiya sat, nearer than usual, one knee angled towards yours. “All right, scholar. Go on.”
“Well…” You turned the cover over beneath your hands. “The characters don’t seem to trust affection when it’s offered sincerely. They trust lust because it asks less of them, or it asks for something they already know how to give. They spend half the book finding ways to be physically intimate while avoiding the much more frightening possibility of being understood.”
“Very philosophical for a novel with that many breasts.”
“There are an extraordinary number of breasts.”
“Research.”
“Of course.”
His smile did not quite dismiss the subject.
“Every time someone comes close to saying what they actually want, something gets in the way. A misunderstanding, an interruption...” You glanced at him. “Usually a joke.”
“Comedy requires timing.”
“Yes. It can also be an exit.”
The afternoon had reached its hottest hour. Even the cicadas had exhausted themselves, leaving the courtyard to the hollow knock of water slipping from the bamboo spout into the pond and the faint activity of clerks behind closed windows. Jiraiya looked towards the upper storey almost absently, checking, you thought, whether anyone might be listening.
“You take things very seriously.”
“Not everything.”
“My sales figures thank you.”
“I understand why it sold. It’s entertaining.” You ran a thumb along the cover. “But it’s lonely too.”
Something tightened at one corner of his mouth.
You might have left it there; perhaps, if your judgement had been better, you should have. Instead you found yourself thinking of all the things you had come to recognise over the past months. You thought of the man who disappeared without warning because leaving was easier when no one expected a goodbye, the man who could entrust you with a sealed letter but not answer a direct question about himself, who filled rooms with laughter and wrote characters forever arriving too late for honesty.
“Loud things often are,” you murmured.
Jiraiya studied you. The afternoon light showed the years in him as wear rather than weakness. Some portion of battlefields crossed, teachers and students outlived, an intelligence network carried across borders converted into jokes before anyone could ask what remained underneath.
He leaned back against the bench, clearing his throat. “You make a habit of taking men apart by their books?”
“Only the interesting ones.”
The answer escaped before you examined it. Jiraiya turned his head, and you became sharply aware of the short space between his leg and yours.
His interest had never been difficult to imagine in the abstract. He was Jiraiya, after all, a man who advertised desire with almost civic enthusiasm. But this was not the broad, careless attention he scattered through taverns and streets, and the difference unsettled you more than flirtation ever had. His gaze held yours without a joke rushing in to soften it.
Then his mouth curved. “Well,” he said, the old swagger returning with suspicious care, “I’ve been called many things, but interesting may be the most seductive.”
You let out the breath you had not intended to hold. “I’ve heard you call yourself interesting twice today already.”
“An expert opinion.”
“From a biased source.”
“Most experts are.”
“You also claimed a paragraph about ankles was politically necessary.”
“Elegant architecture deserves serious study.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The exit.”
His grin faltered, then returned more softly as he looked across the pond. “You really are dangerous.”
You reopened the novel and Jiraiya remained while you finished the final chapter, one knee still angled towards yours, his attention apparently fixed on the pond whenever you glanced up at him.
The next day, you returned the book to Kakashi with a scrap of paper tucked near the end that read, He thinks being desired will protect him from being loved.
Kakashi read it at your desk, glanced through the window at Jiraiya arguing with a fruit seller over a melon, and closed the novel around the note.
Autumn wove its way into Konoha slowly.
The mornings sharpened first, cool enough that people lingered over tea before opening their shops, and smoke hung longer above the chimneys instead of disappearing at once into summer haze. Along the archive courtyard, the gingko leaves yellowed branch by branch, bright as small coins before the wind began worrying them loose and scattering them over the paving stones.
By then, Jiraiya had finally completed his organised defence of his own mind.
It required twenty-seven pages, three addenda, a map of the Land of Rain, two recipes and a diagram explaining how a toad’s digestive system related to narrative tension. He arrived at your desk one evening with the bundle under his arm and remained while you stitched the pages together, because an argument of such importance apparently deserved preservation.
The archive had nearly emptied, the last light slanted through the high windows and turned dust copper above the shelves while workers carried lanterns into the streets outside.
Jiraiya watched you pull linen thread through the spine. “You do that often?”
“Bind manuscripts?”
“Make broken things respectable.”
“The pages weren’t broken, just disorderly.”
“So you admit there was order.”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“I’m working.”
“Cowardice.”
“You’re hovering.”
“Supervising.”
“You have never bound a book in your life.”
“I’ve watched it done.”
“Then supervise from farther away.”
He laughed then. “Such a hostile working environment.”
You tied the final stitch, clipped the excess thread and pushed the volume across the desk. “There.”
Jiraiya picked it up with both hands. You had chosen deep red paper for the cover and left the front untitled, but in the bottom corner, small enough to escape immediate notice from anyone who did not know what to seek, you had pressed the shape of a crowned toad.
He found it at once. “You mocked my visual aid.”
“I preserved it.”
“Sentimental.”
“Archival.”
Outside the window, the lamplighter raised his pole and flame bloomed within the glass box by the archive steps. The warmer light caught the underside of Jiraiya’s face, deepening the lines beside his mouth before he turned the manuscript over once more in his hands.
He had grown familiar without becoming ordinary. You knew his tea had to taste nearly medicinal, that he performed both sides of dialogue while writing and hated the scrape of a dry brush against paper. You knew the ridiculous man could identify surveillance seals at a glance and become frighteningly focused when a coded report mentioned missing children. Familiarity had accumulated through books, lunches and arguments until his absence could alter the course of a day before your mind had decided to notice.
Jiraiya set the manuscript down. “You missed a page.”
“I did not.”
“The conclusion.”
“You said you finished it.”
“Not that one.”
From inside his vest, he withdrew a single folded sheet and held it across the desk. Unlike the rest of the manuscript, it had been written without corrections, arrows or marginal rebellions. The brushwork was steady.
Conclusion: The mind of Jiraiya is not chaotic. It is expansive, adaptable and unjustly maligned by one beautiful archivist whose criticism has nevertheless improved its organisation.
Further study may be required, preferably over dinner.
You read the page twice before looking up. Jiraiya had become fascinated by his own fingernails while one sandal tapped lightly against the floor.
“You could have asked without twenty-seven pages of supporting evidence.”
“And sacrifice academic integrity?”
“Is it dinner or research?”
“Can’t it be both?”
“That depends.”
He looked up. “On?”
“Whether you intend to leave me with the bill again.”
His grin arrived more cautiously than usual. “Half?”
“All.”
“Merciless.”
“Exceptionally.”
Dinner lasted three hours.
The restaurant near the village wall was narrow and warm, with steam fogging the windows and a proprietor who knew Jiraiya well enough to demand payment in advance. He protested this assault on his reputation while surrendering the money with practised resignation, then spent much of the evening telling you stories about places you had never seen. He spoke of a cliffside monastery where bells rang when the mountain shifted, a fishing town that left bowls of milk for ghosts, a tavern in the Land of Lightning whose owner had banned him for an offence he refused to describe without legal counsel.
You suspected half the stories were embellished. The true halves were probably stranger.
What surprised you was how often he turned the conversation back towards you. He already knew your favourite books, so he asked why you had left regular field service, whether intelligence had been a deliberate choice, whether you missed travelling. He asked about your first mission, your childhood and the scar along your forearm that he had noticed weeks ago.
His attention did not feel like interrogation, he always gave you room to answer or not.
By the time the owner began stacking chairs, neither of you had noticed how late it had become.
You walked back through Konoha beneath rows of amber lanterns while shopkeepers pulled shutters across windows and the last vendors counted their coins. Jiraiya carried the bound manuscript of his mind beneath one arm. Your shoulders brushed once when you both moved aside for a cart, and neither of you commented.
At the mouth of your street, he stopped.
“Well,” Jiraiya said, rocking back slightly on his heels. “A successful evening.”
“Your mind remains chaotic.”
“Ah, cruel to the last.”
“You compared political negotiation to dumpling preparation.”
“A sound metaphor.”
You smiled, and his attention dropped briefly to your mouth.
The glance lasted no more than a moment, but there was nothing accidental in it. When his eyes returned to yours, surprise had entered his expression before he could rearrange it, not because desire itself was unfamiliar to him, but perhaps because this particular desire had arrived carrying something less easily dismissed. You felt the same uncertainty move through you.
The lane had emptied around you, dry leaves scraped over the stones, and somewhere beyond the neighbouring houses a dog barked twice before settling again.
Jiraiya rubbed the back of his neck. “I…should let you go in.”
“Probably.”
“People will talk.”
“People already talk.”
“About me, certainly. One of the burdens of being a living legend.”
“Most people call you a public nuisance.”
“Jealousy.”
The space between you was not large. Either of you could have closed it.
Instead, Jiraiya planted his hands on his hips with a little too much grandeur. “I shall depart while your opinion of me remains dangerously favourable.”
“My opinion has survived several months of evidence.”
“Yes, but I’m very talented.”
“At departing?” The words escaped your mouth before caution reached them.
His grin remained, but something behind it withdrew. “At many things.”
He gave you a careless salute and sprang towards the roofline, red coat catching the lantern light before the dark swallowed it.
You remained where he left you until the sound of his sandals disappeared.
Winter made him scarce.
Rumours of Akatsuki moved through the intelligence offices in fragments, never enough in one place to form a complete picture but sufficient to keep certain desks lit long after midnight. Reports arrived from border settlements under layered codes, some bearing Jiraiya’s seals and almost nothing else. Between the first frost and the New Year, he returned twice, and neither visit lasted three full days.
The first time, he climbed through your office window after midnight.
You had fallen asleep over a translation and woke to a hand covering your mouth. “Just me,” Jiraiya whispered.
You bit him.
He hissed in pain and recoiled into a nearby cabinet. “Violent woman.”
“You entered through a locked window!”
“You could’ve stabbed me.”
“You’re fortunate I only used my teeth.”
“I wouldn’t say only.”
“Do not.”
He grinned, but when he stepped farther into the lamplight, you saw the blood darkening the side of his trousers and your eyes widened.
“You’re injured.”
“Barely.”
“You’re bleeding onto an eighteenth-century census!”
He looked down. “Ah.”
“Sit.”
“Bossy.”
“Jiraiya.”
That persuaded him.
He lowered himself into the chair beside your desk while you locked the office door and fetched the medical kit kept for paper cuts, strained backs and the occasional poisoned document. His coat had torn near the hip, and beneath it a blade had opened a long wound along his side. The bleeding had slowed, but not stopped.
“This needs a medic.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That isn’t the same as being well.”
“Tsunade will ask questions.”
“She usually does.”
“She’s always been unreasonable.”
You squinted at the wound, then at him. “You crossed three countries like this rather than answer them?”
“Two and a half.”
You gave him a look of profound exasperation.
“It matters geographically,” he added.
“Coat off.”
Jiraiya’s brows rose.
“I need access to the wound.”
“Of course. Entirely professional.”
“If you make this unpleasant, I’ll summon Tsunade personally.”
His cooperation became immediate.
The cut was clean enough that you doubted surgery would be necessary, but deep enough to make every joke he had offered since entering the room seem increasingly absurd. You disinfected it while he gripped the arms of the chair and narrated the circumstances of his injury with heroic disregard for plausibility. The account began with six enemy agents, acquired a landslide near the halfway point and ended with a village of grateful widows.
You threaded a needle. “You fell through another roof.”
His story faltered. “It was...tactical.”
“And then someone stabbed you.”
“After the roof.”
“You should be dead.”
The sentence escaped more harshly than you intended.
Jiraiya watched you work in silence for a long moment. Around you, the archive seemed suddenly too small for the statement. Rows of records rose into shadow beyond the lamplight, each shelf preserving names, births, missions, marriages, deaths, the neat administrative remains of people who had once expected another morning.
“Probably,” he said.
You finished closing the wound without speaking and he did not try to entertain you again.
When you tied the final bandage, his hand settled over yours before you could withdraw it. His palm was large and warm, the calluses along his fingers catching lightly against your skin, and there was no flirtation in the touch, no tug meant to draw you closer or gleam in his eyes inviting you to blush.
“Thank you.”
Weariness had altered him more than the injury. Without the grin and noise, he looked older, though not diminished; only stripped of the performance that usually kept the distance between what he carried and what anyone else was permitted to see.
“You frightened me.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
You believed him, if only because the simplicity of it hurt more than an argument might have.
His hand remained over yours until his eyes flicked towards the window and the old instinct resurfaced. “You know, most women buy me dinner before undressing me.”
You pulled free and tightened the bandage.
Jiraiya yelped.
He slept in the archive that night because you refused to let him go farther, though he complained at length about the indignity of being confined by an archivist and the quality of the available bedding. You gave him your coat for a pillow and a woollen record blanket to pull over himself; he informed you it smelled of dust and bureaucracy, then fell asleep before completing the complaint.
You returned to the desk and pretended to work while the building settled around you, pipes ticking in the walls and wind nudging the windows. Every so often, Jiraiya shifted beneath the blanket, his breathing rougher than it had been earlier.
Near dawn, he began to dream, though no full sentences emerged, only names worn down by sleep and grief.
Sensei. Orochimaru. Minato. Nagato. Naruto.
You did not wake him.
When morning finally thinned the darkness behind the windows, Jiraiya opened his eyes to find a cup of tea beside him and your hand resting on the desk near his. Neither of you mentioned how little distance remained between them.
The second visit came in a storm.
Rain swept across Konoha in slanting sheets and hammered the rooftops until every gutter overflowed, turning the streets beyond the archive steps into shining channels of mud and reflected lantern light. You had given up pretending you might leave without getting soaked and were standing beneath the entrance awning with your bag tucked beneath one arm when a familiar figure emerged through the downpour.
Jiraiya crossed the courtyard with his coat drawn closed around something beneath it, white hair plastered in wet spikes across his shoulders and water streaming from his sandals. He looked healthy, infuriatingly pleased with himself and so thoroughly drenched that the sight of him stopped the irritation you had been carefully preparing.
“You’re back.”
Something in his smile altered, only slightly; he grin remained, but some of the performance loosened around it as he climbed the steps “I said I would be.”
“You were three days late.”
“Flooded road.”
“You travel over roofs.”
“They were flooded as well.”
You glanced at the water pouring steadily from his sleeves. “Get inside.”
He followed obediently, leaving a trail across the archive floor while you found towels and endured the displeasure of the clerk on duty, who watched a Legendary Sannin drip onto government property with an expression that seemed as though he was reconsidering village security. The parcel beneath Jiraiya’s coat, at least, had survived.
He gave it to you only after you had made him sit.
The book was small and printed on fibrous grey paper, its cover stamped with silver reeds that caught the lamplight whenever you tilted it. The printer’s seal sat unobtrusively near the spine.
“You went to Ame.”
Jiraiya stopped rubbing a towel over his hair. “That’s quite an accusation.”
“The seal,” you murmured, tracing the indented pattern gently.
He reached across and touched one of the silver reeds, his fingertip resting there for a moment before he withdrew it. “Read it later.”
There was enough beneath the request that you did not ask why, and so you waited patiently until he had departed.
The collection contained children’s stories about a wandering warrior who carried sunlight inside a jar. In every tale he lost it, sometimes through carelessness, sometimes theft, once because he opened the lid simply to reassure himself that the light was still there, and spent the rest of the story trying to recover what had escaped. He never did. Instead, the sunlight appeared elsewhere: in a beggar’s cooking fire, in a child’s lantern, in the windows of a house rebuilt after winter, in a field of yellow flowers growing where an army had once passed. The stories were simple enough to read aloud to children, but by the final page you had slowed.
Inside the back cover, in Jiraiya’s handwriting, were eleven words.
Sometimes the story improves when it gets away from the author.
You sat with the book open in your lap while rain moved against the windows, reading the sentence until the ink lost its edges.
By spring, everyone knew, which was inconvenient, because nothing had actually happened.
Jiraiya visited the archive; you met him for meals. He brought books home from foreign roads and left them at your door when you were not there; you repaired his drafts when the bindings failed and argued with his metaphors when they did. Some afternoons he sat beneath the gingko tree while you read, claiming to work and producing very little beyond sketches of toads engaged in political debate.
Apparently, Konoha required no declaration beyond that. The village had assembled a romance from the evidence and become impatient with both of you for failing to provide a conclusion.
Genma was particularly unbearable.
“You know,” he said one evening, dropping into the chair opposite you at a crowded izakaya, “when you first told me you were reading one of his books, I imagined this going very differently.”
Kakashi sat beside him with Icha Icha open in one hand and a cup of sake in the other, declining involvement in the conversation so conspicuously that it became involvement of its own.
You took a drink. “Nothing has gone anywhere.”
“Exactly.”
“Have you been interviewing people?”
“Sources.”
Without looking up from his page, Kakashi said, “People refuse to tell him things, so he wanders around until they complain in his presence.”
“A refined intelligence technique.”
“You stole that phrase from Jiraiya.”
Genma only grinned. The izakaya roared around you, full of shinobi with payday money and poor judgement. Bowls knocked against low tables, meat hissed on the grill and smoke gathered beneath the rafters despite the open windows, through which damp spring air carried the smell of rain. Near the entrance, someone had begun singing with enthusiasm so far beyond ability that even Kakashi turned a page more firmly.
You had come because Jiraiya was meant to be trapped in a late meeting with Tsunade.
Naturally, the door opened and a gust of wet air swept through the room along with Jiraiya when he stepped inside. He spotted you almost immediately; his face brightened just as quickly.
It happened without calculation, before he could turn the reaction into anything clever, and perhaps that was why Genma noticed it too. You saw the precise moment a terrible idea took root behind his eyes.
“Don’t,” you ordered.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Yet.”
Jiraiya was already making his way through the room, accepting greetings, insults and one thrown peanut without breaking stride. By the time he reached your table, he looked entirely at home among the noise.
“Celebrating without me?”
“Mourning,” Genma said.
Kakashi lifted his cup.
Jiraiya ignored them both after the required glance, his attention settling on you. “I thought you were working.”
“I finished.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“You were meeting the Hokage.”
“She threw me out.”
You shifted along the bench as he sat. “Did she use the door?”
“A window.”
“That’s almost progress.”
He laughed, bringing the smell of rain and wet cloth with him. His thigh brushed yours before he settled, not quite far enough away to prevent it happening again if either of you moved carelessly.
Across the table, Genma looked delighted while Kakashi intentionally opened his book wider.
You caught Jiraiya’s wrist when he reached for your sake. “Hey! That’s mine.”
“Community spirit.”
“You have your own cup.”
“Empty.”
“Then refill it.”
“Yours tastes better.”
“It came from the same bottle.”
“Company changes the flavour.”
He slipped free of your hand with the ease of someone who had been escaping holds since childhood and took the cup anyway. You made a grab for it; he raised it beyond reach, grinning, and the absurdity of wrestling with one of the Legendary Sannin over three mouthfuls of cheap sake was apparently too much for Genma.
Jiraiya glanced at him. That was all it took for the dam to break.
“Careful, old man.” Genma lounged back against the wall, senbon balanced at the corner of his mouth. “She might actually like you.”
For one second, it was only another joke.
You felt the change before you understood it, because you had spent enough months learning his expressions to recognise the moment an exit opened behind his eyes. His fingers remained loose around your cup. His posture did not alter. Around him, the izakaya went on roaring as though nothing had happened.
Then he laughed louder than necessary. “Her? She’s got better sense.”
Genma’s amusement faltered.
Jiraiya drank your sake. “Pretty young thing like this will come to her senses once she runs out of my books. I’m an educational phase.”
The words came out light, conversational, and that was what made them hurt.
To anyone else, it was Jiraiya doing what he did best, making himself the punchline before another person could, acknowledging the age between you, his reputation, the obvious absurdity of a younger woman taking him seriously. Genma even looked ready, for half a second, to let the joke pass. But you had spent enough months learning the difference between Jiraiya laughing and Jiraiya leaving.
The smile was still there, waiting for you to do what you always did, roll your eyes, tell him he was unbearable, turn the remark back on him and restore the easy rhythm of the table so nobody had to acknowledge that he had taken something warm between you and made it ridiculous before anyone else had the chance to name it.
Instead, you snatched up your coat.
Kakashi closed his book properly now while Genma leaned forwards, already trying for damage control. “Hey, I didn’t mean...”
“I know.” You stood, pulling the coat sharply around your shoulders. “Goodnight.”
The rain had thinned to mist outside, cool against the heat in your face as you walked away from the izakaya. Water shone on the paving stones and gathered along your lashes; somewhere overhead, runoff still dripped steadily from the eaves.
Behind you, the door opened. You did not turn around.
Footsteps followed you halfway up the street, far enough back to offer neither apology nor company. Then they stopped.
Jiraiya could cross countries without being seen but that night, he let you hear him choose not to follow.
You did not bother trying to avoid him.
Avoidance would have suggested that proximity was the problem, and it was not. The problem was what Jiraiya had done with it—taken months of books, meals, departures, returns and conversations that had become increasingly difficult to mistake for ordinary friendship, then made the whole thing ridiculous the moment someone else noticed.
So when he appeared at the archive two days later, you greeted him politely, found the book he requested, answered his question about border records and returned to your work.
Jiraiya remained beside the desk. You felt him standing there long after any reasonable visitor would have understood the conversation was over.
“Busy?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Lunch?”
“I have plans.”
“With?”
You turned a page. “Food.”
His mouth twitched. Ordinarily, the answer would have been enough to start another exchange, but when you finally looked up, whatever joke he had prepared died.
“Dinner, then?”
“I’m unavailable.”
Jiraiya watched you for a moment, one hand resting against the edge of the desk, before giving a small nod. “Right.”
He left after that.
For the next week, notes arrived instead. The first accompanied a volume of comedic plays: For a woman who has forgotten the medicinal value of laughter. You sent it back through a clerk.
The second came attached to a paper frog folded from red stationery: An ambassador. He requests diplomatic relations. You kept the frog in your desk drawer and tried not to think too hard about why returning it felt cruel.
The third contained no joke: I’m sorry. You kept that one beside the frog.
Spring advanced around the archive while the distance between you remained. Buds opened along the gingko branches; rain filled the pond until water lapped against its stone rim, and the courtyard where you had once spent most lunches became somewhere you crossed on errands without stopping. You ate at your desk instead, surrounded by papers and the familiar movements of colleagues who had the tact not to ask why Jiraiya no longer occupied the chair beside you. You missed him with humiliating ferocity.
Missing him did not make the izakaya hurt less. Understanding why he had done it almost made it worse.
Jiraiya had taken your choice and converted it into evidence that you would eventually exercise better judgement; had made you younger than you were and himself less worthy than he was, because if the whole thing was merely a phase, neither of you had to discover what happened when you answered honestly. You were not going to reward that by pretending it had been charming.
Nine days after the izakaya, you returned to the courtyard.
The afternoon was overcast, the gingko leaves newly unfurled into small green fans and darkened by an earlier shower. Jiraiya was already on the bench with your copy of The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi in his hands.
He looked up without smiling. “I didn’t steal it. You left it in my room months ago.”
“I wondered where it had gone.”
“I meant to return it.”
“You often do.”
His eyes dropped to the book.
You could have left. For several seconds, you considered it, then crossed the courtyard and sat at the opposite end of the bench.
Jiraiya turned the novel over once. “Genma thinks you’re going to kill him.”
“Genma thinks everyone wants to kill him.”
“Occupational instinct.”
“He didn’t say it.”
“No.” His thumb pressed against the repaired corner. “I did.”
“Yes.”
“I was trying to be funny.”
“You were trying to make the truth harmless.”
“Which truth?”
“That you think I’ll come to my senses.”
“You will.” The answer came so quickly that Jiraiya shut his eyes and dragged a hand down his face. “See, this is why I write conversations before anyone has to hear them.”
“Even your fictional characters communicate terribly.”
“Based on experience.”
“Try something else then.”
He leaned forwards again, forearms braced against his thighs, and looked towards the pond. Beyond the courtyard walls, the village went on with its ordinary afternoon, wheels rattling over the road, children calling near the academy, a hammer striking timber somewhere beyond the Tower.
“You’re younger than me,” he acknowledged finally.
“I know.”
“By a fair amount,” he added. “I disappear for months. Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m coming back. I drink too much, lose money I should know better than to gamble, and I have habits you’ve made very clear you don’t admire.”
“I don’t admire peeping.”
“That’s the one.”
“It isn’t a charming eccentricity.”
“I know.”
There was no defence in the admission, so you waited.
Jiraiya’s eyes dropped down to the book again where his hands had tightened around it without him seeming to notice. “I’ve spent most of my life making promises I didn’t keep. I was going to bring Orochimaru back. Help my students change the world. Find some answer to…all of this.”
One hand left the book and gestured beyond the walls broad enough to encompass Konoha and perhaps every country he had crossed in search of that answer.
“I kept thinking there’d be a point where the story made sense afterwards. Where enough wandering and failing turned into something you could look back on and call a purpose.” His mouth twisted disdainfully. “Instead, I got older.”
You had heard him call himself old dozens of times but never like that.
“I don’t think you’re foolish,” he continued. “That’s the problem. You’re sensible enough to build a life that doesn’t depend on whether some old shinobi crawls back through your window bleeding on government property.”
“You think highly of my sense.”
“I think highly of most of you.”
The words seemed to surprise him as much as they did you.
Your anger remained. It had not been solved by understanding, nor should it have been, but tenderness moved beside it now, complicated and unwilling to excuse him merely because you could see where the wound began.
“You don’t get to decide what kind of life I build.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to reduce my feelings to a lapse in judgement because accepting them frightens you, and you do not get to call me a girl when it makes me easier to dismiss.”
“I knew you were an adult from the beginning,” he said, more firmly. “You have your own work, your own home, your own opinions and enough stubbornness to supply a minor country. I never thought you didn’t understand yourself.”
“Then why say it?”
His answer took longer. Eventually, he admitted quietly, “Because I don’t understand what you see.”
You studied him, the red lines beneath his eyes, the old marks across his hands, the breadth of shoulders that had carried packs, weapons, students and whatever other burdens he had never learned to put down. His mouth was so accustomed to laughter that grief sat strangely upon it.
“You think I’ve mistaken the legend for the man.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No. I know the legend. I also know the man who stains manuscripts with sake, writes notes on betting slips, repairs books after damaging them and gives children hope before calling himself a failure because he couldn’t protect everyone.”
Jiraiya had gone very still, but not blank. Every part of his attention had narrowed towards you.
“You write beautifully and behave appallingly. You’re brave in ways that frighten me and cowardly in ways that make me furious. You make me laugh. You make me worry. You leave, and lately you have learned to tell me when.” You paused, considering your next words carefully, before deciding this was no longer the time to be careful. “I’m not confusing you with someone easier to love.”
The word landed like a stone between you.
Jiraiya stared at you as though the bench had shifted beneath him. “You shouldn’t say things like that to an old man.”
“Why?”
“His heart might give out.”
“You are exceptionally resilient.”
A small, disbelieving laugh escaped him. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, the vulnerability in his face was so unguarded that you understood, with painful clarity, why he preferred lechery. Desire was familiar territory, desire came with jokes, poses and exits. This…did not.
“What do you want from me?”
“Honesty.”
“Dangerous.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
You turned more fully towards him. “Stop making choices for me. Stop turning yourself into a warning whenever something matters. Tell me when you leave. Come back when you can.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then I will at least grieve with accurate information.”
His mouth pulled sideways. “You really are an archivist.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
You considered him. “I want to know whether you visit because you enjoy my company or because irritating archivists is part of your intelligence duties.”
“Both.”
“Jiraiya.”
“That was honest.”
Despite yourself, you nearly smiled.
The bench creaked when he moved closer, slowly enough to give you room to object.
“I visit because I want to see you,” he said. “When I’m away, I find books you’d like without meaning to look for them. I write things down because I want to know what you’ll say, and I’ve started hearing your criticism in my head while I work, which is extremely disruptive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“No.”
His knee touched yours. Jiraiya looked at the point of contact for a second, then back at you. “I think about coming back.”
You felt your pulse change before you could control it.
“You notice everything,” you said.
“Occupational hazard.”
This time, neither of you used the joke to leave.
Jiraiya’s hand lifted as though he meant to touch your face, hesitated, then changed course and settled around your wrist. His fingers rested over your pulse with a care at odds with their size and strength.
“I…don’t know how to do this well.”
“Neither did your protagonist.”
“He was an idiot.”
“He continued.”
His thumb moved once against the inside of your wrist.
The courtyard seemed suddenly made of details you had not noticed a moment before: water falling from the eaves into the pond, leaves stirring overhead, the worn grain of the bench beneath your palm, the warmth of his leg against yours. Jiraiya’s gaze dropped to your mouth. When he looked back into your eyes, something cautious and almost incredulous had entered his face.
“You’re dangerous,” he murmured.
“You keep saying that as though it will make me leave.”
“No.” His grip softened. “I think I’m starting to hope it won’t.”
He did not kiss you.
Instead, he released your wrist and turned his hand between you, palm open. You placed yours inside it and, for a long time, you sat beneath the gingko tree with your hands joined between you and his failed novel resting against his thigh.
Jiraiya left Konoha five days later. This time, he told you two days in advance, which did not prevent an argument about the route, although he revealed only enough to let you understand the risk and then complained when you inferred more than he had technically said. This time, the sealed letter went to Tsunade rather than you. You told him this represented measurable personal growth.
At the village gate, morning spread pale gold along the road while merchants arranged their carts and the night watch surrendered to the next shift beneath the wooden arch. Twenty paces away, Naruto was loudly objecting to the hour, the journey and the quantity of supplies Jiraiya apparently expected him to carry.
Jiraiya stood before you with his pack over one shoulder. “Three weeks.”
“You said that last time.”
“Three and a half, then.”
“Better.”
He grinned. “Miss me terribly.”
“I intend to enjoy the reduced noise.”
“Liar.”
“Yes.”
Something in his expression softened.
The moment invited touch, but the gate was public, Naruto had abandoned even the pretence of not watching and two guards nearby had developed an extraordinary interest in a crack running through the wall. You reached into your bag instead.
“I brought you something.”
Jiraiya took the book you offered and turned it over. The cover was plain, its original title worn away with age, and when he opened it he found only blank pages.
“A journal?”
“You write on inappropriate scraps.”
“Those scraps have character.”
“You lost three pages of your last chapter because you wrote them on a restaurant bill.”
“Ah, just a temporary setback.”
“Use the journal.”
He flicked through several pages, smiling to himself until he reached the sentence you had written near the front.
Return with something worth reading.
His thumb rested beneath the words. When Jiraiya looked up, the joke you expected did not come. “I will.”
Then, before the silence could become too aware of itself, he reached out and touched two fingers beneath your chin. The gesture lasted only a moment, stopping short of anything either of you had yet promised, but the warmth of his hand remained after he turned towards the road.
Naruto waited until they were beyond the gate to ask, “Why didn’t you kiss her?”
Jiraiya struck him over the head with the journal.
You heard Naruto complaining for half a mile with a smile on your face.
He returned twenty-six days later, not three weeks.
You had prepared a respectable quantity of anger during the delay and rehearsed several remarks while pretending not to worry. All of it survived until you entered the courtyard and found Jiraiya beneath the gingko tree, dusty but intact, holding the journal against one hip.
It was no longer remotely empty. Paper scraps protruded from the edges, pressed leaves thickened the binding and dozens of pages of cramped handwriting had transformed the modest book into something swollen and unruly.
Early evening lay warm across the courtyard, summer’s first long daylight turning the pond from blue to apricot. You had The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi open across your lap.
Jiraiya nodded at it as he approached. “Again?”
“I was waiting.”
“For the ending?”
You glanced up. “For the author.”
Something warmed in his face as he crossed the remaining distance and sat beside you, prompting the bench to complain with old familiarity. Dust silvered his coat, a fresh scrape marked one cheek and a twig had lodged in his hair.
You removed it, tossing it lightly to the ground. “Twenty-six days.”
“Complications.”
“You could have sent word.”
“I did.”
“The toad arrived yesterday. He said you were delayed by an incident of romantic diplomacy.”
Jiraiya winced. “I specifically told him not to phrase it that way.”
“What happened?”
“An official’s wife mistook me for someone else.”
You waited.
He sighed heavily. “Her husband.”
‘It was dark’ proved an inadequate defence against the fact that he had white hair to his waist, though Jiraiya insisted the family was distinctive. By the time his laughter rolled across the courtyard, warmed by travel and relief, your own joined it despite every effort at indignation.
When you recovered, he held out the journal. “I organised a thought.”
“Only one?”
“It was a difficult mission.”
The first pages were crowded with observations from the road, quick sketches of buildings and overheard conversations written down without context. Between them were fragments of stories, copied lines of poetry and notes addressed so plainly to you that reading them with him beside you felt unexpectedly intimate.
You would hate this inn. The shelves are decorative.
The librarian in Tanzaku says you still owe her a letter.
Saw a first edition of the river poems. Too expensive. Stole it. Borrowed. Permanently.
You glanced at him over the page.
“Scholarly preservation,” he offered.
“Of course.”
Near the middle, you found a pressed yellow flower. At the end, on a page by itself, he had written, I want to come back. Your fingers rested lightly against the words.
Jiraiya’s shoulder touched yours. “Well?”
“You managed to organise several thoughts.”
“I have an expansive mind.”
“Chaotic.”
“Adaptable.”
“Unrepentant.”
“That too.”
You closed the journal and kept one hand over the cover.
The sun had slipped behind the Tower. Lanterns began appearing in the windows above, one after another, their reflections trembling in the pond. When Jiraiya looked at you again, the laughter had left his face without taking its warmth.
“There was one more thought.”
“Did you write it down?”
“I thought I might try saying this one.”
“That sounds serious.”
“Terrible habit. I’m hoping not to make it permanent.”
You waited while he rubbed the back of his neck. For a man capable of delivering speeches from atop giant toads while armies attempted to kill him, he looked remarkably troubled by the prospect of addressing one woman on a bench.
At last, he drew a breath.
“I would very much like to kiss you,” he said awkwardly, “if you’re still feeling reckless.”
Warmth rose through you, immediate and certain. “Your timing is terrible.”
His mouth curved, though caution remained in his eyes. “Is that a no?”
You marked your place in the novel with one finger and leaned towards him. Jiraiya realised what you intended in time for his breath to catch before your mouth met his.
For all his boasting, Jiraiya did not seize control. One hand settled against the bench beside your hip while the other came carefully to your jaw, the touch so measured that the tenderness of it hurt more than confidence would have. His mouth was warm, his lips faintly roughened by wind and travel, and when you moved closer he followed rather than led, as though some part of him still could not quite believe he had been invited.
You felt the moment caution began to loosen.
His thumb moved along your cheek and he turned towards you more fully, broad body angling closer as the kiss deepened, not with the practised swagger you might once have expected from him but with a hunger held back long enough to become gentle. He tasted faintly of tea and the road, and when your fingers slid into his hair near the nape of his neck, the sound he made against your mouth possessed none of the theatrical confidence he would undoubtedly claim later.
The book slipped from your lap and landed closed beside you.
Jiraiya drew back only far enough to breathe, his forehead resting against yours.
“Well,” he murmured, voice roughened, “that was worth the critical abuse.”
“You’re talking too soon.”
“Right.”
You kissed him again. This time his laugh broke softly into it, startled and warm, and you felt him smiling beneath your mouth.
Above you, the gingko leaves moved in the evening air while Konoha carried on beyond the courtyard walls, lanterns kindling, doors closing, meals being served, entirely unaware that, for once, one of its loudest men had finally found something he did not wish to interrupt.
Beside you, the failed novel held your place. A yellow flower marked his.
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getting drunk with tsunade and jiraiya ends up with them arguing between your legs ꒰ ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ
cw: mdni, threesome, oral sex, age gap, power imbalance, dubcon (they all drunk af), you lowk pass out from pleasure
Drinking with them felt wrong. Oh, but they invited you! Still, it felt like an intrusion. Lady Tsunade and Jiraiya were really close, you could tell from the way they talked to each other, how they knew what the other preferred… They practically know everything about each other and that made you feel like an outsider even if they insisted that you weren’t.
And if that wasn’t enough, they were older than you, enough to make some people uncomfortable. They were your superiors too, Tsunade at least, you never really knew what Jiraiya is about. But, gosh, Tsunade was the Hokage, and you were staring at her tits! She had her arm looped around your shoulders, hand threatening to go lower as she sipped on her glass of straight alcohol.
You tried to play it cool, taking another sip of your own drink to hide the flush creeping up your cheeks. The sake was hitting harder now, warming everything from your belly outward. Jiraiya leaned in from your other side, his big shoulder bumping yours on purpose. His white hair was a little messy from running his hand through it, and that signature grin of his looked way too knowing.
“So, kid,” he drawled, “ are you always this shy when the drinks start flowing? Or is it just us making you nervous?” His hand landed on your knee, giving it a squeeze that lingered a second too long.
Tsunade laughed, she was definitely drunker than you, her cheeks pink and her eyes half-lidded as she pressed closer. Her massive chest brushed against your arm, soft and warm even through her top.
“Leave her alone, pervert. Can’t you see she’s enjoying the view?” Then, without missing a beat, she tilted her head and let her gaze drop right to your chest. “Though I gotta say, those tits of yours look fantastic. Perky and full. Bet they feel even better.”
Heat shot straight through you. You swallowed hard, but the words came out before you could stop them. “That’s a nice compliment coming from you, Lady Tsunade. Yours are... legendary.”
Jiraiya barked out a laugh, scooting even nearer until his thigh was flush against yours. “Hah! Hear that, Tsunade? The girl’s got good taste.”
His fingers traced lazy circles on your knee, inching higher up your leg. Tsunade’s hand finally slipped lower, resting just above your hip, her thumb stroking the side of your waist. You felt very hot, your panties getting wetter from all the attention.
“You know,” Tsunade whispered, her breath warm against your ear, “I like how you look all pretty between us.” She nipped at your earlobe lightly, making you shiver. “Bet you've got all kinds of secrets under that outfit. Care to share with your Hokage?”
“L-Lady Tsunade…”
Jiraiya’s hand moved bolder now, sliding up your thigh as he leaned in to whisper on your other side. “We can show you a really good time, y’know. We’re not feeling very professional tonight." His fingers brushed the inside of your leg, so close it made your breath catch.
Tsunade’s arm tightened around you, pulling you against her curves while Jiraiya’s touch kept exploring higher.
Jiraiya laughed, shoving his shoulder against hers as he tried to nudge her out of the way. His hand slid up your other thigh, fingers brushing teasingly close to your entrance but not quite touching. “Like hell, Tsunade. I’ve been dreaming about burying my face in a sweet pussy like this for years.”
“Why would I care about that?” She says, shoving her shoulder back against his.
They kept arguing right there between your legs, their hot breath ghosting over your sensitive skin, making you squirm and leak even more. Tsunade pushed Jiraiya’s face back with her palm, leaning down so close her lips almost brushed your clit. “She’s mine first, she won’t need your dick after I’m done with her.”
“No one’s talking about dicks, Tsunade.” He rolls his eyes dramatically. “I’m gonna suck on that puffy clit until she’s begging for more.”
“More of me, obviously,” she adds right away.
You could barely think straight, your body throbbing with need while they bickered like competitive idiots, both so eager to be the first one to taste you. Their hands kept roaming over your naked body, squeezing your tits and stroking your hips as they fought for position. It was so hot watching them argue over who got to eat your wet pussy first.
But you were getting tired and needy.
“Enough already!” you snapped, voice coming out sharper and a little angry from all the frustration. You pushed up on your elbows, glaring down at both of them between your spread legs. “Just eat me out at the same time, gosh! Stop fighting and do it together before I lose my mind!”
Tsunade and Jiraiya both paused, then grinned, you just gave them the best idea ever. “Greedy girl,” Jiraiya chuckled.
Tsunade dove in first, her warm tongue dragging flat and rough right up your soaked slit, licking up all your juices while Jiraiya attacked from the side, sucking your swollen clit into his mouth hard. The feeling hit you like lightning, two mouths on your pussy at once.. Tsunade pushed her tongue deep inside you, fucking you with it in messy strokes while Jiraiya flicked and sucked on your clit.
You cried out, hips bucking wildly, but they held you down. Tsunade’s strong hands gripped your thighs, spreading you even wider as she ate you out sloppily, moaning into your pussy like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted. Jiraiya was rougher than you expected, his beard scratching your sensitive skin while he sucked harder, occasionally letting his tongue join hers to lap at your entrance together.
It was too much. Way too good. Their tongues slid against each other and against your folds, wet sounds filling the room as they devoured you. Pleasure crashed through you in huge waves, making your legs shake uncontrollably. You regretted it almost immediately.
“Wait— oh fuck, it’s too much!” you gasped, but they didn’t slow down.
Tsunade growled against your pussy and shoved her tongue deeper, curling it just right while Jiraiya sucked your clit faster, one of his fingers pushing inside you alongside her tongue. The stretch, the heat, the way they worked together had you screaming. Your orgasm hit so hard your vision went blurry, but they kept going, licking and sucking through it until you were thrashing and sobbing from the overstimulation.
Another climax ripped through you right after, even stronger. Your whole body tensed up, pussy clenching around their tongues as they kept eating you out like they were starving. It felt so insanely good it almost hurt. Your mind went blank, pleasure overloading everything.
The last thing you remembered was Tsunade moaning something dirty while Jiraiya sucked your clit one more time. Then everything faded to black as you passed out from the overwhelming bliss, body twitching helplessly on the sheets.
It took him a few moments to catch up, missing the cute sounds of your moans.
“Hey, kid—” Jiraiya lifted his gaze, seeing your eyes closed and your mouth half-opened. “Shit, Tsunade, did we kill her?”
She was already kneeling beside you, shaking your shoulders a little for you to gain your consciousness back. “Don’t be dramatic, asshole. She just passed out from pleasure.”
He forms an ‘o’ with his mouth, nodding along Tsunade’s words. “So we are that good.”
Yesterday doesn’t taint today and today turns into forever
Summary: Slowly, but surely, you’re finding yourself comfortable in this new normal. Sharing yourself with the most important people in your life without fear.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Mutant!Male!Reader
Word Count: 16.3k
Tags/Warnings: canon-level violence, sexual themes, kidnapping, I’m still learning to write fight scenes, family issues, friendly bullying, smut bottom!Sub!Spencer, Top!Dom!Reader, frotting, cum as lube, anal
A/n: I actually really dislike writing smut but i think the people wanted it, so it’s like pretty short ngl
PART 1
You’d found Josh. He was buried so deep in the Earth that he almost reached the mantle, evidenced by the burns across his body and his being so dehydrated that it was dangerous giving him too much fluid at one time. In contrast, you were fine. They’d noticed the difference between the two of you almost immediately, not even a spec of dirt lingered on your skin as you helped put Josh on one of the infirmary beds. He wasn’t all that conscious, and you admitted that he was more lucid but most likely bringing up to the surface so fast had caused his condition to worsen. But added that it also could’ve been the adrenaline keeping him up for so long, both of which were probably the reasons, considering his current state.
But, as it stands, he was alive and would remain alive for the foreseeable future, and that was a win in your book. Lord knows he’s survived worse situations.
Spencer's eyes drag across your figure, pressed against the wall as you give Hank a quick debrief of what happened. Jean is on the opposite end of the room, talking with Scott about the same thing before the two of you switch. As you pass by, Spencer smells the earth on you. The dirt and what he can only assume was the mantle you’d gotten dangerously close to. It’s oddly comforting.
Jean and your conversation earlier rings as you pass by. The information that you like him back makes his heart race, but the knowledge that you’re not going to pursue him makes his chest tighten. He’d assume the risks, he knew the risks when he became an FBI agent of this caliber— and he’d never, ever, treat you differently because you were a mutant. And then he remembers the videos and the court records, the files of the horrors you’ve seen and faced. He knows that you’re more afraid than you let on, maybe even terrified about getting hurt again. Time and time again, you’ve been hurt by people close to you and people you don’t even know; you just wanted something to be different for once.
And now, you don’t even have that. The whole team knows, they’ve seen some of your gory past, watched as you nearly engulfed the wooden room in flames without noticing. It was like this, being a mutant, wasn’t something you could ever escape; it was something worse than skeletons in your closet. Like a cruel fate you couldn’t run away from, shadows in a corner.
Scott smiles at you, this soft kind of smile as you shake your head, carefully explaining something Spencer’s not privy to before he nods, exhaling. He can't see the man’s eyes but his eyebrows are crossed, lips pinched shut as you speak, slowly closing into yourself more as the air grows colder. It feels prickly against Spencer’s exposed skin before the room goes back to its normal temperature.
“You should head to bed,” Scott’s voice is clear in the room, naturally gathering everyone’s attention. “It’s late. Please, rest,” While you don’t want to agree, you do, taking one last look at Josh before heading up with the rest of the team. Somehow you’re ahead of them, feeling their eyes on the back of you just until you reach your room.
“Do you…” Spencer cringes as his voice comes out smaller than he intended, a slight crack finding its way inside but it gets your attention. “Do you want to sleep with me— share a room…tonight?”
You nod, your body already carrying you across the hall before you’ve spoken. “Please,” He smiles and holds the door open for you. His room is one of the standard rooms: a bed, a desk, and a wardrobe. No decorations or touches of personality aside from the books on the nightstand and notes on the desk from him.
For a moment, the two of you don’t talk and you don’t move until you inhale loud enough that he hears. “Do you mind if I shower?” Quickly, he shakes his head and you thank him, stepping into the small bathroom in the corner of the room.
“Do you want me to get you a change of clothes?” He asks just before the door could fully close. You pause, staring down at your dirty clothes and agree, thanking him yet again.
Spencer’s hand wraps around the worn copper doorknob, carefully twisting it and pushing inside as if there was an UnSub waiting on the other side. The light switched on before the door is even closed, pulling the darkness away and he takes in the room. Your childhood room.
The walls are painted a nineties shade of blue, the wood was different from the one in his and Pen’s room and not just because yours had a deep circular burn mark in the middle. Yours looked worn, the gloss long gone and anyone who came by to wax the floors clearly neglected this room. There are posters from various artists, shows, and one singular poster from the school. That one is above your desk where old homework is still pushed to the side, and there’s a pencil next to what must’ve been a goodbye note. The bed isn’t made, the cover is half on the floor and one of the pillows is stuck between the bed and the nightstand, the end poking out as if it were calling for help.
He finds your to-go bag on the floor next to a pair of old shoes, which was ripped open and items shoved to the side. Kneeling down, he glances at the pair of old Nike Solo Flights, worn down with love and time before finally reaching inside of the bag to pull out a long-sleeve shirt. The sleeves are navy blue but the rest have thin yellow and white stripes, a Minion in the middle with the text above and below it reading I killed 4 People in 1996. When he reaches for a pair of pants, they aren’t any better, it’s a pair of polyester sweats with a badly printed and cropped picture of a cheeseburger stretched around the entire thing.
With those in hand, he leaves the room and sets the clothes on the sink of the bathroom before getting into the bed. You’ve shared a bed before, so this shouldn’t be too different. Only… his eyes drag over to the empty space next to him, it’s certainly not big enough to hold two people. Let alone two grown men. But he wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor, if need be. He quietly hoped the need wouldn’t be.
Soon enough, the shower turns off and he hears the steady stream of water filling a drain before the curtain opens. He tries not to imagine what’s happening in there, if you liked the pajamas, if you were standing there just second-guessing spending the night with him. Which was weird because this wasn’t even sexual and was purely platonic. Platonic friends sharing a bed to avoid the childhood trauma of a bedroom within a place one of them would rather not be inside. On a twin-size mattress with one blanket. This was platonic in every sense of the word.
It would be unbecoming to suggest otherwise.
The door opens and you’re there, in the silly shirt and pants, covering a yawn. And he’s there, sitting on the right side of the bed, trying to ignore the thumping of his heart against his ribcage. This was not platonic, this was absolutely— wholeheartedly not platonic with the way he was feeling, with what his mind was swimming with.
“I-I wasn’t sure if I should get you a shirt, I know you don’t sleep with one but I figured it didn’t hurt to…” He blinks away from you, unable to keep himself focused with how you’re looking at him without realizing it. Had you always looked at him that way? With that much adoration and just…tenderness? “It’s getting colder,” He reasons instead. “And it’s considerably colder here than it is in your apartment.”
“Is it?” You ask, shifting around as if the air would confirm for you. “My body is pretty bad at telling temperatures— but it’s fine. The floor pinches my skin,”
“The floor?” He echoes to which you nod, pointing at the floor as if the word is foreign to Spencer. “You can sleep in the bed, if you want.” Taking a moment, you agree and climb into bed next to him. For just a second, it’s fine but then when he lies down, it’s obvious that there needs to be some overlap between the two of you.
Even so, neither one of you speaks until you exhale and turn over to face him. “How do you wanna do this?” He doesn’t know. Spencer doesn’t know because all he wants to do is kiss you until he’s stupid. Especially when you’re like this— this is too much. And it’s only amplified after finding out that you feel the exact same way.
“I—uh,” He shifts, nearly falling off of the bed had you not grabbed him, tugging him back up and onto you out of instinct. “This is fine,” Slowly, you nod and the two of you ease into the new position. It’s awkward, limbs are everywhere until Spencer shifts again, resting his head over your heart and your hands find their place on his back. Your legs are crossed over each other, the fabrics sliding against each other until they stop shifting and you exhale.
Licking his lips, he can feel you shifting slightly, most likely uncomfortable wearing a shirt to bed and pushes up slightly. “You can take the shirt off… if you’re uncomfortable,” You breathe a small thanks and remove your hands from his back, quickly pulling the shirt up and over your head and discarding it on the floor.
Thankfully, it’s still dark in the room. The door is closed, the lights are off and only just a little bit of the moonlight poked in through the gap in the curtains so he only really sees the wall which— hopefully— meant you saw next to nothing of him. Not his burning face or the way his eyes were fighting hard not to stare at your chest. He felt ridiculous, pushing thirty and can’t contain himself while you were clearly drifting to sleep, eyes fluttering closed as your hands found their spot again. Completely unaffected by all of this.
Carefully, he laid his head down and forced himself to fall asleep to the sound of your heartbeat, smelling his to-go soap on your skin as if it were a normal occurrence.
—
The BAU tends to get up early, cases never wait for them and with everything that happened yesterday, they couldn’t sleep past six if they tried. And Spencer tried. He did all the tricks in the books but couldn’t go back into a peaceful slumber and eventually accepted his fate, pushing himself off from you until he’s forced back with a thump. Looking up, he finds you’re still sound asleep, lips slightly parted and breathing audible. He can’t imagine what you’re dreaming about but he can feel the effects of the morning.
Nocturnal penile tumescence, a normal and common occurrence during sleep due to the difference in hormones present in the body. In layman’s terms, your morning wood was pressing against his stomach, twitching and Spencer swore he could feel the veins and the curves, considering you weren’t wearing boxers. Why hadn’t he grabbed the stupid boxers when he had the chance?
He was screwed if he didn’t get up soon and tried to inch away from your grip but when you squeezed tighter, he pressed down on your dick, making you let out a panty sort of moan. Fuck, fuck fuck. He’s never been in this position before, doesn’t know what to do, or even how to properly feel. He knows that it has next to no correlation between sex dreams and is truly just your body doing whatever it feels like as you slept but this was too far from platonic for him.
Following that revelation, he takes it slow. Carefully slipping from your arms and drifting towards the floor before springing up. The cover had fallen in the middle of the night and when he looked— yup, that was wood and it was certainly the morning. Turning on his heel, Spencer takes a shower and heads down to meet the rest of the team for breakfast. Trying to forget his… hard morning.
When you come down, around ten or so minutes later, you’re scratching the back of your head and wearing more relaxed clothes. A normal t-shirt and sweats, probably with boxers this time. “What’s for breakfast?” You yawned, watching as Erik was at the stove. It smelled like… comfort. Things you’ve missed since your departure.
“Avena oatmeal,” He glances at the pot where a metal spoon is slowly swirling itself inside of it. “Eggs, slightly runny. French toast, kosher sausage links, and waffles.” Erik doesn’t exactly keep full-kosher these days, like the no dairy and meat mixing, but he keeps some kosher.
Humming, you slide into a seat, resting your arms on the counter and then your head on your arms. “Sounds amazing,” You’re tired, you’d slept well but you’re so drained. Your body feels rigid, stressed probably. Whenever you can, you’ll head to the gym to work out for a bit. Or maybe go to the training room with Scott, if he’s not too busy between his classes and helping with the case.
“Anything new on the case?” Erik turns back to the French toast, flipping it and you shake your head, once more yawning into your arm. The night hasn’t yielded anymore progress aside from the side quest you and Jean had gone on.
“We found Josh and we’re supposed to narrow the list later today. I think Scott wants to interview everyone, he was rambling. Didn’t listen to him,” You admit while rolling your eyes at the end that makes Erik chuckle.
It reminds him of when you were younger, complaining that Scott wanted you to be more of a leader while you never wanted to feel more important than the rest of the team. It was probably the only thing the two of you ever argued about— up until you made him co-captain. Things were smooth sailing from there until you left.
Distantly, you can hear students running around, they’re crowding around someone, but they’re not fighting. You don’t hear shouting that sounds like when kids circle two people tussling; it’s more like a celebrity appearance. Maybe Dazzlers visiting, you think she’s on tour right now anyway. It would make sense, a lot of mutants are fans and she’s popular with the younger crowd right now. Something in your back hurts when you realize you’re not counted in that younger crowd, a grey hair forming somewhere in your hair.
They retreat soon enough and you hear heels clicking towards the kitchen, it’s long strides, confident too. As you’re lifting your head you hear a soft gasp and then, from your right you hear Pen whisper oh my god and Emily softly adds oh my goddess. And there’s really only one person who holds that title.
At the entrance to the kitchen you see her, dressed in a gorgeous flowing dress, her hair pinned into a curly ponytail with curly side bangs. “Ororo!” You gleamed, suddenly springing from your chair and crashing into the woman. She laughs, catching you as she calls your name with just as much glee. When the two of you meet, the room feels like a soft spring, gentle breezes kicking up the smells of the room. Then you’re buzzing around each other, floating through the air as if it was second nature. Like two children meeting again during the first day of school. “You’re glowing! How’s Wakanda?”
“Amazing,” She grins, holding you at arms length to see you better. “Oh, you really should visit. It’s been too long. I know my husband surely misses you, too,” Agreeing, you’re still smiling wildly at her, the life back in your eyes. “I take it you can tell,” She chuckles when you eagerly nod, zipping your lips.
“And I take it you’re not here just for a visit,” Erik notes, watching as the two of you lower to the floor.
“Ah,” Ororo nods, her eyes flickering over the stunned faces of the BAU. “A little birdie told me that someone…” Her eyes flicker to you, a cocky grin growing on her face. “needed a stern talking to.”
“Jean!” You shouted, looking up towards the stairs. “Ugh! You loud mouth! All of you!” She laughs, holding your shoulder to stop you from finding Jean and Scott and giving them a piece of your mind. Despite how it sounded, you’re far from upset. The room isn’t getting hot, there’s no smoke forming at your feet, and the room isn’t shaking. This is fun for you, teasing with friends. “And I thought you came here for noble intentions,”
“These are noble,” She hums, pulling you towards the kitchen. “Now, introduce me to your team.” Albeit begrudgingly, you introduce everyone. They’re all in awe of her and you can’t blame them. Sure, your weather powers are strong but it’s nowhere near her level. You’re like… a breeze compared to Storm.
When Pen stumbles up from her seat, she bows to Ororo who chuckles and helps her rise, her laughter filling the room while Penelope holds back a scream.
“Oh,” She turns to you, her white hair floating unnaturally. “I’ve been told that you tried to kill the professor, again.” Her arms cross under her chest, hip cocked to the side and you know she’s not joking around with you.
“What?” The team echoes as your eyes shift away from everyone, wringing your hands together behind your back.
“Jean and Scott are the most loud-mouthed motherfuckers I have ever met! wasn’t gonna actually kill him!” You defend, taking a step closer to her. She just continues to stare at you until you huff and hang your head back. “Maybe I was— sue me! He’s already died like three times! And you should’ve seen him, you would’ve tried, too!”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill him,” Erik notes, now plating everyone’s food.
Kicking the air, you nod and settle back into your seat. “You guys are acting like killing Charles would’ve been a crime.” The looks you get are crazy, as if you’ve forgotten which universe you’re in.
“That’s because it is,” Spencer softly reminds you. “We’re here to investigate the current mutant murders.”
A part of you had forgotten about it. Not because you didn’t care but with everyone else it had slipped your mind. There was a stack of potential UnSub’s in Scott’s office as you spoke and once Josh woke up, you’d know more. Learn who he was running from. A plate settles in front of you and then a hand squeezes your shoulder and you smile up at Erik, thanking him.
You felt terrible, having spent this case so sure that everything was fake, that this was a stupid ploy to get you back home that you were neglecting the dead. The dead children who died because of the actions of someone in this fucking mansion. The school where they promised a safe haven.
The Aveeno tastes good, it’s probably hot, too hot for any of the others to eat, at least because JJ is blowing on hers and Rossi has the idea that stirring it will help it cool faster. Ororo forgoes the homemade breakfast and leaves to search for Jean, who’s most likely just waking up.
“Would you have killed him?” Hotch whispers from your right. Glancing at him, you quickly look back at your food, thinking about it. You’ve always said you wanted to, you’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill him but you never have. You’ve gotten close, closer than that day but something always stops you.
“No.” You whisper back. And you mean it. He nods, sipping his coffee and you wonder if he believes you.
—
“Have you spoken to your family?” Jean asks while you’re mindlessly tapping your pencil against the table, crossing off names on the paper and writing notes in the margins. At least, you were. Now the pencil is flat on the wooden table and you’re focused on her, lips pulled into a tight line. “They’re still here,” She adds, gesturing vaguely to the door. As if you’d get up and leave just to have a pointless conversation with them.
“I couldn’t care any less.” The pencil is back in your hand, the graphite pressing harshly against the white paper, leaving a sharp indent as you cross out a name. You’ve seen your sister in the hallway, she was talking to Hotch, you don’t care to know about what, don’t care to even humor a conversation about it. Your parents, on the other hand, you’re vaguely aware of them being around. Heard their voices behind closed doors, felt their presence looming over you.
Jean hums, her pen slowly dragging over her paper. “You’re judging me.” You’re not asking, it’s not something you’re unsure of. You know she is, she knows you know. Her pen sets down and she exhales. “About which thing?” Since you’re clearly a hot topic at the moment, there’s a lot to judge.
“All of it,” She shrugs. “I guess mostly about—“ Her eyes darted to Spencer. He’s hunched over a table, finger gliding down a paper to read reports about Krakoa and the full proposed Accords. He’s not exactly facing you, but you can see the slope of his nose twitching every so often. You roll your eyes, already tired of this topic. “But, also, you’re odd.”
“Gee, thanks,” You drone.
“Not like that,” Her chair inches forward, her hand raking through her hair. “You didn’t hesitate to find Josh but you haven’t touched the files for the case,” The pile on a different table shifts, you’re not sure if it was her or you.
“The others have it handled, I’m more useful here,”
Her head tilts, an eyebrow quirking up. “You mean Derek has it.”
Your eyes snap up to her, eyes narrowed. “Jean.” Spencer peers over at the two of you working at the round table, papers neatly placed on the edges, dashes of red ink dancing across them. The others are in the room too, turning their attention towards the two of you. Derek looks over from the whiteboard, having heard his name before he finds Spencer with his eyebrows raised. What’s that about? But Spencer can only offer a shrug.
“I’m right.” She settles. You look between her eyes, trying to find what’s happening and why it’s happened now.
“It’s not about being right or wrong—“
“It sorta is,”
“Jean, I love you, we’re not having this conversation right now.”
Through a sigh, you grab the next paper and start scribbling next to names. You can’t focus now, your mind is set solely on Derek. How he’s still looking at you, eyes flicking across your face for some type of sign. The fact that his heart is slightly faster than normal, a sweat is building on his body. You’re not sure if he hates you still or if he just wants to talk. You’re afraid to find out, afraid to lose him too. Jean tilts her head again, only this time it’s expectantly.
You really hate telepaths.
“Fucking hell,” You grumble, standing up. It’s not going to get off of your mind until you deal with this. Until you sit and talk with Derek, be honest. You’d talk with the whole team but you… needed to talk to him alone, just the two of you. Your eyes meet and you nod towards the door, shoving your hands into the back of your pants pocket. He nods, capping his marker before the two of you leave the room. You walk into a classroom in silence, a math one judging by the posters around you and you settle on top of the desk. Professor McCoy. Makes sense, you figure. Derek settles on the desk across from you, his hands folding on top of his lap. Waiting. You are, too, unsure of how to start this conversation. Afraid of where it’s going to lead your relationship.
Staring at him, you take him in. His navy blue V-cut shirt, his black jeans, the cross in his eyebrows, the concern in his eyes. “Are you mad at me?” You quietly ask, much different from the million of conversation starters that you had in your mind. Much more timid, too.
“A little,” He admits without hesitation. “Why didn’t you trust me, man?”
“I…” There’s so many reasons, so little explanations that would make sense to him. “I was afraid that things would change. You’d see me differently— even if you thought you wouldn’t,”
“I wouldn’t have, that’s the thing.”
“Everyone always says that,” You slump, staring at the fabric of your pants. “But they don’t notice that they do— in some way or another. And I liked our relationship before this,” You glance around the room. “this mess. I just hoped no one would ever find out, I guess. That I’d still be (Y/n) at the end of the day,”
“Did I treat you differently when you came out?”
“No,”
Derek looks at your avoidant eyes, frowning slightly. “Is it because of how I’ve talked about my mutant cases?”
“That’s part of it, yeah,”
“I’m sorry, man,” He exhales, running a hand over his head. “Looking back, I can see it was fucked to talk about them like that. That it made you worried to tell me the truth. I promise that it’s something I’ll stop, I’ll think twice before talking like that again. And, if I do, feel free to… launch me in the air or something,” He smiles when that pulls a chuckle from you, your eyes meeting momentarily.
“Alright, I will.”
“And, man, no more secrets, yeah? Y’know hiding does more harm than good, right?” He’s not angry, his voice is calm, like he’s talking to a victim. “That note in your door, you wouldn’t have seen it. You could’ve gone missing and none of us would’ve known where to look.” You want to tell him that you wouldn’t have, you’re pretty good at evading being kidnapped. That even if, by some universal coincidence, you did, there’s people who would’ve known. You would’ve missed your check-ins with Erik, just as a confirmation that you’re alive and well and they would’ve been looking for you.
But you don’t.
You don’t speak— at all. Just sit there, staring at the floor, your blood rushing through your ears. Words are lost on you, you don’t know how to respond to him, something that’s never happened before. He stands from the table, crossing the imaginary threshold of him to you and for just a split second, he stares at you. And then, pulls you in for a hug. “I love you, man. I really do, hope you know that.” Your arms wrap under his as he speaks and he feels you relax against him.
“I love you, too, man.” When you speak, it’s clear you’re holding back tears, your chin resting on his shoulder.
—
The case had finally picked up later in the afternoon, after Josh had woken up and was able to speak in clear sentences after getting the dirt removed from his stomach and throat. Once he was able to speak coherently and be alert enough that you were able to sit and speak with him without pause, you did. He was always sorta skittish around other people, it’s why he lived in your building, so you could keep an eye on him. He trusted you. But while you were in the mansion infirmary, another body was found. The team went to check out the scene, half went to talk to the witnesses and the other half was checking out the crime scene. Penelope was the only other one in the school with you, she was working on locating where the victim had been taken and mapping it with the help of Charles.
“What happened?” You ask while lightly tapping your pen against your notepad, taking in John’s appearance. He’s looking better now, his more serious burns were still carefully in their dressings, the lighter ones were clearly healing, the blisters smaller than they were before. His eyebrows were growing back, too. You’re often thankful for his fast regeneration.
“I-“ He’s stuttering, fumbling over himself before he stops and shakes his head, starting again but slowly. “I heard them. A group, talking about us. Me and you. They were going to lure us to the safe house— it was trapped, people were inside waiting for us. They heard me, started shooting. Machine guns, I think. I ran into the Earth, they couldn’t follow. Someone tried, almost did. I think they were one of us,”
“Why?”
His eyes moved down to the floor as though he was back there, feeling it. “Because, they were inside of the Earth with me.”
You shift in your seat, quickly going over the list of mutants with similar-sounding powers. “In how? Did they move the Earth?”
He firmly shakes his head, looking at you again. “No, it was like they were flying through the dirt as if it were air. Like Kitty,”
Kitty Pryde, a mutant with the ability to phase through solid objects through density shifting. Not many mutants with powers similar to her. Two of which can only make their density heavier, which wouldn’t have worked in this situation.
“Do you know if they were a woman?”
“No— not a woman,” He shakes his head, assured in his response. “They called him Sir. He gave them orders,” Only one name comes to mind at the revelation and you softly breathe in, trying not to worry him.
“Thank you, Josh. I’ll leave you alone now, call me if anything else happens or you remember more,” He nods and you leave the room as calmly as you can before you start flying through the manor. Scott and Jean are… you pull the air around you, searching for them… in the basement. Talking with Logan and Ororo.
The profile had been accurate to a fault. A mutant with family issues, someone who’s jealous of mutants with supportive families, enacting their own rage onto their victims. The team had said that the UnSub was most likely in between your age of x-men and the new age kids, probably found later in life after years of hardship.
You make it down to your friends in record time, opening the door. “It’s Shinobi Shaw— he’s in the mansion right now.”
—
Spencer’s heading back to the car with Derek, quietly going over his notes from the witness he’d talked to. They hadn’t seen much, just the body. There wasn’t much to go on, none of them had much to go on, really. It was frustrating, distressing even, that they’ve been on the case for what— nearly two weeks with little to no real progress. Only young mutants dead bodies and stacks of the Accords are piling up in the evidence bin.
The media had, unfortunately, gotten a hold of the case and Hotch had a field day when they named the killer the Accords Executioner. Hotch made them pull the name as soon as he could and JJ held a short press conference with the Professor about what they knew without giving the public, the non-mutants, an insight to their own perils.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Derek nudges Spencer’s arm as they’re walking.
He shakes his head, pocketing the mini notebook before gripping his messenger back. “I feel like something’s missing; we’re not seeing something.”
“Like what?”
His lips purse, if he'd known what was missing, they wouldn’t be in this situation right now. This weird stalemate between Unsub and the team. “Did we ever figure out the connection with Daniella?” Derek shakes his head before nodding at Emily as she joins the group, looking exasperated. “Did her killer get released?”
Derek’s not sure, but he knows who will know. “I’ll call Garcia.” Spencer nods, fiddling with his thumbs as Emily recounts her witness interviews. They weren’t much help, either. A pair of mutant-haters at that, so they really didn’t care for the murder. “She’s not answering,” Morgan stares at his phone, the voicemail quiet in his ears.
“Weird,” Emily notes, crossing her arms. “Maybe she’s away from her phone? Try (Y/n),” He nods and dials your number and thirty seconds later, Derek’s pulling the phone from his ear, shaking his head. “Him too?”
“Something’s wrong,” Derek concludes, dialing Penelope again. “We should head back. Hotch!” His voice carries across Central Park like a megaphone and the man looks up from the body, slowly rising at Derek’s signal. Rossi and JJ aren’t too far away, beckoned over by Emily and they’re back on the road.
Fifteen voicemails are left between Central Park and the school. It would have been sixteen but as the car pulled past the line of trees, they saw the school. Fire was spreading out from some windows, glass was scattered across the yard, on the side there was an entire chunk of wall missing. Kids are rushing from the building, ushered out by Hank and Erik.
“What’s going on?” JJ asks one of the kids, the girl is frantic, looking between JJ and the building, soot on her face and her arm is bleeding.
“I-I don’t know. Professor Logan told us to get out.” Air whizzes past them, leaves and dirt kicking in the air as the blur of blue dashes into the building. The closer they get, the louder an alarm is. It’s like a siren that fills the team with a sense of doom. Mixed with the whispers of the teenagers and children around them, they can’t feel anything but worry.
Did you see them?
They had guns!
They had power collars— one of them took Jubilee!
Did they get Cyclops?
Heard they knocked him out— took some of the older mutants with him.
I think they got Queen Ororo.
No way they took Professor Logan, right?
Probably, he was with Mr. Summers. Mrs. Grey and—
“They took (Y/n).” Josh is at their side, nails digging into his arms so much they’re starting to bleed. He’s muttering to himself, shaking his head before he looks at the team. “I-I tried to help, I couldn’t. There was so many of them,”
“Who— who took him?” Rossi tries to coax him but Josh is looking everywhere but at the team. “Josh— who?”
He looks at them, sniffs and then shakes his head. “I-I didn't recognize them. They’re not mutants— one is, I don’t know who he is, though. I don’t know much, I don’t— I need— I gotta—“ He’s shaking his head again, overwhelmed by everything and walks to the grass, burying himself inside. He’s incredibly fast with it, tunneling down.
“Garcia?” Derek’s shouting into the crowd, eyes swimming in the mix of people for her. “Garcia!” He’s getting more frantic as the seconds pass, each blonde head leaves his heart hammering in his chest until he relaxes. She’s there, with a group of children, far from the chaos. Immediately, he runs to her, the others quickly on his trail. “Babygirl,” Gasping, she looks up and lunges for a hug. She smells like fire, shaking like a leaf in his arms, holding him like she did that night. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” He’s stroking the back of her head, kissing the crown.
Spencer takes a step back, looking at the building. Maybe Josh was wrong, maybe the fire was you, you’re using it to hide somewhere in the building.
“All clear!” The blur of blue is back, standing at the steps of the school. Erik and Charles are in front of him, no sign of you. He checks, and he checks again. And again. You’re not there. Even as the fire gets put out by Bobby you’re not there. He can’t bring himself to think about anything that’s not you, he needs to get back on the case. He needs to find that missing link. He needs to find you.
“We’ve made a list of the missing mutants,” Flinching, he looks over and sees a woman and a man— it’s the same red eyes from the picture Penelope had shown them. Gambit and Rogue. Her white streak and his red eyes. “Sorry, for scaring you, hun,”
“It’s fine,” He shakes his head, eyes trying to find some place to settle. “How did you make it so fast?”
“Pierto helped mon amie,” Gamit wraps his arm around Rogue, squeezing her hip while she hands the list over.
“It looks like they mostly took from the old teams. Scott, Jean, (Y/n), Ororo, Logan, Morph, Emma, Rose, and Jubilee.” He relays to the BAU, handing the list over to Hotch who scans over it. “Do you have any idea where they took them?”
“They got away using a plane,” Erik says, joined by Charles with a deep frown. “I was able to damage it before it got too far, so it couldn’t have gone very far.”
“Can we track it?” Emily asks, eyeing the paper in Hotch’s hand. “Do we know who took them?”
Charles shakes his head, staring up at the team. “Unfortunately, as of right now, we can’t track the plane, no. But I know someone who can,”
—
Your head is twisting, trying to find some type of comfort with the thick, metal collar around your neck. The pink light is humming, a sign that it’s active and working. There’s so much of that flickering pink light that the room is washed in the color. The room itself resembles a sort of jail cell; concrete walls and floors, two, thin overhead lights that kind of have that buzz to them that makes your stomach twist. There’s nothing really in the room itself, just the people they’d taken during the attack.
“So much for never getting kidnapped,” Logan gruff from across the room.
“I literally hate you,” You groan. “Aren’t you supposed to smell these things before they happen?”
“Can’t you sense people?” He bites back.
Scott sighs from his spot in the room. “That’s enough, you two,” Rolling your eyes, you move your head to the side before looking at Ororo. She’s next to you, laying her head against the wall, Jean is in her lap, unconscious. They’d done something to her, you don’t know what but she won’t wake up. Ororo looks at you and offers a small smile that you quickly return.
Across from you, Logan and Morph are… being Logan and Morph. You wish they’d fuck instead of whatever that is. Then there’s Jubilee, she’s not exactly huddled into herself but she’s close to Logan. You have less memories of her, if you’re being honest. You’d known her maybe a year or two before you left the team, the school. Rose is with her, though. Her back is to you, you’re glad for that, and she’s the better comfort right now. Plus, she’s away from you.
Emma and Scott, on the other hand, are standing in another corner, probably coming up with a plan. A part of you tells you that you should be there, too. Make yourself useful. But you can’t. Not when your eyes keep going to the glass wall where, on the other side, you’re staring at the scientists. They're in a lab— the room you’re in is a cell within the lab, their lab. They’re not looking at you, they haven’t since they put the collar on you, promising that you’ll understand soon enough.
Shinobi is there, too. He comes and goes every so often, plucking pictures of young mutants from the board and leaving with them. Right now, he’s talking in hushed whispers with one of the women; his head is tilted in a way that makes his hair cover his face.
You don’t know where you are, it’s underground, you think. Like a bunker of sorts or maybe at the base of a hill. You remember walking down something. But you couldn’t give anything more than that. Especially in this windowless room, artificial lights filled in with large lamps in the corner.
You’re not sure how any of this fits together. If your sister was just a coincidence or somehow, some type of weird string was connecting her to this. If it was her killer, you’re not sure. You can’t remember if he got out of jail, it feels like something you should know, you’d gone to his parole hearings and made sure he didn’t get out early. But that was three years ago now. He was supposed to get the minimum sentence, fifteen years but his lawyers, the judge, and the jury managed to get him down to eight.
Your stomach drops. He was out. Had been for at least a couple of months at this point.
But him and Shinobi, you don’t think you could see them working together. Then again, you didn’t think Shinobi would be leading a mutant serial killer group and yet, here you are.
“Can we talk?” Rose settles next to you, not waiting for a response.
“There’s nothing I want to say to you.”
“Really?” She gives you a sad smile that you make a point not to look at. “You don’t want to yell at me?” Inhaling, you close your eyes and lay your head back. The wall is hard on your head and, for once, you can feel that it’s cold. You’d nearly forgotten that feeling. “Well, I can talk and you can listen,”
“Leave me alone, Rose.”
She continued anyway. “I tried to get them to keep her where we buried her, they begged me not to tell you. Said you’d cause another country-wide disaster hurricane, it would be better if they told you. I… I thought they did and just thought you didn’t want to talk to me about it.” Her hand rests in your knee before you jerk away, glaring at her as she apologizes. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Turning to her, you lick the inside of your mouth. “You’re not. ‘Cause you’ve never defended me against them. You let them think I was making up lies about wanting to leave while you played the perfect daughter! And you still are, letting them call me angry— I’m frustrated because no one in this family takes me seriously! I made one mistake and now I’m not allowed to have strong emotions; I’m dismissed constantly for things you know are true. You come to me with all your frustrations about everything and expect me not to act like you’re happy with your life.”
“And you are?”
“More than you,” You scoff. “I’m away from their stupid fucking legacy and living my own life— far away from them.”
“We miss you,”
“No, you don’t. You barely even know me,”
“I know you’re my baby brother,” She offers. “That has to count for something,”
“I would, if you actually cared.” Standing up, you finally join Scott and Emma, talking about possible escape routes and just what the fuck is happening. You’re talking about the visible doors, the things you remember from the path when the collars buzz and then, you’re slammed to the floor, the collar pressing against the floor. Everyone’s struggling to get up, the magnetic pull too great for even Logan to pull himself up.
A door opens, you hear heavy footsteps behind you and then your hands are taken. You try to twist, to scratch whoever it is before heavy, hand-covering cuffs are placed over them. Your collar doesn’t seem too heavy at that point and you’re hauled to your feet, out of the room where the door closes and everyone is released from the floor.
From there, you’re walked to another cell where they throw you onto the hard, cold floor. You land on your side, looking up at who did it when you see his face, looking down at you as a scientist grabs you, pulling you towards a risen white table.
It’s Robert Kelly Jr.
He looks exactly like his father now, it’s one of those faces you’ll never forget. With his brown hair, swooped to the side with square glasses. If you had to guess, it was the same exact pair. He stares at you as he gets closer, he’s content, almost gleeful as he watches your eyes widen in horror before narrowing. When he fixes his lips to speak, your legs reach out, wrapping around his neck and slamming him down. You’re shouting, cursing him out, squeezing as tight as your legs can go while he claws at you, unable to do anything until the collar around your neck starts electrocuting you.
Your muscles lock, the feeling of a thousand needles prickling your skin feels like nothing you’ve felt before— you never have. Electricity has never felt like this, you’ve never been so hot before, your blood boiling as your body’s fighting against the current. And then, when it stops, your body goes slack, legs unintentionally dropping the hold you had on Robert. He falls to the floor, gasping for air with a red face and neck. But, he’s not the only one. You’re on the floor, recovering as you stand before him, your foot meets his face and there’s a crunch. Limping from the new cell, you’re barely able to look around before people barge inside of the lab, strapped with guns and tactical gear. You look towards the glass cell at the others, panting while they bang on it, shouting something you can’t hear.
When you look back, they’re telling you to get down. Their guns are pointed, someone has the control of your collar, finger hovering over a button you know makes it shock you. You don’t know what to do— what you can do. You’ll die if you charge at them, you’ll probably die if you let him take you wherever Robert wants them to.
You’re scared.
For once, you’re powerless in a room you should’ve controlled with ease.
Blinking, your attention shifts to Robert, covering his bloody nose, inching away from you, calling you slurs you’ve heard a million times before. Maybe he has something you can use— you’re a profiler, you can use that. You can use him— can you? Is there enough time? Have you done too much damage to sweet talk them into letting you stand alone? Could you take a step without them shooting? Could you block the bullets in time? Would the metal cuffs even take the bullets?
Your heart drums in your chest as they inch forward, together as if this was practiced; this was always their goal. Were you their goal? Did they kill those kids to get you here?
There’s nothing organic in the room, there’s no water, no dirt, nothing for you to manipulate. The collar is there to prevent you from using the air and fire against them. Your longest friends and sister are here, they’d taken another child as collateral, she’d been there at the wrong time and place.
Was it selfish to think all of this was really for you?
You hear static, it’s coming from somewhere you can’t pinpoint. “— Can— can you hear me?” The static clears up, the voice rings as Penelope’s and you exhale. They’re close, they have to be. “Oh my god— he can hear me! Yes, yes!” Heads turn towards the sound, the camera, she’s watching.
“You’ll have six seconds,” Erik says before the light’s blowout, sparks flying as the room is covered in darkness broken only by the pink light from around your neck. You run forward, sliding below their shields and guns, using the heavy metal cuffs to knock over however many people you can before you find the one holding the controller. It drops, the sound is clear in your ears and you raise your arms, smashing it down. It crunches, breaking under the force and weight of the cuffs and the pink light around your neck dies. The collar unlocks, dropping to the floor.
It’s almost euphoric, the way everything rushes at you. You can feel the air again, feel the way it drifts throughout the room, under the gap in the door, the way the blood is rushing through their bodies, the way they’re hot. They’re scared, hearts beating against their chest.
The lights turn back on, a backup generator humming from somewhere in the lab. Instead of the white lights, everything’s red. That dangerous red that makes the stakes feel higher than they are. You’re surrounded again, guns pointed at your head from all angles but this time is different.
They tell you to stand up and you do, slowly rising with the cuffs dragging your arms down. Pressure is building in them, like a balloon inflating, you can feel it pushing and denting the metal. Someone pushes you back towards the cells before everyone is sent flying back, pinned against walls, arms spread and guns clattering to the floor. The cuffs are in pieces on the floor, broken bits of metal crunch under your feet as you head back to the glass cell.
Back. You motion to them, they do, huddling together in a corner, covering their faces as your hands raise, arms extended before you clap. The air condenses, pushed forward and everything in the room begins to rattle before the glass breaks. It flies everywhere, caught by the same air that broke it before it hit anyone.
“There’s more coming,” Penelope’s voice is static again, getting worse the longer she talks. “Someone is kicking me out of—systems— not much time—“ You reach Emma first, grabbing her collar and pushing air between the gaps in the metal until it breaks. She sighs, rolling her neck and thanking you before the collars around you drop. Logan flexes his hands, grinning as his claws slide from his knuckles with ease.
“You filthy muties!” Robert, you’d forgotten about him.
Turning, you see him holding one of the discarded guns. His nose is clearly broken, but it’s stopped bleeding, the blood smeared across his face and hands. His hair is a mess, you can see spots of blood in it too. It’s deeper in color thanks to the red lights around you. “You got this, bub?” Logan asks and you hum, eyeing Robert.
He takes a step closer, teeth bared like a rabid animal. “I’ll kill you just like I killed your sister!”
Your head tilts, the air shifting as the wind increases around him. “Will you?” Feeling his finger move towards the trigger, you wrap the air around his finger, bending it backwards until it snaps. He screams, the gun clattering to the floor as he cradles his hand. “Can you?” Around you, you can feel Scott trying to wake Jean and then you feel something moving in her blood. A sedative no doubt.
You don’t have much time, between more people heading down, Robert, and Jean, you have to give your focus to her. You don’t know what’s in her body, but you know you can get it out. Pulling out of the air, you kneel next to Jean and pull at the material in her blood. It’s thick, kind of heavy. It won’t sweat out, it needs an exit. “I need to cut her,” Scott doesn’t question you, he never really does and he picks up a piece of glass. It’s sharp enough that it’ll cut but thick enough that it won’t fracture into her skin. As soon as it digs far enough that you see blood, you start pulling at the liquid. She’s groaning, twitching under the pain so Emma kneels at her head, calming her while you pull out the murky silver liquid.
“We need to hurry,” Storm advises as she and Logan stand guard near the door. “Many of them are coming,”
You nod, looking at the still crying Robert and kick him in the face, knocking him out and hauling him over your shoulder. “Alright,” Scott picks Jean up, holding her bridal styled, her body still lifeless against him. “Let’s go.”
—
Spencer can’t breathe, his heart is in his head— no, that’s a headache. A stress migraine forming along the front of his head. Caliban, the mutant Charles called to track you and the others, had sent them nearly two hours away from the school. Derek was driving, speeding down the road as fast as the car could allow and normally that would be the scariest part for him, his back would be pressed against the back of the seat, one hand on the seatbelt and the other on that little holder above the window. But he’s just wishing Derek could go faster, that this stupid SUV would be as fast as you had flown the other night.
Penelope was in the back, trying not to drop her expensive equipment as she tried to hack back into the building's cameras. It was a government building, one backed by the exact people who were silently trying to implement anti-mutant laws, laws Spencer feels stupid for not reading more about earlier. Maybe if he’d known, you wouldn’t be there. Maybe if he had cared more about mutant issues, those missing pieces would’ve found its way to this stupid, fucked puzzle. He doesn’t know what tech they have there, reports are limited and what’s there is already concerning. Labs with blood— blood they won’t exactly say but he has a sneaking suspicion that it’s mutant blood, storage units big enough to house new age Sentinels. Fuck, that image of you getting stabbed by one flashes through his mind and he wants to yell at Derek.
Nothing is fast enough right now. Not his mind, not this car, and not Penelope’s hacking.
“Five minutes,” Derek strains. “I can see the top of the building,” They’re at the top of a hill, and as the car starts to go down, Spencer can see it, too. A silver building in the middle of a field, a broken plane on the top. Five minutes, three hundred seconds. A lot can happen between now and then, especially when he sees the heat from an explosion, the glass of the car rattles before it careens off the side of the road.
When the car stops, he realizes it’s Erik inside the car, using his powers to gently place the SUV back on the road. Everyone gets out, meeting together as Erik flies down, their words lost on their tongue. It looks like a war, your group versus the military and, like he’d suspected, new age sentinels. They’re based on the ones from nineteen ninety-seven; tall purple and pink robots nearly three times the size of the average adult.
It’s bad. Everything’s red, everything feels hot, there are paths of fire on the Earth, lightning is brewing above them, a figure in the clouds commanding them. Everyone is scattered around. He sees Scott handing Jean over to Erik, Logan is across the field with Jubilee, he’s in front of her taking the brunt of the attacks from the soldiers, Rose is trying to sink the sentinels, Emma is in her diamond form, taking on her own horde— he can’t see you.
He can’t see you. His eyes swim across the battlefield, breathing heavy before the clouds begin to rumble. The figure in the clouds turns to two, lighting mixes with a tornado. “To me, my X-Men!” Your voice thunders over the sound of everything else as you and Ororo fly around, avoiding getting shot or attacked by the robots and soldiers. Your command has everyone regrouping, meeting in the middle.
It’s like that, your command, puts everyone back on track. They stop separating and pick one thing to focus on, together as a group. Emma and Morph— who’s using her powers— push the people away, making them toss their guns and whatever other weapons they had, while everyone else takes the Sentinels. The tornado is mixing with fire on the ground, made from Scott’s heat beams. The wind and the extra gravity is pulling the giants in the middle— it’s pulling the BAU in, too, but they’re able to hold themselves back as Rose increases the gravity below the sentimentals, sinking them into the Earth that you use to swallow them up.
As they’re blasting through it, Scott is using his beams to slice through them.
Something happens, Spencer can’t tell what but the fight turns one-sided. The hairs on his arms stick up— his hand reaches up for his head— its electricity. It’s Storm, she’s in the clouds again, commanding the weather with a booming voice, lightning striking on the messy dirt as the tornado grows. It’s pulling in the SUV’s now and whatever robots were left are ripped apart as they’re tossed in the fiery, electric tornado.
When it’s over, the clouds part, the moonlight shining down on them, robots parts scattered on the floor, your team is standing on their feet, smiling and you’re lowering to the ground, almost unfazed.
“Holy shit,” Derek whispers, watching as you look over at them and wave before heading over with the group.
“—Your X-Men,” Scott laughs and you shrug, almost bashful.
You look over the group, remembering your youth where you were their leader and glance at the clouds. “It just felt right— didn’t it?”
“It certainly did,” Ororo smiles at you before you stop in front of your team.
They’re kind of shell-shocked, staring at you with something you can’t really describe. Maybe it’s awe, maybe they’re still trying to process everything, but the first one to move is Penelope. She’s wrapping you in the tightest hug you’ve ever gotten, almost sobbing into your chest. “And I thought— and you were— it was terrifying— sorry—“ Carefully, you hug her back, rubbing her back.
“Pen, I’m fine,” You pull away, wiping her tears.
“Don’t you ever get kidnapped again!”
Laughing, you nod. “I’ll try my best,” As she pulls away, you look at Spencer. He looks the worst of the team, like he’s sick to his stomach, he’s paler than that time he got the stomach bug from a dive bar in Florida. But he doesn’t move, like he’s stuck in place just staring at you.
“(Y/n)…” Turning your head, you see your parents, they’re with Rose, checking her over. A lot’s happened tonight, a lot of feelings you’ll unpack later, especially as Rossi and Emily haul Robert Kelly Jr. into a cop car, but you still can’t. You feel like this is the part of the movie where everyone makes up, the parents realize that they’ve been wrong and their child realizes that they need to be more open but… you can’t. You can’t look at them and pretend like you’re happy to see them. To pretend that you want to be in their embrace, under their watchful gaze, trying to assess if you’re okay.
And you’re fine with that. The thought used to make you sick, you used to want nothing but to have your family back together, to want to feel their warmth, not just an obligation to see them.
“How’s Jean?” You ask Erik, looking away from your parents. He steps to the side, showing you Scott and Jean sitting in the trunk of the SUV, holding each other. “They drugged her with something, I kept some of it for Hank to analyze once we get back— we didn’t find Shinobi, though,”
“We’re on it,” Logan gruffs, grabbing Morph by the collar who grins wildly, shapeshifting into Logan. You’re not going to question them.
Erik pulls your attention back. “Go ahead and head back, we got it from here,” Nodding, you join your team and head back to the school.
—
The school is back to normal by the time you get back, with Wanda and Jericho using some spells to reform the building, the students are able to sleep in their rooms for the night. You’re not going to bed just yet, though. You’re sitting near the pond, feeling the creatures in the land go back to their homes, feeling the way Wanda and Jericho share a kiss in front of the school before they leave back to Strange Academy, feel the way Ororo and Jean are hugging down in the infirmary, how Scott is with Logan, interrogating Shinobi, how your parents are in on of the office rooms with your sister, and then, how Spencer’s walking out of the building.
“Hey, Spence,” You call, turning your head back to see him. He hasn’t spoken much since you got back, but you haven’t wanted to pry, it’s probably been a long… week for him.
“Hi— can I sit?” Nodding, he settles next to you, your knees knocking against each other before he stares at the moon, squinting ever so slightly. “How are you doing?”
“Are we being honest or…”
“Honest. Please,”
Shifting closer to him, you stare at the pond, unsure of what to say. “I’ve been better and I’ve been worse. I… I’m glad we caught Robert and Logan got Shinobi, I feel stupid ‘cause I let my anger cloud my judgement and innocent kids died. Stupid because I let a lot get to me, stuff that I swore stopped getting to me. But,” Inhaling, you lean back, letting your head hit the grass. “Today was sort of cathartic. I haven’t used my powers like that in years. I feel sort of free— it’s hard, explaining it to a nonmutant but maybe it’s like when you broke your leg, that feeling when you could walk unassisted again.”
“There was a study done, around three years ago, that said that around forty percent of mutants don’t use their powers. Half of them said because they’re worried of getting caught, thirty percent said it’s because their powers physically harm them, and the last twenty said they didn’t because their powers weren't needed.”
“Really?”
He hums. “It was done by the Mutants Against Hate organization, they said that the numbers could actually be higher, since there’s an unknown percentage of mutants who flat out refuse to acknowledge their X-gene,”
That makes sense, especially for older generations like your parents.
“How about you— I never asked how you’re handling this. This has been a lot for you, no doubt,”
He softly breathes, lips pursed into a sort of smile. “I… this case was enlightening. It taught me my bias around the mutant community, I got to learn more about you, about your life before us and…” It’s on the tip of his tongue, he wants to just blurt it out but he’s worried. Because even if you’re happy, even if that weight has been lifted from your shoulders, he doesn’t know if your stance on dating him is the same. “… But I was scared. More than I was with Tobias, more than I ever was,”
“Why?”
That makes his stomach twist— why can’t you see it? See him without a cloud over your eyes. “Because of you. You got kidnapped and— and no one knew if you were alive or not. You were gone for four hours but it felt so much longer— I replayed every single interaction we’ve ever had, and you know what I kept thinking?”
“…what?” You lean up, shocked.
“That I would’ve kissed you when I had the chance,” He’s still looking up at the sky but you’re looking at him, trying to find a sign that he’s lying. Your words are stuck in your throat, your mind is racing and you don’t know what to say.
“Spencer—“
“We heard you.” He blurts, quickly glancing at you. “When you spoke to Jean before finding Josh. You said that you wanted to kiss me in the sensory room, said that ‘I’m never going to be separated from this life, and if I merge him with this, who knows who’s going to find out? The wrong person could and I lose Spencer— forever. I could lose all of them,’ But you aren’t. You aren’t going to lose any of us, we love you…. I… I love you,” He looks at you, eyes slightly damp as his chest is rising and falling quickly. “I’d take the risks and you won’t lose me if you just… let me in,”
Your eyes are hot now, stinging with the salty tears. “Spencer,” Your head shakes, a stutter of sounds falling from your lips before you feel his on yours. His hands are on your face, just barely there until you lean forward, holding the back of his head and it's only then does he hold you. His fingers trace your hairline, sliding further into your hair. You can feel him shaking, like he was scared you’d pull away and yell at him, that this was too far. One of your hands finds his hip, using it to pull down on you and he complies with ease.
He’s half on top of you now, one of his legs pressed softly between yours, his hand resting on your chest, right above your heart before his lips slowly peel from yours. “Please,” He pants, looking between your eyes as they slowly open. “We could be the exception.”
There’s nothing you want more than to say yes, to kiss him again and to slowly move his books into your apartment. You’ve already crossed the boundary between friends, he knows and you know— the whole team knows. Your friends know. But there’s that fear you can’t shake, that gnawing fear that something is going to happen to him. “I don’t—“
His forehead presses against yours, warm even though you can’t tell, his eyes are closed, nose brushes against your own. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be with you. If it takes you a week, a month, years, to accept this— us, I’m willing. I’m not scared,”
“I am,” Sitting up, he sits with you. “I don’t want to sound like a broken record but, I do… I love you,” His lip trembles as you finally admit. “And if I lose you, I can't come back from that.”
“You won’t.”
“You can’t promise that,”
“And you can’t promise that you’ll lose me.”
He’s right. It’s not fair to give him a possibility and hold it above your heads without giving him a chance. Blinking, you let yourself smile and lean in to kiss him again, this time he breathes into it, holding your hands tightly in his. “We should,” He pants between kisses, trying desperately not to pull away while talking. “We should go inside,”
“Yeah,” Is it embarrassing that Spencer likes it when you lift him and fly to the window? Serious question because he seriously likes it, and he doesn’t know if he should feel ashamed or not. Probably not, all things considered.
Especially not when your lips are traveling down from his lips to his neck, lightly sucking on your way down while he holds the back of your head, eyes closed while softly panting in the quiet room. When he lifts your face back to his, you’re smiling down at him and kiss him again— he’s going to get dizzy from all this kissing, he figures while letting his hands travel across your body.
Then, as his hand moves down to the curve of your bulge, his fingers ghosting over the top, he hears the sound of fire catching on fabric. “Shit— not again!” You whine, glaring at the curtain until the fire dies down.
“Are you mad at me?” He asks, watching as you stare at him, bewildered.
“No—no, not in the slightest! My fire doesn’t come from my anger, it comes from my passion,” You quietly explain, avoiding his eyes. “If I get too emotional— like excited, things tend to light on fire.”
“Me touching your dick made you excited?” He teases, grinning as you get bashful.
“Shut up, Spence,” Leaning down, the two of you settle on just kissing for the night. To spare the curtains and embarrassment of having to explain why the curtains or worse ended up on fire.
At some point in the night, you end up falling asleep, just holding each other in that stupid twin size mattress.
—
Interviewing Shinobi ten minutes after you wake up isn’t ideal, but it needs to happen. He’s instant that you’re there, so it’s you, Charles, and Emily in the makeshift interrogation room. Charles is off to the side, out of the view but you can feel his presence; it’s almost religious, in some strange way. He’s wearing a power dampener, his version of suicide watch, considering his past and the fact that, had Jean not caught him last night, he would’ve milled himself again.
“Working with Robert Kelly Junior,” You sigh as you sit in front of him, hands laced between your legs before you lean forward. “How would Sebastian feel?”
He shrugs. “Considering he killed me, I don’t particularly care,”
“Oh,” You blink, shaking your head as if that was obvious. “Not that— I know he doesn’t care about you, I’m talking about his company. The company he had to build from scratch and then gave to you,”
“I never wanted it,”
“I think you did, though, Shinobi. You joined Hellfire Club and— I can’t believe I forgot but you were also in the Upstarts, right? A club for mutants to kill other mutants for fun, you tried to kill him and got his company as a reward.” His jaw tightens, eyes narrowing. “So, I think him killing you was justified. Then, you tried to restart Hellfire with Warren and Psylocke, they declined. You tried to kill the New Mutants and Hellions, that didn’t work. Found out your dad was alive and, because you’re a coward, went into hiding. Then, after he found and killed you, you got resurrected, you rejoined the Upstarts, killed the Nasty Boys and when we captured you— you killed yourself. Your cowardice is insane.”
“All of that, and you still welcomed me to your safe haven island and school with plenty of other mutants,” He grins and you hum.
“That wasn’t my call, actually. I, as the records can show, did try to get you exiled and/or killed again.”
He nods, smirking. “They called you jealous because I came back and your sister didn’t,”
“And your dad called you a bastard, I think only one of those is true,” He grunts, leaning back in his seat. “Oh, sorry. I’m talking about Sebastian, not Harry— how is he, by the way— still disappointed in you?”
“How’s your dad?”
“Uh, good,” You shrug. “He’s upstairs. I’m pretty sure they’re working on a memorial for the kids you killed,”
“How did you kill them?” Emily picks up and you lean back, looking between the two of them. “Their bodies were transported by a mutant with teleportation,” She flips through his file. “And you only have density manipulation,”
“You’ll never catch him,”
You nod. “Vanisher, right?” His eyes dart to you, slightly wide. “We actually saw his files in the building. Along with the five other mutants you were working with. Vanisher, Selene, Trevor Shaw, Orbit, and the Strucker Twins. You don’t have many friends, unfortunately for you, so they were easy enough to decode once we learned one word in your files. And we do have him, as of…” Checking your phone, you nod. “Seven-sixteen A.M. Vanisher is in our custody. He’s the one who put the note on my door, I’m guessing,”
Silence overtakes the room, Shinobi is breathing hard as he glares at your grinning figure. A lot happened while you slept, the others had gone over the files recovered from the building and spent the better part of the early morning tracking them down while Caliban was still in the building. You were only missing Selene, but you’re not sure you will find her before the day ends. She is pretty slippery.
“What? Can’t kill yourself before you face consequences, again?” When he tries to lunge forward, the air pushes him back to his seat, pressing hard enough that he cries out in pain. “You can try again, if you’d like. I know you’re not used to fighting people who can fight back,”
“Is this an interrogation or are you just going to keep insulting him?” Charles sighs.
“It’s certainly both,” You grin. “He wanted me here, he should’ve expected this. But fine— why’d you do it?”
“It was fun,” He shrugged. “Kelly paid us to hunt down mutants, remind the public of what they were,”
“You’re a mutant, don’t you think he would’ve killed you, too?” Emily asks, eyebrows crossed.
His fingers twitch on the table, trying to see if it can phase through. It can’t. “We had a deal,” He blinks over to her and then grins at the memory. “Our very own, government-backed and funded Upstarts.”
“God, you’re a fucking loser.” You mumble, rubbing your eyebrow. “Alright, so you weren’t the ringleader. That was Kelly— why’d he want me?”
His hair whips as he looks at you. “To end your dumbass bloodline.” Now, you’re not dumb, can’t speak for the rest of them, though. “Daniella, Rose, your stupid parents, you. You aren’t as strong as you think,”
Your head tilts to the side, slowly grinning. “Did Kelly tell you that before his nose reconstruction surgery or after he mysteriously got cerebral hypoxia? How’s his seizures, still taking Brivaracetam?” When Charles sighs, you correct your posture and hold your hands up. “Sorry, continue.”
“He wanted you all buried in that little memorial so he could continue to piss on the (L/n) graves,”
Your mouth goes dry. “Continue?” He nods, leaning back in his chair.
“Ever since he got out, he goes for a walk in the park, drinks his morning coffee and unloads on her grave,”
Emily remembers the feeling of the room being hot the other day, that slow-roasting feeling that made her short of breath. She remembers when the floors started smoking and that look in your eyes. She’d expected that to happen again when you leaned forward, but instead, what happened was the pipes in the wall rumbled, the sound of water crashing like an ocean during a storm. The room felt like the second you realize it’s raining— it is, a drop hits her nose and she reaches up, feeling the cold water on the tip of her finger.
“Upset?” Shinobi muses, flicking the rain that hits the table separating the two of you.
You blink, leaning back as the sound from the pipes goes away. Your eyes are a controlled type of furious, almost like you’re staring past him, searching for Kelly. “Well, there’s been an offer for your head, spearheaded by one of the mothers of the children you killed. So, we can either release you over to this woman and you can try your hand at escaping, or you can go to the prison built for mutants. I’m told it’s in the middle of the ocean with modified sentinels as guards. Your choice. But I’m told the mother is Theresa Cassidy,”
“Banshee‘s adoptive daughter,” He pieces together and you nod.
“Sonic screams, flight, hypnotic suggestion, and force fields; to name a few of her powers.”
“Prison.”
“Good choice,” Standing up, you leave the room, head held high with your posture straight. Emily is behind you, her strides nearly matching your own before, about five feet away from the room, she watches as your jaw clenches and a pipe bursts in front of you.
“Sorry,” You slowly apologize, looking back to grab her hand. She takes it, confused, before her feet no longer touch the floor and she’s lifted to the elevator while you stay behind, fixing the pipe. “Can you tell Spence that I’ll be a little late? There’s something else I need to do,” She nods, watching as you walk in the opposite direction, towards the hanger before heading upstairs herself.
Rose is leaving today, there’s a mission that needs attending to, semi-urgent from what you heard. But you imagine she’ll pause it for this.
Thankfully, by the time you enter the hangar, she’s still putting things on the jet. “Come with me,” Your voice carries across the room and she looks at you, a box of supplies tucked under her arm before she sets it down and makes her way over.
“Is everything alright?” Shaking your head, you realize you’re breathing like you’re about to cry, your lip is trembling and your fist are clenching around nothing. “Talk to me; what’s wrong?”
“He’s been pissin’ on her grave. I’m either going over to kill him or make him suffer for the rest of his life,” She takes a moment before nodding; the two of you heading to the hospital he’s being held at. He’d been sent there for the broken nose and finger you’d given him and according to his chart, he’d gotten out of surgery two hours ago.
It’s silent when you and Rose scale the back of the building, avoiding the cameras and security guards at each exit. It’s still daytime, so it’s risky being there but you can’t wait until the sun sets, not with that feeling in your chest, the ache in your soul. It only starts to go away when you reach his room, the lights are dimmed, he’s sleeping, signs of his surgery clear with the bandages on his head and the splint on his finger.
At the door, you see two guards. Military. Backs to you, scanning up and down the hall every other second. But aside from that, you’re in the clear as the window slides open and the two of you climb inside.
“What do you want me to do?” She whispers, watching as you stalk to his bed.
“Just… hold him down. And make sure the door doesn’t open,” Nodding, you watch as he dips down, the gravity around his body is heavier than before and you climb on top of him. You’re sitting on his legs, watching and waiting as he begins to wake up. When he goes to shout, to call for help, you suck the air from his lungs, wrapping it around his vocal chords.
“Do you know a lot about the human body?” You ask, still holding his chords, watching his scared face as he starts to cry. “No? Do you know about the spine?” Reaching over, you slip your hand under his back, dragging your finger up from the bottom to the top of his spine. “It starts at the base of your skull, then there’s the cervical enlargement, lumbar enlargement, conus medullaris, cauda equina, sacrum, and coccyx. It’s labeled C1 down to L5.” You dig your finger into each section, watching his face twist in pain. “C3, C4, and, C5 are right here, injuring those are the most dangerous types of spinal injuries. C3 is connected to your jaw and hyoid, it helps move your neck. C4 helps you breathe, connected to your diaphragm. C5, when damaged, can stop your breathing, your vocal cords, and your upper arm muscles.” Digging deeper, you feel him try to move from you, his fast breathing fanning against your face. “And if I press hard enough, right… here, you’ll lose nearly all of your bodily functions. Don’t worry, though. I’ll let you breathe, but that’s about it.” Something snaps under your pressure and you watch as his body goes lax before climbing off of him.
“You could’ve lived your life in jail completely fine, but Shinobi told me you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants. So, since you like pissing in public, I made it easier for you. You’ll wear a diaper for the rest of your sad, miserable, life. You’ll be in prison, maybe, who knows with your condition now. Helpless— so, so helpless. Can’t even talk but you can feel everything, can’t you? Not to mention you don’t have any money for a proper wheelchair or any type of aid.” The door starts to open and you quickly reach over, smashing your fist against his newly reconstructed nose before leaving with Rose.
You just wish you could’ve heard him screaming in pain.
—
Spencer, after having not seen you for the better half of the day, sets out for you. He checks the pond first, then the kitchen, the training room that Scott said you used to frequent, the sensory room, and then the room he’d found you in. The one with the fireplace and the family portrait above the mantle. The first thing he notices is how dark it is. The lights are off, curtains tightly drawn, and the fire is barely even lit. At first, he assumed you weren’t in the room, he couldn’t see you but then he heard shifting and vented deeper inside.
There, he found you sitting on the floor, head back on the cushions with your eyes closed. “Hey, Spence,” Your voice drifted up, eyes still closed and head still back. The fire grows as he sits next to you, crackling in a way that reminds him of Christmas time. Without hesitation, you lay your head on his lap, inhaling his scent. “Did you need me for something?”
“No,” He shakes his head, carefully bringing a hand to the base of your hairline, messing with the ends. “I wanted to see you, is all.” Carefully, his eyes trace up to the painting, looking at you. It’s obvious now that he knows, the nose, the shape of your lips, the faint smile line— he should’ve known it was you sooner. It’s almost foolish he hadn’t. You and Daniella look a lot alike, almost as if you were identical twins just opposite genders, he wonders what she’d look like now, if you’d still be so similar it’s almost scary. A weird part of him wonders if he’d be dating you if she was still alive; if you would’ve gone to the BAU or stayed an X-Men.
“I paralyzed Robert,” You admit, just barely opening your eyes. “Severed the connection in his cervical enlargements.” You say it clinically, as if this was just a report. Maybe it’s shock, that you’re compartmentalizing it.
He breaths, hands pausing in your hair. “Oh,” Strangely enough, that’s not off-putting to him. A deep part of him almost admires the skill it would take to manually paralyze someone like that.
“It felt good. It still feels good, I would’ve killed him but that would’ve been too kind,” What does he say to that? He doesn’t want to ask for the details, in case he’s ever… he doesn’t know, interrogated about this, but he doesn’t want to just brush past this if you want to talk about it. “Rose was with me,” You add, eyebrows pinched.
“You spoke to her?”
Shrugging, you sigh. “Barely. Just enough to get it done, she left an hour ago. There’s some mission in India, we hugged before she left, though. But, I don’t think we’re going to speak often; I don’t have anything to say to them anymore. I think… I can’t get past them moving her grave without telling me. I found out in such a horrible way, I can’t see myself forgiving them. Is that weird that I’m fine not talking to them anymore— that I can move past this?”
“No,” His touch is welcomed as you lean into it, relaxing as his fingers rub against your cheek. “Forgiveness isn’t something that’s black and white. I forgive my mother during her episodes, when she forgets who I am and slaps me, but I don’t forgive her for having me, knowing that paranoid schizophrenia runs in her family. Seeing her go through that… I’m afraid that one day it’ll be me. And there’s nothing that I can do to prevent it,” One day it’ll be him. You guess that’s what you’re afraid of, too. Dying and instead of being buried in a place you love, you’re placed in the graveyard of other young mutants, hurt by the world. That your wishes aren’t honored, even in death.
You can’t imagine being in his shoes, though. Eidetic memory that you fear one day will slowly start to fade, or you’ll stay to remember things wrong, memories are replaced or added, you lose days at a time; that, one day Spencer won’t be Spencer anymore.
The door opens and Derek pokes his head inside. “Hey, lovebirds. We’re leaving in twenty, make sure you’re decent by then,” His voice is soft despite the teasing and you let out a small chuckle, standing up.
“I gotta do one last thing.” They nod and you leave, heading down to Hank’s lab where he’s working on studying what they had injected Jean with.
Clearing your throat, you look at the floor. “Hey, Dr. McCoy,”
“Hello,” He spins in his seat, watching as you toy with the items around, avoiding even being near him. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah— yes, I just… do you remember when you made the dampener for Rogue? The bracelet?” He nods, taking his glasses off. “Can you maybe make me a pair, too?”
You wanted Spencer, now more than ever, and whenever you thought about it too much, you’d noticed things kept catching on fire. Or whenever you kissed for too long, like you did the night prior. And you really couldn’t afford to burn your apartment down because you were getting handsy with your boyfriend. So, this was a necessary but very— very embarrassing conversation with the man who basically watched you grow up. Thankfully, he handles like a professional.
“I believe I have a spare around, allow me to find it.”
Five minutes later, you’re walking to your room, rubbing the cold metal on your wrist. He’d said it was an updated model, but it still shouldn’t be worn for long periods of time, since it still causes headaches, according to Rogue. A weird side effect of it, though, is that you’re starting to notice the temperature more. It’s cold in the mansion, cold enough that you slip on a sweater as you grab your to-go back from your room. But then, you can feel Spencer’s warm hand grabbing yours. And you can feel the warmth, not just know instinctively that it’s warm because human bodies are warm. It’s nice, this sort of comfort you haven’t known in a long time.
“You are going to be insufferable,” Emily teases from the bottom of the stairs, which leads to JJ smacking her arm.
“Stop it— you two look very cute,” It causes Spencer to blush while you don’t know what to say. Maybe that was a side effect, too. A loss for words, you’ll ask Rogue about it when you have the time. Hopefully soon, all things considered.
“You’re leaving?” Ororo’s voice calls from the main hall.
“Yeah,” You nod, turning to her. She’s with the others, all of them huddled together, seemingly about to get ready for a group outing. They’re all a little sad looking, frowning ever so slightly in a way that has you giving a small smile. “We have a mandatory two days off after today, though. I can just fly back, if you want,”
“Bring your boy toy, too,”
“Have I ever told you how much I hate you, Logan?” He gruffs at that.
Jean clears her throat, grinning. “Or, you can use our jet to get back— it’ll be shorter and we can catch up, without the stress,”
“I vote yes!” Penelope smiles, already moving towards them. Hotch looks at the others, you’re already walking over with Spencer on your tail and the others, even Rossi clearly wants to take the better option, are looking at him with puppy dog eyes. He sighs and says something about calling the pilot that makes everyone cheer.
Spencer watches from his spot in the group as you’re happily talking with your friends, floating with Ororo down the hallway to the hangar as if it was nothing. He hopes you’ll be that comfortable with the team, that maybe everyone is in Rossi or JJ’s backyard and it’s raining, so you’ll bend the rain around them, or you’ll agree to go to the beach with them and swim to find a secret alcove to show off.
“Is that—“ Jean's hand reaches over, grabbing your wrist and pulls the sleeve up to reveal a black and pink tennis bracelet. The pink is sort of glowing, he notes, and your friends laugh while you quickly hide it. “Wait— is your kissing thing still happening?” Her eyes widen and you groan.
Quickly, you eye Jean but it’s not her who speaks up. “Whenever he’s kissing someone that he really likes, things ignite and burn,” That’s sort of cute, actually. At least, Penelope must think so because she awes the way she does whenever she sees baby animals interacting with babies. Derek, however claps Spencer on the shoulder, eager to say My Man as if that was some rite of passage.
“Roro!” Betrayed, you hold a hand to your chest. “You three are gossip central! I cannot,”
“Speaking of gossip,” Emily trails, looking at nothing in particular. “But have you ever dated Nightcrawler— or just… kissed him.”
Your response is immediate. “Nope.”
“So…” Derek says, trailing off. “Not even on your prom night, in the bathroom?” This time, your friend group laughs as you slowly lower to the floor, resting your head on your knees, ashamed.
“Who told you?” Your voice is muffled by your pants. “Was it Jean? I bet it was Jean, you hater.”
Eyes turn to Spencer, clearly he’s going to spill the beans. “We might’ve seen some videos from when you were younger— Penelope found them and showed us.” Standing, you ignore your burning face and nod, pulling your lips into your mouth. “Why— is it something you’d rather not talk about?”
Scott laughs. “(Y/n)? Not talking about people he’s kissed— unheard of,” That earns a punch to the shoulder that he winces out. “No, he was just asked to admit he was into Preacher Boy because the religious aspect,”
“You had religious trauma?”
“It wasn’t trauma,” Is all you say before briskly walking away, leaving the others to figure it out. When they do, the last thing you hear is Derek whistling.
“Guess we’re being Reid a nun costume for Halloween,”
—
You’ve checked every single one of her windows and her locks, you’ve unclogged each of her drains after she had a bad attempt at dying her hair to give herself pink highlights— they’re better, now, and now you’re heading back to your apartment. Spencer is at the door, wearing his pajamas and his house slippers, talking with Josh about the fridge he’s sure is going to break soon, but he pauses just enough to greet you, pushing the door open so you can stand at his side. Josh promises to get here first thing in the morning, and the two of you head to the bedroom.
He doesn’t live here, not yet at least, but it’s getting close. Half of his library has migrated to your place, you’ve repainted the walls to a color that calms the place and his occasional headaches, and he has a dedicated section in your dresser. He’s gotten your entire apartment memorized, knows all the little secrets that no guest could possibly know.
Like the way your bed feels when he’s laying in the middle of it, the owner of the bed on top of him, carefully peeling his shirt from his body as they kiss. A needle drops and then slow music begins to play, music that helps Spencer unwind. He’d learned where the record player was, it took almost two weeks, but he found it, disguised as a cabinet in the living room. “Focus,” Your voice draws him back and his brown eyes look down from the ceiling to you as your hands are trailing down to his shorts. “That’s it,” His fingers move up, curling into your hair while he lifts his hips.
He feels the tennis bracelet drag against his skin, nearly rolling from your hand until the feeling on his thighs is replaced with your palms. They tremble as you set his legs over your hips before removing your shirt with one hand. For a moment, Spencer’s gaze lingers on the three scars on your chest, he’s seen them a lot by this point, touched them enough to know that when he drags his hand down your chest he knows he’s going to feel your heart thumping against it as if it was just beneath the scar.
“You alright, handsome?”
“Perfect,” He says and you grin, leaning down to kiss him again. As you do, he’s using his heels, pushing your shorts down until he feels it slip over the curve of your ass and your dicks rub against each other. Carefully, he wraps his hand around your dicks, squeezing them together before jerking his hand up and down.
Quickly, the room starts to feel warmer, it’s not hot but it’s definitely not the crisp temperature it was before. Especially as the kiss keeps getting broken by your mixed moans, as your hands can’t seem to settle on his body, not as they drag from his face down to his chest where you rub his nipples, feeling them perk up under your fingers, and definitely not when they get below his navel. You brush against his hand, feeling the curve of his cock as it slides against yours, precum quickly spreading between the two before you give his balls a small squeeze. And then, finally, they stop at his thighs.
Your nails dig into his flesh as you bring his legs up, pulling them higher and higher until the inside of his knees are resting on your shoulder. It’s not a painful stretch by any measure, especially after fucking in the kitchen earlier in the day, but it does make him drag out a noise that brushes against your mouth. “This okay?” You ask, pressing your lips into his neck, giving him a chance to both reply and catch his breath.
“Yeah— yeah,” He nods as his body starts to shake; he’s about to cum. “Keep going— please—,” Watching him, you roll your hips into his hand, slow thrusts that mess up his messy rhythm but you feel when he spurts against your dick. The thick liquid sticks the two of you together just a bit, just enough that you hear it when you pull away and stroke yourself with his cum.
Wrapping one arm around his legs, you start to line yourself up with him and slowly press inside. “You’re going good, so good ‘f me, baby,” You coo, carefully watching his face. “Almost inside, want me to keep going?” Biting his lip, Spencer nods while looking up at you with watery eyes. He feels them wipe away, shivering as the air starts to stroke his face, comfortingly warm like your hand would be. Slowly, you push deeper and deeper inside, hissing as he tightens around you. “Relax, Spence, you’re doing good, so good,”
When you bottom out, he’s holding the pillows underneath him, knuckles clenched tightly on the soft material as he mutters yes, yes, yes without realizing he is. He knows this song and dance— he loves this song and dance, loves when you slowly drag yourself inside of him, loves when you hold his hand, whispering exactly what you’re doing to him, how he’s making you feel, and asking him each step of the way if he’s okay. And he always is.
He loves when you leave marks on his skin, watching the red blossom into something more the longer you’re inside of him, love the way your skin reacts to his touch, he loves you and everything you’re doing to him. For him.
When you cum, or at least nearing it, he can always tell. It’s always when you get extra kissy, when it gets sloppy so your thrusts don’t change in tempo, when you’re moaning in his ear, words broken in a way that feels like a code only he knows. And then, when you do, your head drops to his shoulder, teeth biting on the flesh until you’ve filled him. And then, as you’re coming down from your high, you smile at him as if you didn’t just have sex before reaching into the bedside for wipes.
They’re fragrance and paraben-free, the type that doesn’t give Spencer a reaction when you’re cleaning him up just enough that he can walk to the bathroom while you clean the room up. By the time he’s done in the bathroom, you’re entering the room with clean clothes to shower together. That’s never long, he used to think the logistics of showering together would make it hell but, not when you bend half of the water onto your body so you can both shower at the same time and not do that weird switch around Derek warned him about.
You carry him back to bed, complaining about his lack of warmth on your body and don’t let go, not even as you’re crawling into bed or as he’s shifting to grab the water bottle on his nightstand.
And then, just as you’re about to hit the hay, someone knocks on the door and you grumble, removing the bracelet and using the air to tell who it is. “It’s Pen,” You mutter into his back. “I think we have a case, she’s dressed.”
“If we don’t answer, she’ll go away,” He whispers back, turning to look at your face. That sounds like an amazing idea, in theory. Because by the fourth time you don’t answer the door, she grabs her spare key. “You have to take away her key,”
“I will,” You hum, giving him a slow kiss. “And give it to you, instead.”
Summary: When a case in New York drags you back to a place you’d rather forget, you find yourself pulled in two directions— face your truth, or continue to live in your lie.
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Mutant!Male!Reader
Word Count: 21.4k
Tags/Warnings: canon-level violence, anti-mutant sentiment, sexual talks, theme of sibling loss, unresolved trauma, Charles Xavier Slander, canon-level cases, I make my own canon. friends-to-lovers.
A/n: in honor of turning 21, here’s a 21k word fic and this is a part 1
PART 2
Close. Close to catching the killer. Close to getting on that jet and returning home. Close to putting this case behind you. Close to having the families get some type of closure.
And close to losing your shit.
You hated many things; your mother would often say you were the cynic of her three kids. But one of the things you really hated was fucking Nebraska. Known for Warren Buffett (an old white billionaire), Arbor Day, and carhenge; Nebraska wasn’t high on your favorite states list. It was definitely a state you could cross off on your map and be glad to never return to.
The case was beyond yourself, another stupid white male, between 25-35, probably blends into the crowd, has a car big enough to hold a body— which is every fucking car, mind you because they’re meant to hold bodies— and who got his motivation because of his crush rejecting him. It, of course, was the man who worked random odd jobs and lived between homes. It was nothing absolutely anyone could’ve guessed, as if the past ten cases didn’t have the same exact profile.
Emily and Spencer went to check his mother's house, Hotch and Rossi went to check at his grandmother's house while you and Derek went to his aunt’s house. JJ was back at the precinct, double-checking the facts and ready to dispatch units to whoever’s location with Penelope.
Derek drums his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the music. The drive had gotten impossibly quiet after everyone had stopped talking and planning. Your earpieces were still on but there wasn’t much to say while everyone was still driving to their locations.
It’s not awkward by any means; you’ve known Derek since you joined the BAU, so around eight years now. But it’s just hard to find conversation as you’re double-checking your gun and handcuffs, then doing the same for his gear. His vest was a little loose so he doesn’t mind when at a red light, you quickly adjust the straps and then pat his chest. Although he takes a second to remember the fact that you’ve done the same thing every single time someone on the team wears a vest. Since your first case, really. It’s become second nature to let you adjust the team's vests.
At the aunt's house, it’s decided that Derek goes first. He’s the more approachable one of the two of you. He knocks on the door to the apartment while you stand behind him, looking up and down the hallway. The air feels stale, not many people walk around and judging by the floor being damn near spotless, you assume the building is new or for rich people who never actually step foot inside.
The door opens just a crack and you see the blue eye of the aunt. She looks between the two of you, her eyes settling on your vests before she huffs and closes the door. The chain drops from the door and she opens it up.
When she does, you both turn your heads and you wipe your nose.
“Oh,” She says as she slowly closes the door again. “You aren’t here for the… ah… erm…” She laughs. “Party?”
“No, ma’am,” You say and look back at her. She apologizes and grabs a robe from behind the door and tosses it on. “We’re with the Behavioral Analysis Unit—FBI, looking for your nephew? Westly Vel, is he here?” She makes a face, thinking before shaking her head.
“No,” She finally answers. She looks at Derek and smiles, as if she’s only addressing him now. “I haven’t seen West in a month or two, why?” He’s there, or at the very least, she knows where he is. Penelope has doorbell footage of West at her apartment the week prior.
“Just wanna ask him some questions, ma’am.” Derek lies and you nod. “Do you mind if we take a look around?”
“Let me ask everyone to get decent,” She disappears into the apartment and you squint at the door. Derek makes some comment about swingers because of the upside-down pineapple mat. Something he learned about on a cruise. You just snort and wait for the door to open.
“Stay here,” You tell him as you step inside the apartment. He nods, waiting in front of the door while the aunt walks after you. As you venture into the apartment you see people, they’re sitting and talking. Fully clothed. Nothing is messed up, there’s no fluids on the floor.
The apartment smells… sterile almost. It’s this medical sort of smell. Definitely no smells akin to a sex party.
There’s someone standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, the sun cast straight down on them but as you look away you can’t help but notice there’s no shadow attached to them. And it does nothing but confirm your suspicions.
There aren’t many doors to the apartment, but there’s one that’s closed and you head towards it.
“That’s just a closet,” The aunt says, her voice catching up to her as she walks behind you. You raise an eyebrow, feeling something more than a closet behind the door. “Can I see some—“ Throwing the door open, you see what you had honestly expected.
The aunt, the actual aunt, is lying on her bed. Her throat is cut and judging by the color of the wound and the blood-soaked sheets, she’s been dead for a day.
“C'mon man,” Westly says as his skin twists and shifts until you see the man you’ve been looking for. “You really shouldn’t have looked inside.” As he talks, you notice the sounds of the ‘party’ completely disappear. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a gun, pointing it at you. He flicks his hand, motioning for you to raise yours and you do.
“What gave it away?” He asks, backing you into the room and then closes the door with his foot.
“No shadows,” You shrug. “And it didn’t smell like a group of people who just fucked. Guessing you wouldn’t know that smell since…” Making a motion to his crotch, he grits his teeth and flexes his fingers.
“I fuck,” He swears and you just give a noncommittal nod. “I do!” He shouts and stomps his foot. Hmm. Childishness definitely wasn’t in the profile. As he stomps his foot a second time, again swearing that he gets laid, the door slams open and he’s knocked forward. Accidentally pressing the trigger, you duck and quickly pin him while he’s already on the floor.
“You definitely don’t,” You laugh, pinning his arms behind him with one hand while grabbing your cuffs with the other.
“We got him,” Derek tells the others as you’re cuffing him. “He killed his aunt…” He pauses as he looks at you, bringing the man to his feet. He’s shifting between forms, trying to find one that makes your grip loosen. “…and tell the PD they’re going to need the power collar.”
“Mutant?” Emily asks and Derek confirms.
—
A celebration is in order following the case. It’s the team's first mutant case in three years and this time no one got away from it with any injuries. The last time Derek walked away with a scar on his back but he says it helps him with the ladies so he doesn’t mind it anymore.
The actual celebration happens the day after you land back in DC. And of course, you’re going straight to the bar. Penelope asks for all the details, minus the blood and death. So not many details, just the action and Derek is more than willing to tell her as you’re ordering a second glass of vodka party punch. It’s heaven in a drink; vodka, Hawaiian punch, ginger ale, pineapple juice, and orange juice. With an orange slice.
Squeezing the juice into the cup, you put the slice into your mouth and listen to them talk, enjoying the slice as Spencer slides you his own lemon slice. He’s in the middle of his own conversation but he doesn’t miss a beat as he passes it over.
He doesn’t drink all that much; there’s mostly soda in his drink with maybe a hint of alcohol. If you ask him, he’d probably say something about not liking being inebriated, which is valid and definitely one of the reasons. But you think he’s read about the side effects, he’s afraid that too much alcohol will raise his chances of… well, becoming his mother.
So it’s incredibly rare for him to drink, aside from a shot every other bar trip, you’ve never seen him drink. Except that one time he said fuck it and did a line of shots with the team. He did end up throwing up after ten minutes, but he did it.
Putting the orange slice on the napkin, you take a slow sip of your drink before picking up the lemon. It’s not overly juicy, you think the salt on the rim of his glass had taken most of it away but it’s still sour.
“You look like a child,” Emily notes as she stares at you, the lemon wedge between your lips and you’re messing with the mini umbrella that came with your drink. You frown and it’s big and exaggerated due to the lemon slice. “How did you make it into the FBI again?” She jokes. Rolling your eyes, you lean back in the booth and look around the bar.
It’s a Saturday, so there’s a ton of people inside. You can see countless people bordering on blackout drunk, another person who’s definitely already thrown up, and a bachelorette party. The bride-to-be is wearing a large plastic crown and a white sash while the others wear black sashes. With matching outfits, you see the maid of honor walk up to the soon-to-be bride. She’s wearing a bronze sash and you make eye contact for a second.
She laughs and you remember the lemon slice and smile. It only makes her laugh harder and you chuckle, leaning forward to spit it out.
She’s cute, sure, but you’re not one for flings. Plus, you doubt you’ll meet anyone worthwhile at a bar, nothing against them. It’s just that you only ever go there for work. They’re at the bar for fun.
“Go and say hi,” Derek encourages as you’re wiping spit from the corner of your mouth. You hum and then shake your head. He makes a noise and pushes your shoulder. “You caught a mutant yesterday, I think you deserve to get laid.” He adds and your face scrunches.
“Whaddya mean?” You ask to which Derek gives a noncommittal shrug and rolls his hand.
“It could’ve gone real bad.” He explains. “I heard of a squad going up against a woman who controls blood. None of them survived.” He sighs and leans over to knock his knuckle against your forehead. “Luckily that dude only had shape-shifting powers.” Nodding, you rub the spot and look back to the other patrons of the bar.
The bridal party is gone, bar hopping no doubt. In the spot they once stood at, you see some college students. Looking away, you reach for your drink and take slow sips as the conversations around you merge into talks about mutants.
They all talk, giving their opinions. You try not to care, to act as if you’ve thought about mutants from a normie perspective but you can’t. God, you wish you could. But you can’t and all you can do is down the rest of your drink before the need to speak overcomes your need to not tell government workers you’re a mutant.
Sometimes you wish there were different work events. Like renting out a hall or going out to eat. That way you won’t go home with a headache from the music or an empty stomach because you’d forgotten to get food and smacked on the free peanuts at the table.
With no one sober, everyone stands a distance away from the bar waiting for their respective Uber. Everyone is a good couple of feet away from one another, something you’ve learned over the years. Drivers tend to think you’re all trying to ride together and cancel it. But you and Penelope always split one, considering you’re neighbors it saves money and time.
“This is us,” Pen tells you as a silver car rolls up to your location. Nearly everyone else is gone. Rossi had actually called up a taxi company, which you had forgotten were still around. It was a little weird.
“You sure you don’t wanna come?” You ask Spencer as he’s the last one there. His plan is waiting for an actual taxi, considering he doesn’t have any ride app on his phone and got the number from Rossi.
He shakes his head but you sigh and tug him along. He lets you, stumbling over his feet before you have him slide in after Penelope. Awkwardly sitting with his knees high up, you follow after him and make sure everyone else is comfortable. You don’t mind sitting up front if need be.
Glancing at Spencer, you find him twiddling with his thumbs and eyes forward on the road. You wonder what he’s thinking, maybe if you’d been a telepath, you would’ve figured out ages ago just which thoughts race through his mind the most. But no, you can just tell that your driver really needs to pee but the apartment building is still another ten-minute drive.
He glances at you as you look away. His mind flashing the way you smile with the lemon slice, how Derek describes the take down with the mutant. God, he wishes Derek hadn’t gone into so much detail because Spencer has never wanted to be an UnSub more in his life.
His eyes flutter back to the road as he tries to get the pictures out of his mind. Facts, he thinks of every single fact he can. Anything to distract him. His mind wanders to cases but he finds you in all of them. It wanders to Doctor Who but he finds you in those, too. And he doesn’t even know how or why. You’ve never spoken about the show!
“Hunky,” Penelope calls, leaning forward to look past Spencer and at you. You hum, looking at her with a smile. “Do you think you could check on my sink? It’s been making this noise and you know I hate to ask Josh—“
“Course,” You nod. “Give me an hour to wash off bar germs and I’m all yours.” She smiles and looks at Spencer. He’s trying not to get in either of your views, pressing himself impossibly close to the faux leather seats.
“Who’s Josh?” He asks and she groans, pushing herself back into the seat.
“He’s one of the maintenance workers. He lives in the building so he’s always on call. But he sorta hates Pennie,” You explain with a huff. Spencer almost laughs, he can’t imagine someone not liking her. She’s like the most lovable person alive! He asks why and you snort while she reaches over to slap your leg. “He found out she’s a hacker and said that’s not a real job, so she ‘accidentally’ flashed her badge.”
“Ah,” He nods. He knows well enough how fragile men’s egos are and a part of him worries that she isn’t safe. Shit, Pen couldn’t go through another crime happening in her apartment. She only moved into your apartment building following her getting shot and he’d hate for it to happen again.
“He’s harmless, though,” You reassure him. “He’s more of the passive-aggressive type. He’ll talk shit about her decor or won’t answer calls until a week later.” But how many times had you heard that same exact phrase? How many times did no one expect the killer to be the killer? “And I know him. He’s sorta afraid of blood.” Ah. Okay, that’s better.
“He fainted once,” Penelope laughs at the memory.
“He faints every time,” You correct with a snort.
Soon enough the three of you are piling out of the car and you’re in the middle of unlocking the front door when you turn to Spencer.
“You want to spend the night? Or I could get you an Uber… if you want.” Checking the time, he purses his lips and thinks about it.
“You don’t mind?” He asks and you shake your head.
“I have some clothes that would fit you and a guest bedroom.”
“After my sink gets fixed.”
—
Awkwardly standing in your doorway, Spencer watches as you toss your shoes into a rack. There are about seven pairs, various shoes he’s seen you wear to work before along with a pair of house slippers that you immediately put on. He looks at the walls where there are framed pictures of the team together. Nothing predating you joining the team, he quickly notes.
“Come in,” You beckon him. He listens as you venture further into the apartment, now standing in your living room. For some reason, whenever he imagined your home, Spencer pictured something more… masculine? He pictured weights and exercise equipment lying around. Protein powder jugs on the kitchen island. Some sort of apartment from those fitness men online.
But no, it’s a normal apartment. You decorate it pretty frugally. A sofa and two chairs, a coffee table, tv, and lamp. No rug, though. Each piece is different: the leather chair, the velvet chair, and the cotton sofa. A second-hand coffee table, he figures, has several different items scattered about. It almost makes him nauseous with how much stuff is on there.
“I put some clothes in the guest bed. Feel free to pick whatever or go into my closet,” You tell him as you lean against a wall. There’s a towel over your shoulder and your shirt is a little unbuttoned. Not to mention the pants are already undone and he sees your boxers peeking out. “There’s a bathroom across from the guest bedroom. Feel free, again.” You tell him and start to walk away before you turn around.
“And a closet with towels and rags, it’s to the right of the bedroom.”
“Thanks,” He nods, unable to say anything more than that until you’re away.
Mentally, Spencer strangles himself on the way to the guest bedroom. With an IQ as high as his, he should be able to form proper sentences. A proper thank you at least. But no, he gets thrown off by a little bit of skin like a teenager.
As he’s sorting through the clothes you’d given him, he hears you walk down the apartment again.
“There’s also a washer and dryer. It’s in the room that has a frosted glass door.” You explain, vaguely pointing down the hallway.
Rich. He wants to say, to tease but he just nods and thanks you again. But he can’t imagine having a washer and dryer inside of his one-bedroom apartment. Hell, he doesn’t even have an elevator! Old buildings are good, though. They’re more structurally sound and last longer than the more modern apartments.
Not that he minds your apartment. He likes it… he’d live there if he could.
Twenty minutes comes and passes and Spencer is fresh out of the shower, moving his clothes into the dryer while you’re still in the shower. He doesn’t know what to do while he waits.
It would feel a little invasive to explore but he doesn’t want to just sit on the guest bed until you’re done.
He ends up venturing into the living room again, this time he settles onto the couch. As he sits there in a pair of blue sweatpants and one of your old band t-shirts, he finds a small library on a wall. There’s ten or so books and it all but draws him closer. Luring him in like a siren's song he picks up the first book he can and goes to sit down.
Another five minutes pass before he hears the shower stop. It had become background noise in the otherwise silent apartment that it nearly scared him when it turned off. He tries not to listen as the glass door slides open and instead he rereads the book, the voice in his head filling the space the shower had left.
“Heading to Pen’s, wanna join?” You ask, fixing your shirt over your sweats. Spencer looks up from the book and you see him physically pause at the shirt. It’s a yellow star under the words My Tummy Hurts in various bright colors. Then he sees the pants and has to look away for a moment, minion sweatpants. “Not too much on my outfit.” You warn.
“Didn’t say anything,” He says as he sets the book on the spot next to him. You just wave him after you and head across the hall in your house slippers. He follows, hurriedly putting his converse back on as you knock on the door.
“Just in time,” Penelope whines as she pulls the two of you inside of her apartment. She’s watching music videos, her way of winding down for the night. Spencer feels more at ease in her apartment; he’s been in her old one a handful of times.
They chat as you grab the tools from under Penelope’s kitchen sink. She laughs at your pajamas, telling him about the others you have. The Hello Kitty fluffy pants, the Scrooge gown, the Cookie Monster sweats, and, most infamous your Sugar Daddy crop top.
“I’m a little surprised he had those,” She admits, referencing the outfit you’d given Spencer while the three of you head to her bathroom.
“I have normal night clothes,” You defend. They share a look and then stare at you. Clearly, your track record shows a different story. Rolling your eyes, you get to work under the sink.
Spencer watches as you unscrew various parts of the pipe and grab a long, metal pipe cleaner and swirl it. All the while you and Penelope talk, she offhandedly mentions a girl visiting your place the day before the team left for the case and you brush it off. He thinks that’s a tell, that maybe you like the girl. Maybe you’re already dating and by the way she describes the mystery girl, he’s sure you are.
Nearly sighing, he watches as you remove the cleaner and flick the hair clumps into a plastic bag and push it back into the pipe. He almost gags and has to look away from the damp drain hair. You’re sure it’s clear by that point and re-screw everything into place. And with a quick water test, her sink is fixed.
The whole thing lasted less than five minutes and he now knows who to call if he needs household repairs. Unintentionally, his mind wanders, imagining you at his door with a white tank, a tool belt, baggy jeans and heavy boots. He’s probably ill-dressed, just his pants, because his landlord likes turning the heat up—
He stops himself, focusing back on the conversation as you’re checking Penelope’s windows and locks. He assumes it’s some sort of tradition, since it’s like clockwork for the two of you.
Once every nook and cranny is checked, you head out and back into your apartment, where you immediately check your own windows. He doesn’t miss the three locks on the front door, although only two are locked. On purpose, he notes. He’s unsure of what to do with himself, if he should help or stay out of the way. If he should even speak at all, he honestly hasn’t spoken much the entire night.
“I’m going to bed,” You tell him in a soft tone, dimming the hallway lights. Damn, you have a washer and dryer and a light dimmer. “You can stay up, eat, drink, whatever. Just clean up, yeah?” You smile at him and then offhandedly look towards the kitchen. “Cups and plates are in the cabinet labeled cups and plates.” You add with a small laugh.
“Thank you,” He says and you nod before walking away. He doesn’t miss the fact that as you’re closing your bedroom door, you’re already discarding your shirt.
Mystery girl sure is lucky.
—
You loved your job, you truly and wholeheartedly did. But you didn’t like it. You didn’t like the fear that, as you’re sitting at your desk, someone is getting murdered. The fear that you’re never going to be fast enough, there’s always going to be serial killers and kidnappers and rapists. And you won’t always catch them.
But you loved your job, you loved the closure, you loved the sense of family the team had. You loved that no matter how late you were, there would always be one less killer on the streets thanks to you.
And yet, sometimes you find yourself drifting to the paperwork to quit. You can’t help but wonder if this job, doing this is what you want to do. If it’s where your skills are being used to their best. There are several things that keep you at your desk, keep you on the BAU’s payroll and on that jet.
One of them is Spencer.
You like him more than you’d admit; he’s your closest friend aside from Derek. You joined with Derek, the two of you were basically brothers by the time Spencer joined and found a quick friendship with him. Both are special in their own way.
Emily liked to joke that the two of you were Spencer's bodyguards, and you’d never be too far from the doctor.
Maybe that’s why you stayed. Maybe it wasn’t for him specifically, maybe it was that you couldn’t leave him behind. His head was too big to worry about getting hurt, but yours had more than enough space to worry about you and him.
Maybe not, maybe so. You didn’t care; all that mattered was getting your work done faster so you could relax. You do end up finishing your files in record time and spend a second thinking of something to do. There’s not much, aside from making something to drink.
“Spence,” You call and he looks up from his book. “Why can’t we stop inflation if it’s made up?” He grins, setting the book down and you know you had his full attention.
That’s his favorite type of question.
Spencer, as he’s most known for, houses a ton of information in his head. He loves information, in some ways he’s a glutton for information. He digests information at the same rate that he breathes and he loves it. But something that he loves more is sharing that information, he spills and spills the words laying dormant in his head. They beg to be heard, flying out of his mouth faster than he can process that the person has checked out.
But not with you.
They never fly, he never loses that focus a person first has when they ask him a question.
You’ve always engaged with him, you nod and you ask questions. What he loves the most is when you remember what he said. He loves that feeling more than anything he’s felt before. That feeling of teaching— someone has learned something because of him, sometimes he wishes he’d become a teacher just to experience that. Give his never-ending wisdom to the youth or even college students.
Spencer loves your questions almost as much as you love hearing him talk. He learns a bunch of random facts, knowing sometimes your questions aren’t about anything in particular. Sometimes they’re about history or a college sort of science but he likes the random questions. It makes him feel less like a robot.
He explains, watching as you let out a great big exaggerated huff before returning back to him. It's confusing, but he explains it as many times as you need. With no secret frustration.
He smiles, the corners of his lips reaching his nose when you finally get it; explaining it back to him just to ensure you’ve understood him correctly.
“Still stupid,” You mutter and he nods.
Spencer watches you with barely hidden heart eyes, he commits you to memory every time he sees you. His… crush of sorts has only gotten worse since the impromptu sleepover the week prior. Never had he woken up to breakfast being made, freshly squeezed orange juice, and soft music coming from a hidden record player he’d yet to find.
Penelope didn’t join, which you said was normal. She tended to take longer to get ready so you prepared a separate bowl for her, for while she’s on the road. So for the entirety of his morning, it was just the two of you. Hanging around… talking, eating… it was nice. Too nice. The poor kid didn’t know how to act, choosing the yes and approach to nearly all the conversations.
You’d even gotten him a toothbrush!
Derek snickers from behind him and he huffs, rolling his chair so he was facing Derek and not you. Derek just makes a kissing motion with his hands before messing with Spencer’s hair and walking away.
He shakes his head and quietly fixes his hair as you and Derek walk to the exit of the bullpen to grab lunch for the team. He would’ve joined but he’s needed by another team, requested to have the infamous Spencer Reid look over their case files.
Inside Derek's car, the two of you listen to the radio, mindlessly rocking your head to the beats until he lowers the music at a red light.
“So,” He starts, looking at you with a wide grin. “You and Pretty boy.” You roll your eyes and look forward. There’s a black SUV in front of you, the back window has those family stickers and there’s about seven kids and a pregnant woman sticker. “Don’t give me that look,” He laughs, pushing your shoulder. You just look at him, unamused.
“So, you’re telling me that nothing happened between the two of you?” He asks, now looking forward. Chuckling as you see his eyes widen at the number of children.
“Nope,” You shrug. “It’s almost as if I can take someone home and not sleep with them.” Rolling his eyes, he inches the car forward when the light switches.
“I’m just saying, you two have a lot of chemistry.” He shrugs back. Pursuing your lips, you sigh. “What? You don’t like Spencer?” Glancing at you, Derek’s eyebrows furrow.
“It’s not that,” Shaking your head, you change the station as Taylor Swift plays. “It’s just… I dunno. I don’t really think about dating,” Dating normies, at least.
“You’ve never dated?” He asks, his voice thick with what you can only assume is disbelief.
“I have. Just— I mean, Spencer is great. He’s funny, smart, he has goals, he has hobbies, definitely not a serial killer, and he’s shown he can be committed.”
“But?” Derek urges.
The silence following his question is thick.
You sit in your seat, thinking about the negatives that would come from dating Spencer. If you even liked him romantically. You think about it and dating Spencer seems nice in your head. Waking up next to him, date nights with him. But it wouldn’t be a dream and there would be actual issues with dating him. There's paperwork, no doubt. If either one of you progressed to unit chief then you’d be transferred to another team or branch entirely. If you can even keep your job. If things lasted, then you’d have to tell him you’re a mutant. He’d meet your family, know the truth.
It’s not worth it. You decide. You can’t trust someone to that degree, not even if you’re dating them.
“It’s complicated.” You finally tell him. “I think… I do like him. But,” Shaking your head, you almost groan as there’s another red light. “I know I couldn’t date him.”
“It’s not because of some hidden homophobia, right?” Derek laughs and you laugh back, shaking your head.
“Please, I’ve sucked too much dick and fucked too many men to be ashamed of being bi.” He holds his hands up, playfully surrendering before he looks at you.
“What’s the worst that could happen? Honestly,”
“One of us dies and the other has to deal with the grief.” He kills you for being a mutant or gets killed trying to protect you. The first one just seems highly unlikely.
“Oh,” Licking his teeth, you nod. “Well, what’s the best that could happen?”
“Nothing bad happens and we get married and adopt two kids. Maybe a cat. Definitely a cat.” He accepts you for being a mutant and doesn’t kill you.
“And what most likely will happen?” He asks and you think about it.
“We date, test the waters and see what happens from there, probably come to the mutual understanding that while we do have feelings for each other our careers come first and end things.”
“God, you’re sad.” Morgan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I’m realistic about the negative sides of life.”
—
For the first time ever, it’s your turn to host the team's movie night. Truthfully, you don’t know how you’ve managed to evade it for three years, but it’s caught up to you. You think because Spencer had mentioned your apartment to Derek and Emil,y causing them to think if they’ve ever been. Which led to you opening your door to the team.
You’d gone all out, truthfully, you’d been nervous and made snacks to calm yourself down. It didn’t fill all of your time so you even steam cleaned your couches— it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be. Just a little murky.
Normall,y you’re not such a worrier but this was a momentous occasion. It was a tradition you had avidly avoided for nearly four years without getting caught and now, oh lord, now they were aware of it.
“Hey, guys,” You greeted them after Penelope had knocked on your door for a minute straight. To think you would’ve gotten there in the same amount of time if she’d knocked once.
“This was on your door?” Emily hands you a paper and you take it while letting them inside. It’s a note, written in a language you’re all too familiar with.
Krakoan.
You don’t read it yet, if it was an emergency, you would know. Rather, you lock the door and put the note on your bed for later.
“You have a nice place,” Derek comments when you return.
“Thank you,” You smile. “What movie are we watching? I have like all the movie apps,”
Everyone settles on a movie: The X trilogy. While searching for it, you and Spencer get up to serve everyone. It’s really just moving everything from the kitchen into the living room, everyone self serves during movie nights.
“I didn’t know you baked,” He admits, eyeing the cookies he knew for a fact weren’t store-bought.
“I stopped some time ago,” You sigh, staring at the cookies, a recipe your younger sister had created. “But I might start back up, I missed making them.”
“They smell amazing,” It’s true, he swears he’s not just saying that. The cinnamon and white chocolate smell from the cookies makes his stomach rumble a bit. They look even better, large cookies with crispy edges.
“Thank you,” Guiding him back to the others, you move to turn down the lights and double-check that everything is going according to plan.
The girls all share a couch and a blanket, knees knocking together and sharing shoulders. Hotch and Rossi had taken the chairs on either side so that left you, Derek, and Spencer on the floor. Not that any of you minded, the girls definitely didn’t mind messing with you and Spencer’s hair every so often.
Derek made it a point to have Spencer next to you, even claiming that he didn’t want the blanket so the two of you were forced to share it. Spencer wasn’t as uncomfortable as he thought he’d be, especially sitting on the floor that he didn’t clean himself or see get cleaned, but your floor had this smell to it. An almost jasmine scent that didn’t linger for long, so you obviously cleaned.
Plus he saw the couch cleaner when he was helping you bring the food.
His hand brushes yours under the cover, an honest accident because the glass of soda had made his hands ridiculously cold. He flinched away but you didn’t even acknowledge it, so he tested the waters and put his hand back. With his heart racing, his hand finds yours and you turned your palm up, holding his hand.
You can feel his blood rushing, feel the air in his lungs rush out and rush in before they slowly calm down. You don’t think the movie is scary, shocking for sure. But Pearl definitely isn’t scary. Side glancing at Spencer, you find he’s biting his thumbnail before he drops it and messes with the fabric of the blanket.
Weird.
Spencer can’t even focus on the movie anymore; your hand is so warm against his. Your thumb is gently caressing against his hand and he can smell your hair. He gulps, blinking to try and focus on the movie. She’s chasing the neighbor girl; why?
A knock on the door startles him and Penelope. It’s two sharp knocks and you excuse yourself, the warmth from your hand makes Spencer frown, his hand now feeling incredibly empty.
Checking the peephole, you glance back at the others before exiting the apartment with the lock out so it wouldn’t lock on you.
“Did someone leave a note on your door?” Josh asks while messing with his nails. They’re dirty, he’s undoubtedly been digging in the dirt again.
“Yeah, why?” Moving him away from the door, he messes with his hair. The long blonde strands fall in front of his face before he sweeps them away. You can see bits of dried blood on his roots and squint. “You’re hurt.”
“Yeah,” He stutters out a nod. “I think there's a mutant hunter in the building,” He says and looks around, you know there’s no one else in the hallway so you don’t look with him. “I-I had a note on my door. In Krakoan, was yours also…?”
“It was. I haven’t read it yet, I have friends over,” He nods and continues to pick at his nails.
“I just wanted to let you know, cause I’m heading to the school in ten minutes. Yeah, so, stay safe. Hank already knows and he’s sending a temp super for the building.”
“Okay, do you want help with anything?”
“Mm-mm, I got everything packed and ready to go. I’m just really shaken, y’know. After the sentinels ‘n’ shit we dealt with.”
“Yeah, no, I get it, J.” He smiles but looks up and down the hallway again. “Stay safe, remember there’s a couple of safe houses between here and the school.”
“I have them in my GPS— you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, haven’t sensed anything wrong.” He nods and then takes a step back.
“Well, I’ll see you. Maybe in a week, hopefully this place is still standing.” You laugh to calm his nerves and watch as he leaves before going back into the apartment.
Josh isn’t a paranoid man; maybe he does hate technology but that’s not because of the government or anything. You try being stuck in a computer for a year and see if you wanna use one again. But you’re not worried about mutant-hunters, you would be able to tell if someone was sneaking up on you. Not to mention they were rarely ever quiet or hush-hush about what they did.
Going back into your apartment, you lock the door and rejoin Spencer. The movie has since ended and everyone is waiting for you to return.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Derek asks once you’re on your way back.
“Down the hall to the right, the door is open.” He thanks you and gets up, his feet echoing in the empty hallway. “How’d the movie end?” Settling back down next to Spencer, you grab a cookie.
“She killed Mitsy, lays down with her mother before posing her parents dead bodies for one last dinner. Howard returns from the war and finds them,” Emily explains.
“Pretty sure we had a case like that,” You muse and Penelope gags. How she agreed to watch a scary movie is beyond you, not to mention she’s queuing up the next movie.
Derek returns from the bathroom soon after and she plays the movie. Your hand ends up under the blanket again, unable to focus on the movie as you think about Josh. You should’ve used the bathroom break to read the note— or read it once Emily gave you the damn paper.
Spencer’s hand finds yours again in the middle of a sex scene. It’s awkward, watching a sex scene with your boss in the room. Derek makes jokes, of course he does, and Emily makes counter-jokes.
“I bet (Y/n) made more girls scream than you,” Emily chuckles and you look back at her, mouth agape.
“Is that some type of insult?” You squint and she covers her mouth.
“Oh, please, how many women have you been with?” Derek rolls his eyes.
“Two,” You shrug and he hollers, clapping his hands as if that proves his point. “I’ve been told I’m an amazing lover— besides, you’ve been a hundred women for one night, I was with two women for three years.” There’s some ohhhs from the girls and you laugh.
“Let’s watch the damn movie,” Derek grumbles.
When the movie is over, everyone agrees it’s late and starts heading home. Spencer is the last one out, helping you clean up the little things that the others hadn’t. The lights are turned up, not by too much, but enough that you can see what you’re sweeping up.
He’s wiping down the counters, chewing on his bottom lip.
“(Y/n)?” He calls and you look over. He blinks and thinks for a moment; he didn’t even mean to call you. “Are there any more cookies?”
“Yeah, should be.” Setting the broom against the wall, you head over to the kitchen and grab a Tupperware from the fridge. There are five left and you hand him the container. He thanks you and takes one, you grab one too and a napkin to catch anything that falls. He stands across from you, holding a hand under the cookie to catch the crumbs.
He’s nervous again, for some reason. His heart is racing and he’s sweating. Especially on his hands.
It’s clearly because you’re staring at him with a twinkle in your eyes; something you’re not aware of. You finish the cookie and toss the napkin into the trash before relaxing against the counter.
“You wanna spend the night again?” You grin, head tilted to the side. He’s probably worried about going home or something.
“Sure,” He nods and you smile wider. Clearly, you can read him like an open book.
“I’ll get you some clothes. Come,”
He follows you into your bedroom, taking it in. There’s a smaller dresser next to the closet, your bed is in the middle of the room, big enough for three people with large blankets and pillows. There are a lot of decorations, too. Trinkets, pictures, books, journals, posters, records— he still hasn’t found the player. You take the time he’s distracted to hide the note inside your dresser.
“Pick whatever, I don’t mind.” You tell him while finding your own night clothes. He nods and follows after you, picking up the first shirt he finds. A yellow and blue shirt with frayed edges and a pair of red pants with two white stripes going down the outer side. You omit a shirt, grab a pair of baggy shorts and head into your bathroom.
Spencer gets changed in the other bathroom and waits in the hallway. Was this an invitation into your room? He’s not sure yet again. He really should speak up.
“Was the movie too scary?” You joke when you exit the bathroom. “We can share a bed, if you’d like,”
“Sure,” Like an excited puppy, he rushes into the room and you turn the lights off with a yawn. You lay down first, placing yourself closer to the door and then pat the bed. Spencer joins and stares at you for a second before he gets comfortable.
“G’night, Spence,”
“Goodnight,”
—
It’s shocking that there’s another case only two weeks after the first one. There are typically three and a half weeks of downtime between cases but everyone is called into the meeting room by Hotch. Penelope rushes in, her kitten heels loudly echoing on the concrete path.
“Today's case,” Penelope sighs as she taps on her tablet. “The Big Apple, we’ve been called in by um…” She trails off, her eyes darting to Hotch for a little assistance.
“Professor Charles Xavier.” He finishes and it just feels as if the word is collapsing on you. It feels like the life you’ve built up is coming down without leaving you any time to save it. Never has Charles asked for the FBI to help him; Erik sure as hell wouldn’t let him do that, either. You’ve never taken a mutant case in New York either, he handles those personally.
“Like the leader of the X-men?” Rossi asks, and god, you’re praying there’s a difference, Charles Xavier in New York. That this professor is like Spencer, a really smart cop in Brooklyn or something. Anything but the rich, bald man you’re imagining sent in this request to JJ. He probably bypassed her altogether, now that you think about. Telepathically spoke to Hotch and convinced him to take the case.
That's so something he would do.
“Yes.” Hotch confirms.
After that you space out, you can’t bring yourself to focus on the details. Not when your head is spinning and it sounds like you’re underwater, struggling to get to the surface as your hearing goes in and out. You stare at nothing but the table, unable to feel a single emotion. Or maybe you’re feeling them all at once, you can’t tell.
Your lack of mental attendance is noticeable to everyone else since you normally love going to New York for cases. You get to visit family and check out your old neighborhood. It’s odd, they don’t know why this is any different from the others until it clicks. There’s only one real difference between this case and the others.
Mutants.
“Wheels up,” Hotch says, eyeing you as you’re the first to stand up and grab your stuff. Spencer looks at Derek, confused but Derek is just as confused as he is. They give each other a nod and go to collect their to-go bags before heading to the airstrip. You’re already there, sunglasses on and you’d thrown a sweater on. Which is even more strange, since you never seemed affected by the weather before.
Spencer tried to speak to you, but you’re gone. Your head is somewhere so far even with him standing in front of you, you don’t acknowledge him. You head onto the jet last, despite being the first one there. You check your phone, nervously looking at the empty notification bar until you decide to put it face down on the table.
The jet is a little tense during take off, but it’s broken by Garica who’s been asked to join the others. She’s so excited to see the school for gifted youngsters, even more to see Wolverine who she says is her absolute dreamboat.
Everyone hears you try and silently snicker, sinking yourself into your seat when she says that.
Derek’s eyebrows knit together. He’s known you for a decade and he’d never thought you were a bigot before. Hell, he’d never seen you angry before. Not when someone spilt red wine on a brand new, very expensive shirt. Not when a family member of a victim had sucker punched you because they weren’t believing what you said. Not when you were being chewed out by Hotch or Strauss.
No one had ever seen you so much as frown, not seriously anyway. The wrinkles on your forehead were new despite how deep and prominent they looked.
You sigh, deep and heavy as you look out the window of the jet. There’s nothing some fucking BAU agents can do that a team filled with telepaths can’t. This is just some stupid ass plan by Charles, you know it.
Grabbing one of the files from the table, you look them over.
The case isn’t anything new, by any means. Aside from the fact that they’re mutants, it’s pretty identical to certain cases you’ve had before. A kidnapping followed by a three-day wait before their body is found dumped in Central Park with the Genovia Act stuffed in their mouths. Why this was hard for Charles to figure out, you don’t know. You’re sure there’s someone who can talk to the dead, or have Wanda talk to her husband and they do some magic and figure it out.
You don’t know any of the victims, you haven’t been back to that mansion since you left so you’re not all that caught up with who lives inside of there. You wish you could keep it that way but the plane lands and you’re all shuffled into government issued SUV cars.
Inside, you’re given the news that makes you want to kill yourself.
Your accommodations for the stay are at the school.
The large, older than anyone you knew mansion was something you honestly never wanted to see again. In your opinion, it would do the world a lotta good if it was gone. The only good thing about it were the open fields and woods surrounding it and if you focus you can feel the lake to the east of the mansion.
It’s calm, there’s no one around it, you guess it’s too cold this time of year to go for lake swims. You feel the wind flow back to the mansion, there are several dozen kids hanging about. Playing sports or sitting in the grass, they’re all scattered across the acres of land. There’s more inside the mansion, since it is a weekday, afterall and they still had school.
Pulling yourself out of the wind, you find that the car is rounding a corner and the Professor is waiting at the entrance. He’s different from the last time you’d seen him, most notably is that he’s back in his wheelchair with Cerebro nowhere in sight, but you still feel the same burning hatred for him as he sits there. To his left is Erik, and to his right is Logan.
“One hell of a welcome wagon…” Derek trails. You silently agree, waiting until the car comes to a stop before leaving the SUV.
“Greetings, BAU.” The professor presses his fingers to his temple and the bags float out from the car before anyone could move to grab them. He looks incredibly stupid, in your humble opinion. “Erik will show you to your rooms,” He lifts the bags after him as he enters the school, Logan following behind him.
“Our rooms?” Penelope gasps, buzzing in her shoes. She hadn’t been in the car when Hotch had explained that small, tiny little fact for the case. You swallow whatever you were wanting to say and your eyes flicker over to Logan. He greets you, silently and in a way only the two of you understand.
“To keep everyone safe, the team will be staying here.” Hotch explains. “Remember to be on your best behavior.” It feels targeted to you, but you don’t seem to care as you stare at Erik. You smile at him and he smiles back, his silver hair moving with the tentative breeze that blows past.
“Follow me,” He nods to the team and steps inside. You follow after, seeing the familiar halls of the school. You can hear the classes happening around you, you can feel the potential of young mutants. You feel everything around you, how the wood creaks and how there’s a single wooden panel that’s rotten and about to fall on someone’s head. You feel how people move around, using their powers and writing their essays.
You sigh, looking at the portraits on the walls and the way they once felt filled with hope. They feel like a painful reminder now. You see your old team, you see you, standing in that stupid suit with a half-face mask. With that stupid grin.
The steps aren’t covered in carpet anymore; they’re a glossy wood and you can only imagine it’s because speedsters and cloth don’t exactly mix.
“Your rooms.” Erik stops at the entrance to the East Wing dorms. You hadn’t even realized where he was taking you. But you can’t exactly say you didn’t expect this, of course, Charles would do this. “Your bags are in front of your doors. When you’re done, head down to the study.” He slips past everyone, his hand gently squeezing your arm as he passes by without another word.
“This is so cool!” Emily says, seeing her bag at the end of the hall. “God, I hope Storm is here!” The others chime in about their favorite mutant heroes, all of them finding their bags in front of a door.
You don’t need to look to see yours, you know your room.
Standing in front of it, you feel your eyes sting with tears. You can’t bring yourself to twist the golden knob. It’s gotten that dirty copper look after not being used for so long.
“Kid, you okay?” Morgan asks, suddenly behind you with a hand on your shoulder. “I know the rooms are kinda plain but you’ll live.” He reaches over you and opens the door. It swings open and you shudder at the sight.
“How come he gets a decorated room?” Morgan groans and everyone flocks to your room. They take in the room you’d grown up in, not a single part of it has changed. Your lip quivers as you remember what happened and that’s enough for you.
Snatching your bag from the floor, you toss it inside before slamming the door shut and heading downstairs. The others follow, a little concerned but also they don’t want to get lost in the huge school.
Emily notices how you move through the halls with ease, as if it’s muscle memory. How you know to be careful on the second to last step and walk with this vigor you never used to have. Spencer frowns, watching as you throw open a set of doors. He’s not too far behind, so when he reaches the door he sees the Professor sitting at the table.
“I need a different room.” You demand, walking past him to find a seat. Your seat, you’ve always sat in the seat closest to the window that overlooks the pond.
“I’m afraid they’re all occupied. Unless you’re willing to switch with one of your friends,” He says and glances at the others before his eyes settle back to you. He’s almost daring you, egging you on. He sighs and you concede. You know he’s lying, there are a dozen of empty rooms in the school.
“Fine.” You grit. “Let’s talk about the case, then.”
—
“How could you let him call us?” You whine to Erik, sitting on his desk as he cleans the books lining the walls. It’s lunchtime and the others were scattered about. Hotch had gone out for lunch, despite Charles's insistence that there was plenty of food for the team. “I can’t sleep in that room, Erik. I can’t.” Pulling your feet to the edge of the desk, you lay your head on your knees.
“I’m truly sorry,” He shakes his head, setting the feather duster on the shelf. “I wasn’t aware of his intentions until I saw the cars pulling up. I would’ve stopped him had I known.” He stalks over to you, caressing the top of your head before his hand reaches your back.
“I know,” You mutter. “I feel so angry now that I’m here. My team— my friends have noticed. They think I hate mutants,”
“I assume they don’t know.” Nodding, he sighs and takes his seat in front of you. “Why haven’t you told them?” Looking at him through your lashes, he raises an eyebrow, encouraging you to talk.
“I’m afraid,” You stress, dropping your legs. “They’re government agents and you know how much they like us! Hotch knows… kind of. He knows Bug is a mutant but that’s because they had a fling in law school,” Rubbing your head, you look at him. “I’m so afraid, Erik. I’m this…”
“Mutant?” He finishes but you shake your head.
“I’m Derek and Spencer’s best friend, I make sure Penelope’s house is safe because she got shot in her last apartment and she’s terrified of it happening again, I have monthly movie nights with the others. I’ve met their kids. They know that I cry when I watch Cujo because he didn’t deserve that. They know I have to eat my eggs with ketchup because otherwise they taste like too much egg. But I-I can’t even think about telling them this!” You ramble.
“You’ve adopted a normie life,” You nod and he continues. “Why? You’re an omega-level mutant, you could be so much more than an agent.”
“It’s better than that,” You shrug, gesturing to the picture of your old team hanging behind his head. His children were on your team, too. Polaris and Pierto at least. “My current team doesn’t worry about being attacked because they were born with the X gene or some world-ending event anymore. I don’t cradle their dying bodies, pushing their blood back into their system, and I’m not pulling the toxic gas from their lungs. I don’t get buried alive anymore! I can live a life!”
“Are you happy?”
“Am I happy? I’m safe!” You shout and immediately cover your mouth. He frowns and you can’t meet his face, your eyes staying on the floor.
“But are you happy? I’ve seen you online, you’re hiding. I know your smile,” He grabs your hand but you stand up and move away, holding yourself. “(Y/n),” He sighs. Your lips purse and you shake your head. “Are you even allowing yourself to love? To connect to someone romantically?”
“No.” Licking your lips, you stare at the door. “I can’t.”
“You cannot continue down this path, Charles mentioned feeling your affection towards Dr. Reid. Why not pursue him?”
“Man,” You scoff. “Tell your bald ass husband to stay out of my head!” He chuckles and lays his hand flat on your head. He’s going to let you avoid talking about Spencer for now; but not forever.
“He was concerned for you, he’d seen the news of your latest case. And you’ve ignored his calls,”
“I don’t want to talk to that British fuck.”
“Understandable,” He laughs. “Come on, your friends are waiting in the lounge for you.”
The lounge is a room that was originally meant to talk about missions before it was moved down to the basement. Nowadays it’s filled with arcade games and a pool table. Not to mention various seats in various states. The team is crowded around one of the tables, grabbing their food when you walk inside.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Erik says as he closes the door behind you.
“Er, this one is yours!” Penelope says, holding out your food. Thanking her, you take it and settle on one of the recliner chairs. It’s the funky one with the handle you have to jiggle five times up and then down once to make it leanback, you don’t, despite the urge to.
“Hey, kid,” Derek says, his voice barely hiding the tension he wants to push down. He sits on the couch that’s had enough blood on it to fill an Olympic-sized pool, but you can’t tell him that. Plus, it’s been cleaned well enough that you can’t even tell. You greet him back while ripping open the tissue paper, keeping the sandwich together. “You okay? You’ve been… off since Hotch said we’d be working this case.” It’s hard to miss the ears that tune in to the conversation, the not so sutble conversation quieting until it’s nonexistent.
“I’m fine,” You look at him and then Spencer. He tucks his hair behind his ear when your eyes meet before he looks down at his sandwich. “Just tired.” He nods, pretending to understand.
“Because I’m here if you want to talk, get something off your chest.” He adds and you nod into your sandwich.
“I’m good, trust.”
—
It’s late. You’ve gone into the city and spoken to the witnesses who found the victims, you’ve gone through all the evidence and begrudgingly worked with Charles to try and find a necromancer who wasn’t away or evil. Which is harder than you expected it to be. He could also be lying.
But, the moon was rising and it was time to turn in for the night. Everyone had gone upstairs to their room but you made the excuse that you were fixing up the paperwork to stay down longer. Instead, you ventured outside and sat in front of the pond.
The water is deeper than most expect it to be, it connects to a secret room the water mutants use from time to time. You dip your hand inside the water, feeling the fish dart away from the sudden movement and the plants move with the soft ripple of water. Your hand travels to the mud and you find the earthworms eating away, the air moving through the roots of trees and flowers. You find the animals making their homes underground before your hands touch the grass. The snails and ants crawl on blades, one is strangely close to you and you find it.
The snail glides on your finger, moving up your hand before it settles on your knuckle. It’s tiny, barely the size of your fingernail, and stares at you before it turns around. It goes back onto the grass and disappears from sight.
Laying flat on your back, you close your eyes and imagine yourself anywhere but there.
“Get your ass inside,” Logan says from above you. Cracking your eyes open, you stare up at him.
“Your tits are blocking the moon,” You tell him. He growls, flexing his hands. “Oh, please stab me. I want to go home.” He sighs, it’s deep and heavy and then he moves so he’s opposite to the moon.
“You can’t sleep out here,” He says and you shrug. “You have to go inside.” He urges again. Logan doesn’t try to sound convincing, despite his words. It’s oddly void of any concern and it’s mainly annoyance in his tone.
“I don’t have to do anything but die.” You correct him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighs heavily.
“Fine,” He grunts. “When Ororo drags you inside, don’t say I ain’t warn you.” He walks away and you close your eyes again. It’s some time before the moonlight is blocked again and you crack your eyes open, half expecting it to be Erik.
“Spence,” You blink, sitting up. He fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt and looks back at the school. “What’s up?” Nervously, he gives a half smile and points his thumb back to the school.
“It’s late and it’s not good to sleep outside without the proper equipment,” He says. “I can see you from my window. It’s expected to get colder and possibly drizzle, so you’re more likely to catch a cold if you stay out here.” Looking towards the East Wing windows, you see Emily sitting on her windowsill, watching you. Hotch is at his, too.
“Okay,” You sigh, standing up. He nods and follows after you while staring at the grass stains on your shirt and pants. There’s bits of grass in your hair and he thinks there’s a snail on one of them but he’s not too sure about that last bit. You remove it with ease as you walk up the stairs, setting the grass on the banister and dusting yourself off.
“Do you want to switch rooms?” He asks once you’re at your door. “Or-or share?” He adds when you look at him, eyes heavy with regret.
“No, I’m fine. Thank you.” He doesn’t miss the deep breath you take as you push into the room. The knob feels impossibly cold in your grip and the door is heavy as you push it open and close. Thankfully, all the lights are off and the curtain is drawn so you can’t see anything. It’s muscle memory as you strip out of your dirty clothes and climb into the bed.
The covers are the same, it’s still so warm as you pull them up to your chest and imagine you’re home. Anywhere but in that room.
That night, for the first time in eight years, you have a nightmare. You don’t remember it when you wake up at five in the morning, you just feel the heavy beating of your heart, the sweat building on your forehead and the tears falling from your face. You see it in the fire burning in the center of the room, the small flame in the exact position you’d been all those years ago. You see it in the way the blanket is pulled taught, holding you safely to the bed.
The fire snuffs out and the blanket loosens so you can leave the bed and head into the bathroom. You just stand under the water, not bothering to get undressed or even turn the light on. It’s blistering hot but you can’t tell, it just feels wet. The temperature is nothing on your skin, not as the water goes arctic cold just as you’re taking your boxers off.
Grabbing the fresh washcloth from the sink, you wash yourself for what feels like an hour. The familiar-smelling soap does nothing to calm your nerves and you get out, feeling the water slip from your body and go down the drain.
You don’t know where to go as you’re getting dressed, but you know you can’t stay in your childhood room any longer than needed. You grab your phone, badge, and necessary items before leaving the room. Spencer is awake and exits his room at the same time you do, you acknowledge him with a glance and keep it pushing.
Your feet bang against the wooden floors while he barely leaves a sound. He follows you down the stairs, through the empty corridors until you enter the kitchen.
“(Y/n)?” He softly calls as you open the fridge. “The Professor didn’t say we could eat whenever…”
“That rich asshole can deal,” You grumble, stealing some eggs and cheese. “You hungry, Spence?” He hesitates but eventually nods. You nod back, pointing an egg at him. He goes to take it but you place them on the counter and check the cabinets for bowls. Finding one large enough, you throw it onto the counter and dip into the freezer for some frozen waffles. “Blueberry or chocolate?”
“Blueberry is fine,” Tossing the blueberry eggos next to the bowl, you flick the pilots on and start whisking the eggs. Spencer doesn’t like his eggs with anything, no salt or pepper, no adobo either. And you don’t feel like making two batches either.
“Wanna make me an omelet?” Scott grins and you nod, pointing to the fridge. He grabs three eggs and butter and you set them aside, throwing some butter onto the pan. “I’m Scott, by the way.” He introduces himself to Spencer.
“Spencer,” He dips his head down, trying to avoid looking at Scott’s glasses.
“He’s a doctor,” You grin, tossing four eggos into the toaster. Leaning against the counter, you grab an apple and hold it between your fingers. “Peppers in the omelet or plain?” Scott takes the apple and bites into it.
“Impressive,” He pats Spencer’s back. “And plain. I’m bulking.” Nodding, you pour yours and Spencer’s eggs into the pan.
“Twink death, I suppose.” With a large, exaggerated sigh you lean against the counter again, fanning yourself.
“Because you know all about that, right?” The two of you laugh, like really laugh and Spencer looks between the two of you. You’re loose, compared to yesterday. You’re smiling and happily engaging with Scott, you’re even making him food. Willingly. He doesn’t look past the clear history either and chews on his lip.
What type of history could the two of you possibly share?
“So,” Scott clears his throat. “You’re a doctor?” His eyes (Spencer thinks, he can’t tell) flicker to Spencer while you tend to the eggs.
“I have several PhDs, I’m not a medical doctor,” He explains and clears his throat. “So, technically, I am a doctor, just not a medical professional. But I am EMT certified as per the FBI guidelines.” Scott looks at you, eyebrow raised and you smile, looking away.
“That’s cool, I have red beam eyes.” He shrugs, lowering the glasses and blasts the apple. It sprays everywhere and one chunk hits you square in the forehead.
“I’m not cleaning that.” Scrambling the eggs, you move apple guts off of the stove while Scott grabs a paper towel.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Spencer asks and Scott points him in the direction. He thanks him and leaves while Scott throws away the paper towels. Once he's gone, Scott leans against the counter with his arms crossed.
“What?” You sigh, piling the eggs onto the plate.
“You always like the chatty ones,” He grins. “Wade, Tony for a week, Pierto, Jenn, and what was her name?” He snaps his fingers and you hush him.
“Misty and she was not chatty!”
“Mmhm,” He looks forward, his ankles now crossed. “You should date him.” He mutters. “You’d make a cute couple. A cute little FBI, mutie couple.” His nose crinkles and you roll your eyes.
“He’s not a mutant,”
“But you like him.” He tilts his head closer to yours and you push him away from you. Focusing on the omelet, you peel the sides and check to see if it’s ready to flip.
“Did Charles or Erik tell you to do this?”
“They talked about it,” He shrugs, pushing himself away from the counter. He walks over towards the kitchen island and sits down. “And I agree. You don’t have to only date other mutants. Your track record shows you mostly date normies.”
“My longest relationships were with mutants, though.” You add, looking back at him. “That track record says I should only date mutants.”
“Maybe he is,” Scott grins. “Like a super smart mutant. What then?”
“Then I’d jump his bones— I’m joking!” You shout as Scott cackles. “Nothing changes. I don’t date anymore.”
“Ah, straight to marriage.”
“Scott,” Adding cheese into his omelet, you blink. “Im good being single.”
“Sure, but you’re pushing forty and still single…” Scoffing, you face him and point the spatula towards Charlie’s office.
“Charles is like a hundred and still won’t admit he loves Erik. I feel like there are bigger issues than me not dating!” He waves his hand, dismissing your entire statement. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to date someone. I’m happy being single,”
“I know aromantics and asexuals— you’re not one of them. That’s sexual frustration speaking. All that anger and libido built up isn’t good,” Flinging his eggs at him, he grabs the plate and manages to catch all of it. “See. Someone who’s happy doesn’t do that to breakfast.”
“I really want Jean to divorce you.”
Spencer walks back into the kitchen soon after and Scott motions his head towards him as he leaves with his food.
—
The case is going… not horribly. But not good, either. Another two mutants have been found and you’re sure you’re going to strangle Charles soon. Your latest theory is that he’s faking the deaths, they’re clones or something. You don’t know. But you think all of this is hocus pocus.
You’re three days in now, talking with the others about possible suspects and trying to find some type of rhyme or reason to how they’re picking out the mutants. (It’s Charles, duh.)
“Crossing every possible line- race, gender, age, type of mutant,” Derek lists through a frustrated sigh.
“Were they runaways? Had loving parents?” You ask, only to humor Charles into believing this was a real case and not some weird ploy. The man in question thinks for a second before flipping through the pictures again. Of course you’d find some missing link in this case.
“I’ve met all of their parents, they’re from mutant families.” He lists off their families, naming the mutants they’re related to. Some of them aren’t well known to people, even heavily tied with the mutant community. You doubt most of the people in the mansion had heard of them— hell, you hadn’t.
“We need to talk to the families,” Hotch surmises.
“I fear it won’t be possible. Most of them are under the mutant protection act and cannot be contacted.” That’s not real. That’s something he just made up, but hey. Leave it to the telepath to lie. Charles sighs as he looks at you. Shrugging, you watch as they believe the lie with a little influence from the professor. “I can gather all the mutant families I know and have them know about this threat, though.” Your eye twitched as what he said sunk in.
This fucking asshole.
“Until then, we need to work on the profile.” Hotch says. “The geographical profile won’t be of any help, considering the dump sites are all within Central Park and victims go as far as Queens.”
“It’s likely the Unsub is a mutant himself,” Reid speaks up while fiddling with his pen. “He probably comes from an unsupportive family and envies those who have familial support or understanding.”
“Teleportation mutant isn’t uncommon,” Emily adds. “It would explain how he’s getting the bodies into the park without being noticed.”
“But the placement of the Accords wouldn’t make sense.” Rossi shakes his head.
“Throws us off the trail,” Hotch explains. “Professor, can you create a list of mutants with teleportation powers and narrow it based on who has an unsupportive family? Garcia, I want you to pull up all the footage from the area where the victims were taken, review it with Reid frame by frame.”
“Yes, sir,” She nods and the two of them head over to her station. It’s in the room, which is strange considering how many rooms the mansion has but this is a fake case, you don’t expect much.
Looking over the files, your leg continues to bounce. It’s a matter of time before Charles mentions your family. Hotch will if he doesn’t. You know him, he’s not going to keep something so important to the case a secret. Raking your hand through your hair, you shudder and lean back in your seat. This isn’t going how you wanted it to. You never wanted them to find out.
You’re fine having feelings for Spencer in private. You don’t care if he never knows, you don’t care. This part of your life was buried for a reason and you didn’t need to uncover it for the sake of a fake fucking case.
Looking around the room, you see Erik standing at the door. You think him and Charles are having a telepathic conversation by the way his face keeps switching emotions. He looks at you and offers a sympathetic smile before glaring at Charles and leaving. They’re back to the divorce stage, then. Great.
You wonder what the team will think. It’s been eight years of knowing them, eight years of working together so well you consider them family. A family that hates secrets, especially giant ones. They’ll view this as you not trusting them, that you’ve been lying for almost a decade. They’ll hate you.
“I found a possible victim,” Derek calls and you pull yourself together. “Nine years ago, a teenage girl was killed in Central Park by her boyfriend.” Your eyes widen as he says that, snapping to the professors while he just sits there. “Danella Harkens, she was a student here. Her parents were in the original X-men.” He nods, as though he’d just remembered her.
You feel sick to your stomach as all of this settles in. Your sister's death has been something you tried to warn him about— you knew her boyfriend wasn’t any good but she was a rebellious teenager who didn’t want to listen to anyone. You begged him to make her stop, you were away on a mission, you couldn’t do anything. He could’ve. And he didn’t.
“I remember her,” He turns to Derek while you’re breathing hard. “She was a lovely student. It’s a shame—“ He stops, holding his throat as the air in his lungs is removed. Quickly, his face starts turning shades of red and the others scramble to help him. They don’t know what’s wrong, how could they? You walk to the middle of the room, staring at him as he loses more and more air. He silently pleads to you to stop but you don’t. You like it. Watching him suffer.
“Stop it,” Scott whispers, placing a hand on your shoulder. You shake your head, face tight. “(Y/n), let him go.” He urges.
“He killed her,” You whisper.
“Let him go.” Closing your eyes, you push the air back into his lungs. Charles gasps, holding onto the chair for support while you’re pulled out of the room. No one notices, busy attending to Charles.
Scott takes you to the training simulation room, something he used to do when you still lived there. He clears out the class who don’t hesitate to leave, loving the free period they’ve been provided. He boots up some of the harder simulations, watching as you quite literally burn through them. The fire burns a powerful blue, turning the (holographic) metal into (holographic) puddles. It doesn’t matter that they’re fake, the programming feels so real that there are phantom injuries whenever someone gets attacked by one.
He watches the sweat build on your face and then get turned into tiny knives that fly through the air.
“What’s the Avatar doing?” Emma asks, standing next to Scott with her arms crossed.
“Blowing off steam,” He cringes when your fire fills up the entire room, leaving scorch marks along the wall. “The Professor brought up Ella and he thinks it’s a fake case.” She hums, tilting her head as you suck the fire back in and form a fire sword with it.
“Is it?” She asks. She wouldn’t put it past Charles to do some fucked up shit like that.
“No,” He shakes his head. “It’s very real.”
—
Danella Harkness, a name she’s given herself because she fell in love with the book character with her first name. Danella (L/n) is your younger sister, she was several years younger than you, fifteen when she died. She wasn’t the strongest mutant ever; she didn’t have much control over her power. It wasn’t anything crazy or new, controlling light. You’ve seen it used in amazing ways but she never got the hang of it.
It wasn’t often that a mutant family all had similar powers. The X gene didn’t carry what type of powers someone got. At least to your knowledge. But your mother has moon powers, your father has the wildest energy powers you’ve seen in a long time, your older sister controls gravity, and you have the most basic, elemental powers.
You stare at the family portrait inside one of the common areas, you’re all in your suits, smiling and alive. It was painted four weeks before Ella died. You’re thankful that she’s been immortalized in such a happy state but it still aches you to your core. She would’ve been twenty-four this year. It's been nine years since she’s died, nine years since you’ve been angry with the world.
You’ve been angry with Charles since you could be angry— he’s a shit person in general.
“There you are,” Spencer gasps, clearly out of breath as you sit with your back to the door. “Hotch is calling us, it’s dinner time.”
“I’m not hungry,” You respond and the doors close. Sinking into the seat, you stare at a nineteen-year-old you. You’re hardly smiling in that picture, but you’re happy. You can tell. You’ve never liked your smile all that much so you faked a nicer one for the painting. Your parents didn’t like that, they always wanted it redone to get your true smile but…
“Are you okay?” Spencer settles next to you. You scoot over, making room for him. His eyes follow yours, finding the painting. “Is that Danella?” He knows her face, of course, he does, he’s seen it once. He knows the slope of her nose, he knows how she had gotten a messy lip ring but he doesn’t know that she ran her finger along her nose to calm her down or that she’d gotten the lip ring because your older sister had gotten one.
“Yeah,” You bite without meaning to. “Yes,” You say in a calmer tone, silently apologizing.
“We didn’t get a file on the rest of her family,” He points out, a sense of urgency growing in his voice. “The sister and the brother could be in danger.” Your sister is flying in from her latest mission, according to Jean tells you. She’ll be back within the hour. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You don’t know what your life is going to look like after today.
“Who said danger?” A shrill voice says as the doors to the room slam open. You close your eyes, knowing the voice, while Spencer jumps.
“Excuse me?” He stutters, watching as Wade rushes across the room and flings himself onto the couch. His knee hits your head and you groan, holding the side of your head while he scrambles to sit down properly, squishing himself between you and Spencer. To Spencer’s credit, he moves over to give more space before eventually giving up and standing instead.
“Y’know, this is a niche crossover,” Wade sighs while looking at a wall. “I’ve only ever read beanstalk over here and Gambit boning for this crossover.”
“Fuck are you talking about?” You groan, checking your hand. There isn’t any blood, of course there wouldn’t be. But you felt that you should still check.
“Nothing.” He quickly says and then sighs dramatically and crosses his legs. “What were you two talking about?” He plays with the ends of your hair, smiling under his mask as you glare at him.
“None of your business,” Smacking his hand away, he hisses and blows on his hand. “God! Kill me!” Standing up, you circle around the couch to grab your sweater and gun holster when the others walk inside.
“We’ve been looking for you two!” JJ sighs, tucking some hair behind her ear. “The Professor wants to talk about the case, something about the Danella’s girls family.” Your eye twitches again, you never thought that was a real thing but leave it to Charles.
“Oh,” Wade drags out before he jumps over the couch and spins you into his chest. “And here I thought you were here for little ole moi,” He frowns as you push yourself away from him, angrily fixing your hair. “You used to like that.” He says while staring at the wall again.
“Do you ever shut up?” You seethe, looking for your gun holster. You were sure it was next to your sweater. Scanning the room, you find it next to the fireplace and squint. How the fuck?
“You know a couple ways to shut me up,” Wade sings, following after you. “Wink wink.” Grabbing your gun, you check the weight and then stare at Wade. “Wink.” His head moves as though he’s making an exaggerated wink.
“You two know each other?” Derek slowly asks.
“No.”
“We used to fuck raw.” Wade grins and you shout, ripping his mask off and shoving the barrel of your gun into his mouth. He moans, eyes shut while you can feel his tongue licking along the gun.
“You freak,” You spit, taking the gun off of safety. The others shout, begging you to stop but Wade pulls the trigger with a loud moan, his eyes rolling back. He drops to the floor without a sound, blood and oddly enough his teeth land on your face. “Some fucking peace and quiet!” You groan, wiping your face before you put the gun's safety back on.
“You just killed a man.” Penelope whispers, her eyes trained on the wall. Her eyes are red and there are already free flowing tears running down her face.
“Look man,” Derek takes a hesitant step forward. “We know you hate mutants but this is too far!”
“What?” You ask, hands on your hips.
“You killed him!” He shouts, a vein bulging out of his forehead.
“Do you guys know who that is?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Hotch pulls himself together, blinking away from Wades ‘dead’ body. You can see his head reforming already, steadily breathing again. “You killed a man.” Blinking, you turn to face your family painting. Thankfully, there’s no blood on it, protected by a thick bulletproof glass, considering how many different accidents happen in the school.
“He’s not— I’m so going to kill myself.” Pinching the bridge of your nose, you let out a loud sigh and turn around again. Charles and Logan stand at the door, slowly letting themselves in.
“Professor, I am… there’s no words to describe how sorry I am.” Hotch stumbles over his words. Xavier holds his hand up, staring at you as him and Logan move closer to you and Wade.
“You had to make it messy?” Logan grits, staring at the blood-soaked rug and the brains on the wall.
“He’s being a little bitch!” You defend, pointing your gun at him. “‘Sides he pulled the trigger this time.” He chuckles, shaking his head.
“Course he did,” He puts a cigar between his lips and leans over expectantly. Taking it, you hover it over the fireplace and put it between his lips. “Not what I wanted.” He mutters but takes a long drag from the cigar.
“Suck a dick.” Scrunching your nose as he blows smoke towards you, Logan rolls his eyes.
“I hope that got everything out of your system.” Charles sighs, watching as Wade starts to breathe again.
“If you weren’t in a wheelchair, I would’ve thrown you off of the Empire State Building by this point.” You admit, low enough that only the three of you hear.
“You should still do it,”
“Logan.” Charles blinks.
“My God, that was hot!” Wade shouts as he jumps up, his face still molding itself together. The others scream and you blink, you’ve never heard Hotch scream before. It’s strange. “Do it again.”
“No, you freak!” You spit. “You nearly got me locked up!”
“Bet you’d like that,”
“Wade,” Closing your eyes, you step away from him.
“My apologies for not explaining the situation earlier, Wade here has a mutation that rapidly grows his cells, a regeneration mutation.” Charles explains. “Simply put, Wade is impossible to kill by normal means.”
“I know how,” Logan offers.
“How did you know that?” Spencer asks you.
“Because,” You shrug.
“They used to date.” Logan blows out another puff of smoke.
“I’d rather not tell people that, I was desperate.” You blink, unable to look at the team.
“To a cancer patient,” Wade gasps, hand on his chest. “You know i’m sensitive about my skin.”
“I preferred you without a mask and gagged, I think we know why the relationship didn’t last.” You bite without meaning to.
“You gagged him?” Emily stares and you close your eyes. Unsure of what was worse, admitting to your sexual escapades in front of your crush and boss or nearly spilling your own secret for the sake of killing Wade.
“Can we not? There’s a case.” You mumble.
“Right,” Charles clears his throat and you side glance at him. “Daniella’s family is here.”
The sentence feels like the end of the world. And you’ve experienced the end of the world before. Several times in fact. And those have never left this type of pit in your stomach, this type of dryness to your mouth that you’re sure drinking all of the world's clean water could hydrate. It makes your head spin and your knees are about three seconds from buckling.
So many years, so many memories and shared with the team, and so— so— much love was about to be put to the test.
You crumble with each step, feeling as if you’re being walked to your public execution of your own making. Your neck is burning from the inevitable blade coming down and you just hope it’s as swift as a guillotine was.
You never should’ve taken this job. You never should’ve lied to them. You never should’ve gotten so close to them. You should’ve been more open with them.
You don’t know which never is right and you suppose you never will. You’ve made your bed and it’s time to lay in it.
The team is guided to the elevator that leads down to the basement. No one really talks, still shocked and trying to piece together the last three minutes. Spencer is especially quiet, his eyes are traveling with each of his thoughts and he’s picking at the end of his vest. It must be hard, he has a million and five questions and yet, he can’t ask them. He won’t get the answers fast enough and you don’t know if you’ll be around to ever give them to him.
Logan opens the door to the hanger, it hisses as the seal breaks before it slides open without making a sound. The jet is parked and the door is open, three pairs of footsteps echo through the bay and Hotch is the first to react.
He turns to you.
That’s the first thing he does when he sees them.
His head snaps to you, his eyes wide as his mouth is pressed into a thin line. A knowing line. You avoid his gaze, staring down at the floor as your chest tightens again. Your lips curl into an emotion you can’t place just yet. Because just like that, just by seeing your family Aaron Hotchner is the first to figure out that you're a mutant.
He knows because he knows your sister. He could have never forgotten her— he’s only ever been with two people.
Your family stands in front of the BAU, their careful eyes scanning over the team and when your sister sees Hotch, she gives a small smile. Nothing more, nothing less. He gives an even smaller one back, a mental dilemma clearly written over his face.
“So, we’re all here?” Your mother nods towards Charles.
“We’re still waiting on your son, ma’am,” Derek eyes, as if it was obvious. Charles had said everyone from the family was flying in but, clearly, they were down a person.
“My son?” Your mother blinks from him and then to you. She frowns, her crescent-shaped lips almost unnatural-looking as they pout. Emily pauses, tilting her head ever so slightly as the pieces fall into place for her. Her eyes shift to you and she makes a small expression. Barely visible but it lets you know everything.
Two people.
Inhaling, you turn towards Logan. Begging him, pleading with him to do something. Anything. Logan isn’t one for pity but he’s not exactly an asshole. He grunts, feigning boredom and ushers everyone back upstairs. Into the meeting room you’d been working out of.
“We believe that your daughter was the first victim for our UnSub,” Rossi starts the conversation as everyone settles down. You’re still at your seat, your sister to your left, Spencer to your right. In front of you are your parents. “Can you tell us about Daniella’s death?”
“We were gone,” Your mother starts, her eyes drifting as her mind does. “A mission to take down a factory creating Sentinels. She couldn’t go, I didn’t want her getting hurt and she found no issue, they were having a trip that day. But the kids,” She looks at your sister and then you. Spencer tenses for a moment and you can feel the air push from his lungs as he tries not to stare at you.
Three people.
“They begged me not to, not to leave her or not to go. Begged Charles. We returned to the news, her boyfriend. A secret boyfriend. He’d stabbed her in Central Park because he found out she was a mutant.”
“You knew?” Derek’s eyebrows furrow as he looks at your sister. “How?”
“We— me and my brother, we knew the kid. His dad, at the time, was working for the government. Working on legalizing sentinels again. She didn’t believe us and then she said he wasn’t like his father. She trusted him,” She explains and you swear it’s like you’re back there again. That you're pleading with everyone to do something, to save your sister from the fate you know she’s about to walk into.
No one did. No one helped. And you lost yourself that day, you lost your baby sister, your parents, and you lost your trust with the older generation of X-men.
“Can you think of a reason why someone is copying Danella’s murder?” JJ softly asks as if her tone would cushion her words. You lower your head a little while your hands reach up to massage your neck and then the sides of your head. Your fear is turning into anger and soon enough, if—when someone says the wrong thing you’re going to explode.
“No,” She shakes her head. “He’s an only child, his mother is alive and his father died four years ago.”
“I…” Your dad starts, his voice sounding like he’s afraid to say what’s on his mind. Which is unusual. “I can. It’s a strange reason but…” His lips purse and your mother shakes her head, silently telling him no. Slightly, you perk
up while your eyes narrow.
“Anything is helpful,” Rossi nods, leaning forward in his seat. “Even if it doesn’t seem that way.” Your dad nods and looks at your mother, waiting for her to concede. She does and exhales slowly as he speaks.
“We moved her grave recently.” He finally says. “We moved her here.” It’s like time froze, like you could finally feel the temperature around you, the chill in the air rushing through your lungs, your veins, and into that well of emotions you’ve kept under lock and key for nearly a decade. You’re not thinking straight, not thinking of the consequences as your voice fills the room faster than your mind can catch it.
“You what?” You shuddered, looking between the two of them. They avoid your betrayed gaze until you stand from the table, your fist clenched at your side as the chair nearly falls down. “You fucking moved her?” You shout, face twisted with fury that grows with their silence. “Answer me— what the fuck did you do?”
“This is why we didn’t tell you,” Your mother's voice is almost a plea as she looks at you. “Look at you, (Y/n).”
You grit, shaking your head. “Don’t spin this back to me,” You tell her, trying to keep your voice steady. “My sister was murdered and we laid her to rest next to her favorite park. And you two moved her back to the place she hated.”
“You hate it here,” Your father softly corrects as if he’s talking down one of his patients. “Ella loved it here.”
Lifting your chin, you stare down at him. “Ella hates the X-men. She hates missions, she hates living in this school—“
“Ella is dead.” Your mother reminds you, looking away as the words formed a bitter taste on her tongue.
“Fuck you.” You spit, nearly enjoying the hurt that flickers across her face, like the air was sucked out of her lungs. “Y’know what? Fine. Ella hated the X-men. She hated how Charles treated us like show ponies. She hated living in a dorm instead of an apartment. She hated how you made us go to courts to watch as people called us cruel words as they treated us like we weren’t people. She didn’t go on that mission because she was tired of being reminded that the world fucking hated her. She was never mutant and proud. She didn’t get a hang on her powers because she didn’t want to.”
“(Y/n),” Your sister looks up at you, eyes bleary. “Stop.”
“What?” You laugh this bitter laugh that feels like it scrapes against your throat. “We’re just being honest, aren’t we? Ella told us how much she hated this place but she wanted to make them proud.” Lamely, you gesture to your parents. “You would’ve known that, had you stopped to think of us outside of being legacy mutants.”
“We never did,” Your mother stands up, hurt written clearly on her face. “(Y/n), you need therapy. This—this isn’t healthy, you’re still so angry,”
“I’m not angry.” You grit. You’ve never been the angry one, sardonic maybe Cynical. But you didn’t like being angry, that weird burning feeling in your chest, the way the anger would cloud a person's judgment. That was never you. “Stop calling me angry.”
But she nods, solemnly like it hurts her to do so. “Look at you. Look behind you,” Blinking, you turn around and see that the floor is on fire, a line trailing from your feet, across the room and traveling up the wall. Shaking your head, it snuffs out and you turn back, blinking away the embarrassment lingering in your eyes. “You’re scaring your friends; you’re scaring us.”
Licking your lips, you shake your head again before leaving. You can’t deal with this, deal with them or the sounds of your mother crying as you leave. You’ve fucked everything up, again. You always do.
“(Y/n)—“ Spencer’s voice calls after you, a little panicked as he follows the burnt footsteps. The heat that’s radiating off of your body. “—wait, please!”
“I need to be alone!” You warn, pushing through a set of doors that leads to the basement. “Stay with the others, Spencer.”
He waits at the door for a moment, just one, solitary moment to think about it before he shakes his head and follows you down. “Talk to me… please,” The basement is a metal, but not the type that radiates the heat rolling off of your body; it’s cold down there, reflective in a way that makes the fire in your eyes shine when you face him.
“I can’t hurt you,” You’re pleading, the anger gone from your body as he only gets closer, a cold fear quickly replacing it. “Spencer, please. Stay back— I when I get like this—“ Stopping yourself, you shake your head and head inside the room. He follows, again because for some reason he can’t stop himself. It’s like he needs to prove himself, to who, he’s sure it’s you. He’s not sure why and he’s not sure how but he enters the room just before the doors close.
It’s dark, impossibly so. The type of darkness that’s no longer just the color black— this must be what it’s like to be completely blind. But even more so. He can’t tell which way is up or down and it’s so silent. The hall had been quiet but this was silent, silent enough that he could hear the blood rushing through his ears, his soft breathing. But he can’t hear you. And a part of him is afraid to call out, to break whatever this is that’s going on.
“You need to go,” Your voice echoes from across the room, in some area he can’t pinpoint. He flinches, trying to figure out where your voice came from, his eyes desperately trying to adjust to the darkness. “The room is going to fill with water in fifteen seconds. The door will shut for an hour. And I don't want to have to force you out,”
“What about you?” He’s panting, and he doesn’t know why. One foot steps in front of the other, venturing deeper into the room.
“I’m—“ Your voice catches in your throat, the words ringing as not important. Not the focus of right now. “Spencer, you have ten seconds. Leave. This is my… timeout room. Go!” His hand wraps around yours, at first he stutters, unsure in his movements— actions before they hold you tightly. “Spence…”
“I trust you.” The door hisses, the seal clicking into place and your eyes close. Another seal hisses and water starts to pour into the room from behind you. His heartbeat picks up, slightly but enough that you notice.
“It’s going to fill the room entirely. Floor to ceiling.” You warn, looking at the water. You can’t see it but you can sense it, understand where it’s coming from and going. “Fifteen percent Epsom salt, so we’ll float but still be able to swim. Air gets pumped through… some system, I’m not sure.”
“How do we…” Breathe, he means. The water’s up to your knees by this point but he hasn’t moved. And it feels like he’s staring at you.
“I can breathe underwater. It’s a skill I learned, filtering the water out before it enters my nose, so I just get the oxygen. I can… make a large air bubble for you.” You’ve done it before, back when you were an X-Men and once, when the team went to the beach and Henry slipped from his floaters faster than anyone could react.
He leans back, letting the water hold him up and you feel it, his body lying on the surface, slowly drifting about. You do the same; it’s the purpose of the room, after all. By the time your stomach hits the ceiling, you’ve wrapped Spencer into the bubble of air. It moves around him— he’s talking and you swim closer to him before widening the bubble to incase the both of you.
“Do you want to talk about it?” It, the situation or the other situation. Because, while you don’t want to talk about either, one is certainly better than the other. Then again, knowing Spencer, he’ll want the bigger picture first.
“The point of this room is to not talk for an hour,” You softly remind him.
“Still,” It’s up to you, that’s the thing. You can say no, give a firm, black or white yes or no and he’ll drop it. Hand to God he would, but… you want to. You want to tell someone about this, someone like Spencer. To get this off of your chest, to let him see you and see all of you. Not just SSA (Y/n) (L/n).
Despite yourself, there’s an immediate need to defend yourself. “I’m not angry— I’m not an angry person,”
“I know,”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
“It’s just; they make me angry. My parents, Charles… they’re so… self-righteous. Mutant and proud. Putting yourself on the line. These—the great, grandiose expectations about how you’re supposed to be great and this poster boy for mutants. Proud of your mutations, to ignore the vile words, the hatred that normies spew at us. To still help them when they spit at us, treat us like infections. I was the only one of my siblings to try and tell them that we didn’t want this life, they didn’t believe me and it frustrated me. I…I got angry and…” Trailing off, you feel your eyes sting as the memories come back. “I didn’t mean to. I just… I lost control of my powers and ended up burning them. Everyone. My mom, dad, Rose, and Ella.” His breath hitches and he reaches forward while you lean back. “That's why they built this room. It makes me focus on water and not fire.”
“Ella was different, she was always… scared. Of her powers, of people— it really didn’t matter. And then she met him. Walking in a park, he was…normal, that’s what she called him.” Running your hand over your head, you exhale. “She saw the life she wanted in him. Going to high school, living in an apartment with just his family, no one hated him. Nothing that she had in her life. She told us about it, told me and Rose. Swore us to keep it a secret, Rose wanted to but I knew something wrong was happening. She needed an escape, not a boyfriend. And not him. I told them— I stalked him,” It’s the first time you’re admitting this, your arms crossed over your stomach as your eyes dart around, the memories slowly rolling in.
“I followed him home, this brownstone in Manhattan. I saw him, the Senator who’s the main endorsement for the Sentinels. They looked so similar and seemed too close that there was no way that they didn’t have the same views. I tried telling her, and then Rose, and then our parents. No one listened. Ella thought I was being a protective big brother. Rose wanted to let Ella make her own choices and my parents just… wanted to focus on using her to get close to the Senator.”
You just continued to talk but it felt more like word vomit, your words growing more and more hoarse until you just started sobbing. It was uncontrollable, pent-up feelings bubbling to the surface like a volcano that you couldn’t contain. And Spencer didn’t want you to. He listened and he didn’t judge, not even when you admitted to robbing a liquor store after finding out about her death and getting black out drunk in the middle of the woods. He just sat there, letting you lean on him for the first time.
By the time you caught your breath, the water was being drained in the middle of the room and the lights were starting to come back. It was a slow progression so as to not hurt your eyes. The water slipped between the new slots in the floor and whatever somehow managed to stay inside the room would be steamed out once you left.
“Are you ready to go back?” He asks, still squinting due to the bright, white lights flooding the area.
“No,” You admit, voice steady where your eyes are still red, lips still holding a small tremble. “I’m going to find Ella,” He nods, letting you guide him back upstairs before you leave him to get back to the others.
—
It’s almost an hour before you return. The team had been trying to focus on the case but it was hard. Especially for Morgan who kept huffing and slamming things on the table; everyone knew why, too. He was hurt, hurt in ways he couldn’t describe. One of his closest friends, someone who he calls when he’s at his lowest, didn't trust him as much as he trusted them. And that stings, Spencer will admit. But he gets it.
He looks at the cases— your file and slips through countless mission reports. The details in them are gruesome. Buried alive at eleven, thrown into a lava pit at nine, set on fire, kidnapped and tortured, and something about being sent to an alternate universe. Then there’s the press, he skims through videos of you and your family at rallies, protesting at capital buildings, in court— a video of your mother getting arrested at one while you’re struggling to contain yourself, bending the wooden table in front of you before you’re tackled to the ground and placed in a mutant collar. You’d been seven at the time.
The room itself was quiet, whispers of information passed around like a game of telephone until rapid footsteps approached the door. It swung open like a storm was hitting, bouncing off of the hinges and everyone turned to the door, seeing you frantic.
“Is Josh here?”
“No,” Scott shakes his head, beginning to stand up. “We sent Logan and Kitty on a search for him.”
“And?”
“Nothing yet,” He sighs. “They’ve checked each safe house and nothing's been touched. Logan hasn’t picked up his scent, either.” He’s speaking like a doctor breaking bad news to a family, taking slow steps until he’s in front of you. Something flashes across your face; guilt, maybe sadness and you whisper to him, shaking your head. Spencer can hear faint I know and it's not your fault from Scott.
“Cerebro,” Your voice gets higher, eyes snapping towards Charles. “Use cerebro to find him.”
Charles doesn’t give an indication if he can or even will, but he makes his way over to the two of you and the three of you start talking. The air starts to feel hotter, like it had when you learned they moved Ella and Spencer sees the smoke rising from the floor underneath you. Sees the shifting air around Scott’s hair, the way your face twists and contorts as though you have no control over it. And then, a break.
Your body falters, blearly eyes look between the two of them. “He’s not… he’s…”
Charles shakes his head. “It’s the most likely scenario. Logan will do one last sweep today for him,”
“So, there is a mutant serial killer,” It’s not a question, it’s a realization. That these past couple of days of bullshitting had been for nothing, that you should’ve taken this more seriously. Scott nods. “Okay— have we asked Jean, Wanda, or Hotoru to take a look at the bodies? See if they can get any information from them?”
It’s weird, now you can place yourself into business mode. Because you’re walking around the room, using your powers to guide files over to the board, standing straighter and that tone, Spencer knows it well. You and Scott work together well, he notes. The man is at your side in seconds and it’s strange how well the two of you balance each other out. He wonders just how connected the two of you are, considering what happened during breakfast.
“Spencer, did you get a look at the letter on my door?” He snaps out of it, seeing your serious face and nods, standing up with his dry-erase marker to the board. “Both Josh and I got one— I didn’t get a chance to read it. Maybe the others did, too,” You hurriedly explain, arms crossed and teeth finding purchase on the inside of your cheek.
“So, you’re a potential victim,” Scott notes, arms crossed to mimic you when you turn to him as if he asked a stupid question. “You are. And don’t bring up the fact that you can hide inside of a volcano, again.”
“Well, I can hide inside of a volcano!” There’s a pause, your eyes shift before your eyebrows shoot up. “And Josh can dig underground. Deep enough to not be found by detectors or search dogs.”
While it convinces Scott, his lips purse. “There are hundreds of miles of dirt between your building and here. It would take you days to search it,”
“Julio and I can— and maybe Jean. She can try and fly with me, sense him. Are there any other earth based mutants?”
He thinks for a moment, recounting all the students in his care. “A couple, but none of them have that much power. It’s just you and Julio. And even he’s not on your level,”
Grinning at him, you move towards the board where Spencer is. “You’re making me blush,” Standing next to him, you look at the board. “That’s everything?” He hums, blinking over at you while you read it over, lips pulled to the side and eyes jumping around.
“This is weird,” You admit, waving Scott over. “It’s all broken,”
“Broken?” Hotch echoes and you no,d turning to him.
“This is Krakoan. It’s a language for an island, and if you were on the island at any point, you’d know the language as if it was your native tongue,”
“This is written like someone’s learning the language,” Scott finishes with you nodding in agreement.
But now the question was, who’s teaching them? “Making a list of all the mutants on the island wouldn’t take too long. Not many of us left it. So, we can start from there.”
—
“This isn’t crazy to you guys?” Derek whispers during dinner. You’re gone, off with Scott and your friends, making a plan to find Josh— who Penelope was surprised to figure out was the same Josh from the apartment building— and connect the letters to the current murders. “He’s been lying for years!”
Hotch is the first to speak, his head shaking slightly with a slight frown etched into his skin. “It’s not that simple,”
Derek scoffs, leaning back in his seat. “We’re not bigots, Hotch. He could've trusted us like we trust him.”
“You’ve seen him,” Hotch starts, slow like he’s still piecing together his evidence. “How he reacted ever since we took this case. He’s scared, he’s barely sleeping, outbursts, and withdrawn. This wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with anyone,” Of course, Derek can sympathize with that. He knows that feeling well but it doesn’t stop the hurt in his chest. Something so deep in his soul that he doesn’t know how to get over this feeling fast enough to make logical choices.
Outside, they hear someone’s loud laughter and the conversation dies on Derek’s tongue. “He’s cute— he’s cute, I don’t see the harm,” It’s a woman’s voice, one they haven’t heard before.
“Jean,” That’s you, undeniably that’s your voice. “Name one mutant who's found love in a normie,” The team eyes each other, trying to figure out where the conversation is going.
“Wanda,” She immediately responds to which you scoff.
“Jericho is literally the sorcerer supreme,”
It takes a moment but she snaps her fingers. “Ororo and T’Challa,”
“He’s the king of the most powerful nation and has powers,”
She huffs. “You’re impossible,”
“I’m practical and you’re not fitting the criteria. I want a mutant and a non-mutant without any powers in a stable relationship where one of them doesn’t die.”
The silence that follows is heavy. “It could be you and Spencer,” She finally says.
Her words hit most of the team like a truck, the two of you weren’t just talking in general. This was a specific conversation about you and Spencer getting together. The logistics of someone like you and someone like him being together for the long run. When they look at him, his ears are burning red and he’s staring at the window as if you’d climb through and…confess or something of the sort.
“You said it yourself, you wanted to kiss him in the sensory room,” If Spencer wasn’t red before, he is now. Avoiding everyone’s gazes and sinking into his seat.
“Shut the fuck up.” Your voice is fast, embarrassed that she’s speaking about it out in the open. “And I told Scott that in confidence— he's such a loud mouth,” There’s a twinge of a whine to your voice while Jean laughs.
“I’m his wife,”
There’s no rebuttal for that and the two of you start walking, albeit slowly. “So what if I did, it’s not gonna happen. You, Scott, Charles, Erik, and Derek need to understand that.”
She sighs and it’s this big, loud disappointed sigh that only a mother could pull off. “You need therapy. And I’m saying this to be nice but you and Spencer could be really cute and go the whole way. But your fear of normies not accepting you— all of you is holding you back. You’ve known him for eight years, doesn’t that count for something? You said the two of you held hands—“
“He was scared, we were sharing a blanket and he wanted to hold my hand,”
“You slept in the same bed,”
“Again, he was scared. We watched a scary movie,”
“The X trilogy. Stop interrupting me. He likes you, I've never met him and I can tell. You like him. The two of you are cute and clearly, he’s not going to turn out to be some evil mutant killer or end up kidnapped by an evil mutant killer,”
“He could, though,” When you speak, your voice is smaller, almost breathy. “I’m never going to be separated from this life, and if I merge him with this, who knows who’s going to find out? The wrong person could and I lose Spencer— forever. I could lose all of them, Derek already hates me,” The way you say it, like a child scared they’d disappointed their parent,
makes Derek feel bad. Guilt builds in his stomach as the others glance at him as if he’d refute your claim. He should— he will, he knows that. Just… not right now.
“No, he doesn’t,”
“You weren’t there, Jean. I saw his face, I know Derek. He’s upset with me and I can’t find it in myself to wish I had told them sooner. I would’ve taken this to the grave,”
“…(Y/n)…”
“What? It’s not like I’m going to pass along the X gene, there was no reason for them to know. And sure, none of them have their pitchfork and torches but what now? Are they going to be nervous around me during work, passive-aggressive, or maybe I’ll just be quietly shunned out until the only thing for me to do is quit? Because I’ve heard the way they talk about mutants. They don’t want us dead, but we need to fit into their boxes.”
“What?”
“They’re FBI agents, they’ve dealt with mutants. Big and scary ones, ones with what they call inconsequential powers, and everything in between. You’re always lucky to survive a case with them. It's a cool story to tell to pick up chicks in a bar, a war story about what could’ve gone wrong. It’s something you keep hush-hush, don’t assume the UnSub is mutant, it’s taboo. It’s like calling them the devil.”
“If you’re scared of them, then why stay? You could get a job anywhere else, but you’ve stayed with them,”
“Honestly,” You shrug, passing by the window. “They’re amazing people. I just think they’ve been subjected to so much propaganda, they don’t notice it.”
“Y’know what your issue is?”
“Oh, please tell me another issue I have,”
“You dim your light in situations where you’d shine.”
“How about we go look for Josh? We’re burning daylight,”
“It’s nighttime,”
“I don’t have time for your mind games, Jean. Get in the air already,” The sound of the two of you leaving leaves something short of a sonic boom that makes the glass shake and the team shudder.
—
That night, while you were still out looking for Josh, most of the team had gathered inside of Penelope’s room. Everyone but Hotch and Rossi couldn’t sleep, their minds filled with the information that not only were you a mutant, but you used to be one of the most powerful— probably still are, if what Scott had said was true.
None of them have that much power. It’s just you and Julio. And even he’s not on your level.
Your level, your own separate league for just your earth based powers. Who knew about the other three elements you could bend to your will?
Pen had dug up all the videos she could of you and sent them all one single text: check this out. Which is how they ended up huddled around her desk, chairs pulled up and the curtains drawn as if it would shield them from being found out.
The first video isn’t bad. It’s a news clip about the school, you’re in the background, playing with Scott and a man they’ve yet to meet. It’s grainy, clearly dated by the bad camera quality when Pen zoomed in, but it’s obviously you. The next video is mission footage, clips recovered from a warehouse. You’re a teenager, maybe even a tween, running with Ella in your arms as robots chase after. They’re huge, skin changing to steel as you shoot waves of fire at it. There are bodies— other mutants, scattered across the floor that you’re trying to shield Ella from seeing.
At some point, you meet with Rose and your parents. From there, you Ella off to your mother before you and Rose turn back to the creature. “It’s a sentinel,” Emily breathes, quietly as if the word would bring it out from the screen. “In the report, they’re robots who adapted to mutant powers, it nearly wiped the mutant population out,”
In the video, Rose holds her hands up and the room shakes. It’s like everything feels heavy and you strain, trying to use the air to rip it apart when from behind, just out of view, Spencer sees it. A shine on the floor, then a black metal foot before three prongs pierce your chest. If the sound had not been recovered from the footage, they would’ve heard Rose’s screams, and heard the ground split as the gravity became too hard for even the sentinel to handle and collapsed under their weight.
“He was eleven,” Derek points out, looking at the date on the corner of the screen.
“He was a baby,” Pen’s voice is filled with pain that only grows when the next video plays. You’re there, on a makeshift operating table. This time, there’s sound and they hear all of your shouts, hear the wind blowing across the room because there wasn’t any anesthetic. This is somewhere in the warehouse, untouched by the sentinels. Blood is rushing from your wounds, there’s an organ poking out from one of the holes, and you’re screaming. There shouldn’t be air in your lungs to make any type of noise, but it’s like your powers are working on autopilot to keep you alive.
“Where is Silver?” Scott asks, he’s there, holding your hand to keep you from getting up.
“Rose is finding him now,” Erik replies. He’s somewhere in the room, pacing around.
“She needs to hurry— he’s losing—“
“I’m aware,” He’s at your side, kneeling down to brush the sweat from your skin. “Just a little longer, I promise it.” You manage a nod through gritted teeth before sobbing again. You’re muttering so they can’t hear the words but they know the tone.
The video skips as Penelope wipes her face. This one is easier to stomach. It’s homemade footage that starts with Scott pointing the camera in the mirror, showing off his new suit.
“Hey, heat beam—“
Scott sighs, pointing the camera over to you. You’re about thirteen in your new suit, grinning madly. “It’s a concussive punch—“
“Yeah, whatever,” Waving your hand, you inhale while Scott exhales. “These suits are kinda ass, gotta admit. But Lorena said I look good and I was thinking of asking her out— don’t tell Erik, please. Delete this—“ You hold your hand out and the camera flies into your hand, showing your scared face. Scott shouts and a chase starts, showing off the halls of the mansion until they see a familiar door.
It’s your room, your current room. It's the same hallway and the inside is filled with whatever items a thirteen-year-old omega-level mutant could want.
“Scott! How the fuck do I delete this?” You shout, turning the camera over in your hand.
“Just— gimmie the camera, I’ll do it.”
You stare at him, eyes narrowed. “You said that last time and now Hank knows that we all think he’s on furry chat rooms selling his body!” Looking down again, you grin. “Found i—“ The footage doesn’t end there, though. It just cuts to another video, dated the same day, just four hours later.
The camera is on the ground, grass blocking some of the view but most of it is still visible. It’s chaotic, like a war zone in the middle of a field. There’s a crashed airplane in the distance, that’s what caused the fire in the background and there’s a team. Two people fall to the ground. Scott is on his knees, clutching his chest, Lorena is just now standing up and Quicksilver is bringing supplies from the plane.
“Cyclops— don’t breathe it in! Don’t!” Your voice is hoarse, you must’ve been shouting for a while. Your hand plants itself on someone’s chest and they watch as the person convulses before green air is pushed out their body. Pietro places a breathing mask on the person's face as you run to the next person, repeating the process.
By the time you reach Scott, he’s face down on the grass. “Q— can you see if the— the black box is still in the plane? Someone needs to tell the Professor what happened?” He zips back, returning less than a second later with a solemn look on his face. “It’s okay— it’s okay. Just… move them away from the plane, yeah?”
You lug Scott up, limping towards the camera and they see a piece of metal sticking out from your leg. It’s straight through but you’ve been working through it, using your powers to keep pressure from the leg.
The video ends there, cutting to a picture of you and a guy with red eyes in front of a grave, giving it the middle finger. It reads Charles Xavier. The next picture of the two of you again, taken by someone else as you’re both hanging your heads at the sight of Charles, alive and back in the mansion.
Again, it’s a video. It starts with a banner that says it’s prom night. The theme is Under the Stars and there’s terrible music playing in the rented-out hall. “This is proof— because we all know (Y/n) will deny this later,” Jean laughs into the camera as your group of friends rush towards the bathroom. There’s Scott, of course, and three other people they can’t see. The door to the bathroom opens without anyone touching it and they see you, standing with Kurt sat on the bathroom sink, making out.
The group shouts when the two of you pull away and Kurt bites your lower lip, pulling a noise from you. It doesn’t last long, as your head snaps over and you shout, chasing them throughout the party.
Then starts a string of videos. Taken at different points of your life but you’re training your powers in all of them. Flying, holding up Olympic-sized pools with just a finger, freezing giant robots midstep, creating tornadoes— incredible feats that continue to top each other with each new clip. It’s somehow but incredibly terrifying and amazing and then they’re reminded that the person they’re watching is the same person they’ve known for nearly eight years.
The same person that they would’ve said didn’t have a single dangerous bone in their body, whose muscles were for carrying them home from the bar— not the guy who broke off the top of a mountain to fight Apocalypse.
It’s so weird, like you’re two separate people. But, Spencer guesses that the death of Ella truly did change you, since none of the videos are dated after her death.
Before the screen turns back, there’s one final picture. It’s a funeral, Ella’s. The rain is heavy, impossibly so and Spencer remembers it— that storm. The rain was so heavy and strong that it reached Vegas, towns flooded and some of the damage is still being recovered to this day. The background is hard to read but there’s a break in the rain, a perfect rectangle above the casket where a golden sun shone down on the beautiful bouquet.
You’re off to the side, not far from the casket but notably away from everyone else, staring at the brown wood, fist clenched tightly in your suit, two sizes too small for your body.
Spencer gets it— you are on a completely different level from the other mutants.
You thought the worst thing that could happen was being blindsided by divorce from John Price. Until you realized you were the last to know anything: the affair, the friends who covered for him, and just how long your marriage had been dead.
You turn the fallout into music, writing vicious, aching songs never meant for anyone else. Then one track goes viral, and overnight your heartbreak makes you a global star. You never expected to see the 141 again. That chapter was supposed to be closed.
Then a bombing at one of your concerts linked to Konni puts you back in the same orbit as the team you can no longer trust to not lie to your face, never mind have your back while a worldwide terrorist organization paints a target on it.
Or: the one where John Price’s affair ends in a divorce, a chart topping revenge album, a terrorist attack, and Task Force 141 assigned to protect the woman they helped break.
Ghost x Reader slow burn (you guys are going to hate me for how slow this burn is); ex-husband John Price x Reader
ao3 link
One: Skin Me Alive ✘ Let It Bleed ✘ POSSESSION ✘ Four ✘ Five ✘ Six ✘ Seven ✘ Eight ✘ Nine ✘ Ten ✘ Eleven ✘ Twelve ✘ Thirteen ✘ Fourteen ✘ Fifteen ✘
Cw: Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn Romance, dual timeline story, Domino Effect, Butterfly Effect, Found Family Again (eventually, it’s complicated), heavy angst, no easy forgiveness, canon-typical violence, dear god everyone needs therapy, women supporting women, men failing at basic communication skills, John Price Is A Bastard, long term consequences of actions, infidelity, divorce, panic attacks, trauma, PTSD, terrorist attack, mass casualty event, bombing, graphic descriptions of injury, Original Characters (outside of Reader), The Author Knows Fuckall About The Entertainment Industry
Cw: Graphic depictions of terror attack, canon compliant violence, infidelity, depression, heavy angst, slow burn,
✘ Masterlist
London, UK // Present
At first, there’s no sound, just a god awful weight across your legs, across your shoulders, enormous pressure that makes it hard for your ribs to fully expand, gulp down air, convert oxygen molecules to carbon dioxide. Weight and heat and something slick beneath your cheek. Pain in long bright lines, and ugly, wet warmth soaking into your skin.
You come back slowly, dragged up through black water as if something had grabbed you by the hair and pulled, lungs full of ash, every part of you arriving separately and screaming as it does.
Then the sound comes back; a low, continuous tone somewhere above the range of hearing, pressing into the inside of your skull. Underneath of it, muffled and wrong, something that sounds like an alarm. Something that might be a voice. The sounds exist at a remove, packed in cotton, arriving delayed, like a broadcast signal bounding off something too far away.
You open your eyes.
Or…
You try to. One opens. The other is stuck, something dried and tacky pulling at your lashing, sealing them half shut.
There’s concrete pressed against your face. (Why are you laying on the ground? What happened-) A smear of gray inches from your mouth, dusted white in places, cracked dark in others. Something drips onto it, a red bloom spreading into the powder like ink onto paper.
Blood, your mind supplies, helpfully.
Not yours, another part of you answers immediately, stupidly, hopefully.
Then your ribs hitch and the pain answers that for you.
Oh.
Your blood too.
You breathe, taste copper and something burnt, like popcorn left in the microwave too long until the smell coats the back of your throat. A strip light overhead, half of its housing torn free, swings slight on a wire in a draft you can feel against your cheek. Dust hands thick in the air, particles moving in slow orbits through the light like the whole corridor is underwater.
You try to move your left arm. It doens’t move and you try again.
Something shifts above you and the weight across your shoulder increases with a small grinding sound, compresses the air from your chest, forcing a thin, broken sound out of your mouth and you stop.
Okay.
Okay. Don’t do that.
Your right arm barely moves, fingers scraping over concrete, nails catching in grit, palm slipping in something warm. You press it flat and use it to push carefully, until your head lifts an inch. Two. The room tilts sideways and you hold very still until it stops, until the ringing in your ears turns from one high pitched sound into many.
Your vision pulses, the corridor tilting in and out of focus, emergency lighting flickering red and white and red and white and- across the ceiling in slow, nauseating intervals. Somewhere far away, alarms are going. Somewhere farther than that, people are shouting. Or… maybe they’re not. Maybe those are just echoes in your skull, trapped there by the blast and circling with nowhere else to go.
You turn your head, cheek dragging across the concrete, grit biting into your skin, hair sticking wetly to your mouth. The room greys at the edges and you wait, teeth pressed together, eyes fixed on the ceiling strip light and its slow swinging arc until the grey retreats and the edges come back sharp and you see him.
Eli.
Eli on his side, half curled a few feet away, shirt torn open, soaked dark down one side. Dust has turned his hair grey. There’s blood on his face. Blood on his mouth. Blood under him, spreading in a slow uneven pool that keeps finding the little cracks in the floor.
No.
The word doesn’t make it out of your mouth, it sits behind your teeth, useless and childish.
No, because Eli does not get to be still. Eli does not get to be quiet. Eli does not get to be a body on concrete with the alarm painting him red every other second. Eli is supposed to be barking at you. Dragging you. Ruffling your hair with one heavy hand even though he knows you hate it. Swearing under his breath about reckless fucking pop stars who think barricades are decorative. Eli is supposed to be annoyed and alive and telling someone on his mic to move their ass before he moves it for them.
The room blurs.
The black comes up soft.
You don’t mean to close your eyes, they just close, without you realizing it and the world fades.
Not all the way, not like before, with the white nothing of the blast. This is more like a dimmer switch, the light dropping by half, the ceiling retreating, the strip light blurring into a smear of white above you.
“- eyes open.”
The words reach you with a half second delay, stripped of their beginning, arriving mid sentence and flattened by distance. The easy drawl has been pressed out of them, voice left rough, dragged raw.
“Stay- eyes open. Don’t- “
Your eyes flutter, one opening wider than the other, vision rolling towards the voice, towards Eli, who is moving.
Towards Eli who is moving.
He shouldn’t be moving.
Everything about the way he looks says he should not be moving. His arm drags forward against the floor, palm smearing through dust and blood, fingers clawing for purchase. His body follows, a brutal, stubborn haul across the concrete. His injured side leaves a dark trail behind him. His jaw is clenched so hard the muscles in his face jump every time he pulls himself closer.
“Don’t- “ His voice comes in clearer now, closer. “Don’t you close your eyes. You hear me? Keep- “ A breath, sharp through his nose, followed by a grimace he can’t quite hide. “Keep your eyes on me.”
It’s an effort. Your eyes want to drift. Wants to go soft at the edges and let the ceiling blur back in, wants to follow the strip light in its slow arc and let that be the last thing. White. Swinging. Quiet. Simple.
Eli makes a sound low in his throat, almost a growl.
“Oi.” His hand slaps weakly at the floor beside you, once, twice, loud enough to cut through the cotton in your skull. “Don’t start being quiet now when you’re always so loud, always making noise. What would Ghost say? Price? Can’t let that bastard have the last word, can you?”
Your mouth moves.
Nothing comes out.
“Yeah, I know.” He drags himself another inch and his face goes tight with pain. “You’ve got a complaint. You always have a complaint. File it when we’re not underneath half a fucking building.”
That should not make something in you want to cry and it moves through your chest so tight it becomes a cough, becomes pain so bright and complete your vision whites out at the center. Your body curls around it as much as the weight allows, instinct trying to protect injuries they cannot accurately locate because every part of you hurts. Something wet fills your mouth. You swallow before you can think about it and taste blood all over again.
“No, no, no.” Eli’s voice snaps sharp. “None of that. Look at me.”
Your eyes snap open and he’s close enough now that you can see the little things. Dust caught in his eyelashes. A thin cut splitting his lower lip. The way his left hand shakes when he plants it. The way he keeps shifting his weight off his left side like something there has gone very, very wrong.
He reaches you and his hand closes around your wrist, fingers clamping hard enough to hurt, hard enough to anchor you to the room and him to the proof that you are still in it. His thumb moves over the inside of your wrist, searching, pressing too hard, slipping once because everything is too slick.
For the first time since you’ve known him, Eli looks afraid in a way he can’t convert into irritation fast enough.
“Come on,” he mutters. “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t piss me about.”
You want to say his name. You want to say, You’re bleeding. You want to say, Stop moving. You want to say, I’m scared. I want Simon. Simon would know what to do. But your mouth is heavy and your tongue feels too large and the words tangle somewhere between your brain and your throat and what comes out instead if barely a sound.
“Eli.”
His face changes, just for a second, all the command stripped out of it. All the training. There is only him looking down at your like you are a twelve year old with a scraped knee instead of pinned under wreckage in a corridor full of smoke.
“I’m here,” he says, too quickly, as if he thinks you might not believe him. His hand moves from your wrist to your face. His palm is rough and shaking when it cups your cheek, thumb dragging clumsily beneath your open eye. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
You blink up at him.
“Look at me.” His voice lowers. Goes firm. “That’s it. Good. Keep your eyes on me.”
You try.
God you try.
The light swings behind him.
White. Red. White. Red.
His face swims between colors, cut up by shadow and emergency lights and his mouth keeps moving.
“- need to check-”
He looks past you then, toward the shattered end of the corridor, and shouts. “Help!”
The word tears out of him so violently it seems to hurt. He twists, tries to push himself higher, and his injured leg betrays him. His body drops forward, one hand slamming into the concrete beside your head so he does not fall on you. The sound he makes is not one you have ever heard from him before.
“Help!” he shouts again, louder, voice shredding towards the end. “We need help here!”
There’s not answer. Or there is one and you cannot hear it. The alarm keeps going. The strip light swings. Dust moves through the beam in slow underwater spirals.
You blink slowly.
“Don’t.” The sound of his voice is distant now. Worse because it’s softer. “Don’t you leave me here talking to myself.”
Your mouth curves, maybe.
“There,” he says, seizing on the proof of life. “That’s it. Be smug. Be annoying. Give me something.”
You want it.
You want to so badly it becomes another kind of pain.
You want to roll your eyes at him. Tell him his bedside manner is shit. Tell him you are absolutely reporting him to his HR for calling you annoying during a mass casualty event. Tell him he looks terrible, which would make him tell you that you look worse, which would make you both feel less afraid for half a second.
But your body is not listening anymore.
The light drops again and Eli’s face blurs, sharpens, blurs. His mouth moves and words arrive scattered.
“- look at me-”
You are.
You think you are.
“- don’t close.”
His hand catches yours, folds your fingers into his palm, and squeezes hard. You hear him say your name again, sharp. Then again, not sharp at all.
The pressure is the last thing you feel.
Then everything lets go.
***
Five years ago…
You don’t get out of bed the morning after, not really.
Your body has become useless with no instructions, no hunger, no thirst, no private little humiliations that keep it tethered to life. A bladder that gets full. A stomach that twists. A mouth that dries. But yours seems to have missed the message.
You just lay under the blankets with heavy arms, heavier legs, and nothing inside you reaches. Nothing wants. You stare at the ceiling until the ceiling becomes a blank canvas, a flat, pale nothing your eyes can pour themselves into.
The minutes thicken, doesn’t seem to move forward. It accumulates, piles on your chest, grain by grain, until breathing feels like something you are doing from underneath dirt, buried alive.
Your phone vibrates.
Once.
Again.
Again.
You know who it is without looking.
Soap calls first.
Johnny, the screen says when you finally turn your head enough to see it. His name lights the room blue for a few seconds, bright and obscene, then goes dark. Then bright again. Then dark. His contact photo is still there because you have not had the strength to delete it. Soap grinning too close to the camera, two fingers behind Gaz’s head, you laughing half out of frame because John had been beside you with his hand on your waist and you had thought- God, you had thought- that was what belonging looked like. A group of people crowding close enough that no one could fall out.
The phone goes still.
Then Gaz.
Kyle.
His name hurts differently. Cleaner, maybe. Sharper. Soap had always been a little too loud, a little too warm, the kind of man who made betrayal feel like being shoved out into the cold by someone who used to wrap you in his coat. Gaz’s betrayal is quieter and therefore meaner. It lives in the memory of three typing dots appearing and disappearing while you asked him if Price was seeing someone else. It lives in the delay. In the calculation. In the soft, reasonable lie that followed.
You two are solid.
The phone stops.
Then Laswell.
Kate does not call as many times. Of course she doesn’t, Kate is disciplined even in guilt. Kate can ration panic. Kate can make betrayal sound like strategy and apology sound like a formal statement issued after casualties have already been counted. Her name appears once, twice, then a message follows.
Please let one of us know you’re safe.
Safe.
You read the word until it loses meaning and the room goes grey around you.
You should call work.
The thought arrives from very far away, completely detached from the rest of you.
You imagine standing and the image alone exhausts you. First, you would have to move the blanket. Then sit up. Then put your feet on the floor. Then trust your knees. Then cross the room. Then shower. Then choose clothes. Then look in the mirror and see whatever is left of you looking back. The sequence stretches out in your mind, impossible and absurd. A pilgrimage designed for someone with muscles, bones, purpose. Someone whose blood has not turned to wet cement overnight.
Your hand finds your phone again only because it is easier than getting up, and somehow, you manage to text your manager with your thumb barely moving.
Migraine. Can’t come in today. I’m sorry.
It is not a lie exactly. There is pain behind your eyes, pressure in your skull, a pulsing ache at the base of your neck from crying too hard on the kitchen floor after everyone left. But migraine is easier because is does not say: My husband been cheating on me and married her two weeks after I signed the divorce papers. Migraine does not say: My friends knew and watched me beg. Migraine does not say: I think something inside me has been unplugged and I do not know where the cord is.
Your manager sends back a sympathetic message with too many exclamation points.
Feel better soon!!!!
You stare at the exclamation points until your vision swims.
Soon.
As if better is a place you can return to with enough sleep and a glass of water. As if the better version of you has not been dragged out behind the house and shot.
The day goes soft around the edges.
You sleep, maybe. Or not. It is hard to tell. You drift in and out of shallow, airless pockets of unconsciousness that do nothing to rest you. Each time you come back, the room has changed in some small indifferent way. The light has moved across the wall. The phone has collected more missed calls. Your mouth tastes worse. Your head hurts more. Your body remains where you left it, heavy and uncooperative, as if grief has filled your bones with sand while you were under.
At some point, you cry, tears leaking sideways into your hair, sliding from the corners of your eyes and cooling against your temples.
You think of John.
You think of his ring catching the sunlight at the kitchen table. His signature already on the papers. His voice when he said, I need you to sign. The flat finality of it. The way you had mistaken his guilt for grief. The way you had looked at his face and tried to find your husband in it, not understanding that your husband had already packed himself up and moved into another woman’s life. That the man sitting across from you was not asking to leave. He had left. He was only asking you to make the paperwork match.
You think of Elena’s hand on his chest.
You think of his smile.
That is what ruins you each time. Not the sex, not even the wedding. The smile. That warm, unguarded thing he had starved you of and then handed to her so freely like it had always belonged there.
You had spent the last year of your marriage trying to coax that smile back into the house. You had made yourself smaller for it. Quieter. Easier. You had folded your needs into neat little shapes and tucked them away so they would not inconvenience him. You had learned to read exhaustion as love, silence as trust, absence as duty. You had thanked him for scraps and called it understanding.
And he had been smiling somewhere else. Smiling for someone else.
Your throat closes so violently you gag.
For a second, you think you might vomit, but even that requires more energy than you have. Your body convulses once, twice, then gives up. You lie there with spit thick in your mouth and tears drying on your skin and feel a kind of disgust so deep it has no object. Him. Her. Them. Yourself. The bed. The room. Your own hands, curled uselessly near your chest. The whole act of being alive.
Evening comes, the grey light thins into blue, then black. The bedroom disappears until the furniture becomes shape without detail. Your phone glows periodically in the dark. Missed call. Missed call. Text. Voicemail. Missed call.
Soap leaves messages.
You do not listen to them, but the transcriptions appear in broken pieces beneath his name anyway.
Hen, please just-
I know ye dinnae want-
We need to know you’re-
I’m outside if-
That one makes you move.
Not much. Just your eyes toward the window. Toward the curtains. Toward the thin line of streetlight at the edge of the fabric. Outside. He is outside. He wants proof you are alive because your death would inconvenience his guilt. Because if you die, there is no future version of you to forgive him. No eventual softening. No absolution delivered years from now over coffee and tears. Just the thing he did, sealed forever. You do not look out the window.
You do not give him the mercy of movement.
The next day is worse because you wake up in it.
John. Elena. Soap. Gaz. Laswell. Wedding photos. Two weeks. Your kitchen. The tea on the wall. The fruit bowl breaking. Soap’s face when he said, We thought… We thought he’d end it. As if the affair could be ignored if it had just been a one time thing. As if your husband fucking another woman was something they could file away under bad night, single mistake, lesson learned. As if you were the wife and therefore the problem to be managed, and he was the friend and therefore the man to be saved.
As if betrayal had a quota. As if you had to bleed a certain amount before they were allowed to respect and love you back.
You sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes before standing. Your head swims. Your heart beats too hard, too fast. The carpet under your feet feels unreal. Soft in a way that makes you want to scream. You shuffle to the bathroom with one hand on the wall until you catch the mirror out the side of your eye and abruptly stop.
There is a person standing there.
You know technically that it is you. Same hair. Same eyes. Same mouth, swollen from crying. Same skin, dull under the bathroom light. But recognition does not arrive with any warmth. You look at yourself and feel nothing but a distant pity. Oh, you think. Look what happened to her.
Her.
Not me.
Her.
That is how the days begin to split you. There is the part of you that lies in bed, breathes, blinks, occasionally drinks water from the glass on the nightstand when the headache becomes unbearable. And there is the part that watches from somewhere near the ceiling, detached and useless, observing the ruin. She has not eaten today. She has not showered. She has not answered the phone. She has been staring at the same patch of wall for forty seven minutes. She is crying again. She does not seem to know.
By the third day, work calls twice.
You don’t answer.
Your manager texts. Then someone from HR. Then a coworker you like well enough sends, Hey, just checking in. No pressure, but we’re worried.
Worried.
The word follows you around the room.
Everyone is worried. Everyone is sorry. Everyone is reaching out now that reaching can no longer save anything. Concern blooms beautifully after the damage is done. It costs so little then. A text. A voicemail. A knock at the door. A trembling apology offered after silence has already done its work.
You call out again with another lie and now there is nothing to get up for.
The bed becomes the center of the universe. The kitchen exists below you in memory and dread, still littered with the aftermath of the night everything finished breaking. You know there is glass on the floor. Ceramic dust under the cabinets. Tea dried brown on the wall. An apple bruised under the table, softening day by day into rot.
You cannot make yourself clean it.
Gaz texts later.
I know you told us not to contact you. I’m sorry. I just need to know you’re okay.
You stare at it from under the blanket and wonder what would happen if you answered honestly.
No, Kyle. I am not okay. I am lying in the bed I shared with him and trying not to think about whether he touched her before coming home to me. I have not eaten anything real in two days. My hair is matted at the back of my head. Sometimes I forget to breathe until my chest hurts. Sometimes I stare at the wall so long the room changes color. Sometimes I think if I stay perfectly still, I might disappear without having to do anything dramatic about it. Would that help? Would that make you feel informed?
You pick up the phone.
Your hands are shaking, fine tremors at the fingertips, and open the group chat only because it is easier than sending three separate messages.
Your thumb hovers and for a second, something in you almost breaks the other way.
Almost writes: Why?
Almost writes: How could you?
Almost writes: I loved you too.
Instead, you type:
Do not contact me again.
The typing bubbles appear almost immediately but before they can send anything, you block them and set the phone on the nightstand, roll onto your side, and pull the blanket over your head.
Weeks pass, and you do not get better.
You become functional in the loosest, ugliest sense of the word. You learn how to perform enough life to keep other people from forcing their way into yours. You shower sometimes, standing under the water with one hand braced against the tile and let it hit the crown of your head until your scalp aches, until the steam thickens around you, until the mirror disappears. You eat sometimes until your belly is swollen with bloat and then you don’t eat anything at all for days.
The house becomes smaller.
Not literally. The walls stay where they are, but your world narrows anyway. Bedroom. Bathroom. Hallway, sometimes. Kitchen only when necessity becomes cruel enough to drag you there. The living room is too full of ghosts, so you do not go in.
Your phone becomes the only door you open.
That is the worst part. You know it is the worst part while you are doing it. You know, with the detached intelligence of someone watching herself through glass, that every time you pick it up you are putting your hand back into the wound. You know nothing good waits there. You know there will be no answer that makes the betrayal smaller. No post, no picture, no caption that rearranges the past into something kinder to you.
You pick it up anyway, make a burner account, and search for Elena, thumb hovering over her profile before you tap it.
Some small, ridiculous part of you expects the app to know. To stop you. To flash up a warning that says: Are you sure you want to harm yourself in this humiliating way? Are you sure you want to kneel in front of the life that replaced yours and press your face to the glass?
It does not.
Her page is bright.
That is your first coherent thought. Bright. Not just visually, though it is that too- all clean whites and warm golds and soft domestic light- but bright in the way lives look when the person living them believes the world is mostly kind. Brunch plates. A mirror selfie in an expensive coat. Flowers on a counter. A photograph of a book beside a mug. John’s hand visible at the edge of one frame, unmistakable even cropped down to knuckles and a wedding band.
You stare at that hand until the phone blurs.
You know that hand.
You know the callus along the side of his thumb. You know the faint scar crossing the back of it from a training accident he once dismissed as nothing while you cleaned it and called him an idiot. You know how heavy it felt at the base of your spine. How warm on your stomach in sleep. How steady on your face when he kissed you goodbye. You know that hand better than you know your own some days, and here it is reduced to a casual object in another woman’s photograph.
You scroll.
You shouldn’t, but you do it anyway.
You find a picture of Elena at a restaurant, months before the divorce, a second glass of wine across from her accompanied by a caption about good company. Elena in a mirror wearing the exact same shirt you remember John saying he didn’t notice when you asked if he liked yours. Elena posting an expensive and beautiful bouquet.
Your body reacts before your mind can soften the facts.
Your stomach turns over. Your hands go cold. A tremor starts at the base of your spine and climbs. You scroll backward through time and watch the affair reveal itself not as a lightning strike, not as one catastrophic mistake, but as a whole second life built carefully beside yours while you slept in the ruins of the first and called the draft love.
Your thumb pauses on a picture from the wedding reception.
It is not one you saw before.
Soap is in the background, slightly out of focus, head tipped back, laughing. His tie is loosened. One hand around a glass, the other braced on John’s shoulder. John is laughing too. Elena is turned toward someone outside the frame, smiling wide, her dress luminous under the lights.
It looks easy.
That is what makes bile climb your throat.
It looks so easy for them to stand in the room where your humiliation was being celebrated with flowers and champagne and not collapse under the weight of it. Soap had stood there with a drink in his hand and a laugh in his mouth while you were somewhere else, maybe in the bed John had abandoned, maybe still believing your friends had been caught in the wreckage with you instead of seated at the reception.
You look at the comments and see one from Gaz, about being grateful for the people who keep you steady.
People.
You wonder if he meant John.
You wonder if he meant you before you became inconvenient.
You wonder if he had ever typed anything about you and deleted it because guilt made cowards of men who could clear rooms with rifles but not answer one woman honestly on a bathroom floor.
You throw the phone across the bed.
Not hard. Hard would require energy. It bounces once against the blanket and lands face up, Elena’s profile still glowing at you from the screen.
You stare at it.
Then you crawl under the blanket and cry until the phone goes dark by itself.
This becomes the rhythm.
Wake. Hurt. Check. Hurt worse. Sleep. Wake again. Hurt again. Check again.
You begin to learn things you never wanted to know. Elena likes white wine. Elena wears perfume with peony and yuzu in it because someone asked about it and she answers. Elena has a sister. Elena has a little dog John apparently likes enough to be photographed with, one large hand cupped around its ridiculous tiny body while it licks his chin. John, who used to grumble that you would spoil anything with four legs beyond repair. John, who told you no to a weekend away because money was tight. John, whose new wife captions him as home.
Home.
You close the app so fast your thumb slips.
This house used to be home. Not because it was beautiful, not because it was perfect, but because you had believed love lived here. Even when it got hard. Even when John came home quiet. Even when he turned away from you in bed and you lay there studying the slope of his shoulder, telling yourself distance was just another language marriage learned during difficult seasons.
Now it is just a house.
That is one of the crueller discoveries. Love had not soaked into the walls the way you thought and once it was gone, everything became object again. Bed. Lamp. Chair. Door. Cup. Floor.
You.
Object.
The crying starts so suddenly it almost frightens you, body folding forward, mouth open around a sob too raw, breath punching out of you in broken, wet bursts. Your phone slides from your hand and hits the carpet facedown, a soft little thud and both hands press to your mouth like you are trying to hold yourself in, like if you let go your whole body might turn inside out from the force of it.
By the time the crying burns itself down to hiccups, your head is pounding. Your throat feels scraped hollow. The room has gone blurry and grey at the edges, everything softened by tears except the pain, which remains bright and exact and cruelly well lit.
You bend for the phone. Your fingers brush carpet first. Then the phone. Then something else.
Wood.
You freeze.
For a second, you don’t understand what you are touching. Your hand slides farther beneath the bed, fingertips following the smooth curve of it, the dust gathered along the edge, the familiar dip and hollow of a body you once knew better than your own.
A guitar.
Your guitar.
Shoved underneath the bed, half hidden behind a box of old winter clothes and the soft grey accumulation of neglect.
You pull it out slowly and for a long moment, you just stare at it.
You forgot you had it.
No. Worse. You remember forgetting.
You remember putting it away because John was tired. Because John had just come home. Because John said, not tonight, love, with his eyes already closed. Because the house was easier when it was quiet. Because he made you feel like wanting attention was childish. Because singing in the kitchen felt too bright when he came home dark and distant and unreachable. Because somewhere along the line, without noticing the exact moment of amputation, you had learned to tuck every loud, living part of yourself beneath the bed.
You had made yourself smaller for him.
Quiet enough not to ask. Soft enough not to press. Patient enough not to need. A woman folded carefully around a man who kept taking up less and less space in your life while somehow requiring more and more of the room.
The guitar sits in your lap, dusty and mute.
Your thumb drags over the strings.
The sound is ugly. Out of tune. Barely there.
Still, something in you goes still around it.
How long had you been breaking yourself into smaller pieces for a man who wanted something bigger?
Music had been one of the things John liked about you in the beginning.
That thought should not matter but it does. It lands with a dull, mean little weight. He used to ask you to sing while he cooked. Used to lean in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder and listen. Used to say, Again, love, when you stopped.
You wonder when he stopped hearing you.
The first chord is wrong, fingers not wanting to form the proper shape. The pads are soft from disuse, clumsy against the strings. You try again. Better. Not right. Good enough.
Your phone is still open beside you, burner account glowing faintly on the carpet.
You don’t know why you hit record.
Or you do, but the reason is too humiliating to name. Maybe some part of you wants proof. Proof that you are this hurt. Proof that something happened here. Proof that if everyone else can polish the story into a wedding album and a clean divorce and an unfortunate situation, then you can leave evidence of the blood. Maybe you want someone, anyone, to look at the wreckage and say: Yes. I see it. That should have killed you.
You hit record.
For a few seconds, you just sit there crying, then your fingers move.
The song is barely a song.
It is four chords; a melody that keeps collapsing because your throat keeps closing. Words arriving fragmented, not clever, not polished, not even fully rhymed and ends with you pressing your palm to your mouth, shoulders shaking, guitar sliding sideways in your lap.
You should delete it. You should absolutely delete it. There is no dignity in it. No performance. No artistry. It is not a song anyone should hear. It is a woman unraveling on carpet because the people she loved made a liar out of every safe place she had.
You post it.
Not because you think anyone will care but because you are too tired to protect yourself from being seen. Then you drop the phone onto the carpet, curl around the guitar like it is a body, and cry yourself empty.
In the morning, there are two hundred and seventeen views.
You stare at the number for a long time.
Two hundred and seventeen is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is a crowded room, maybe. A small venue on a bad night. A number the internet can swallow without tasting. But to you, lying on the floor with a headache and dried tears tight on your cheeks, it feels impossible.
Two hundred and seventeen people saw you.
Heard you.
Did not stop it from happening, no. Did not fix anything. Did not reach back through time and make John faithful or Soap honest or Gaz brave or Laswell kind. But they saw. For one minute and forty three seconds, your pain existed outside your body. It had shape. It had sound. It landed somewhere that was not just the inside of your own skull.
For now, it’s the closest thing you have to proof that you are still here.
***
Undisclosed military base // Present…
“They denied it.” Laswell says, lowering her phone.
The room goes still.
Not quiet. The television is still talking, voices layered over sirens and crowd noise and the clipped panic of reporters trying to sound useful from behind police barricades. Ghost’s phone is still in his hand, screen dark now, the same number called so many times the glass has gone greasy beneath his thumb. Soap is staring at the broadcast like the right kind of attention might drag you out of the building. Gaz has stopped pretending he isn’t watching Ghost. Price has not moved from where he stands, but his hands are locked together so tightly the tendons look close to tearing.
For a second, nobody answers. The words are too clean for the room. Denied. Like she requested a meeting room. Like this is an email chain. Like you are not somewhere inside a building full of smoke and blood with your phone going straight to voicemail.
Price turns his head slowly. “Denied.”
“They don’t want unnecessary agencies converging on an active mass casualty scene. Local response and counterterror units already on site are handling it.” Her voice stays level, but there is something strained beneath it, something thin and stretched nearly through. “Task Force 141 isn’t needed.”
Soap makes a sound like a strangled laugh. “Not needed.”
Ghost doesn’t speak. He just looks at Laswell, and the room changes around it. Not visibly. Nothing moves. But something in the air lowers itself to the floor, heavy and animal. His mask hides his mouth, his jaw, everything that might give shape to whatever is happening in him, but his eyes do not have the mercy of fabric. They are fixed on Laswell with a blankness so complete it stops looking like restraint and starts looking like the moment before violence.
“Call again,” Price says.
“I did.”
“Call someone else.”
“I am.”
“Call higher.”
Laswell’s eyes cut to him. “I have.”
The reporter’s voice sharpens before Price can answer, pulling every eye back to the screen. “- we’re going now to live footage outside the rear of the venue where our camera operator is picking up movement near what appears to be one of the service exits- ”
The image lurches, too far away and zoomed in too hard, every movement unstable, every flash of emergency light blowing the image out red, then blue, then white. Police vans block half the view. Paramedics move in and out of frame. Rain streaks the lens. Smoke drifts low across the pavement from somewhere behind the venue, grey and ugly under the floodlights.
For a moment, it is just chaos. Bodies in hi-vis jackets. Officers shouting. Someone crying close enough to the microphone that the sound cuts through the broadcast. The camera tries to follow a group of paramedics running toward the loading bay, loses them behind a vehicle, overcorrects, catches the broken service doors by accident.
Then Eli staggers out of the smoke with you over his shoulders, appearing on the edge of the frame, bent under your limp weight, one arm hooked over the backs of your legs, the other locked across you.
He is covered in blood. You are covered in blood. It runs from both of you so completely that, through the rain and the distortion and the violent zoom, there is no telling where his ends and yours begins, splashing against the ground in pools.
Soap stands up so fast the couch shifts. “No.”
Eli takes one step, another, injured leg dragging behind him at an angle that makes Gaz turn slightly, hand coming up to his mouth before he can stop it. Your arm hangs down Eli’s back, fingers open and loose, blood slipping from them in lines onto the wet pavement. Your head is turned away from the camera, hair matted dark against your face, body horribly slack over his shoulder.
Ghost moves then.
Only a step toward the television, useless and instinctive, but Price sees it. Soap sees it. Gaz sees it. Something in Laswell’s face flickers and goes carefully blank again.
On the screen, Eli nearly goes down. His knee hits the pavement and his free hand slams out to catch himself, your body sliding just enough that Soap makes a broken, helpless noise in the back of his throat. Eli’s head drops. For one terrible second, it looks like he won’t be able to get back up. Then he does, forcing himself upright with a violence that looks less like strength and more like refusal, dragging one more step out of a body that has clearly spent everything it had.
“Come on,” Soap whispers. “Come on, mate. Come on.”
The police line surges and holds. Someone is shouting. The microphone catches pieces of it, back up, back up, possible secondary, hold the line, but the words only make the room worse because they all understand them. They understand procedure. They understand threat assessment. They understand why the officers hesitate, why the paramedics cannot simply flood the doorway, why every second is being measured against the possibility of another blast.
Understanding does not make it less obscene.
Eli crosses the last stretch like a man dragging himself out of hell by his teeth. He gets behind the cordon before his body finally starts to fold. Even then, he doesn’t drop you.
He lowers you. One arm under your shoulders, one hand braced awkwardly behind your head, easing you down onto the wet pavement with a care so stubborn it feels almost cruel to watch. Only when you are flat on the ground and medics are already dropping around you does his hand slip from beneath your skull.
The camera zooms tighter.
Too tight.
Your face fills the screen in fragments: cheek smeared with soot, mouth slack, lashes dark against skin gone bloodless beneath the emergency lights. A paramedic’s gloved fingers press under your jaw. Another cuts through ruined fabric. Someone shoves gauze against your side and it blooms red before the hand has even settled. Someone else is speaking into a radio, fast, too fast, while another set of hands searches for a vein.
No one in the room says your name.
It is everywhere anyway.
The paramedic at your throat shifts his fingers. Presses again. Moves lower, then back, head bent close like he is listening for something the rest of the world has gone too loud to hear. Your body does not move. The camera keeps shaking. Rain keeps streaking the lens. The reporter is saying something, but the words do not matter. The only thing that matters is the hand at your throat and the terrible amount of time it takes to find anything there.
Price’s face goes blank in a way that does not look like control anymore. It looks like something in him has stepped out. His eyes are fixed on the paramedic’s hand at your throat, on those two gloved fingers trying to find proof that the world has not taken you while he was standing in a room miles away, useless.
His voice comes out almost soundless. “Find it.”
Ghost’s phone creaks in his hand.
The casing cracks.
The paramedic’s head snaps up.
He shouts something, and the medics around you move all at once. A syringe appears. An oxygen mask. More gauze. Faster hands. Someone at your throat checks again, two fingers pressing hard beneath your jaw like whatever he found is so faint he is afraid it will disappear if he stops touching it.
Laswell exhales. “Pulse.”
Soap bends forward like the word has gone through him.
“They found a pulse,” Gaz says, but he sounds like he does not trust himself to believe it.
Ghost does not look relieved. That is the thing. He does not soften. Does not blink. His stare stays fixed to the screen, and whatever he sees there makes his voice come out low and flat. “Weak.”
Nobody asks how he knows.
They all know how he knows. The speed of the medics. The way they do not pause. The way no one smiles. The way one hand stays at your throat even as they lift you, as if life is something that has to be physically held in place.
They load you into the ambulance fast, with the brutal gentleness of people who do not have time to be careful but are careful anyway. Your arm slips once, limp at the wrist, and a medic catches it and tucks it back against you before the doors swallow you. For one second, the camera sees inside: white light, red hands, oxygen mask, someone leaning over you with their whole body committed to keeping you here.
Then the doors shut.
The ambulance pulls away.
Eli collapses the second you are gone.
He takes one step after it, then his body simply gives out, knees folding, his shoulder hits the pavement, and he goes down hard in the rain.
Soap covers his mouth.
Gaz turns away.
Price looks at Laswell, and there is nothing polished left in his face. No command posture. No distance. Just a man watching the consequence of every silence he ever asked other people to keep.
Ghost finally speaks.
“Find a way.”
Laswell already has her phone up. “Simon- ”
“Find,” he says, voice dropping into something quiet enough to frighten the room, “a fucking way.”
No one corrects him. No one tells him they have no authority, no orders, no place there. The broadcast has cut back to the reporter, but the footage is still moving behind everyone’s eyes: Eli staggering out by accident. Your arm hanging limp. The paramedic searching for a pulse. The ambulance doors closing.
Laswell puts the phone to her ear.
When someone answers, her voice is cold enough to make even Price look at her.
“This is Station Chief Laswell,” she says. “Wake whoever the fuck you need to wake.”
Cw: Graphic depictions of terror attack, canon compliant violence, infidelity
✘ Masterlist
Five years ago…
You're sitting at the kitchen table, and the wood grain is blurring.
There's a mug of tea in front of you that Laswell made an hour ago. It's gone cold. The surface has that dull film on it, the way tea gets when it sits for too long with nobody to drink it. You haven't touched it. Your forearms are flat on the table, the fine hairs standing up in the draught from the window someone left open, and you can feel your own pulse ticking in your wrists against the wood.
Upstairs, you can hear them moving around. Soap's terrible at being quiet, he bumps into something and swears under his breath. Gaz murmurs something you can't make out. Laswell's footsteps are quiet. They're packing up John's things. Taking away the last physical evidence that he was ever here.
At least they came. At least they're helping. At least you still have them.
Your phone is in your hand. You don't remember picking it up. The screen feels warm against your cold fingers, your thumb moving on its own, scrolling through social media without seeing any of it. Just needing motion. Just needing something to land your eyes on that isn't the chair across from you, the one that still has an indentation in the cushion from where he sat.
Sponsored ad. Someone's lunch. A puppy video. Another ad. Someone's vacation photos.
Mr. and Mrs. John Price are pleased to announce their marriage…
Your thumb stops.
It's a wedding announcement. Professional photos. Soft lighting, elegant typography, expensive.
Your eyes read the words. Read them again. A third time. Something in the back of your brain is holding the meaning at arm's length, the way you'd hold a door shut against something on the other side, not because you don't know what's there, but because once you let it through, it's through. Your thumb hasn't moved. The screen is very bright against your face and you can feel its heat on your chin, your lower lip, the soft skin under your eyes.
You see the photo.
John in his dress uniform. Smiling. Not the thin, tired version he gave you at the end- the real one, wide and warm, the one with the lines around his eyes that you used to trace with your finger in bed. The one you spent the last year of your marriage trying to earn back, rearranging yourself into smaller and smaller shapes to make room for whatever was wrong, and here it is. On his face. Given freely. To someone else.
And next to him, a woman. Brunette. Her hand flat on his chest, his arm around her waist. A wedding dress. White lace. Elegant. Expensive. She's looking up at him the way you used to look up at him, and he's looking back, and the expression on his face is one you recognize down to the muscle- every tendon, every crease- except it's not pointed at you. It was never going to be pointed at you again.
Elena Price.
The date stamp: three days ago.
Two weeks after you signed the papers. Two weeks after he looked you in the eye and told you there was nothing to fix. Two weeks after he let you beg him not to leave.
Two. Weeks.
Your hand is shaking. The screen judders, the photo smearing, and you realize it's not just your hand, it's your whole arm, tremoring from the shoulder down, the muscles firing without input. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat now. Not racing. Lurching. Arrhythmic, skipping, like a record needle dragged across a groove.
Your finger swipes. More photos. The ceremony. The reception. The cake. John kissing her, one hand on the small of her back, the other cradling her jaw, the same way he used to hold your face when he kissed you goodbye before deployments, his thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone like he was memorizing it in case he didn't come back.
He'd been practicing on you.
And in the background-
Your breath hitches, gets caught, your chest spasming.
Gaz. Suit and tie, champagne glass raised.
Soap. Laughing, his arm around someone you don't recognize.
Laswell. Talking to an older woman. Smiling.
They were there.
They were at his fucking wedding.
Something happens in your chest deep behind your sternum, like a shelf pulling away from a wall in slow motion, plaster dust and screws and everything that was holding it up just… letting go. Your diaphragm contracts. Your mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Your lungs pull and pull and there's nothing to pull against because the air has gone solid, or you have, or the room has collapsed into a space too small to hold oxygen and a woman falling apart at the same time.
Your mind does it fast. Clicks the pieces into place. Cruel. The distance, the late nights, the perfume that one time. The way he stopped touching you. Stopped looking at you. The way he'd said nothing changed, that's the problem, and his gaze had drifted past your shoulder to the window, to the street, to anywhere that wasn't your face asking him to stay.
He was fucking her. In your house. In your bed. While you lay awake at three in the morning with your hand on his side of the mattress, the sheets still cold, wondering what you'd done wrong.
And Soap… you'd asked Soap. Cornered him in the driveway three months ago when John missed your anniversary dinner. He'd been leaning against his truck, keys already in hand, and you'd caught his sleeve and he'd turned and your voice was shaking and your eyes were already wet and you'd asked Is something going on?
And he'd looked at you. Right at you. Not past, not through- at. And his face had done something quick, something that rearranged itself between one blink and the next, and he'd said, He's just stressed, hen. Ye know how he gets.
He'd patted your shoulder when he said it. You remember that now. The weight of his hand. The way he squeezed once before pulling away.
Gaz. You'd texted him at two in the morning from the bathroom floor, knees drawn up, the tile cold through your pajamas. Is Price seeing someone else? Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. And then: Where's this coming from? You two are solid.
You'd believed him. You'd set the phone face-down on the tile and pressed your forehead to your knees and told yourself you were being paranoid, that you were making problems where there weren't any.
Laswell. You'd called her on a Wednesday afternoon, standing in the kitchen that still smelled like his cologne because he'd left that morning without kissing you goodbye. Your voice had broken on the second sentence and she'd listened- she'd listened, patient and steady, the way she always was- and when you'd asked, voice barely holding, if there was another woman, she'd paused. Just for a beat. Just long enough for something to move behind her silence.
And then she'd said, If there was, you'd be the first to know. Trust me.
Trust me.
The air comes back all at once. Your lungs seize on it, a gulp so deep your whole body jerks, spine curving, shoulders snapping forward, and the sound that comes out of you is not your voice. It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to something older and less evolved, something that lives in the part of the brain that existed before language, before thought, before any of the architecture that's supposed to keep a person from making a sound like this in a room where people might hear.
They hear.
Upstairs, everything goes quiet. Then footsteps, fast.
"YOU KNEW!" You're on your feet. You don't remember standing. The chair hits the wall behind you and the plaster gives, a soft crunch like stepping on snow, and you don't feel your legs but they're holding you up so it doesn't matter. "YOU FUCKING KNEW!"
Soap appears in the doorway first. His face is already wrong, already rearranging itself into something careful, something managed, and the sight of it makes your vision go white at the edges because you've seen that face before and you now recognize it for what it’s worth, for all the times he lied to you.
"What- "
You hurl your phone at him, full bodied, your shoulder rotating with it like you're trying to put your whole skeleton behind the impact. It hits him square in the sternum and he grunts, catches it on reflex because his hands are faster than his brain. Gaz and Laswell crowd in behind him, and the doorway is suddenly too full of people you trusted, people you loved, people who watched you bleed out for months and handed you a towel instead of a tourniquet.
"Sweetheart, what's- " Gaz starts.
"Don’t." The word comes out of you with a sound like tearing cloth. "Don't you dare call me that. Don't you fucking dare."
Soap's eyes drop to your phone. To the screen still open. The wedding photos, the dress, the smile, the date stamp. You watch it happen, watch comprehension move through his face the way a crack moves through ice, starting at one point and spreading outward until the whole surface is fractured.
"Oh fuck," he breathes.
"Yeah." Something leaves your mouth that is sounds like a laugh and tastes like bile. "Oh fuck is right."
Gaz takes a step toward you. "Listen, we can explain- "
"Explain what?" Your hands are vibrating at your sides. You can feel the tremor in your fingertips, in the thin bones of your wrists, in the tendons that run up your forearms like wires pulled too tight. "Explain how you watched him fuck someone else in my bed while I thought I was the problem? Explain how I asked you- I asked all of you- if something was wrong and you lied to my face?"
"We didn't- " Laswell starts.
"YOU WERE AT HIS WEDDING!" Your throat tears on it. You feel it go, a hot, wet rip somewhere deep in the tissue, and you don't stop. Can't stop. You slam your fist down and something behind you is rattling, a glass or a plate vibrating against wood with each syllable you scream. "TWO WEEKS! He married her TWO WEEKS after I signed those papers, and you were THERE! In the pictures! Smiling! Celebrating!"
"We didnae know he was gonnae- " Soap tries.
"Bullshit!" The mug is in your hand. Laswell's cold fucking tea, the one she made you an hour ago like she was doing you a kindness, like that small domestic gesture could coexist with what she knew and chose not to tell you. It leaves your hand before the thought finishes forming and shatters against the wall behind their heads, ceramic shrapnel and cold brown liquid spraying across the wallpaper in a pattern that looks, for one deranged second, like a Rorschach test. "You knew he was fucking her! You knew and you said NOTHING!"
"We were trying to protect you- " Gaz says.
"PROTECT ME?!" You're crying. You can feel it, the heat, the blur, the way your sinuses are flooding, the tears running into your mouth and down your chin and dripping off your jaw onto your shirt. You can taste salt and mucus and the copper tang of a bitten cheek, and underneath all of it something acrid that might be adrenaline or might be the last of your dignity metabolizing. "You let me sit here thinking I wasn't enough! Thinking I'd failed him! I asked you- " Your voice buckles at the knees. "I asked you if he was cheating and you looked me in the eye and you lied."
Soap's face has gone the color of wet cement. "We thought… we thought he'd end it. We thought- "
"You thought WHAT?" You're advancing on him. Each step is deliberate and unsteady, your body moving with the jerky, graceless momentum of someone who has stopped caring what happens next. Soap takes a step back. Then another. A trained soldier, six foot something of muscle and scar tissue and combat reflex, retreating from you across your own kitchen floor with his hands half-raised like you're the biggest threat in the room. "You thought it was better to let me BEG him? To let me sit here tearing myself apart trying to figure out what I did WRONG while he was balls deep in someone else?"
"That's not- " Laswell cuts in, and her voice has that tone. The one you've heard her use on calls, on base, in rooms full of men with fragile egos. Controlled. Logical. The voice of a woman who has never lost a negotiation because she never lets emotion into the equation. You don’t let her.
"In MY bed!" The screams are doing damage now, you can feel it, the rawness, the way each word costs more than the last. "He fucked her in the bed I sleep in! And you- " Your finger finds each of them. Shaking so hard it paints the air in zigzags. "You watched. You knew. And you let me think I was crazy. You let me think I was the problem."
"We were in an impossible situation," Laswell says.
"No." You shake your head, a hysterical laugh bubbling up, caught between your teeth. "You were in an easy situation. You picked the man who was betraying me, and you let me suffer for it."
"It wasn't like that," Gaz says quietly.
"Then what was it like?" Your vision has dissolved. Everything is liquid and blurred, the kitchen swimming behind a wall of water, their faces smeared into shapes you can't read. "Tell me. Explain to me how watching your friend get cheated on and saying nothing is anything OTHER than betrayal."
None of them answer. The silence fills the space where their excuses should be, and it's heavier than anything they could have said.
"I asked you," you whisper. Your voice drops so low it barely displaces air, and you watch them flinch harder than they did when you were screaming because this is worse, and they know it. This is the sound of someone who has stopped fighting. "Three months ago. Six months ago. I asked all of you. And you lied. You looked at me- at me, someone you called family- and you lied." Your voice climbs. Cracks upward. Your finger levels at Gaz, steady for the first time all night, a barrel finding its target. "You told me he was under stress and I should give him time."
He swallows. You can see the muscles of his throat work from across the room. "He was under stress."
"HE WAS UNDER ANOTHER WOMAN," you scream.
"We didnae want to hurt ye," Soap says. His voice breaks on the last word, actually breaks, splits down the middle and comes apart in his mouth like wet paper, and some part of you, some distant, demolished part, registers that he's in pain. That this is costing him something.
You don't care.
"Well you fucking DID!" The fruit bowl leaves your hands with everything you have left. Apples and oranges scatter mid-air, spinning out in separate arcs, and the bowl itself hits the edge of the counter and splits, a sharp, clean crack that sounds like what something makes when it breaks along a fault line that was always there. "You hurt me WORSE! Because I thought- " You're gasping. Hyperventilating. Sobs and screams competing for the same airway and neither is winning. "I thought I still had you. I thought even though John left, I still had my friends. But I don't. I never did."
"That's not fair," Laswell says.
"FAIR?!" The word rips something loose in your chest, something that was holding the rest of you in place. "Was it FAIR that I begged him not to leave while he had a FIANCEE? Was it FAIR that I tore myself apart trying to be better while he was planning a WEDDING? Was it FAIR that the people I trusted most in the world watched it happen and said NOTHING?"
Silence.
Your breathing fills the kitchen. Ragged, wet, obscene in its volume. You can feel snot on your upper lip. Tears cooling on your jaw. Your hands are still shaking at your sides, fingers curled inward, nails buried in the meat of your palms deep enough that you'll find the marks tomorrow, four perfect crescents in each hand, bruised purple, like something bit you from the inside.
"Get out." Your voice comes from somewhere low and gutted, scraped along the floor on its way to your mouth. Flat. Final.
"Wait, just let us- " Gaz reaches for you.
"GET OUT!" A picture frame is in your hand- when did you pick it up?- and it’s John's face, smiling up at you through glass, and your arm is already moving, already cocked, already releasing, and it hits the wall six inches from Soap's head and shatters. Glass sprays across the tile in a bright, sharp fan, pieces spinning and skittering and catching the overhead light as they scatter. "Get his shit and GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
They go.
You hear them take the stairs two at a time. Hear the careful handling from before- the folded shirts, the wrapped frames, the quiet respect for objects that belonged to a man who deserved none- replaced by frantic shoving. Drawers yanked open. Things dropped into boxes without padding.
They come back down with arms full. Boxes and bags and the last of him, all of it clutched to their chests. None of them look at you. They can't. You're standing in the middle of the kitchen with blood on you from where the ceramic of the fruit bowl cut you and you didn't feel it, and your face is a wreck- swollen, blotched, streaked- and you're breathing like you've just finished drowning, and none of them can look at you because looking at you means seeing what they did.
Soap stops at the door. His back is to you. His shoulders are shaking.
"I'm sorry," he says. His voice is barely there. "I'm so fuckin’ sorry."
You don't answer. Your jaw is clenched so tight your molars are grinding against each other, a slow, involuntary pressure that sends pain radiating up through your temples. If you open your mouth, what comes out won't be words. It'll be the sound from before- that torn, animal thing- and this time it won't stop.
He waits.
You give him nothing and Gaz grabs him and drags him out and they leave.
You stand in the wreckage of your kitchen. Ceramic dust on the counter. Brown tea stains drying on the wallpaper in long, slow drips. Glass on the tile, glinting. An apple under the table, bruised where it landed. An orange against the baseboard. A picture frame with no picture in it, the backing hanging loose, the little metal clips bent where the glass tore free.
The house is so quiet you can hear the clock in the hallway. The refrigerator humming. A car passing on the street outside, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling and then gone.
Your knees go first.
They just stop holding. No warning, no wobble, just the sudden absence of anything between your hips and the floor. You go down hard, knees hitting tile, the impact jolting up your spine, and then your hands, palms flat in the glass and the ceramic dust, and the cuts open fresh and you feel them this time, thin and bright and precise, and you don't move.
Then the rest of you.
You fold. Slowly. Forehead to the floor, arms around your head, knees curled in, making yourself as small as physics will allow in the middle of your destroyed kitchen, and the sound that comes out of you is low and formless, a long low frequency that vibrates in your teeth and the tile under your head, pressed out of your lungs by the weight of your own body against the floor.
The clock ticks.
The refrigerator hums.
Outside, it starts to rain.
London, UK // Present…
Eli drags you, fist locked around your arm hard enough to bruise, raw adrenaline doing the thinking for both of you.
You stumble off the main platform, the drop to backstage jarring up your spine. Your heel catches a cable; your ankle twists; you pitch sideways. Eli hauls you upright and keeps moving, half carrying you through the entrance to backstage.
Chaos. Cases overturned, cords everywhere, set pieces looming in the emergency lighting. Crew members running in every direction- some toward exits, some toward the gunfire, some frozen with their headsets hanging and their eyes seeing nothing.
Another burst of gunfire. Closer. Sharper without the arena's shell to blunt it. You flinch so hard your teeth click together.
Eli shoves your head lower. "Down. Eyes forward. Don't stop."
Flashes as you move- a lighting tech curled under a table. One of your dancers clutching her phone, sobbing, "My mum- my mum's in there- "
"Eli, the others- " you choke. "My band, the girls- "
"They're moving. You're priority."
He cuts right, through a fire door, into a service corridor. Concrete walls. Strip lighting. Cooler air, sharp with dust and electrical burn.
You're running. Actually running now, legs finding a rhythm born of pure terror. The corridor stretches ahead, grey and long, lit in intervals by emergency floods that pulse like something dying.
A stagehand rounds the corner ahead of you, sprinting toward you, eyes wild. "This way's clear!" he shouts, waving you forward. "Loading bay's- "
The round takes him in the shoulder.
The sound reaches you a fraction of a second later, a single flat crack, the concrete corridor turning it into something enormous. The stagehand spins. His feet tangle. His body hits the wall and slides down it in a way that doesn't look like a person anymore. It looks like a coat falling off a hook.
Blood. Bright and wrong on the grey concrete, spreading faster than makes sense. His hand twitches once.
Eli's arm slams across your chest, clotheslining you backward. You hit his body hard enough to lose your breath and then he's already moving his hand on the back of your neck into a narrow alcove. A dead end, maintenance access panel, locked. He stops. You stop. His hand is still on your arm and his breathing is hard and controlled, forced through his nose the way people breathe when they're trying not to panic, and for the first time since this started you're standing still.
The silence is worse than the noise.
It presses in from every side, thick and physical, broken only by the muffled wail of a fire alarm somewhere far above and the wet, uneven drag of your own breathing. Your ears are ringing. Your shoulder throbs where you hit the flight case on stage. Your hands are sticky with someone else's blood and they won't stop shaking, won't stop-
Beep.
Your eyes drop.
Not a conscious decision. Not a choice. Something older than thought, something threaded into the base of your brainstem where the animal lives, the part that tracked predators across open grassland a hundred thousand years ago, the gut instinct that senses the wrong thing in a room before the higher brain can name it. Your gaze falls like a stone, pulled down and to the left by a gravity that has nothing to do with physics.
It's there.
Beep.
The world thickens.
That's the only word for it. The air itself seems to change viscosity, to slow around you like you've been submerged in something clear and heavy. The fire alarm fades. Eli's breathing fades. The distant screaming fades. All of it pulling back to the edges of your awareness like a tide retreating, leaving you standing on the bare floor of your own mind with nothing in it except the matte black case you’re staring at and the sound of the beep and the slow, heavy thud of your own heart in your ears.
Beep.
You watch the numbers change.
Your brain does something strange. It splits. The front of it- the part that processes, that plans, that screams and bargains and fights- goes very quiet. Steps back. Sits down. And the part underneath, the old part, the part that's been running on fumes and adrenaline and sheer refusal to die since the first explosion, looks at the device with a recognition so plain and so total that it doesn't even register as fear.
It registers as oh.
Just that.
Small and dull and almost funny in its inadequacy. The same flat, resigned understanding you felt when you looked down at divorce papers on your kitchen table and realized that begging wasn't going to change anything. The same numbness that settled over you like silt when you signed your name and watched John walk out the door without turning around.
Oh, you think, and somewhere behind the thought there's a laugh trying to get out, high and thin and half hysterical, because of course. Of course. You survived five years of heartbreak and public humiliation and rebuilding yourself from raw materials into someone who could stand in front of forty thousand people and scream her pain into a microphone and make them love her for it.
And now there's a bomb three feet from your ankle, and the numbers are getting smaller, and your brain can't even be bothered to panic.
Oh. There's another bomb.
Eli sees your face.
He follows your eyes down. You know the exact moment he finds it because his hand tightens on your arm, a seizure, every finger contracting at once, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to bring you back into your body for one lurching second.
He says something. You see his mouth move. The words don't reach you. They're somewhere on the other side of the glass that's settled between you and the rest of the world, muffled and distant and irrelevant.
The numbers tick. The beeping increases in frequency.
He moves.
You feel his body rotating, his arms closing around you, pulling you into him, his back to the device and his chest against your face and his chin pressing hard into the top of your skull. He is trying to make himself a wall. He is trying to put as much of himself as possible between you and the thing that's about to happen, and the last thing your mind registers is the pressure of his ribs against your cheek and the wild, arrhythmic hammer of his heartbeat and the way his arms tighten like he can hold you together through sheer force.
The beeping stops.
For one fraction of one second, the corridor is perfectly, absolutely silent.
And then then everything turns white.
Undisclosed military base // Present…
The TV is on.
That's the first thing. The screen, cycling through the same loop of footage it's been running for the last fifteen minutes- aerial shot of the arena, smoke rising from two places now. Emergency vehicles. A cordon. Tiny figures that might be people. A scrolling banner at the bottom that reads EXPLOSION AT LONDON ARENA- MASS CASUALTY EVENT- MULTIPLE VICTIMS REPORTED in letters too small and too neat for what they're describing.
The rec room smells like cold coffee and sweat and the particular staleness that settles into a space when too many people have been sitting in it for too long without moving. Someone left a protein shaker on the table hours ago. The whey has separated. Nobody's touched it.
Ghost is standing by the window.
He's been standing there for eleven minutes. Soap knows because he's been watching him, not looking away, not getting closer, just... tracking. Waiting to see what happens.
Ghost's phone is in his right hand. His thumb moves. The screen lights. He presses call.
The sound fills the room, a tiny, distant ring, small as a coin, cycling through the silence once, twice, three times.
Nobody speaks.
Four. Five.
The TV murmurs behind them. A reporter's voice, carefully modulated, saying something about confirmed fatalities and ongoing investigation and no statement yet regarding the condition of- and it doesn't matter. None of it matters. The only sound that matters is that ring, thin and mechanical, threading through the stale air like a pulse.
Six.
Click-
"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later."
The recording is flat, the vocal equivalent of a form letter. It says nothing and means everything and Ghost listens to it, completely still, completely focused, the kind of attention that has already started to grieve.
The call drops.
Ghost's thumb moves. Screen lights. He presses call.
Ring.
Soap is sitting on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees and his hands knotted in his hair. He hasn't moved from this position in ten minutes. His jaw is clenched so tight the muscle jumps at his temple, a rhythmic twitch that he doesn't seem to notice.
Ring.
Gaz is by the door. Arms crossed, shoulder against the frame, one boot tapping a pattern against the floor in anxiety. His face is doing the thing it does when he's working very hard to feel nothing- smooth, neutral, empty-except for his eyes, which are already red.
Ring.
Price is in the corner. Standing the way he stands during mission briefings, feet planted, hands clasped behind his back, chin level. Command posture. But his fingers are white where they grip each other, the knuckles bloodless, and he hasn't spoken a word since he walked in and saw your face on the screen and the words about a bomb and an active shooter at your concert.
Ring.
Laswell is on her phone speaking in low, clipped tones to someone. Clearances. Transport. Access to the scene. She's working the problem because that's what Laswell does, she works the problem, she finds the angle, she pulls the strings. Her voice is steady. Her hand, the one not holding the phone, is gripping the back of a chair so hard her knuckles match Price's.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable- "
Ghost hangs up. The motion is the same as before. Mechanical. A soldier performing a function.
His thumb moves.
Screen lights.
He presses call.
The TV plays footage of men in tactical gear pulling up to the arena, pouring through the entrance while officers fan out, directing civilians past a police cordon to where paramedics are already working in the spaces they’ve cleared. The banner says POSSIBLE SECOND EXPLOSION BACKSTAGE- The anchor is careful about it- unconfirmed, we want to stress, unconfirmed- and the word does nothing. Confirms nothing. Denies nothing. Just takes up space where an answer should be.
Unconfirmed.
Ring.
The protein shaker on the table has a ring of condensation around its base, soaking into the wood. There's a half empty mug next to it. The overhead lights are too bright. They buzz faintly at a frequency that sits right at the edge of hearing, the kind of sound you can't unhear once you've noticed it.
Ring.
Ghost's face hasn't changed. The mask helps with that; hides the mouth, hides the jaw, hides whatever's happening in his expression. But his eyes are visible, and they're fixed on the middle distance, focused on nothing, the way eyes go when the thing they're looking at is internal.
Ring.
"The number you have dialed- "
He hangs up.
The silenceis loud.
It's a different kind of silence than before. Heavier. The kind that has weight and texture and a taste, metallic, like blood, like the inside of a bitten cheek. The kind of silence that settles over a room when everyone in it has run out of ways to pretend that what they're waiting for is anything other than what it is.
Soap lifts his head. His eyes are wet.
"Si," he says. His voice sounds like it's been dragged over gravel. "Maybe- "
"No." Ghost's voice is quiet. The word comes out flat and absolute, a single syllable that closes a door.
His thumb moves.
Screen lights.
He presses call.
The phone rings into the empty room, into the stale air, into the space between what they know and what they're afraid of. It rings and rings and rings, and the sound is small and relentless and faithful, and no one on the other end is ever going to pick up, and he is going to keep calling anyway.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later."
Cw: Graphic depictions of terror attack, blood and injury, gun violence, mass panic, divorce, angst, canon typical violence
✘ Masterlist
London, UK // Present
There’s forty thousand people in front of you, easy.
Phones in the air. Lights like stars. The bass thrums through the stage, through your boots, through the marrow of your legs and up your spine until it feels like your bones are vibrating in time with the track.
You’re halfway through the bridge of your second number when they sing the line back at you; louder than the speakers, louder than the band, a wall of sound made of anger and heartbreak and every person who ever got left behind.
You grin into the microphone, lungs burning, sweat beading at the back of your neck. A little undone by it, the way you always are.
“London,” you shout, breathless, laughing. “You’re fucking loud tonight!”
The arena screams like it’s been waiting its whole life to be praised.
You move, because you can't stop moving- motion is the only thing that makes sense up here, the only channel wide enough to hold all of it. You cross toward the barricade, fingers grazing the outstretched hands at the rail, security tensed in the pit below as you lean just far enough forward to make the front row tip onto their toes. Your own face stares back from the screens overhead, twenty feet tall, eyes catching the light, every wrecked and salvaged piece of you rendered in high definition.
This is where you live now. On the edge of a note, on the edge of a scream.
The song slams into its final chorus and you hit the high note clean, the kind of note that used to crack when you were sobbing alone in your shitty apartment you used to share with your ex husband John Price, whisper singing into a phone mic at three in the morning. Now the whole world howls it back with you.
The last chord drops; the lights cut to black; the crowd roars.
You’re panting, smiling, hair plastered to your forehead as the stadium goes dark for the transition. The in-ear monitor buzzes softly with your crew’s chatter, the stage tech already counting down to the start of Act Two.
You’re about to move toward the side stairs, toward the quick change area where a rack of costumes and a makeup artist are waiting, when the east side of the arena… flashes.
For a split second, your brain files it in the same folder as pyro. A bright bloom, a flare of light where there shouldn’t be one. Maybe someone misfired a special effect. Maybe you missed a cue in rehearsal. Maybe-
The shockwave hits.
Air punches the breath out of your chest. The world lurches sideways, stage tilting under you as your knees slam into the floor. Your palms scrape across the rough surface, microphone skittering away in a shriek of feedback.
Your ears ring so hard everything goes underwater. The crowd’s scream distorts into a single, high, endless sound.
You blink.
Smoke curls up from the east gate. Where there was a mass of people- banners, homemade signs, cheap knockoff merch- there’s… nothing there instead. Around it- people shoving, stumbling, bodies climbing over seats, over each other, trying to get away from-
From what?
Pyrotechnic malfunction? your mind offers, wildly. Some idiot set off something in the stands? A gas main? An amp blew?
You push up, trying to find your feet, and your hand slides.
You look down.
It’s not sweat. It’s not water from a spilled bottle. It’s red, thick and hot and already sticky across your skin, painting your fingers. For a second your brain blanks, refuses it.
And then you see the person on the edge of the stage, slumped over the barrier, their hair matted, their shirt soaked, and your stomach climbs into your throat.
That’s blood.
That’s someone’s blood.
You’re covered in blood. It’s hot and wet and soaking through your bodysuit, sticking to your palms, and it’s not yours. Your brain tries to catch up, tries to make sense of it, but there’s just red. So much red. Someone else’s blood on your hands, your arms, splattered across your chest.
Your mind runs at it and runs at it and can't get purchase, keeps presenting it as a technical problem, a wardrobe issue, something with a solution- and there's no solution, there's just red, and the smell, something scorched and sweet and wrong curling up into your sinuses.
Your vision tunnels. The giant screens flicker; emergency lights begin to strobe. Somewhere in your in-ear, someone is yelling your name, but it’s buried in static and the white roar of forty thousand people panicking at once.
“Move! Move! MOVE!”
The shout comes from behind you, fingers clamping on your upper arm, already pulling, dragging you up and back-
“Wait- ” you gasp, instinctively pulling away, heart hammering. You twist, trying to plant your feet, to see the crowd, to see if anyone is-
You look up.
Eli.
Close cropped dark hair. Jaw clenched. Security headset askew around his neck. Your head of security, usually so relaxed he’s borderline smug, looks like someone ripped the floor out from under him. His eyes cut over you, fast, assessing- no obvious wounds, conscious, mobile- and then he hauls you harder.
“We’re off, now,” he barks, voice low and sharp, the tone he only uses when drunk fans rush the barricade. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
“What happened?” you demand, stumbling after him because your body is moving even if your brain is still ten seconds behind. “Eli- what- was that- ?”
A crack tears through the air and you know that sound. Everyone does. It’s baked into a hundred movies, news clips, headlines, every video you’ve ever scrolled past and tried not to watch.
Gunshots.
One. Two. Then a controlled burst- short, deliberate, patterned- and there's nothing for your mind to do with it except what it already knows.
You flinch so hard you nearly throw yourself out of Eli’s grip. Below the stage, people scream, trying to get away from the east side, spilling over seats, over each other, tripping, falling, being dragged down by strangers who are just as terrified.
“Down!”
Eli shoves your head down with his free hand, palm heavy on the back of your neck, folding you at the waist as he angles himself between you and the arena, broad shoulders taking up more space than you remember. The world compresses into a narrow, tilted view of the stage floor and the edge of his boot as he drags you backward, toward the wings, toward backstage, toward anywhere that isn’t open and exposed.
You taste dust and metal and the sour tang of smoke. The smell of burned something- plastic? fabric? flesh?- curls under your nose and makes your eyes sting.
You let him move you. You go where you're put.
And the scream, when it tears out of you, doesn't feel like yours.
***
5 years ago…
You’re staring at the papers like if you look at them hard enough, the words will rearrange themselves into something that makes sense. But they don’t. They stay exactly what they are.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
Your name. His name. A case number that reduces years of your life together into administrative processing.
Your eyes drag up slowly, and John Price is watching you. Just… watching. His face is carefully blank, that same expression he uses when he’s delivering bad news to families, to command, to anyone he needs to keep at arm’s length. You’ve seen him use it a hundred times.
You’ve never seen him use it on you.
“What is this?” Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. Confused. Like you’re asking him to explain a joke you don’t get.
Price shifts in his chair. He won’t quite meet your eyes. “I think it’s pretty clear.”
“No.” You shake your head. “No, it’s not. John, what- what is this? Where is this coming from?”
He sighs, and it’s the sigh he uses when he’s tired, when he’s been patient long enough. “We’re not happy. Either of us. Haven’t been for a while now.”
“I’m- ” You stop. Blink. “What?”
“You’re unhappy. I’m unhappy.” He says it like it’s fact. Like it’s been decided. “This isn’t working anymore.”
Your hands are shaking. You press them flat against the table to make them stop, but it doesn’t work. “I’m not- John, I’m not unhappy. I’ve been worried. You’ve been distant, you’ve been- I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong so we can fix it.”
“There’s nothing to fix.” His voice is so calm. Too calm. “It’s just… run its course.”
“Run its course?” You’re standing now, you don’t remember standing. “We’re not a fucking mission, John. We’re a marriage.”
“And it’s over.”
The words hit like a slap. You actually rock back on your heels.
“No.” Your voice cracks. “No, you don’t get to just- we don’t just end. Not like this. Not without even trying- ”
“I have tried.” Now there’s something in his voice. Frustration, maybe. Guilt. “This is what’s best. For both of us.”
“Best for- ” You can’t breathe right. Your chest is too tight. “How is this best? John, talk to me. Please. What did I do? Just tell me what I did wrong and I’ll- ”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why?” You’re crying now, you can feel the tears hot on your face but you don’t care. “Why are you doing this? We can fix this. Whatever it is, we can- I love you. Don’t you- ” Your voice breaks completely. “Don’t you love me anymore?”
Something flickers across his face. For just a second, he looks like he’s in pain. But then it’s gone, locked down, and he’s Captain Price again. Unreachable.
“I need you to sign the papers.”
“No.” You’re shaking your head. “No, I’m not- John, please. Please. We can go to counseling, we can- I’ll do anything. Just don’t throw this away. Don’t throw us away.”
“I’ve already signed.” He taps the bottom of the page, and you see it. His signature. John Price. Black ink. Final.
You stare at it. At proof that he’s already made this decision. That he’s already left you, he’s just waiting for you to catch up.
“I’ve been asking everyone if something was wrong,” you whisper. Your throat feels raw. “Soap, Gaz, Laswell- I thought maybe it was a mission, something you couldn’t tell me about, I thought- ” You let out a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob. “I thought if I just gave you space, if I just waited, you’d come back to me.”
Price’s jaw tightens. He looks away.
“But you’re not coming back.” The reality of it is settling over you like ice water. “You’ve already decided. You’ve already… you’re already gone.”
“Sign the papers.” His voice is quiet now. Almost gentle. Somehow that’s worse. “Please.”
You press your palms against your thighs under the table to keep them from shaking. The kitchen feels too bright, the morning sun pouring across the countertops like it doesn’t know it’s not allowed to be cheerful right now. There’s a mug in the sink with a ring of old coffee at the bottom. His jacket on the back of a chair. Your life, scattered in the details of a home you thought you shared.
“What changed?” you ask. “Tell me that, at least. Because several months ago you came home from a tour and you grabbed me in the hallway and told me you missed your wife more than your bed.” Your voice cracks on wife. “So what changed?”
“Nothing changed,” he says. “That’s the problem.”
You stare at him.
“That doesn’t make sense,” you whisper.
He leans back slightly, eyes flicking away from you to the window, to the counter, anywhere but your face.
“We keep doing this,” he says. “You wait for me to come home. You try to… fit around the job. I try to leave it at the door. We pretend it works. It doesn’t. I’m tired.” A pause. “You’re tired.”
“You don’t get to tell me how I feel,” you snap, the first real spark of anger cutting through the fog. “Don’t put words in my mouth because you don’t want to say what’s actually going on.”
His gaze drops back to you, heavy and assessing, an officer sizing up a situation. You know that look. You’ve seen it turned on recruits, on suspects, on men who came back from missions with that faraway stare and bloody sleeves.
You’ve never seen it turned on you.
“I am saying what’s going on,” he says, and there’s a finality in his voice that makes your stomach flip. “I don’t want to be married anymore.”
For a heartbeat, everything goes silent.
There’s still a fridge humming. A car on the street outside. A distant dog barking. But they all sound miles away.
Your hand lifts off your lap without your permission and lands on the papers, fingertips skating over the printed lines. You can feel your pulse pounding under the thin skin of your wrist.
“What did I do?” You’re begging now and you hate it, hate the way your voice sounds, but you can’t stop. “Just tell me. I can fix it. Whatever it is, I can- ”
The question sits between you like something fragile and ugly. You hate that you asked it. You hate that you need the answer.
He flinches, just a little.
“You didn’t do anything.” He’s standing now too, and there’s something desperate in the way he says it. “This isn’t about you. It’s- ” He stops. Runs a hand over his face. “It’s me. I can’t… I can’t do this anymore.”
“Can’t do what? Be married? Be with me?” You’re shaking so hard your teeth are chattering. “John, we built a life together. Years. That means something. That has to mean something.”
“It does.” His voice is rough. “It means I’m asking you to let me go.”
The floor might as well have dropped out from under you.
“Let you go,” you repeat. Numb now. Beyond tears.
He nods.
“John,” you say again, softer now. “Please. Tell me what I did. I can fix it. If I’ve been… too much, not enough, if I’ve been handling the stress wrong, if you need space, we can figure that out. We can- ” Your breath hitches. “Don’t throw this away without even trying to fix it.”
He looks at you then. Really looks. For a moment you see something crack in his expression- guilt, pain, something deep and complicated that you reach for like a lifeline.
Then it’s gone.
He shakes his head once, slow.
“I have tried,” he says, voice low. “Longer than you know. This is me fixing it before it gets worse.”
“How is walking away fixing anything?” you demand. “How is handing me a stack of papers fixing the fact that my husband comes back from missions and won’t let me in? How is this- ” You jab a finger at the document. “- better than a therapist? Or time? Or actually talking to me?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about it,” he snaps, the first crack in his composure. “I don’t want to pick apart every decision I’ve made, every op, every night I didn’t call. I don’t want to sit in a room with some stranger while we pretend this is salvageable when it’s not.”
Your eyes burn.
“So that’s just… it?” you say. “You’ve decided it’s over, so it is.”
“I’ve decided it’s over,” he agrees quietly. “I think that’s the kindest thing I can do for both of us.”
A bitter laugh catches in your chest. It doesn’t make it out. If you start laughing, you’re not sure you’ll stop.
“You don’t get to call this kind,” you whisper. “You’re ripping my life in half at the kitchen table and you think that’s mercy?”
He doesn’t answer.
The clock on the wall ticks. The sunlight moves another inch across the table, catching on the gold of his ring. Your ring feels suddenly heavy on your hand, a band of metal that’s more shackle than promise.
You curl your fingers into a fist to hide the tremble.
“What if I don’t sign?” you ask, because you have to cling to something. Some measure of control. “What then?”
His gaze drops briefly to the papers, to the neatly filled out lines, the places where he’s already written his signature. Where the solicitor’s name sits. Where the process has clearly already started without you.
“Then it’ll take longer,” he says. “And it’ll be uglier. Lawyers. Courts. All of it. I don’t want that for you.”
He keeps saying it like he’s doing you a favor.
You swallow hard. Your tongue tastes like metal.
Images flicker in your mind: him coming through the door with that tired, lopsided smile. The way he kissed your forehead when he thought you were asleep. The time he brought you a mug of tea and sat with you on the floor when you cried over some stupid movie, his big hand moving slow and clumsy on your back because he didn’t know what else to do but refused to leave.
You built a life on those moments. On the belief that underneath the uniforms and silence and scars, you were wanted.
You look down at the papers again. At the blank line next to your name. All you have to do is sign, and seven years of love and trust and building a home together just… ends. Dissolved. Like it never mattered at all.
Your hand is shaking so badly you can barely hold the pen.
“I love you,” you whisper. One last time. One last desperate attempt. “I love you, John. Doesn’t that matter? Don’t you love me anymore?”
He doesn’t answer.
The silence stretches, taut and strangling. Somewhere outside a car door slams, a dog barks, the world keeps going like it doesn’t know everything inside you is collapsing inward.
You let out a shuddering breath.
“Okay,” you say, even though nothing is okay. “Okay. You want it to be over. You’ve already signed. You’ve already talked to a solicitor without me. You’ve decided this is the best thing for both of us.” Your voice steadies as you go, anger cooling into something colder. “Just… don’t stand there and pretend it’s because you’re doing me some kindness.”
You sign your name.
The pen feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Your signature looks wrong. Shaky and small and wrong. But it’s there.
“There,” you say, voice barely above a whisper. “Congratulations.”
John’s breath leaves him in a slow, heavy exhale. His shoulders drop a fraction, like something just unclenched inside him. The sight of it makes bile rise in your throat.
Price reaches across the table and takes the papers. Doesn’t look at you when he does it.
“I’ll have my lawyer file these tomorrow,” he says quietly. “Thank you.”
You laugh, broken. “Don’t thank me,” you say. “You asked me to help you burn our life down and I handed you the matches. That’s not something you thank someone for.”
You just stand there. Empty. Hollowed out.
He walks to the door. Stops with his hand on the frame. For a second you think he’s going to turn around. Going to say something. Going to tell you this was all a mistake.
He doesn’t turn around.
The door opens. Closes.
The house is suddenly too quiet. The only evidence he was ever here is the faint smell of his cologne, the ghost of his coffee in the sink, and your name, still wet in ink on a document that says your marriage is over.
You sit there at the kitchen table, hands folded tightly in your lap so you don’t fall apart, and try to understand what you did wrong.
project hail mary is a touching and poignant film that leaves you asking questions about humanity like, "wow what if all mainstream media was genuinely good" and "what if book adaptions actually gave a shit about the book in question" and "what if studios hired actors that could actually act, and then let them get a lil wacky with it"
︵ ೀ fluff. you call satoru by his last name in public and he is a bit dramatic about it
the staff meeting at jujutsu high was supposed to be the most boring hour of your week, the kind where yaga talks about statistics and everyone quietly checks how many minutes are left before they can go get lunch.
but you and satoru had gotten into a fight that morning, one of those stupid arguments that starts over something small and somehow spirals into “well maybe you just don’t think about anyone but yourself,” and neither of you had really resolved it before you both had to show up to work like functioning adults.
so when he strolled into the conference room fifteen minutes late, blindfold pushed up onto his head, grinning like the whole world owed him a good morning, you didn’t even glance up from your notebook.
“morning, morning, did everyone miss me?” he said, dropping into the seat next to yours like nothing at all had happened between the two of you a few hours earlier.
“gojo,” you said, without looking up, your voice perfectly even, like you were greeting a coworker you barely knew.
the entire room seemed to freeze for a second. not satoru. not babe, not the nickname you swore you’d never use in public but absolutely used constantly at home. just gojo, delivered with all the warmth of a weather report.
nanami’s eyebrows climbed so high they nearly disappeared into his hairline. shoko made a small choking sound and had to set her coffee cup down before she embarrassed herself further. even yaga, who had seen a thousand strange things happen in this school, paused his sentence about budget allocations to look between the two of you like he’d wandered into the middle of a drama he hadn’t signed up for.
satoru blinked, the smile faltering just slightly at the corners. “huh?”
you flipped a page in your notebook and underlined something that absolutely did not need underlining, just to have somewhere to put your hands.
“did you,” he started, sitting up straighter now, all his earlier ease draining out of him, “did you seriously just gojo me?”
“can we please get back to the agenda,” you said, addressing the room in general rather than him specifically.
nanami cleared his throat and tried to steer things back on track. “as i was saying, the eastern district has seen an uptick in curse activity over the past—”
“she gojo’d me,” satoru interrupted, loud enough that the whole table heard it, staring at you with the wounded expression of a man who had just watched his house burn down in front of him. “in front of everyone. she used my last name like i’m a substitute teacher.”
you still didn’t look at him. you clicked your pen closed, then open again, then closed, a habit you knew drove him up the wall, and said nothing at all.
“focus, gojo,” you said again, watching the way his whole soul seemed to leave his body when you said it a second time was a little more satisfying than you’d expected.
“okay. okay, everybody hold on,” satoru said, raising both hands like he was trying to talk down an actual hostage situation. “nobody move, nobody speak, something has gone horribly wrong here. she just used my government name. in public. on purpose.”
“that is your name,” nanami pointed out, deadpan, not even looking up from his own notes.
“not to her it isn’t! not in four years has she ever once called me gojo, and now suddenly, out of nowhere, in the middle of a staff meeting, she’s talking to me like i’m a stranger she met at the post office—” he turned to you again, voice climbing with real panic now. “okay, you know what, meeting’s over, everyone go home, thank you for coming, we’ll reschedule—”
“the meeting,” yaga said flatly, unimpressed, “is not over.”
“it is for me!” satoru stood so fast his chair scraped loudly against the floor, then leaned across the table toward you, blindfold slipping further down his forehead, genuine desperation creeping into his voice. “what did i do. just tell me what i did and i’ll fix it. is this about the mission partner thing? it’s the mission partner thing, isn’t it. i can undo it. i can un-fix the fixing. i can grovel right here in front of everyone if that’s what this requires—”
you finally looked up to deliver the final blow with the sweetest, most devastating calm you could manage:
“i’m not sure what you mean, gojo. we’re in the middle of a meeting.”
that was the moment the room completely lost it. shoko was laughing so hard into her coffee cup that she had to set it down entirely, wiping at her eyes. nanami pressed a hand over his face like he was praying for the strength to survive this job for one more day. even yaga, who never smiled during meetings on principle, was clearly biting back one now, badly.
“that’s it,” satoru said, dropping back into his chair. “fine. that’s fine. be like that. see if i care. i am literally the strongest sorcerer in the world and i am being disrespected in my own place of employment, in front of my own coworkers, by my own—” he lowered his voice for the last part, leaning toward you like it was a secret, “—girlfriend, who apparently doesn’t remember that we live together and that i know exactly what cereal she eats and exactly what she looks like without—”
“gojo,” nanami cut in, exhausted, “please let the meeting continue.”
“see! even he can feel that something is deeply wrong here! the temperature in this room actually dropped! shoko, did the temperature just drop or was that just me—”
you allowed yourself the smallest, most private smile, tucked safely behind the cover of your notebook, as the strongest sorcerer alive continued to unravel in real time over exactly one syllable of his own last name, in front of the entire senior staff of jujutsu high, on a random tuesday morning.
by the time you got home that evening, satoru had clearly spent the whole day rehearsing something, because the second you walked through the door he was already there, hovering, almost vibrating with nervous energy like a dog that knows it did something wrong but isn’t sure what.
“okay so,” he said, following you into the kitchen, “i’ve been thinking about this literally all day, and i want to formally apologize, on the record, for the mission partner thing, and also i want to say, for the record, that what you did today was actually kind of terrifying and i need you to never do it again.”
“do what,” you said, setting your bag down like you had no idea what he could possibly mean, even though you absolutely did.
“you know what,” he said, sliding an arm around your waist from behind before you could even take your jacket off, chin dropping onto your shoulder. “the gojo thing. please. i’m begging you. never again.”
“it’s your name,” you said, echoing nanami from earlier, and you felt him groan directly into your shoulder.
“it is not my name when you say it like that,” he mumbled. “when you say it like that it sounds like you’re breaking up with me in front of witnesses. i had to sit there for an entire meeting wondering if this was it, if this was the day my girlfriend decided she’d had enough of me and was breaking the news.”
you turned around in his arms, biting back a laugh, and he immediately seized the opportunity to rest his forehead against yours, eyes closed like he was bracing for more punishment.
“so you admit you deserved it,” you said.
“i admit nothing,” he said, “except that i am deeply, deeply sorry, and that i will never again swap your mission partner without telling you first, and that if you ever call me gojo again in public i will actually die.”
“say please.”
“please,” he said immediately, no hesitation at all, pulling you in tighter like he was worried you might change your mind and use his last name right there in the kitchen just to torture him further. “please, please, i’ll do anything, i’ll even do paperwork, just—just be normal about it. call me anything else. call me an idiot, call me insufferable, i don’t care, just not that.”
“fine,” you said, finally letting the smile show. “satoru.”
the relief on his face was almost embarrassing, the way his whole body seemed to unclench at once, like you’d just lifted some enormous curse off him.
“thank you,” he said, dramatic as ever, pressing a kiss to your forehead, then your cheek, then finally your mouth. “never again. i mean it. that was the scariest six words of my entire life and i’ve fought curses that wanted to eat my ass.”
“it was one word,” you pointed out.
“it felt like six,” he said, and pulled you into a hug so tight it nearly knocked the breath out of you, laughing into your hair, all traces of this morning’s fight forgiven, or at least thoroughly overridden by how badly he never wanted to hear his own last name from you again.
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