Now this is not 911 so feel free to ignore it but. I would love hair braiding for any of Parker/Hardison/Eliot
this is an excellent prompt THANK U <33 here are some guys
Eliot doesn’t ask for things. It isn’t how he operates. He hasn’t made it as long as he has in this business by needing other people to do things for him–self sufficiency is a requirement for his survival. So when Parker walks in to the kitchen as he’s struggling to pull his hair back, neither of them say anything.
On their last job, Eliot had dislocated his shoulder, an ill-advised shove landing him harder than he’d calculated. He’s been in his line of work long enough now that he can’t bounce back from an injury the way he used to, and he still doesn’t have full range of motion on his left side. It hasn’t been enough to keep him out of commission, but it’s been irritating. And now, he can’t get his hair back out of his face. With Parker in front of him, he tries not to show his frustration. But with Parker in front of him, he doesn’t have to. She’s picked up people-reading skills from Sophie, sure, but for better or for worse, Parker knows his specific tells better than almost anyone. She makes a disapproving noise as she slides over next to him, pulling a stool out from under the bar.
“You’re making it worse,” she tells him.
“My shoulder?”
She huffs a laugh. “Your hair!”
“Don’t see how it could get worse’n it is,” he grumbles.
“How about if you dislocate your shoulder again and have to sit the next job out?”
Eliot growls low in his throat, and trusts that Parker will know its not really directed at her. She easily disregards him, pushing at his shoulder until he relents and drops onto the barstool.
“Just let me fix it, ‘kay?”
Eliot gives an affirmative grunt. Parker comes up behind him on the barstool and starts finger-combing his hair. She isn’t particularly gentle, not the way one might expect. But in a way particular to Parker, she is gentle. When Eliot hisses a breath through his teeth, Parker’s hands still and adjust until they’re no longer pulling at a tangle. Eliot gives a contented sigh as Parker’s nails scratch over his scalp, and she repeats the movement, sending sparks down his spine. Neither of them speak for long moments as her hands untangle his hair, attempting to fix the mess Eliot had made earlier. But they’re talking all the same. It’s been years since Eliot and Parker had to speak to communicate. Not since they recognized their shared alien nature—the thing that makes them different from everyone else, but the same as each other. Their shared secret language that means Eliot understands Parker’s movements as if she were his shadow. As she starts tugging his hair into strands, pulling them over and under each other, Eliot hears, take better care of yourself. He hopes that as the line of his shoulders relaxes, she hears him reply, thanks for having my back.
From Parker’s methodical weaving of his hair Eliot discerns she’s giving him a French braid. He lets himself lean further into her hands. He almost never opts to braid his own hair, but he appreciates the practicality of it. Likes that Parker knows he won’t be fixing his hair himself for a bit, and is giving him a hairstyle that stands a chance of lasting a few days, if he’s careful. There’s a soothing, soporific effect to having his partner’s hands in his hair, and Eliot’s eyes have drifted shut by the time Parker ties off the braid.
“Don’t mess that up,” she tells him, breaking the long quiet.
“The braid?”
“Your shoulder,” she corrects. Her quick thief’s hands slide lightly over the injury.
“‘S long as you’ll fix my hair when this unravels, I promise I’ll take it easy.”
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said, as if he had some say in the matter.
He had no idea who he was, or who she was. All he knew was that the two kept meeting on abandoned rooftops, chasing after criminals across the night sky.
She knew much more than that.
She knew of early mornings spent side by side, watching the sunrise in each other’s arms.
Of late nights spent in front of a movie, yelling at the plot.
Of days spent with each other, where there was nothing to do but be.
But remembering lost days would do her no service now.
She shrugged off his comment, stepping past him to punch a foe who had been raising his baton.
“And miss out on seeing your wonderful face? I think I’ll pass.”
He laughed at that- not the laugh she remembered, but a ghost of it. “I’m not saying thanks; I could have handled them.”
“No you couldn’t. If I wasn’t here, that man would’ve knocked you out.”
He laughed again, shaking his head. He was already walking away, ready to jump across another roof. “I don’t need your help.”
She reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder. He paused, turning his head to look at her hand.
“If you keep doing this, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
ok lets definitely not think about how old this ask is!! heres a “what if nmj and jgy had, like, literally one adult honest conversation about things” scene :0
it wasn’t as though meng yao was a born liar. it was something he practiced, had had to practice, until deception was a second skin that he fit snugly within. but practice did not mean he could not make mistakes. it was his emotions that were dangerous, running hot in his veins and making him careless. it was anger, this time, that damned him.
“if he takes credit for my work one more time,” meng yao says, harsh under his breath, “i’ll kill him. i could make it look like an accident. they wouldn’t punish me, not if i act like it was a mistake. he wants to think that i’m good. i can help him believe that. i--”
“meng yao?”
oh, heavens.
“n-nie-zongzhu, i--” meng yao loses control of his face entirely. his expressions, normally meticulously controlled, slip away from him. dimly, he is aware that he must look shocked, eyes wide open and face flushed. he must look guilty, which is much worse. “i didn’t know you’d arrived in lanling, nie-zongzhu,” he blusters.
“who is taking credit for your work?” nie mingjue asks.
“oh, sect leader, you don’t need to concern yourself with--”
“who, meng yao?” nie mingjue does not sound any more angry than he normally does, but he is not being gentle.
“just my supervisor, nie-zongzhu. it’s--its nothing, really.” meng yao has found control over his face again, and opens his eyes wide, quirking his eyebrows up in concern. he tries to gentle his blush into something softer, less incriminating. it doesn’t seem to soften nie mingjue any.
“and were you serious? your threat--do you really want him dead?” unprepared, meng yao falls silent, shuffling excuses around in his head.
“don’t lie to me, meng yao.” nie mingjue pauses, and then adds, “please.”
meng yao sighs, a small contained, thing. folding his arms behind his back he steps forward, pushing himself into nie mingjue’s space. he lets his gaze drop, lets his eyelashes flutter.
“yes.” meng yao reaches up to rest a hand on the collar of nie mingjue’s robe. “i do want him dead. the thousand other little faults of his i could deal with but...well. i take pride in the work i do, nie-zongzhu.” meng yao’s voice is low, soft enough that nie mingjue leans imperceptably closer. meng yao brings the blush back into his cheeks and takes a step backward. nie mingjue follows, seemingly without thought, and meng yao has to hold back a smile.
“does it make a difference?” nie mingjue asks. “that it was me that overheard?”
“of course it does,” meng yao laughs, harsh and wounded. “i care what you think of me. although i’m sure i’ve ruined my reputation, now.”
“is that what you think?”
“are you going to prove me wrong, zongzhu?” meng yao keeps his face still as he waits for nie mingjue to respond.
“i just wish you would have let me know you.” nie mingjue says. he doesn’t sound as betrayed as meng yao thought he might. he just sounds tired. meng yao, abruptly, feels as exhausted as nie mingjue sounds, and lets the mask fall from his face. it would be so much easier if mingjue would hate him, instead of this neutral disappointment.
“and what would you have done? would you have tried to fix me, nie-zongzhu? to redeem me? would you have tried ot bring poor, lost, a-yao back to the light?” he’s drawn closer to nie mingjue as spoke, tilting his chin up to look him in the eye.
“no, meng yao.” nie mingjue’s hand lifts, nearly settling on meng yao’s shoulder before dropping away, like he’s not sure he’s allowed. “i would have asked why. and i would have listened, if you told me.”
“oh,” meng yao says. the room falls silent as he turns mingjue’s words over and over in his head. almost without thinking, he leans his head against nie mingjue’s chest. after a moment, nie mingjue lifts his hand again, resting it on the small of meng yao’s back with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “well. if...if you ask. if you were to ask me, some time. maybe i’d tell you.”
“hm.” there’s a smile in nie mingjue’s voice. “then i will, some time.”
“okay,” meng yao says, and smiles--intentional, but real.
“and...try not to kill your superiors, meng yao. i’m sure you can come up with another solution.” meng yao sighs, put upon and dramatic.
“well. since you asked so nicely, nie-zongzhu, i’ll think about it.”
for @blaseballwipamnesty: 1.4k of a Sutton Dreamy study, immediately post-ascension. i may come back to it someday--would’ve been eventual sutton dreamy/juice collins, with background nagomi mcdaniels/mrs silk, and nagomi & sutton friendship. warnings for description of a panic attack/breakdown, with some slight descriptions of depersonalization, and not the most healthy handling of intense emotions, and non-maincord-friendly swearing.
The problem was that Sutton didn’t know she had had a home until it was taken away from her. She didn’t know that home could be the gas station fried chicken the team would share before practice at unholy hours. She hadn’t known it could be sitting in the stands with Parra and talking about extradimensionality, or Kennedy calling her “kiddo,” or finding impossibly long strands of Combs’ hair in everything she owned even after they were gone. Her home had been splurging on overpriced aquarium tickets and caramel-and-Old-Bay ice cream, and falling asleep to the scuttling whispers of the MotherCrab every night. It hadn’t occurred to her that Baltimore had been her home, but it was. And then it was gone.
Ascension was like having a limb ripped away from her. No--Ascension was like being the limb that was ripped away. Being the part that gets left behind, unnecessary and useless. Unable to function on its own. An arm without a body, displaced. One second she is with her team, and they’ve won, and they had tried to be as prepared as possible for what would come next, but nothing could have prepared them for this. And then, loud and sudden and all-encompassing, they are somewhere else, somewhere so wrong that, even for Sutton, it’s nightmarish. They’re losing like they’ve never lost before--but isn’t it an honor, to have a god come after you personally? And it’s all over so suddenly that none of them have the chance to say goodbye. Between one blink and the next, her family is one. Another breath, and Sutton is swept away, too--not to follow them, but instead washing up on the soft, unfamiliar sands of Hawai’i. It is only the second time in her life that Sutton regrets teaching herself how to feel. She feels broken-open, realizing only belatedly that her face is wet with more than just ocean spray. She’s crying, violently so, and doesn’t understand at first that she’s furious. It’s the most emotion she’s ever felt at once, and it’s horrible--everything so intense that it comes back around to feeling distant and numb. She’s gotten herself out of the water, somehow, curled up on her side as she heaves with what must be inhumanly ugly sobs. Everything around her blurs, until she is aware of the sand in her fingernails and the salt drying in her eyelashes and her rage and nothing else. After maybe an eternity she hears a voice from somewhere, somewhere nearby, maybe. It’s a distinctive, rasping voice, a familiar one, but it still takes Sutton a moment to place it.
“Sutton,” Nagomi is saying. “Breathe, come on, Dreamy. Damn it, can you hear me?” Nagomi’s mandibles click anxiously. Sutton chokes on her own breath.
“Gomi,” she gasps. A thud, like someone dropping to the ground next to her, and the weight and warmth of Nagomi’s uncarcinized hand rubbing circles on Sutton’s back.
“Yeah, Dreamy. You gotta breathe with me, okay? You can freak out all you want, but let me at least get you inside, first.” She keeps talking, even when Sutton’s perception goes all fuzzy, and eventually the familiar creaking of her voice soothes her back into something approaching coherence. Nagomi helps her stand, hand still steady on her back, and for the first time, Sutton can take in her surroundings. They’re on a small beach, enclosed and private, with no one but herself and Nagomi in sight. There’s a house, maybe 50 yards away from the beach, with white siding and soft blue curtains in the windows. There’s a vegetable garden in the yard, and a path of uneven stone leading to the house.
“Where are we?” Sutton manages to ask, voice hoarse. In response, Naagomi beams, her mouth stretching impossibly wide. They approach the back door, and Nagomi slides it open with enough familiarity that Sutton doesn’t think to question her.
“Dreamy,” Nagomi says, as a dark haired, oddly familiar-looking woman turns to look at them, “I’d like you to meet my wife.”
Mrs. Silk, unsurprisingly, is a lovely woman, and, more surprisingly, Sutton absolutely does not want to talk to her. Sutton thinks that she might stumble through some pleasantries, but between everything that’s happened to her wife and her son, Sutton is pretty sure that Mrs. Silk won’t judge anyone for being inconsolable over blaseball. Nagomi presses a glass of water into Sutton’s hands and Sutton drinks it, although she remains only distantly aware of her body. She might drink more water, or someone might ask if she wants anything to eat, but time seems to stretch and compress oddly and the next thing Sutton knows, she’s curling up to sleep on the living room sofa. She might lie awake, staring at the ceiling, or she might fall asleep in moments, and either way she is glad when sleep takes her.
It’s still dark when Sutton wakes, and for a few moments she doesn’t know where she is. What she does know is that she’s tired of feeling numbly miserable. Players get traded all the time, she tells herself. So what if her entire team is gone somewhere she can’t follow? She was bound to leave the Crabs someday, so she might as well get ahold of herself and learn to deal with it. So she heaves herself off of the couch and leaves Mrs. Silk’s house. The night sky sheds deep blue light over the sand and the water. It’s an entirely different sort of night than Sutton is used to, no humming yellow city lights or sirens or omnipresent eldritch whispering. It’s quiet, and Sutton hates it. She wants to scream and shatter the night like glass, but she doesn’t. Instead she walks, along the beach until she finds a road, and along the road until she finds a town, and through the town until she finds a bar. It’s still open, which surprises her, but after a moment of staring up at the neon sign, she goes in. The space is quiet, its walls made of dark wood, with soft, warm lighting throughout. To Sutton’s relief, she’s not the only one there--several patrons sit in booths or at the bar, where a single bartender is serving drinks. The bartender is wearing a blue patterned button down with the sleeves rolled up, her dark hair held up in a loose bun with a cocktail umbrella stuck into it. She has warm, dark skin and a warmer smile that she’s directing at the customer she’s talking to. When she catches sight of Sutton, the bartender smiles--she has dimples--and waves to her.
“Hi! We close in about an hour, but you’re welcome to stay until then.”
“Oh,” Sutton says, “sorry, I--I don’t even know what time it is,” she admits.
“No worries!” says the bartender. “It’s--” she checks her watch, “--just after eleven. We close at midnight.”
“Thanks,” Sutton says. She’s off-put by the woman’s demeanor, a sudden reminder that not everyone had their world end earlier today. But that’s not her fault, Sutton tells herself. She takes a seat at the bar.
[Plot notes: Sutton wanders and eventually ends up at Juice’s bar--doesn’t know what to order, because she doesn’t drink, and the only thing she remembers other Crabs drinking is like, shitty beer is making it natty boh too cliche?? im never around baltimoreans drinking. Juice won’t give Sutton alcohol because it’s pretty clear that Sutton is fucked up, but they talk. Juice remembers Sutton, but Sutton had a kind of insular attitude to making friends and doesn’t really know Juice. This is a little bit of a meet-ugly, because this is the literal worst day that Sutton has had, ever, in her life. Juice is really sweet, though, and doesn’t hold a grudge because she saw Sutton’s worst day of her life televised, as did pretty much everybody. The rest of the plot would be about Sutton learning to Vibe™ with the help of Juice, Nagomi, and Mrs. Silk (who would probably need a first name at some point….). (Where is York at this point? Can he visit?? Actually that’s probably more angst than I’m prepared to deal with.) (ALSO re: Mrs. Silk’s house being right where Gomi and Sutton washed up, maybe her house is where new/traded players always show up, and she built her house there bc of how often Gomi gets traded, so she’d always be the first person to see her when she shows up??) Anyways, Sutton has to learn how to be a person on her own, and also how to chill the fuck out. If this follows her through the end of the siesta it’d probably involve her having some kind of culture shock going from hypercompetitive, structured crab life to the fridays Literally Just Hanging Out.]
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Neerie McCloud is in the Elsewhere. Neerie McCloud has always been in the Elsewhere; there is no need to remember anything else. The Elsewhere wants Neerie to stay.
or: scenes from the Immateria, where Neerie has been for 138 days and counting.
my friends enabled me to write sad blaseball fic ! so here’s this! detailed content warnings are in author’s note; this fic deals a lot with memory loss and dissociation
tam!!! ilysm i had so much fun w this prompt. also theres an ao3 link here bc this got kinda long oop
“lan zhan. hey, lan zhan.” wei wuxian’s words are insistent, but whispered, as though he doesn’t want to break the silence of the night around them. the sky is dark around them, and the moon is bright, like it was when they first met. before either of them knew what they would become to each other. this night, they are laying in the grass in cloud recesses, as snow-white rabbits hop and stretch and nap nearby. wei wuxian’s head rests nearly on lan wangji’s shoulder, with his arm resting gently on lan wangji’s chest. it is the most peaceful lan wangji can remember feeling in a long, long time.
”mn. wei ying.”
“lan zhan, i missed you when i was gone.” he says it like a secret. “did you miss me?” lan zhan stares at him, looking surprised and--concerned? offended, maybe?
“did i miss you? wei ying--when you were dead?” he asks. wei wuxian sits up immediately, looking nearly frantic.
“ah! no, lan zhan, no, that’s not what i meant at all. i’m sorry, lan zhan, ah--i wouldn’t joke about that, i wouldn’t.” he grabs for lan wangji’s hands, and pulls him up until he is sitting as well, so wei wuxian can wrap his arms around his shoulders and rock them both back and forth. lan wangji follows easily, tucking his head against wei wuxian’s shoulder and resting his hands on his waist. “i promise i wouldn’t, lan zhan.”
lan wangji, now that he’s thinking clearly, knows that wei wuxian wouldn’t. they’d had that conversation already, when he had made one too many jokes about his own death and lan wangji had made himself be honest about why it bothered him so much. he did his best to explain, to tell wei wuxian what he meant, about the enormity of his grief. if he had had the words he would have said:
wei ying, for every breath i took the past sixteen years, i missed you. i missed you the way i would a limb, or my golden core, or my own slow-beating heart. like you were my best friend, my soulmate, the other father to my son. even when my grief had calmed from a hurricane to a slow, heavy fog, it never left me. those sixteen years i learned how to survive without you, wei ying, but never again how to live. and i did not know sunlight again until i heard your voice.
lan wangji had not had the words to say this. but he thinks that wei wuxian heard some of it anyway, as he never again brought up his own death with anything but gentleness in front of lan wangji. and he knows, now, that he would not have asked something so careless.
“i apologize. i do know that you wouldn’t joke about your dying--i was not thinking, and i made assumptions.” as he speaks, lan wangji moves a hand from wei wuxian’s waist to the back of his head, combing gently through his loose ponytail and pulling blades of grass from it.
“lan zhan, ah, lan zhan, don’t apologize, silly, its--we’re okay. i didn’t mean to upset you.”
“we’re okay,” lan wangji echoes, a reassurance. wei wuxian sighs in relief, his breath close enough to ruffle lan wangji’s hair just a little.
“what i meant,” wei wuxian continues, “was, did you miss me, just recently, when i was travelling. i missed you, of course--every beautiful thing i saw, i wanted to turn to you and point and say, ‘lan zhan, look at that!’ sometimes i’d forget, and tell you about something anyway, until i’d remember you weren’t there.” wei wuxian’s voice has gone soft, and wistful, and maybe a little embarrassed, and all at once lan wangji feels so full of love for him that he thinks his heart could break. he moves to lay back down on the grass, pulling wei wuxian with him until he lays half on top of him, their arms still around each other, wei wuxian’s face against lan wangji’s neck. “i started writing you letters, but i got too embarrassed to send them. it just kind of ended up being a journal that i kept, but...but written for you, i guess.”
“wei ying,” lan wangji says, feeling like he could just up and die of feeling. “wei ying. i missed you. when you were travelling.” he pauses, the tips of his ears bright red. “whenever you aren’t with me, i miss you.”
“oh.” wei wuxian says. he pulls lan wangji closer to him. lan wangji can feel the soft motion of wei wuxian’s eyelashes against his neck whenever he blinks. “oh,” he says again. “lan zhan, i didn’t know.”
“i missed you every day for sixteen years,” lan wangji points out. “no matter where you are, if you are away from me, i will miss you. my wei ying.”
“my lan zhan…” wei wuxian says, soft and serious in the way he so rarely is. “you won’t have to miss me any more, okay? i know i get restless but...but maybe next time i travel you can just come with me. so i won’t have to miss you, either.”
“mn. yes.”
“yes? just like that?”
“want to be where wei ying is,” lan wangji says. he doesn’t know how to make it any clearer to wei wuxian that he loves him.
“i want to be where you are too, lan zhan. so lets stay together, okay?” wei wuxian says. lan wangji nods, and kisses wei wuxian on the center of his forehead, where the medallion of his forehead ribbon would lay if he had one. “okay.” wei wuxian says. he grins. “good.”
!!! rememebr that SIGHT banter i was writing weeks ago?? here it is! best worst clairvoyant team who i care so much.
“Eastwood.”
“Yes?”
“You know I can’t actually see the meteor shower.”
Eastwood laughs, loud and bright. “Whitney, I did, in fact, know that.”
“Well, alright then.” Whitney sighs and leans back in the grass, closing their eyes--though it doesn’t make a difference. “So tell me why you brought your blind coworker to watch a meteor shower? Wouldn’t this be more up Watcher’s alley?”
“Watcher is a lot to spend time with outside of work,” says Eastwood. There’s a rustling of fabric, and he makes a sound like he’s stretching. “And I just had a feeling.” A gentle tap, on Whitney’s closed hand, prompting them to hold it outstretched so Eastwood can place a worn card on their palm. She rubs it between two fingers.
“Which one is this?”
“It’s an Uno card,” he tells her. “It’s the yellow eight.”
Whitney hums, and nods, and lets Eastwood take the card back. They know what that card means from Eastwood, mostly. The quiet shuffling of Eastwood’s deck of cards is soothing in its familiarity. “Has it started yet?”
“Mm.”
“What’s it like?”
“Give it five minutes.”
Whitney laughs, then. “Oh, I see how it is. You’re thinking my Sight is gonna kick in. I don’t control that, you know! I could just as well see that new kid ordering their coffee, or what Watcher’s wife’s next sewing project will be.”
“Or,” Eastwood says, “you could see a meteor shower.” He pauses. “I’m gesturing,” he adds, “with both my hands out, like, ‘trust me.’ And anyways, Whitney, I thought you only Saw important things.”
“Well, sure I trust you. I just don’t think you’re right, East, that’s a totally different thing. And important is relative.”
Eastwood hms at her, skeptical, but Watcher is pretty sure that she can hear him smiling. Everything gets quiet after that, as Eastwood watches the meteor shower and shuffles his cards, over and over. Whitney starts to feel restless, tense like they‘re waiting for something while simultaneously not expecting anything to happen. It bothers them, a bit, that Eastwood thinks they’ll See something. It’s more frustrating than they’d like to admit. Whitney never goes around telling Eastwood what to use his cards for, after all. The unfortunate thing about working on a team like SIGHT is that every person on it, by virtue of being able to see the future, was on some level an insufferable bastard. Watcher was the worst, of course, and Eastwood was usually the best out of any of them, unobtrusive and deceptively normal. Usually it was that normalcy, the bright, unbothered manner of his, that got on Whitney’s nerves. But it only bothered them rarely, so their friendship remained pretty functional. All things considered. So, in the interest of maintaining that friendship, Whitney tried to let their annoyance slide away. By the time the feeling had begun to pass, it had been nearly five minutes since the meteor shower had started. And then, as it has nearly every day since they were fifteen, Whitney feels a tingling in their fingers, and a shifting lightheadedness comes over them.
“East,” she says, warning. Eastwood lays a hand over hers, grounding. And Whitney’s Sight takes over. Five minutes from now, Mayor Hope Skylark will be sitting at her desk, typing frantically on a desktop computer and shifting a stack of papers. Her office will be lit by a single lamp, and her tall windows will have the curtains drawn back. Skylark doesn’t see, not with her back to the windows. But Whitey Puckett does. The night sky, its deep blue-black. The pinprick stars. The streaks of the meteor shower, purple and blue through the windows.
Whitney shakes herself a bit as the vision ends. Eastwood gives her hand a squeeze.
“Anything good?” He asks.
“Mayor Skylark, doing paperwork.”
Eastwood sighs.
“She’s got these, fuckin’, massive windows in her office though. Nothing but sky,” Whitney says, grin spreading over their face. A laugh, bright and delighted, from Eastwood. “I shoulda trusted the yellow Uno card,” she says, feigning annoyance.
“That’s what I always fuckin’ tell people!” Eastwood cries. Whitney knocks their head against Eastwood’s shoulder. She’s sort of misjudged where he’s sitting, but she gets there after a second.
